Book: My Novel, Volume 1.

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




(Plaintive.) "I know very well that whatever I do is wrong, Charles
dear."

"Nay, I am very glad you amused yourself so much without me, Charles
dear."

"Not quite so loud! If you had but my poor head, Charles dear," etc.

(Arch.) "If you could spill the ink anywhere but on the best tablecloth,
Charles dear!"

"But though you must always have your own way, you are not quite
faultless, own, Charles dear," etc.

When the enemy stops in the middle of the sentence, its venom is
naturally less exhausted. For example:--

"Really, I must say, Charles dear, that you are the most fidgety person,"
etc.

"And if the house bills were so high last week, Charles dear, I should
just like to know whose fault it was--that's all."

"But you know, Charles dear, that you care no more for me and the
children than--" etc.

But if the fatal word spring up, in its primitive freshness, at the head
of the sentence, bow your head to the storm. It then assumes the majesty
of "my" before it; it is generally more than simple objurgation,--it
prefaces a sermon. My candour obliges me to confess that this is the
mode in which the hateful monosyllable is more usually employed by the
marital part of the one flesh; and has something about it of the odious
assumption of the Petruchian paterfamilias--the head of the family--
boding, not perhaps "peace and love, and quiet life," but certainly
"awful rule and right supremacy." For example:--

"My dear Jane, I wish you would just put by that everlasting crochet, and
listen to me for a few moments," etc. "My dear Jane, I wish you would
understand me for once; don't think I am angry,--no, but I am hurt! You
must consider," etc.

"My dear Jane, I don't know if it is your intention to ruin me; but I
only wish you would do as all other women do who care three straws for
their husband's property," etc.

"My dear Jane, I wish you to understand that I am the last person in the
world to be jealous; but I'll be d---d if that puppy, Captain Prettyman,"
etc.

Now, few so carefully cultivate the connubial garden, as to feel much
surprise at the occasional sting of a homely nettle or two; but who ever
expected, before entering that garden, to find himself pricked and
lacerated by an insidious exotical "dear," which he had been taught to
believe only lived in a hothouse, along with myrtles and other tender and
sensitive shrubs which poets appropriate to Venus? Nevertheless Parson
Dale, being a patient man, and a pattern to all husbands, would have
found no fault with his garden, though there had not been a single
specimen of "dear,"--whether the dear /humilis/ or the dear /superba/;
the dear /pallida, rubra/, or /nigra/; the dear /suavis/ or the dear
/horrida/,--no, not a single "dear" in the whole horticulture of
matrimony, which Mrs. Dale had not brought to perfection. But this was
far from being the case; Mrs. Dale, living much in retirement, was
unaware of the modern improvements, in variety of colour and sharpness of
prickle, which have rewarded the persevering skill of our female
florists.




CHAPTER IX.

In the cool of the evening Dr. Riccabocca walked home across the fields.
Mr. and Mrs. Dale had accompanied him half-way, and as they now turned
back to the parsonage, they looked behind to catch a glimpse of the tall,
outlandish figure, winding slowly through the path amidst the waves of
the green corn.

"Poor man!" said Mrs. Dale, feelingly; "and the button was off his
wristband! What a pity he has nobody to take care of him! He seems very
domestic. Don't you think, Charles, it would be a great blessing if we
could get him a good wife?"

"Um," said the parson; "I doubt if he values the married state as he
ought."

"What do you mean, Charles? I never saw a man more polite to ladies in
my life."

"Yes, but--"

"But what? "You are always so mysterious, Charles dear."

"Mysterious! No, Carry; but if you could hear what the doctor says of
the ladies sometimes."

"Ay, when you men get together, my dear. I know what that means--pretty
things you say of us! But you are all alike; you know you are, love!"

"I am sure," said the parson, simply, "that I have good cause to speak
well of the sex--when I think of you and my poor mother."

Mrs. Dale, who, with all her "tempers," was an excellent woman, and loved
her husband with the whole of her quick little heart, was touched. She
pressed his hand, and did not call him dear all the way home.

Meanwhile the Italian passed the fields, and came upon the high road
about two miles from Hazeldean. On one side stood an old-fashioned
solitary inn, such as English inns used to be before they became railway
hotels,--square, solid, old-fashioned, looking so hospitable and
comfortable, with their great signs swinging from some elm-tree in front,
and the long row of stables standing a little back, with a chaise or two
in the yard, and the jolly landlord talking of the crops to some stout
farmer, whose rough pony halts of itself at the well-known door.
Opposite this inn, on the other side of the road, stood the habitation of
Dr. Riecabocca.

