CHAPTER V.
Jogtrot Hall was the one central grandeur, the boast and the comfort of Marigolds; a village, it may be, overlooked, unknown to the town reader, although so near to London, that on soft, calm nights, with the light wind setting from the east, it is said the late villager has heard the bell of St. Paul’s humming of the huge city in the deep quietude of starlit fields. As yet, the iron arms of the rail had not clipped Marigolds close to London. As yet, it lay some two hours’ distant—reckoning the time by coach-horses. Therefore, it was a day of wondrous promise to the villagers, when Squire Carraways threw open the Hall to his London friends. All Marigolds glowed with satisfaction, for the Hall was as the heart of the village; its influence felt, acknowledged at the farthest extremity. In fact, Squire Carraways was the feudal sovereign (he had, without knowing it, so crowned himself) of the people of Marigolds. He lorded it over every fireside; with the like power, if not with the like means, of the good old blade-and-buckler generations.
Conceive Jogtrot Hall to be the awful castle of the domain; though, to say the truth, there was not a frown to be got from it, see it as you would. For the architects, in their various tasks undertaken from time to time, had made the Hall a sort of brick-and-mortar joke; a violation and a burlesque of all building. The Hall was a huge jumble; here adorned with large beauty spots of lichen; there with ivy; here with jasmine and roses; and, to be short, with a very numerous family of flowering parasites, sticking and clinging, and creeping everywhere about it. The Hall seemed to have been built bit by bit as its owners got the wherewithal: as though, only when fortune had made a good venture, the owner permitted himself to send out for additional bricks and mortar. The Hall covered, or to speak better, sprawled over half an acre of ground. And as it lay tumbled on the greensward, dressed with all coloured plants and flowers;as its fifty windows stared, and peeped, and looked archly at you, it puzzled you which room to choose wherein to set your easy chair, and, with the fitting accessaries, therein to take a long, deep pull of blessed leisure.
And the lord of the Hall—Gilbert Carraways, merchant—had a high and dignified sense of his station. He had, perhaps, his own notions of feudality; but such as they were, he vindicated and worked them out with a truly Saxon energy. In the first place, he hated a beggar: he had, it would almost seem, an inborn horror of a destitute man: therefore, he never permitted any misery soever—we mean the misery of want—to find harbourage in Marigolds. If, in his walks, he met with a strange starving vagrant, crawling his way to hungry death, he would immediately take up the offender, and giving strictest orders that the vagabond should be well looked after, that is fed—and with amended covering, and a shilling in his pocket, be sent forth rebuked upon his journey. As for the vassals, or villagers, the Lord of the Hall knew every man, woman, and child; and at certain times, would call them to strict account. He would so carry it even in their homes, that he knew—as winter came—how many blankets were in every cottage, what logs of wood, and what store of coals. He would moreover busy himself with the meanest circumstances of the meanest mortality; for example, in such mishaps as the death of a cow, a horse, nay, even pigs, when the property of a labouring villager. He would thereupon resolve himself into a jury of inquiry; and satisfied with the evidence, would replace the cow, give another horse, send a pig or two from his own store. Moreover, this lord in the deep vaults of his Hall had captives buried from the light for ten and twenty years: and these at Christmas and at holiday times he would set free for the especial merriment of the folk of Marigolds.
Jogtrot Hall was partly surrounded by an advance guard of magnificent elms: huge, sturdy timber, with the wrinkles of some two hundred years in their bark; but green and flourishing, and alive and noisy with a colony of rooks, the descendants of a longflight of undisturbed ancestry. Between the elms, and lifted on a gentle rise of ground, Jogtrot Hall looked down with smiling, hospitable face. There was no rampant lion over the gates; no eagle, ready to swoop upon the new-comer. You approached the door through a double hedge of holly, winding up the slope; a double line of green-liveried guards bristling and berried. Two peacocks cut in yew—the bird crest of former occupants—were perched at the upper end on either side. Their condition, in the midst of flourishing beauty, gave warning of its fleetness. They were fast withering. One bird was dying from the head; the other from the tail; they looked forlorn and blighted; an eyesore amidst health and freshness. Nevertheless, Carraways would not suffer them to be cut down. “In the first place,” he would say, “it would be a mean act towards those who had lived there before him: to the original owners of the peacocks. And secondly, in the sunniest seasons the dying birds preached a sermon, nothing the less solemn because to a rustling, fine-dressed congregation of leaves and flowers.”
