Book: My Novel, Volume 2.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> My Novel, Volume 2.




The result was that all were charmed with him; and that even Captain
Barnabas postponed the whist-table for a full hour after the usual time.
The doctor did not play; he thus became the property of the two ladies,
Miss Jemima and Mrs. Dale.

Seated between the two, in the place rightfully appertaining to Flimsey,
who this time was fairly dislodged, to her great wonder and discontent,
the doctor was the emblem of true Domestic Felicity, placed between
Friendship and Love.

Friendship, as became her, worked quietly at the embroidered pocket-
handkerchief and left Love to more animated operations.

"You must be very lonely at the Casino," said Love, in a sympathizing
tone.

"Madam," replied Riccabocca, gallantly, "I shall think so when I leave
you."

Friendship cast a sly glance at Love; Love blushed, or looked down on the
carpet,--which comes to the same thing. "Yet," began Love again,--"yet
solitude to a feeling heart--"

Riccabocca thought of the note of invitation, and involuntarily buttoned
his coat, as if to protect the individual organ thus alarmingly referred
to.

"Solitude to a feeling heart has its charms. It is so hard even for us
poor ignorant women to find a congenial companion--but for YOU!" Love
stopped short, as if it had said too much, and smelt confusedly at its
bouquet.

Dr. Riccabocca cautiously lowered his spectacles, and darted one glance
which, with the rapidity and comprehensiveness of lightning, seemed to
envelop and take in, as it were, the whole inventory of Miss Jemima's
personal attractions. Now Miss Jemima, as I have before observed, had a
mild and pensive expression of countenance; and she would have been
positively pretty had the mildness looked a little more alert, and the
pensiveness somewhat less lackadaisical. In fact, though Miss Jemima was
constitutionally mild, she was not /de natura/ pensive; she had too much
of the Hazeldean blood in her veins for that sullen and viscid humour
called melancholy, and therefore this assumption of pensiveness really
spoiled her character of features, which only wanted to be lighted up by
a cheerful smile to be extremely prepossessing. The same remark might
apply to the figure, which--thanks to the same pensiveness--lost all the
undulating grace which movement and animation bestow on the fluent curves
of the feminine form. The figure was a good figure, examined in detail,
--a little thin, perhaps, but by no means emaciated, with just and
elegant proportions, and naturally light and flexible. But the same
unfortunate pensiveness gave to the whole a character of inertness and
languor; and when Miss Jemima reclined on the sofa, so complete seemed
the relaxation of nerve and muscle that you would have thought she had
lost the use of her limbs. Over her face and form, thus defrauded of the
charms Providence had bestowed on them, Dr. Riccabocca's eye glanced
rapidly; and then moving nearer to Mrs. Dale--"Defend me" (he stopped a
moment, and added) "from the charge of not being able to appreciate
congenial companionship."

"Oh, I did not say that!" cried Miss Jemima.

"Pardon me," said the Italian, "if I am so dull as to misunderstand you.
One may well lose one's head, at least, in such a neighbourhood as this."
He rose as he spoke, and bent over Frank's shoulder to examine some views
of Italy, which Miss Jemima (with what, if wholly unselfish, would have
been an attention truly delicate) had extracted from the library in order
to gratify the guest.

"Most interesting creature, indeed," sighed Miss Jemima, but too--too
flattering."

"Tell me," said Mrs. Dale, gravely, "do you think, love, that you could
put off the end of the world a little longer, or must we make haste in
order to be in time?"

"How wicked you are!" said Miss Jemima, turning aside. Some few minutes
afterwards, Mrs. Dale contrived it so that Dr. Riccabocca and herself
were in a farther corner of the room, looking at a picture said to be by
Wouvermans.

MRS. DALE.--"She is very amiable, Jemima, is she not?"

RICCABOCCA.--"Exceedingly so. Very fine battle-piece!"

MRS. DALE.--"So kind-hearted."

