I was made “presentable” in due time, and on the fifth day after my arrival made my appearance at the dinner-table. “Sit there, sir,” said my father, “opposite me.” And I was not sorry to perceive that an enormous vase with flowers effectually screened me from his sight. The post of honor thus accorded me was a sufficient intimation to my father's guests how he intended me to be treated by them; and as they were without an exception all hangers-on and dependants,—men who dined badly or not at all when uninvited to his table,—they were marvellously quick in understanding that I was to be accepted as his heir, and, after himself, the person of most consideration there.
Besides the three individuals I have already mentioned, our party included two foreigners,—Baron Steinmetz, an aide-de-camp of the King, and an Italian duke, San Giovanni. The Duke sat on my father's right, the Baron on mine. The conversation during dinner was in French, which I followed imperfectly, and was considerably relieved on discovering that the German spoke French with difficulty, and blundered over his genders as hopelessly as I should have done had I attempted to talk. “Ach Gott,” muttered he to himself in German, “when people were seeking for a common language, why did n't they take one that all humanity could pronounce?”
“So meine ich auch, Herr Baron,” cried I; “I quite agree with you.”
He turned towards me with a look of-positive affection, on seeing I knew German, and we both began to talk together at once with freedom.
“What's the boy saying?” cried my father, as he caught the sounds of some glib speech of mine. “Don't let him bore you with his bad French, Steinmetz.”
“He is charming me with his admirable German,” said the Baron. “I can't tell when I have met a more agreeable companion.”
This was, of course, a double flattery, for my German was very bad, and my knowledge on any subject no better; but the fact did not diminish the delight the praise afforded me.
“Do you know German, Digby?” asked my father.
“A little,—a very little, sir.”
“The fellow would say he knew Sanscrit if you asked him,” whispered Hotham to Eccles; but my sharp ears overheard him.
“Come, that's better than I looked for,” said my father. “What do you say, Eccles? Is there stuff there?”
“Plenty, Sir Roger; enough and to spare. I count on Digby to do me great credit yet.”
“What career do you mean your son to follow?” asked the Italian, while he nodded to me over his wine-glass in most civil recognition.
“I'll not make a sailor of him, like that sea-wolf yonder; nor a diplomatist, like my silent friend in the corner. Neither shall he be a soldier till British armies begin to do something better than hunt out illicit stills and protect process-servers.”
“A politician, perhaps?”
“Certainly not, sir. There 's no credit in belonging to a Parliament brought down to the meridian of soap-boilers and bankrupt bill-brokers.”
“There's the Church, Sir Roger,” chimed in Eccles.
“There's the Pope's Church, with some good prizes in the wheel; but your branch, Master Bob, is a small concern, and it is trembling, besides. No. I 'll make him none of these. It is in our vulgar passion for money-getting we throw our boys into this or that career in life, and we narrow to the stupid formula of some profession abilities that were meant for mankind. I mean Digby to deal with the world; and to fit him for the task, he shall learn as much of human nature as I can afford to teach him.”
“Ah, there's great truth in that, very great truth; very wise and very original too,” were the comments that ran round the board.
Excited by this theme, and elated by his success, my father went on:—
“If you want a boy to ride, you don't limit him to the quiet hackney that neither pulls nor shies, neither bolts nor plunges; and so, if you wish your son to know his fellow-men, you don't keep him in a charmed circle of deans and archdeacons, but you throw him fearlessly into contact with old debauchees like Hotham, or abandoned scamps of the style of Cleremont,”—and here he had to wait till the laughter subsided to add, “and, last of all, you take care to provide him with a finishing tutor like Eccles.”
“I knew your turn was coming, Bob,” whispered Hotham; but still all laughed heartily, well satisfied to stand ridicule themselves if others were only pilloried with them.
When dinner was over, we sat about a quarter of an hour, not more, and then adjourned to coffee in a small room that seemed half boudoir, half conservatory. As I loitered about, having no one to speak to, I found myself at last in a little shrubbery, through which a sort of labyrinth meandered. It was a taste of the day revived from olden times, and amazed me much by its novelty. While I was puzzling myself to find out the path that led out of the entanglement, I heard a voice I knew at once to be Hotham's, saying,—
“Look at that boy of Norcott's: he's not satisfied with the imbroglio within doors, but he must go out to mystify himself with another.”