A few years before the date of these annals, the stage-coach on its way
to London from a seaport town stopped at the inn, as was its wont, for a
good hour, that its passengers might dine like Christian Englishmen--not
gulp down a basin of scalding soup, like everlasting heathen Yankees,
with that cursed railway-whistle shrieking like a fiend in their ears!
It was the best dining-place on the whole road, for the trout in the
neighbouring rill were famous, and so was the mutton which came from
Hazeldean Park.

From the outside of the coach had descended two passengers, who, alone
insensible to the attractions of mutton and trout, refused to dine,--two
melancholy-looking foreigners, of whom one was Signor Riccabocca, much
the same as we see him now, only that the black suit was less threadbare,
the tall form less meagre, and he did not then wear spectacles; and the
other was his servant. "They would walk about while the coach stopped."
Now the Italian's eye had been caught by a mouldering, dismantled house
on the other side the road, which nevertheless was well situated; half-
way up a green hill, with its aspect due south, a little cascade falling
down artificial rockwork, a terrace with a balustrade, and a few broken
urns and statues before its Ionic portico, while on the roadside stood a
board, with characters already half effaced, implying that the house was
"To be let unfurnished, with or without land."

The abode that looked so cheerless, and which had so evidently hung long
on hand, was the property of Squire Hazeldean. It had been built by his
grandfather on the female side,--a country gentleman who had actually
been in Italy (a journey rare enough to boast of in those days), and who,
on his return home, had attempted a miniature imitation of an Italian
villa. He left an only daughter and sole heiress, who married Squire
Hazeldean's father; and since that time, the house, abandoned by its
proprietors for the larger residence of the Hazeldeans, had been
uninhabited and neglected. Several tenants, indeed, had offered
themselves; but your true country squire is slow in admitting upon his
own property a rival neighbour. Some wanted shooting. "That," said the
Hazeldeans, who were great sportsmen and strict preservers, "was quite
out of the question." Others were fine folks from London. "London
servants," said the Hazeldeans, who were moral and prudent people, "would
corrupt their own, and bring London prices." Others, again, were retired
manufacturers, at whom the Hazeldeans turned up their agricultural noses.
In short, some were too grand, and others too vulgar. Some were refused
because they were known so well: "Friends were best at a distance," said
the Hazeldeans; others because they were not known at all: "No good
comes of strangers," said the Hazeldeans. And finally, as the house fell
more and more into decay, no one would take it unless it was put into
thorough repair: "As if one was made of money!" said the Hazeldeans. In
short, there stood the house unoccupied and ruinous; and there, on its
terrace, stood the two forlorn Italians, surveying it with a smile at
each other, as for the first time since they set foot in England, they
recognized, in dilapidated pilasters and broken statues, in a weed-grown
terrace and the remains of an orangery, something that reminded them of
the land they had left behind.

On returning to the inn, Dr. Riccabocca took the occasion to learn from
the innkeeper (who was indeed a tenant of the squire) such particulars as
he could collect; and a few days afterwards Mr. Hazeldean received a
letter from a solicitor of repute in London, stating that a very
respectable foreign gentleman had commissioned him to treat for Clump
Lodge, otherwise called the "Casino;" that the said gentleman did not
shoot, lived in great seclusion, and, having no family, did not care
about the repairs of the place, provided only it were made weather-
proof,--if the omission of more expensive reparations could render the
rent suitable to his finances, which were very limited. The offer came
at a fortunate moment, when the steward had just been representing to the
squire the necessity of doing something to keep the Casino from falling
into positive ruin, and the squire was cursing the fates which had put
the Casino into an entail--so that he could not pull it down for the
building materials. Mr. Hazeldean therefore caught at the proposal even
as a fair lady, who has refused the best offers in the kingdom, catches,
at last, at some battered old captain on half-pay, and replied that, as
for rent, if the solicitor's client was a quiet, respectable man, he did
not care for that, but that the gentleman might have it for the first
year rent-free, on condition of paying the taxes, and putting the place
a little in order. If they suited each other, they could then come
to terms. Ten days subsequently to this gracious reply, Signor
Riccabocca and his servant arrived; and, before the year's end, the
squire was so contented with his tenant that he gave him a running lease
of seven, fourteen, or twenty-one years, at a rent merely nominal, on
condition that Signor Riccabocca would put and maintain the place in
repair, barring the roof and fences, which the squire generously renewed
at his own expense. It was astonishing, by little and little, what a
pretty place the Italian had made of it, and, what is more astonishing,
how little it had cost him. He had, indeed, painted the walls of the
hall, staircase, and the rooms appropriated to himself, with his own
hands. His servant had done the greater part of the upholstery. The two
between them had got the garden into order.

