Alice Coverdale, annoyed and pained by what she considered her husband’s injustice and unkindness, did not leave him long in doubt as to her feelings upon the subject; for as soon as she could conquer a choking sensation in the throat sufficiently to speak, she exclaimed:—
“Really, Harry, I must say you are most unkind and inconsiderate; you chose of your own accord to accept the invitation to Allerton House, though I warned you at the time that it would necessitate your calling on the Duke and Duchess first: you agreed—in fact, you promised to do so. There has not been a day since that I haven’t reminded you of this promise, so it is impossible you can have forgotten it;—there was a time, and not so very long ago either, when you were ready enough to go anywhere with me, and were only too glad to find I wished you to do so. I little thought, poor foolish girl that I was, how soon things would alter; and now, when you knew as well as I did that this is the last day on which we can pay this visit, you’ve formed some stupid engagement (to go and shoot somewhere, I dare say; I wish guns had never been invented—horrid dangerous things—always going off unexpectedly and killing people), and so made it impossible to return the Duchess’s call: and tomorrow I shall be ashamed to look her in the face, or to speak to her; though I dare say she won’t give me a chance to do that, for she is as proud as Lu——— as a woman can be.”
Here, from sheer want of breath, Alice being forced to pause, Harry quietly remarked: “Women can be as proud as men for that matter, ecce signum, but now just listen to a little common sense for a minute. I fully intended and wished to accompany you, but I happened yesterday, at H————, to meet with a very old friend of mine, who informed me that he was going this morning to transact certain business matters which would involve the expenditure of a considerable sum of money, in regard to which affair he particularly required my advice and opinion.”
“He must be going to buy a gun or a horse then,” interrupted Alice; “those are the only things people imagine you understand; and I don’t wonder at them either, when they see you waste half your life about this horrid sporting. If you give up all intellectual pursuits in this way, you’ll go on till you become fit for nothing but to hunt, shoot, eat, drink, and sleep, like that dreadful old creature, Colonel Crossman.”
Thoroughly provoked by this last speech (which touched on a sensitive point in Harry’s disposition, and aroused a latent fear, by which he was always more or less oppressed, lest people should consider him, from his fondness for field sports, a mere addlepated, fox-hunting squire), he replied, with more asperity in his tone than he had ever before used, or believed it possible he could use, towards Alice, “Take care you don’t become a peevish shrew, like Mrs. Crossman. You are angry, and forget yourself; when you grow calm again, you will perceive how foolish and unreasonable you have been to lose your temper about such a silly trifle.”
“You think being rude to your friends and unkind to your wife a silly trifle, do you?” inquired Alice.
Harry’s colour rose as he took a turn up and down the room to compose his feelings ere he would trust himself to reply. “You want to make me angry,” he said, “but I do not intend to afford you that satisfaction. Listen to me,” he continued, seeing that his wife was again about to interrupt him, “listen to me, and when you have heard what I am about to say, you can reply as you please. I made this engagement to oblige my friend, without at the moment recollecting that to-day was the time appointed for calling on the Duchess; but when I reflected that one was business of importance, and the other a mere visit of ceremony, I hoped and believed you would be reasonable enough, when I should have explained the matter to you, not even to wish me to give up my engagement, and would exercise sufficient common sense and self-control, to go and pay the visit alone.”
“Then you thought wrongly,” returned Alice, with vehemence; “if you required a wife who could go about by herself and visit a set of proud, stiff people, who are strangers to her, and keep up your position in the county, while you are out hunting and shooting all day, for your own selfish amusement, you should have chosen some fashionable woman of the world, and not a poor simple country girl like myself, who relied on your affection to protect and encourage her;” and here Alice showed strong symptoms of a disposition to bring that “young wife’s last resource” of a flood of tears to bear upon her disobedient and refractory spouse.
Harry, seeing this, and having been throughout the interview haunted by a latent consciousness that he was in the wrong, was strongly tempted to yield, and, dispatching a messenger to Tom Rattleworth furnished with some good and sufficient social white lie to account for his non-appearance, to stay quietly at home till the time should have arrived to accompany his wife to visit their aristocratic neighbours; but, unhappily, Colonel Crossman’s caution, “You’ve married a nice gal and a pretty gal, take care you don’t go and spoil her,” flashed across him: “women are all alike, more or less; it’s the nature of ’em to choose to have their own way; if you indulge ’em at first, they will be your masters ever after; show your wife she has met her match,” &c. &c.—these, and such like precepts, rang in Harry’s ears. Alice was angry and unreasonable, striving for the upper hand, in fact; he must not permit this: for her sake, as much as for his own, he was called upon to assert himself, and vindicate his marital authority. Yes, painful as it was to his feelings to speak or act harshly to his young wife, whom, even at that moment, he cared for more than any other created being, he would give her a lesson which should cure the evil at once and for ever. So putting on a very grave look he began: “My dear Alice, you are forgetting yourself, forgetting our relative positions; but there is a quiet way of settling such affairs; verbose discussions of this nature do not suit me—I am essentially a man of action. It is the husband’s right to command, the wife’s duty to obey. I had hoped your own proper feeling would have saved me the pain of being forced to remind you of this. I must now add, that I consider myself bound to fulfil my engagement to my friend, and intend to do so: during my absence, it is my wish and desire that you should drive and call on the Duchess of Brentwood; if, which I can scarcely conceive possible, you still refuse to do as I have pointed out, I shall, before I leave this room, write a note to Lady Allerton, informing her that we are unable to dine with her to-morrow, without assigning any cause whatsoever for this change of intention—which, as I cannot give the true reason, and will not stoop to invent a false one, is the only course left open to me.”