Now, whatever discourse the peacocks may have held to the master of the domain, we have no belief that the dying preachers will obtain a moment’s attention from the crowd of visitors now on their way from London, to eat and drink, and dance and sing, and to act love and to make enmity, to embrace one another, and to pick one another to pieces, for half-a-day’s happiness at Jogtrot Hall. Family parties, gatherings of friends and acquaintances came with every week to the house; but this was a day special—a day set apart for the reception of a multitude. Never, since Carraways had come down to the village, had Marigolds been so roused. The day was, we say, a general festival. All the folks were in their best; and the schoolmaster and schoolmistress—both functionaries paid from the privy purse of Jogtrot Hall—gave their boys and girls a holiday, that, in their cleanest attire, and with big nosegays stuck in their bosoms and held in their hands, they might, as small retainers of the Lord of the Hall, do honour to him and pleasure to themselves.
For three hours at least the children and the younger villagers had been prepared, arranged in seemly rows, to confront the fine, the awful folks from London. “They’re coming now, Jenny,” said a young fellow, “take care of yourself;” and familiarly pressing the arm of a fair, slim, country girl, who stood in the doorway of White, the schoolmaster—a place where she had the best claim to be, for in truth she was the schoolmaster’s daughter—the earnest adviser, Robert Topps by name, ran at his best speed back to the Hall. And now, on one side of the road, the boys’ school, with old White at their head, and his daughter at the threshold, with her fair pink face a little flustered by expectation, and, perhaps, by the counsel of Bob Topps,—on one side, the boys’ school, with flowers and green boughs, is on tiptoe with the first cheer; and immediately opposite, the girls’ school of Marigolds, under the firm and temperate direction of Mrs. Blanket, schoolmistress, duly prepared with a flourish of handkerchiefs; one or two of the more impulsive threatening to shout and flourish very much out of season.
At this turn of the road, reader,—this one whereby the carriages must sweep to the Hall, receiving, as they pass, the fire of either scholarhood—we have an excellent view of the guests. How the ladies—spick and span from the mint of fashion—bring in their caps, and bonnets, and hoods, and gowns, the most delightful wonders to the folks of Marigolds! It is London splendour, in all its mystery, brought to their doorways. If hats and caps were new stars, they would not be stared at with half so much wonderment. And now—there is a very narrow turning further up the road—the carriages go so slowly, that the young scholars, boys as well as girls, feel abashed to cheer in the fixed presence of the fine people. It is only when the line loosens, and the carriages roll quicklier on, that the children take new courage and shout and pipe their welcome.
We do not propose to introduce every guest to the reader,—merely two or three of the folks; and for this reason. As the reader will never again meet with the great body of the gathering,we shall suffer whole clouds of lace and muslin to drive on, like the lovely clouds over our head, with passing admiration, but with no hope of further knowledge of their lustre. The few persons whom we propose to make known will form part of the acquaintance of the traveller through this book, should he gird his loins to journey to the end.
That lady ripening in the sun beneath a pink parasol, is the Hon. Miss Candituft. You will be kind enough to look very attentively, yet withal deferentially, at that lady; and for this reason: it is to her enlarged knowledge of the true elements of society—as she has been known to call them—that you are indebted for the condescending attendance of the distinguished people who will this day eat, drink, and make merry at Jogtrot Hall. It was the good fortune of Miss Carraways to meet Miss Candituft abroad, travelling with her brother, the Hon. Cesar Candituft, whose baggage—with a large sum of money—had been secretly cut from his vehicle by the guilty hands of a demoralized banditti! The Carraways were then making a tour; they were very serviceable to the Canditufts, and a friendship began between the two young women that grew fast and close as ivy. Miss Candituft is called a fine woman; has been so called for some years. Her face, you perceive, is large and classical; very pale, and very full of intellect. There is only one reason why she is not married—the men are afraid of her. We think it only right to give this fact the widest publicity: to proclaim it with the most significant emphasis; it is so frequent a calamity, and yet so unsuspected by the principal sufferers. They know not—they who have eaten so much of the tree of knowledge, swallowing fruit, pips, leaves, twigs, bark and all—they know not how terrible they make themselves to a bachelor man. He may be six feet high, with shoulders broad as a table, and yet—we have known it—before such a woman his heart has melted into water. He has held his hand to her, with all the old feeling that he held forth his palm to the school ferula. Let Minerva take this axiom to her cool crystal breast—If she would condescend to marry, she must consent to leaveher owl at home. Now, Miss Candituft would always carry the pet to parties with her; and, we have given the result; the men—poor birds!—were alarmed, and fluttered away from her. Nevertheless, she had a fine look: a very white skin, a large—a little icy, perhaps—full, blue eye; a close, controlled mouth; a well-cut, very high-bred nose; and large long twists of amber-coloured ringlets, dancing in her lap, like burnished snakes. For all this, men walked about her as though her very beauties were combustible—destructive. And knowing their fears, at length she never spared them.