RICCABOCCA.--"All ladies are. How naturally that warrior makes his
desperate cut at the runaway!"

MRS. DALE.--"She is not what is called regularly handsome, but she has
something very winning."

RICCABOCCA (with a smile).--"So winning, that it is strange she is not
won. That gray mare in the foreground stands out very boldly!"

MRS. DALE (distrusting the smile of Riccabocca, and throwing in a more
effective grape-charge).--"Not won yet; and it is strange! she will have
a very pretty fortune."

RICCABOCCA.--"Ah!"

MRS. DALE. "Six thousand pounds, I dare say,--certainly four."

RICCABOCCA (suppressing a sigh, and with his wonted address).--"If Mrs.
Dale were still single, she would never need a friend to say what her
portion might be; but Miss Jemima is so good that I am quite sure it is
not Miss Jemima's fault that she is still--Miss Jemima!"

The foreigner slipped away as he spoke, and sat himself down beside the
whist-players.

Mrs. Dale was disappointed, but certainly not offended. It would be such
a good thing for both," muttered she, almost inaudibly.

"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he was undressing that night in the large,
comfortable, well-carpeted English bedroom, with that great English four-
posted bed in the recess which seems made to shame folks out of single
blessedness, "Giacomo, I have had this evening the offer of probably
L6000, certainly of four thousand."

"Cosa meravigliosa!"--["Miraculous thing."]--exclaimed Jackeymo, and he
crossed himself with great fervour. "Six thousand pounds English! why,
that must be a hundred thousand--blockhead that I am!--more than L150,000
Milanese!" And Jackeymo, who was considerably enlivened by the squire's
ale, commenced a series of gesticulations and capers, in the midst of
which he stopped and cried, "But not for nothing?"

"Nothing! no!"

"These mercenary English! the Government wants to bribe you?"

"That's not it."

"The priests want you to turn heretic?"

"Worse than that!" said the philosopher.

"Worse than that! O Padrone! for shame!"

"Don't be a fool, but pull off my pantaloons--they want me never to wear
THESE again!"

"Never to wear what?" exclaimed Jackeymo, staring outright at his
master's long legs in their linen drawers,--"never to wear--"

"The breeches," said Riccabocca, laconically.

"The barbarians!" faltered Jackeymo.

"My nightcap! and never to have any comfort in this," said Riccabocca,
drawing on the cotton head-gear; "and never to have any sound sleep in
that," pointing to the four-posted bed; "and to be a bondsman and a
slave," continued Riccabocca, waxing wroth; "and to be wheedled and
purred at, and pawed and clawed, and scolded and fondled, and blinded and
deafened, and bridled and saddled--bedevilled and--married!"

"Married!" said Jackeymo, more dispassionately--"that's very bad,
certainly; but more than a hundred and fifty thousand lire, and perhaps a
pretty young lady, and--"

"Pretty young lady!" growled Riccabocca, jumping into bed and drawing the
clothes fiercely over him. "Put out the candle, and get along with you,
--do, you villanous old incendiary!"




CHAPTER IX.

It was not many days since the resurrection of those ill-omened stocks,
and it was evident already, to an ordinary observer, that something wrong
had got into the village. The peasants wore a sullen expression of
countenance; when the squire passed, they took off their hats with more
than ordinary formality, but they did not return the same broad smile to
his quick, hearty "Good-day, my man." The women peered at him from the
threshold or the casement, but did not, as was their wont (as least the
wont of the prettiest), take occasion to come out to catch his passing
compliment on their own good looks, or their tidy cottages. And the
children, who used to play after work on the site of the old stocks, now
shunned the place, and, indeed, seemed to cease play altogether.

On the other hand, no man likes to build, or rebuild, a great public work
for nothing. Now that the squire had resuscitated the stocks, and made
them so exceedingly handsome, it was natural that he should wish to put
somebody into them. Moreover, his pride and self-esteem had been wounded
by the parson's opposition; and it would be a justification to his own
forethought, and a triumph over the parson's understanding, if he could
satisfactorily and practically establish a proof that the stocks had not
been repaired before they were wanted.