Having delivered himself calmly and firmly of this despotic speech, Harry folded his arms across his broad chest, and leaning his autocratic back against the chimney-piece, stood looking as if he felt himself completely “monarch of all he surveyed,” his wife included. Meanwhile a fearful struggle between good and evil was proceeding in Alice’s mind; a kind word or look would instantly have caused the good to triumph: but her husband stood cold and inexorable as a statue of Fate. Then the same personage who tempted Eve to the sin which lost her Eden, suddenly caused to flash across Alice’s recollection all Mrs. Crossman’s arguments, and she determined to follow her advice, to “pluck up a spirit, and treat her husband as he treated her,” &c. Accordingly, by a great effort restraining her tears, which during Harry’s harangue had begun to flow, she looked up with flashing eyes and crimson cheeks, as she replied:
“The obedience you require is not that of a wife but of a slave, and I refuse to yield it. You have treated me unkindly and unjustly, and I will not sacrifice myself to oblige you.” Harry made no reply, though his lips moved convulsively, as though he could scarcely command himself to keep silence; then snatching pen and ink, he scrawled a hasty note, sealed and directed it, and rising, quitted the room without uttering a single word. As the door closed behind him, the tears which Alice had hitherto with such difficulty repressed, burst forth unrestrained. She was roused from a paroxysm of weeping by the sound of horses’ feet, and springing to the window, reached it in time to see Harry give a note to a groom, who rode away at speed in the direction of Allerton House; then mounting his own horse, he also galloped off, ere Alice could muster sufficient presence of mind to attempt to recall him.
Falling out with the wife of one’s bosom is a process that bears a marked affinity to two other domestic operations which, from time immemorial, have lapsed into well-merited disrepute—viz., quarrelling with one’s bread and butter, and cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face; the same moral but uncomfortable necessity of inherent self-chastisement being common to all three. Thus Harry Coverdale, having vindicated his marital dignity, and galloped off the irritation consequent upon so acting, heartily wished the deed undone, and Alice and himself friends again; for, little as he appeared to prize it, her affection had become necessary to him, and he could no more do without it, than he could have dispensed with sunshine in summer, or fires at Christmas. Accordingly it was in no very amiable frame of mind that he joined his fox-hunting ally; and it required all the allurements of oysters, porter, devilled bones, and unimpeachable port wine, to enable him to “cast dull care away,” sufficiently to take a proper and sportsman-like interest in all the minutiæ of the proposed transfer of stock, canine and equestrian. Once fairly in for it, however, his stable-minded propensities asserted themselves, and he spent a deeply interesting afternoon in feeling back-sinews, detecting incipient curbs and spavins, condemning an incurable sand-crack, and otherwise testing and pronouncing judgment upon the quadrupedal inmates of Squire Broomfield’s hunting stables. As the waning light heralded the approach of dinner-time (that important epoch in the day with all country gentlemen, and with most London ones also), and the last horse had been trotted out and trotted in again, and its petticoats (which grooms call ‘body-clothing’) replaced, Harry’s thoughts fell back into their former gloomy train. Anxious, therefore, to learn how Alice was progressing under the weight of his high displeasure, he was about to take leave, when Tom Rattleworth drew him aside, observing in a confidential whisper,—
“I say, Coverdale, old Broomfield is going to ask you to stay and dine—I know he is, he looks so pleased with himself. For mercy’s sake don’t refuse, or else I shall have to endure a tête-à-tête with the old boy, and that will use me up all together—horse, foot, and artillery; for, besides being bored to extinction, he will do me out of every advantage you have obtained for me to-day. He’s an awful screw, and I’m good for nothing at a bargain after the first bottle; so if you leave me to his tender mercies, I’m safe to be butchered like a lamb, and served up in my own mint sauce before we quit the mahogany.”
“I’m afraid I must decline,” was the reply, “for my wife has been at home by herself all day, and it is not fair to expect her to spend the evening in solitude also. But you need not be victimised on that account; come home and dine with us. You’ve never met my wife; she was in the school-room and a pinafore when you went abroad with your regiment. Say yes, and then you can tell old Broomfield that you are engaged to me.”
“So be it then,” was the rejoinder, and thus was Mr. Broomfield cheated of his guests, and Harry enabled to avoid a tête-à-tête dinner, and possibly a scene, with his outraged spouse. In the meantime, Alice had been enduring all the mental torments consequent upon having been angry with the person one loves best in the world. First, the idea that she had been most cruelly used, and extensively sinned against, and put upon, was the only one which presented itself to her mind in anything like a clear and definite shape; and she bewailed her evil fortune in a very thunderstorm of weeping. Having by this means condensed, and disposed of, a vast amount of superfluous steam, she grew calmer and more reasonable, when the uncomfortable possibility gradually dawned upon her, that she also might have been to blame—that she had first irritated, and then defied Harry, and utterly and completely failed in her duty as a wife; and so penitent did she become on the strength of this conviction, that if her husband had returned at that moment, she would have thrown herself at his feet and humbly implored his pardon, which act of unqualified submission must have disarmed Harry so entirely and totally, that he would instantly have forgiven her, and frankly confessed himself to blame, and Alice would never again have experienced the effects of his “quiet manner.” But, unfortunately, Harry was at that moment differently occupied, in impressing upon Tom Rattleworth the important fact, that Lucifer would be all the better for having a red-hot iron passed lightly over his off fetlock at the first convenient opportunity, and thus Alice’s extreme penitence evaporated as her anger had done. The final conclusion at which she arrived was, that she would confess her fault to Harry on his return, and then try calmly and quietly to convince him of his injustice. If she should succeed in this, of which she did not feel by any means certain, they would exchange forgiveness; and, warned by that which had occurred, take heed to their ways, and live in harmony and affection ever after. All these sentiments Alice proposed to deliver when she and her husband should be tête-à-tête after dinner, at which time she had observed Harry to be usually in an amiable and convincible frame of mind. It may easily be imagined, therefore, that when she heard Tom Rattleworth declare with much enthusiasm, and in a voice raised to the pitch in which its possessor had been wont to direct the gallant fraction of the British army lately under his command to “Should—der ar-r-ums,” that he was open to “be blessed,” on the spot, if “the jolly old place did not look stunning,” she was by no means inclined to afford him the benediction he had invoked, and heartily wished him at the bottom of the Red Sea, which we take to be the lowest geographical limit to which a lady’s anathema can be permitted to descend. She had not time to do more than condemn her unknown visitor to the oceanic penal settlement aforesaid, ere a sound as of a jibbing man impelled forward by some powerful agency in the rear, together with the following expostulation, met her ear:—“My dear fellow, I’m not fit to be introduced; I’m all over mud, I am upon my life!”
