CHAPTER XXV.That evening Dr. Hutton started, on his long swift mare, for the Hall at Nowelhurst, where he had promised to be. He kissed his Rosa many times, and begged her pardon half as often, for all the crimes that day committed. Her brother Ralph, from Fordingbridge, who always slept there at short notice, because the house was lonely, would be sure to come (they knew) when the little boy Bob was sent for him. Ralph Mohorn—poor Rosa rejoiced in her rather uncommon patronymic, though perhaps it means Cow–horn—Ralph Mohorn was only too glad to come and sleep at Geopharmacy Lodge. He was a fine, fresh–hearted fellow, only about nineteen years old; his father held him hard at home, and of course he launched out all the more abroad. So he kicked up, as he expressed it, “the devilʼs own dust” when he got to the Lodge, ordered everything in the house for supper, with a bottle of whisky afterwards—which he nevertouched, only he liked the name of the thing—and then a cardinal, or the biggest meerschaum to be found in any of the cupboards. His pipe, however, was not, like his grog, a phantom of the imagination; for he really smoked it, and sat on three chairs, while he “baited” Rosa, as he called it, with all the bogeys in Christendom. It was so delicious now to be able to throw her into a tremble, and turn her cheeks every colour, and then recollect that a few years since she had smacked his own cheeksad libitum. However, we have little to do with him, and now he is a jolly farmer.Rufus Hutton rode through Ringwood over the low bridge where the rushes rustle everlastingly, and the trout and dace for ever wag their pellucid tails up stream. How all that water, spreading loosely, wading over miles of meadows, growing leagues of reed and rush, mistress of a world in winter, how it all is content to creep through a pair of little bridges—matter of such mystery, let the Christchurch salmon solve it. Dr. Hutton went gaily over—at least his mare went gaily—but he was thinking (beyond his wont) of the business he had in hand. He admired the pleasant old town as he passed, and the still more pleasant waters; but his mare, the favourite Polly, went on at her usual swing, until they came to the long steep hill towards the Picked Post. As he walked her up the sharp parts of the rise, he began to ponder the mysterious visit of those convivial strangers. It was very plain that neither of them knew or caredthe turn of a trowel about the frank art of gardening; that, of course, was only a sham; then what did they really come for? Rufus, although from childhood upwards he had been hospitable to his own soul, that is to say, regarded himself with genial approbation, was not by any means blindly conceited, and could not suppose that his fame, for anything except gardening, had spread through the regions round about. So he felt that his visitors had come, not for his sake, but their own. And it was not long before he suspected that they wished to obtain through him some insight, perhaps even some influence, into and in the course of events now toward at Nowelhurst Hall. They had altogether avoided the subject; which made him the more suspicious, for at present it was of course the leading topic of the county.However, as they were related to the family, while he, Rufus Hutton, was not, it was not his place to speak of the matter, but to let his guests do as they liked about it. They had made him promise, moreover, to dine with the Kettledrums on the very earliest day he could fix—viz. the following Wednesday—and there he was to meet Mr. and Mrs. Corklemore. Was it possible that they intended, and perhaps had been instructed, to subject the guest on that occasion to more skilful manipulation than that of their rude male fingers?“Iʼll take Rosa with me”, said Rufus to himself; “a woman sees a womanʼs game best; though Rosa, thank Heaven, is not very Machiavellian. How veryodd, that neither of those men had the decency to carry a bit of crape, out of respect for that poor boy; and I, who am noway connected with him, have been indued by my Roe with a hat–band”!Shrewd as our friend Rufus was, he could not be charged with low cunning, and never guessed that those two men had donned the show of mourning, and made the most of it round their neighbourhood to impress people with their kinship to the great Nowells of Nowelhurst, but that their guardian angels had disarrayed them ere they started, having no desire to set Rufus thinking about their chance of succession. As the sharp little doctor began to revolve all he had heard about Corklemore, his mare came to the Burley–road where they must leave the turnpike. Good Polly struck into it, best foot foremost, and, as she never would bear the curb well, her rider had quite enough to do, in the gathering darkness, and on that cross–country track, to attend to their common safety.She broke from the long stride of her trot into a reaching canter, as the moon grew bright between the trees, and the lane was barred with shadow. Pricking nervously her ears at every flaw or rustle, bending her neck to show her beauty, where the light fell clear on the moor–top, then with a snort of challenge plunging into the black of the hollows, yet ready to jump the road and away, if her challenge should be answered; bounding across thewater–gulley and looking askance at a fern–shadow; then saying to herself, “It is only the moon, child”, and up the ascent half ashamed of herself; then shaking her bridle with reassurance to think of that mile of great danger flown by, and the mash and the warm stable nearer, and the pleasure of telling that great roan horse how brave she had been in the moonlight——“Goodness me! Whatʼs that”?She leaped over road and roadside bank, and into a heavy gorse–bush, and stood there quivering from muzzle to tail in the intensity of terror. If Rufus had not just foreseen her alarm, and gripped her with all his power, he must have lain senseless upon the road, spite of all his rough–riding in India.“Who–hoa, who–hoa, then, Polly, you little fool, you are killing me! Canʼt you see itʼs only a lady”?Polly still backed into the bush, and her unlucky rider, with every prickle running into him, could see the whites of her eyes in the moonshine, as the great orbs stood out with horror. Opposite to them, and leaning against a stile which led to a footpath, there stood a maiden dressed in black, with the moonlight sheer upon her face. She took no notice of anything; she had heard no sort of footfall; she did not know of Pollyʼs capers, or the danger she was causing. Her face, with the hunterʼs moon upon it, would have been glorious beauty, but for the broad rims under the eyes, andthe spectral paleness. One moment longer she stared at the moon, as if questing for some one gone thither, then turned away with a heavy sigh, and went towards the Coffin Wood.All this time Rufus Hutton was utterly blind to romance, being scarified in the calf and thighs beyond any human endurance. Polly backed further and further away from the awful vision before her—the wife of the horse–fiend at least—and every fresh swerve sent a new lot of furze–pricks into the peppery legs of Rufus.“Hang it”! he cried, “here goes; no man with a haʼporth of flesh in him could stand it any longer. Thorn for thorn, Miss Polly”. He dashed his spurs deep into her flanks, the spurs he had only worn for show, and never dared to touch her with. For a moment she trembled, and reared upright in wrath worse than any horror; then away she went like a storm of wind, headlong through trees and bushes. It was all pure luck or Providence that Rufus was not killed. He grasped her neck, and lay flat upon it; he clung with his supple legs around her; he called her his Polly, his darling Polly, and begged her to consider herself. She considered neither herself nor him, but dashed through the wild wood, wilder herself, not knowing light from darkness. Any low beech branch, any scrag holly, even a trail of loose ivy, and man and horse were done for. The lights of more than a million stars flashed before Rufus Hutton, and he made up his mind to die, and wondered how Rosawould take it. Perhaps she would marry again, and rear up another family who knew not the name of Hutton; perhaps she would cry her eyes out. Smack, a young branch took him in the face, though he had one hand before it. “Go it again”! he cried, with the pluck of a man despairing, and then he rolled over and over, and dug for himself a rabbit–hole of sand, and dead leaves, and moss. There he lay on his back, and prayed, and luckily let go the bridle.The mare had fallen, and grovelled in the rotten ground where the rabbits lived; then she got up and shook herself, and the stirrups struck fire beneath her, and she spread out all her legs, and neighed for some horse to come and help her. She could not go any further; she had vented her soul, and must come to herself, like a lady after hysterics. Presently she sniffed round a bit, and the grass smelled crisp and dewy, and, after the hot corn and musty hay, it was fresher than ice upon brandy. So she looked through the trees, and saw only a squirrel, which did not frighten her at all, because she was used to rats. Then she brought her forelegs well under her stomach, and stretched her long neck downwards, and skimmed the wet blades with her upper lip, and found them perfectly wholesome. Every horse knows what she did then and there, to a great extent, till she had spoiled her relish for supper.After that, she felt grateful and good, and it repented her of the evil, and she whinnied aboutfor the master who had outraged her feelings so deeply. She found him still insensible, on his back, beneath a beech–tree, with six or seven rabbits, and even a hare, come to see what the matter was. Then Polly, who had got the bit out of her mouth, gave him first a poke with it, and then nuzzled him under the coat–collar, and blew into his whiskers as she did at the chaff in her manger. She was beginning to grieve and get very uneasy, taking care not to step on him, and went round him ever so many times, and whinnied into his ear, when either that, or the dollop of grass half chewed which lay on his countenance, revived the great spirit of Rufus Hutton, and he opened his eyes and looked languidly. He saw two immense black eyes full upon him, tenderly touched by the moonlight, and he felt a wet thing like a sponge poking away at his nostrils.“Polly”, he said, “oh, Polly dear, how could you serve me so? What will your poor mistress say”?Polly could neither recriminate nor defend herself; so she only looked at him beseechingly, and what she meant was, “Oh, do get up”.So Rufus arose, and dusted himself, and kissed Polly for forgiveness, and she, if she had only learned how, would have stooped like a camel before him. He mounted, with two or three groans for his back, and left the mare to her own devices to find the road again. It was very pretty to see in the moonlight how carefully she went with him, not even leaping the small water–courses, but feeling herfooting through them. And so they got into the forest–track, some half mile from where they had left it; they saw the gleam of Bull Garnetʼs windows, and knew the straight road to the Hall.Sir Cradock Nowell did not appear. Of course that was not expected; but kind John Rosedew came up from the parsonage to keep Rufus Hutton company. So the two had all the great dinner–table to themselves entirely; John, as the old friend, sat at the head, and the doctor sat by his right hand. Although there were few men in the world with the depth of mind, and variety, the dainty turns of thought, the lacework infinitely rich of original mind and old reading, which made John Rosedewʼs company a forest for to wander in and be amazed with pleasure; Rufus Hutton, sore and stiff, and aching in the back, thought he had rarely come across so very dry a parson.John was not inclined to talk: he was thinking of his Cradock, and he had a care of still sharper tooth—what had happened to his Amy? He had come up much against his wishes, only as a duty, on that dreary Saturday night, just that Mr. Hutton, who had been so very kind, might not think himself neglected. John had dined four hours ago, but that made no difference to him, for he seldom knew when hehaddined, and when he was expected to do it. Nevertheless he was human, for he loved his bit of supper.Mr. Rosedew had laboured hard, but vainly, to persuade Sir Cradock Nowell to send some or anymessage to his luckless son. “No”, he replied, “he did not wish to see him any more, or at any rate not at present; it would be too painful to him. Of course he was sorry for him, and only hoped he was half as sorry for himself”. John Rosedew did not dream as yet of the black idea working even now in the lonely fatherʼs mind, gaining the more on his better heart because he kept it secret. The old man was impatient now even of the old friendʼs company; he wanted to sit alone all day weaving and unravelling some dark skein of evidence, and as yet he was not so possessed of the devil as to cease to feel ashamed of him. “Coarse language”! cries some votary of our self–conscious euphemism. But show me any plainer work of the father of unbelief than want of faith in our fellow–creatures, when we have proved and approved them; want of faith in our own flesh and blood, with no cause for it but the imputed temptation. It shall go hard with poor old Sir Cradock, and none shall gainsay his right to it.Silence was a state of the air at once uncongenial to Dr. Huttonʼs system and repugnant to all his finest theories of digestion. For lo, how all nature around us protests against the Trappists, and the order of St. Benedict! See how the cattle get together when they have dined in the afternoon, and had their drink out of the river. Donʼt they flip their tails, and snuffle, and grunt at their own fine sentiments, and all the while they are chewing the cud take stock of one another?Donʼt they discuss the asilus and œstrum, the last news of the rinderpest, and the fly called by some the cow–dab, and donʼt they abuse the festuca tribe, and the dyspepsia of the sorrel? Is the thrush mute when he has bolted his worm, or the robin over his spiderʼs eggs?So Rufus looked through his glass of port, which he took merely as a corrective to the sherry of the morning, cocked one eye first, and then the other, and loosed the golden bands of speech.“Uncommonly pretty girls, Mr. Rosedew, all about this neighbourhood”.“Very likely, Dr. Hutton; I see many pleasant faces; but I am no judge of beauty”. He leaned back with an absent air, just as if he knew nothing about it. And all the while he was saying to himself, “Pretty girls indeed! Is there one of them like my Amy”?“A beautiful girl I saw to–night. But I donʼt wish to see much more beauty in that way. Nearly cost me my life, I know. You are up in the classics so: what is it we used to read at school?—Helene, Helenaus, Helip—something—teterrima belli causa fuit. Upon my word, I havenʼt talked so much Latin and Greek—have another glass of port, just for company; the dry vintage of ’34 canʼt hurt anybody”. John Rosedew took another glass, for his spirits were low, and the wine was good, and the parson felt then that he ought to have more confidence in God. Then he brought his mind to bear on the matter, and listened veryattentively while the doctor described, with a rush of warm language and plenteous exaggeration, the fright of his mare at that mournful vision, the vision itself, and the consequences.“Sir, you must have ridden like a Centaur, or like Alexander. What will Mrs. Hutton say? But are you sure that she leaped an oak–tree”?“Perfectly certain”, said Rufus, gravely, “clean through the fork of the branches, and the acorns rattled upon my hat, like the hail of the Himalaya”.“Remarkable! Most remarkable”!“But you have not told me yet”, continued Dr. Hutton, “although I am sure that you know, who the beautiful young lady is”.“From your description, and the place, though I have not heard that they are in mourning, I think it must have been Miss Garnet”.“Miss Garnet! What Miss Garnet? Not Bull Garnetʼs daughter? I never heard that he had one”.“Yes, he has, and a very nice girl. My Amy knows a little of her. But he does not allow her to visit much, and is most repressive to her. Unwise, in my opinion; not the way to treat a daughter; one should have confidence in her, as I have in my dear child”.“Oh, you have confidence in Miss Rosedew; and she goes out whenever she likes, I suppose”?“Of course she does”, said the simple John,wondering at the question; “that is, of course, whenever it is right for her”.“Of which, I suppose, she herself is the judge”.“Why, no, not altogether. Her aunt has a voice in the matter always, and a very potent one”.“And, of course, Miss Rosedew, managed upon such enlightened principles, never attempts to deceive you”?“Amy! my Amy deceive me”! The rector turned pale at the very idea. “But these questions are surely unusual from a gentleman whom I have known for so very short a time. I am entitled, in turn, to ask your reason for putting them”. Mr. Rosedew, never suspecting indignities, could look very dignified.“Iʼm in for it now”, thought Rufus Hutton; “what a fool I am! I fancied the old fellow had nonous, except for Latin and Greek”.Strange to say, the old fellow hadnousenough to notice his hesitation. John Rosedew got up from his chair, and stood looking at Rufus Hutton.“Sir, I will thank you to tell me exactly what you mean about my daughter”.“Nothing at all, Mr. Rosedew. What do you suppose Ishouldmean”?“Youshouldmean nothing at all, sir. But I believe that youdomean something. And, please God, I will have it out of you”. Rufus Hutton said afterwards that he had two great frights thatevening, and he believed the last was the worst. The parson never dreamed that any man could be afraid of him, except it were a liar, and he looked upon Rufus contemptuously. The man of the world was nothing before the man of truth.“Mr. Rosedew”, said Rufus, recovering himself, “your conduct is very extraordinary; and (you will excuse my saying it) more violent than becomes a man of your position and character”.“No violence becomes any man, whatever his position. I am sorry if I have been violent”.“You have indeed”, said Rufus, pushing his advantage: a generous man would have said, “No, you havenʼt”, at seeing the parsonʼs distress, and so would Rufus have said, if he had happened to be in the right; “so violent, Mr. Rosedew, that I believe you almost frightened me”.“Dear me”! said John, reflecting, “and he has just leaped an oak–tree! I must have been very bad”.“Donʼt mention it, my dear sir, I entreat you say no more about it. We all know what a father is”. And Rufus Hutton, who did not yet, but expected to know in some three months, grew very large, and felt himself able to patronise the rector. “Mr. Rosedew, I as well am to blame. I am thoughtless, sir, very thoughtless, or rather I should say too thoughtful; I am too fond of seeing round a corner, which I have always been famous for. Sir, a man who possesses this power, this gift, this—I donʼt know the word for it, but I have nodoubt you do—that man is apt to—I mean to—— ”“Knock his head against a wall”? suggested the parson, in all good faith.“No, you mistake me; I donʼt mean that at all; I mean that a man with this extraordinary foresight, which none can understand except those who are gifted with it, is liable sometimes, is amenable—I mean to—to—— ”“See double. Ah, yes, I can quite understand it”. John Rosedew shut his eyes, and felt up for a disquisition, yet wanted to hear of his daughter.“No, my dear sir, no. It is something very far from anything so commonplace as that. What I mean is—only I cannot express it, because you interrupt me so—that a man may have this faculty, this insight, this perception, which saves him from taking offence where none whatever is meant, and yet, as it were by some obliquity of the vision, may seem, in some measure, to see the wrong individual”. Here Rufus felt like the dwarf Alypius, when he had stodged Iamblichus.“That is an interesting question, and reminds me of the state ofἀῤῥεψίαas described in the life of Pyrrho by Diogenes Laertius; whose errors, if I may venture to say it, have been made too much of by the great Isaac Casaubon, then scarcely mature of judgment. It will give me the greatest pleasure to go into that question with you. But not just now. I am thrown out so sadly, and my memory fails me”—John Rosedew had fanciedthis, by–the–by, ever since he was thirty years old—“only tell me one thing, Dr. Hutton, and I am very sorry for my violence; you meant no harm about my daughter”? Here the grey–haired man, with the mighty forehead, opened his clear blue eyes, and looked down upon Rufus beseechingly.“Upon my honour as a gentleman, I mean no harm whatever. I made the greatest mistake, and I see the mistake I made”.“Will you tell me, sir, what it was? Just to ease my mind. I am sure that you will”.