Therefore, unconsciously to himself, there was something about the squire
more burly and authoritative and menacing than heretofore. Old Gaffer
Solomons observed, "that they had better moind well what they were about,
for that the squire had a wicked look in the tail of his eye,--just as
the dun bull had afore it tossed neighbour Barnes's little boy."

For two or three days these mute signs of something brewing in the
atmosphere had been rather noticeable than noticed, without any positive
overt act of tyranny on the one hand or rebellion on the other. But on
the very Saturday night in which Dr. Riccabocca was installed in the
four-posted bed in the chintz chamber, the threatened revolution
commenced. In the dead of that night personal outrage was committed on
the stocks. And on the Sunday morning, Mr. Stirn, who was the earliest
riser in the parish, perceived, in going to the farmyard, that the knob
of the column that flanked the board had been feloniously broken off;
that the four holes were bunged up with mud; and that some jacobinical
villain had carved, on the very centre of the flourish or scroll-work,
"Dam the stoks!" Mr. Stirn was much too vigilant a right-hand man, much
too zealous a friend of law and order, not to regard such proceedings
with horror and alarm. And when the squire came into his dressing-room
at half-past seven, his butler (who fulfilled also the duties of valet)
informed him, with a mysterious air, that Mr. Stirn had something "very
partikler to communicate about a most howdacious midnight 'spiracy and
'sault."

The squire stared, and bade Mr. Stirn be admitted.

"Well?" cried the squire, suspending the operation of stropping his
razor.

Mr. Stirn groaned.

"Well, man, what now?"

"I never knowed such a thing in this here parish afore," began Mr.
Stirn; "and I can only 'count for it by s'posing that them foreign
Papishers have been semminating--"

"Been what?"

"Semminating--"

"Disseminating, you blockhead,--disseminating what?"

"Damn the stocks," began Mr. Stirn, plunging right /in medias res/, and
by a fine use of one of the noblest figures in rhetoric.

"Mr. Stirn!" cried the squire, reddening, "did you say, 'Damn the
stocks'?--damn my new handsome pair of stocks!"

"Lord forbid, sir; that's what they say: that's what they have digged on
it with knives and daggers, and they have stuffed mud in its four holes,
and broken the capital of the elewation."

The squire took the napkin off his shoulder, laid down strop and razor;
he seated himself in his armchair majestically, crossed his legs, and, in
a voice that affected tranquillity, said,--

"Compose yourself, Stirn; you have a deposition to make, touching an
assault upon--can I trust my senses?--upon my new stocks. Compose
yourself; be calm. Now! What the devil is come to the parish?"

"Ah, sir, what indeed?" replied Mr. Stirn: and then laying the forefinger
of the right hand on the palm of the left he narrated the case.

"And whom do you suspect? Be calm now; don't speak in a passion. You
are a witness, sir,--a dispassionate, unprejudiced witness. Zounds and
fury! this is the most insolent, unprovoked, diabolical--but whom do you
suspect, I say?" Stirn twirled his hat, elevated his eyebrows, jerked his
thumb over his shoulder, and whispered, "I hear as how the two Papishers
slept at your honour's last night."

"What, dolt! do you suppose Dr. Rickeybockey got out of his warm bed to
bung up the holes in my new stocks?"

"Noa; he's too cunning to do it himself, but he may have been
semminating. He's mighty thick with Parson Dale, and your honour knows
as how the parson set his face agin the stocks. Wait a bit, sir,--don't
fly at me yet. There be a boy in this here parish--"

"A boy! ah, fool, now you are nearer the mark. The parson write 'Damn
the stocks,' indeed! What boy do you mean?"

