Volume One—Chapter Nine.An Old Campaigner.The London season had ended: so Lady Inskip, having packed up her baggage waggons, gathered herimpedimentaaround her, and mustered her forces, consisting of her two grown-up daughters, her only son, a young imp of twelve summers; her maid, a knowing abigail; and lastly, though by no means least, herself—put her regiment in marching order; and sallied down with metaphorical bands playing and colours flying to the quiet little watering place of Bigton, to prosecute a sort of son-in-law-hunting war during the summer solstice.For be it known, Lady Inskip was a campaigner—one, too, who had fought many a fray on many a field, from the era of her first battle when she had, with an equally adept old mother for an ally, striven for a husband and a title, and an establishment in life, and had won the three combined in the person of her departed spouse, the late Sir John O’Gaunt Inskip, Bart.—down to her last little skirmish in Mayfair, where she had attempted to float off her two remaining daughters—her eldest she had gotten rid of handsomely some time before. She had then and there been routed disastrously, before she could draw up her forces for a regular pitched battle; but it was not her fault, or from lack of perseverance or want of judgment on her part, as she had been unable to fix upon any special young or old gentleman—it did not matter which—whom she deemed or doomed as eligible for her matrimonial projects.She was not daunted, however: not she! She was too old and experienced a campaigner for that, and had regularly changed her front mapped out hercarte du pays, and planned out an entirely new disposition of her forces before coming down to Bigton. She contemplated a bold stroke, somewhat like Napoleon’s procedure at Austerlitz, or, better still, his invasion of Egypt; and had determined to follow the tactics of other experienced commanders, and “carry the war into Africa.”It was not a very colossal adversary against whom she schemed and plotted, and collected such munitions of war—it was only Tom Hartshorne—poor Tom, whom she had met in London, and who seemed inclined for a mild flirtation with her pensive Laura, and lively, not to say “larky,” Carry—especially at the last Woolwich Artillery ball, when his attentions had been “really quite marked!” That unfortunate young officer having sauntered through a quadrille with Laura, and told the exuberant Carry, after a waltz, that she was “a stunner to go.” He certainly, however, criminated himself to some extent, by calling the next day at their house in town, and playing pretty to, and chaffing both girls.Mr Thomas Hartshorne she had found out—strange what wonderful perspicacity and knowledge of the means, standing, and expectations of wooers and would-be sons-in-law, mothers with marriageable daughters have!—was in a very good position, and was the presumptive heir to the present proprietress of The Poplars.She had made up her mind, therefore, to secure him at all hazards for one of her “dear, darling, girls.” He was, consequently, the object of her present visit to Bigton. Tom was the game marked downin esse, although goodness knows, with the hopeful ground of a watering place to work upon, and its heterogeneous crowds of visitors, and its romantic opportunities, who and how many, without agitating Mormonism, might not be the victimsin posse!Lady Inskip was the widow of a Scotch baronet, who had married her for her good looks rather than her fortune—unlike the generality of his countrymen—for a very limited trousseau was all she brought him; and even now, some twenty years after her marriage, she was still what Doctor Jolly would, and did, call “a fine figure of a woman, sir, by Gad!”Her two daughters were very nice, presentable girls; Laura a sort of languid beauty, and Carry “gushing,” and a trifle inclined to be fast. The boy, Mortimer, was an obstinate, headstrong, young cub, just of that age when boys are peculiarly obnoxious and always in the way and disagreeable. He was, naturally enough, the spoilt pet of his mother, and for a young baronet had all the graces and follies of the position which he would be required to fill. But we need not go on to particularise all the points of Lady Inskip’sménage.Suffice it to say, that she came down to Bigton very shortly after Tom had left town. You may wager a trifle, if you are inclined to woo Fortune in that way, that she was previously acquainted with his destination before she moved her Lares and Penates; and now that she was here, you may depend that she would leave no stone unturned to secure her object.She took a pleasant little cottage on the Esplanade, about half a mile or so from the town, for a year, and had it fitted up elegantly and decorated so as to make it a perfect bijou of a place. If you watch a spider, you will always observe what a magnificent web he spins before he hunts about or lays in wait for his prey; see what a gorgeous centre-piece he has to his prismatic castle! Depend upon it that the spider is certain that his parlour is well-furnished before he invites the fly to “walk in,” as is detailed in the lines of the harrowing ballad sacred to childhood.Well, Lady Inskip had a nice little house, nicely furnished, with a nice little garden all mignionette and passion flowers, and a nice little croquet lawn, where nice little games of flirtation could be played by suitable nice young gentlemen with her nice dear darling girls. In fact it was all “nice”—that adjective so dear to the heart of the gentler sex, and so lavishly used by them—and so the old campaigner having entrenched herself within these fortifications, continuing our military descriptive, prepared to battle for and on behalf her of two daughters Laura and Caroline, as aforesaid.She had not been in the place two days, before she knew “all about everybody.” How Captain Curry Cucumber, who lived at the big red brick house, “just as you passed the common, you know,” was an old returned East India officer (and who was seventy years old if he was a day), was immensely rich, and had come home with a lakh of rupees to marry and settle down. He had an “awful temper in course,” as his landlady said, and swore dreadful at his “pore black man,” but then he had a sweet yellow face, and his widow would be left very comfortably off. Then she learnt too of our old friend the doctor, how he was a gay young bachelor; and of course she found out all about Mrs Hartshorne, and her place and her ways and her oddities. She learnt also of the Revd. Herbert Pringle, and his little church at Hartwood: and as he was a relative of the great Sir Boanerges Todhunter, and was a young man with a good living, and probably had property of his own, she made up her mind to patronise him, especially as he was the protégé of the dowager.Accordingly she and her tender daughters and the young Sir Mortimer attended divine service at Hartwood the first Sunday of her stay at Bigton, and she was so wonderfully pleased with the performances of the ritualistic rector—he was “so like that dear Aminadab, at St. Barnabas’,” that she made up her mind to go there always in future, and not to patronise the Reverend Jabez, of Bigton.She met Tom after church. She was “delighted to see him,” and made him promise to call next day and bring the Reverend Herbert Pringle, on his mentioning that he was a great friend and a nice fellow. The dowager having bundled out of church immediately the service was over, Lady Inskip had then had no opportunity to make her acquaintance, although she assured Tom she was “longing to know her,” but as she was an old lady, she, Lady Inskip, said she would do herself the honour of paying a visit at The Poplars very shortly.She wassoglad to see Mr Markworth, too, “quite an unexpected pleasure to see him down here,” when she was really mortally afraid of that worthy, who she could readily perceive, with a woman’s mental keenness of vision, had taken her measure and thoroughly understood her plans and tactics. Altogether Lady Inskip was delighted with everything, as, fortunately for her peace of mind, she had not seen the pretty Lizzie Pringle, and was unaware of Tom’s present infatuation about that young lady, which anyone “with half an eye,” except those personally concerned, would have at once recognised.She drove back to Bigton, in a very pleasant frame of mind, at peace with her daughters, herself and everything around her; and her smart little equipage—a park phaeton and pair of ponies—caused much excitement amongst the rustics along the road.Master Tom, not being averse to renewing his flirtation with Miss Carry and her sister, notwithstanding his being enthralled by Lizzie, determined to pay a call at the Inskip’s little cottage, on the Bigton esplanade, a morning or two after, and proposed to Markworth that he should accompany himself and Pringle.“No, thanks,” replied that gentleman, “none of my lady schemer for me! Look out for her, Tom! She’s an awful old pythoness, and would wheedle the devil himself into marrying one of her plain daughters. Why, she nearly caught Harrowby ‘of yours’ the other day, and I believe she came down here after you.”“Never fear, Markworth,” answered Tom, as he went off to call on Pringle, in order to get him to go, and also perhaps to have a glimpse of Lizzie, to act as a sort of charm against witchery from the Inskip girls. “Never fear, my boy! I saw her game in London, and shan’t be caught. But they are jolly girls, that little Carry is up to chaff no end; and they will make this place gayer by coming down. There’ll be nothing but pic-nics and croquet presently, if I know them aright,” and he walked off to get his horse, which George was grooming to make it look respectable.Pringle was a very dapper little man. A perfect little exquisite, and no one was so particular as to the parting of his hair, the curl of his whiskers, and the general “nattiness” of his turn out, as himself. He had seen the fair Laura and Caroline in church, and their presence had lent a perceptible tone to the pronunciation of his “awe-men,” and the delivery of his sermon. He saw they were well dressed, but when he learnt that Tom knew them, and beyond that, that they were the daughters of a baronet, and their mother a “lady in her own right,” he was most anxious to make their acquaintance. Lizzie told him laughingly not to lose his heart over the belles, and suggested that he would be quite irresistible when she saw him so particular about the various points of his toilet this morning; but he thought it no laughing matter, I can assure you. He had all the elaborate priggishness of a young man fresh from college, and was more bent on making an impression than on pleasing. To tell the truth he had mixed very little in the world, and the feeling of being a man and occupying a responsible position was quite a novel one to him.He was ready long before the hour Tom had fixed for calling for him on his way to Bigton, and was walking up and down the verandah in front of the parsonage, waiting impatiently, and flicking the flies off his pony, which stood ready saddled for the start.“By Jove!” he said (he had not been able to break himself of that expression, more suited to the laity, which he had picked up at Oxford), “I wish he would come: we shall be too late!” and at that moment Tom rode in at the gate. After passing a little time speaking to Lizzie, who told him, too, not to “lose his heart,” to which little shot Tom replied in a low voice—they had become intimate now, you see—that he had lost his already, which caused Miss Violet Eyes to blush, of course from sorrow; they at length rode off, and the promised visit was made to Lady Inskip, at Laburnum Cottage.Poor Pringle was dreadfully embarrassed during the time he was under the eyes of the three ladies, and the “young imp” Mortimer caused him to lose what little self-possession he had, by making some observation on the parting of his back hair, asking him what was the perfume on his “rag,” alluding to his pocket-handkerchief, and finally by playfully pulling away his chair as he was going to sit down. He blushed all the time of his stay, although Lady Inskip was very affable to him, and the girls expressed the most intense admiration for his little church and all its belongings. The only easy moment he had when he could speak clearly was when “the darling girls,” as their mother called them, came out on the lawn to admire his dapple pony, and called it “a little duck:” then Pringle had longed in his inmost heart to be that pony, for he was enraptured with the langour and beauty of Laura. Carry frightened him with her chaffy tongue, and by the way she went on with Tom, who seemed quite “at home,” as he generally made himself at most places.The young men left after a lengthy stay, and the ladies very naturally, canvassed them on their departure.“What a nice fellow—regularly jolly fellow Tom Hartshorne is!” said Miss Caroline, “but the parson’s a spoon!”“My dear Carry!” interposed Lady Inskip, “I do really wish you would not talk in those horrid slang terms! It is quite shocking! Mr Hartshorne is a very nice gentleman, of course, and I think Mr Pringle the same thing. He’s very quiet naturally; you cannot expect a clergyman, Caroline, to be as gay and ‘jolly,’ as you call it, as a young officer. I’m surprised at you, miss.”“He preaches delightfully!” observed the beauty languidly, “and I think him very nice; he was only bashful!”“I suppose at the sight of you, Laura?” said the pert Miss Carry. “But he has one good point about him, and that is his pony. I wonder if it is up to my weight?” a very natural enquiry, as she probably weighed considerably heavier than the owner of the animal, and was what an outspoken individual would have termed “a bouncer.”“I’m glad he’s coming again; we shall have some croquet,” continued the elder sister. “Yes, my dears,” said the mother. “We must make him at home; he’s a very nice young man.” She had already looked upon the Oxonian as “eligible,” and was bent on making him a captive of her bow and spear.“Well, for my part, I think him a donkey, and do not care whether he comes or not.”“Caroline! Caroline! Is this the return you make me for all I have done for you, and planned and schemed on my bended knees! ungrateful girl!” said Lady Inskip plaintively, as if she was going to cry.“Oh, don’t go on, ma, any more. We know all that! Laura can have the white-choker if she likes: I will cultivate Tom.”“Bless you my child!” said the mother, “you are rash and impetuous, but you have a good heart.”