“No, I must not tell you now, until I have worked the matter out. You will thank me for not doing so. But I apologise most heartily. I feel extremely uncomfortable. No claret, sir, but the port, if you please. I was famous, in India, for my nerve; but now it seems to be failing me”.Rufus, as we now perceive, had fully discovered his mistake, and was trying to trace the consequences. The beautiful girl whom he saw in the wood, that evening, with Clayton Nowell, was not our Amy at all, but Mr. Garnetʼs daughter. He knew the face, though changed and white, when it frightened his mare in the moonlight; and, little time as he had to think, it struck him then as very strange that Miss Rosedew should be there. Bull Garnetʼs cottage, on the other hand, was quite handy in the hollow.CHAPTER XXVI.At this melancholy time, John Rosedew had quite enough to do without any burden of fresh anxieties about his own pet Amy. Nevertheless, that burden was added; not by Dr. Huttonʼs vague questions, although they helped to impose it, but by the fatherʼs own observation of his darlingʼs strange condition. “Can it be”, he asked himself, and often longed to ask her, as he saw only lilies where roses had been, and little hands trembling at breakfast–time, “can it be that this child of mine loved the poor boy Clayton, and is wasting away in sorrow for him? Is that the reason why she will not meet Cradock, nor Cradock meet her, and she trembles at his name? And then that book which Aunt Doxy made her throw on the kitchen fire—very cruel I now see it was of my good sister Eudoxia, though at first I did not think so—that book I know was poor Claytonʼs, for I have seen it in his hand. Well, if it truly is so, there is nothing to be done, except to be unusuallykind to her, and trust to time for the cure, and give her plenty of black–currant jam”.These ideas he imparted to the good Aunt Doxy, who delivered some apophthegms (which John did not want to listen to), but undertook, whatever should happen, to be down upon Amy sharply. She knew all about her tonsils and her uvula, and all that stuff, and she did not want Johnʼs advice, though she had never had a family; and thank God heartily for it!On Monday, when the funeral came to Nowelhurst churchyard, John Rosedew felt his heart give way, and could not undertake it. At the risk of deeply offending Sir Cradock, whose nerves that day were of iron, he passed the surplice to his curate, Mr. Pell, of Rushford; and begged him, with a sad slow smile, to do the duty for him. Sir Cradock Nowell frowned, and coloured, and then bowed low with an icy look, when he saw the change which had been made, and John Rosedew fall in as a mourner. People said that from that day the old friendship was dissevered.John, for his part, could not keep his eyes from the nook of the churchyard, where among the yew–trees stood, in the bitterness of anguish, he who had not asked, nor been asked, to attend as mourner. Cradock bowed his head and wept, for now his tears came freely, and prayed the one Almighty Father, who alone has mercy, not to take his misery from him, but to take him from it.When the mould was cast upon the coffin, blackWena came between peopleʼs legs, gave a cry, and jumped in after it, thinking to retrieve her master, like a stick from the water. She made such a mournful noise in the grave, and whimpered, and put her head down, and wondered why no one said “Wena, dear”, that all the school–girls burst out sobbing—having had apples from Clayton lately—and Octavius Pell, the great cricketer, wanted something soft for his throat.That evening, when all was over, and the grave heaped snugly up, and it was time to think of other things and begin to wonder at sorrow, John Rosedew went to Sir Cradock Nowell, not only as a fellow–mourner and a friend of ancient days, but as a minister of Christ. It had cost John many struggles; and, what with his sense of worldly favours, schoolday–friendship, delicacy, he could scarce tell what to make of it, till he just went down on his knees and prayed; then the learned man learned his duty.Sir Cradock turned his head away, as if he did not want him. John held out his hand, and said nothing.“Mr. Rosedew, I am surprised to see you. And yet, John, this is kind of you”.John hoped that he only said “Mr. Rosedew”, because the footman was lingering, and he tried not to feel the difference.“Cradock, you know what I am, as well as I know what you are. Fifty years, my dear fellow, fifty years of friendship”.“Yes, John, I remember when I was twelve years old, and you fought Sam Cockings for me”.“And, Cradock, I thrashed him fairly; you know I thrashed him fairly. They said I got his head under the form; but you know it was all a lie. How I do hate lies! I believe it began that day. If so, the dislike is subjective. Perhaps I ought to reconsider it”.“John, I know nothing in your life which you ought to reconsider, except what you are doing now”.Sir Cradock Nowell began the combat, because he felt that it must be waged; and perhaps he knew in that beginning that he had the weaker cause.“Cradock, I am doing nothing which is not my simple duty. When I see those I love in the deepest distress, can I help siding with them”?“Upon that principle, or want of it, you might espouse, as a duty, the cause of any murderer”.The old man shuddered, and his voice shook, as he whispered that last word. As yet he had not worked himself up, nor been worked up by others, to the black belief which made the living lost beyond the dead.“I am sure I donʼt know what I might do”, said John Rosedew, simply, “but what I am doing now is right; and in your heart you know it. Come, Cradock, as an old man now, and one whom God has visited, forgive your poor, your noble son, who never will forgive himself”.But for one word in that speech, John Rosedew would perhaps have won his cause, and reconciled son and father.“Mynobleson indeed, John! A very noble thing he has done. Shall I never hear the last of his nobility? And who ever called my Clayton noble? You have been unfair throughout, John Rosedew, most unfair and blind to the merits of my more loving, more simple–hearted, more truly noble boy, I tell you”.Mr. Rosedew, at such a time, could not of course contest the point, could not tell the bereaved old man that it was he himself who had been unfair.“And when”, asked Sir Cradock, getting warmer, “when did you know my poor boy Violet stick up for political opinions of his own at the age of twenty, want to drain tenants’ cottages, and pretend to be better and wiser than his father”?“And when have you known Cradock do, at any rate, the latter”?“Ever since he got that scholarship, that Scotland thing at Oxford”—Sir Cradock knew the name well enough, as every Oxford man does—“he has been perfectly insufferable; such arrogance, such conceit, such airs! And he only got it by a trick. Poor Viley ought to have had it”.John Rosedew tried to control himself, but the gross untruth and injustice of that last accusation were a little too much for him.“Perhaps, Sir Cradock Nowell, you will allowthat I am a competent judge of the relative powers of the two boys, who knew all they did know from me, and from no one else”.“Of course, I know you are a competent judge, only blinded by partiality”.John allowed even that to go by.“Without any question of preference, simply as a lover of literature, I say that Clayton had no chance with him in a Greek examination. In Latin he would have run him close. You know I always said so, even before they went to college. I was surprised, at the time, that they mentioned Clayton even as second to him”.“And grieved, I dare say, deeply grieved, if the truth were told”!“It is below me to repel mean little accusations”.“Come, John Rosedew”, said Sir Cradock, magnanimously and liberally, “I can forgive you for being quarrelsome, even at such a time as this. It always was so, and I suppose it always will be. To–day I am not fit for much, though perhaps you do not know it. Thinking so little of my dead boy, you are surprised that I should grieve for him”.“I should be surprised indeed if you did not. God knows even I have grieved deeply, as for a son of my own”.“Shake hands, John; you are a good fellow—the best fellow in the world. Forgive me forbeing petulant. You donʼt know how my heart aches”.After that it was impossible to return for the moment to Cradock Nowell. But the next day John renewed the subject, and at length obtained a request from the father that his son should come to him.By this time Cradock hardly knew when he was doing anything, and when he was doing nothing. He seemed to have no regard for any one, no concern about anything, least of all for himself. Even his love for Amy Rosedew had a pall thrown over it, and lay upon the trestles. The only thing he cared at all for was his fatherʼs forgiveness: let him get that, and then go away and be seen no more among them. He could not think, or feel surprise, or fear, or hope for anything; he could only tell himself all day long, that if God were kind He would kill him. A young life wrecked, so utterly wrecked, and through no fault of its own; unless (as some begin to dream) we may not slay for luxury; unless we have but a limited right to destroy our Fatherʼs property.Sir Cradock, it has been stated, cared a great deal more for his children than he did for his ancestors. He had not been wondering, through his sorrow, what the world would say of him, what it would think of the Nowells; he had a little too much self–respect to care a fig for foolʼs–tongue. Now he sat in his carved oak–chair, expecting hisonly son, and he tried to sit upright. But the flatness of his back was gone, never to return; and the shoulder–blades showed through his coat, like a spoon left under the tablecloth. Still he appeared a stately man, one not easily bowed by fortune, or at least not apt to acknowledge it.Young Cradock entered his fatherʼs study, with a flush on his cheeks, which had been so pale, and his mind made up for endurance, but his wits going round like a swirl of leaves. He could not tell what he might say or do. He began to believe he had shot his father, and to wonder whether it hurt him much. Trying in vain to master his thoughts, he stood with his quivering hands clasped hard, and his chin upon his breast.So perhaps Adrastus stood, Adrastus son of Gordias, before the childless Crœsus; and the simple words are these.“After this there came the Lydians carrying the corpse. And behind it followed the slayer. And standing there before the corpse, he gave himself over to Crœsus, stretching forth his hands, commanding to slay him upon the corpse, telling both his own former stress, and how upon the top of that he had destroyed his cleanser, nor was his life now liveable. Crœsus, having heard these things, though being in so great a trouble of the hearth, has compassion on Adrastus, and says to him—— ”“But Adrastus, son of Gordias, son of Midas, this man, I say, who had been the slayer of hiswomb–brother, and slayer of him that cleansed him, when there was around the grave a quietude from men, feeling that he was of all men whom he had ever seen the most weighed down with trouble, kills himself dead upon the tomb”.But the father now was not like Croesus, the generous–hearted Lydian, although the man who stood before him was not a runagate from Phrygia, but the son of his own loins. The father did not look at him, but kept his eyes fixed on the window, as though he knew not any were near him. Then the son could wait no more, but spoke in a hollow, trembling voice:“Father, I am come, as you ordered”.“Yes. I will not keep you long. Perhaps you want to go out” (“shooting” he was about to say, but could not be quite so cruel). “I only wish so to settle matters that we may meet no more”.“Oh, father—my own father!—for Godʼs sake!—if there be a God—donʼt speak to me like that”!“Sir, I shall take it as a proof that you are still a gentleman, which at least you used to be, if you will henceforth address me as ‘Sir Cradock Nowell’, a title which soon will be your own”.“Father, look me in the face, and ask me; then I will”.Sir Cradock Nowell still looked forth the heavily–tinted window. His son, his only, his grief–worn son, was kneeling at his side, unable to weep, too proud to sob, with the sense of deep wrong rising.If the father once had looked at him, nature must have conquered.“Mr. Nowell, I have only admitted you that we might treat of business. Allow me to forget the face of a fratricide, perhapsmurderer”.Cradock Nowell fell back heavily, for he had risen from his knees. The crown of his head crashed the glass of a picture, and blood showered down his pale face. He never even put his hand up, to feel what was the matter. He said nothing, not a syllable; but stood there, and let the room go round. How his mother must have wept, if she was looking down from heaven!The old man, having all the while a crude, dim sense of outrunning his heart, gave the youth time to recover himself, if it were a thing worth recovering.“Now, as to our arrangements—the subject I wished to speak about. I only require your consent to the terms I propose, until, in the natural course of events, you succeed to the family property”.“What family property, sir”? Cradockʼs head was dizzy still, the bleeding had done him good.“Why, of course, the Nowelhurst property; all these entailed estates, to which you are now sole heir”.“I will never touch one shilling, nor step upon one acre of it”.“Under your motherʼs—that is to say, under my marriage–settlement”, continued Sir Cradock, in the same tone, as if his son were only bantering, “you are at once entitled to the sum of 50,000l.invested in Three per Cent. Consols—which would have been—I mean, which was meant for younger children. This sum the trustees will be prepared—— ”“Do you think I will touch it? Am I a thief as well as a murderer”?“I shall also make arrangements for securing to you, until my death, an income of 5000l.per annum. This you can draw for quarterly, and the cheques will be countersigned by my steward, Mr. Garnet”.“Of course, lest I should forge. Once for all, hear me, Sir Cradock Nowell. So help me the God who has now forsaken me, who has turned my life to death, and made my own father curse me—every word of yours is a curse, I say—so help me that God (if there be one to help, as well as to smite a man), till you crave my pardon upon your knees, as I have craved yours this day, I will never take one yard of your land, I will never call myself ‘Nowell’, or own you again as my father. God knows I am very unlucky and little, but you have shown yourself less. And some day you will know it”.In the full strength of his righteous pride, he walked for the first time like a man, since heleaped that deadly hedge. From that moment a change came over him. There was nothing to add to his happiness, but something to rouse his manhood. The sense of justice, the sense of honour—that flower and crown of justice—forbade him henceforth to sue, and be shy, and bemoan himself under hedges. From that day forth he was as a man visited of God, and humbled, but facing ever his fellow–men, and not ashamed of affliction.CHAPTER XXVII.With an even step, and no frown on his forehead, nor glimpse of a tear in his eyes, young Cradock walked to his own little room, his “nest”, as he used to call it; where pipes, and books, and Oxford prints—no ballet–girls, however, and not so very many hunters—and whips, and foils, and boxing–gloves—cum multis aliis quæ nunc describere longum est; et cui non dictalong ago?—were handled more often than dusted. All these things, except one pet little pipe, which he was now come to look for, and which Viley had given him a year ago, when they swopped pipes on their birthday (like Diomed and the brave Lycian), all the rest were things of a bygone age, to be thought of no more for the present, but dreamed of, perhaps, on a Christmas–eve, when the air is full of luxury.Caring but little for any of them, although he had loved them well until they seemed to injure him, Cradock proceeded with great equanimity todo a very foolish thing, which augured badly for the success of a young man just preparing to start for himself in the world. He poured the entire contents of his purse into a little cedar tray, then packed all the money in paper rolls with a neatness which rather astonished him, and sealed each roll with his amethyst ring. Then he put them into a little box of some rare and beautiful palm–wood, which had been his motherʼs, laid his cheque–book beside them (for he had been allowed a banking account long before he was of age), and placed upon that his gold watch and chain, and trinkets, the amethyst ring itself, his diamond studs, and other jewellery, even a locket which had contained two little sheaves of hair, bound together with golden thread, but from which he first removed, and packed in silver paper, the fair hair of his mother. This last, with the pipe which Clayton had given him, and the empty purse made by Amyʼs fingers, were all he meant to carry away, besides the clothes he wore.After locking the box he rang the bell, and begged the man who answered it to send old Hogstaff to him. That faithful servant, from whom he had learned so many lessons of infancy, came tottering along the passage, with his old eyes dull and heavy. For Job had gloried in those two brothers, and loved them both as the children of his elder days. And now one of them was gone for ever, in the height of his youth and beauty, and a whisper was in the household that the other would not stay.Of him, whom Job had always looked upon as his future master (for he meant to outlive the present Sir Cradock, as he had done the one before him), he had just been scoring upon his fingers all the things he had taught him—to whistle “Spankadillo”, while he drummed it with his knuckles; to come to the pantry–door, and respond to the “Whoʼs there”?—“A grenadier”! shouldering a broomstick; to play on the Jewʼs–harp, with variations, “An old friend, and a bottle to give him”; and then to uncork the fictitious bottle with the pop of his forefinger out of his mouth, and to decant it carefully with the pat of his gurgling cheeks! After all that, how could he believe Master Crad could ever forsake him?Now Mr. Hogstaffʼs legs were getting like the ripe pods of a scarlet–runner (although he did not run much); here they stuck in, and there they stuck out, abnormally in either case; his body began to come forward as if warped at the small of the back; and his honest face (though he drank but his duty) was Septemberʼd with many a vintage. And yet, with the keenness of love and custom, he saw at once what the matter was, as he looked up at the young master.“Oh, Master Crad, dear Master Crad, whatever are you going to do? Donʼt, for good now, donʼt, I beg on you. Hearken now; doʼee hearken to an old man for a minute”. And he caught him by both arms to stop him, with his tremulous, wrinkled hands.“O Hoggy, dear, kind Hoggy! you are about the only one left to care about me now”.“No, donʼt you say that, Master Crad; donʼt you say that, whatever you do. Whoever tell you that, tell a lie, sir. It was only last night Mrs. Toaster, and cook, and Mrs. OʼGaghan, the Irishwoman, was round the fire boiling, and they cried a deal more than they boiled, I do assure you they did, sir. And Mr. Stote, he come in with some rabbits, and he went on like mad. And the maids, so sorry every one of them, they canʼt be content with their mourning, sir; I do assure you they canʼt. Oh, donʼt ’ee do no harm to yourself, donʼt ’ee, Mr. Cradock, sir”.