"And that boy be cockered up much by Mr. Dale; and the Papisher went and
sat with him and his mother a whole hour t' other day; and that boy is as
deep as a well; and I seed him lurking about the place, and hiding
hisself under the tree the day the stocks was put up,--and that 'ere boy
is Lenny Fairfield."

"Whew," said the squire, whistling, "you have not your usual senses about
you to-day, man. Lenny Fairfield,--pattern boy of the village. Hold
your tongue. I dare say it is not done by any one in the parish, after
all: some good-for-nothing vagrant--that cursed tinker, who goes about
with a very vicious donkey,--a donkey that I caught picking thistles out
of the very eyes of the old stocks! Shows how the tinker brings up his
donkeys! Well, keep a sharp look-out. To-day is Sunday; worst day of
the week, I'm sorry and ashamed to say, for rows and depredations.
Between the services, and after evening church, there are always idle
fellows from all the neighbouring country about, as you know too well.
Depend on it, the real culprits will be found gathering round the stocks,
and will betray themselves; have your eyes, ears, and wits about you, and
I've no doubt we shall come to the rights of the matter before the day's
out. And if we do," added the squire, "we'll make an example of the
ruffian!"

"In course," said Stirn: "and if we don't find him we must make an
example all the same. That's what it is, sir. That's why the stocks
ben't respected; they has not had an example yet,--we wants an example."

"On my word I believe that's very true; and we'll clap in the first idle
fellow you catch in anything wrong, and keep him there for two hours at
least."

"With the biggest pleasure, your honour,--that's what it is."

And Mr. Stirn having now got what he considered a complete and
unconditional authority over all the legs and wrists of Hazeldean parish,
/quoad/ the stocks, took his departure.





CHAPTER X.

"Randal," said Mrs. Leslie on this memorable Sunday,--"Randal, do you
think of going to Mr. Hazeldean's?"

"Yes, ma'am," answered Randal. "Mr. Egerton does not object to it; and
as I do not return to Eton, I may have no other opportunity of seeing
Frank for some time. I ought not to fail in respect to Mr. Egerton's
natural heir."

"Gracious me!" cried Mrs. Leslie, who, like many women of her cast and
kind, had a sort of worldliness in her notions, which she never evinced
in her conduct,--"gracious me! natural heir to the old Leslie property!"

"He is Mr. Egerton's nephew, and," added Randal, ingenuously letting out
his thoughts, "I am no relation to Mr. Egerton at all."

"But," said poor Mrs. Leslie, with tears in her eyes, "it would be a
shame in the man, after paying your schooling and sending you to Oxford,
and having you to stay with him in the holidays, if he did not mean
anything by it."

"Anything, Mother, yes,--but not the thing you suppose. No matter. It
is enough that he has armed me for life, and I shall use the weapons as
seems to me best."

Here the dialogue was suspended by the entrance of the other members of
the family, dressed for church.

"It can't be time for church! No, it can't," exclaimed Mrs. Leslie. She
was never in time for anything,

"Last bell ringing," said Mr. Leslie, who, though a slow man, was
methodical and punctual. Mrs. Leslie made a frantic rush at the door,
the Montfydget blood being now in a blaze, dashed up the stairs, burst
into her room, tore her best bonnet from the peg, snatched her newest
shawl from the drawers, crushed the bonnet on her head, flung the shawl
on her shoulders, thrust a desperate pin into its folds, in order to
conceal a buttonless yawn in the body of her gown, and then flew back
like a whirlwind. Meanwhile the family were already out of doors, in
waiting; and just as the bell ceased, the procession moved from the
shabby house to the dilapidated church.