The Hon. Cesar Candituft sits beside his sister. Could we get behind those scenes that every man carries in his brain—(acting, with his tongue and eyes, just so much of the play as seems fit to him)—it is not improbable that we should behold the gentleman levelling this hedge—widening this road—pulling down that scrubby row of cottages—and making many other improvements, by anticipation, in his property of Marigolds.Hisproperty, when he shall marry Bessy Carraways; and her father—finally put aside from the mildew of the city—shall sleep in the village church beneath a substantial covering of very handsome marble. With the hopes, nay the certainty of marrying old Carraways’ heiress, it was not Mr. Candituft’s fault if these very natural thoughts would present themselves. Certainly not. Who can control thought? Who can dismiss it, like an insolent servant? Who, too, can prophesy, what thought the dial finger on the next minute will bring him? We are thus earnest in common-place, that we may attempt to excuse Cesar Candituft; of all men—all men say it of him—the most kind, the most obliging; nay, the most forgiving. Let Candituft have an enemy seeking him with a drawn sword; and Candituft, with no more than a rose in his hand, will strike away the blade; and in a quarter of an hour make the wicked fellow ashamed of himself, that he could feel a moment’s anger against so good, so calm, so generous a creature as Candituft. Good, noble, sagacious Candituft! They who know him best, call him the Man-Tamer.
That old tall man, with a very big head on a thin stalk of neck, is Colonel Bones. He goes everywhere. He looks vulgar and grubby; yet is he accounted as costly clay among a certain number of very worthy Christians; as precious as is Jerusalem earth to exiled Hebrews. He gives himself out as prodigiously poor; but people, in these times, are not to be gulled. The world—(that is, the kernel of the world—for the world is as a cocoa-nut; there is the vulgar outside fibre, to be made into door-mats and ropes; the hard shell, good for beer-cups; and the white, delicate kernel, the real worth, food for the gods)—the world knows the secret of Colonel Bones. Ingenuous old soul! He believes the world will take him at his word; will receive him as the pauper he declares himself. Sly Colonel! The world knows better. The world, in its winding sagacity, has worked out the truth; and therefore, with a good-tempered smile, gives a very pleasant reason for all the oddities of the good, dear, old Colonel. He will not afford himself the luxury of a carriage; therefore, a carriage is always sent for him. He will not take care of himself at his own table; and therefore he must always dine with one of his best friends. Why, it was only last winter that, having bound himself by previous promise to grant the request of a petitioner, he consented to become godfather, with the enforced proviso that he shouldnotgive his godson a single ounce of plate. Up to this moment, the child—Bones Mizzlemist, eldest son of Mizzlemist of Doctors’ Commons—is without a mug. Colonel Bones—he served somewhere in some regiment at some date in the militia—Colonel Bones insists upon playing the pauper on an annuity of fifty pounds, and the world lets the poor old fellow have his feeble whim, his little joke. Very right; an old man, and to be humoured.
That slight young man, with the handsome face of blank meaning (a fine lamp with no light in it) is Sir Arthur Hodmadod. He is scarcely cool in his baronetcy, having only succeeded to the title in the spring. He bows to Miss Candituft a little timidly; for even yet he does not feel himself altogether safe. He looks at her as though he still beheld in her thedread possibility of Lady Hodmadod. However, he takes heart, and rides up to the carriage.—Only hear him.
“That’s a nice thing there;” and Hodmadod points towards Jenny White, the schoolmaster’s daughter.
“Where?” asks Miss Candituft, opening her eyes to take in everybody.
“There; that thing with the—what is it?—the silver bee; isn’t it a bee? buttoning the black riband at her throat.”
“Yes, it is a bee,” says Miss Candituft, using her glass; and then staring at the baronet. “It is a bee. Ha, Sir Arthur! What an aquiline eye you have! Not even a bee escapes you! Well, it is a bee.”
“Really, a beautiful thing. So white, and pink, and smooth; so like Dresden china, you might put the wench upon a mantel-piece. Eh?” and Hodmadod looks for the lady’s opinion.