The London season had ended: so Lady Inskip, having packed up her baggage waggons, gathered herimpedimentaaround her, and mustered her forces, consisting of her two grown-up daughters, her only son, a young imp of twelve summers; her maid, a knowing abigail; and lastly, though by no means least, herself—put her regiment in marching order; and sallied down with metaphorical bands playing and colours flying to the quiet little watering place of Bigton, to prosecute a sort of son-in-law-hunting war during the summer solstice.
For be it known, Lady Inskip was a campaigner—one, too, who had fought many a fray on many a field, from the era of her first battle when she had, with an equally adept old mother for an ally, striven for a husband and a title, and an establishment in life, and had won the three combined in the person of her departed spouse, the late Sir John O’Gaunt Inskip, Bart.—down to her last little skirmish in Mayfair, where she had attempted to float off her two remaining daughters—her eldest she had gotten rid of handsomely some time before. She had then and there been routed disastrously, before she could draw up her forces for a regular pitched battle; but it was not her fault, or from lack of perseverance or want of judgment on her part, as she had been unable to fix upon any special young or old gentleman—it did not matter which—whom she deemed or doomed as eligible for her matrimonial projects.
She was not daunted, however: not she! She was too old and experienced a campaigner for that, and had regularly changed her front mapped out hercarte du pays, and planned out an entirely new disposition of her forces before coming down to Bigton. She contemplated a bold stroke, somewhat like Napoleon’s procedure at Austerlitz, or, better still, his invasion of Egypt; and had determined to follow the tactics of other experienced commanders, and “carry the war into Africa.”
It was not a very colossal adversary against whom she schemed and plotted, and collected such munitions of war—it was only Tom Hartshorne—poor Tom, whom she had met in London, and who seemed inclined for a mild flirtation with her pensive Laura, and lively, not to say “larky,” Carry—especially at the last Woolwich Artillery ball, when his attentions had been “really quite marked!” That unfortunate young officer having sauntered through a quadrille with Laura, and told the exuberant Carry, after a waltz, that she was “a stunner to go.” He certainly, however, criminated himself to some extent, by calling the next day at their house in town, and playing pretty to, and chaffing both girls.
Mr Thomas Hartshorne she had found out—strange what wonderful perspicacity and knowledge of the means, standing, and expectations of wooers and would-be sons-in-law, mothers with marriageable daughters have!—was in a very good position, and was the presumptive heir to the present proprietress of The Poplars.
She had made up her mind, therefore, to secure him at all hazards for one of her “dear, darling, girls.” He was, consequently, the object of her present visit to Bigton. Tom was the game marked downin esse, although goodness knows, with the hopeful ground of a watering place to work upon, and its heterogeneous crowds of visitors, and its romantic opportunities, who and how many, without agitating Mormonism, might not be the victimsin posse!
Lady Inskip was the widow of a Scotch baronet, who had married her for her good looks rather than her fortune—unlike the generality of his countrymen—for a very limited trousseau was all she brought him; and even now, some twenty years after her marriage, she was still what Doctor Jolly would, and did, call “a fine figure of a woman, sir, by Gad!”
Her two daughters were very nice, presentable girls; Laura a sort of languid beauty, and Carry “gushing,” and a trifle inclined to be fast. The boy, Mortimer, was an obstinate, headstrong, young cub, just of that age when boys are peculiarly obnoxious and always in the way and disagreeable. He was, naturally enough, the spoilt pet of his mother, and for a young baronet had all the graces and follies of the position which he would be required to fill. But we need not go on to particularise all the points of Lady Inskip’sménage.
Suffice it to say, that she came down to Bigton very shortly after Tom had left town. You may wager a trifle, if you are inclined to woo Fortune in that way, that she was previously acquainted with his destination before she moved her Lares and Penates; and now that she was here, you may depend that she would leave no stone unturned to secure her object.
She took a pleasant little cottage on the Esplanade, about half a mile or so from the town, for a year, and had it fitted up elegantly and decorated so as to make it a perfect bijou of a place. If you watch a spider, you will always observe what a magnificent web he spins before he hunts about or lays in wait for his prey; see what a gorgeous centre-piece he has to his prismatic castle! Depend upon it that the spider is certain that his parlour is well-furnished before he invites the fly to “walk in,” as is detailed in the lines of the harrowing ballad sacred to childhood.
Well, Lady Inskip had a nice little house, nicely furnished, with a nice little garden all mignionette and passion flowers, and a nice little croquet lawn, where nice little games of flirtation could be played by suitable nice young gentlemen with her nice dear darling girls. In fact it was all “nice”—that adjective so dear to the heart of the gentler sex, and so lavishly used by them—and so the old campaigner having entrenched herself within these fortifications, continuing our military descriptive, prepared to battle for and on behalf her of two daughters Laura and Caroline, as aforesaid.
She had not been in the place two days, before she knew “all about everybody.” How Captain Curry Cucumber, who lived at the big red brick house, “just as you passed the common, you know,” was an old returned East India officer (and who was seventy years old if he was a day), was immensely rich, and had come home with a lakh of rupees to marry and settle down. He had an “awful temper in course,” as his landlady said, and swore dreadful at his “pore black man,” but then he had a sweet yellow face, and his widow would be left very comfortably off. Then she learnt too of our old friend the doctor, how he was a gay young bachelor; and of course she found out all about Mrs Hartshorne, and her place and her ways and her oddities. She learnt also of the Revd. Herbert Pringle, and his little church at Hartwood: and as he was a relative of the great Sir Boanerges Todhunter, and was a young man with a good living, and probably had property of his own, she made up her mind to patronise him, especially as he was the protégé of the dowager.
Accordingly she and her tender daughters and the young Sir Mortimer attended divine service at Hartwood the first Sunday of her stay at Bigton, and she was so wonderfully pleased with the performances of the ritualistic rector—he was “so like that dear Aminadab, at St. Barnabas’,” that she made up her mind to go there always in future, and not to patronise the Reverend Jabez, of Bigton.
She met Tom after church. She was “delighted to see him,” and made him promise to call next day and bring the Reverend Herbert Pringle, on his mentioning that he was a great friend and a nice fellow. The dowager having bundled out of church immediately the service was over, Lady Inskip had then had no opportunity to make her acquaintance, although she assured Tom she was “longing to know her,” but as she was an old lady, she, Lady Inskip, said she would do herself the honour of paying a visit at The Poplars very shortly.
She wassoglad to see Mr Markworth, too, “quite an unexpected pleasure to see him down here,” when she was really mortally afraid of that worthy, who she could readily perceive, with a woman’s mental keenness of vision, had taken her measure and thoroughly understood her plans and tactics. Altogether Lady Inskip was delighted with everything, as, fortunately for her peace of mind, she had not seen the pretty Lizzie Pringle, and was unaware of Tom’s present infatuation about that young lady, which anyone “with half an eye,” except those personally concerned, would have at once recognised.
She drove back to Bigton, in a very pleasant frame of mind, at peace with her daughters, herself and everything around her; and her smart little equipage—a park phaeton and pair of ponies—caused much excitement amongst the rustics along the road.
Master Tom, not being averse to renewing his flirtation with Miss Carry and her sister, notwithstanding his being enthralled by Lizzie, determined to pay a call at the Inskip’s little cottage, on the Bigton esplanade, a morning or two after, and proposed to Markworth that he should accompany himself and Pringle.
“No, thanks,” replied that gentleman, “none of my lady schemer for me! Look out for her, Tom! She’s an awful old pythoness, and would wheedle the devil himself into marrying one of her plain daughters. Why, she nearly caught Harrowby ‘of yours’ the other day, and I believe she came down here after you.”
“Never fear, Markworth,” answered Tom, as he went off to call on Pringle, in order to get him to go, and also perhaps to have a glimpse of Lizzie, to act as a sort of charm against witchery from the Inskip girls. “Never fear, my boy! I saw her game in London, and shan’t be caught. But they are jolly girls, that little Carry is up to chaff no end; and they will make this place gayer by coming down. There’ll be nothing but pic-nics and croquet presently, if I know them aright,” and he walked off to get his horse, which George was grooming to make it look respectable.
Pringle was a very dapper little man. A perfect little exquisite, and no one was so particular as to the parting of his hair, the curl of his whiskers, and the general “nattiness” of his turn out, as himself. He had seen the fair Laura and Caroline in church, and their presence had lent a perceptible tone to the pronunciation of his “awe-men,” and the delivery of his sermon. He saw they were well dressed, but when he learnt that Tom knew them, and beyond that, that they were the daughters of a baronet, and their mother a “lady in her own right,” he was most anxious to make their acquaintance. Lizzie told him laughingly not to lose his heart over the belles, and suggested that he would be quite irresistible when she saw him so particular about the various points of his toilet this morning; but he thought it no laughing matter, I can assure you. He had all the elaborate priggishness of a young man fresh from college, and was more bent on making an impression than on pleasing. To tell the truth he had mixed very little in the world, and the feeling of being a man and occupying a responsible position was quite a novel one to him.
He was ready long before the hour Tom had fixed for calling for him on his way to Bigton, and was walking up and down the verandah in front of the parsonage, waiting impatiently, and flicking the flies off his pony, which stood ready saddled for the start.
“By Jove!” he said (he had not been able to break himself of that expression, more suited to the laity, which he had picked up at Oxford), “I wish he would come: we shall be too late!” and at that moment Tom rode in at the gate. After passing a little time speaking to Lizzie, who told him, too, not to “lose his heart,” to which little shot Tom replied in a low voice—they had become intimate now, you see—that he had lost his already, which caused Miss Violet Eyes to blush, of course from sorrow; they at length rode off, and the promised visit was made to Lady Inskip, at Laburnum Cottage.
Poor Pringle was dreadfully embarrassed during the time he was under the eyes of the three ladies, and the “young imp” Mortimer caused him to lose what little self-possession he had, by making some observation on the parting of his back hair, asking him what was the perfume on his “rag,” alluding to his pocket-handkerchief, and finally by playfully pulling away his chair as he was going to sit down. He blushed all the time of his stay, although Lady Inskip was very affable to him, and the girls expressed the most intense admiration for his little church and all its belongings. The only easy moment he had when he could speak clearly was when “the darling girls,” as their mother called them, came out on the lawn to admire his dapple pony, and called it “a little duck:” then Pringle had longed in his inmost heart to be that pony, for he was enraptured with the langour and beauty of Laura. Carry frightened him with her chaffy tongue, and by the way she went on with Tom, who seemed quite “at home,” as he generally made himself at most places.
The young men left after a lengthy stay, and the ladies very naturally, canvassed them on their departure.
“What a nice fellow—regularly jolly fellow Tom Hartshorne is!” said Miss Caroline, “but the parson’s a spoon!”
“My dear Carry!” interposed Lady Inskip, “I do really wish you would not talk in those horrid slang terms! It is quite shocking! Mr Hartshorne is a very nice gentleman, of course, and I think Mr Pringle the same thing. He’s very quiet naturally; you cannot expect a clergyman, Caroline, to be as gay and ‘jolly,’ as you call it, as a young officer. I’m surprised at you, miss.”
“He preaches delightfully!” observed the beauty languidly, “and I think him very nice; he was only bashful!”
