Book: My Novel, Volume 8.

E >> Edward Bulwer Lytton >> My Novel, Volume 8.




"You are not angry that I was playing at hockey with our neighbours,"
said he, deprecatingly, observing that Randal would not break the
silence.

"No," replied the elder brother; "but in associating with his inferiors,
a gentleman still knows how to maintain his dignity. There is no harm in
playing with inferiors, but it is necessary to a gentleman to play so
that he is not the laughing-stock of clowns."

Oliver hung his head, and made no answer. They came into the slovenly
precincts of the court, and the pigs stared at them from the palings, as
their progenitors had stared, years before, at Frank Hazeldean.

Mr. Leslie, senior, in a shabby straw-hat, was engaged in feeding the
chickens before the threshold, and he performed even that occupation with
a maundering lack-a-daisical slothfulness, dropping down the grains
almost one by one from his inert dreamy fingers.

Randal's sister, her hair still and forever hanging about her ears, was
seated on a rush-bottom chair, reading a tattered novel; and from the
parlour window was heard the querulous voice of Mrs. Leslie, in high
fidget and complaint.

Somehow or other, as the young heir to all this helpless poverty stood in
the courtyard, with his sharp, refined, intelligent features, and his
strange elegance of dress and aspect, one better comprehended how, left
solely to the egotism of his knowledge and his ambition, in such a
family, and without any of the sweet nameless lessons of Home, he had
grown up into such close and secret solitude of soul,--how the mind had
taken so little nutriment from the heart, and how that affection and
respect which the warm circle of the heart usually calls forth had passed
with him to the graves of dead fathers, growing, as it were, bloodless
and ghoul-like amidst the charnels on which they fed.

"Ha, Randal, boy," said Mr. Leslie, looking up lazily, "how d' ye do?
Who could have expected you? My dear, my dear," he cried, in a broken
voice, and as if in helpless dismay, "here's Randal, and he'll be wanting
dinner, or supper, or something." But, in the mean while, Randal's
sister Juliet had sprung up and thrown her arms round her brother's neck,
and he had drawn her aside caressingly, for Randal's strongest human
affection was for this sister.

"You are growing very pretty, Juliet," said he, smoothing back her hair;
"why do yourself such injustice,--why not pay more attention to your
appearance, as I have so often begged you to do?"

"I did not expect you, dear Randal; you always come so suddenly, and
catch us /en dish-a-bill/."

"Dish-a-bill!" echoed Randal, with a groan. "Dishabille! you ought never
to be so caught!"

"No one else does so catch us,--nobody else ever comes. Heigho!" and the
young lady sighed very heartily. "Patience, patience; my day is coming,
and then yours, my sister," replied Randal, with genuine pity, as he
gazed upon what a little care could have trained into so fair a flower,
and what now looked so like a weed.

Here Mrs. Leslie, in a state of intense excitement--having rushed through
the parlour, leaving a fragment of her gown between the yawning brass of
the never-mended Brummagem work-table--tore across the hall, whirled out
of the door, scattering the chickens to the right and left, and clutched
hold of Randal in her motherly embrace. "La, how you do shake my
nerves," she cried, after giving him a most hasty and uncomfortable kiss.
"And you are hungry too, and nothing in the house but cold mutton!
Jenny, Jenny, I say, Jenny! Juliet, have you seen Jenny? Where's Jenny?
Out with the odd man, I'll be bound."

"I am not hungry, Mother," said Randal; "I wish for nothing but tea."
Juliet, scrambling up her hair, darted into the house to prepare the tea,
and also to "tidy herself." She dearly loved her fine brother, but she
was greatly in awe of him.

Randal seated himself on the broken pales. "Take care they don't come
down," said Mr. Leslie, with some anxiety.

"Oh, Sir, I am very light; nothing comes down with me." The pigs stared
up, and grunted in amaze at the stranger. "Mother," said the young man,
detaining Mrs. Leslie, who wanted to set off in chase of Jenny, "Mother,
you should not let Oliver associate with those village boors. It is time
to think of a profession for him."

"Oh, he eats us out of house and home--such an appetite! But as to a
profession, what is he fit for? He will never be a scholar."

Randal nodded a moody assent; for, indeed, Oliver had been sent to
Cambridge, and supported there out of Randal's income from his official
pay; and Oliver had been plucked for his Little Go.

"There is the army," said the elder brother,--" a gentleman's calling.
How handsome Juliet ought to be--but--I left money for masters--and she
pronounces French like a chambermaid."

"Yet she is fond of her book too. She's always reading, and good for
nothing else."

"Reading! those trashy novels!"