In another moment the drawing-room door flew open, and her husband and a tall, large, bushy-whiskered, bluff, young man, who looked as if he could only have been brought in doors by way of a trick, like a pony, or a wheelbarrow, stood before her.
“Alice, this is Tom Rattleworth, an old schoolfellow of mine, who is very anxious to form your acquaintance, and has kindly consented to dine with us,” observed Harry.
“Hey!—haw!” began Tom Rattleworth, uttering sounds like a bashful ogre in his intense consciousness of his muddy disqualification for female society; “haw!—hey! the kindnesses all—haw!—the other way. I hope—Mrs. Coverdale—my dear fellow—will excuse—I told you I wasn’t fit to be seen; but you seem to be—the roads are—impetuous as ever—so very muddy.” Having delivered himself of this slightly incoherent address, the embryo M.F.H. “made his reverence” to Alice, and then performing the military evolution expressed in the mysterious terms, “To the right about! wheel!” he laid violent hands upon his host, and forced him out of the room as energetically as he had been himself propelled into it.
The dinner soon made its appearance, and was a “real blessing” to all parties, for it provided them something wherewith to occupy their mouths, and thus obviated the painful necessity of manufacturing small-talk—a toil compared with which the labours of Hercules appear child’s play, and the up-hill work of Sisyphus a mere game at ball.
The first sharp edge of his appetite taken off, Tom Rattleworth began to converse fluently upon the only topic which never failed him, and which invariably formed the staple ingredient in his discourse, and, indeed, in his thoughts generally—viz., himself and his own sayings and doings.
Alice, bored and unhappy, uttered monosyllabic replies, when she perceived that she was expected to do so; and remained silent and distraite when such exertions were not required of her.
Harry, partly grieved at perceiving the accustomed sunshine in his wife’s pretty face overcast, partly irritated at what he imagined to be the sulkiness of her manner; annoyed at his friend’s egotistic chatter, which he felt was disgusting Alice, and which he could not contrive to check (seeing that the obtuseness of Tom Rattleworth’s faculties rendered him totally impervious to a hint); and generally provoked by the change from his usual state of careless, light-hearted happiness to his present uncomfortable frame of mind—a change which he rightly enough attributed in a great measure to his own hastiness and mismanagement, almost lost his temper. This he displayed by rating the lad who assisted Wilkins, until he reduced that unhappy juvenile to such a pitch of nervousness and general mental debility, that, having inveigled his mistress into sugaring instead of peppering a broiled turkey’s leg, and replenished the Champagne glasses from a bottle of bitter ale, he was sent out of the room in disgrace. But in this mortal life (which would be quite unendurable if such were not the case) all things sooner or later come to an end—and dull dinners are no exceptions to the rule—thus, after the dessert had been placed on the table, Alice, having finished her half-glass of sherry and nibbled a fragment of some little vegetable absurdity preserved in candied sugar, and looking like a geological specimen rather than a sweetmeat, reckoned she had sufficiently fulfilled her duty as hostess, and was watching for an opportunity to escape and go and be wretched comfortably by herself, when Tom Rattleworth, addressing her especially, began:—
“’Pon my word, my dear Mrs. Coverdale, when I see you and my friend Harry here so happy together.” (Harry seized a pear and began denuding it of its rind with a kind of ferocious eagerness, suggestive to any one acquainted with the dessous des cartes of his willingness to perform a similar operation upon his mal à-propos guest), “I declare it makes a fellow feel quite down in the mouth when he thinks of going home to enjoy his own single blessedness, as they call it—though single t’other thing would be more like the truth, I fancy—but then it isn’t everybody that’s as lucky as Harry and you—not suited to each other so charmingly, you understand.” (Alice, avoiding her husband’s eye, bent over her sweetmeat as though she were anxious to count the number of spangles of candied sugar it took to cover a square inch thereof.) “Now there was a man in our regiment—curious coincidence, his name was Harry, too—but those things do happen so curiously—Harry Flusterton his name was—well, ma’am, when we were quartered up at Montreal, there was a family there to whom Harry and I took out introductions, and as we found ourselves decidedly hard up for amusement, we used to visit there pretty much. There were two or three daughters in the family, but the eldest was the one that took my fancy most, and Harry Flusterton was of the same opinion. Accordingly we both laid siege to her, but Harry soon began to shoot ahead, and I, finding that it was no go, quietly took up with number two, who, although she hadn’t her sister’s points, figure, or action, was by no means a girl to be despised, especially in a dull place like that; well, my dear fellow—haw!—my dear ma’am, I mean—’pon my word, I’m not fit for ladies’ society—but the long and short of it is, Harry was married—everybody thought he was the luckiest dog breathing—I’m sure I did for one, and said as much to Eliza—that was the younger one, you understand, that I was obliged to put up with. When I made that remark to her, she looked at me queer like, and says she, ‘I hope your friend is a very sweet temper, Mr. Rattleworth?’ ‘Of course he is,’ returned I, for he was, up to the day he married, as easy tempered a fellow as you’d wish to meet with. Would you believe it, Mrs. Coverdale, this charming creature that we had both fallen so desperately in love with (not but that I liked Eliza just as well when I once got used to her) turned, out a regular vixen—a perfect virago, ma’am; why Harry himself told me that they hadn’t much more than got over the honeymoon, when the first time he wanted her to do something she didn’t like, some nonsense about visiting, or some such stuff, the way she flared up was a caution to single men——”