“I suppose at the sight of you, Laura?” said the pert Miss Carry. “But he has one good point about him, and that is his pony. I wonder if it is up to my weight?” a very natural enquiry, as she probably weighed considerably heavier than the owner of the animal, and was what an outspoken individual would have termed “a bouncer.”
“I’m glad he’s coming again; we shall have some croquet,” continued the elder sister. “Yes, my dears,” said the mother. “We must make him at home; he’s a very nice young man.” She had already looked upon the Oxonian as “eligible,” and was bent on making him a captive of her bow and spear.
“Well, for my part, I think him a donkey, and do not care whether he comes or not.”
“Caroline! Caroline! Is this the return you make me for all I have done for you, and planned and schemed on my bended knees! ungrateful girl!” said Lady Inskip plaintively, as if she was going to cry.
“Oh, don’t go on, ma, any more. We know all that! Laura can have the white-choker if she likes: I will cultivate Tom.”
“Bless you my child!” said the mother, “you are rash and impetuous, but you have a good heart.”
Volume One—Chapter Ten.A Call and its Consequences.Doctor Jolly trotted along the road from Bigton to Hartwood, with Huz and Buz his brother, cantering at his horse’s heels, and making short predatory excursions every now and then into neighbouring gardens and farmyards on the way, to the apoplectic scaring and bewilderment of sundry unhappy fowls and ducks. In about half an hour, as he always rode at a sharp pace, he had reached The Poplars to make his weekly visit.“How-de-do!” he shouted to Tom, when he was half a mile off, seeing him at the gate; and presently the stout doctor was dismounting from his quadruped with extreme difficulty, owing to the still painful gout, and limping up the steps of the dowager’s mansion.“So you are here again, are you?” observed that lady with her customary acrimony, from the open window of the dining-room, which faced the entrance gate. “Why, you’re always running here, now; you’d better come and live here at once; it would, at all events, save your gouty legs some exertion.”“Bless my soul! Mrs Hartshorne, why you are looking as blooming as a daisy. I wish I could wear like you, madam; why you must be sixty, if you are a day!”“I’ll outlast you at all events, Mister Jolly,” said the old lady, as our friend the doctor, who hated being called “Mister” instead of by his medical title, walked into the house.“And how’s Susan?” he asked, as he entered the room.“There she is with her governess, and you can see for yourself,” snappishly returned the dowager, walking out, and leaving the doctor with Miss Kingscott and her charge.Susan looked greatly improved, and timidly offered her hand as he went up to her in his hearty way.“And how are we to-day?” he said kindly.She, to his great astonishment, not only looked him in the face, but answered him, which she had seldom or ever done before.“Very well, I thank you,” she said, quietly.It was not much, certainly; not more, perhaps, than a well-trained parrot might have said, but, then, it was a decided improvement to her former apathy. She immediately afterwards, however, left the room, as she heard Markworth playing on the organ up-stairs; and Miss Kingscott and the doctor were alone.“By Gad, madam!” exclaimed the doctor, as soon as she had gone—he did not mean to give Miss Kingscott “brevet rank,” but he always addressed every woman, young or old, as “Madam.”“By Gad, madam! it’s positively wonderful. What an improvement; couldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it! But where has she gone to now—who’s that thrumming the old organ?”“That must be Mr Markworth, I believe,” she answered, “and you must compliment him on Susan’s improvement: she’s always with him, and he seems quite devoted to her. It is really quite charming to see them together.”Who would have dreamt of their joint conspiracy from the way she spoke?“Really?” enquired our Aesculapius. “To tell you the truth, madam, I don’t like that fellow at all. I’m never deceived in a face; and, if I do not make a mistake, madam, that man is a scoundrel as certain as God made little apples.”I do not know why it was, but the doctor always seemed desirous of connecting the name of the deity with miniature specimens of the forbidden fruit whenever he wanted to qualify a strong assertion.“Dear me, doctor!” interposed the lady, “your language is very strong.”“Not a bit of it, madam; not a bit more than he deserves. By Gad, madam! he must have some object to gain; he would not take all that trouble for nothing. I know human nature, madam, and he is either going to marry the old lady, or something else. Ho! ho! ho! what a fine pair they would make!”And the doctor sniggered over his own joke, and laughed so contagiously that Miss Kingscott could not but follow suit.The doctor presently, however, returned to business. He had been thinking of this young lady all the way over from Bigton. He had asserted to himself over and over again that she was “a dooced fine girl,” as if some one else had been disputing the point with him; and now that he was in her presence she not only looked finer and more beautiful than ever, but he had one of the best opportunities for speaking to her alone he had ever had before, or could have wished for.She looked very refined and ladylike as she stood there in the shaded dining-room, clad in a light morning dress. Her regular features and pale complexion gave an air of dignified beauty to her face which her height and figure well carried out. Altogether she was very charming, and looked so loveable on the present occasion, in appearance, that she would have captivated a man even less in love than the doctor, and led him on to the inevitable “pop!”Aesculapius was a long time beating about the bush. Although he was generally free and easy in his speech, the doctor was now tongue-tied when he most wanted to speak, and his already ruddy face was more “peonified” than ever—if I may be allowed to coin that word—while his heart thumped against his ribs “like a pestle against the sides of a pill mortar,” as he expressed it professionally.“Ha! hum! a fine morning, madam—a fine morning! Don’t you think so?”Miss Kingscott assented, of course. She saw his embarrassment, and wished to lead him on to anéclaircissement; but she could scarcely refrain herself from smiling at the ludicrous endeavours of the doctor to hide his nervousness, which was unmistakeably increasing.“Yes, madam, it’s a fine day; but hot, madam. Don’t you think so?”“Certainly, doctor, I think it is warm,” answered the lady, confirmatively.And, indeed, any one looking into his face could not but agree with the remark.“Warm, madam, is no term for it, it is confoundedly hot! But I beg your pardon, madam, were you ever in love?” he blurted out abruptly, after a great effort, bolting into his subject, as it were.“Good gracious me, doctor?” said Miss Kingscott, with a charmingly acted surprise, and blushing embarrassment. “What a strange question for you to ask!”“Not at all, madam—not at all. I said the weather was hot. Don’t you see, madam? and it is hot. I asked you about love—and love is hot. There’s my proposition, you see the connection between the two?”And the doctor’s face glowed with perspiration.“I do not follow your argument,” said the governess, calmly. “You seem to arrive very rapidly at your deductions; but what has the result to do with me?” she asked, with ingenuous innocence.“A good deal, madam—a good deal. How fearfully warm it is! You see, madam, before you an old man.”“Not so very old, doctor, I’m sure,” she interrupted, looking bewitchingly into his perspiring countenance.“Well, well,” he continued, in a gratified tone, “perhaps not exactly an old man; but I’m not a young one. Still, if it wasn’t for the confounded gout, I daresay I should be as young and skittish as the best of them.”“Oh! I’m so sorry for that horrid gout—and I do pity you so when I see you in pain,” condoled Miss Kingscott, thinking of the doctor being “skittish,” as if she had heard of an elephant dancing a hornpipe.“Are you really—do you really?” he asked eagerly, a flush of joy overspreading his already flushed and perspiring face. “Well, I tell you what, madam, I’m in love.”And the doctor heaved a portentous and languishing sigh, which quivered through his colossal frame which shook like a mould of jelly.“Are you really, doctor? I am sure I hope the young lady is nice, for your sake; and I hope she will make you a good wife,” she replied, ignoring the doctor’s nervousness until she got him to the point.“You are very kind, madam, very kind; but you are always kind—you can’t help it, for it is in your nature. Infernally hot, is it not, madam?”“Very warm,” said the lady, encouragingly.“Bless my soul! madam, so it is. But, madam, Miss Kingscott that is—”“Well?” she encouraged him, her eyes sparkling with ill-concealed fun at the doctor’s predicament.“You sly little creature! Why, you are laughing at me all the time!”“Oh! dear no; but who’s the young lady, doctor? You have not told me her name yet, and I’m dying to know.”“You wicked little baggage! you know all the time.”“How can I? when you have not yet told me.”“By Gad! women are the most provoking creatures under the sun.”“Notall, doctor,” she pleaded, demurely, tapping the carpet impatiently with her foot.“Well, perhaps not all; but dooced near it. I am an old fool! Here am I bungling about and can’t say what I mean!”“Can I help you, doctor?”“I wish you would, and tell me what to say to you, young baggage!”“Do be calm, doctor. Suppose I’m the old lady now, and that you were talking to me—I am not so very young you know, either.”And she looked so demurely grave and elderly, that Aesculapius was charmed anew.“Well, I must say it. It’s better to have it out, like a bad tooth; there’s no good in keeping it in my head. I’m an old fool I know, madam; but I am really in earnest now, and I want you to listen seriously to me for a moment. The fact is, madam, Miss Kingscott that is—how fearfully warm it is!”At that moment, just when he was trembling on the verge of his disclosure, the shrill tones of Mrs Hartshorne’s voice was heard without.“George! George!” she cried to the faithful servitor (she pronounced his name indeedJodge!Jodge! speaking in her usual rapid manner, with quick utterance). “Who’s that at the gate? Don’t you let anybody in, man!”And our friends inside could hear her feet scrunching the gravel as she walked towards the gate in order to see who it was; so they went to the window also to look on, and the interesting conversation I have just detailed, was abruptly broken off at the indefinite point it had reached.“Plaise, marm,” replied the rustic voice of George, “it’s a leddy, marm, and she says as how she’s coomed to say un.”“I don’t know any ladies, and don’t want to know any, either; I wonder who is the flaunting creature? Get back to your work, you grinning baboon! I’ll speak to the woman myself.”At the gate, seated in her pony carriage, and accompanied by her two daughters, all dressed out and equipped in their state-costume for the payment of calls, was Lady Inskip. She looked astounded—for she had heard every word of the dialogue between the dowager and her henchman; and not only she had heard it, but her daughters also; and the grinning page, covered with sugar-loaf buttons, who sat perched on a mushroom sort of seat that sprang out as a sort of excrescence from behind the equipage. The old campaigner was surprised and astounded: but she tried to appear cool and collected as befitted her dignity: the languid Laura was as apathetic as ever; and the fast Carry seemed inclined to follow the Buttons example and laugh aloud.The dowager, in another moment, was on the scene of operations, and addressed the campaigner who sat in her pony carriage, with her forces drawn up inechelonbehind the gate.“Who are you, woman; and what do you want?”“My name is Lady Inskip,” answered the veteran, with bridling dignity. “I presume I have the honour of addressing Mistress Hartshorne?”“I don’t know you—that’s my name; what do you want, woman? My time is valuable, and I can’t stop cackling with you all day.”“You might be a little more polite, madam,” said Lady Inskip, with freezing politeness and sarcasm. “I came with my daughters just to pay a customary call of civility, and I expected, at all events, to be treated like a lady, by a lady, whom I expected to meet here; but I now find out I am mistaken.”“Is that all? Then you and your daughters can just take yourselves off, with all your flauntings and finery! I don’t want any grand people coming about me!Inever go to see anybody, and I don’t want anybody to come and see me. Quite a pity, isn’t it, after you had bedizened yourself so finely too?”“Laura!” exclaimed Lady Inskip, ignoring the presence of the dowager, “I think we had better drive home, and leave this vulgar woman to herself. Perhaps,” she said, turning to the dowager as she whirled the ponies round, “you will have the civility to give that letter to your son, it contains an invitation to a pic-nic. I suppose we need not hope for the pleasure of your sweet company?”“I don’t want any of your pic-nics, or jakanapes, or your impudence!” said the downright old woman, raising her shrill voice even more piercingly. “I will give the letter to my son. If he cares about running after you,Idon’t. Go! You said you were going home, and the sooner you go the better, for you don’t come in here, my lady!” Then, considering the engagement terminated, she slammed-to the gate menacingly, and turned on her way back to the house, leaving the discomfitted campaigner to retreat at her leisure.Our friends, the doctor and the governess, had heard the whole of the interview, and much amused they were over it, too, I promise you; but it stopped the coming proposal. Miss Kingscott was rather pleased at this, for she thought there was still some hope of gaining over Master Tom, the young squire, and she did not wish either to finally accept or reject the doctor until she knew which was the best card to play.He, on his way home, was also pleased that he had not fully committed himself.“It would never have done for Deb,” he considered; “she would never have liked it. At all events, I was just stopped in time, though, and a miss is as good as a mile. But I am a damned old fool! That’s a fact.”He kept to his promise with Pythias, did Damon, and drank a bottle of port to himself that day after dinner, shaking his head as he muttered to himself every now and then, while, with half-cocked eye, he held up his glass to the light—“It’s a lucky escape; but I’m a confounded old fool!”Twice he bethought him of telling Deborah all about it; but she looked so comfortable and composed, as she sat there darning his socks, that he thought it would be a pity to disturb and agitate her. So his dreams, when he retired to rest, were very wild indeed, and he passed altogether a sleepless night.—So much for the doctor’s love-making.
