Book: My Novel, Volume 1.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> My Novel, Volume 1.




WIDOW.--"I proud! Lord love ye, sir, I have not a bit o' pride in me!
and that's the reason they always looked down on me."

PARSON.--"Your parents must be well off; and I shall apply to them in a
year or two on behalf of Lenny, for they promised me to provide for him
when he grew up, as they ought."

WIDOW (with flashing eyes).--"I am sure, sir, I hope you will do no such
thing; for I would not have Lenny beholden to them as has never given him
a kind word sin' he was born!"

The parson smiled gravely, and shook his head at poor Mrs. Fairfield's
hasty confutation of her own self-acquittal from the charge of pride; but
he saw that it was not the time or moment for effectual peace-making in
the most irritable of all rancours,--namely, that nourished against one's
nearest relations. He therefore dropped the subject, and said, "Well,
time enough to think of Lenny's future prospects; meanwhile we are
forgetting the haymakers. Come."

The widow opened the back door, which led across a little apple orchard
into the fields.

PARSON.--"You have a pleasant place here; and I see that my friend Lenny
should be in no want of apples. I had brought him one, but I have given
it away on the road."

WIDOW.--"Oh, sir, it is not the deed,--it is the will; as I felt when the
squire, God bless him! took two pounds off the rent the year he--that is,
Mark--died."

PARSON.--"If Lenny continues to be such a help to you, it will not be
long before the squire may put the two pounds on again."

"Yes, sir," said the widow, simply; "I hope he will."

"Silly woman!" muttered the parson. "That's not exactly what the
schoolmistress would have said. You don't read nor write, Mrs.
Fairfield; yet you express yourself with great propriety."

"You know Mark was a schollard, sir, like my poor, poor sister; and
though I was a sad stupid girl afore I married, I tried to take after him
when we came together."




CHAPTER IV.

They were now in the hayfield, and a boy of about sixteen, but, like most
country lads, to appearance much younger than he was, looked up from his
rake, with lively blue eyes beaming forth under a profusion of brown
curly hair.

Leonard Fairfield was indeed a very handsome boy,--not so stout nor so
ruddy as one would choose for the ideal of rustic beauty, nor yet so
delicate in limb and keen in expression as are those children of cities,
in whom the mind is cultivated at the expense of the body; but still he
had the health of the country in his cheeks, and was not without the
grace of the city in his compact figure and easy movements. There was in
his physiognomy something interesting from its peculiar character of
innocence and simplicity. You could see that he had been brought up by a
woman, and much apart from familiar contact with other children; and such
intelligence as was yet developed in him was not ripened by the jokes and
cuffs of his coevals, but fostered by decorous lecturings from his
elders, and good-little-boy maxims in good-little-boy books.

PARSON.--"Come hither, Lenny. You know the benefit of school, I see: it
can teach you nothing better than to be a support to your mother."

LENNY (looking down sheepishly, and with a heightened glow over his
face).--"Please, sir, that may come one of these days."

PARSON.--"That's right, Lenny. Let me see! why, you must be nearly a
man. How old are you?"

Lenny looks up inquiringly at his mother.

PARSON.--"You ought to know, Lenny: speak for yourself. Hold your
tongue, Mrs. Fairfield."

LENNY (twirling his hat, and in great perplexity).--"Well, and there is
Flop, neighbour Dutton's old sheep-dog. He be very old now."

PARSON.--"I am not asking Flop's age, but your own."

LENNY.--"'Deed, sir, I have heard say as how Flop and I were pups
together. That is, I--I--"

For the parson is laughing, and so is Mrs. Fairfield; and the haymakers,
who have stood still to listen, are laughing too. And poor Lenny has
quite lost his head, and looks as if he would like to cry.

PARSON (patting the curly locks, encouragingly).--"Never mind; it is not
so badly answered, after all. And how old is Flop?"

LENNY.--"Why, he must be fifteen year and more.."

PARSON.--"How old, then, are you?"

LENNY (looking up, with a beam of intelligence).--"Fifteen year and
more."

Widow sighs and nods her head.

"That's what we call putting two and two together," said the parson.
"Or, in other words," and here be raised his eyes majestically towards
the haymakers--"in other words, thanks to his love for his book, simple
as he stands here, Lenny Fairfield has shown himself capable of INDUCTIVE
RATIOCINATION."

At those words, delivered /ore rotundo/, the haymakers ceased laughing;
for even in lay matters they held the parson to be an oracle, and words
so long must have a great deal in them. Lenny drew up his head proudly.

"You are very fond of Flop, I suppose?"

"'Deed he is," said the widow, "and of all poor dumb creatures."