“No, Hoggy”, said Cradock, taking his hands; “you need not fear that now of me. I have had very wicked thoughts, but God has helped me over them. Henceforth I am resolved to bear my trouble like a man. It is the part of a dog to run, when the hoot begins behind him. Now, take this little box, and this key, and give them yourself to Sir Cradock Nowell. It is the last favour I shall ask of you. I am going away, my dear old friend; donʼt keep me now, for I must go. Only give me your good wishes; and see that they mind poor Caldo: and, whatever they say of me behind my back, you wonʼt believe it, Job Hogstaff, will you”?Job Hogstaff had never been harder put to it in all his seventy years. Then, as he stood at the open door to see the last of his favourite, hethought of the tall, dark womanʼs words so many years ago. “A bonnie pair ye have gat; but yeʼll ha’ no luck o’ them. Tak’ the word of threescore year, yeʼll never get no luck o’ ’em”.Cradock turned aside from his path, to say good–bye to Caldo. It would only take just a minute, he thought, and of course he should never see him again. So he went to that snuggest and sweetest of kennels, and in front of it sat the king of dogs.The varieties of canine are as manifold and distinct as those of human nature. But the dog, be he saturnine or facetious, sociable or contemplative, mercurial or melancholic, is quite sure to be one thing—true and loyal ever. Can we, who are less than the dogs of the Infinite, say as much of ourselves to Him? Now Caldo, as has been implied, if not expressed before, was a setter of large philosophy and rare reflective power. I mean, of course, theoretical more than practical philosophy; as any dog would soon have discovered who tried to snatch a bone from him. Moreover, he had some originality, and a turn for satire. He would sit sometimes by the hour, nodding his head impressively, and blinking first one eye and then the other, watching and considering the doings of his fellow–dogs. How fashionably they yawned and stretched, in a mode they had learned from a pointer, who was proud of his teeth and vertebræ; how they hooked up their tails for a couple of joints, and then let them fall at a right angle,having noticed that fashion in ladies’ bustles, when they came on a Sunday to talk to them; how they crawled on their stomachs to get a pat, as a provincial mayor does for knighthood; how they sniffed at each otherʼs door, with an eye to the rotten bones under the straw, as we all smell about for the wealthy; how their courtesy to one another flowed from their own convenience—these, and a thousand other dog–tricks, Caldo, dwelling apart, observed, but did not condemn, for he felt that they were his own. Now he hushed his bark of joy, and looked up wistfully at his master, for he knew by the expression of that face all things were not as they ought to be. Why had Wena snapped at him so, and avoided his society, though he had always been so good to her, and even thought of an alliance? Why did his master order him home that dull night in the covert, when he was sure he had done no harm? Above all, what meant that moving blackness he had seen through the trees only yesterday, when the other dogs (muffs as they were) expected a regular battue, and came out strong at their kennel doors, and barked for young Clayton to fetch them?So he looked up now in his masterʼs face, and guessed that it meant a long farewell, perhaps a farewell for ever. He took a fond look into his eyes, and his own pupils told great volumes. Then he sat up, and begged for a minute or two, with a most beseeching glance, to share his masterʼs fortunes, though he might have to steal his livelihood,and never get any shooting. Seeing that this could never be, he planted his fore–paws on Cradockʼs breast (though he felt that it was a liberty) and nestled his nose right under his cheek, and wanted to keep him ever so long. Then he howled with a low, enduring despair, as the footfall he loved grew fainter.Looking back sadly, now and then, at the tranquil home of his childhood, whose wings, and gables, and depths of stone were grand in the autumn sunset, Cradock Nowell went his way toward the simple Rectory: he would say good–bye there to Uncle John and the kind Aunt Doxy; Miss Rosedew the younger, of course, would avoid him, as she had done ever since. But suddenly he could not resist the strange desire to see once more that fatal, miserable spot, the bidental of his destiny. So he struck into a side–path leading to the deep and bosky covert.The long shadows fell from the pale birch stems, the hollies looked black in the sloping light, and the brown leaves fluttered down here and there as the cold wind set the trees shivering. Only six days ago, only half an hour further into the dusk, he had slain his own twin–brother. He crawled up the hedge through the very same gap, for he could not leap it now; his back ached with weakness, his heart with despair, as he stayed himself by the same hazel–branch which had struck his gun at the muzzle. Then he shivered, as the trees did, and his hair, like the brown leaves, rustled, as heknelt and prayed that his brotherʼs spirit might appear there and forgive him. Hoping and fearing to find it there, he sidled down into the dark wood, and with his heart knocking hard against his ribs, forced himself to go forward.All at once his heart stood still, and every nerve of his body went creeping—for he saw a tall, white figure kneeling where his brotherʼs blood was—kneeling, never moving, the hands together as in prayer, the face as wan as immortality, the black hair—if it were hair—falling straight as a pall drawn back from an alabaster coffin–head. The power of the entire form was not of earth, nor heaven; but as of the intermediate state, when we know not we are dead yet.Cradock could not think nor breathe. The whole of his existence was frozen up in awe. It showed him in the after time, when he could think about it, the ignorance, the insolence, of dreaming that any human state is quit of human fear. While he gazed, in dread to move (not knowing his limbs would refuse him), with his whole life swallowed up in gazing at the world beyond the grave, the tall, white figure threw its arms up to the darkening sky, rose, and vanished instantly.What do you think Cradock Nowell did? We all know what he ought to have done. He ought to have walked up calmly, with measured yet rapid footsteps, and his eyes and wits well about him, and investigated everything. Instead of that,he cut and ran as hard as he could go; and I know I should have done the same, and I believe more than half of you would, unless you were too much frightened. He would never turn back upon living man; but our knowledge of Hades is limited. We pray for angels around our bed; if they came, we should have nightmare.Cradock, going at a desperate pace, with a handsome pair of legs, which had recovered their activity, kicked up something hard and bright from a little dollop of leaves, caught it in his hand like a tennis–ball, and leaped the hedgeuno impetu. Away he went, without stopping to think, through the splashy sides of the spire–bed, almost as fast, and quite as much frightened, as Rufus Huttonʼs mare. When he got well out into the chase, he turned, and began to laugh at himself; but a great white owl flapped over a furze–bush, and away went Cradock again. The light had gone out very suddenly, as it often does in October, and Cradock (whose wind was uncommonly good) felt it his duty to keep good hours at the Rectory. So, with the bright thing, whatever it was, poked anywhere into his pocket, he came up the drive at early tea–time, and got a glimpse through the window of Amy.“Couldnʼt have been Amy, at any rate”, he said to himself, in extinction of some very vague ideas; “I defy her to come at the pace I have done. No, no; it must have been in answer to my desperate prayer”.Amy was gone, though her cup was there, when Cradock entered the drawing–room. “Well”, he thought, “how hard–hearted she is! But it cannot matter now, much. Though I never believed she would be so”.Being allowed by his kind entertainers to do exactly as he pleased, poor Cradock had led the life of a hermit more than that of a guest among them. He had taken what little food he required in the garret he had begged for, or carried it with him into the woods, where most of his time was spent. Of course all this was very distressing to the hospitable heart of Miss Doxy; but her brother John would have it so, for so he had promised Cradock. He could understand the reluctance of one who feels himself under a ban to meet his fellow–creatures hourly, and know that they all are thinking of him. So it came to pass that Miss Eudoxia, who now sat alone in the drawing–room, was surprised as well as pleased at the entrance of their refugee. As he hesitated a moment, in doubt of his reception, she ran up at once, took both his hands, and kissed him on the forehead.“Oh, Cradock, my dear boy, this is kind of you; most kind, indeed, to come and tell me at once of your success. I need not ask—I know by your face; the first bit of colour I have seen in your poor cheeks this many a day”.“Thatʼs because I have been running, Miss Rosedew”.“Miss Rosedew, indeed; andnow, Cradock!Aunt Eudoxia, if you please, or Aunt Doxy, with all my heart, now”.He used to call her so, to tease her, in the happy days gone by; and she loved to be teased by him, her pet and idol.“Dear Aunt Eudoxia, tell me truly, do you think—I can hardly ask you”.“Think what, Cradock? My poor Cradock; oh, donʼt be like that”!“Not that I did—I donʼt mean that—but that it was possible for me to have done it on purpose”?“Done what on purpose, Cradock”?“Why, of course, that horrible, horrible thing”.“On purpose, Cradock! My poor innocent! Only let me hear any one dream of it, and if I donʼt come down upon them”.An undignified sentence, that of Aunt Doxyʼs, as well as a most absurd one. How long has she been in the habit of hearing people dream?“Some one not only dreams it, some one actually believes that I did it so”.“The low wretch—the despicable—who”?“My own father”.I will not repeat what Miss Rosedew said, when she recovered from her gasp, because her language was stronger than becomes an elderly lady and the sister of a clergyman, not to mention the Countess of Driddledrum and Dromore, who must have been wholly forgotten.“Then you donʼt think, dear Aunt Eudoxia, that—that Uncle John would believe it”?“What, my brother John! Surely you know better than that, my dear”.“Nor—nor—perhaps not even cousin Amy”?“Amy, indeed! I do believe that child is perfectly mad. I canʼt make her out at all, she is so contradictory. She cries half the night, I am sure of that; and she does not care for her school, though she goes there; and her flowers she wonʼt look at”.Seeing that Cradockʼs countenance fell more and more at all this, Miss Rosedew, who had long suspected where his heart was dwelling, told him a thing to cheer him up, which she had declared she would never tell.“Darling Amy is, you know, a very odd girl indeed. Sometimes, when something happens very puzzling and perplexing, some great visitation of Providence, Amy becomes so dreadfully obstinate, I mean she has such delightful faith, that we are obliged to listen to her. And she is quite sure to be right in the end, though at the moment, perhaps, we laugh at her. And yet she is so shy, you can never get at her heart, except by forgetting what you are about. Well, we got at it somehow this afternoon; and you should have heard what she said. Her beautiful great eyes flashed upon us, like the rock that was struck, and gushed like it, before she ended. ‘Can we dare to think’, she cried, ‘that our God is asleep like Baal—that He knows not when He has chastened His children beyond what they can bear? I know that he,who is now so trampled and crushed of Heaven, is not tried thus for nothing. He shall rise again more pure and large, and fresh from the hand of God, and do what lucky men rarely think of—the will of his Creator’. And, when John and I looked at her, she fell away and cried terribly”.Cradock was greatly astonished: it seemed so unlike young Amy to be carried away in that style. But her comfort and courage struck root in his heart, and her warm faith thawed his despair. Still he saw very little chance, at present, of doing anything but starving.“How wonderfully good you all are to me! But I canʼt talk about it, though I shall think of it as long as I live. I am going away to–night, Aunt Doxy, but I must first see Uncle John”.Of course Miss Rosedew was very angry, and proved it to be quite impossible that Cradock should leave them so; but, before very long, her good sense prevailed, and she saw that it was for the best. While he stayed there, he must either persist to shut himself up in solitude, or wander about in desert places, and never look with any comfort on the face of man. So she went with him to the door of the book–room, and left him with none but her brother.John Rosedew sat in his little room, with only one candle to light him, and the fire gone out as usual: his books lay all around him, even his best–loved treasures, but his heart was not among them. The grief of the old, though not wild and passionateas a young manʼs anguish, is perhaps more pitiable, because more slow and hopeless. The young tree rings to the keen pruning–hook, the old tree groans to the grating saw; but one will blossom and bear again, while the other gapes with canker. None of his people had heard the rector quote any Greek or Latin for a length of time unprecedented. When a sweet and playful mind, like his, has taken to mope and be earnest, the effect is far more sad and touching than a stern manʼs melancholy. Ironworks out of blast are dreary, but the family hearth moss–grown is woeful.Uncle John leaped up very lightly from his brooding (rather than reading), and shook Cradock Nowell by the hand, as if he never would let him go, all the time looking into his face by the light of a composite candle. It was only to know how he had fared, and John read his face too truly. Then, as Cradock turned away, not wanting to make much of it, John came before him with sadness and love, and his blue eyes glistened softly.“My boy, my boy”! was all he could say, or think, for a very long time. Then Cradock told him, without a tear, a sigh, or even a comment, but with his face as pale as could be, and his breath coming heavily, all that his father had said to him, and all that he meant to do through it.“And so, Uncle John”, he concluded, rising to start immediately, “here I go to seek my fortune, such as it will and must be. Good–bye, my best and only friend. I am ten times the man I wasyesterday, and shall be grander still to–morrow”. He tried to pop off like a lively cork, but John Rosedew would not have it.“Young man, donʼt be in a hurry. It strikes me that I want a pipe; and it also strikes me that you will smoke one with me”.Cradock was taken aback by the novelty of the situation. He had never dreamed that Uncle John could, under any possible circumstances, ask him to smoke a pipe. He knew well enough that the rector smoked a sacrificial pipe to Morpheus, in a room of his own up–stairs; only one, while chewing the cud of all he had read that day. But Mr. Rosedew had always discouraged, as elderly smokers do, any young aspirants to the mystic hierophancy. It is not a vow to be taken rashly, for the vow is irrevocable; except with men of no principle.And now he was to smoke there—he, a mere bubble–blowing boy, to smoke in the middle of deepest books, to fumigate a manuscript containing a lifeful of learning, which John could no more get on with; and—oh Miss Eudoxia!—to make the hall smell and the drawing–room! The oxymoron overcame him, and he took his pipe: John Rosedew had filled it judiciously, and quite as a matter of course; he filled his own in the self–same manner, with a digital skill worthy of an ancient fox trying on a foxglove. All the time, John was shyly wondering at his own great force of character.“Now”, said John Rosedew, still keeping it up, “I have a drop of very old Schiedam—Schnapps I think, or something—of which I want your opinion; Crad, my boy, I want your opinion, before we import any more. I am no judge of that sort of thing; it is so long since I was at Oxford”.Without more ado, he went somewhither, after lighting Cradockʼs yard of clay—which the young man burnt his fingers about, for he wouldnʼt let the old man do it—and came back like a Bacchanal, with a square black–jack beneath his arm, and Jenny after him, wondering whether they had not prayed that morning enough against the devil. It was a good job Miss Amy was out of the way; the old cat was bewitched, that was certain, as well as her dear good master. Miss Doxy was happy in knowing not that she was called “the old cat” in the kitchen.
CHAPTER XXV.That evening Dr. Hutton started, on his long swift mare, for the Hall at Nowelhurst, where he had promised to be. He kissed his Rosa many times, and begged her pardon half as often, for all the crimes that day committed. Her brother Ralph, from Fordingbridge, who always slept there at short notice, because the house was lonely, would be sure to come (they knew) when the little boy Bob was sent for him. Ralph Mohorn—poor Rosa rejoiced in her rather uncommon patronymic, though perhaps it means Cow–horn—Ralph Mohorn was only too glad to come and sleep at Geopharmacy Lodge. He was a fine, fresh–hearted fellow, only about nineteen years old; his father held him hard at home, and of course he launched out all the more abroad. So he kicked up, as he expressed it, “the devilʼs own dust” when he got to the Lodge, ordered everything in the house for supper, with a bottle of whisky afterwards—which he nevertouched, only he liked the name of the thing—and then a cardinal, or the biggest meerschaum to be found in any of the cupboards. His pipe, however, was not, like his grog, a phantom of the imagination; for he really smoked it, and sat on three chairs, while he “baited” Rosa, as he called it, with all the bogeys in Christendom. It was so delicious now to be able to throw her into a tremble, and turn her cheeks every colour, and then recollect that a few years since she had smacked his own cheeksad libitum. However, we have little to do with him, and now he is a jolly farmer.Rufus Hutton rode through Ringwood over the low bridge where the rushes rustle everlastingly, and the trout and dace for ever wag their pellucid tails up stream. How all that water, spreading loosely, wading over miles of meadows, growing leagues of reed and rush, mistress of a world in winter, how it all is content to creep through a pair of little bridges—matter of such mystery, let the Christchurch salmon solve it. Dr. Hutton went gaily over—at least his mare went gaily—but he was thinking (beyond his wont) of the business he had in hand. He admired the pleasant old town as he passed, and the still more pleasant waters; but his mare, the favourite Polly, went on at her usual swing, until they came to the long steep hill towards the Picked Post. As he walked her up the sharp parts of the rise, he began to ponder the mysterious visit of those convivial strangers. It was very plain that neither of them knew or caredthe turn of a trowel about the frank art of gardening; that, of course, was only a sham; then what did they really come for? Rufus, although from childhood upwards he had been hospitable to his own soul, that is to say, regarded himself with genial approbation, was not by any means blindly conceited, and could not suppose that his fame, for anything except gardening, had spread through the regions round about. So he felt that his visitors had come, not for his sake, but their own. And it was not long before he suspected that they wished to obtain through him some insight, perhaps even some influence, into and in the course of events now toward at Nowelhurst Hall. They had altogether avoided the subject; which made him the more suspicious, for at present it was of course the leading topic of the county.However, as they were related to the family, while he, Rufus Hutton, was not, it was not his place to speak of the matter, but to let his guests do as they liked about it. They had made him promise, moreover, to dine with the Kettledrums on the very earliest day he could fix—viz. the following Wednesday—and there he was to meet Mr. and Mrs. Corklemore. Was it possible that they intended, and perhaps had been instructed, to subject the guest on that occasion to more skilful manipulation than that of their rude male fingers?“Iʼll take Rosa with me”, said Rufus to himself; “a woman sees a womanʼs game best; though Rosa, thank Heaven, is not very Machiavellian. How veryodd, that neither of those men had the decency to carry a bit of crape, out of respect for that poor boy; and I, who am noway connected with him, have been indued by my Roe with a hat–band”!Shrewd as our friend Rufus was, he could not be charged with low cunning, and never guessed that those two men had donned the show of mourning, and made the most of it round their neighbourhood to impress people with their kinship to the great Nowells of Nowelhurst, but that their guardian angels had disarrayed them ere they started, having no desire to set Rufus thinking about their chance of succession. As the sharp little doctor began to revolve all he had heard about Corklemore, his mare came to the Burley–road where they must leave the turnpike. Good Polly struck into it, best foot foremost, and, as she never would bear the curb well, her rider had quite enough to do, in the gathering darkness, and on that cross–country track, to attend to their common safety.She broke from the long stride of her trot into a reaching canter, as the moon grew bright between the trees, and the lane was barred with shadow. Pricking nervously her ears at every flaw or rustle, bending her neck to show her beauty, where the light fell clear on the moor–top, then with a snort of challenge plunging into the black of the hollows, yet ready to jump the road and away, if her challenge should be answered; bounding across thewater–gulley and looking askance at a fern–shadow; then saying to herself, “It is only the moon, child”, and up the ascent half ashamed of herself; then shaking her bridle with reassurance to think of that mile of great danger flown by, and the mash and the warm stable nearer, and the pleasure of telling that great roan horse how brave she had been in the moonlight——“Goodness me! Whatʼs that”?She leaped over road and roadside bank, and into a heavy gorse–bush, and stood there quivering from muzzle to tail in the intensity of terror. If Rufus had not just foreseen her alarm, and gripped her with all his power, he must have lain senseless upon the road, spite of all his rough–riding in India.“Who–hoa, who–hoa, then, Polly, you little fool, you are killing me! Canʼt you see itʼs only a lady”?Polly still backed into the bush, and her unlucky rider, with every prickle running into him, could see the whites of her eyes in the moonshine, as the great orbs stood out with horror. Opposite to them, and leaning against a stile which led to a footpath, there stood a maiden dressed in black, with the moonlight sheer upon her face. She took no notice of anything; she had heard no sort of footfall; she did not know of Pollyʼs capers, or the danger she was causing. Her face, with the hunterʼs moon upon it, would have been glorious beauty, but for the broad rims under the eyes, andthe spectral paleness. One moment longer she stared at the moon, as if questing for some one gone thither, then turned away with a heavy sigh, and went towards the Coffin Wood.All this time Rufus Hutton was utterly blind to romance, being scarified in the calf and thighs beyond any human endurance. Polly backed further and further away from the awful vision before her—the wife of the horse–fiend at least—and every fresh swerve sent a new lot of furze–pricks into the peppery legs of Rufus.