The church was a large one, but the congregation was small, and so was
the income of the parson. It was a lay rectory, and the great tithes had
belonged to the Leslies, but they had been long since sold. The
vicarage, still in their gift, might be worth a little more than L100 a
year. The present incumbent had nothing else to live upon. He was a
good man, and not originally a stupid one; but penury and the anxious
cares for wife and family, combined with what may be called solitary
confinement for the cultivated mind, when, amidst the two-legged
creatures round, it sees no other cultivated mind with which it can
exchange one extra-parochial thought, had lulled him into a lazy
mournfulness, which at times was very like imbecility. His income
allowed him to do no good to the parish, whether in work, trade, or
charity; and thus he had no moral weight with the parishioners beyond the
example of his sinless life, and such negative effect as might be
produced by his slumberous exhortations. Therefore his parishioners
troubled him very little; and but for the influence which, in hours of
Montfydget activity, Mrs. Leslie exercised over the most tractable,--that
is, the children and the aged,--not half-a-dozen persons would have known
or cared whether he shut up his church or not.

But our family were seated in state in their old seignorial pew, and Mr.
Dumdrum, with a nasal twang, went lugubriously through the prayers; and
the old people who could sin no more, and the children who had not yet
learned to sin, croaked forth responses that might have come from the
choral frogs in Aristophanes; and there was a long sermon a propos to
nothing which could possibly interest the congregation,--being, in fact,
some controversial homily which Mr. Dumdrum had composed and preached
years before. And when this discourse was over, there was a loud
universal grunt, as if of relief and thanksgiving, and a great clatter of
shoes, and the old hobbled, and the young scrambled, to the church door.

Immediately after church, the Leslie family dined; and as soon as dinner
was over, Randal set out on his foot journey to Hazeldean Hall.

Delicate and even feeble though his frame, he had the energy and
quickness of movement which belongs to nervous temperaments; and he
tasked the slow stride of a peasant, whom he took to serve him as a guide
for the first two or three miles. Though Randal had not the gracious
open manner with the poor which Frank inherited from his father, he was
still (despite many a secret hypocritical vice at war with the character
of a gentleman) gentleman enough to have no churlish pride to his
inferiors. He talked little, but he suffered his guide to talk; and the
boor, who was the same whom Frank had accosted, indulged in eulogistic
comments on that young gentleman's pony, from which he diverged into some
compliments on the young gentleman himself. Randal drew his hat over his
brows. There is a wonderful tact and fine breeding in your agricultural
peasant; and though Tom Stowell was but a brutish specimen of the class,
he suddenly perceived that he was giving pain. He paused, scratched his
head, and, glancing affectionately towards his companion, exclaimed,--

"But I shall live to see you on a handsomer beastis than that little
pony, Master Randal; and sure I ought, for you be as good a gentleman as
any in the land."

"Thank you," said Randal. "But I like walking better than riding,--I am
more used to it."

"Well, and you walk bra'ly,--there ben't a better walker in the county.
And very pleasant it is walking; and 't is a pretty country afore you,
all the way to the Hall."

Randal strode on, as if impatient of these attempts to flatter or to
soothe; and coming at length into a broader lane, said, "I think I can
find my way now. Many thanks to you, Tom;" and he forced a shilling into
Tom's horny palm. The man took it reluctantly, and a tear started to his
eye. He felt more grateful for that shilling than he had for Frank's
liberal half-crown; and he thought of the poor fallen family, and forgot
his own dire wrestle with the wolf at his door.

He stayed lingering in the lane till the figure of Randal was out of
sight, and then returned slowly. Young Leslie continued to walk on at
a quick pace. With all his intellectual culture and his restless
aspirations, his breast afforded him no thought so generous, no sentiment
so poetic, as those with which the unlettered clown crept slouchingly
homeward.

As Randal gained a point where several lanes met on a broad piece of
waste land, he began to feel tired, and his step slackened. Just then a
gig emerged from one of these byroads, and took the same direction as the
pedestrian. The road was rough and hilly, and the driver proceeded at a
foot's pace; so that the gig and the pedestrian went pretty well abreast.

"You seem tired, sir," said the driver, a stout young farmer of the
higher class of tenants, and he looked down compassionately on the boy's
pale countenance and weary stride. "Perhaps we are going the same way,
and I can give you a lift?"