"So like you,--you always come to scold, and make things unpleasant,"
said Mrs. Leslie, peevishly. "You are grown too fine for us, and I am
sure we suffer affronts enough from others, not to want a little respect
from our own children."

"I did not mean to affront you," said Randal, sadly. "Pardon me. But
who else has done so?"

Then Mrs. Leslie went into a minute and most irritating catalogue of all
the mortifications and insults she had received; the grievances of a
petty provincial family, with much pretension and small power,--of all
people, indeed, without the disposition to please--without the ability to
serve--who exaggerate every offence, and are thankful for no kindness.
Farmer Jones had insolently refused to send his wagon twenty miles for
coals. Mr. Giles, the butcher, requesting the payment of his bill, had
stated that the custom at Rood was too small for him to allow credit.
Squire Thornhill, who was the present owner of the fairest slice of the
old Leslie domains, had taken the liberty to ask permission to shoot over
Mr. Leslie's land, since Mr. Leslie did not preserve. Lady Spratt (new
people from the city, who hired a neighbouring country-seat) had taken a
discharged servant of Mrs. Leslie's without applying for the character.
The Lord-Lieutenant had given a ball, and had not invited the Leslies.
Mr. Leslie's tenants had voted against their landlord's wish at the
recent election. More than all, Squire Hazeldean and his Harry had
called at Rood, and though Mrs. Leslie had screamed out to Jenny, "Not at
home," she had been seen at the window, and the squire had actually
forced his way in, and caught the whole family "in a state not fit to be
seen." That was a trifle, but the squire had presumed to instruct Mr.
Leslie how to manage his property, and Mrs. Hazeldean had actually told
Juliet to hold up her head, and tie up her hair, "as if we were her
cottagers!" said Mrs. Leslie, with the pride of a Montfydget.

All these, and various other annoyances, though Randal was too sensible
not to perceive their insignificance, still galled and mortified the
listening heir of Rood. They showed, at least, even to the well-meant
officiousness of the Hazeldeans, the small account in which the fallen
family was held. As he sat still on the moss-grown pales, gloomy and
taciturn, his mother standing beside him, with her cap awry, Mr. Leslie
shamblingly sauntered up, and said in a pensive, dolorous whine,

"I wish we had a good sum of money, Randal, boy!"

To do Mr. Leslie justice, he seldom gave vent to any wish that savoured
of avarice. His mind must be singularly aroused, to wander out of its
normal limits of sluggish, dull content.

So Randal looked at him in surprise, and said, "Do you, Sir?---why?"

"The manors of Rood and Dulmansberry, and all the lands therein, which my
great-grandfather sold away, are to be sold again when Squire Thornhill's
eldest son comes of age, to cut off the entail. Sir John Spratt talks of
buying them. I should like to have them back again! 'T is a shame to
see the Leslie estates hawked about, and bought by Spratts and people.
I wish I had a great, great sum of ready money." The poor gentleman
extended his helpless fingers as he spoke, and fell into a dejected
revery.

Randal sprang from the paling, a movement which frightened the
contemplative pigs, and set them off squalling and scampering. "When
does young Thornhill come of age?"

"He was nineteen last August. I know it, because the day he was born I
picked up my fossil of the sea-horse, just by Dulmansberry church, when
the joy-bells were ringing. My fossil sea-horse! It will be an
heirloom, Randal--"

"Two years--nearly two years--yet--ah, ah!" said Randal; and his sister
now appearing, to announce that tea was ready, he threw his arm round her
neck and kissed her. Juliet had arranged her hair and trimmed up her
dress. She looked very pretty, and she had now the air of a
gentlewoman,--something of Randal's own refinement in her slender
proportions and well-shaped head.

"Be patient, patient still, my dear sister," whispered Randal, "and keep
your heart whole for two years longer." The young man was gay and good-
humoured over his simple meal, while his family grouped round him. When
it was over, Mr. Leslie lighted his pipe, and called for his brandy-and-
water. Mrs. Leslie began to question about London and Court, and the new
king and the new queen, and Mr. Audley Egerton, and hoped Mr. Egerton
would leave Randal all his money, and that Randal would marry a rich
woman, and that the king would make him a prime minister one of these
days; and then she should like to see if Farmer Jones would refuse to
send his wagon for coals! And every now and then, as the word "riches"
or "money" caught Mr. Leslie's ears, he shook his head, drew his pipe
from his mouth, "A Spratt should not have what belonged to my great-
great-grandfather. If I had a good sum of ready money! the old family
estates!" Oliver and Juliet sat silent, and on their good behaviour; and
Randal, indulging his own reveries, dreamily heard the words "money,"
"Spratt," "great-great-grandfather," "rich wife," "family estates;" and
they sounded to him vague and afar off, like whispers from the world of
romance and legend,--weird prophecies of things to be.