“Hang it”! he cried, “here goes; no man with a haʼporth of flesh in him could stand it any longer. Thorn for thorn, Miss Polly”. He dashed his spurs deep into her flanks, the spurs he had only worn for show, and never dared to touch her with. For a moment she trembled, and reared upright in wrath worse than any horror; then away she went like a storm of wind, headlong through trees and bushes. It was all pure luck or Providence that Rufus was not killed. He grasped her neck, and lay flat upon it; he clung with his supple legs around her; he called her his Polly, his darling Polly, and begged her to consider herself. She considered neither herself nor him, but dashed through the wild wood, wilder herself, not knowing light from darkness. Any low beech branch, any scrag holly, even a trail of loose ivy, and man and horse were done for. The lights of more than a million stars flashed before Rufus Hutton, and he made up his mind to die, and wondered how Rosawould take it. Perhaps she would marry again, and rear up another family who knew not the name of Hutton; perhaps she would cry her eyes out. Smack, a young branch took him in the face, though he had one hand before it. “Go it again”! he cried, with the pluck of a man despairing, and then he rolled over and over, and dug for himself a rabbit–hole of sand, and dead leaves, and moss. There he lay on his back, and prayed, and luckily let go the bridle.The mare had fallen, and grovelled in the rotten ground where the rabbits lived; then she got up and shook herself, and the stirrups struck fire beneath her, and she spread out all her legs, and neighed for some horse to come and help her. She could not go any further; she had vented her soul, and must come to herself, like a lady after hysterics. Presently she sniffed round a bit, and the grass smelled crisp and dewy, and, after the hot corn and musty hay, it was fresher than ice upon brandy. So she looked through the trees, and saw only a squirrel, which did not frighten her at all, because she was used to rats. Then she brought her forelegs well under her stomach, and stretched her long neck downwards, and skimmed the wet blades with her upper lip, and found them perfectly wholesome. Every horse knows what she did then and there, to a great extent, till she had spoiled her relish for supper.After that, she felt grateful and good, and it repented her of the evil, and she whinnied aboutfor the master who had outraged her feelings so deeply. She found him still insensible, on his back, beneath a beech–tree, with six or seven rabbits, and even a hare, come to see what the matter was. Then Polly, who had got the bit out of her mouth, gave him first a poke with it, and then nuzzled him under the coat–collar, and blew into his whiskers as she did at the chaff in her manger. She was beginning to grieve and get very uneasy, taking care not to step on him, and went round him ever so many times, and whinnied into his ear, when either that, or the dollop of grass half chewed which lay on his countenance, revived the great spirit of Rufus Hutton, and he opened his eyes and looked languidly. He saw two immense black eyes full upon him, tenderly touched by the moonlight, and he felt a wet thing like a sponge poking away at his nostrils.“Polly”, he said, “oh, Polly dear, how could you serve me so? What will your poor mistress say”?Polly could neither recriminate nor defend herself; so she only looked at him beseechingly, and what she meant was, “Oh, do get up”.So Rufus arose, and dusted himself, and kissed Polly for forgiveness, and she, if she had only learned how, would have stooped like a camel before him. He mounted, with two or three groans for his back, and left the mare to her own devices to find the road again. It was very pretty to see in the moonlight how carefully she went with him, not even leaping the small water–courses, but feeling herfooting through them. And so they got into the forest–track, some half mile from where they had left it; they saw the gleam of Bull Garnetʼs windows, and knew the straight road to the Hall.Sir Cradock Nowell did not appear. Of course that was not expected; but kind John Rosedew came up from the parsonage to keep Rufus Hutton company. So the two had all the great dinner–table to themselves entirely; John, as the old friend, sat at the head, and the doctor sat by his right hand. Although there were few men in the world with the depth of mind, and variety, the dainty turns of thought, the lacework infinitely rich of original mind and old reading, which made John Rosedewʼs company a forest for to wander in and be amazed with pleasure; Rufus Hutton, sore and stiff, and aching in the back, thought he had rarely come across so very dry a parson.John was not inclined to talk: he was thinking of his Cradock, and he had a care of still sharper tooth—what had happened to his Amy? He had come up much against his wishes, only as a duty, on that dreary Saturday night, just that Mr. Hutton, who had been so very kind, might not think himself neglected. John had dined four hours ago, but that made no difference to him, for he seldom knew when hehaddined, and when he was expected to do it. Nevertheless he was human, for he loved his bit of supper.Mr. Rosedew had laboured hard, but vainly, to persuade Sir Cradock Nowell to send some or anymessage to his luckless son. “No”, he replied, “he did not wish to see him any more, or at any rate not at present; it would be too painful to him. Of course he was sorry for him, and only hoped he was half as sorry for himself”. John Rosedew did not dream as yet of the black idea working even now in the lonely fatherʼs mind, gaining the more on his better heart because he kept it secret. The old man was impatient now even of the old friendʼs company; he wanted to sit alone all day weaving and unravelling some dark skein of evidence, and as yet he was not so possessed of the devil as to cease to feel ashamed of him. “Coarse language”! cries some votary of our self–conscious euphemism. But show me any plainer work of the father of unbelief than want of faith in our fellow–creatures, when we have proved and approved them; want of faith in our own flesh and blood, with no cause for it but the imputed temptation. It shall go hard with poor old Sir Cradock, and none shall gainsay his right to it.Silence was a state of the air at once uncongenial to Dr. Huttonʼs system and repugnant to all his finest theories of digestion. For lo, how all nature around us protests against the Trappists, and the order of St. Benedict! See how the cattle get together when they have dined in the afternoon, and had their drink out of the river. Donʼt they flip their tails, and snuffle, and grunt at their own fine sentiments, and all the while they are chewing the cud take stock of one another?Donʼt they discuss the asilus and œstrum, the last news of the rinderpest, and the fly called by some the cow–dab, and donʼt they abuse the festuca tribe, and the dyspepsia of the sorrel? Is the thrush mute when he has bolted his worm, or the robin over his spiderʼs eggs?So Rufus looked through his glass of port, which he took merely as a corrective to the sherry of the morning, cocked one eye first, and then the other, and loosed the golden bands of speech.“Uncommonly pretty girls, Mr. Rosedew, all about this neighbourhood”.“Very likely, Dr. Hutton; I see many pleasant faces; but I am no judge of beauty”. He leaned back with an absent air, just as if he knew nothing about it. And all the while he was saying to himself, “Pretty girls indeed! Is there one of them like my Amy”?“A beautiful girl I saw to–night. But I donʼt wish to see much more beauty in that way. Nearly cost me my life, I know. You are up in the classics so: what is it we used to read at school?—Helene, Helenaus, Helip—something—teterrima belli causa fuit. Upon my word, I havenʼt talked so much Latin and Greek—have another glass of port, just for company; the dry vintage of ’34 canʼt hurt anybody”. John Rosedew took another glass, for his spirits were low, and the wine was good, and the parson felt then that he ought to have more confidence in God. Then he brought his mind to bear on the matter, and listened veryattentively while the doctor described, with a rush of warm language and plenteous exaggeration, the fright of his mare at that mournful vision, the vision itself, and the consequences.“Sir, you must have ridden like a Centaur, or like Alexander. What will Mrs. Hutton say? But are you sure that she leaped an oak–tree”?“Perfectly certain”, said Rufus, gravely, “clean through the fork of the branches, and the acorns rattled upon my hat, like the hail of the Himalaya”.“Remarkable! Most remarkable”!“But you have not told me yet”, continued Dr. Hutton, “although I am sure that you know, who the beautiful young lady is”.“From your description, and the place, though I have not heard that they are in mourning, I think it must have been Miss Garnet”.“Miss Garnet! What Miss Garnet? Not Bull Garnetʼs daughter? I never heard that he had one”.“Yes, he has, and a very nice girl. My Amy knows a little of her. But he does not allow her to visit much, and is most repressive to her. Unwise, in my opinion; not the way to treat a daughter; one should have confidence in her, as I have in my dear child”.“Oh, you have confidence in Miss Rosedew; and she goes out whenever she likes, I suppose”?“Of course she does”, said the simple John,wondering at the question; “that is, of course, whenever it is right for her”.“Of which, I suppose, she herself is the judge”.“Why, no, not altogether. Her aunt has a voice in the matter always, and a very potent one”.“And, of course, Miss Rosedew, managed upon such enlightened principles, never attempts to deceive you”?“Amy! my Amy deceive me”! The rector turned pale at the very idea. “But these questions are surely unusual from a gentleman whom I have known for so very short a time. I am entitled, in turn, to ask your reason for putting them”. Mr. Rosedew, never suspecting indignities, could look very dignified.“Iʼm in for it now”, thought Rufus Hutton; “what a fool I am! I fancied the old fellow had nonous, except for Latin and Greek”.Strange to say, the old fellow hadnousenough to notice his hesitation. John Rosedew got up from his chair, and stood looking at Rufus Hutton.“Sir, I will thank you to tell me exactly what you mean about my daughter”.“Nothing at all, Mr. Rosedew. What do you suppose Ishouldmean”?“Youshouldmean nothing at all, sir. But I believe that youdomean something. And, please God, I will have it out of you”. Rufus Hutton said afterwards that he had two great frights thatevening, and he believed the last was the worst. The parson never dreamed that any man could be afraid of him, except it were a liar, and he looked upon Rufus contemptuously. The man of the world was nothing before the man of truth.“Mr. Rosedew”, said Rufus, recovering himself, “your conduct is very extraordinary; and (you will excuse my saying it) more violent than becomes a man of your position and character”.“No violence becomes any man, whatever his position. I am sorry if I have been violent”.“You have indeed”, said Rufus, pushing his advantage: a generous man would have said, “No, you havenʼt”, at seeing the parsonʼs distress, and so would Rufus have said, if he had happened to be in the right; “so violent, Mr. Rosedew, that I believe you almost frightened me”.“Dear me”! said John, reflecting, “and he has just leaped an oak–tree! I must have been very bad”.“Donʼt mention it, my dear sir, I entreat you say no more about it. We all know what a father is”. And Rufus Hutton, who did not yet, but expected to know in some three months, grew very large, and felt himself able to patronise the rector. “Mr. Rosedew, I as well am to blame. I am thoughtless, sir, very thoughtless, or rather I should say too thoughtful; I am too fond of seeing round a corner, which I have always been famous for. Sir, a man who possesses this power, this gift, this—I donʼt know the word for it, but I have nodoubt you do—that man is apt to—I mean to—— ”“Knock his head against a wall”? suggested the parson, in all good faith.“No, you mistake me; I donʼt mean that at all; I mean that a man with this extraordinary foresight, which none can understand except those who are gifted with it, is liable sometimes, is amenable—I mean to—to—— ”“See double. Ah, yes, I can quite understand it”. John Rosedew shut his eyes, and felt up for a disquisition, yet wanted to hear of his daughter.“No, my dear sir, no. It is something very far from anything so commonplace as that. What I mean is—only I cannot express it, because you interrupt me so—that a man may have this faculty, this insight, this perception, which saves him from taking offence where none whatever is meant, and yet, as it were by some obliquity of the vision, may seem, in some measure, to see the wrong individual”. Here Rufus felt like the dwarf Alypius, when he had stodged Iamblichus.“That is an interesting question, and reminds me of the state ofἀῤῥεψίαas described in the life of Pyrrho by Diogenes Laertius; whose errors, if I may venture to say it, have been made too much of by the great Isaac Casaubon, then scarcely mature of judgment. It will give me the greatest pleasure to go into that question with you. But not just now. I am thrown out so sadly, and my memory fails me”—John Rosedew had fanciedthis, by–the–by, ever since he was thirty years old—“only tell me one thing, Dr. Hutton, and I am very sorry for my violence; you meant no harm about my daughter”? Here the grey–haired man, with the mighty forehead, opened his clear blue eyes, and looked down upon Rufus beseechingly.“Upon my honour as a gentleman, I mean no harm whatever. I made the greatest mistake, and I see the mistake I made”.“Will you tell me, sir, what it was? Just to ease my mind. I am sure that you will”.“No, I must not tell you now, until I have worked the matter out. You will thank me for not doing so. But I apologise most heartily. I feel extremely uncomfortable. No claret, sir, but the port, if you please. I was famous, in India, for my nerve; but now it seems to be failing me”.Rufus, as we now perceive, had fully discovered his mistake, and was trying to trace the consequences. The beautiful girl whom he saw in the wood, that evening, with Clayton Nowell, was not our Amy at all, but Mr. Garnetʼs daughter. He knew the face, though changed and white, when it frightened his mare in the moonlight; and, little time as he had to think, it struck him then as very strange that Miss Rosedew should be there. Bull Garnetʼs cottage, on the other hand, was quite handy in the hollow.
That evening Dr. Hutton started, on his long swift mare, for the Hall at Nowelhurst, where he had promised to be. He kissed his Rosa many times, and begged her pardon half as often, for all the crimes that day committed. Her brother Ralph, from Fordingbridge, who always slept there at short notice, because the house was lonely, would be sure to come (they knew) when the little boy Bob was sent for him. Ralph Mohorn—poor Rosa rejoiced in her rather uncommon patronymic, though perhaps it means Cow–horn—Ralph Mohorn was only too glad to come and sleep at Geopharmacy Lodge. He was a fine, fresh–hearted fellow, only about nineteen years old; his father held him hard at home, and of course he launched out all the more abroad. So he kicked up, as he expressed it, “the devilʼs own dust” when he got to the Lodge, ordered everything in the house for supper, with a bottle of whisky afterwards—which he nevertouched, only he liked the name of the thing—and then a cardinal, or the biggest meerschaum to be found in any of the cupboards. His pipe, however, was not, like his grog, a phantom of the imagination; for he really smoked it, and sat on three chairs, while he “baited” Rosa, as he called it, with all the bogeys in Christendom. It was so delicious now to be able to throw her into a tremble, and turn her cheeks every colour, and then recollect that a few years since she had smacked his own cheeksad libitum. However, we have little to do with him, and now he is a jolly farmer.
Rufus Hutton rode through Ringwood over the low bridge where the rushes rustle everlastingly, and the trout and dace for ever wag their pellucid tails up stream. How all that water, spreading loosely, wading over miles of meadows, growing leagues of reed and rush, mistress of a world in winter, how it all is content to creep through a pair of little bridges—matter of such mystery, let the Christchurch salmon solve it. Dr. Hutton went gaily over—at least his mare went gaily—but he was thinking (beyond his wont) of the business he had in hand. He admired the pleasant old town as he passed, and the still more pleasant waters; but his mare, the favourite Polly, went on at her usual swing, until they came to the long steep hill towards the Picked Post. As he walked her up the sharp parts of the rise, he began to ponder the mysterious visit of those convivial strangers. It was very plain that neither of them knew or caredthe turn of a trowel about the frank art of gardening; that, of course, was only a sham; then what did they really come for? Rufus, although from childhood upwards he had been hospitable to his own soul, that is to say, regarded himself with genial approbation, was not by any means blindly conceited, and could not suppose that his fame, for anything except gardening, had spread through the regions round about. So he felt that his visitors had come, not for his sake, but their own. And it was not long before he suspected that they wished to obtain through him some insight, perhaps even some influence, into and in the course of events now toward at Nowelhurst Hall. They had altogether avoided the subject; which made him the more suspicious, for at present it was of course the leading topic of the county.
However, as they were related to the family, while he, Rufus Hutton, was not, it was not his place to speak of the matter, but to let his guests do as they liked about it. They had made him promise, moreover, to dine with the Kettledrums on the very earliest day he could fix—viz. the following Wednesday—and there he was to meet Mr. and Mrs. Corklemore. Was it possible that they intended, and perhaps had been instructed, to subject the guest on that occasion to more skilful manipulation than that of their rude male fingers?
“Iʼll take Rosa with me”, said Rufus to himself; “a woman sees a womanʼs game best; though Rosa, thank Heaven, is not very Machiavellian. How veryodd, that neither of those men had the decency to carry a bit of crape, out of respect for that poor boy; and I, who am noway connected with him, have been indued by my Roe with a hat–band”!
Shrewd as our friend Rufus was, he could not be charged with low cunning, and never guessed that those two men had donned the show of mourning, and made the most of it round their neighbourhood to impress people with their kinship to the great Nowells of Nowelhurst, but that their guardian angels had disarrayed them ere they started, having no desire to set Rufus thinking about their chance of succession. As the sharp little doctor began to revolve all he had heard about Corklemore, his mare came to the Burley–road where they must leave the turnpike. Good Polly struck into it, best foot foremost, and, as she never would bear the curb well, her rider had quite enough to do, in the gathering darkness, and on that cross–country track, to attend to their common safety.
She broke from the long stride of her trot into a reaching canter, as the moon grew bright between the trees, and the lane was barred with shadow. Pricking nervously her ears at every flaw or rustle, bending her neck to show her beauty, where the light fell clear on the moor–top, then with a snort of challenge plunging into the black of the hollows, yet ready to jump the road and away, if her challenge should be answered; bounding across thewater–gulley and looking askance at a fern–shadow; then saying to herself, “It is only the moon, child”, and up the ascent half ashamed of herself; then shaking her bridle with reassurance to think of that mile of great danger flown by, and the mash and the warm stable nearer, and the pleasure of telling that great roan horse how brave she had been in the moonlight——
“Goodness me! Whatʼs that”?
She leaped over road and roadside bank, and into a heavy gorse–bush, and stood there quivering from muzzle to tail in the intensity of terror. If Rufus had not just foreseen her alarm, and gripped her with all his power, he must have lain senseless upon the road, spite of all his rough–riding in India.
“Who–hoa, who–hoa, then, Polly, you little fool, you are killing me! Canʼt you see itʼs only a lady”?
Polly still backed into the bush, and her unlucky rider, with every prickle running into him, could see the whites of her eyes in the moonshine, as the great orbs stood out with horror. Opposite to them, and leaning against a stile which led to a footpath, there stood a maiden dressed in black, with the moonlight sheer upon her face. She took no notice of anything; she had heard no sort of footfall; she did not know of Pollyʼs capers, or the danger she was causing. Her face, with the hunterʼs moon upon it, would have been glorious beauty, but for the broad rims under the eyes, andthe spectral paleness. One moment longer she stared at the moon, as if questing for some one gone thither, then turned away with a heavy sigh, and went towards the Coffin Wood.
All this time Rufus Hutton was utterly blind to romance, being scarified in the calf and thighs beyond any human endurance. Polly backed further and further away from the awful vision before her—the wife of the horse–fiend at least—and every fresh swerve sent a new lot of furze–pricks into the peppery legs of Rufus.