Doctor Jolly trotted along the road from Bigton to Hartwood, with Huz and Buz his brother, cantering at his horse’s heels, and making short predatory excursions every now and then into neighbouring gardens and farmyards on the way, to the apoplectic scaring and bewilderment of sundry unhappy fowls and ducks. In about half an hour, as he always rode at a sharp pace, he had reached The Poplars to make his weekly visit.
“How-de-do!” he shouted to Tom, when he was half a mile off, seeing him at the gate; and presently the stout doctor was dismounting from his quadruped with extreme difficulty, owing to the still painful gout, and limping up the steps of the dowager’s mansion.
“So you are here again, are you?” observed that lady with her customary acrimony, from the open window of the dining-room, which faced the entrance gate. “Why, you’re always running here, now; you’d better come and live here at once; it would, at all events, save your gouty legs some exertion.”
“Bless my soul! Mrs Hartshorne, why you are looking as blooming as a daisy. I wish I could wear like you, madam; why you must be sixty, if you are a day!”
“I’ll outlast you at all events, Mister Jolly,” said the old lady, as our friend the doctor, who hated being called “Mister” instead of by his medical title, walked into the house.
“And how’s Susan?” he asked, as he entered the room.
“There she is with her governess, and you can see for yourself,” snappishly returned the dowager, walking out, and leaving the doctor with Miss Kingscott and her charge.
Susan looked greatly improved, and timidly offered her hand as he went up to her in his hearty way.
“And how are we to-day?” he said kindly.
She, to his great astonishment, not only looked him in the face, but answered him, which she had seldom or ever done before.
“Very well, I thank you,” she said, quietly.
It was not much, certainly; not more, perhaps, than a well-trained parrot might have said, but, then, it was a decided improvement to her former apathy. She immediately afterwards, however, left the room, as she heard Markworth playing on the organ up-stairs; and Miss Kingscott and the doctor were alone.
“By Gad, madam!” exclaimed the doctor, as soon as she had gone—he did not mean to give Miss Kingscott “brevet rank,” but he always addressed every woman, young or old, as “Madam.”
“By Gad, madam! it’s positively wonderful. What an improvement; couldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it! But where has she gone to now—who’s that thrumming the old organ?”
“That must be Mr Markworth, I believe,” she answered, “and you must compliment him on Susan’s improvement: she’s always with him, and he seems quite devoted to her. It is really quite charming to see them together.”
Who would have dreamt of their joint conspiracy from the way she spoke?
“Really?” enquired our Aesculapius. “To tell you the truth, madam, I don’t like that fellow at all. I’m never deceived in a face; and, if I do not make a mistake, madam, that man is a scoundrel as certain as God made little apples.”
I do not know why it was, but the doctor always seemed desirous of connecting the name of the deity with miniature specimens of the forbidden fruit whenever he wanted to qualify a strong assertion.
“Dear me, doctor!” interposed the lady, “your language is very strong.”
“Not a bit of it, madam; not a bit more than he deserves. By Gad, madam! he must have some object to gain; he would not take all that trouble for nothing. I know human nature, madam, and he is either going to marry the old lady, or something else. Ho! ho! ho! what a fine pair they would make!”
And the doctor sniggered over his own joke, and laughed so contagiously that Miss Kingscott could not but follow suit.
The doctor presently, however, returned to business. He had been thinking of this young lady all the way over from Bigton. He had asserted to himself over and over again that she was “a dooced fine girl,” as if some one else had been disputing the point with him; and now that he was in her presence she not only looked finer and more beautiful than ever, but he had one of the best opportunities for speaking to her alone he had ever had before, or could have wished for.
She looked very refined and ladylike as she stood there in the shaded dining-room, clad in a light morning dress. Her regular features and pale complexion gave an air of dignified beauty to her face which her height and figure well carried out. Altogether she was very charming, and looked so loveable on the present occasion, in appearance, that she would have captivated a man even less in love than the doctor, and led him on to the inevitable “pop!”
Aesculapius was a long time beating about the bush. Although he was generally free and easy in his speech, the doctor was now tongue-tied when he most wanted to speak, and his already ruddy face was more “peonified” than ever—if I may be allowed to coin that word—while his heart thumped against his ribs “like a pestle against the sides of a pill mortar,” as he expressed it professionally.
“Ha! hum! a fine morning, madam—a fine morning! Don’t you think so?”
Miss Kingscott assented, of course. She saw his embarrassment, and wished to lead him on to anéclaircissement; but she could scarcely refrain herself from smiling at the ludicrous endeavours of the doctor to hide his nervousness, which was unmistakeably increasing.
“Yes, madam, it’s a fine day; but hot, madam. Don’t you think so?”
“Certainly, doctor, I think it is warm,” answered the lady, confirmatively.
And, indeed, any one looking into his face could not but agree with the remark.
“Warm, madam, is no term for it, it is confoundedly hot! But I beg your pardon, madam, were you ever in love?” he blurted out abruptly, after a great effort, bolting into his subject, as it were.
“Good gracious me, doctor?” said Miss Kingscott, with a charmingly acted surprise, and blushing embarrassment. “What a strange question for you to ask!”
“Not at all, madam—not at all. I said the weather was hot. Don’t you see, madam? and it is hot. I asked you about love—and love is hot. There’s my proposition, you see the connection between the two?”
And the doctor’s face glowed with perspiration.
“I do not follow your argument,” said the governess, calmly. “You seem to arrive very rapidly at your deductions; but what has the result to do with me?” she asked, with ingenuous innocence.
“A good deal, madam—a good deal. How fearfully warm it is! You see, madam, before you an old man.”
“Not so very old, doctor, I’m sure,” she interrupted, looking bewitchingly into his perspiring countenance.
“Well, well,” he continued, in a gratified tone, “perhaps not exactly an old man; but I’m not a young one. Still, if it wasn’t for the confounded gout, I daresay I should be as young and skittish as the best of them.”
“Oh! I’m so sorry for that horrid gout—and I do pity you so when I see you in pain,” condoled Miss Kingscott, thinking of the doctor being “skittish,” as if she had heard of an elephant dancing a hornpipe.
“Are you really—do you really?” he asked eagerly, a flush of joy overspreading his already flushed and perspiring face. “Well, I tell you what, madam, I’m in love.”
And the doctor heaved a portentous and languishing sigh, which quivered through his colossal frame which shook like a mould of jelly.
“Are you really, doctor? I am sure I hope the young lady is nice, for your sake; and I hope she will make you a good wife,” she replied, ignoring the doctor’s nervousness until she got him to the point.
“You are very kind, madam, very kind; but you are always kind—you can’t help it, for it is in your nature. Infernally hot, is it not, madam?”
“Very warm,” said the lady, encouragingly.
“Bless my soul! madam, so it is. But, madam, Miss Kingscott that is—”
“Well?” she encouraged him, her eyes sparkling with ill-concealed fun at the doctor’s predicament.
“You sly little creature! Why, you are laughing at me all the time!”
“Oh! dear no; but who’s the young lady, doctor? You have not told me her name yet, and I’m dying to know.”
“You wicked little baggage! you know all the time.”
“How can I? when you have not yet told me.”
“By Gad! women are the most provoking creatures under the sun.”
“Notall, doctor,” she pleaded, demurely, tapping the carpet impatiently with her foot.
“Well, perhaps not all; but dooced near it. I am an old fool! Here am I bungling about and can’t say what I mean!”
“Can I help you, doctor?”
“I wish you would, and tell me what to say to you, young baggage!”
“Do be calm, doctor. Suppose I’m the old lady now, and that you were talking to me—I am not so very young you know, either.”
And she looked so demurely grave and elderly, that Aesculapius was charmed anew.
“Well, I must say it. It’s better to have it out, like a bad tooth; there’s no good in keeping it in my head. I’m an old fool I know, madam; but I am really in earnest now, and I want you to listen seriously to me for a moment. The fact is, madam, Miss Kingscott that is—how fearfully warm it is!”
At that moment, just when he was trembling on the verge of his disclosure, the shrill tones of Mrs Hartshorne’s voice was heard without.
“George! George!” she cried to the faithful servitor (she pronounced his name indeedJodge!Jodge! speaking in her usual rapid manner, with quick utterance). “Who’s that at the gate? Don’t you let anybody in, man!”
And our friends inside could hear her feet scrunching the gravel as she walked towards the gate in order to see who it was; so they went to the window also to look on, and the interesting conversation I have just detailed, was abruptly broken off at the indefinite point it had reached.
“Plaise, marm,” replied the rustic voice of George, “it’s a leddy, marm, and she says as how she’s coomed to say un.”
“I don’t know any ladies, and don’t want to know any, either; I wonder who is the flaunting creature? Get back to your work, you grinning baboon! I’ll speak to the woman myself.”
At the gate, seated in her pony carriage, and accompanied by her two daughters, all dressed out and equipped in their state-costume for the payment of calls, was Lady Inskip. She looked astounded—for she had heard every word of the dialogue between the dowager and her henchman; and not only she had heard it, but her daughters also; and the grinning page, covered with sugar-loaf buttons, who sat perched on a mushroom sort of seat that sprang out as a sort of excrescence from behind the equipage. The old campaigner was surprised and astounded: but she tried to appear cool and collected as befitted her dignity: the languid Laura was as apathetic as ever; and the fast Carry seemed inclined to follow the Buttons example and laugh aloud.
The dowager, in another moment, was on the scene of operations, and addressed the campaigner who sat in her pony carriage, with her forces drawn up inechelonbehind the gate.
“Who are you, woman; and what do you want?”
“My name is Lady Inskip,” answered the veteran, with bridling dignity. “I presume I have the honour of addressing Mistress Hartshorne?”
“I don’t know you—that’s my name; what do you want, woman? My time is valuable, and I can’t stop cackling with you all day.”
“You might be a little more polite, madam,” said Lady Inskip, with freezing politeness and sarcasm. “I came with my daughters just to pay a customary call of civility, and I expected, at all events, to be treated like a lady, by a lady, whom I expected to meet here; but I now find out I am mistaken.”
“Is that all? Then you and your daughters can just take yourselves off, with all your flauntings and finery! I don’t want any grand people coming about me!Inever go to see anybody, and I don’t want anybody to come and see me. Quite a pity, isn’t it, after you had bedizened yourself so finely too?”
“Laura!” exclaimed Lady Inskip, ignoring the presence of the dowager, “I think we had better drive home, and leave this vulgar woman to herself. Perhaps,” she said, turning to the dowager as she whirled the ponies round, “you will have the civility to give that letter to your son, it contains an invitation to a pic-nic. I suppose we need not hope for the pleasure of your sweet company?”