Such was the hearth which warmed the viper that nestled and gnawed at the
heart of Randal, poisoning all the aspirations that youth should have
rendered pure, ambition lofty, and knowledge beneficent and divine.




CHAPTER VI.

When the rest of the household were in deep sleep, Randal stood long at
his open window, looking over the dreary, comfortless scene,--the moon
gleaming from skies half-autumnal, half-wintry, upon squalid decay,
through the ragged fissures of the firs; and when he lay down to rest,
his sleep was feverish, and troubled by turbulent dreams.

However, he was up early, and with an unwonted colour in his cheeks,
which his sister ascribed to the country air. After breakfast, he took
his way towards Hazeldean, mounted upon a tolerable, horse, which he
borrowed of a neighbouring farmer who occasionally hunted. Before noon,
the garden and ter race of the Casino came in sight. He reined in his
horse, and by the little fountain at which Leonard had been wont to eat
his radishes and con his book, he saw Riccabocca seated under the shade
of the red umbrella. And by the Italian's side stood a form that a Greek
of old might have deemed the Naiad of the Fount; for in its youthful
beauty there was something so full of poetry, something at once so sweet
and so stately, that it spoke to the imagination while it charmed the
sense.

Randal dismounted, tied his horse to the gate, and, walking down a
trellised alley, came suddenly to the spot. His dark shadow fell over
the clear mirror of the fountain just as Riccabocca had said, "All here
is so secure from evil!--the waves of the fountain are never troubled
like those of the river!" and Violante had answered in her soft native
tongue, and lifting her dark, spiritual eyes, "But the fountain would be
but a lifeless pool, oh my father, if the spray did not mount towards the
skies!"




CHAPTER VII.

RANDAL advanced--"I fear, Signor Riccabocca, that I am guilty of some
want of ceremony."

"To dispense with ceremony is the most delicate mode of conferring a
compliment," replied the urbane Italian, as he recovered from his first
surprise at Randal's sudden address, and extended his hand.

Violante bowed her graceful head to the young man's respectful
salutation. "I am on my way to Hazeldean," resumed Randal, "and, seeing
you in the garden, could not resist this intrusion."

RICCOBOCCA.--"YOU come from London? Stirring times for you English, but
I do not ask you the news. No news can affect us."

RANDAL (softly).--"Perhaps yes."

RICCABOCCA (startled).--"How?"

VIOLANTE.--"Surely he speaks of Italy, and news from that country affects
you still, my father."

RICCABOCCA.--"Nay, nay, nothing affects me like this country; its east
winds might affect a pyramid! Draw your mantle round you, child, and go
in; the air has suddenly grown chill."

Violante smiled on her father, glanced uneasily towards Randal's grave
brow, and went slowly towards the house. Riccabocca, after waiting some
moments in silence, as if expecting Randal to speak, said, with affected
carelessness,

"So you think that you have news that might affect me? /Corpo di Bacco/!
I am curious to learn what?"

"I may be mistaken--that depends on your answer to one question. Do you
know the Count of Peschiera?"

Riccabocca winced, and turned pale. He could not baffle the watchful eye
of the questioner.

"Enough," said Randal; "I see that I am right. Believe in my sincerity.
I speak but to warn and to serve you. The count seeks to discover the
retreat of a countryman and kinsman of his own."

"And for what end?" cried Riccabocca, thrown off his guard, and his
breast dilated, his crest rose, and his eye flashed; valour and defiance
broke from habitual caution and self-control. "But--pooh!" he added,
striving to regain his ordinary and half-ironical calm, "it matters not
to me. I grant, sir, that I know the Count di Peschiera; but what has
Dr. Riccabocca to do with the kinsman of so grand a personage?"

"Dr. Riccabocca--nothing. But--" here Randal put his lip close to the
Italian's ear, and whispered a brief sentence. Then retreating a step,
but laying his hand on the exile's shoulder, he added, "Need I say that
your secret is safe with me?"

Riccabocca made no answer. His eyes rested on the ground musingly.

Randal continued, "And I shall esteem it the highest honour you can
bestow on me, to be permitted to assist you in forestalling danger."

RICCABOCCA (slowly).--"Sir, I thank you; you have my secret, and I feel
assured it is safe, for I speak to an English gentleman. There may be
family reasons why I should avoid the Count di Peschiera; and, indeed,
he is safest from shoals who steers clearest of his relations."

The poor Italian regained his caustic smile as he uttered that wise,
villanous Italian maxim.