“Hang it”! he cried, “here goes; no man with a haʼporth of flesh in him could stand it any longer. Thorn for thorn, Miss Polly”. He dashed his spurs deep into her flanks, the spurs he had only worn for show, and never dared to touch her with. For a moment she trembled, and reared upright in wrath worse than any horror; then away she went like a storm of wind, headlong through trees and bushes. It was all pure luck or Providence that Rufus was not killed. He grasped her neck, and lay flat upon it; he clung with his supple legs around her; he called her his Polly, his darling Polly, and begged her to consider herself. She considered neither herself nor him, but dashed through the wild wood, wilder herself, not knowing light from darkness. Any low beech branch, any scrag holly, even a trail of loose ivy, and man and horse were done for. The lights of more than a million stars flashed before Rufus Hutton, and he made up his mind to die, and wondered how Rosawould take it. Perhaps she would marry again, and rear up another family who knew not the name of Hutton; perhaps she would cry her eyes out. Smack, a young branch took him in the face, though he had one hand before it. “Go it again”! he cried, with the pluck of a man despairing, and then he rolled over and over, and dug for himself a rabbit–hole of sand, and dead leaves, and moss. There he lay on his back, and prayed, and luckily let go the bridle.
The mare had fallen, and grovelled in the rotten ground where the rabbits lived; then she got up and shook herself, and the stirrups struck fire beneath her, and she spread out all her legs, and neighed for some horse to come and help her. She could not go any further; she had vented her soul, and must come to herself, like a lady after hysterics. Presently she sniffed round a bit, and the grass smelled crisp and dewy, and, after the hot corn and musty hay, it was fresher than ice upon brandy. So she looked through the trees, and saw only a squirrel, which did not frighten her at all, because she was used to rats. Then she brought her forelegs well under her stomach, and stretched her long neck downwards, and skimmed the wet blades with her upper lip, and found them perfectly wholesome. Every horse knows what she did then and there, to a great extent, till she had spoiled her relish for supper.
After that, she felt grateful and good, and it repented her of the evil, and she whinnied aboutfor the master who had outraged her feelings so deeply. She found him still insensible, on his back, beneath a beech–tree, with six or seven rabbits, and even a hare, come to see what the matter was. Then Polly, who had got the bit out of her mouth, gave him first a poke with it, and then nuzzled him under the coat–collar, and blew into his whiskers as she did at the chaff in her manger. She was beginning to grieve and get very uneasy, taking care not to step on him, and went round him ever so many times, and whinnied into his ear, when either that, or the dollop of grass half chewed which lay on his countenance, revived the great spirit of Rufus Hutton, and he opened his eyes and looked languidly. He saw two immense black eyes full upon him, tenderly touched by the moonlight, and he felt a wet thing like a sponge poking away at his nostrils.
“Polly”, he said, “oh, Polly dear, how could you serve me so? What will your poor mistress say”?
Polly could neither recriminate nor defend herself; so she only looked at him beseechingly, and what she meant was, “Oh, do get up”.
So Rufus arose, and dusted himself, and kissed Polly for forgiveness, and she, if she had only learned how, would have stooped like a camel before him. He mounted, with two or three groans for his back, and left the mare to her own devices to find the road again. It was very pretty to see in the moonlight how carefully she went with him, not even leaping the small water–courses, but feeling herfooting through them. And so they got into the forest–track, some half mile from where they had left it; they saw the gleam of Bull Garnetʼs windows, and knew the straight road to the Hall.
Sir Cradock Nowell did not appear. Of course that was not expected; but kind John Rosedew came up from the parsonage to keep Rufus Hutton company. So the two had all the great dinner–table to themselves entirely; John, as the old friend, sat at the head, and the doctor sat by his right hand. Although there were few men in the world with the depth of mind, and variety, the dainty turns of thought, the lacework infinitely rich of original mind and old reading, which made John Rosedewʼs company a forest for to wander in and be amazed with pleasure; Rufus Hutton, sore and stiff, and aching in the back, thought he had rarely come across so very dry a parson.
John was not inclined to talk: he was thinking of his Cradock, and he had a care of still sharper tooth—what had happened to his Amy? He had come up much against his wishes, only as a duty, on that dreary Saturday night, just that Mr. Hutton, who had been so very kind, might not think himself neglected. John had dined four hours ago, but that made no difference to him, for he seldom knew when hehaddined, and when he was expected to do it. Nevertheless he was human, for he loved his bit of supper.
Mr. Rosedew had laboured hard, but vainly, to persuade Sir Cradock Nowell to send some or anymessage to his luckless son. “No”, he replied, “he did not wish to see him any more, or at any rate not at present; it would be too painful to him. Of course he was sorry for him, and only hoped he was half as sorry for himself”. John Rosedew did not dream as yet of the black idea working even now in the lonely fatherʼs mind, gaining the more on his better heart because he kept it secret. The old man was impatient now even of the old friendʼs company; he wanted to sit alone all day weaving and unravelling some dark skein of evidence, and as yet he was not so possessed of the devil as to cease to feel ashamed of him. “Coarse language”! cries some votary of our self–conscious euphemism. But show me any plainer work of the father of unbelief than want of faith in our fellow–creatures, when we have proved and approved them; want of faith in our own flesh and blood, with no cause for it but the imputed temptation. It shall go hard with poor old Sir Cradock, and none shall gainsay his right to it.
Silence was a state of the air at once uncongenial to Dr. Huttonʼs system and repugnant to all his finest theories of digestion. For lo, how all nature around us protests against the Trappists, and the order of St. Benedict! See how the cattle get together when they have dined in the afternoon, and had their drink out of the river. Donʼt they flip their tails, and snuffle, and grunt at their own fine sentiments, and all the while they are chewing the cud take stock of one another?Donʼt they discuss the asilus and œstrum, the last news of the rinderpest, and the fly called by some the cow–dab, and donʼt they abuse the festuca tribe, and the dyspepsia of the sorrel? Is the thrush mute when he has bolted his worm, or the robin over his spiderʼs eggs?
So Rufus looked through his glass of port, which he took merely as a corrective to the sherry of the morning, cocked one eye first, and then the other, and loosed the golden bands of speech.
“Uncommonly pretty girls, Mr. Rosedew, all about this neighbourhood”.
“Very likely, Dr. Hutton; I see many pleasant faces; but I am no judge of beauty”. He leaned back with an absent air, just as if he knew nothing about it. And all the while he was saying to himself, “Pretty girls indeed! Is there one of them like my Amy”?
“A beautiful girl I saw to–night. But I donʼt wish to see much more beauty in that way. Nearly cost me my life, I know. You are up in the classics so: what is it we used to read at school?—Helene, Helenaus, Helip—something—teterrima belli causa fuit. Upon my word, I havenʼt talked so much Latin and Greek—have another glass of port, just for company; the dry vintage of ’34 canʼt hurt anybody”. John Rosedew took another glass, for his spirits were low, and the wine was good, and the parson felt then that he ought to have more confidence in God. Then he brought his mind to bear on the matter, and listened veryattentively while the doctor described, with a rush of warm language and plenteous exaggeration, the fright of his mare at that mournful vision, the vision itself, and the consequences.
“Sir, you must have ridden like a Centaur, or like Alexander. What will Mrs. Hutton say? But are you sure that she leaped an oak–tree”?
“Perfectly certain”, said Rufus, gravely, “clean through the fork of the branches, and the acorns rattled upon my hat, like the hail of the Himalaya”.
“Remarkable! Most remarkable”!
“But you have not told me yet”, continued Dr. Hutton, “although I am sure that you know, who the beautiful young lady is”.
“From your description, and the place, though I have not heard that they are in mourning, I think it must have been Miss Garnet”.
“Miss Garnet! What Miss Garnet? Not Bull Garnetʼs daughter? I never heard that he had one”.
“Yes, he has, and a very nice girl. My Amy knows a little of her. But he does not allow her to visit much, and is most repressive to her. Unwise, in my opinion; not the way to treat a daughter; one should have confidence in her, as I have in my dear child”.
“Oh, you have confidence in Miss Rosedew; and she goes out whenever she likes, I suppose”?
“Of course she does”, said the simple John,wondering at the question; “that is, of course, whenever it is right for her”.
“Of which, I suppose, she herself is the judge”.
“Why, no, not altogether. Her aunt has a voice in the matter always, and a very potent one”.
“And, of course, Miss Rosedew, managed upon such enlightened principles, never attempts to deceive you”?
“Amy! my Amy deceive me”! The rector turned pale at the very idea. “But these questions are surely unusual from a gentleman whom I have known for so very short a time. I am entitled, in turn, to ask your reason for putting them”. Mr. Rosedew, never suspecting indignities, could look very dignified.
“Iʼm in for it now”, thought Rufus Hutton; “what a fool I am! I fancied the old fellow had nonous, except for Latin and Greek”.
Strange to say, the old fellow hadnousenough to notice his hesitation. John Rosedew got up from his chair, and stood looking at Rufus Hutton.
“Sir, I will thank you to tell me exactly what you mean about my daughter”.
“Nothing at all, Mr. Rosedew. What do you suppose Ishouldmean”?
“Youshouldmean nothing at all, sir. But I believe that youdomean something. And, please God, I will have it out of you”. Rufus Hutton said afterwards that he had two great frights thatevening, and he believed the last was the worst. The parson never dreamed that any man could be afraid of him, except it were a liar, and he looked upon Rufus contemptuously. The man of the world was nothing before the man of truth.
“Mr. Rosedew”, said Rufus, recovering himself, “your conduct is very extraordinary; and (you will excuse my saying it) more violent than becomes a man of your position and character”.
“No violence becomes any man, whatever his position. I am sorry if I have been violent”.
“You have indeed”, said Rufus, pushing his advantage: a generous man would have said, “No, you havenʼt”, at seeing the parsonʼs distress, and so would Rufus have said, if he had happened to be in the right; “so violent, Mr. Rosedew, that I believe you almost frightened me”.
“Dear me”! said John, reflecting, “and he has just leaped an oak–tree! I must have been very bad”.
“Donʼt mention it, my dear sir, I entreat you say no more about it. We all know what a father is”. And Rufus Hutton, who did not yet, but expected to know in some three months, grew very large, and felt himself able to patronise the rector. “Mr. Rosedew, I as well am to blame. I am thoughtless, sir, very thoughtless, or rather I should say too thoughtful; I am too fond of seeing round a corner, which I have always been famous for. Sir, a man who possesses this power, this gift, this—I donʼt know the word for it, but I have nodoubt you do—that man is apt to—I mean to—— ”
“Knock his head against a wall”? suggested the parson, in all good faith.
“No, you mistake me; I donʼt mean that at all; I mean that a man with this extraordinary foresight, which none can understand except those who are gifted with it, is liable sometimes, is amenable—I mean to—to—— ”
“See double. Ah, yes, I can quite understand it”. John Rosedew shut his eyes, and felt up for a disquisition, yet wanted to hear of his daughter.
“No, my dear sir, no. It is something very far from anything so commonplace as that. What I mean is—only I cannot express it, because you interrupt me so—that a man may have this faculty, this insight, this perception, which saves him from taking offence where none whatever is meant, and yet, as it were by some obliquity of the vision, may seem, in some measure, to see the wrong individual”. Here Rufus felt like the dwarf Alypius, when he had stodged Iamblichus.
“That is an interesting question, and reminds me of the state ofἀῤῥεψίαas described in the life of Pyrrho by Diogenes Laertius; whose errors, if I may venture to say it, have been made too much of by the great Isaac Casaubon, then scarcely mature of judgment. It will give me the greatest pleasure to go into that question with you. But not just now. I am thrown out so sadly, and my memory fails me”—John Rosedew had fanciedthis, by–the–by, ever since he was thirty years old—“only tell me one thing, Dr. Hutton, and I am very sorry for my violence; you meant no harm about my daughter”? Here the grey–haired man, with the mighty forehead, opened his clear blue eyes, and looked down upon Rufus beseechingly.
“Upon my honour as a gentleman, I mean no harm whatever. I made the greatest mistake, and I see the mistake I made”.
“Will you tell me, sir, what it was? Just to ease my mind. I am sure that you will”.
“No, I must not tell you now, until I have worked the matter out. You will thank me for not doing so. But I apologise most heartily. I feel extremely uncomfortable. No claret, sir, but the port, if you please. I was famous, in India, for my nerve; but now it seems to be failing me”.
Rufus, as we now perceive, had fully discovered his mistake, and was trying to trace the consequences. The beautiful girl whom he saw in the wood, that evening, with Clayton Nowell, was not our Amy at all, but Mr. Garnetʼs daughter. He knew the face, though changed and white, when it frightened his mare in the moonlight; and, little time as he had to think, it struck him then as very strange that Miss Rosedew should be there. Bull Garnetʼs cottage, on the other hand, was quite handy in the hollow.
CHAPTER XXVI.At this melancholy time, John Rosedew had quite enough to do without any burden of fresh anxieties about his own pet Amy. Nevertheless, that burden was added; not by Dr. Huttonʼs vague questions, although they helped to impose it, but by the fatherʼs own observation of his darlingʼs strange condition. “Can it be”, he asked himself, and often longed to ask her, as he saw only lilies where roses had been, and little hands trembling at breakfast–time, “can it be that this child of mine loved the poor boy Clayton, and is wasting away in sorrow for him? Is that the reason why she will not meet Cradock, nor Cradock meet her, and she trembles at his name? And then that book which Aunt Doxy made her throw on the kitchen fire—very cruel I now see it was of my good sister Eudoxia, though at first I did not think so—that book I know was poor Claytonʼs, for I have seen it in his hand. Well, if it truly is so, there is nothing to be done, except to be unusuallykind to her, and trust to time for the cure, and give her plenty of black–currant jam”.These ideas he imparted to the good Aunt Doxy, who delivered some apophthegms (which John did not want to listen to), but undertook, whatever should happen, to be down upon Amy sharply. She knew all about her tonsils and her uvula, and all that stuff, and she did not want Johnʼs advice, though she had never had a family; and thank God heartily for it!On Monday, when the funeral came to Nowelhurst churchyard, John Rosedew felt his heart give way, and could not undertake it. At the risk of deeply offending Sir Cradock, whose nerves that day were of iron, he passed the surplice to his curate, Mr. Pell, of Rushford; and begged him, with a sad slow smile, to do the duty for him. Sir Cradock Nowell frowned, and coloured, and then bowed low with an icy look, when he saw the change which had been made, and John Rosedew fall in as a mourner. People said that from that day the old friendship was dissevered.John, for his part, could not keep his eyes from the nook of the churchyard, where among the yew–trees stood, in the bitterness of anguish, he who had not asked, nor been asked, to attend as mourner. Cradock bowed his head and wept, for now his tears came freely, and prayed the one Almighty Father, who alone has mercy, not to take his misery from him, but to take him from it.When the mould was cast upon the coffin, blackWena came between peopleʼs legs, gave a cry, and jumped in after it, thinking to retrieve her master, like a stick from the water. She made such a mournful noise in the grave, and whimpered, and put her head down, and wondered why no one said “Wena, dear”, that all the school–girls burst out sobbing—having had apples from Clayton lately—and Octavius Pell, the great cricketer, wanted something soft for his throat.That evening, when all was over, and the grave heaped snugly up, and it was time to think of other things and begin to wonder at sorrow, John Rosedew went to Sir Cradock Nowell, not only as a fellow–mourner and a friend of ancient days, but as a minister of Christ. It had cost John many struggles; and, what with his sense of worldly favours, schoolday–friendship, delicacy, he could scarce tell what to make of it, till he just went down on his knees and prayed; then the learned man learned his duty.Sir Cradock turned his head away, as if he did not want him. John held out his hand, and said nothing.“Mr. Rosedew, I am surprised to see you. And yet, John, this is kind of you”.John hoped that he only said “Mr. Rosedew”, because the footman was lingering, and he tried not to feel the difference.“Cradock, you know what I am, as well as I know what you are. Fifty years, my dear fellow, fifty years of friendship”.“Yes, John, I remember when I was twelve years old, and you fought Sam Cockings for me”.“And, Cradock, I thrashed him fairly; you know I thrashed him fairly. They said I got his head under the form; but you know it was all a lie. How I do hate lies! I believe it began that day. If so, the dislike is subjective. Perhaps I ought to reconsider it”.“John, I know nothing in your life which you ought to reconsider, except what you are doing now”.Sir Cradock Nowell began the combat, because he felt that it must be waged; and perhaps he knew in that beginning that he had the weaker cause.“Cradock, I am doing nothing which is not my simple duty. When I see those I love in the deepest distress, can I help siding with them”?“Upon that principle, or want of it, you might espouse, as a duty, the cause of any murderer”.The old man shuddered, and his voice shook, as he whispered that last word. As yet he had not worked himself up, nor been worked up by others, to the black belief which made the living lost beyond the dead.“I am sure I donʼt know what I might do”, said John Rosedew, simply, “but what I am doing now is right; and in your heart you know it. Come, Cradock, as an old man now, and one whom God has visited, forgive your poor, your noble son, who never will forgive himself”.But for one word in that speech, John Rosedew would perhaps have won his cause, and reconciled son and father.“Mynobleson indeed, John! A very noble thing he has done. Shall I never hear the last of his nobility? And who ever called my Clayton noble? You have been unfair throughout, John Rosedew, most unfair and blind to the merits of my more loving, more simple–hearted, more truly noble boy, I tell you”.Mr. Rosedew, at such a time, could not of course contest the point, could not tell the bereaved old man that it was he himself who had been unfair.“And when”, asked Sir Cradock, getting warmer, “when did you know my poor boy Violet stick up for political opinions of his own at the age of twenty, want to drain tenants’ cottages, and pretend to be better and wiser than his father”?“And when have you known Cradock do, at any rate, the latter”?“Ever since he got that scholarship, that Scotland thing at Oxford”—Sir Cradock knew the name well enough, as every Oxford man does—“he has been perfectly insufferable; such arrogance, such conceit, such airs! And he only got it by a trick. Poor Viley ought to have had it”.John Rosedew tried to control himself, but the gross untruth and injustice of that last accusation were a little too much for him.“Perhaps, Sir Cradock Nowell, you will allowthat I am a competent judge of the relative powers of the two boys, who knew all they did know from me, and from no one else”.“Of course, I know you are a competent judge, only blinded by partiality”.John allowed even that to go by.“Without any question of preference, simply as a lover of literature, I say that Clayton had no chance with him in a Greek examination. In Latin he would have run him close. You know I always said so, even before they went to college. I was surprised, at the time, that they mentioned Clayton even as second to him”.