“I don’t want any of your pic-nics, or jakanapes, or your impudence!” said the downright old woman, raising her shrill voice even more piercingly. “I will give the letter to my son. If he cares about running after you,Idon’t. Go! You said you were going home, and the sooner you go the better, for you don’t come in here, my lady!” Then, considering the engagement terminated, she slammed-to the gate menacingly, and turned on her way back to the house, leaving the discomfitted campaigner to retreat at her leisure.
Our friends, the doctor and the governess, had heard the whole of the interview, and much amused they were over it, too, I promise you; but it stopped the coming proposal. Miss Kingscott was rather pleased at this, for she thought there was still some hope of gaining over Master Tom, the young squire, and she did not wish either to finally accept or reject the doctor until she knew which was the best card to play.
He, on his way home, was also pleased that he had not fully committed himself.
“It would never have done for Deb,” he considered; “she would never have liked it. At all events, I was just stopped in time, though, and a miss is as good as a mile. But I am a damned old fool! That’s a fact.”
He kept to his promise with Pythias, did Damon, and drank a bottle of port to himself that day after dinner, shaking his head as he muttered to himself every now and then, while, with half-cocked eye, he held up his glass to the light—
“It’s a lucky escape; but I’m a confounded old fool!”
Twice he bethought him of telling Deborah all about it; but she looked so comfortable and composed, as she sat there darning his socks, that he thought it would be a pity to disturb and agitate her. So his dreams, when he retired to rest, were very wild indeed, and he passed altogether a sleepless night.—So much for the doctor’s love-making.
Volume One—Chapter Eleven.Des Beaux Yeux.No words can paint the mingled rage and mortification that filled the heart of Lady Inskip as she drove away from The Poplars, after her interview with the dowager.“The Jezabel!” she said, in a voice of anger, “I’ve never been so scandalously treated in my life. You need not laugh, miss!” she fired out on Carry, who was exploding in fits of laughter at the humorous nature of the rencontre. “You need not laugh, miss; it is no laughing matter to see your mother insulted! But what can you expect from a vulgar boor but abuse? I ought to have known that before I laid myself open to such treatment. I don’t think I can ask that young Hartshorne to my house again after this.”“Good gracious! ma,” said Carry; “why what has he got to do with it? I’m sure he’s a very nice fellow, and he is not accountable for his mother’s actions.”“Well,” said the old campaigner, mollifying somewhat, as she got further from the scene of her defeat, and allowed her better judgment to prevail; “perhaps he’s not to blame, and I am sure I never said so. He can come of course to the pic-nic, now he is invited; but I am sorry I left the note with that old cat, after all. Never mind, it’s done now, and there’s no use in regretting it. He is a good match; and if you listen to my words, Carry,” she leaned over and said confidentially to her daughter, so that Buttons might not overhear, “instead of giggling so foolishly, and play you cards well, you will secure him in spite of that Jezabel, his mother. Not that I am afraid of her, or twenty like her,” Lady Inskip said to herself consolingly, now that a distance of road lay between them.But where was Master Tom all this while?Well, you must understand that Mr Thomas Hartshorne, of Her Majesty’s Plungers, was, and had been all the morning, learning the craft of fly-fishing on the banks of the little stream that ran by the bottom of the parsonage, under the apt tuition of the incumbent’s sister. The young reverend himself had long since gone out for his parochial duties, such as enquiring after farmer Giles’ rheumatism, and the widow Blake’s asthma, intending also to do himself the honour of calling on Lady Inskip on his way home, for Pringle had been much struck by the charming Laura the more he saw of her, and wanted to see more still.It was most surprising what a violent and indefatigable interest that previously indolent young man Tom had taken in the piscatorial art.He who had before declared Isaac Walton an old humbug, and who had professed his agreement with the dogmatic old doctor Johnson’s assertion, that fishing consisted of “a worm at one end of a rod and a fool at the other,” now used to sally out every morning nearly from The Poplars, with his fishing-tackle on his shoulder down to the parsonage, telling Markworth, whom he used to faintly persuade to accompany him, that it was “the best sport in the world, old fellow.”He went to the incumbent’s grounds because it was the “finest spot in the county for perch,” and Pringle was “a brother angler, and such a jolly good fellow, you know.” Those were his only reasons, of course!Hartwood parsonage was the beau ideal of a snug little country lodge; a long, straggling, one-storied cottage form of house, all ingles and corners and slanting roofs, and covered with roses, jessamine, and clematis.It had low, diamond-paned French windows, opening down to the ground; so that one could walk out into the trim-inclined but wild planted flower garden—Lizzie’s especial pride—and on to the smooth velvetty lawn beyond, that sloped down to the water’s edge, bordered with hanging branches of weeping willows, and sappy, luscious, green osiers, that sprang like ostrich plumes from the quiet pools and crinks into which the stream widened here and there.The parsonage had a “fine walled-in kitchen garden,” as house agents advertise, devoted to spruce rows of cabbages and arrogant cauliflowers, each of which weighed more than a good-sized Christmas turkey; and fruit-clustered pear and apple and peach trees, all nailed up and trained along the walls, like a giant’s palms spread out with the fingers extended. Beyond the kitchen garden the walls were overhung with rich green ivy, which took off the stuck-up appearance it might have had like most enclosures, and gave the place a much, more picturesque aspect. But it was in the flowery plaisance, marked out on each side by a thick laurel shrubbery, that Lizzie’s handiwork shone out.This commenced just under the windows of the house, round which it extended, and spread out to where it joined the lawn, from which it was separated by a sort of strawberry island, and a hedge-row of box, tall, up-grown, and cut in queer, fantastic shapes.In Lizzie’s flower garden, which she had specially looked after since she came to keep house for her brother, there was the most lavish display. Tiger lilies and jonquills, sunflowers and pale-faced narcissi, vied with each other for effect; and the great charm of the whole lay in the utter absence of any set form or arrangement—roses and lilies all grew together in the most charming confusion, with sundry creepers twining around them; it was only on account of there being no weeds visible, that you did not set down this wilderness of flowers to be totally neglected.Other effects were not wanting to complete the picture. Here on a summer afternoon you would hear a pet robin punctually begin his sweet song, at “four of the clock precisely,” from his favourite perch on a spreading fir tree that overhung the eaves of the house—a little robin that used to hop down every morning to the adjacent window of the parlour, to receive his matutinal crumbs from Lizzie’s hand. The “chuck! chuck! chuck!” of the black bird too, would be also heard from the laurel shrubbery; and the rival strains of the yellow-hammer from the neighbouring medlar tree. The latter gentleman would commence his lay with a “whirr,” like an alarm clock running down, and end with a sort of chorus like the concluding bars of “Green grow the Rushes O!” The Beccaficoes, too, or English ortolan, very like the thrush, would assemble here in the hot months of the year, and did not fail to leave evidences of their partiality for the fruit tree which received the Saviour’s curse.Tom Hartshorne had explored all this paradise long before, in the company of Miss Lizzie; and he was now, as I said, under her tuition, looking at her tying on some artificial May-fly or other ichneumon to his line.It was a beautiful morning—not yet twelve—and the air was balmy, and scented with new-mown hay and flowers; while bees were buzzing around, and birds singing in the air, the lark, chief songster, above them all; altogether, Master Tom was situated under very romantic circumstances, and his handsome Saxon face and honest blue eyes looked and shone out happy in the extreme.Lizzie was dressed in a dainty little muslin dress, picked out with some lilac tinge, and her little hat was thrown on coquettishly, half off and half on; while her bright pretty little face was unclouded, and there was a depth of tenderness in the deep violet eyes that glanced up every now and then to Tom.She had just succeeded in tying on the fly, and looked up suddenly in a triumphant, saucy little way, in Tom’s face. He was very close to her, for he had to watch very narrowly to see how the work was done, and he stooped at the time she looked up; and she said, “There, sir!”They were very close together, and their eyes met, and Tom was stooping, and, naturally, as those sweet little tempting rosebud lips were so near, he—Well, what would you do if a very pretty girl was very close to you, male reader, under the same circumstances? What reply would you make?Very well, Tom did it!Just at that moment, Lady Inskip was driving round the road which skirted by the parsonage garden, to pay a visit, and leave an invitation, at the house of our friend, the young incumbent. It was not long after her encounter with the dowager, and Lady Inskip was still wrath: her observation being keen, and the pony carriage high, she could therefore see the little meeting between Tom and Lizzie over the wall.She saw it all, my dear sir; and her sense of propriety was so shocked, that, instead of calling, as she intended, on the Pringles, she only left the invitation and drove on homewards.Here she had been twice defeated this morning! The dowager had routed her at The Poplars, and “that artful little minx” had presumed to poach upon her manor—was actually making love to Master Tom, whom she had designed for her own Carry. It was absolutely startling! She did not know what to do. Fortunately, she thought, no one had observed the pleasant little episode in the garden—so indelicate!—but herself, as her daughters, riding on the front seat, had had their backs turned at the time, so she would keep it to herself, and determine what was to be done.One thing, at all events, she resolved to do, and that was to speak to the Reverend Herbert Pringle privately, and in confidence, about his sister. He was a most gentlemanly young man, and could not be offended at her mentioning the subject, especially as she would put it to him, since she was old enough to be his mother—at least, his mother-in-law!Fortune favoured the old campaigner in her object. Our friend, the incumbent, having visited and cheered his poor people, by asking affably as to their healths, returned homewards by way of Laburnum Cottage, to see the Inskips, determining to himself that that was the shortest way round, although it was at least five miles out of his way.Lady Inskip only arrived a few moments before him, and so he caught her when she was red hot on the subject just then rampant in her heart.When she had flattered him sufficiently, and after he had basked in the sunshine of Laura’s smiles, he rose to leave, and Lady Inskip accompanied him herself to the door, and on to the grass plot beyond, and the gate, where stood his dapple-grey pony with his reins flung over the post to keep him from straying. When the girls saw their mother follow Clericus without, they made up their minds that she was going to “ask his intentions,” and much did the lively Carry chaff her sister therenent. The campaigner’s motive was, however, a very different one.“You will excuse me, Mr Pringle, I’m sure, but I am an old woman, you know, and I take such a motherly interest in you—(very motherly!)—that you will forgive me for asking you a question?”Poor Clericus, himself, trembled at this introduction, as I believe his idea of what was coming was very similar to those of the girls inside.“Oh, certainly, Lady Inskip, certainly!” he said, with a sort of dead-alive alacrity.“Is your sister engaged to Mr Tom Hartshorne?” said the old campaigner; and Pringle was immensely relieved.“Oh dear, no!” he responded, this time cheerfully enough. “Oh dear, no, Lady Inskip, what made you suppose so?”And, thereupon, my lady spoke, and told what she had seen; and, although Pringle was not very angry at first, nor did he look upon the affair as anything serious, the campaigner presently persuaded him that it was his duty to speak to his sister. He, of course,—so she explained—could not be aware how a young girl would be talked about if she were allowedcarte blancheto flirt with every young man she came across. Poor Lizzie! as if she would have done so—and that it was very unfortunate the poor girl had no mother to warn her, and so on. But it was his duty as her brother, and not only on that account, but as a clergyman also—so the campaigner put it—to speak earnestly at once, and have the thing broken off.Herbert Pringle promised to do so, and rode home very sadly, for he loved his little sister very much in his way, and hated the business of talking so seriously to her, besides not knowing how to set about it.Let us return to our lovers; our poor tender sheep, into whose fold such a great gaunt wolf had now penetrated.They did not hear the wheels of the old campaigner’s chaise as it passed round by the garden wall, nor did they see her grim eyes surveying them above it, and taking notes of their propinquity—not they!When Master Tom committed himself in the way I have hinted at, little Lizzie blushed crimson, and hung down her head so that he could not see her face.“Oh, how could you? How could you?” she stammered out, nearly crying.“Forgive me! I beg your pardon: I could not help it”—and Tom was going to tell his love, and disclose all the feelings that filled his heart, when, at that moment, my Lady Inskip rang the bell to leave her note, as already detailed.Before Tom could catch her so as to hold her, Lizzie darted off, like a startled fawn, towards the house, and the opportunity was lost.The next day she was not in when he called round, and Pringle visited him the day after that, instead of his visiting him; and so, although he was not spoken to, no opportunities were put in the way of their meeting alone.Both Tom and Lizzie were looking forward to the pic-nic with heartfelt longing, for the former, at least, determined to speak then.Oh, Love! Love! When will thy course run smooth?