"Very good. Suppose, my lad, that you had a fine apple, and that you met
a friend who wanted it more than you, what would you do with it?"

"Please you, sir, I would give him half of it."

The parson's face fell. "Not the whole, Lenny?"

Lenny considered. "If he was a friend, sir, he would not like me to give
him all."

"Upon my word, Master Leonard, you speak so well that I must e'en tell
the truth. I brought you an apple, as a prize for good conduct in
school. But I met by the way a poor donkey, and some one beat him for
eating a thistle, so I thought I would make it up by giving him the
apple. Ought I only to have given him the half?"

Lenny's innocent face became all smile; his interest was aroused. "And
did the donkey like the apple?"

"Very much," said the parson, fumbling in his pocket; but thinking of
Leonard Fairfield's years and understanding, and moreover observing, in
the pride of his heart, that there were many spectators to his deed, he
thought the meditated twopence not sufficient, and he generously produced
a silver sixpence.

"There, my man, that will pay for the half apple which you would have
kept for yourself." The parson again patted the curly locks, and after a
hearty word or two with the other haymakers, and a friendly "Good-day" to
Mrs. Fairfield, struck into a path that led towards his own glebe.

He had just crossed the stile, when he heard hasty but timorous feet
behind him. He turned, and saw his friend Lenny.

LENNY (half-crying, and holding out the sixpence).--"Indeed, sir, I would
rather not. I would have given all to the Neddy."

PARSON.--"Why, then, my man, you have a still greater right to the
sixpence."

LENNY.--"No, sir; 'cause you only gave it to make up for the half apple.
And if I had given the whole, as I ought to have done, why, I should have
had no right to the sixpence. Please, sir, don't be offended; do take it
back, will you?"

The parson hesitated. And the boy thrust the sixpence into his hand, as
the ass had poked its nose there before in quest of the apple.

"I see," said Parson Dale, soliloquizing, "that if one don't give Justice
the first place at the table, all the other Virtues eat up her share."

Indeed, the case was perplexing. Charity, like a forward, impudent
baggage as she is, always thrusting herself in the way, and taking other
people's apples to make her own little pie, had defrauded Lenny of his
due; and now Susceptibility, who looks like a shy, blush-faced, awkward
Virtue in her teens--but who, nevertheless, is always engaged in picking
the pockets of her sisters--tried to filch from him his lawful
recompense. The case was perplexing; for the parson held Susceptibility
in great honour, despite her hypocritical tricks, and did not like to
give her a slap in the face, which might frighten her away forever. So
Mr. Dale stood irresolute, glancing from the sixpence to Lenny, and from
Lenny to the sixpence.

"Buon giorno, Good-day to you," said a voice behind, in an accent
slightly but unmistakably foreign, and a strange-looking figure presented
itself at the stile.

Imagine a tall and exceedingly meagre man, dressed in a rusty suit of
black,--the pantaloons tight at the calf and ankle, and there forming a
loose gaiter over thick shoes, buckled high at the instep; an old cloak,
lined with red, was thrown over one shoulder, though the day was sultry;
a quaint, red, outlandish umbrella, with a carved brass handle, was
thrust under one arm, though the sky was cloudless: a profusion of raven
hair, in waving curls that seemed as fine as silk, escaped from the sides
of a straw hat of prodigious brim; a complexion sallow and swarthy, and
features which, though not without considerable beauty to the eye of the
artist, were not only unlike what we fair, well-fed, neat-faced
Englishmen are wont to consider comely, but exceedingly like what we are
disposed to regard as awful and Satanic,--to wit, a long hooked nose,
sunken cheeks, black eyes, whose piercing brilliancy took something
wizard-like and mystical from the large spectacles through which they
shone; a mouth round which played an ironical smile, and in which a
physiognomist would have remarked singular shrewdness, and some
closeness, complete the picture. Imagine this figure, grotesque,
peregrinate, and to the eye of a peasant certainly diabolical; then perch
it on the stile in the midst of those green English fields, and in sight
of that primitive English village; there let it sit straddling, its long
legs dangling down, a short German pipe emitting clouds from one corner
of those sardonic lips, its dark eyes glaring through the spectacles full
upon the parson, yet askant upon Lenny Fairfield. Lenny Fairfield looked
exceedingly frightened.

"Upon my word, Dr. Riccabocca," said Mr. Dale, smiling, "you come in good
time to solve a very nice question in casuistry;" and herewith the parson
explained the case, and put the question, "Ought Lenny Fairfield to have
the sixpence, or ought he not?"

"Cospetto!" said the doctor, "if the hen would but hold her tongue,
nobody would know that she had laid an egg."