Miss Candituft stares at Sir Arthur; she did not expect to be appealed to upon so domestic an arrangement. And then, without winking, and with a fixed wondering face, Miss Candituft says, “I don’t know.”
“Charming thing!” And the uneasy Hodmadod turns in his saddle to look at Jenny. “A child of nature!”
“You think so?” asks Miss Candituft, with a searching emphasis, that somehow goes through the baronet.
Hodmadod finds himself put upon his proofs; and in his usual logical manner, hastily sets his meaning in its clearest, strongest light. “Quite a child of nature. That is, you know, when I say a child of nature, why I mean, of course, a—a perfect kitten.”
“Of course; that is evident,” says Miss Candituft, with her large, cold eyes in the brain of the baronet. Defenceless man! He feels his exposed condition—and touching his hat, speeds past the carriage. Well, we do not yet think him safe. Miss Candituft pursues him with such a look that, even now, we would not insure him from the life-long consequences of her resolution. However, let him flutter his hour while he may. We shall see.
On either side boys and girls set up so loud, so shrill a welcome, it is plain they have caught sight of some bit of bravery—some splendour that hitherto is the chief glory of the show. Quick and perceptive is the wit of childhood; and—they know it—the little ones have not spent their best cheer without good judgment. For look at that magnificent equipage. Four glorious horses, wearing the most superb caparison, with—it would seem—a full sense of its costliness, for everywhere it is set and bossed with precious silver—four horses, dancing—as though, like immortal steeds, they pawed the empyrean, not the Queen’s highway—draw a sky-blue phaeton. There is another shout, as the vehicle turns the corner; and horses, and postilions, and carriage and company, are revealed at full. The horses seem to toss their heads, as with a sense of beauty, coquetting with the public approbation; and the postilions, in their gold-coloured satin jackets, have an assured and knowing look, and very proud of their horse-flesh, pat the beasts, as though blood was immortal, and there was not a dog in the world. And who are the company who sit in the phaeton, drinking in, as at every pore of the skin, the looks of wonder and admiration that from all sides are cast upon them? It is difficult—we feel the task—very difficult to obtain belief for the assertion; nevertheless, as faithful chroniclers, we must at any peril make it. The ladies are Mrs. Jericho and her two daughters, Miss Monica and Miss Agatha Pennibacker; the gentleman is Mr. Solomon Jericho.
No, sir; we are not abashed at your look of incredulity; we expected it. We had no thought that, at the word, you would take our avowal for the truth; the folks are, every one of them, so changed; so refined, and yet withal so enlarged. Mrs. Jericho was always a woman of commanding presence; she could not, even when she most desired to unbend, she could not without very much ado, subside into the familiarity of gentleness. But now, she looks as though she had been passing a visit with Queen Juno, and had brought home the last large manners from Olympus. Albeit she onlyshares the phaeton with three others, she seems as though she filled, nay overflowed it; manner, manner does so much. The nasty children scream, and the horrid bumpkins shout; yet it is gratifying, very pleasant, indeed, that the phaeton (her taste,) and the postboys’ jackets (her taste,) are not lost upon the creatures. Nevertheless, Mrs. Jericho will not bow; no, not wink an eyelid in recognition of the applause; she will receive the homage as the fealty born to. And the young ladies are worthy of their majestic mother. They are wondrously changed. They have, with all the elasticity of the female character, so sympathized with fortune in her sudden good-nature, that already she seems to them a life-long acquaintance.
Solomon Jericho is only fourteen days older since he and the reader were last together. Fourteen days only have been filtered into the sea of the past since Solomon Jericho—with a strange musical tingling of every nerve of his body; with a lively, melodious flourish to Plutus—entered upon the mysterious cares of wealth. Whenever it pleased Solomon, he could lay his hand upon his heart, and find a hundred pounds of ready money there. Yes; we say it. When Solomon wanted real happiness, he had only to place his hand upon his heart, and he touched the ready felicity. He was mightily stirred by the first knowledge of the secret. The reader may haply remember, that ere Jericho—to his vast astonishment—drew forth the first note; ere the property of his bosom, like a dried autumn leaf, came off into his palm, he was raised to a state of ecstasy. He felt, without knowing the cause, all the blessedness of the triumph that makes man, by force of a golden sceptre, one of the kings of the world. Earth, with all its delights, was suddenly made to him little other than one huge market, whereat he might purchase whatever took his choice. Without knowing it, he celebrated his coming of age; the unexpected birth-day of a full-grown heir. Now this emotion passed almost as soon as Jericho was assured of possession. He himself could not have believed in the easiness of his self-accommodation to the boundlessness of money. Nevertheless, next morning he woke to fortune, asthough she had always shared his pillow. Even Mrs. Jericho was astonished at the equanimity with which her husband received the gifts of luck, as vouchsafed to him from discovered veins of platina; for no, not even to the partner of his bosom, had Jericho revealed his bosom’s wealth. Little, indeed, did Mrs. Jericho know the value of the heart that beat—did it really beat?—beside her. It was, in truth, the one great secret of his breast that Jericho held undiscovered from the nominal mistress of that region.