The Italians seemed to have taken a joint love to the place, and to deck
it as they would have done some favourite chapel to their Madonna.

It was long before the natives reconciled themselves to the odd ways of
the foreign settlers. The first thing that offended them was the
exceeding smallness of the household bills. Three days out of the seven,
indeed, both man and master dined on nothing else but the vegetables in
the garden, and the fishes in the neighbouring rill; when no trout could
be caught they fried the minnows (and certainly, even in the best
streams, minnows are more frequently caught than trout). The next thing
which angered the natives quite as much, especially the female part of
the neighbourhood, was the very sparing employment the two he creatures
gave to the sex usually deemed so indispensable in household matters. At
first, indeed, they had no woman-servant at all. But this created such
horror that Parson Dale ventured a hint upon the matter, which Riccabocca
took in very good part; and an old woman was forthwith engaged after some
bargaining--at three shillings a week--to wash and scrub as much as she
liked during the daytime. She always returned to her own cottage to
sleep. The man-servant, who was styled in the neighbourhood "Jackeymo,"
did all else for his master,--smoothed his room, dusted his papers,
prepared his coffee, cooked his dinner, brushed his clothes, and cleaned
his pipes, of which Riccabocca had a large collection. But however close
a man's character, it generally creeps out in driblets; and on many
little occasions the Italian had shown acts of kindness, and, on some
more rare occasions, even of generosity, which had served to silence his
calumniators, and by degrees he had established a very fair reputation,--
suspected, it is true, of being a little inclined to the Black Art, and
of a strange inclination to starve Jackeymo and himself, in other
respects harmless enough.

Signor Riccabocca had become very intimate, as we have seen, at the
Parsonage. But not so at the Hall. For though the squire was inclined
to be very friendly to all his neighbours, he was, like most country
gentlemen, rather easily /huffed/. Riccabocca had, with great
politeness, still with great obstinacy, refused Mr. Hazeldean's earlier
invitations to dinner; and when the squire found that the Italian rarely
declined to dine at the Parsonage, he was offended in one of his weak
points,--namely, his pride in the hospitality of Hazeldean Hall,--and he
ceased altogether invitations so churlishly rejected. Nevertheless, as
it was impossible for the squire, however huffed, to bear malice, he now
and then reminded Riccabocca of his existence by presents of game, and
would have called on him more often than he did, but that Riccabocca
received him with such excessive politeness that the blunt country
gentleman felt shy and put out, and used to say that "to call on
Rickeybockey was as bad as going to Court."

But we have left Dr. Riccabocca on the high road. By this time he has
ascended a narrow path that winds by the side of the cascade, he has
passed a trellis-work covered with vines, from which Jackeymo has
positively succeeded in making what he calls wine,--a liquid, indeed,
that if the cholera had been popularly known in those days, would have
soured the mildest member of the Board of Health; for Squire Hazeldean,
though a robust man who daily carried off his bottle of port with
impunity, having once rashly tasted it, did not recover the effect till
he had had a bill from the apothecary as long as his own arm. Passing
this trellis, Dr. Riccabocca entered upon the terrace, with its stone
pavement as smoothed and trimmed as hands could make it. Here, on neat
stands, all his favourite flowers were arranged; here four orange trees
were in full blossom; here a kind of summer-house, or belvidere, built by
Jackeymo and himself, made his chosen morning room from May till October;
and from this belvidere there was as beautiful an expanse of prospect as
if our English Nature had hospitably spread on her green board all that
she had to offer as a banquet to the exile.

A man without his coat, which was thrown over the balustrade, was
employed in watering the flowers,--a man with movements so mechanical,
with a face so rigidly grave in its tawny hues, that he seemed like an
automaton made out of mahogany.

"Giacomo," said Dr. Riccabocca, softly.

The automaton stopped its hand, and turned its head.