CHAPTER V.

"Granted," said the parson; "but what follows? The saying is good, but I
don't see the application."

"A thousand pardons!" replied Dr. Riccabocca, with all the urbanity of an
Italian; "but it seems to me that if you had given the sixpence to the
/fanciullo/, that is, to this good little boy, without telling him the
story about the donkey, you would never have put him and yourself into
this awkward dilemma."

"But, my dear sir," whispered the parson, mildly, as he inclined his lips
to the doctor's ear, "I should then have lost the opportunity of
inculcating a moral lesson--you understand?"

Dr. Riccabocca shrugged his shoulders, restored his pipe to his mouth,
and took a long whiff. It was a whiff eloquent, though cynical,--a whiff
peculiar to your philosophical smoker, a whiff that implied the most
absolute but the most placid incredulity as to the effect of the parson's
moral lesson.

"Still you have not given us your decision," said the parson, after a
pause.

The doctor withdrew the pipe. "Cospetto!" said he,--"he who scrubs the
head of an ass wastes his soap."

"If you scrubbed mine fifty times over with those enigmatical proverbs of
yours," said the parson, testily, "you would not make it any the wiser."

"My good sir," said the doctor, bowing low from his perch on the stile,
"I never presumed to say that there were more asses than one in the
story; but I thought that I could not better explain my meaning, which is
simply this,--you scrubbed the ass's head, and therefore you must lose
the soap. Let the /fanciullo/ have the sixpence; and a great sum it is,
too, for a little boy, who may spend it all as pocketmoney!"

"There, Lenny, you hear?" said the parson, stretching out the sixpence.
But Lenny retreated, and cast on the umpire a look of great aversion and
disgust.

"Please, Master Dale," said he, obstinately, "I'd rather not.

"It is a matter of feeling, you see," said the parson, turning to the
umpire; "and I believe the boy is right."

"If it be a matter of feeling," replied Dr. Riccabocca, "there is no more
to be said on it. When Feeling comes in at the door, Reason has nothing
to do but to jump out of the window."

"Go, my good boy," said the parson, pocketing the coin; "but, stop! give
me your hand first. There--I understand you;--good-by!"

Lenny's eyes glistened as the parson shook him by the hand, and, not
trusting himself to speak, he walked off sturdily. The parson wiped his
forehead, and sat himself down on the stile beside the Italian. The view
before them was lovely, and both enjoyed it (though not equally) enough
to be silent for some moments. On the other side the lane, seen between
gaps in the old oaks and chestnuts that hung over the mossgrown pales of
Hazeldean Park, rose gentle, verdant slopes, dotted with sheep and herds
of deer. A stately avenue stretched far away to the left, and ended at
the right hand within a few yards of a ha-ha that divided the park from a
level sward of tableland, gay with shrubs and flower-pots, relieved by
the shade of two mighty cedars. And on this platform, only seen in part,
stood the squire's old-fashioned house, red-brick, with stone mullions,
gable-ends, and quaint chimney-pots. On this side the road, immediately
facing the two gentlemen, cottage after cottage whitely emerged from the
curves in the lane, while, beyond, the ground declining gave an extensive
prospect of woods and cornfields, spires and farms. Behind, from a belt
of lilacs and evergreens, you caught a peep of the parsonage-house,
backed by woodlands, and a little noisy rill running in front. The birds
were still in the hedgerows,--only (as if from the very heart of the most
distant woods), there came now and then the mellow note of the cuckoo.

"Verily," said Mr. Dale, softly, "my lot has fallen on a goodly
heritage."

The Italian twitched his cloak over him, and sighed almost inaudibly.
Perhaps he thought of his own Summer Land, and felt that, amidst all that
fresh verdure of the North, there was no heritage for the stranger.

However, before the parson could notice the sigh or conjecture the cause,
Dr. Riccabocca's thin lips took an expression almost malignant.

"Per Bacco!" said he; "in every country I observe that the rooks settle
where the trees are the finest. I am sure that, when Noah first landed
on Ararat, he must have found some gentleman in black already settled in
the pleasantest part of the mountain, and waiting for his tenth of the
cattle as they came out of the Ark."

The parson fixed his meek eyes on the philosopher, and there
was in them something so deprecating rather than reproachful that
Dr. Riccabocca turned away his face, and refilled his pipe. Dr.
Riccabocca abhorred priests; but though Parson Dale was emphatically
a parson, he seemed at that moment so little of what Dr. Riccabocca
understood by a priest that the Italian's heart smote him for his
irreverent jest on the cloth. Luckily at this moment there was a
diversion to that untoward commencement of conversation in the appearance
of no less a personage than the donkey himself--I mean the donkey who ate
the apple.