“My dear Rattleworth, I’m sorry to interrupt you,” exclaimed Coverdale, who could bear it no longer, “but I’m afraid my wife is a little overcome by the heat of the room—those servants will make such ridiculously large fires. My dear Alice, if you prefer the drawing-room, I’m sure Rattleworth will excuse you; this place is like the black-hole in Calcutta.” And while Rattleworth, talking all the time, sprang to open the door, Harry covered his wife’s retreat by instituting a furious onslaught upon the unoffending fire. It was well he came to the rescue when he did, for in another minute Alice would have been in hysterics. To get rid of his dear friend as soon as possible was Harry’s next anxiety, but this was no such easy matter. Thomas Rattleworth, Esq., M.F.H., was at that happy moment the victim of two strenuous necessities—one to listen to the sound of his own voice, expressing not so much his ideas as his paucity thereof; and the other to imbibe a bottle of port wine, in twelve doses of a wine-glass each; and these necessities had the unfortunate property of re-acting upon and increasing each other; for talking made him thirsty, and drinking made him talkative, so that it was eleven o’clock before he had talked himself out, by which time the terminus of a second bottle of port had been arrived at. With a feeling of relief such as Sinbad the Sailor might have experienced when he felt the legs of the Old Man of the Sea gradually relaxing their clasp around his wearied shoulders, did Harry assist his friend to light a cigar, then watched its fiery tip gradually disappear in the darkness, as Rattleworth’s cover hack cantered off with its master’s six feet one of good-natured goose-flesh.
Left to his own meditations, Harry started a cigar on his own account, and, the night being a fine one, he paced up and down the gravel walk in front of the house until he should have cleared his brain from the fumes of the wine civility had forced him to swallow. The calm stars came out one by one, and as he watched their bright effulgence, an idea of his childhood, that they might be the eyes of angels, recurred to his memory; and he could even fancy they appeared to gaze upon him reproachfully. No human being possessing even the lowest order of reflective powers, or the faintest vestige of imagination, can watch the tranquil splendour of a starlight night—a scene which at once proclaims God’s omnipotence, and appears a work fitted to the majesty of the Great Being who created it for his own glory—without becoming imbued with the idea of rest and peace, and desirous of realising these blessings in his own life. “With God and infinity so near us, how we loathe the trifles of existence! and, above all, how we despise and contemn the littleness of our fallen nature! how we repent with bitter tears of shame and contrition the evils they have wrought in ourselves, and through us to others! And how, at such a moment, do the qualities we inherit from heaven—truth, and love, and mercy—expand within us, and fill our souls, and raise us, for the time, above ourselves, and nearer to the high estate from which we have fallen—alas I that it should be only for the time! Coverdale was not insensible to these elevating influences; his love for Alice returned in all its original strength and purity, and he determined, before he slept that night, to bring about a reconciliation, even if his wife should refuse to confess that she had acted wrongly. Yes! he would actually go the length of owning that he had been to blame and was sorry for it, and then Alice would forgive him, and all would be as though this foolish disagreement had never occurred.
False reasoning, Harry! there are two things a woman, however thoroughly she may forgive them, never forgets—neglect and unkindness; and when once these have cast their shadow across the bright eager gladness with which she yields up her whole soul as a thank-offering to him she loves, man, with his stronger, sterner nature, can no more bring back the delicacy and freshness of that young affection, than he can restore to the peach the bloom which his careless fingers have profaned—the love may still exist in its full reality, but the bright halo of early romance which surrounded it has been dispelled, never to return.
Having looked at the stars, and profited by their quiet teaching, Harry went in a sadder and a wiser man, resolved, ere he slept that night, to confess his fault, and, if it might be so, obtain Alice’s forgiveness. But Alice, tired and unhappy, had gone to bed, and cried herself to sleep like a weary child; and when Harry entered her room, he found her lying with her head pillowed on her arm, and the tear-drops scarcely dried upon her long silken eyelashes, as soundly asleep as though care, and sin, and sorrow, were evils of which her philosophy had never dreamed—so Coverdale could only invoke a silent blessing upon her, and hasten to follow her example by going to bed and to sleep himself. Thus an opportunity was lost of regaining the “high estate” in his wife’s affections, from which he had fallen by reason of his inconsiderate selfishness, and hasty and impetuous temper; and it is a fact equally true and trying, that an opportunity once lost never returns, even an advertisement in the Times would fail to regain it.
One of the strangest and least comprehensive of psychological phenomena is the total change produced in our thoughts, feelings, opinions, hopes, fears, sympathies, antipathies, and all the other component parts which make up that wonderful spiritual steam-engine, the mind of man, by a good night’s sleep. We go to bed desperately in love with some charming girl we have flirted with half the evening, despising her cruel old male parent, who would come and disturb our tête-à-tête, and take her away at least an hour sooner than anybody not utterly callous to all the finer feelings of human nature would have dreamed of doing; and having with unchristian malignity her tall cousin in the Blues, who, having known her from her cradle upwards, dared to call her “Gussie” to our very face—we sleep soundly, our mind lies fallow for some six hours, and lo! a change has come o’er us; our goddess has stepped down from her pedestal, and appears a very average specimen of white muslined femininity and flirtation, whom her father has improved into quite an amiable model paterfamilias, at whose patient benignity in remaining, to please his daughter, at an evening party till half-past three a.m. we actually marvel; and as to that fine young fellow her cousin, we are really shocked when we recall our unchristian feelings towards him, and, as some slight compensation, mentally book him for an invite to that dinner at Blackwall which we propose bestowing upon a dozen of our very particular friends, in the unlikely event of our exchequer holding out till the white-bait season. Thus, by the next morning, Coverdale had slept off the sharp edge of his penitence, and when Alice began by a great effort to refer to the events of the previous day, with the intention of confessing herself in the wrong, and asking forgiveness, Harry, dreading a scene with a degree of horror equally masculine and English, checked the flow of her eloquence by exclaiming abruptly and cheerfully, “Yes, dear, certainly—but don’t say another word about it; we were both very silly, and made each other very miserable, when we might be as happy as the day is long; let bygones be bygones, we will forgive and forget, and be wiser for the future, eh?” As he spoke, he drew her to him, and sealing his forgiveness on her lips with a kiss, rendered all discussion impossible by leaving the room.