“And grieved, I dare say, deeply grieved, if the truth were told”!“It is below me to repel mean little accusations”.“Come, John Rosedew”, said Sir Cradock, magnanimously and liberally, “I can forgive you for being quarrelsome, even at such a time as this. It always was so, and I suppose it always will be. To–day I am not fit for much, though perhaps you do not know it. Thinking so little of my dead boy, you are surprised that I should grieve for him”.“I should be surprised indeed if you did not. God knows even I have grieved deeply, as for a son of my own”.“Shake hands, John; you are a good fellow—the best fellow in the world. Forgive me forbeing petulant. You donʼt know how my heart aches”.After that it was impossible to return for the moment to Cradock Nowell. But the next day John renewed the subject, and at length obtained a request from the father that his son should come to him.By this time Cradock hardly knew when he was doing anything, and when he was doing nothing. He seemed to have no regard for any one, no concern about anything, least of all for himself. Even his love for Amy Rosedew had a pall thrown over it, and lay upon the trestles. The only thing he cared at all for was his fatherʼs forgiveness: let him get that, and then go away and be seen no more among them. He could not think, or feel surprise, or fear, or hope for anything; he could only tell himself all day long, that if God were kind He would kill him. A young life wrecked, so utterly wrecked, and through no fault of its own; unless (as some begin to dream) we may not slay for luxury; unless we have but a limited right to destroy our Fatherʼs property.Sir Cradock, it has been stated, cared a great deal more for his children than he did for his ancestors. He had not been wondering, through his sorrow, what the world would say of him, what it would think of the Nowells; he had a little too much self–respect to care a fig for foolʼs–tongue. Now he sat in his carved oak–chair, expecting hisonly son, and he tried to sit upright. But the flatness of his back was gone, never to return; and the shoulder–blades showed through his coat, like a spoon left under the tablecloth. Still he appeared a stately man, one not easily bowed by fortune, or at least not apt to acknowledge it.Young Cradock entered his fatherʼs study, with a flush on his cheeks, which had been so pale, and his mind made up for endurance, but his wits going round like a swirl of leaves. He could not tell what he might say or do. He began to believe he had shot his father, and to wonder whether it hurt him much. Trying in vain to master his thoughts, he stood with his quivering hands clasped hard, and his chin upon his breast.So perhaps Adrastus stood, Adrastus son of Gordias, before the childless Crœsus; and the simple words are these.“After this there came the Lydians carrying the corpse. And behind it followed the slayer. And standing there before the corpse, he gave himself over to Crœsus, stretching forth his hands, commanding to slay him upon the corpse, telling both his own former stress, and how upon the top of that he had destroyed his cleanser, nor was his life now liveable. Crœsus, having heard these things, though being in so great a trouble of the hearth, has compassion on Adrastus, and says to him—— ”“But Adrastus, son of Gordias, son of Midas, this man, I say, who had been the slayer of hiswomb–brother, and slayer of him that cleansed him, when there was around the grave a quietude from men, feeling that he was of all men whom he had ever seen the most weighed down with trouble, kills himself dead upon the tomb”.But the father now was not like Croesus, the generous–hearted Lydian, although the man who stood before him was not a runagate from Phrygia, but the son of his own loins. The father did not look at him, but kept his eyes fixed on the window, as though he knew not any were near him. Then the son could wait no more, but spoke in a hollow, trembling voice:“Father, I am come, as you ordered”.“Yes. I will not keep you long. Perhaps you want to go out” (“shooting” he was about to say, but could not be quite so cruel). “I only wish so to settle matters that we may meet no more”.“Oh, father—my own father!—for Godʼs sake!—if there be a God—donʼt speak to me like that”!“Sir, I shall take it as a proof that you are still a gentleman, which at least you used to be, if you will henceforth address me as ‘Sir Cradock Nowell’, a title which soon will be your own”.“Father, look me in the face, and ask me; then I will”.Sir Cradock Nowell still looked forth the heavily–tinted window. His son, his only, his grief–worn son, was kneeling at his side, unable to weep, too proud to sob, with the sense of deep wrong rising.If the father once had looked at him, nature must have conquered.“Mr. Nowell, I have only admitted you that we might treat of business. Allow me to forget the face of a fratricide, perhapsmurderer”.Cradock Nowell fell back heavily, for he had risen from his knees. The crown of his head crashed the glass of a picture, and blood showered down his pale face. He never even put his hand up, to feel what was the matter. He said nothing, not a syllable; but stood there, and let the room go round. How his mother must have wept, if she was looking down from heaven!The old man, having all the while a crude, dim sense of outrunning his heart, gave the youth time to recover himself, if it were a thing worth recovering.“Now, as to our arrangements—the subject I wished to speak about. I only require your consent to the terms I propose, until, in the natural course of events, you succeed to the family property”.“What family property, sir”? Cradockʼs head was dizzy still, the bleeding had done him good.“Why, of course, the Nowelhurst property; all these entailed estates, to which you are now sole heir”.“I will never touch one shilling, nor step upon one acre of it”.“Under your motherʼs—that is to say, under my marriage–settlement”, continued Sir Cradock, in the same tone, as if his son were only bantering, “you are at once entitled to the sum of 50,000l.invested in Three per Cent. Consols—which would have been—I mean, which was meant for younger children. This sum the trustees will be prepared—— ”“Do you think I will touch it? Am I a thief as well as a murderer”?“I shall also make arrangements for securing to you, until my death, an income of 5000l.per annum. This you can draw for quarterly, and the cheques will be countersigned by my steward, Mr. Garnet”.“Of course, lest I should forge. Once for all, hear me, Sir Cradock Nowell. So help me the God who has now forsaken me, who has turned my life to death, and made my own father curse me—every word of yours is a curse, I say—so help me that God (if there be one to help, as well as to smite a man), till you crave my pardon upon your knees, as I have craved yours this day, I will never take one yard of your land, I will never call myself ‘Nowell’, or own you again as my father. God knows I am very unlucky and little, but you have shown yourself less. And some day you will know it”.In the full strength of his righteous pride, he walked for the first time like a man, since heleaped that deadly hedge. From that moment a change came over him. There was nothing to add to his happiness, but something to rouse his manhood. The sense of justice, the sense of honour—that flower and crown of justice—forbade him henceforth to sue, and be shy, and bemoan himself under hedges. From that day forth he was as a man visited of God, and humbled, but facing ever his fellow–men, and not ashamed of affliction.
At this melancholy time, John Rosedew had quite enough to do without any burden of fresh anxieties about his own pet Amy. Nevertheless, that burden was added; not by Dr. Huttonʼs vague questions, although they helped to impose it, but by the fatherʼs own observation of his darlingʼs strange condition. “Can it be”, he asked himself, and often longed to ask her, as he saw only lilies where roses had been, and little hands trembling at breakfast–time, “can it be that this child of mine loved the poor boy Clayton, and is wasting away in sorrow for him? Is that the reason why she will not meet Cradock, nor Cradock meet her, and she trembles at his name? And then that book which Aunt Doxy made her throw on the kitchen fire—very cruel I now see it was of my good sister Eudoxia, though at first I did not think so—that book I know was poor Claytonʼs, for I have seen it in his hand. Well, if it truly is so, there is nothing to be done, except to be unusuallykind to her, and trust to time for the cure, and give her plenty of black–currant jam”.
These ideas he imparted to the good Aunt Doxy, who delivered some apophthegms (which John did not want to listen to), but undertook, whatever should happen, to be down upon Amy sharply. She knew all about her tonsils and her uvula, and all that stuff, and she did not want Johnʼs advice, though she had never had a family; and thank God heartily for it!
On Monday, when the funeral came to Nowelhurst churchyard, John Rosedew felt his heart give way, and could not undertake it. At the risk of deeply offending Sir Cradock, whose nerves that day were of iron, he passed the surplice to his curate, Mr. Pell, of Rushford; and begged him, with a sad slow smile, to do the duty for him. Sir Cradock Nowell frowned, and coloured, and then bowed low with an icy look, when he saw the change which had been made, and John Rosedew fall in as a mourner. People said that from that day the old friendship was dissevered.
John, for his part, could not keep his eyes from the nook of the churchyard, where among the yew–trees stood, in the bitterness of anguish, he who had not asked, nor been asked, to attend as mourner. Cradock bowed his head and wept, for now his tears came freely, and prayed the one Almighty Father, who alone has mercy, not to take his misery from him, but to take him from it.
When the mould was cast upon the coffin, blackWena came between peopleʼs legs, gave a cry, and jumped in after it, thinking to retrieve her master, like a stick from the water. She made such a mournful noise in the grave, and whimpered, and put her head down, and wondered why no one said “Wena, dear”, that all the school–girls burst out sobbing—having had apples from Clayton lately—and Octavius Pell, the great cricketer, wanted something soft for his throat.
That evening, when all was over, and the grave heaped snugly up, and it was time to think of other things and begin to wonder at sorrow, John Rosedew went to Sir Cradock Nowell, not only as a fellow–mourner and a friend of ancient days, but as a minister of Christ. It had cost John many struggles; and, what with his sense of worldly favours, schoolday–friendship, delicacy, he could scarce tell what to make of it, till he just went down on his knees and prayed; then the learned man learned his duty.
Sir Cradock turned his head away, as if he did not want him. John held out his hand, and said nothing.
“Mr. Rosedew, I am surprised to see you. And yet, John, this is kind of you”.
John hoped that he only said “Mr. Rosedew”, because the footman was lingering, and he tried not to feel the difference.
“Cradock, you know what I am, as well as I know what you are. Fifty years, my dear fellow, fifty years of friendship”.
“Yes, John, I remember when I was twelve years old, and you fought Sam Cockings for me”.
“And, Cradock, I thrashed him fairly; you know I thrashed him fairly. They said I got his head under the form; but you know it was all a lie. How I do hate lies! I believe it began that day. If so, the dislike is subjective. Perhaps I ought to reconsider it”.
“John, I know nothing in your life which you ought to reconsider, except what you are doing now”.
Sir Cradock Nowell began the combat, because he felt that it must be waged; and perhaps he knew in that beginning that he had the weaker cause.
“Cradock, I am doing nothing which is not my simple duty. When I see those I love in the deepest distress, can I help siding with them”?
“Upon that principle, or want of it, you might espouse, as a duty, the cause of any murderer”.
The old man shuddered, and his voice shook, as he whispered that last word. As yet he had not worked himself up, nor been worked up by others, to the black belief which made the living lost beyond the dead.
“I am sure I donʼt know what I might do”, said John Rosedew, simply, “but what I am doing now is right; and in your heart you know it. Come, Cradock, as an old man now, and one whom God has visited, forgive your poor, your noble son, who never will forgive himself”.
But for one word in that speech, John Rosedew would perhaps have won his cause, and reconciled son and father.
“Mynobleson indeed, John! A very noble thing he has done. Shall I never hear the last of his nobility? And who ever called my Clayton noble? You have been unfair throughout, John Rosedew, most unfair and blind to the merits of my more loving, more simple–hearted, more truly noble boy, I tell you”.
Mr. Rosedew, at such a time, could not of course contest the point, could not tell the bereaved old man that it was he himself who had been unfair.
“And when”, asked Sir Cradock, getting warmer, “when did you know my poor boy Violet stick up for political opinions of his own at the age of twenty, want to drain tenants’ cottages, and pretend to be better and wiser than his father”?
“And when have you known Cradock do, at any rate, the latter”?
“Ever since he got that scholarship, that Scotland thing at Oxford”—Sir Cradock knew the name well enough, as every Oxford man does—“he has been perfectly insufferable; such arrogance, such conceit, such airs! And he only got it by a trick. Poor Viley ought to have had it”.
John Rosedew tried to control himself, but the gross untruth and injustice of that last accusation were a little too much for him.
“Perhaps, Sir Cradock Nowell, you will allowthat I am a competent judge of the relative powers of the two boys, who knew all they did know from me, and from no one else”.
“Of course, I know you are a competent judge, only blinded by partiality”.
John allowed even that to go by.
“Without any question of preference, simply as a lover of literature, I say that Clayton had no chance with him in a Greek examination. In Latin he would have run him close. You know I always said so, even before they went to college. I was surprised, at the time, that they mentioned Clayton even as second to him”.
“And grieved, I dare say, deeply grieved, if the truth were told”!
“It is below me to repel mean little accusations”.
“Come, John Rosedew”, said Sir Cradock, magnanimously and liberally, “I can forgive you for being quarrelsome, even at such a time as this. It always was so, and I suppose it always will be. To–day I am not fit for much, though perhaps you do not know it. Thinking so little of my dead boy, you are surprised that I should grieve for him”.
“I should be surprised indeed if you did not. God knows even I have grieved deeply, as for a son of my own”.
“Shake hands, John; you are a good fellow—the best fellow in the world. Forgive me forbeing petulant. You donʼt know how my heart aches”.
After that it was impossible to return for the moment to Cradock Nowell. But the next day John renewed the subject, and at length obtained a request from the father that his son should come to him.
By this time Cradock hardly knew when he was doing anything, and when he was doing nothing. He seemed to have no regard for any one, no concern about anything, least of all for himself. Even his love for Amy Rosedew had a pall thrown over it, and lay upon the trestles. The only thing he cared at all for was his fatherʼs forgiveness: let him get that, and then go away and be seen no more among them. He could not think, or feel surprise, or fear, or hope for anything; he could only tell himself all day long, that if God were kind He would kill him. A young life wrecked, so utterly wrecked, and through no fault of its own; unless (as some begin to dream) we may not slay for luxury; unless we have but a limited right to destroy our Fatherʼs property.
Sir Cradock, it has been stated, cared a great deal more for his children than he did for his ancestors. He had not been wondering, through his sorrow, what the world would say of him, what it would think of the Nowells; he had a little too much self–respect to care a fig for foolʼs–tongue. Now he sat in his carved oak–chair, expecting hisonly son, and he tried to sit upright. But the flatness of his back was gone, never to return; and the shoulder–blades showed through his coat, like a spoon left under the tablecloth. Still he appeared a stately man, one not easily bowed by fortune, or at least not apt to acknowledge it.
Young Cradock entered his fatherʼs study, with a flush on his cheeks, which had been so pale, and his mind made up for endurance, but his wits going round like a swirl of leaves. He could not tell what he might say or do. He began to believe he had shot his father, and to wonder whether it hurt him much. Trying in vain to master his thoughts, he stood with his quivering hands clasped hard, and his chin upon his breast.
So perhaps Adrastus stood, Adrastus son of Gordias, before the childless Crœsus; and the simple words are these.
“After this there came the Lydians carrying the corpse. And behind it followed the slayer. And standing there before the corpse, he gave himself over to Crœsus, stretching forth his hands, commanding to slay him upon the corpse, telling both his own former stress, and how upon the top of that he had destroyed his cleanser, nor was his life now liveable. Crœsus, having heard these things, though being in so great a trouble of the hearth, has compassion on Adrastus, and says to him—— ”
“But Adrastus, son of Gordias, son of Midas, this man, I say, who had been the slayer of hiswomb–brother, and slayer of him that cleansed him, when there was around the grave a quietude from men, feeling that he was of all men whom he had ever seen the most weighed down with trouble, kills himself dead upon the tomb”.
But the father now was not like Croesus, the generous–hearted Lydian, although the man who stood before him was not a runagate from Phrygia, but the son of his own loins. The father did not look at him, but kept his eyes fixed on the window, as though he knew not any were near him. Then the son could wait no more, but spoke in a hollow, trembling voice:
“Father, I am come, as you ordered”.
“Yes. I will not keep you long. Perhaps you want to go out” (“shooting” he was about to say, but could not be quite so cruel). “I only wish so to settle matters that we may meet no more”.
“Oh, father—my own father!—for Godʼs sake!—if there be a God—donʼt speak to me like that”!
“Sir, I shall take it as a proof that you are still a gentleman, which at least you used to be, if you will henceforth address me as ‘Sir Cradock Nowell’, a title which soon will be your own”.
“Father, look me in the face, and ask me; then I will”.
Sir Cradock Nowell still looked forth the heavily–tinted window. His son, his only, his grief–worn son, was kneeling at his side, unable to weep, too proud to sob, with the sense of deep wrong rising.
If the father once had looked at him, nature must have conquered.
“Mr. Nowell, I have only admitted you that we might treat of business. Allow me to forget the face of a fratricide, perhapsmurderer”.
Cradock Nowell fell back heavily, for he had risen from his knees. The crown of his head crashed the glass of a picture, and blood showered down his pale face. He never even put his hand up, to feel what was the matter. He said nothing, not a syllable; but stood there, and let the room go round. How his mother must have wept, if she was looking down from heaven!
The old man, having all the while a crude, dim sense of outrunning his heart, gave the youth time to recover himself, if it were a thing worth recovering.
“Now, as to our arrangements—the subject I wished to speak about. I only require your consent to the terms I propose, until, in the natural course of events, you succeed to the family property”.
“What family property, sir”? Cradockʼs head was dizzy still, the bleeding had done him good.
“Why, of course, the Nowelhurst property; all these entailed estates, to which you are now sole heir”.
“I will never touch one shilling, nor step upon one acre of it”.
“Under your motherʼs—that is to say, under my marriage–settlement”, continued Sir Cradock, in the same tone, as if his son were only bantering, “you are at once entitled to the sum of 50,000l.invested in Three per Cent. Consols—which would have been—I mean, which was meant for younger children. This sum the trustees will be prepared—— ”
“Do you think I will touch it? Am I a thief as well as a murderer”?
“I shall also make arrangements for securing to you, until my death, an income of 5000l.per annum. This you can draw for quarterly, and the cheques will be countersigned by my steward, Mr. Garnet”.
“Of course, lest I should forge. Once for all, hear me, Sir Cradock Nowell. So help me the God who has now forsaken me, who has turned my life to death, and made my own father curse me—every word of yours is a curse, I say—so help me that God (if there be one to help, as well as to smite a man), till you crave my pardon upon your knees, as I have craved yours this day, I will never take one yard of your land, I will never call myself ‘Nowell’, or own you again as my father. God knows I am very unlucky and little, but you have shown yourself less. And some day you will know it”.