No words can paint the mingled rage and mortification that filled the heart of Lady Inskip as she drove away from The Poplars, after her interview with the dowager.
“The Jezabel!” she said, in a voice of anger, “I’ve never been so scandalously treated in my life. You need not laugh, miss!” she fired out on Carry, who was exploding in fits of laughter at the humorous nature of the rencontre. “You need not laugh, miss; it is no laughing matter to see your mother insulted! But what can you expect from a vulgar boor but abuse? I ought to have known that before I laid myself open to such treatment. I don’t think I can ask that young Hartshorne to my house again after this.”
“Good gracious! ma,” said Carry; “why what has he got to do with it? I’m sure he’s a very nice fellow, and he is not accountable for his mother’s actions.”
“Well,” said the old campaigner, mollifying somewhat, as she got further from the scene of her defeat, and allowed her better judgment to prevail; “perhaps he’s not to blame, and I am sure I never said so. He can come of course to the pic-nic, now he is invited; but I am sorry I left the note with that old cat, after all. Never mind, it’s done now, and there’s no use in regretting it. He is a good match; and if you listen to my words, Carry,” she leaned over and said confidentially to her daughter, so that Buttons might not overhear, “instead of giggling so foolishly, and play you cards well, you will secure him in spite of that Jezabel, his mother. Not that I am afraid of her, or twenty like her,” Lady Inskip said to herself consolingly, now that a distance of road lay between them.
But where was Master Tom all this while?
Well, you must understand that Mr Thomas Hartshorne, of Her Majesty’s Plungers, was, and had been all the morning, learning the craft of fly-fishing on the banks of the little stream that ran by the bottom of the parsonage, under the apt tuition of the incumbent’s sister. The young reverend himself had long since gone out for his parochial duties, such as enquiring after farmer Giles’ rheumatism, and the widow Blake’s asthma, intending also to do himself the honour of calling on Lady Inskip on his way home, for Pringle had been much struck by the charming Laura the more he saw of her, and wanted to see more still.
It was most surprising what a violent and indefatigable interest that previously indolent young man Tom had taken in the piscatorial art.
He who had before declared Isaac Walton an old humbug, and who had professed his agreement with the dogmatic old doctor Johnson’s assertion, that fishing consisted of “a worm at one end of a rod and a fool at the other,” now used to sally out every morning nearly from The Poplars, with his fishing-tackle on his shoulder down to the parsonage, telling Markworth, whom he used to faintly persuade to accompany him, that it was “the best sport in the world, old fellow.”
He went to the incumbent’s grounds because it was the “finest spot in the county for perch,” and Pringle was “a brother angler, and such a jolly good fellow, you know.” Those were his only reasons, of course!
Hartwood parsonage was the beau ideal of a snug little country lodge; a long, straggling, one-storied cottage form of house, all ingles and corners and slanting roofs, and covered with roses, jessamine, and clematis.
It had low, diamond-paned French windows, opening down to the ground; so that one could walk out into the trim-inclined but wild planted flower garden—Lizzie’s especial pride—and on to the smooth velvetty lawn beyond, that sloped down to the water’s edge, bordered with hanging branches of weeping willows, and sappy, luscious, green osiers, that sprang like ostrich plumes from the quiet pools and crinks into which the stream widened here and there.
The parsonage had a “fine walled-in kitchen garden,” as house agents advertise, devoted to spruce rows of cabbages and arrogant cauliflowers, each of which weighed more than a good-sized Christmas turkey; and fruit-clustered pear and apple and peach trees, all nailed up and trained along the walls, like a giant’s palms spread out with the fingers extended. Beyond the kitchen garden the walls were overhung with rich green ivy, which took off the stuck-up appearance it might have had like most enclosures, and gave the place a much, more picturesque aspect. But it was in the flowery plaisance, marked out on each side by a thick laurel shrubbery, that Lizzie’s handiwork shone out.
This commenced just under the windows of the house, round which it extended, and spread out to where it joined the lawn, from which it was separated by a sort of strawberry island, and a hedge-row of box, tall, up-grown, and cut in queer, fantastic shapes.
In Lizzie’s flower garden, which she had specially looked after since she came to keep house for her brother, there was the most lavish display. Tiger lilies and jonquills, sunflowers and pale-faced narcissi, vied with each other for effect; and the great charm of the whole lay in the utter absence of any set form or arrangement—roses and lilies all grew together in the most charming confusion, with sundry creepers twining around them; it was only on account of there being no weeds visible, that you did not set down this wilderness of flowers to be totally neglected.
Other effects were not wanting to complete the picture. Here on a summer afternoon you would hear a pet robin punctually begin his sweet song, at “four of the clock precisely,” from his favourite perch on a spreading fir tree that overhung the eaves of the house—a little robin that used to hop down every morning to the adjacent window of the parlour, to receive his matutinal crumbs from Lizzie’s hand. The “chuck! chuck! chuck!” of the black bird too, would be also heard from the laurel shrubbery; and the rival strains of the yellow-hammer from the neighbouring medlar tree. The latter gentleman would commence his lay with a “whirr,” like an alarm clock running down, and end with a sort of chorus like the concluding bars of “Green grow the Rushes O!” The Beccaficoes, too, or English ortolan, very like the thrush, would assemble here in the hot months of the year, and did not fail to leave evidences of their partiality for the fruit tree which received the Saviour’s curse.
Tom Hartshorne had explored all this paradise long before, in the company of Miss Lizzie; and he was now, as I said, under her tuition, looking at her tying on some artificial May-fly or other ichneumon to his line.
It was a beautiful morning—not yet twelve—and the air was balmy, and scented with new-mown hay and flowers; while bees were buzzing around, and birds singing in the air, the lark, chief songster, above them all; altogether, Master Tom was situated under very romantic circumstances, and his handsome Saxon face and honest blue eyes looked and shone out happy in the extreme.
Lizzie was dressed in a dainty little muslin dress, picked out with some lilac tinge, and her little hat was thrown on coquettishly, half off and half on; while her bright pretty little face was unclouded, and there was a depth of tenderness in the deep violet eyes that glanced up every now and then to Tom.
She had just succeeded in tying on the fly, and looked up suddenly in a triumphant, saucy little way, in Tom’s face. He was very close to her, for he had to watch very narrowly to see how the work was done, and he stooped at the time she looked up; and she said, “There, sir!”
They were very close together, and their eyes met, and Tom was stooping, and, naturally, as those sweet little tempting rosebud lips were so near, he—
Well, what would you do if a very pretty girl was very close to you, male reader, under the same circumstances? What reply would you make?
Very well, Tom did it!
Just at that moment, Lady Inskip was driving round the road which skirted by the parsonage garden, to pay a visit, and leave an invitation, at the house of our friend, the young incumbent. It was not long after her encounter with the dowager, and Lady Inskip was still wrath: her observation being keen, and the pony carriage high, she could therefore see the little meeting between Tom and Lizzie over the wall.
She saw it all, my dear sir; and her sense of propriety was so shocked, that, instead of calling, as she intended, on the Pringles, she only left the invitation and drove on homewards.
Here she had been twice defeated this morning! The dowager had routed her at The Poplars, and “that artful little minx” had presumed to poach upon her manor—was actually making love to Master Tom, whom she had designed for her own Carry. It was absolutely startling! She did not know what to do. Fortunately, she thought, no one had observed the pleasant little episode in the garden—so indelicate!—but herself, as her daughters, riding on the front seat, had had their backs turned at the time, so she would keep it to herself, and determine what was to be done.
One thing, at all events, she resolved to do, and that was to speak to the Reverend Herbert Pringle privately, and in confidence, about his sister. He was a most gentlemanly young man, and could not be offended at her mentioning the subject, especially as she would put it to him, since she was old enough to be his mother—at least, his mother-in-law!
Fortune favoured the old campaigner in her object. Our friend, the incumbent, having visited and cheered his poor people, by asking affably as to their healths, returned homewards by way of Laburnum Cottage, to see the Inskips, determining to himself that that was the shortest way round, although it was at least five miles out of his way.
Lady Inskip only arrived a few moments before him, and so he caught her when she was red hot on the subject just then rampant in her heart.
When she had flattered him sufficiently, and after he had basked in the sunshine of Laura’s smiles, he rose to leave, and Lady Inskip accompanied him herself to the door, and on to the grass plot beyond, and the gate, where stood his dapple-grey pony with his reins flung over the post to keep him from straying. When the girls saw their mother follow Clericus without, they made up their minds that she was going to “ask his intentions,” and much did the lively Carry chaff her sister therenent. The campaigner’s motive was, however, a very different one.
“You will excuse me, Mr Pringle, I’m sure, but I am an old woman, you know, and I take such a motherly interest in you—(very motherly!)—that you will forgive me for asking you a question?”
Poor Clericus, himself, trembled at this introduction, as I believe his idea of what was coming was very similar to those of the girls inside.
“Oh, certainly, Lady Inskip, certainly!” he said, with a sort of dead-alive alacrity.
“Is your sister engaged to Mr Tom Hartshorne?” said the old campaigner; and Pringle was immensely relieved.
“Oh dear, no!” he responded, this time cheerfully enough. “Oh dear, no, Lady Inskip, what made you suppose so?”
And, thereupon, my lady spoke, and told what she had seen; and, although Pringle was not very angry at first, nor did he look upon the affair as anything serious, the campaigner presently persuaded him that it was his duty to speak to his sister. He, of course,—so she explained—could not be aware how a young girl would be talked about if she were allowedcarte blancheto flirt with every young man she came across. Poor Lizzie! as if she would have done so—and that it was very unfortunate the poor girl had no mother to warn her, and so on. But it was his duty as her brother, and not only on that account, but as a clergyman also—so the campaigner put it—to speak earnestly at once, and have the thing broken off.
Herbert Pringle promised to do so, and rode home very sadly, for he loved his little sister very much in his way, and hated the business of talking so seriously to her, besides not knowing how to set about it.
Let us return to our lovers; our poor tender sheep, into whose fold such a great gaunt wolf had now penetrated.
They did not hear the wheels of the old campaigner’s chaise as it passed round by the garden wall, nor did they see her grim eyes surveying them above it, and taking notes of their propinquity—not they!
When Master Tom committed himself in the way I have hinted at, little Lizzie blushed crimson, and hung down her head so that he could not see her face.
“Oh, how could you? How could you?” she stammered out, nearly crying.
“Forgive me! I beg your pardon: I could not help it”—and Tom was going to tell his love, and disclose all the feelings that filled his heart, when, at that moment, my Lady Inskip rang the bell to leave her note, as already detailed.
Before Tom could catch her so as to hold her, Lizzie darted off, like a startled fawn, towards the house, and the opportunity was lost.
The next day she was not in when he called round, and Pringle visited him the day after that, instead of his visiting him; and so, although he was not spoken to, no opportunities were put in the way of their meeting alone.
Both Tom and Lizzie were looking forward to the pic-nic with heartfelt longing, for the former, at least, determined to speak then.