This speech (kiss included) ought to have satisfied any reasonable wife, but unfortunately at that moment Alice was not exactly in a reasonable frame of mind; she had dwelt so long on one idea, in accordance with which she had arranged the whole programme of a dramatic reconciliation scene, that she by no means approved of Harry’s short cut to concord, rendering null and void all her explanation of how, and why, and wherefore she had come to behave ill, together with a spirited sketch in monologue of her contrition for the past and vows of amendment for the future; the whole to conclude with certain annotations and reflections, which she trusted would so affect her husband’s feelings, and convince his understanding, that he would for the future restrict shooting to two short mornings a-week, and cast hunting “to the dogs” entirely, and now all the mysterious pleasure the gentler sex derive from talking a thing well over, was denied her.
Ah! that “talking over,” what a wonderful female attribute it is! how vast and important a part of “woman’s mission” does it constitute! in fact, we have met innumerable women—the majority of our female acquaintance, we should say—whose whole and entire mission appears to consist of a “call” to “talk over,” first, their neighbours’ affairs (a duty to their neighbour in which they never fail), secondly, their own. The French aphorism (seldom acted upon, by its voluble originators), Cela va sans dire, must seem unspeakably absurd to these advocates for an indefinite extension of the “freedom of debate;” while the “silent system” must appear a more “capital punishment” than death itself, always supposing the excellence of a punishment to be tested by its severity: but we are slightly digressing.
If anything were needed to prove the absurdity of human beings—creatures with immortal souls, placed in this world to prepare for eternity—darkening the sunshine of each other’s lives by bickering about trifles, that evidence would be afforded when we observe the manner in which such mental nebulæ vanish before the presence of any of the stern realities of existence. Thus when, breakfast being concluded, Harry was called mysteriously out of the apartment to learn that a mounted groom had just arrived from Hazlehurst Grange, with the intelligence that old Mr. Hazlehurst had been seized with a fit, from which, when the servant came away, he was not expected to recover, Coverdale’s only thought was how most tenderly and judiciously to break the sad news to Alice. Having executed his painful task with a degree of tact and delicacy of feeling for which those who knew only the rough side of his character would scarcely have given him credit, and soothed, to the best of his ability, the burst of grief with which Alice received the intelligence, Harry continued, “And now, love, the moment you are able to start, the phaeton will be ready; it is lighter than the close carriage, and in an emergency like the present, every minute becomes of consequence.”
“And you?” inquired Alice, glancing at him timidly through her tears.
“I of course will drive you myself; you did not suppose I should let you go alone.”
Alice could not reply, but as she pressed her husband’s hand caressingly, the old loving look came back into her eyes, and Harry felt that he was forgiven. On reaching the Grange the report of the sick man was more favourable than Alice had dared to hope. An apoplectic fit constitutes one of the few exceptional cases in which prompt medical assistance does not necessarily increase the evil, and the Esculapius of the neighbourhood had this time successfully interposed between death and his victim; while Mr. Hazlehurst had received a lesson sufficiently severe to prevent him from objecting to the substitution of toast and water and “bland” puddings for Port wine, bottled in the year 1830, and the roast beef of Old England. Coverdale having remained at the Grange for three days, during which time he had shaken hands with, and lamented over Arthur (who, summoned at the commencement of his father’s illness, appeared looking so pale and thin, that it was decided nem. con. that he was working himself to death—a view of the case which he rather than otherwise encouraged by the faintness of his denial), was forced to return to the Park to attend the next meeting of magistrates, and finally to dispose of the offending poachers. Accordingly, having arranged with Alice to send the close carriage for her on the day but one following, he took leave of the Hazlehurst family, and drove to H————. Here, after a long examination, the aforesaid poachers were convicted, and sentenced, one to nine months’, another to a year’s imprisonment—Markum’s evidence being so clear and convincing, that such an issue became inevitable. As the gamekeeper left the court, a tall, gipsy-looking fellow came up to him, and muttered in his car, “You’ll live to repent this day’s work, Master Keeper; look to yourself one of these dark nights.”
“Look to yourself if I catch you on our ground,” was Markum’s contemptuous rejoinder; “there’s enough oakum to pick in H———— gaol for Tom and you too.”
“Who is that fellow,” inquired Coverdale, as the man, perceiving that the keeper’s reply was beginning to attract attention, turned away with a scowl.
“That be Jack Hargrave, Mr. Coverdale, sir,” returned Markum; “brother along o’ Tom, as we’ve give twelve months to; and sarve ’im right, a poachin’, thievin’ wagrant.”
“Is this fellow a poacher also?” asked Harry.
“That is he then,” was the reply; “a reg’lur bred un, and as deep a hand as ever set a snare, only he’s so ‘wide o’,’ that it’s not so easy to nab the warmint; but I’ll be down upon ’im yet, for all his threatenings. He’s bin heard to swear he’ll put a charge o’ shot under my veskit some o’ these nights; he’d better not, though, or he may find there’s two can play at that game.”