In the full strength of his righteous pride, he walked for the first time like a man, since heleaped that deadly hedge. From that moment a change came over him. There was nothing to add to his happiness, but something to rouse his manhood. The sense of justice, the sense of honour—that flower and crown of justice—forbade him henceforth to sue, and be shy, and bemoan himself under hedges. From that day forth he was as a man visited of God, and humbled, but facing ever his fellow–men, and not ashamed of affliction.
CHAPTER XXVII.With an even step, and no frown on his forehead, nor glimpse of a tear in his eyes, young Cradock walked to his own little room, his “nest”, as he used to call it; where pipes, and books, and Oxford prints—no ballet–girls, however, and not so very many hunters—and whips, and foils, and boxing–gloves—cum multis aliis quæ nunc describere longum est; et cui non dictalong ago?—were handled more often than dusted. All these things, except one pet little pipe, which he was now come to look for, and which Viley had given him a year ago, when they swopped pipes on their birthday (like Diomed and the brave Lycian), all the rest were things of a bygone age, to be thought of no more for the present, but dreamed of, perhaps, on a Christmas–eve, when the air is full of luxury.Caring but little for any of them, although he had loved them well until they seemed to injure him, Cradock proceeded with great equanimity todo a very foolish thing, which augured badly for the success of a young man just preparing to start for himself in the world. He poured the entire contents of his purse into a little cedar tray, then packed all the money in paper rolls with a neatness which rather astonished him, and sealed each roll with his amethyst ring. Then he put them into a little box of some rare and beautiful palm–wood, which had been his motherʼs, laid his cheque–book beside them (for he had been allowed a banking account long before he was of age), and placed upon that his gold watch and chain, and trinkets, the amethyst ring itself, his diamond studs, and other jewellery, even a locket which had contained two little sheaves of hair, bound together with golden thread, but from which he first removed, and packed in silver paper, the fair hair of his mother. This last, with the pipe which Clayton had given him, and the empty purse made by Amyʼs fingers, were all he meant to carry away, besides the clothes he wore.After locking the box he rang the bell, and begged the man who answered it to send old Hogstaff to him. That faithful servant, from whom he had learned so many lessons of infancy, came tottering along the passage, with his old eyes dull and heavy. For Job had gloried in those two brothers, and loved them both as the children of his elder days. And now one of them was gone for ever, in the height of his youth and beauty, and a whisper was in the household that the other would not stay.Of him, whom Job had always looked upon as his future master (for he meant to outlive the present Sir Cradock, as he had done the one before him), he had just been scoring upon his fingers all the things he had taught him—to whistle “Spankadillo”, while he drummed it with his knuckles; to come to the pantry–door, and respond to the “Whoʼs there”?—“A grenadier”! shouldering a broomstick; to play on the Jewʼs–harp, with variations, “An old friend, and a bottle to give him”; and then to uncork the fictitious bottle with the pop of his forefinger out of his mouth, and to decant it carefully with the pat of his gurgling cheeks! After all that, how could he believe Master Crad could ever forsake him?Now Mr. Hogstaffʼs legs were getting like the ripe pods of a scarlet–runner (although he did not run much); here they stuck in, and there they stuck out, abnormally in either case; his body began to come forward as if warped at the small of the back; and his honest face (though he drank but his duty) was Septemberʼd with many a vintage. And yet, with the keenness of love and custom, he saw at once what the matter was, as he looked up at the young master.“Oh, Master Crad, dear Master Crad, whatever are you going to do? Donʼt, for good now, donʼt, I beg on you. Hearken now; doʼee hearken to an old man for a minute”. And he caught him by both arms to stop him, with his tremulous, wrinkled hands.“O Hoggy, dear, kind Hoggy! you are about the only one left to care about me now”.“No, donʼt you say that, Master Crad; donʼt you say that, whatever you do. Whoever tell you that, tell a lie, sir. It was only last night Mrs. Toaster, and cook, and Mrs. OʼGaghan, the Irishwoman, was round the fire boiling, and they cried a deal more than they boiled, I do assure you they did, sir. And Mr. Stote, he come in with some rabbits, and he went on like mad. And the maids, so sorry every one of them, they canʼt be content with their mourning, sir; I do assure you they canʼt. Oh, donʼt ’ee do no harm to yourself, donʼt ’ee, Mr. Cradock, sir”.“No, Hoggy”, said Cradock, taking his hands; “you need not fear that now of me. I have had very wicked thoughts, but God has helped me over them. Henceforth I am resolved to bear my trouble like a man. It is the part of a dog to run, when the hoot begins behind him. Now, take this little box, and this key, and give them yourself to Sir Cradock Nowell. It is the last favour I shall ask of you. I am going away, my dear old friend; donʼt keep me now, for I must go. Only give me your good wishes; and see that they mind poor Caldo: and, whatever they say of me behind my back, you wonʼt believe it, Job Hogstaff, will you”?Job Hogstaff had never been harder put to it in all his seventy years. Then, as he stood at the open door to see the last of his favourite, hethought of the tall, dark womanʼs words so many years ago. “A bonnie pair ye have gat; but yeʼll ha’ no luck o’ them. Tak’ the word of threescore year, yeʼll never get no luck o’ ’em”.Cradock turned aside from his path, to say good–bye to Caldo. It would only take just a minute, he thought, and of course he should never see him again. So he went to that snuggest and sweetest of kennels, and in front of it sat the king of dogs.The varieties of canine are as manifold and distinct as those of human nature. But the dog, be he saturnine or facetious, sociable or contemplative, mercurial or melancholic, is quite sure to be one thing—true and loyal ever. Can we, who are less than the dogs of the Infinite, say as much of ourselves to Him? Now Caldo, as has been implied, if not expressed before, was a setter of large philosophy and rare reflective power. I mean, of course, theoretical more than practical philosophy; as any dog would soon have discovered who tried to snatch a bone from him. Moreover, he had some originality, and a turn for satire. He would sit sometimes by the hour, nodding his head impressively, and blinking first one eye and then the other, watching and considering the doings of his fellow–dogs. How fashionably they yawned and stretched, in a mode they had learned from a pointer, who was proud of his teeth and vertebræ; how they hooked up their tails for a couple of joints, and then let them fall at a right angle,having noticed that fashion in ladies’ bustles, when they came on a Sunday to talk to them; how they crawled on their stomachs to get a pat, as a provincial mayor does for knighthood; how they sniffed at each otherʼs door, with an eye to the rotten bones under the straw, as we all smell about for the wealthy; how their courtesy to one another flowed from their own convenience—these, and a thousand other dog–tricks, Caldo, dwelling apart, observed, but did not condemn, for he felt that they were his own. Now he hushed his bark of joy, and looked up wistfully at his master, for he knew by the expression of that face all things were not as they ought to be. Why had Wena snapped at him so, and avoided his society, though he had always been so good to her, and even thought of an alliance? Why did his master order him home that dull night in the covert, when he was sure he had done no harm? Above all, what meant that moving blackness he had seen through the trees only yesterday, when the other dogs (muffs as they were) expected a regular battue, and came out strong at their kennel doors, and barked for young Clayton to fetch them?So he looked up now in his masterʼs face, and guessed that it meant a long farewell, perhaps a farewell for ever. He took a fond look into his eyes, and his own pupils told great volumes. Then he sat up, and begged for a minute or two, with a most beseeching glance, to share his masterʼs fortunes, though he might have to steal his livelihood,and never get any shooting. Seeing that this could never be, he planted his fore–paws on Cradockʼs breast (though he felt that it was a liberty) and nestled his nose right under his cheek, and wanted to keep him ever so long. Then he howled with a low, enduring despair, as the footfall he loved grew fainter.Looking back sadly, now and then, at the tranquil home of his childhood, whose wings, and gables, and depths of stone were grand in the autumn sunset, Cradock Nowell went his way toward the simple Rectory: he would say good–bye there to Uncle John and the kind Aunt Doxy; Miss Rosedew the younger, of course, would avoid him, as she had done ever since. But suddenly he could not resist the strange desire to see once more that fatal, miserable spot, the bidental of his destiny. So he struck into a side–path leading to the deep and bosky covert.The long shadows fell from the pale birch stems, the hollies looked black in the sloping light, and the brown leaves fluttered down here and there as the cold wind set the trees shivering. Only six days ago, only half an hour further into the dusk, he had slain his own twin–brother. He crawled up the hedge through the very same gap, for he could not leap it now; his back ached with weakness, his heart with despair, as he stayed himself by the same hazel–branch which had struck his gun at the muzzle. Then he shivered, as the trees did, and his hair, like the brown leaves, rustled, as heknelt and prayed that his brotherʼs spirit might appear there and forgive him. Hoping and fearing to find it there, he sidled down into the dark wood, and with his heart knocking hard against his ribs, forced himself to go forward.All at once his heart stood still, and every nerve of his body went creeping—for he saw a tall, white figure kneeling where his brotherʼs blood was—kneeling, never moving, the hands together as in prayer, the face as wan as immortality, the black hair—if it were hair—falling straight as a pall drawn back from an alabaster coffin–head. The power of the entire form was not of earth, nor heaven; but as of the intermediate state, when we know not we are dead yet.Cradock could not think nor breathe. The whole of his existence was frozen up in awe. It showed him in the after time, when he could think about it, the ignorance, the insolence, of dreaming that any human state is quit of human fear. While he gazed, in dread to move (not knowing his limbs would refuse him), with his whole life swallowed up in gazing at the world beyond the grave, the tall, white figure threw its arms up to the darkening sky, rose, and vanished instantly.What do you think Cradock Nowell did? We all know what he ought to have done. He ought to have walked up calmly, with measured yet rapid footsteps, and his eyes and wits well about him, and investigated everything. Instead of that,he cut and ran as hard as he could go; and I know I should have done the same, and I believe more than half of you would, unless you were too much frightened. He would never turn back upon living man; but our knowledge of Hades is limited. We pray for angels around our bed; if they came, we should have nightmare.Cradock, going at a desperate pace, with a handsome pair of legs, which had recovered their activity, kicked up something hard and bright from a little dollop of leaves, caught it in his hand like a tennis–ball, and leaped the hedgeuno impetu. Away he went, without stopping to think, through the splashy sides of the spire–bed, almost as fast, and quite as much frightened, as Rufus Huttonʼs mare. When he got well out into the chase, he turned, and began to laugh at himself; but a great white owl flapped over a furze–bush, and away went Cradock again. The light had gone out very suddenly, as it often does in October, and Cradock (whose wind was uncommonly good) felt it his duty to keep good hours at the Rectory. So, with the bright thing, whatever it was, poked anywhere into his pocket, he came up the drive at early tea–time, and got a glimpse through the window of Amy.“Couldnʼt have been Amy, at any rate”, he said to himself, in extinction of some very vague ideas; “I defy her to come at the pace I have done. No, no; it must have been in answer to my desperate prayer”.Amy was gone, though her cup was there, when Cradock entered the drawing–room. “Well”, he thought, “how hard–hearted she is! But it cannot matter now, much. Though I never believed she would be so”.Being allowed by his kind entertainers to do exactly as he pleased, poor Cradock had led the life of a hermit more than that of a guest among them. He had taken what little food he required in the garret he had begged for, or carried it with him into the woods, where most of his time was spent. Of course all this was very distressing to the hospitable heart of Miss Doxy; but her brother John would have it so, for so he had promised Cradock. He could understand the reluctance of one who feels himself under a ban to meet his fellow–creatures hourly, and know that they all are thinking of him. So it came to pass that Miss Eudoxia, who now sat alone in the drawing–room, was surprised as well as pleased at the entrance of their refugee. As he hesitated a moment, in doubt of his reception, she ran up at once, took both his hands, and kissed him on the forehead.“Oh, Cradock, my dear boy, this is kind of you; most kind, indeed, to come and tell me at once of your success. I need not ask—I know by your face; the first bit of colour I have seen in your poor cheeks this many a day”.“Thatʼs because I have been running, Miss Rosedew”.“Miss Rosedew, indeed; andnow, Cradock!Aunt Eudoxia, if you please, or Aunt Doxy, with all my heart, now”.He used to call her so, to tease her, in the happy days gone by; and she loved to be teased by him, her pet and idol.“Dear Aunt Eudoxia, tell me truly, do you think—I can hardly ask you”.“Think what, Cradock? My poor Cradock; oh, donʼt be like that”!“Not that I did—I donʼt mean that—but that it was possible for me to have done it on purpose”?“Done what on purpose, Cradock”?“Why, of course, that horrible, horrible thing”.“On purpose, Cradock! My poor innocent! Only let me hear any one dream of it, and if I donʼt come down upon them”.An undignified sentence, that of Aunt Doxyʼs, as well as a most absurd one. How long has she been in the habit of hearing people dream?“Some one not only dreams it, some one actually believes that I did it so”.“The low wretch—the despicable—who”?“My own father”.I will not repeat what Miss Rosedew said, when she recovered from her gasp, because her language was stronger than becomes an elderly lady and the sister of a clergyman, not to mention the Countess of Driddledrum and Dromore, who must have been wholly forgotten.“Then you donʼt think, dear Aunt Eudoxia, that—that Uncle John would believe it”?“What, my brother John! Surely you know better than that, my dear”.“Nor—nor—perhaps not even cousin Amy”?“Amy, indeed! I do believe that child is perfectly mad. I canʼt make her out at all, she is so contradictory. She cries half the night, I am sure of that; and she does not care for her school, though she goes there; and her flowers she wonʼt look at”.Seeing that Cradockʼs countenance fell more and more at all this, Miss Rosedew, who had long suspected where his heart was dwelling, told him a thing to cheer him up, which she had declared she would never tell.“Darling Amy is, you know, a very odd girl indeed. Sometimes, when something happens very puzzling and perplexing, some great visitation of Providence, Amy becomes so dreadfully obstinate, I mean she has such delightful faith, that we are obliged to listen to her. And she is quite sure to be right in the end, though at the moment, perhaps, we laugh at her. And yet she is so shy, you can never get at her heart, except by forgetting what you are about. Well, we got at it somehow this afternoon; and you should have heard what she said. Her beautiful great eyes flashed upon us, like the rock that was struck, and gushed like it, before she ended. ‘Can we dare to think’, she cried, ‘that our God is asleep like Baal—that He knows not when He has chastened His children beyond what they can bear? I know that he,who is now so trampled and crushed of Heaven, is not tried thus for nothing. He shall rise again more pure and large, and fresh from the hand of God, and do what lucky men rarely think of—the will of his Creator’. And, when John and I looked at her, she fell away and cried terribly”.Cradock was greatly astonished: it seemed so unlike young Amy to be carried away in that style. But her comfort and courage struck root in his heart, and her warm faith thawed his despair. Still he saw very little chance, at present, of doing anything but starving.“How wonderfully good you all are to me! But I canʼt talk about it, though I shall think of it as long as I live. I am going away to–night, Aunt Doxy, but I must first see Uncle John”.Of course Miss Rosedew was very angry, and proved it to be quite impossible that Cradock should leave them so; but, before very long, her good sense prevailed, and she saw that it was for the best. While he stayed there, he must either persist to shut himself up in solitude, or wander about in desert places, and never look with any comfort on the face of man. So she went with him to the door of the book–room, and left him with none but her brother.John Rosedew sat in his little room, with only one candle to light him, and the fire gone out as usual: his books lay all around him, even his best–loved treasures, but his heart was not among them. The grief of the old, though not wild and passionateas a young manʼs anguish, is perhaps more pitiable, because more slow and hopeless. The young tree rings to the keen pruning–hook, the old tree groans to the grating saw; but one will blossom and bear again, while the other gapes with canker. None of his people had heard the rector quote any Greek or Latin for a length of time unprecedented. When a sweet and playful mind, like his, has taken to mope and be earnest, the effect is far more sad and touching than a stern manʼs melancholy. Ironworks out of blast are dreary, but the family hearth moss–grown is woeful.Uncle John leaped up very lightly from his brooding (rather than reading), and shook Cradock Nowell by the hand, as if he never would let him go, all the time looking into his face by the light of a composite candle. It was only to know how he had fared, and John read his face too truly. Then, as Cradock turned away, not wanting to make much of it, John came before him with sadness and love, and his blue eyes glistened softly.“My boy, my boy”! was all he could say, or think, for a very long time. Then Cradock told him, without a tear, a sigh, or even a comment, but with his face as pale as could be, and his breath coming heavily, all that his father had said to him, and all that he meant to do through it.“And so, Uncle John”, he concluded, rising to start immediately, “here I go to seek my fortune, such as it will and must be. Good–bye, my best and only friend. I am ten times the man I wasyesterday, and shall be grander still to–morrow”. He tried to pop off like a lively cork, but John Rosedew would not have it.“Young man, donʼt be in a hurry. It strikes me that I want a pipe; and it also strikes me that you will smoke one with me”.Cradock was taken aback by the novelty of the situation. He had never dreamed that Uncle John could, under any possible circumstances, ask him to smoke a pipe. He knew well enough that the rector smoked a sacrificial pipe to Morpheus, in a room of his own up–stairs; only one, while chewing the cud of all he had read that day. But Mr. Rosedew had always discouraged, as elderly smokers do, any young aspirants to the mystic hierophancy. It is not a vow to be taken rashly, for the vow is irrevocable; except with men of no principle.And now he was to smoke there—he, a mere bubble–blowing boy, to smoke in the middle of deepest books, to fumigate a manuscript containing a lifeful of learning, which John could no more get on with; and—oh Miss Eudoxia!—to make the hall smell and the drawing–room! The oxymoron overcame him, and he took his pipe: John Rosedew had filled it judiciously, and quite as a matter of course; he filled his own in the self–same manner, with a digital skill worthy of an ancient fox trying on a foxglove. All the time, John was shyly wondering at his own great force of character.“Now”, said John Rosedew, still keeping it up, “I have a drop of very old Schiedam—Schnapps I think, or something—of which I want your opinion; Crad, my boy, I want your opinion, before we import any more. I am no judge of that sort of thing; it is so long since I was at Oxford”.Without more ado, he went somewhither, after lighting Cradockʼs yard of clay—which the young man burnt his fingers about, for he wouldnʼt let the old man do it—and came back like a Bacchanal, with a square black–jack beneath his arm, and Jenny after him, wondering whether they had not prayed that morning enough against the devil. It was a good job Miss Amy was out of the way; the old cat was bewitched, that was certain, as well as her dear good master. Miss Doxy was happy in knowing not that she was called “the old cat” in the kitchen.