Fourteen days only has Solomon Jericho been new-made; that is, made of money; and wondrous in the new-made man is the new change! Once was he an easy, slipshod sort of fellow, with a high relish for a joke; or when the joke itself was not to be had, with anything that at a short notice could be supplied in its place. Frequently was it the painful duty of his wife to rebuke him for his humour; humour being, Mrs. Jericho would ever insist, beneath a gentleman. Now only fourteen days, and what an improvement! “Money has its duties, Mr. Jericho,” the wife observed; “duties that are above a joke.” And to her great satisfaction, she acknowledged that Jericho in his new dull dignity solemnly carried out her own conviction. She was almost delighted with the man; he was such an improvement upon himself. She confessed it to him.—“He had greatly improved: now he never laughed; he never joked; he never talked of people below his own station; he had given up buffoonery, and philanthropy, and vulgar notions of all kinds; and, really she must say it, he showed himself worthy of the good fortune that had fallen upon him. Moreover, she always knew—she always felt—a presentiment of what the mines would produce; hence she had borne the privations of former years without word, without a tear. She had always loved him; and it had often caused her a struggle to disguise her affection: nevertheless, she did not think she could love him as she did; and for this reason—she could not deny it—she had not believed in the moral dignity his wealth had developed in him. She would say it—she was proud of him!”
“Lovely weather, madam,” says Basil Pennibacker, prancing up to the phaeton. “But, my dear lady, may I be permitted to ask your unprejudiced opinion of the dust?”
“A slight drawback; very slight, my love,” says Mrs. Jericho, heroically. “But what a heavenly sky!”
“Over-head unexceptionable; the other extremity detestable. And with such distress as there is, old Carraways might have hired all the workhouse cheap, to weep in the highway. Such very queer dust, too!” and Basil smacks his lips. “Not at all the Rotten Bow flavour. Full of sand! Agatha, duck, keep your mouth shut; or you’ll be turned into an hour-glass.”
“There, now, Basil, set your spurs to your gallant steed like a good boy, and run away,” says Monica.
“A wonderful animal, sir,” observes Basil confidentially to Mr. Jericho. “Hallo! not well, sir?”
“Well? Admirable! Never so well,” says Jericho, in a cold voice, and with a dim smile.
“’Pon my life, you look so wire-drawn and so thin! Blessed if you don’t look as if you’d been locked out last night, and dragged to bed through the keyhole.”
“Basil! My child!” cries Mrs. Jericho; and Jericho smiles, but dimmer than before.
“Extraordinary animal, sir,” says Basil, thinking it best to return to the horse. “Only three hundred. I’m satisfied, and shall buy him. Only three hundred. Cheap, my honourable sir—cheap for a water-cart. Look at him, sir. None of your horses, put together with skewers for a day out, to tumble to the dogs as soon as they get home: shall, certainly, lay down the loyalty for him. Take care of yourself, my good sir; men like you can’t be spared. Good bye, we shall meet on the daisies.”
“Bye, bye,” says Agatha. “Don’t forget Bessy.”
“Upon my life, you girls look too nice,—you do, indeed;—too nice,” says Basil, holding in his horse.
“Oh!” cry the young ladies, laughing and shaking their heads. “Oh!”
“You do, indeed. Too nice to marry, and not nice enoughto eat;” and Basil gives his horse his head, and bounds forward, followed by a groom, mounted worthy of the new master he attends. Mrs. Jericho smiles proudly, and looks at her husband; who industriously tries, and at length succeeds, to smile in return.
And now the great crowd of guests is set down at the Hall; and now, we invite the reader to enter the house, to stray among the grounds, and to enjoy the large hospitality that from every nook and corner of the place cries—“Eat, drink, and be merry.”