Oh, Love! Love! When will thy course run smooth?
Volume One—Chapter Twelve.“The Beginning of the End.”Markworth’s plot was now nearly ripe for execution.When he had been down at The Poplars some weeks now, he said one morning at the breakfast table that he must run up to town for a day or two, as he had some important business to transact; so excusing himself to the Hartshornes, mother and son, the former of whom did not look as if she would break her heart if he never returned, he said he supposed he had better start at once and come down on the next day, Saturday, so as to be in time for the contemplated pic-nic on the following Tuesday, which Tom would not hear of his missing.“You’ll be sure to be back in time, old fellow,” said the latter, as he wished Markworth good-bye; and the train glided off from the little station to which they had walked in company across the fields. “There’ll be heaps of fun, for Harrowby and a lot of the fellows will be down, and I want you to draw out the campaigner, or she’ll be making a dead set at me, and—”“You’ll have other fish to fry, and will want to attend to someone else, eh? I quite understand it all, my boy; I’m not so blind as some people think, Master Tom. However, I’ll spare your blushes and your explanations: don’t be alarmed, my boy, I’ll be back in plenty of time for the pic-nic, and will take care to occupy my lady’s attention so as to leave you to your own devices. Good-bye, old chap.”“Good-bye, old fellow,” said Tom; and Markworth was soon whizzing on his way to London.Arrived in town, he first directed his steps to the private billiard-room where he and his friend first made the acquaintance of the reader.His object was to enlist the services of the little old-fashioned marker, who we had previously seen watching the game.This man, Joe Begg by name, although only known to the sporting world who frequented the room by his Christian name alone, was an accomplice and ally of Markworth. When our friend would manage to get hold of a nice pigeon for plucking, Joe Begg used to be of the greatest service. He had a peculiarly dexterous way of running up the score, and also a pleasant and most unaccountable manner of sneezing just when Markworth’s opponent would be making some important stroke. It was most unfortunate of course, and the victim would meet with so much sympathy, and the marker would apologise so earnestly with tears in his eyes for the unfortunate cold in the head, “which takes me most unexpected, sir,” as he would explain, that poor pigeon could not but allow that it was an accident, and accept theamende honorableby continuing his play. When neophyte went away, after his vanity had been flattered by his being allowednearlyto win and his losing “rather hot, you know, by Jove?” he did not know that Markworth and the marker generally came to an understanding, which always resulted in the former offering and the latter accepting sundry substantial tokens of esteem and regard.It was not to make use of his aid in the matter of billiards and by-play that Markworth now sought the company of Joe Begg. It was for something much more important and vastly different, although of a similar nature.He wanted a witness for the contemplated marriage, and he could not think of anyone better qualified to assist him than Joe. He was just the man, for he had been always faithful to Markworth’s interests, and could be as “close as wax,” although he would naturally require a “consideration.”“Well, Joe, how’s business,” he said, as he walked into the billiard-room, when, as was usual at such an early hour of the day, the marker was all alone.“Very dull, Mister Markworth, very dull! Why, sir, I haven’t made a bob at pool for the last three weeks. Everybody’s out of town, and those City fellows as comes in are afeared to bet a tizzy on a dead certainty. Can I do anything for you to-day, Mister Markworth?”“Not to-day, Joe; but I will want you shortly.”“All right, sir, whenever you want me you’ve only got to speak, and I’m there.”“I thought I could rely on you, Joe. The fact is, I shall want you to be a witness to a marriage between a lady and myself.”“How much will you stand?”“I’ll do the thing handsomely. I tell you what, I will give you a fiver after it’s all over, because I shall want you to swear to it perhaps in evidence afterwards.”“I’m your man, sir,” replied the marker, with alacrity; “swear to anything for that sum. When is the little affair coming off?”“I can’t say yet, Joe. Maybe in a week, maybe not for a month; but when I want you I shall write here and let you know. Mind! You must be ready at once to accompany me when I write for you.”“I’m fly, sir,” responded Joe, with a cunning movement of his left eyelid, more expressive than an ordinary wink. “I’ll be ready any time; and perhaps, sir, as the business is partickler, it’ll be worth more than a fiver, who knows?”“I shan’t forget you, Joe; we won’t quarrel about terms,” answered Markworth, meaningly, and he then went away, for he had even more important arrangements to make.He paid a second visit to the dingy purlieus of Doctors Commons.This time not to the deed depository of the dead, but to the legal portals of Hymen, where Cupid sits enthroned on the bench, in all the majesty of the law, with a horsehair wig and a pair of clerical bands, to issue licenses to marry and for giving in marriage.It was now Friday, and the pic-nic was to come off at Bigton on the ensuing Tuesday, so Markworth determined that he would manage to get Susan Hartshorne away from The Poplars on that day, as he would be less liable to observation and detection; and taking her up to London, could have the marriage solemnised on the succeeding day. Tuesday, strange to say, was the very day, the 27th of August, according to the information of Miss Kingscott, retailed from the Family Bible, when the girl would be of legal age, one and twenty, and entitled to the free disposal of her money.He accordingly got a license made out without much trouble, by means of a little stretch of the imagination—called perjury in courts of law—and the initiatory step for his design was taken. If everything went well, he would before that day week be the husband of Susan Hartshorne, and master of her twenty thousand pounds. He had well weighed every step in his programme; he had studied every possible consequence to himself; and he saw no reason to anticipate failure when everything pointed to success.After leaving Doctors Commons he went to some old lodgings of his in a retired street in Bloomsbury, where he was well-known, and a set of rooms always kept vacant for him, for his comings and goings were so irregular that no one knew when to expect him. None of his West End friends knew of his ever living here, for he always gave an hotel as an address; and to tell the truth, he had often been comfortably installed in these same Bloomsbury lodgings when the world thought him travelling on the Continent, or shooting grouse on the moors.His appearance was therefore looked upon as a usual thing, and no surprise was manifested; for his ways had always been inscrutable, and as he checked curiosity and was a good and regular paying lodger, he could do as he liked. He had always done so from the first, and his landlady never bothered herself about him or his business, “it was no concern of hers, he always paid his rent, and that was all she cared about,” she said.He stopped here that night, and went away the next morning, telling Mrs Martin, the landlady, that he was going to bring “his sister” to town on the following Tuesday, and would require the rooms to be ready for her reception. This was the first time she had ever heard of his having a sister; but he might have brought twenty so long as he paid his rent. I believe a regular London lodging-house keeper is more of a cosmopolitan than any other person in the world. She will take in anybody with a decent supply of luggage, and who is tolerably regular in the payment of his or her weekly bills—the wandering Jew, Calcraft, or Eugene Aram. It is all the same to the proprietors of the “apartments” whether her tenant be Jew or Gentile, gentleman or “snob,” criminal or honest man; she has but one standard for social position, morality or nationality, and that is a pecuniary one. A lodger may be forgiven everything, even seventy times seven, if he only pays his rent regularly; that is theultima ratioto which appeal is made—it is practical and works well!These preliminary arrangements being seen to, Markworth walked down through Lincoln’s Inn Fields, across into Chancery Lane, and paid a visit to some dingy, tumble-down looking chambers close to the projected site for the new Law Courts, which are to be built at some era dim in futurity. A brass plate was on the door, with the names “Solomonson and Isaacs, solicitors,” engraved thereon.His business was with the senior partner, who greeted him as an old client or customer, which indeed he was. Solomonson was not at all averse to transact business, even on the Jewish Sabbath.“Vell, Mishter M,” said the Jew, who was part money lender, part lawyer, and all rogue. “Doesh de leetel affairsh go on? Have you got de mad girlsh yet. I vants to see her Mishtressh M’sh—”“Not yet, Shylock; but everything’s in train, and I shall do it before the week is out. But you told me right, I hope, about the law; I would not like to commit a felony?”“You are all rightsh, Mishter M’sh. Leave de cashe in dese hands and ve vill see you trough!”“I rely upon you then, and will let you conduct the whole affair,—but I must have some money to carry the thing through, Solomonson. How much can you let me have on my own security?”“I vill letsh you ave two hundredsh pound. S’help me Gadsh, Mishter M’sh! itsh all I’ve got!”“Nonsense, Shylock! you can’t fool me like that,” replied Markworth, and he tried unsuccessfully to get more out of the Jew. He had to be contented for the present with a couple of hundreds. Solomonson knew, however, the stake for which he was playing, and told him that as soon as he was really married to Susan Hartshorne he would advance him more. Until then he would not let him have another penny. So Markworth was forced to content himself with what he had got, and he was not pleased when he recollected that he would have to give the governess half.He was, however, provided with the sinews of war, so he wished Solomonson good day, cheerfully as he went out, and told him he would soon see him back again.“Good daysh!” replied the Jew. “Don’t forget to send me the weddingsh cakesh, my dearsh! I likesh weddingsh cakesh!”The last visit Markworth paid before leaving London was to the curate of a small church in the city, with whom he was acquainted—how he had made his acquaintance I cannot say; and to this gentleman he made some explanation about a forthcoming marriage which appeared to be highly satisfactory to both parties.Everything was now settled but the great event itself, and so Markworth returned to Hartwood by the afternoon train. To shew that he did not forget even trifles in considering everything for his plot, he bought an odd volume of the recently revived “Essays and Reviews,” at the railway book stall, for the personal edification of the Dowager Mrs Hartshorne, who had been speaking of the book in connection with her now favourite topic of ritualism. This he presented to her the same evening, much to her surprise, and peculiarly snappishly-expressed pleasure and thanks. The old lady had recently been over head and ears in pre-adamite geology, and nothing interested her so much as a secular essay on theological truths.Tom was delighted to see him back in such good time, and planned out all sorts of pleasant things for the pic-nic, which was in everybody’s thoughts—little knowing how Markworth intended to dispose of his day. All the Sussex world was going to be there. A pair of violet eyes comprised “all the world” to Tom now.Some time that evening Markworth had a long conversation with Miss Kingscott, preparing for “the end.” Both—strange anomaly!—had worked together for once, and not for good. He gave her a hundred pounds, the first instalment of the “hush money,” and their compact was nearly completed.To one who had not marked out every phase in Susan Hartshorne’s treatment, the change that had been worked in her since Markworth had devoted his energies to her care, was nothing less than marvellous.From dull, irksome melancholia the patient had been transported to the fields of reason. A constantly unchanged vacuity of expression on her face had given place to mobility of feature. Instead of void animal eyes, the windows of the soul now looked out of her face. From an idiot she had been changed nearly if not quite into a reasoning being. Markworth had done all this, aided by Miss Kingscott acting under him and by his directions. It is true the girl had only got back the germ of reason, the reason of a child in nature, and measured by the experience of years. But it was a germ which, although now of delicate growth, and requiring every fostering and care, might yet expand into the fullness of moral culture.No one had any idea how poor Susan had improved, for she saw no one to speak to as yet; and although Tom and Mrs Hartshorne noticed some change in her, yet the former was too much engaged with observing another to notice much in his sister, and as for the mother she really, I believe, did not care either way. She had so long looked upon Susan as insane, that the possibility of her ever recovering her reason now after the lapse of so many years, was put beyond the pale of consideration altogether.And so only Markworth and Miss Kingscott knew of her dawning reason; with them both she spoke now as sensibly as themselves, and as to Markworth she was his abject slave.The first reasoning thought that filled the poor girl’s vacuous brain was one of heartfelt devotion to him who had led her out of darkness to light. She looked upon him as her saviour, ignorant as she was of a higher and more powerful God than he; and he was so uniformly kind and considerate to her, seemingly anticipating her every wish, that one cannot wonder at her slavish idolatry. He was her god—her all; she loved him as a dog would love its master, and everything he did was right: his word, law.Markworth’s material was now plastic enough.