“No violence, my good fellow, no violence; it’s not a light thing to shed the blood of a fellow-creature—besides, there’s a quiet way of managing these affairs. I shall warn the police to keep an eye on that man Hargrave; he looks dangerous; and you may as well put on another watcher, it won’t do to be shorthanded just now.” So saying, Coverdale turned away, and was soon deep in conversation with the inspector of the mounted rural police; after which, refusing to make one of a jovial party who were about to dine with Tom Rattleworth, and were tolerably certain to remain playing whist, and imbibing strong liquors till the small hours should be again upon the increase, he drove home to his solitary mansion.
It was the first time since his marriage that Coverdale had dined by himself, and he felt proportionably lonely; everything tended to remind him of Alice—her favourite dog, a little black-and-tan spaniel, with large loving eyes, not unlike her own, leaped on his knee after dinner, and gazing wistfully at the empty chair opposite, uttered a low whine, as though it would inquire, “Where’s my mistress?” The footstool, whereon her dainty little feet were wont to repose—the screen with which she was accustomed to shade her fair cheek from the too ardent advances of the fire—each object, animate or inanimate, recalled his thoughts to Alice; and feeling, even more strongly than he had ever yet felt, how deeply and tenderly he loved her, he for the first time perceived that love in its true light, and, in acknowledging its full reality, became conscious of the duties and responsibilities such an affection entailed upon him. Faintly and dimly at first the light broke in upon him; deeply did he feel the difficulties of the task, and his own inability to perform it; and bitterly, most bitterly, did he regret his own selfish carelessness, which had, as he was fain to confess, tended already to estrange his young wife’s affection, and to convert a gentle, yielding girl, into a wilful and exacting woman. And thus he sat, pondering over and regretting the past, and forming wise and good resolutions for the future, while minutes gliding by unobserved grew into hours, until the sudden restlessness of the little dog, which had been sleeping quietly upon his knees, roused him, and looking at his watch, he perceived it was nearly midnight. As he did so the dog, whose restlessness appeared to increase, uttered a short bark, while at the same moment a distant sound was faintly audible, which Harry’s practised ear instantly recognised as the report of a gun. To spring to the window, open the shutter, and fling up the sash, was the work of an instant; a like space of time sufficed to resolve doubt into certainty,—guns were being discharged in a favourite plantation about half a mile from the house—a plantation in which the pheasants were as well fed and tame as barn-door fowls; it was evident the poachers were taking their revenge, and that these sacred birds, the Lares and Penates of Harry’s sporting mythology, were being ruthlessly slaughtered on their roosts. Harry rang the bell furiously; then, before the alarmed Wilkins (who, having commenced his career in the service of an apoplectic alderman, laboured under a chronic impression that somebody was in a fit) had passed beyond the door of the servants’ hall, he rushed impetuously out of the dining-room, and meeting that bewildered domestic in full career, nearly frightened him into an attack of the malady he so much dreaded for others, by exclaiming, “Here, quick! Tell Saunders, or some of them, to saddle the shooting cob, and bring him round instantly; then find me a hat and pea-jacket. Quick, I say!”
As the butler vanished on his mission, Coverdale took down from a peg in the hall, a special constable’s staff which had been intrusted to him on behalf of her gracious Majesty, at a time when an extra dose of politics and strong beer had proved too potent for the dense agricultural pates of certain free and independent (alias bribed and tipsy) electors of the neighbouring county town. It was a stout piece of ash, about a foot and a half long, thicker than an ordinary broom-stick, and weighted with lead, for the benefit of any unusually opaque skull into which it might be deemed advisable to knock a respect for our glorious constitution. Harry felt its weight, and, as he passed his wrist through the leather thong attached to it, he thought to himself they would be bold men who could prevent him, with that in his hand, from going where he pleased. The instant the cob appeared he sprang into the saddle. “Do you and Marshal get a couple of stout sticks, and make the best of your way to the ash plantation!” he exclaimed hastily; “there are poachers out, and from their venturing to come so near the house, I should fancy there must be a strong gang of them, and Markum may want all the help we can give him.”
So saying, Coverdale gathered up the reins, and without waiting the groom’s reply, rode off at a brisk canter. As he approached the wood, he drew in and paused, uncertain whether Markum might yet have reached the scene of action: as he listened, the sound of men crashing through the dry underwood became distinctly audible; then shouts and a clamour of angry voices, and finally, the unmistakeable noise of a conflict met his ear. Pausing no longer, he put his horse into a gallop, and dashed on till he reached a hand-gate leading into the wood. This, to his annoyance, he found locked; true, he had a master-key, which he had fortunately brought with him, but he was forced to dismount in order to unfasten the padlock. While thus engaged, the sounds proved that the affray was still raging fiercely, and, as he flung the gate open, a gun was discharged, followed almost instantaneously by the report of two others. Fearing mischief might occur before he could reach the combatants, Coverdale remounted hastily, and heedless alike of obstacles and darkness, galloped down one of the grass rides through the plantation, avoiding collision with the trunks and branches of trees by, as it appeared, a succession of miracles. Before, however, he could arrive at the scene of action, the sound of blows, the shouts and imprecations, had ceased, and nothing but a confused hum of voices, together with a low moaning, as of some person ill or in pain, met his ear. Forcing his horse through the tangled underwood, Coverdale came suddenly upon a group of men, amongst whom he recognised several of his own farm labourers, while two under-keepers were kneeling beside the prostrate figure of a man who, from the stiff, unnatural attitude in which he lay, appeared either dead or dying. To leap to the ground, and snatch a lantern from one of the bystanders, was Harry’s first act; then bending over the fallen man, he recognised in the ghastly features, distorted and convulsed with agony, the well-known countenance of honest, sturdy Markum, while from a gun-shot wound in his right side the dark life-blood was slowly flowing.