"Put by the watering-pot, and come hither," continued Riccabocca, in
Italian; and, moving towards the balustrade, he leaned over it. Mr.
Mitford, the historian, calls Jean Jacques "John James." Following that
illustrious example, Giacomo shall be Anglified into Jackeymo. Jackeymo
came to the balustrade also, and stood a little behind his master.
"Friend," said Riccabocca, "enterprises have not always succeeded with
us. Don't you think, after all, it is tempting our evil star to rent
those fields from the landlord?" Jackeymo crossed himself, and made some
strange movement with a little coral charm which he wore set in a ring on
his finger.

"If the Madonna send us luck, and we could hire a lad cheap?" said
Jackeymo, doubtfully.

"Piu vale un presente che dui futuri,"--["A bird in the hand is worth two
in the bush."]--said Riccabocca.

"Chi non fa quando pub, non pub, fare quando vuole,"--["He who will not
when he may, when he wills it shall have nay."]--answered Jackeymo, as
sententiously as his master. "And the Padrone should think in time that
he must lay by for the dower of the poor signorina."

Riccabocca sighed, and made no reply.

"She must be that high now!" said Jackeymo, putting his hand on some
imaginary line a little above the balustrade. Riccabocca's eyes, raised
over the spectacles, followed the hand.

"If the Padrone could but see her here--"

"I thought I did," muttered the Italian.

"He would never let her go from his side till she went to a husband's,"
continued Jackeymo.

"But this climate,--she could never stand it," said Riccabocca, drawing
his cloak round him, as a north wind took him in the rear.

"The orange trees blossom even here with care," said Jackeymo, turning
back to draw down an awning where the orange trees faced the north.
"See!" he added, as he returned with a sprig in full bud.

Dr. Riccabocca bent over the blossom, and then placed it in his bosom.

"The other one should be there too," said Jackeymo.

"To die--as this does already!" answered Riccabocca. "Say no more."

Jackeymo shrugged his shoulders; and then, glancing at his master, drew
his hand over his eyes.

There was a pause. Jackeymo was the first to break it. "But, whether
here or there, beauty without money is the orange tree without shelter.
If a lad could be got cheap, I would hire the land, and trust for the
crop to the Madonna."

"I think I know of such a lad," said Riccabocca, recovering himself, and
with his sardonic smile once more lurking about the corners of his
mouth,--"a lad made for us."

"/Diavolo!/"

"No, not the Diavolo! Friend, I have this day seen a boy who--refused
sixpence!"

"/Cosa stupenda!/" exclaimed Jackeymo, opening his eyes, and letting fall
the watering-pot.

"It is true, my friend."

"Take him, Padrone, in Heaven's name, and the fields will grow gold."

"I will think of it, for it must require management to catch such a boy,"
said Riccabocca. "Meanwhile, light a candle in the parlour, and bring
from my bedroom that great folio of Machiavelli."




CHAPTER X.

In my next chapter I shall present Squire Hazeldean in patriarchal
state,--not exactly under the fig-tree he has planted, but before the
stocks he has reconstructed,--Squire Hazeldean and his family on the
village green! The canvas is all ready for the colours.

But in this chapter I must so far afford a glimpse into antecedents as to
let the reader know that there is one member of the family whom he is not
likely to meet at present, if ever, on the village green at Hazeldean.

Our squire lost his father two years after his birth; his mother was very
handsome--and so was her jointure; she married again at the expiration of
her year of mourning; the object of her second choice was Colonel
Egerton.

In every generation of Englishmen (at least since the lively reign of
Charles II.) there are a few whom some elegant Genius skims off from the
milk of human nature, and reserves for the cream of society. Colonel
Egerton was one of these /terque quaterque beati/, and dwelt apart on a
top shelf in that delicate porcelain dish--not bestowed upon vulgar
buttermilk--which persons of fashion call The Great World. Mighty was
the marvel of Pall Mall, and profound was the pity of Park Lane, when
this supereminent personage condescended to lower himself into a husband.
But Colonel Egerton was not a mere gaudy butterfly; he had the provident
instincts ascribed to the bee. Youth had passed from him, and carried
off much solid property in its flight; he saw that a time was fast coming
when a home, with a partner who could help to maintain it, would be
conducive to his comforts, and an occasional hum-drum evening by the
fireside beneficial to his health. In the midst of one season at
Brighton, to which gay place he had accompanied the Prince of Wales, he
saw a widow, who, though in the weeds of mourning, did not appear
inconsolable. Her person pleased his taste; the accounts of her jointure
satisfied his understanding; he contrived an introduction, and brought a
brief wooing to a happy close. The late Mr. Hazeldean had so far
anticipated the chance of the young widow's second espousals, that, in
case of that event, he transferred, by his testamentary dispositions, the
guardianship of his infant heir from the mother to two squires whom he
had named his executors. This circumstance combined with her new ties
somewhat to alienate Mrs. Hazeldean from the pledge of her former loves;
and when she had borne a son to Colonel Egerton, it was upon that child
that her maternal affections gradually concentrated.