RANDAL.--"I know little of the Count of Peschiera save from the current
talk of the world. He is said to hold the estates of a kinsman who took
part in a conspiracy against the Austrian power."

RICCABOCCA.--"It is true. Let that content him; what more does he
desire? You spoke of forestalling danger; what danger? I am on the soil
of England, and protected by its laws."

RANDAL.--"Allow me to inquire if, had the kinsman no child, the Count di
Peschiera would be legitimate and natural heir to the estates he holds?"

RICCABOCCA.--"He would--What then?"

RANDAL.--"Does that thought suggest no danger to the child of the
kinsman?"

Riccabocca recoiled, and gasped forth, "The child! You do not mean to
imply that this man, infamous though he be, can contemplate the crime of
an assassin?"

Randal paused perplexed. His ground was delicate. He knew not what
causes of resentment the exile entertained against the count. He knew
not whether Riccabocca would not assent to an alliance that might restore
him to his country,--and he resolved to feel his way with precaution.

"I did not," said he, smiling gravely, "mean to insinuate so horrible a
charge against a man whom I have never seen. He seeks you,--that is all
I know. I imagine, from his general character, that in this search he
consults his interest. Perhaps all matters might be conciliated by an
interview!"

"An interview!" exclaimed Riccabocca; "there is but one way we should
meet,--foot to foot, and hand to hand."

"Is it so? Then you would not listen to the count if he proposed some
amicable compromise,--if, for instance, he was a candidate for the hand
of your daughter?"

The poor Italian, so wise and so subtle in his talk, was as rash and
blind when it came to action as if he had been born in Ireland and
nourished on potatoes and Repeal. He bared his whole soul to the
merciless eye of Randal.

"My daughter!" he exclaimed. "Sir, your very question is an insult."

Randal's way became clear at once. "Forgive me," he said mildly; "I will
tell you frankly all that I know. I am acquainted with the count's
sister. I have some little influence over her. It was she who informed
me that the count had come here, bent upon discovering your refuge, and
resolved to wed your daughter. This is the danger of which I spoke. And
when I asked your permission to aid in forestalling it, I only intended
to suggest that it might be wise to find some securer home, and that I,
if permitted to know that home, and to visit you, could apprise you from
time to time of the count's plans and movements."

"Sir, I thank you sincerely," said Riccabocca, with emotion; "but am I
not safe here?"

"I doubt it. Many people have visited the squire in the shooting season,
who will have heard of you,--perhaps seen you, and who are likely to meet
the count in London. And Frank Hazeldean, too, who knows the count's
sister--"

"True, true" interrupted Riccabocca. "I see, I see. I will consider,
I will reflect. Meanwhile you are going to Hazel dean. Do not say a
word to the squire. He knows not the secret you have discovered."

With those words Riccabocca turned slightly away, and Randal took the
hint to depart.

"At all times command and rely on me," said the young traitor, and he
regained the pale to which he had fastened his horse.

As he remounted, he cast his eyes towards the place where he had left
Riccabocca. The Italian was still standing there. Presently the form of
Jackeymo was seen emerging from the shrubs. Riccabocca turned hastily
round, recognized his servant, uttered an exclamation loud enough to
reach Randal's ear, and then, catching Jackeymo by the arm, disappeared
with him amidst the deep recesses of the garden.

"It will be indeed in my favour," thought Randal, as he rode on, "if I
can get them into the neighbourhood of London,--all occasion there to
woo, and if expedient, to win, the heiress."




CHAPTER VIII.

"Br the Lord, Harry!" cried the squire, as he stood with his wife in the
park, on a visit of inspection to some first-rate Southdowns just added
to his stock,--"by the Lord, if that is not Randal Leslie trying to get
into the park at the back gate! Hollo, Randal! you must come round by
the lodge, my boy," said he. "You see this gate is locked to keep out
trespassers."

"A pity," said Randal. "I like short cuts, and you have shut up a very
short one."

"So the trespassers said," quoth the squire; "but Stirn insisted on it--
valuable man, Stirn. But ride round to the lodge. Put up your horse,
and you'll join us before we can get to the house."

Randal nodded and smiled, and rode briskly on. The squire rejoined his
Harry.

"Ah, William," said she, anxiously, "though certainly Randal Leslie means
well, I always dread his visits."

"So do I, in one sense," quoth the squire, "for he always carries away a
bank-note for Frank."