“How has this happened?” was Coverdale’s hurried inquiry. “Is it an accident, or have any of those scoundrels dared to shoot him?”
There was a moment’s pause, and then one of the elder men replied, “It wor no accident, Mr. Coverdale; but Giles there can tell you best, squire; he wor nearest to un when he dropped.”
The under-keeper thus appealed to—a tall, strapping young fellow, who was vainly attempting to staunch the blood which still continued to flow—turned to reply, while Coverdale, kneeling beside the wounded man, endeavoured to arrange a more effectual bandage.
“All as I know, sir,” he said, “is that I wor a watching nigh down by the warren, when up cum poor Master Markum here, and ‘Giles,’ says he, ‘ye’re wanted, lad; there’s them out as didn’t oughter be.’ So him and I, and the rest o’ our mates here, which master had appinted to meet at eleven o’clock—for I expect he’d had some hint give him of what was to be up, made for the ash spinney, and laid us down in a ditch. Well, it warn’t long afore we heard the blackguards at work among the pheasants, a banging away like blazes. We waited till they got near us, and then we up and at ’em like good uns. There was more of ’em nor there was o’ we, so they showed light a bit. Poor master there he jest wor real savage; he hit out hard and straight, and rolled ’em over like nine-pins; they worn’t o’ no manner o’ use again him, not none on ’em. Well, they soon got enough of that sort of fun, and one arter another cut away, till at last they all fairly turned tail and bolted—that is, all but one, and him master collared, and says he, ‘Stop a bit, Jack; I’m agoin’ to send you to see your brother in H———— gaol; I’m afeard Tom should be dull for want o’ cumpany, poor chap!’ Well, Jack Hargrave, for him it wor, fit sharp for his liburty, but master wor too good a man for him; and he’d a took him as safe as mutton, only Jack hollard arter one of his mates as had a gun, and told him to shoot the ———— keeper, and not let him be took. The fellow stopped and faced round—he wor a young chap as I knows well—I’d cotched sight of his face afore he cut away, a soft young feller, as anybody might bully into anything; and when Jack rapped out a volley of oaths, and told him to let fly, and chance hittin’ him, shoot he did, and poor master let go his hold o’ Jack’s collar, and rolled over and over like I’ve seen many a hare and rabbid roll over afore his gun.”
“But there was more than one barrel discharged,” interposed Coverdale; “I heard three shots in succession—how was that?”
“Why, when I see poor Master Markum fall, I was jest agoin’ to kneel down to raise him a bit, when I ketched sight o’ Jack Hargrave and his pal a cutting away like lamplighters, and I felt mad like to think he should get off scotfree arter what he’d been and done, and having my gun in my hand, I give ’em the contents of both barrels; it worn’t right, I knows, Mr. Coverdale, but if you’d been in my place, squire, I’m blessed if I don’t think you’d ha done the same, axing your pardon.”
Feeling a strong private conviction that “Giles” had only judged him correctly, Harry looked grave and shook his head, as if such a possibility could not exist in the case of a magistrate, ere he inquired, “Do you think you hit either of them?”
“They’d got a farish start before I pulled at ’em,” was the reply, “and the light ain’t that good for a long shot, but I fancy Jack Hargrave’s got something to take home with him, for he give a rare jump as the charge reached him; but it warn’t enough to stop him, for I see him a runnin’ like a greyhound arter-wards.”
While this conversation was proceeding, Coverdale, by aid of sundry neckcloths, and a strip that he cut from his own pea-jacket, had contrived a bandage which in great measure stopped the bleeding, and Markum revived sufficiently to recognise those about him; as his eyes fell on Coverdale, a faint smile passed across his features.
“Is it you, squire?” he murmured in a low voice. “Ah! you always had a kind heart of your own; Jack Hargrave’s kep his word, you see. I expects him and his mate ’as finished me atween ’em this time.”
“We’ll hope not, my poor fellow—but don’t speak. Do you think you can bear carrying yet—yes? Four of you take that hand-gate off its hinges, and bring it here; we’ll lay him on that. We shall have a surgeon for you directly, my poor fellow! I sent one of the lads off on my horse to fetch Mr. Gouger the moment I came up—now, steady with him. I’ll lift his head—that’s it; now raise the gate steadily. Gently there—well done—are you all ready? Step together mind—march.”
As he spoke, Harry (who himself supported one corner of the temporary litter he had contrived) and three others, raised the wounded man on their shoulders, and carried him to his own cottage, which fortunately was near at hand. He bore the transit bravely, though the pain occasioned by such motion as was unavoidable, reduced him more than once to the verge of fainting. Shortly after he had reached his destination the surgeon arrived. Coverdale waited until he had pronounced the wound dangerous, though not necessarily mortal, then leaving him to make a more minute examination, he quitted the house. He found a mounted policeman awaiting him outside, who, making his rounds, had been attracted by the sound of guns at that unusual hour.
“Ah, policeman, I was just going to send after you; my head keeper has been shot by these poaching rascals, and is seriously hurt, I’m afraid!” exclaimed Coverdale. “How are we to make sure of the fellows who did it? It lies between a man called Jack Hargrave—”
“A reg’lur bad un,” observed the horse-patrol, parenthetically.
“You said you knew the other man,” continued Harry, appealing to the under-keeper; “are you acquainted with his name?”
“They do call him ‘Winkey’ in a general way, from a trick he’s got with his eyelids; but his right name be Jim Fags,” was the reply.
“I know him,” observed the policeman. “Well, sir, as we’re acquainted with the parties, I should say we’re safe to be down upon ’em somewheres to-morrow. I’ll ride over to H————, and put all our men on the scent.”