Markworth’s plot was now nearly ripe for execution.
When he had been down at The Poplars some weeks now, he said one morning at the breakfast table that he must run up to town for a day or two, as he had some important business to transact; so excusing himself to the Hartshornes, mother and son, the former of whom did not look as if she would break her heart if he never returned, he said he supposed he had better start at once and come down on the next day, Saturday, so as to be in time for the contemplated pic-nic on the following Tuesday, which Tom would not hear of his missing.
“You’ll be sure to be back in time, old fellow,” said the latter, as he wished Markworth good-bye; and the train glided off from the little station to which they had walked in company across the fields. “There’ll be heaps of fun, for Harrowby and a lot of the fellows will be down, and I want you to draw out the campaigner, or she’ll be making a dead set at me, and—”
“You’ll have other fish to fry, and will want to attend to someone else, eh? I quite understand it all, my boy; I’m not so blind as some people think, Master Tom. However, I’ll spare your blushes and your explanations: don’t be alarmed, my boy, I’ll be back in plenty of time for the pic-nic, and will take care to occupy my lady’s attention so as to leave you to your own devices. Good-bye, old chap.”
“Good-bye, old fellow,” said Tom; and Markworth was soon whizzing on his way to London.
Arrived in town, he first directed his steps to the private billiard-room where he and his friend first made the acquaintance of the reader.
His object was to enlist the services of the little old-fashioned marker, who we had previously seen watching the game.
This man, Joe Begg by name, although only known to the sporting world who frequented the room by his Christian name alone, was an accomplice and ally of Markworth. When our friend would manage to get hold of a nice pigeon for plucking, Joe Begg used to be of the greatest service. He had a peculiarly dexterous way of running up the score, and also a pleasant and most unaccountable manner of sneezing just when Markworth’s opponent would be making some important stroke. It was most unfortunate of course, and the victim would meet with so much sympathy, and the marker would apologise so earnestly with tears in his eyes for the unfortunate cold in the head, “which takes me most unexpected, sir,” as he would explain, that poor pigeon could not but allow that it was an accident, and accept theamende honorableby continuing his play. When neophyte went away, after his vanity had been flattered by his being allowednearlyto win and his losing “rather hot, you know, by Jove?” he did not know that Markworth and the marker generally came to an understanding, which always resulted in the former offering and the latter accepting sundry substantial tokens of esteem and regard.
It was not to make use of his aid in the matter of billiards and by-play that Markworth now sought the company of Joe Begg. It was for something much more important and vastly different, although of a similar nature.
He wanted a witness for the contemplated marriage, and he could not think of anyone better qualified to assist him than Joe. He was just the man, for he had been always faithful to Markworth’s interests, and could be as “close as wax,” although he would naturally require a “consideration.”
“Well, Joe, how’s business,” he said, as he walked into the billiard-room, when, as was usual at such an early hour of the day, the marker was all alone.
“Very dull, Mister Markworth, very dull! Why, sir, I haven’t made a bob at pool for the last three weeks. Everybody’s out of town, and those City fellows as comes in are afeared to bet a tizzy on a dead certainty. Can I do anything for you to-day, Mister Markworth?”
“Not to-day, Joe; but I will want you shortly.”
“All right, sir, whenever you want me you’ve only got to speak, and I’m there.”
“I thought I could rely on you, Joe. The fact is, I shall want you to be a witness to a marriage between a lady and myself.”
“How much will you stand?”
“I’ll do the thing handsomely. I tell you what, I will give you a fiver after it’s all over, because I shall want you to swear to it perhaps in evidence afterwards.”
“I’m your man, sir,” replied the marker, with alacrity; “swear to anything for that sum. When is the little affair coming off?”
“I can’t say yet, Joe. Maybe in a week, maybe not for a month; but when I want you I shall write here and let you know. Mind! You must be ready at once to accompany me when I write for you.”
“I’m fly, sir,” responded Joe, with a cunning movement of his left eyelid, more expressive than an ordinary wink. “I’ll be ready any time; and perhaps, sir, as the business is partickler, it’ll be worth more than a fiver, who knows?”
“I shan’t forget you, Joe; we won’t quarrel about terms,” answered Markworth, meaningly, and he then went away, for he had even more important arrangements to make.
He paid a second visit to the dingy purlieus of Doctors Commons.
This time not to the deed depository of the dead, but to the legal portals of Hymen, where Cupid sits enthroned on the bench, in all the majesty of the law, with a horsehair wig and a pair of clerical bands, to issue licenses to marry and for giving in marriage.
It was now Friday, and the pic-nic was to come off at Bigton on the ensuing Tuesday, so Markworth determined that he would manage to get Susan Hartshorne away from The Poplars on that day, as he would be less liable to observation and detection; and taking her up to London, could have the marriage solemnised on the succeeding day. Tuesday, strange to say, was the very day, the 27th of August, according to the information of Miss Kingscott, retailed from the Family Bible, when the girl would be of legal age, one and twenty, and entitled to the free disposal of her money.
He accordingly got a license made out without much trouble, by means of a little stretch of the imagination—called perjury in courts of law—and the initiatory step for his design was taken. If everything went well, he would before that day week be the husband of Susan Hartshorne, and master of her twenty thousand pounds. He had well weighed every step in his programme; he had studied every possible consequence to himself; and he saw no reason to anticipate failure when everything pointed to success.
After leaving Doctors Commons he went to some old lodgings of his in a retired street in Bloomsbury, where he was well-known, and a set of rooms always kept vacant for him, for his comings and goings were so irregular that no one knew when to expect him. None of his West End friends knew of his ever living here, for he always gave an hotel as an address; and to tell the truth, he had often been comfortably installed in these same Bloomsbury lodgings when the world thought him travelling on the Continent, or shooting grouse on the moors.
His appearance was therefore looked upon as a usual thing, and no surprise was manifested; for his ways had always been inscrutable, and as he checked curiosity and was a good and regular paying lodger, he could do as he liked. He had always done so from the first, and his landlady never bothered herself about him or his business, “it was no concern of hers, he always paid his rent, and that was all she cared about,” she said.
He stopped here that night, and went away the next morning, telling Mrs Martin, the landlady, that he was going to bring “his sister” to town on the following Tuesday, and would require the rooms to be ready for her reception. This was the first time she had ever heard of his having a sister; but he might have brought twenty so long as he paid his rent. I believe a regular London lodging-house keeper is more of a cosmopolitan than any other person in the world. She will take in anybody with a decent supply of luggage, and who is tolerably regular in the payment of his or her weekly bills—the wandering Jew, Calcraft, or Eugene Aram. It is all the same to the proprietors of the “apartments” whether her tenant be Jew or Gentile, gentleman or “snob,” criminal or honest man; she has but one standard for social position, morality or nationality, and that is a pecuniary one. A lodger may be forgiven everything, even seventy times seven, if he only pays his rent regularly; that is theultima ratioto which appeal is made—it is practical and works well!
These preliminary arrangements being seen to, Markworth walked down through Lincoln’s Inn Fields, across into Chancery Lane, and paid a visit to some dingy, tumble-down looking chambers close to the projected site for the new Law Courts, which are to be built at some era dim in futurity. A brass plate was on the door, with the names “Solomonson and Isaacs, solicitors,” engraved thereon.
His business was with the senior partner, who greeted him as an old client or customer, which indeed he was. Solomonson was not at all averse to transact business, even on the Jewish Sabbath.
“Vell, Mishter M,” said the Jew, who was part money lender, part lawyer, and all rogue. “Doesh de leetel affairsh go on? Have you got de mad girlsh yet. I vants to see her Mishtressh M’sh—”
“Not yet, Shylock; but everything’s in train, and I shall do it before the week is out. But you told me right, I hope, about the law; I would not like to commit a felony?”
“You are all rightsh, Mishter M’sh. Leave de cashe in dese hands and ve vill see you trough!”
“I rely upon you then, and will let you conduct the whole affair,—but I must have some money to carry the thing through, Solomonson. How much can you let me have on my own security?”
“I vill letsh you ave two hundredsh pound. S’help me Gadsh, Mishter M’sh! itsh all I’ve got!”
“Nonsense, Shylock! you can’t fool me like that,” replied Markworth, and he tried unsuccessfully to get more out of the Jew. He had to be contented for the present with a couple of hundreds. Solomonson knew, however, the stake for which he was playing, and told him that as soon as he was really married to Susan Hartshorne he would advance him more. Until then he would not let him have another penny. So Markworth was forced to content himself with what he had got, and he was not pleased when he recollected that he would have to give the governess half.
He was, however, provided with the sinews of war, so he wished Solomonson good day, cheerfully as he went out, and told him he would soon see him back again.
“Good daysh!” replied the Jew. “Don’t forget to send me the weddingsh cakesh, my dearsh! I likesh weddingsh cakesh!”
The last visit Markworth paid before leaving London was to the curate of a small church in the city, with whom he was acquainted—how he had made his acquaintance I cannot say; and to this gentleman he made some explanation about a forthcoming marriage which appeared to be highly satisfactory to both parties.
Everything was now settled but the great event itself, and so Markworth returned to Hartwood by the afternoon train. To shew that he did not forget even trifles in considering everything for his plot, he bought an odd volume of the recently revived “Essays and Reviews,” at the railway book stall, for the personal edification of the Dowager Mrs Hartshorne, who had been speaking of the book in connection with her now favourite topic of ritualism. This he presented to her the same evening, much to her surprise, and peculiarly snappishly-expressed pleasure and thanks. The old lady had recently been over head and ears in pre-adamite geology, and nothing interested her so much as a secular essay on theological truths.
Tom was delighted to see him back in such good time, and planned out all sorts of pleasant things for the pic-nic, which was in everybody’s thoughts—little knowing how Markworth intended to dispose of his day. All the Sussex world was going to be there. A pair of violet eyes comprised “all the world” to Tom now.
Some time that evening Markworth had a long conversation with Miss Kingscott, preparing for “the end.” Both—strange anomaly!—had worked together for once, and not for good. He gave her a hundred pounds, the first instalment of the “hush money,” and their compact was nearly completed.
To one who had not marked out every phase in Susan Hartshorne’s treatment, the change that had been worked in her since Markworth had devoted his energies to her care, was nothing less than marvellous.
From dull, irksome melancholia the patient had been transported to the fields of reason. A constantly unchanged vacuity of expression on her face had given place to mobility of feature. Instead of void animal eyes, the windows of the soul now looked out of her face. From an idiot she had been changed nearly if not quite into a reasoning being. Markworth had done all this, aided by Miss Kingscott acting under him and by his directions. It is true the girl had only got back the germ of reason, the reason of a child in nature, and measured by the experience of years. But it was a germ which, although now of delicate growth, and requiring every fostering and care, might yet expand into the fullness of moral culture.
No one had any idea how poor Susan had improved, for she saw no one to speak to as yet; and although Tom and Mrs Hartshorne noticed some change in her, yet the former was too much engaged with observing another to notice much in his sister, and as for the mother she really, I believe, did not care either way. She had so long looked upon Susan as insane, that the possibility of her ever recovering her reason now after the lapse of so many years, was put beyond the pale of consideration altogether.
And so only Markworth and Miss Kingscott knew of her dawning reason; with them both she spoke now as sensibly as themselves, and as to Markworth she was his abject slave.
The first reasoning thought that filled the poor girl’s vacuous brain was one of heartfelt devotion to him who had led her out of darkness to light. She looked upon him as her saviour, ignorant as she was of a higher and more powerful God than he; and he was so uniformly kind and considerate to her, seemingly anticipating her every wish, that one cannot wonder at her slavish idolatry. He was her god—her all; she loved him as a dog would love its master, and everything he did was right: his word, law.
Markworth’s material was now plastic enough.