"I hope he is really Frank's friend," said Mrs. Hazeldean. "Who's else
can he be? Not his own, poor fellow, for he will never accept a shilling
from me, though his grandmother was as good a Hazeldean as I am. But,
zounds, I like his pride, and his economy too. As for Frank--"

"Hush, William!" cried Mrs. Hazeldean, and put her fair hand before the
squire's mouth. The squire was softened, and kissed the fair hand
gallantly,--perhaps he kissed the lips too; at all events, the worthy
pair were walking lovingly arm-in-arm when Randal joined them.

He did not affect to perceive a certain coldness in the manner of Mrs.
Hazeldean, but began immediately to talk to her about Frank; praise that
young gentleman's appearance; expatiate on his health, his popularity,
and his good gifts, personal and mental,--and this with so much warmth,
that any dim and undeveloped suspicions Mrs. Hazeldean might have formed
soon melted away.

Randal continued to make himself thus agreeable, until the squire,
persuaded that his young kinsman was a first-rate agriculturalist,
insisted upon carrying him off to the home-farm; and Harry turned towards
the house; to order Randal's room to be got ready: "For," said Randal,
"knowing that you will excuse my morning dress, I venture to invite
myself to dine and sleep at the Hall."

On approaching the farm-buildings, Randal was seized with the terror of
an impostor; for, despite all the theoretical learning on Bucolics and
Georgics with which he had dazzled the squire, poor Frank, so despised,
would have beat him hollow when it came to the judging of the points of
an ox, or the show of a crop.

"Ha, ha," cried the squire, chuckling, "I long to see how you'll astonish
Stirn. Why, you'll guess in a moment where we put the top-dressing; and
when you come to handle my short-horns, I dare swear you'll know to a
pound how much oil-cake has gone into their sides."

"Oh, you do me too much honour,--indeed you do. I only know the general
principles of agriculture; the details are eminently interesting, but I
have not had the opportunity to acquire them."

"Stuff!" cried the squire. "How can a man know general principles unless
he has first studied the details? You are too modest, my boy. Ho!
there 's Stirn looking out for us!" Randal saw the grim visage of Stirn
peering out of a cattleshed, and felt undone. He made a desperate rush
towards changing the squire's humour.

"Well, sir, perhaps Frank may soon gratify your wish, and turn farmer
himself."

"Eh!" quoth the squire, stopping short,--"what now?"

"Suppose he were to marry?"

"I'd give him the two best farms on the property rent free. Ha, ha! Has
he seen the girl yet? I'd leave him free to choose; sir, I chose for
myself,--every man should. Not but what Miss Stick-to-rights is an
heiress, and, I hear, a very decent girl, and that would join the two
properties, and put an end to that law-suit about the right of way, which
began in the reign of King Charles the Second, and is likely otherwise to
last till the day of judgment. But never mind her; let Frank choose to
please himself."

"I'll not fail to tell him so, sir. I did fear you might have some
prejudices. But here we are at the farmyard."

"Burn the farmyard! How can I think of farmyards when you talk of
Frank's marriage? Come on--this way. What were you saying about
prejudices?"

"Why, you might wish him to marry an Englishwoman, for instance."

"English! Good heavens, sir, does he mean to marry a Hindoo?"

"Nay, I don't know that he means to marry at all; I am only surmising;
but if he did fall in love with a foreigner--"

"A foreigner! Ah, then Harry was--" The squire stopped short.

"Who might, perhaps," observed Randal--not truly, if he referred to
Madame di Negra--"who might, perhaps, speak very little English?"

"Lord ha' mercy!"

"And a Roman Catholic--"

"Worshipping idols, and roasting people who don't worship them."

"Signor Riccabocca is not so bad as that."

"Rickeybockey! Well, if it was his daughter! But not speak English!
and not go to the parish church! By George, if Frank thought of such a
thing, I'd cut him off with a shilling. Don't talk to me, sir; I would.
I 'm a mild man, and an easy man; but when I say a thing, I say it, Mr.
Leslie. Oh, but it is a jest,--you are laughing at me. There 's no such
painted good-for-nothing creature in Frank's eye, eh?"

"Indeed, sir, if ever I find there is, I will give you notice in time.
At present, I was only trying to ascertain what you wished for a
daughter-in-law. You said you had no prejudice."

"No more I have,--not a bit of it."

"You don't like a foreigner and a Catholic?"

"Who the devil would?"

"But if she had rank and title?"

"Rank and title! Bubble and squeak! No, not half so good as bubble and
squeak. English beef and good cabbage. But foreign rank and title!--
foreign cabbage and beef!---foreign bubble and foreign squeak!" And the
squire made a wry face, and spat forth his disgust and indignation.

"You must have an Englishwoman?"

"Of course."

"Money?"

"Don't care, provided she is a tidy, sensible, active lass, with a good
character for her dower."

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