“Stay! that gives me an idea,” said Coverdale; then turning to the under-keeper, he continued in a lower voice—“You are sure you hit Hargrave—are you, Giles?”
The young man nodded in the affirmative, and his master resumed,—
“Go and fetch Nero, poor Markum’s night-dog, muzzle him, and bring him in one of the greyhound leashes. We’ll contrive to take these rascals before day dawns, policeman.”
While Coverdale was explaining his plan to the patrol, Giles returned with the dog: it was a splendid animal, a cross between the English mastiff and a Spanish bloodhound. Its size was unusual, and its strength enormous. Its eyes glared red in the torchlight, like those of some wild beast. When it saw the policeman it uttered a low growl, and the bristles on its back stood up like a mane; but at a word from Coverdale it relinquished its hostile attitude, and with a sagacious look, which said almost as plainly as words could have expressed it—“I comprehend; it’s not him they’ve sent for me to worry”—thrust its huge head caressingly into its master’s hand.
“Now patrol,” resumed Coverdale, “if you will ride along the skirts of the wood, and lead my horse, I fancy I shall be able to put the dog on the track of these fellows—and, if so, he will never leave it till the game is run down. You have handcuffs with you?”
“Aye, and pistols too, for the matter of that,” was the reply.
“I don’t expect they will be required,” rejoined Coverdale; “the scoundrels will scarcely want more fighting than they’ve had already;” then signalling Giles to follow with the dog he turned, and, re-entering the plantation, soon reached the scene of the late conflict.
“Now try and find, an nearly as possible, the spot where Hargrave was when you fired at him,” began Coverdale; “give me the dog to hold, and take the lantern with you.”
Giles obeyed; and having walked about fifty paces down a narrow pathway through the wood, began carefully to examine the ground on either side. Having pursued his investigation for some minutes in silence, he paused, examined the spot still more closely, and then made a sign to Coverdale to join him.
On reaching the place Harry observed, by the light of the lantern, several dark spots, and a long mark on the soft ground, as though some person had slipped and nearly fallen, then deep footsteps led towards the outskirts of the wood. The moment the dog perceived the scent of blood all the savage instinct of its nature awoke, and, with a bound, which tested the strength of the leash, and nearly dislocated Coverdale’s shoulders, it sprang forward along the track of the fugitives. Five minutes’ painful toiling through bush and briar, brought them to the outskirts of the plantation, where they found the policeman waiting with the horses. Hastily springing to the saddle, Coverdale made Giles attach a small cord he had brought with him to the end of the leash, against which the bloodhound now strained impatiently; then twisting the other end round his own wrist, he was about to desire the under-keeper to return, when the patrol interfered by observing,—
“Better take Giles with us, sir!”
“Why so, policeman?” rejoined Coverdale, sharply; “we’re two to two, fresh men against tired ones; besides, you’re armed, and they’re not.”
“Jack’s got a gun with him, and is likely enough to use it now his steam’s up,” insinuated Giles, who by no means approved of losing his share in the expedition.
“And when we have nabbed ’em, I shall want help to convey ’em to H———— gaol,” pleaded the policeman. “I can take him up behind me.”
“As you will; only lose no more time,” was Coverdale’s reply; and cheering on the dog, he rode forward at a brisk trot.
The track led them through the Park, and then over hill and dale, ploughed field, and rough stubble, till it brought them out upon a wide bleak common, dotted here and there with patches of furze and broom, which showed dark and shadowy in the moonbeams, like plumes upon a hearse. Across the wildest and most tangled portion of the heath the dog led them, still straining at the leash, and uttering from time to time a suppressed whimper indicative of impatience. On the farther side of the common rose a steep bank, in one portion of which a deep hollow had been excavated for the purpose of obtaining gravel. As the dog approached this place, its eagerness became, if possible, stronger than before, until, at about thirty yards from the spot, it suddenly stopped, and again erecting the bristles on its back, uttered a deep growl. At the same moment, Coverdale, whose sight was remarkably keen, perceived a figure cautiously stealing away under cover of the bushes. Pointing him out to the policeman, whose horse was beginning to evince symptoms of distress under its double burden, Coverdale observed,—
“I can only see one man, but let us make sure of him. Get down Giles, and hold the dog. Now patrol, while I ride round that bush and head the fellow, do you go on and seize him; and if you want any assistance, I shall be ready to afford it.”
So saying, Coverdale rode forward to cut off the poacher’s retreat, while the policeman, putting spurs to his horse, and drawing his cutlass, dashed up to the fellow, and seized him by the collar.
Overawed by the gleaming weapon, and exhausted by his previous exertions, the unfortunate Jim Fags (alias Winkey) attempted no resistance; and the policeman availed himself of his pusillanimity to produce the handcuffs, and dextrously secure his prisoner. He was thus engaged when Coverdale, who was walking his horse quietly towards them, suddenly caught sight of what, at the first glance, appeared to him only the stump of a tree, but on closer inspection proved to be the figure of a man, crouching under the shadow of the gravel-pit, while, at the moment in which Coverdale first perceived him, he was taking a deliberate aim with a short gun at the unconscious patrol. For a moment the policeman’s life hung upon a thread; but a slight movement of the horse brought the unfortunate Winkey’s head into the line of fire, and his accomplice lowered his piece, and slightly altered his position, while he took fresh aim. The opportunity was not to be lost—quick as thought Coverdale rose in his stirrups, and with the full force of his muscular arm hurled the constable’s staff, which he had retained the whole evening, at the head of the kneeling figure. Fortunately for the policeman, the missile took effect, and, stunned by the force of the blow, Jack Hargrave (for he it was) measured his length upon the turf, discharging the gun harmlessly as he fell. Before he could regain his feet, Giles and the dog (who, but for his muzzle, would have torn the poacher to pieces) were upon him. In less than two hours from that time both the culprits were safely lodged in H———— gaol.