It was Randal's habitual policy to make use of every advantage proffered
to him, and he accepted the proposal frankly enough to please the honest
farmer.

"A nice day, sir," said the latter, as Randal sat by his side. "Have you
come far?"

"From Rood Hall."

"Oh, you be young Squire Leslie," said the farmer, more respectfully, and
lifting his hat.

"Yes, my name is Leslie. You know Rood, then?"

"I was brought up on your father's land, sir. You may have heard of
Farmer Bruce?"

RANDAL.--"I remember, when I was a little boy, a Mr. Bruce who rented,
I believe, the best part of our land, and who used to bring us cakes when
he called to see my father. He is a relation of yours?"

FARMER BRUCE.--"He was my uncle. He is dead now, poor man."

RANDAL.-"Dead! I am grieved to hear it. He was very kind to us
children. But it is long since he left my father's farm."

FARMER BRUCE (apologetically).--"I am sure he was very sorry to go. But,
you see, he had an unexpected legacy--"

RANDAL.--"And retired from business?"

FARMER BRUCE.--"No. But, having capital, he could afford to pay a good
rent for a real good farm."

RANDAL (bitterly).--"All capital seems to fly from the lands of Rood.
And whose farm did he take?"

FARMER BRUCE.--" He took Hawleigh, under Squire Hazeldean. I rent it
now. We've laid out a power o' money on it. But I don't complain. It
pays well."

RANDAL.--"Would the money have paid as well sunk on my father's land?"

FARMER BRUCE.---"Perhaps it might, in the long run. But then, sir, we
wanted new premises,--barns and cattlesheds, and a deal more,--which the
landlord should do; but it is not every landlord as can afford that.
Squire Hazeldean's a rich man."

RANDAL.---"Ay!"

The road now became pretty good, and the farmer put his horse into a
brisk trot.

"But which way be you going, sir? I don't care for a few miles more or
less, if I can be of service."

"I am going to Hazeldean," said Randal, rousing himself from a revery.
"Don't let me take you out of your way."

"O, Hawleigh Farm is on the other side of the village, so it be quite my
way, sir."

The farmer, then, who was really a smart young fellow,--one of that race
which the application of capital to land has produced, and which, in
point of education and refinement, are at least on a par with the squires
of a former generation,--began to talk about his handsome horse, about
horses in general, about hunting and coursing: he handled all these
subjects with spirit, yet with modesty. Randal pulled his hat still
lower down over his brows, and did not interrupt him till they passed the
Casino, when, struck by the classic air of the place, and catching a
scent from the orange-trees, the boy asked abruptly, "Whose house is
that?"

"Oh, it belongs to Squire Hazeldean, but it is let or lent to a foreign
mounseer. They say he is quite the gentleman, but uncommonly poor."

"Poor," said Randal, turning back to gaze on the trim garden, the neat
terrace, the pretty belvidere, and (the door of the house being open)
catching a glimpse of the painted hall within,--"poor? The place seems
well kept. What do you call poor, Mr. Bruce?"

The farmer laughed. "Well, that's a home question, sir. But I believe
the mounseer is as poor as a man can be who makes no debts and does not
actually starve."

"As poor as my father?" asked Randal, openly and abruptly.

"Lord, sir! your father be a very rich man compared to him." Randal
continued to gaze, and his mind's eye conjured up the contrast of his
slovenly shabby home, with all its neglected appurtenances. No trim
garden at Rood Hall, no scent from odorous orange blossoms. Here poverty
at least was elegant,--there, how squalid! He did not comprehend at how
cheap a rate the luxury of the Beautiful can be effected. They now
approached the extremity of the squire's park pales; and Randal, seeing a
little gate, bade the farmer stop his gig, and descended. The boy
plunged amidst the thick oak groves; the farmer went his way blithely,
and his mellow merry whistle came to Randal's moody ear as he glided
quick under the shadow of the trees.

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