CHAPTER VI.

The tinker was a stout, swarthy fellow, jovial and musical withal, for he
was singing a stave as he flourished his staff, and at the end of each
refrain down came the staff on the quarters of the donkey. The tinker
went behind and sang, the donkey went before and was thwacked.

"Yours is a droll country," quoth Dr. Riccabocca; "in mine, it is not the
ass that walks first in the procession that gets the blows."

The parson jumped from the stile, and looking over the hedge that divided
the field from the road--"Gently, gently," said he; "the sound of the
stick spoils the singing! Oh, Mr. Sprott, Mr. Sprott! a good man is
merciful to his beast."

The donkey seemed to recognize the voice of its friend, for it stopped
short, pricked one ear wistfully, and looked up. The tinker touched his
hat, and looked up too. "Lord bless your reverence! he does not mind
it,--he likes it. I vould not hurt thee; would I, Neddy?"

The donkey shook his head and shivered; perhaps a fly had settled on the
sore, which the chestnut leaves no longer protected.

"I am sure you did not mean to hurt him, Sprott," said the parson, more
politely I fear than honestly,--for he had seen enough of that cross-
grained thing called the human heart, even in the little world of a
country parish, to know that it requires management and coaxing and
flattering, to interfere successfully between a man and his own donkey,--
"I am sure you did not mean to hurt him; but he has already got a sore on
his shoulder as big as my hand, poor thing!"

"Lord love 'un! yes; that was done a playing with the manger the day I
gave 'un oats!" said the tinker.

Dr. Riccabocca adjusted his spectacles, and surveyed the ass. The ass
pricked up his other ear, and surveyed Dr. Riccabocca. In that mutual
survey of physical qualifications, each being regarded according to the
average symmetry of its species, it may be doubted whether the advantage
was on the side of the philosopher.

The parson had a great notion of the wisdom of his friend in all matters
not purely ecclesiastical.

"Say a good word for the donkey!" whispered he.

"Sir," said the doctor, addressing Mr. Sprott, with a respectful
salutation, "there's a great kettle at my house--the Casino--which wants
soldering: can you recommend me a tinker?"

"Why, that's all in my line," said Sprott; "and there ben't a tinker in
the county that I vould recommend like myself, thof I say it."

"You jest, good sir," said the doctor, smiling pleasantly. "A man who
can't mend a hole in his own donkey can never demean himself by patching
up my great kettle."

"Lord, sir!" said the tinker, archly, "if I had known that poor Neddy had
had two sitch friends in court, I'd have seen he vas a gintleman, and
treated him as sitch."

"/Corpo di Bacco!/" quoth the doctor, "though that jest's not new, I
think the tinker comes very well out of it."

"True; but the donkey!" said the parson; "I've a great mind to buy it."

"Permit me to tell you an anecdote in point," said Dr. Riccabocca.

"Well?" said the parson, interrogatively.

"Once on a time," pursued Riccabocca, "the Emperor Adrian, going to the
public baths, saw an old soldier, who had served under him, rubbing his
back against the marble wall. The emperor, who was a wise, and therefore
a curious, inquisitive man, sent for the soldier, and asked him why he
resorted to that sort of friction. 'Because,' answered the veteran, 'I
am too poor to have slaves to rub me down.' The emperor was touched, and
gave him slaves and money. The next day, when Adrian went to the baths,
all the old men in the city were to be seen rubbing themselves against
the marble as hard as they could. The emperor sent for them, and asked
them the same question which he had put to the soldier; the cunning old
rogues, of course, made the same answer. 'Friends,' said Adrian, 'since
there are so many of you, you will just rub one another!' Mr. Dale, if
you don't want to have all the donkeys in the county with holes in their
shoulders, you had better not buy the tinker's!"

"It is the hardest thing in the world to do the least bit of good,"
groaned the parson, as he broke a twig off the hedge nervously, snapped
it in two, and flung away the fragments: one of them hit the donkey on
the nose. If the ass could have spoken Latin he would have said, "/Et
tu, Brute!/" As it was, he hung down his ears, and walked on.

"Gee hup," said the tinker, and he followed the ass. Then stopping, he
looked over his shoulder, and seeing that the parson's eyes were gazing
mournfully on his /protege/, "Never fear, your reverence," cried the
tinker, kindly, "I'll not spite 'un."




CHAPTER VII.

"Four, o'clock," cried the parson, looking at his watch; "half an hour
after dinner-time, and Mrs. Dale particularly begged me to be punctual,
because of the fine trout the squire sent us. Will you venture on what
our homely language calls 'pot-luck,' Doctor?"