William Hazeldean was sent by his guardians to a large provincial
academy, at which his forefathers had received their education time out
of mind. At first he spent his holidays with Mrs. Egerton; but as she
now resided either in London, or followed her lord to Brighton, to
partake of the gayeties at the Pavilion, so as he grew older, William,
who had a hearty affection for country life, and of whose bluff manners
and rural breeding Mrs. Egerton (having grown exceedingly refined) was
openly ashamed, asked and obtained permission to spend his vacations
either with his guardians or at the old Hall. He went late to a small
college at Cambridge, endowed in the fifteenth century by some ancestral
Hazeldean; and left it, on coming of age, without taking a degree. A few
years afterwards he married a young lady, country born and bred like
himself.

Meanwhile his half-brother, Audley Egerton, may be said to have begun his
initiation into the /beau monde/ before he had well cast aside his coral
and bells; he had been fondled in the lap of duchesses, and had galloped
across the room astride on the canes of ambassadors and princes. For
Colonel Egerton was not only very highly connected, not only one of the
/Dii majores/ of fashion, but he had the still rarer good fortune to be
an exceedingly popular man with all who knew him,--so popular, that even
the fine ladies whom he had adored and abandoned forgave him for marrying
out of "the set," and continued to be as friendly as if he had not
married at all. People who were commonly called heartless were never
weary of doing kind things to the Egertons. When the time came for
Audley to leave the preparatory school at which his infancy budded forth
amongst the stateliest of the little lilies of the field, and go to Eton,
half the fifth and sixth forms had been canvassed to be exceedingly civil
to young Egerton. The boy soon showed that he inherited his father's
talent for acquiring popularity, and that to this talent he added those
which put popularity to use. Without achieving any scholastic
distinction, he yet contrived to establish at Eton the most desirable
reputation which a boy can obtain,--namely, that among his own
contemporaries, the reputation of a boy who was sure to do something when
he grew to be a man. As a gentleman-commoner at Christ Church, Oxford,
he continued to sustain this high expectation, though he won no prizes,
and took but an ordinary degree; and at Oxford the future "something"
became more defined,--it was "something in public life" that this young
man was to do.

While he was yet at the University, both his parents died, within a few
months of each other. And when Audley Egerton came of age, he succeeded
to a paternal property which was supposed to be large, and indeed had
once been so; but Colonel Egerton had been too lavish a man to enrich his
heir, and about L1500 a year was all that sales and mortgages left of an
estate that had formerly approached a rental of L10,000.

Still, Audley was considered to be opulent; and he did not dispel that
favourable notion by any imprudent exhibition of parsimony. On entering
the world of London, the Clubs flew open to receive him, and he woke one
morning to find himself, not indeed famous--but the fashion. To this
fashion he at once gave a certain gravity and value, he associated as
much as possible with public men and political ladies, he succeeded in
confirming the notion that he was "born to ruin or to rule the State."

The dearest and most intimate friend of Audley Egerton was Lord
L'Estrange, from whom he had been inseparable at Eton, and who now, if
Audley Egerton was the fashion, was absolutely the rage in London.

Harley, Lord L'Estrange, was the only son of the Earl of Lansmere, a
nobleman of considerable wealth, and allied, by intermarriages, to the
loftiest and most powerful families in England. Lord Lansmere,
nevertheless, was but little known in the circles of London. He lived
chiefly on his estates, occupying himself with the various duties of a
great proprietor, and when he came to the metropolis, it was rather to
save than to spend; so that he could afford to give his son a very ample
allowance, when Harley, at the age of sixteen (having already attained to
the sixth form at Eton), left school for one of the regiments of the
Guards.

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