With an even step, and no frown on his forehead, nor glimpse of a tear in his eyes, young Cradock walked to his own little room, his “nest”, as he used to call it; where pipes, and books, and Oxford prints—no ballet–girls, however, and not so very many hunters—and whips, and foils, and boxing–gloves—cum multis aliis quæ nunc describere longum est; et cui non dictalong ago?—were handled more often than dusted. All these things, except one pet little pipe, which he was now come to look for, and which Viley had given him a year ago, when they swopped pipes on their birthday (like Diomed and the brave Lycian), all the rest were things of a bygone age, to be thought of no more for the present, but dreamed of, perhaps, on a Christmas–eve, when the air is full of luxury.
Caring but little for any of them, although he had loved them well until they seemed to injure him, Cradock proceeded with great equanimity todo a very foolish thing, which augured badly for the success of a young man just preparing to start for himself in the world. He poured the entire contents of his purse into a little cedar tray, then packed all the money in paper rolls with a neatness which rather astonished him, and sealed each roll with his amethyst ring. Then he put them into a little box of some rare and beautiful palm–wood, which had been his motherʼs, laid his cheque–book beside them (for he had been allowed a banking account long before he was of age), and placed upon that his gold watch and chain, and trinkets, the amethyst ring itself, his diamond studs, and other jewellery, even a locket which had contained two little sheaves of hair, bound together with golden thread, but from which he first removed, and packed in silver paper, the fair hair of his mother. This last, with the pipe which Clayton had given him, and the empty purse made by Amyʼs fingers, were all he meant to carry away, besides the clothes he wore.
After locking the box he rang the bell, and begged the man who answered it to send old Hogstaff to him. That faithful servant, from whom he had learned so many lessons of infancy, came tottering along the passage, with his old eyes dull and heavy. For Job had gloried in those two brothers, and loved them both as the children of his elder days. And now one of them was gone for ever, in the height of his youth and beauty, and a whisper was in the household that the other would not stay.Of him, whom Job had always looked upon as his future master (for he meant to outlive the present Sir Cradock, as he had done the one before him), he had just been scoring upon his fingers all the things he had taught him—to whistle “Spankadillo”, while he drummed it with his knuckles; to come to the pantry–door, and respond to the “Whoʼs there”?—“A grenadier”! shouldering a broomstick; to play on the Jewʼs–harp, with variations, “An old friend, and a bottle to give him”; and then to uncork the fictitious bottle with the pop of his forefinger out of his mouth, and to decant it carefully with the pat of his gurgling cheeks! After all that, how could he believe Master Crad could ever forsake him?
Now Mr. Hogstaffʼs legs were getting like the ripe pods of a scarlet–runner (although he did not run much); here they stuck in, and there they stuck out, abnormally in either case; his body began to come forward as if warped at the small of the back; and his honest face (though he drank but his duty) was Septemberʼd with many a vintage. And yet, with the keenness of love and custom, he saw at once what the matter was, as he looked up at the young master.
“Oh, Master Crad, dear Master Crad, whatever are you going to do? Donʼt, for good now, donʼt, I beg on you. Hearken now; doʼee hearken to an old man for a minute”. And he caught him by both arms to stop him, with his tremulous, wrinkled hands.
“O Hoggy, dear, kind Hoggy! you are about the only one left to care about me now”.
“No, donʼt you say that, Master Crad; donʼt you say that, whatever you do. Whoever tell you that, tell a lie, sir. It was only last night Mrs. Toaster, and cook, and Mrs. OʼGaghan, the Irishwoman, was round the fire boiling, and they cried a deal more than they boiled, I do assure you they did, sir. And Mr. Stote, he come in with some rabbits, and he went on like mad. And the maids, so sorry every one of them, they canʼt be content with their mourning, sir; I do assure you they canʼt. Oh, donʼt ’ee do no harm to yourself, donʼt ’ee, Mr. Cradock, sir”.
“No, Hoggy”, said Cradock, taking his hands; “you need not fear that now of me. I have had very wicked thoughts, but God has helped me over them. Henceforth I am resolved to bear my trouble like a man. It is the part of a dog to run, when the hoot begins behind him. Now, take this little box, and this key, and give them yourself to Sir Cradock Nowell. It is the last favour I shall ask of you. I am going away, my dear old friend; donʼt keep me now, for I must go. Only give me your good wishes; and see that they mind poor Caldo: and, whatever they say of me behind my back, you wonʼt believe it, Job Hogstaff, will you”?
Job Hogstaff had never been harder put to it in all his seventy years. Then, as he stood at the open door to see the last of his favourite, hethought of the tall, dark womanʼs words so many years ago. “A bonnie pair ye have gat; but yeʼll ha’ no luck o’ them. Tak’ the word of threescore year, yeʼll never get no luck o’ ’em”.
Cradock turned aside from his path, to say good–bye to Caldo. It would only take just a minute, he thought, and of course he should never see him again. So he went to that snuggest and sweetest of kennels, and in front of it sat the king of dogs.
The varieties of canine are as manifold and distinct as those of human nature. But the dog, be he saturnine or facetious, sociable or contemplative, mercurial or melancholic, is quite sure to be one thing—true and loyal ever. Can we, who are less than the dogs of the Infinite, say as much of ourselves to Him? Now Caldo, as has been implied, if not expressed before, was a setter of large philosophy and rare reflective power. I mean, of course, theoretical more than practical philosophy; as any dog would soon have discovered who tried to snatch a bone from him. Moreover, he had some originality, and a turn for satire. He would sit sometimes by the hour, nodding his head impressively, and blinking first one eye and then the other, watching and considering the doings of his fellow–dogs. How fashionably they yawned and stretched, in a mode they had learned from a pointer, who was proud of his teeth and vertebræ; how they hooked up their tails for a couple of joints, and then let them fall at a right angle,having noticed that fashion in ladies’ bustles, when they came on a Sunday to talk to them; how they crawled on their stomachs to get a pat, as a provincial mayor does for knighthood; how they sniffed at each otherʼs door, with an eye to the rotten bones under the straw, as we all smell about for the wealthy; how their courtesy to one another flowed from their own convenience—these, and a thousand other dog–tricks, Caldo, dwelling apart, observed, but did not condemn, for he felt that they were his own. Now he hushed his bark of joy, and looked up wistfully at his master, for he knew by the expression of that face all things were not as they ought to be. Why had Wena snapped at him so, and avoided his society, though he had always been so good to her, and even thought of an alliance? Why did his master order him home that dull night in the covert, when he was sure he had done no harm? Above all, what meant that moving blackness he had seen through the trees only yesterday, when the other dogs (muffs as they were) expected a regular battue, and came out strong at their kennel doors, and barked for young Clayton to fetch them?
So he looked up now in his masterʼs face, and guessed that it meant a long farewell, perhaps a farewell for ever. He took a fond look into his eyes, and his own pupils told great volumes. Then he sat up, and begged for a minute or two, with a most beseeching glance, to share his masterʼs fortunes, though he might have to steal his livelihood,and never get any shooting. Seeing that this could never be, he planted his fore–paws on Cradockʼs breast (though he felt that it was a liberty) and nestled his nose right under his cheek, and wanted to keep him ever so long. Then he howled with a low, enduring despair, as the footfall he loved grew fainter.
Looking back sadly, now and then, at the tranquil home of his childhood, whose wings, and gables, and depths of stone were grand in the autumn sunset, Cradock Nowell went his way toward the simple Rectory: he would say good–bye there to Uncle John and the kind Aunt Doxy; Miss Rosedew the younger, of course, would avoid him, as she had done ever since. But suddenly he could not resist the strange desire to see once more that fatal, miserable spot, the bidental of his destiny. So he struck into a side–path leading to the deep and bosky covert.
The long shadows fell from the pale birch stems, the hollies looked black in the sloping light, and the brown leaves fluttered down here and there as the cold wind set the trees shivering. Only six days ago, only half an hour further into the dusk, he had slain his own twin–brother. He crawled up the hedge through the very same gap, for he could not leap it now; his back ached with weakness, his heart with despair, as he stayed himself by the same hazel–branch which had struck his gun at the muzzle. Then he shivered, as the trees did, and his hair, like the brown leaves, rustled, as heknelt and prayed that his brotherʼs spirit might appear there and forgive him. Hoping and fearing to find it there, he sidled down into the dark wood, and with his heart knocking hard against his ribs, forced himself to go forward.
All at once his heart stood still, and every nerve of his body went creeping—for he saw a tall, white figure kneeling where his brotherʼs blood was—kneeling, never moving, the hands together as in prayer, the face as wan as immortality, the black hair—if it were hair—falling straight as a pall drawn back from an alabaster coffin–head. The power of the entire form was not of earth, nor heaven; but as of the intermediate state, when we know not we are dead yet.
Cradock could not think nor breathe. The whole of his existence was frozen up in awe. It showed him in the after time, when he could think about it, the ignorance, the insolence, of dreaming that any human state is quit of human fear. While he gazed, in dread to move (not knowing his limbs would refuse him), with his whole life swallowed up in gazing at the world beyond the grave, the tall, white figure threw its arms up to the darkening sky, rose, and vanished instantly.
What do you think Cradock Nowell did? We all know what he ought to have done. He ought to have walked up calmly, with measured yet rapid footsteps, and his eyes and wits well about him, and investigated everything. Instead of that,he cut and ran as hard as he could go; and I know I should have done the same, and I believe more than half of you would, unless you were too much frightened. He would never turn back upon living man; but our knowledge of Hades is limited. We pray for angels around our bed; if they came, we should have nightmare.
Cradock, going at a desperate pace, with a handsome pair of legs, which had recovered their activity, kicked up something hard and bright from a little dollop of leaves, caught it in his hand like a tennis–ball, and leaped the hedgeuno impetu. Away he went, without stopping to think, through the splashy sides of the spire–bed, almost as fast, and quite as much frightened, as Rufus Huttonʼs mare. When he got well out into the chase, he turned, and began to laugh at himself; but a great white owl flapped over a furze–bush, and away went Cradock again. The light had gone out very suddenly, as it often does in October, and Cradock (whose wind was uncommonly good) felt it his duty to keep good hours at the Rectory. So, with the bright thing, whatever it was, poked anywhere into his pocket, he came up the drive at early tea–time, and got a glimpse through the window of Amy.
“Couldnʼt have been Amy, at any rate”, he said to himself, in extinction of some very vague ideas; “I defy her to come at the pace I have done. No, no; it must have been in answer to my desperate prayer”.
Amy was gone, though her cup was there, when Cradock entered the drawing–room. “Well”, he thought, “how hard–hearted she is! But it cannot matter now, much. Though I never believed she would be so”.
Being allowed by his kind entertainers to do exactly as he pleased, poor Cradock had led the life of a hermit more than that of a guest among them. He had taken what little food he required in the garret he had begged for, or carried it with him into the woods, where most of his time was spent. Of course all this was very distressing to the hospitable heart of Miss Doxy; but her brother John would have it so, for so he had promised Cradock. He could understand the reluctance of one who feels himself under a ban to meet his fellow–creatures hourly, and know that they all are thinking of him. So it came to pass that Miss Eudoxia, who now sat alone in the drawing–room, was surprised as well as pleased at the entrance of their refugee. As he hesitated a moment, in doubt of his reception, she ran up at once, took both his hands, and kissed him on the forehead.
“Oh, Cradock, my dear boy, this is kind of you; most kind, indeed, to come and tell me at once of your success. I need not ask—I know by your face; the first bit of colour I have seen in your poor cheeks this many a day”.
“Thatʼs because I have been running, Miss Rosedew”.
“Miss Rosedew, indeed; andnow, Cradock!Aunt Eudoxia, if you please, or Aunt Doxy, with all my heart, now”.
He used to call her so, to tease her, in the happy days gone by; and she loved to be teased by him, her pet and idol.
“Dear Aunt Eudoxia, tell me truly, do you think—I can hardly ask you”.
“Think what, Cradock? My poor Cradock; oh, donʼt be like that”!
“Not that I did—I donʼt mean that—but that it was possible for me to have done it on purpose”?
“Done what on purpose, Cradock”?
“Why, of course, that horrible, horrible thing”.
“On purpose, Cradock! My poor innocent! Only let me hear any one dream of it, and if I donʼt come down upon them”.
An undignified sentence, that of Aunt Doxyʼs, as well as a most absurd one. How long has she been in the habit of hearing people dream?
“Some one not only dreams it, some one actually believes that I did it so”.
“The low wretch—the despicable—who”?
“My own father”.
I will not repeat what Miss Rosedew said, when she recovered from her gasp, because her language was stronger than becomes an elderly lady and the sister of a clergyman, not to mention the Countess of Driddledrum and Dromore, who must have been wholly forgotten.
“Then you donʼt think, dear Aunt Eudoxia, that—that Uncle John would believe it”?
“What, my brother John! Surely you know better than that, my dear”.
“Nor—nor—perhaps not even cousin Amy”?
“Amy, indeed! I do believe that child is perfectly mad. I canʼt make her out at all, she is so contradictory. She cries half the night, I am sure of that; and she does not care for her school, though she goes there; and her flowers she wonʼt look at”.
Seeing that Cradockʼs countenance fell more and more at all this, Miss Rosedew, who had long suspected where his heart was dwelling, told him a thing to cheer him up, which she had declared she would never tell.
“Darling Amy is, you know, a very odd girl indeed. Sometimes, when something happens very puzzling and perplexing, some great visitation of Providence, Amy becomes so dreadfully obstinate, I mean she has such delightful faith, that we are obliged to listen to her. And she is quite sure to be right in the end, though at the moment, perhaps, we laugh at her. And yet she is so shy, you can never get at her heart, except by forgetting what you are about. Well, we got at it somehow this afternoon; and you should have heard what she said. Her beautiful great eyes flashed upon us, like the rock that was struck, and gushed like it, before she ended. ‘Can we dare to think’, she cried, ‘that our God is asleep like Baal—that He knows not when He has chastened His children beyond what they can bear? I know that he,who is now so trampled and crushed of Heaven, is not tried thus for nothing. He shall rise again more pure and large, and fresh from the hand of God, and do what lucky men rarely think of—the will of his Creator’. And, when John and I looked at her, she fell away and cried terribly”.
Cradock was greatly astonished: it seemed so unlike young Amy to be carried away in that style. But her comfort and courage struck root in his heart, and her warm faith thawed his despair. Still he saw very little chance, at present, of doing anything but starving.
“How wonderfully good you all are to me! But I canʼt talk about it, though I shall think of it as long as I live. I am going away to–night, Aunt Doxy, but I must first see Uncle John”.
Of course Miss Rosedew was very angry, and proved it to be quite impossible that Cradock should leave them so; but, before very long, her good sense prevailed, and she saw that it was for the best. While he stayed there, he must either persist to shut himself up in solitude, or wander about in desert places, and never look with any comfort on the face of man. So she went with him to the door of the book–room, and left him with none but her brother.
John Rosedew sat in his little room, with only one candle to light him, and the fire gone out as usual: his books lay all around him, even his best–loved treasures, but his heart was not among them. The grief of the old, though not wild and passionateas a young manʼs anguish, is perhaps more pitiable, because more slow and hopeless. The young tree rings to the keen pruning–hook, the old tree groans to the grating saw; but one will blossom and bear again, while the other gapes with canker. None of his people had heard the rector quote any Greek or Latin for a length of time unprecedented. When a sweet and playful mind, like his, has taken to mope and be earnest, the effect is far more sad and touching than a stern manʼs melancholy. Ironworks out of blast are dreary, but the family hearth moss–grown is woeful.
Uncle John leaped up very lightly from his brooding (rather than reading), and shook Cradock Nowell by the hand, as if he never would let him go, all the time looking into his face by the light of a composite candle. It was only to know how he had fared, and John read his face too truly. Then, as Cradock turned away, not wanting to make much of it, John came before him with sadness and love, and his blue eyes glistened softly.
“My boy, my boy”! was all he could say, or think, for a very long time. Then Cradock told him, without a tear, a sigh, or even a comment, but with his face as pale as could be, and his breath coming heavily, all that his father had said to him, and all that he meant to do through it.
“And so, Uncle John”, he concluded, rising to start immediately, “here I go to seek my fortune, such as it will and must be. Good–bye, my best and only friend. I am ten times the man I wasyesterday, and shall be grander still to–morrow”. He tried to pop off like a lively cork, but John Rosedew would not have it.
“Young man, donʼt be in a hurry. It strikes me that I want a pipe; and it also strikes me that you will smoke one with me”.
Cradock was taken aback by the novelty of the situation. He had never dreamed that Uncle John could, under any possible circumstances, ask him to smoke a pipe. He knew well enough that the rector smoked a sacrificial pipe to Morpheus, in a room of his own up–stairs; only one, while chewing the cud of all he had read that day. But Mr. Rosedew had always discouraged, as elderly smokers do, any young aspirants to the mystic hierophancy. It is not a vow to be taken rashly, for the vow is irrevocable; except with men of no principle.
And now he was to smoke there—he, a mere bubble–blowing boy, to smoke in the middle of deepest books, to fumigate a manuscript containing a lifeful of learning, which John could no more get on with; and—oh Miss Eudoxia!—to make the hall smell and the drawing–room! The oxymoron overcame him, and he took his pipe: John Rosedew had filled it judiciously, and quite as a matter of course; he filled his own in the self–same manner, with a digital skill worthy of an ancient fox trying on a foxglove. All the time, John was shyly wondering at his own great force of character.
“Now”, said John Rosedew, still keeping it up, “I have a drop of very old Schiedam—Schnapps I think, or something—of which I want your opinion; Crad, my boy, I want your opinion, before we import any more. I am no judge of that sort of thing; it is so long since I was at Oxford”.
Without more ado, he went somewhither, after lighting Cradockʼs yard of clay—which the young man burnt his fingers about, for he wouldnʼt let the old man do it—and came back like a Bacchanal, with a square black–jack beneath his arm, and Jenny after him, wondering whether they had not prayed that morning enough against the devil. It was a good job Miss Amy was out of the way; the old cat was bewitched, that was certain, as well as her dear good master. Miss Doxy was happy in knowing not that she was called “the old cat” in the kitchen.