Now Riccabocca was a professed philosopher, and valued himself on his
penetration into the motives of human conduct. And when the parson thus
invited him to pot-luck, he smiled with a kind of lofty complacency; for
Mrs. Dale enjoyed the reputation of having what her friends styled "her
little tempers." And, as well-bred ladies rarely indulge "little
tempers" in the presence of a third person not of the family, so Dr.
Riccabocca instantly concluded that he was invited to stand between the
pot and the luck! Nevertheless--as he was fond of trout, and a much more
good-natured man than he ought to have been according to his principles--
he accepted the hospitality; but he did so with a sly look from over his
spectacles, which brought a blush into the guilty cheeks of the parson.
Certainly Riccabocca had for once guessed right in his estimate of human
motives.

The two walked on, crossed a little bridge that spanned the rill, and
entered the parsonage lawn. Two dogs, that seemed to have sat on watch
for their master, sprang towards him, barking; and the sound drew the
notice of Mrs. Dale, who, with parasol in hand, sallied out from the sash
window which opened on the lawn. Now, O reader! I know that, in thy
secret heart, thou art chuckling over the want of knowledge in the sacred
arcana of the domestic hearth betrayed by the author; thou art saying to
thyself, "A pretty way to conciliate 'little tempers' indeed, to add to
the offence of spoiling the fish the crime of bringing an unexpected
friend to eat it. Pot-luck, quotha, when the pot 's boiled over this
half hour!"

But, to thy utter shame and confusion, O reader! learn that both the
author and Parson Dale knew very well what they were about.

Dr. Riccabocca was the special favourite of Mrs. Dale, and the only
person in the whole county who never put her out, by dropping in. In
fact, strange though it may seem at first glance, Dr. Riccabocca had that
mysterious something about him, which we of his own sex can so little
comprehend, but which always propitiates the other. He owed this, in
part, to his own profound but hypocritical policy; for he looked upon
woman as the natural enemy to man, against whom it was necessary to be
always on the guard; whom it was prudent to disarm by every species of
fawning servility and abject complaisance. He owed it also, in part, to
the compassionate and heavenly nature of the angels whom his thoughts
thus villanously traduced--for women like one whom they can pity without
despising; and there was something in Signor Riccabocca's poverty, in his
loneliness, in his exile, whether voluntary or compelled, that excited
pity; while, despite his threadbare coat, the red umbrella, and the wild
hair, he had, especially when addressing ladies, that air of gentleman
and cavalier, which is or was more innate in an educated Italian, of
whatever rank, than perhaps in the highest aristocracy of any other
country in Europe. For, though I grant that nothing is more exquisite
than the politeness of your French marquis of the old regime, nothing
more frankly gracious than the cordial address of a high-bred English
gentleman, nothing more kindly prepossessing than the genial good-nature
of some patriarchal German, who will condescend to forget his sixteen
quarterings in the pleasure of doing you a favour,--yet these specimens
of the suavity of their several nations are rare; whereas blandness and
polish are common attributes with your Italian. They seem to have been
immemorially handed down to him, from ancestors emulating the urbanity of
Caesar, and refined by the grace of Horace.

"Dr. Riccabocca consents to dine with us," cried the parson, hastily.

"If Madame permit?" said the Italian, bowing over the hand extended to
him, which, however, he forbore to take, seeing it was already full of
the watch.

"I am only sorry that the trout must be quite spoiled," began Mrs. Dale,
plaintively.

"It is not the trout one thinks of when one dines with Mrs. Dale," said
the infamous dissimulator.

"But I see James coming to say that dinner is ready," observed the
parson.

"He said that three-quarters of an hour ago, Charles dear," retorted Mrs.
Dale, taking the arm of Dr. Riccabocca.




CHAPTER VIII.

While the parson and his wife are entertaining their guest, I propose to
regale the reader with a small treatise /a propos/ of that "Charles
dear," murmured by Mrs. Dale,--a treatise expressly written for the
benefit of The Domestic Circle.

It is an old jest that there is not a word in the language that conveys
so little endearment as the word "dear." But though the saying itself,
like most truths, be trite and hackneyed, no little novelty remains to
the search of the inquirer into the varieties of inimical import
comprehended in that malign monosyllable. For instance, I submit to the
experienced that the degree of hostility it betrays is in much
proportioned to its collocation in the sentence. When, gliding
indirectly through the rest of the period, it takes its stand at the
close, as in that "Charles dear" of Mrs. Dale, it has spilled so much of
its natural bitterness by the way that it assumes even a smile, "amara
lento temperet risu." Sometimes the smile is plaintive, sometimes arch.
For example:--

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