“I don't much fancy that young gentleman,” said Cleremont.
“And I only half. Bob Eccles says we have all made a precious mistake in advising Norcott to bring him back.”
“Yet it was our only chance to prevent it. Had we opposed the plan, he was sure to have determined on it. There's nothing for it but your notion, Hotham; let him send the brat to sea with you.”
“Yes, I think that would do it.” And now they had walked out of earshot, and I heard no more.
If I was not much reassured by these droppings, I was far more moved by the way in which I came to hear them. Over and over had my dear mother cautioned me against listening to what was not meant for me; and here, simply because I found myself the topic, I could not resist the temptation to learn how men would speak of me. I remembered well the illustration by which my mother warned me as to the utter uselessness of the sort of knowledge thus gained. She told me of a theft some visitor had made at Abbotsford,—the object stolen being a signet-ring Lord Byron had given to Sir Walter. The man who stole this could never display the treasure without avowing himself a thief. He had, therefore, taken what from the very moment of the fraud became valueless. He might gaze on it in secret with such pleasure as his self-accusings would permit. He might hug himself with the thought of possession; but how could that give pleasure, or how drown the everlasting shame the mere sight of the object must revive? So would it be, my mother said, with him who unlawfully possessed himself of certain intelligence which he could not employ without being convicted of the way he gained it The lesson thus illustrated had not ceased to be remembered by me; and though I tried all my casuistry to prove that I listened without intention, almost without being aware of it, I was shocked and grieved to find how soon I was forgetting the precepts she had labored so hard to impress upon me.
She had also said, “By the same rule which would compel you to restore to its owner what you had become possessed of wrongfully, you are bound to let him you have accidentally overheard know to what extent you are aware of his thoughts.”
“This much, at least, I can do,” said I: “I can tell these gentlemen that I heard a part of their conversation.”
I walked about for nigh an hour revolving these things in my head, and at last returned to the house. As I entered the drawing-room, I was struck by the silence. My father, Cleremont, and the two foreigners were playing whist at one end of the room, Hotham and Eccles were seated at chess at another. Not a word was uttered save some brief demand of the game, or a murmured “check,” by the chess-players. Taking my place noiselessly beside these latter, I watched the board eagerly, to try and acquire the moves.
“Do you understand the game?” whispered Hotham.
“No, sir,” said I, in the same cautious tone.
“I 'll show you the moves, when this party is over.” And I muttered my thanks for the courtesy.
“This is intolerable!” cried out my father. “That confounded whispering is far more distracting than any noise. I have lost all count of my game. I say, Eccles, why is not that boy in bed?”
“I thought you said he might sup, Sir Roger.”
“If I did, it was because I thought he knew how to conduct himself. Take him away at once.”
And Eccles rose, and with more kindness than I had expected from him, said, “Come, Digby, I 'll go too, for we have both to be early risers to-morrow.”
Thus ended my first day in public, and I have no need to say what a strange conflict filled my head that night as I dropped off to sleep.
If I give one day of my life, I give, with very nearly exactness, the unbroken course of my existence. I rose very early—hours ere the rest of the household was stirring—to work at my lessons, which Mr. Eccles apportioned for me with a liberality that showed he had the highest opinion of my abilities, or—as I discovered later on to be the truth—a profound indifference about them. Thus, a hundred lines of Virgil, thirty of Xenophon, three propositions of Euclid, with a sufficient amount of history, geography, and logic, would be an ordinary day's work. It is fair I should own that when the time of examination came, I found him usually imbibing seltzer and curacoa, with a wet towel round his head; or, in his robuster moments, practising the dumbbells to develop his muscles. So that the interrogatories-were generally in this wise:—
“How goes it, Digby? What of the Homer, eh?”
“'It 's Xenophon, sir.”
“'To be sure it is. I was forgetting, as a man might who had my headache. And, by the way, Digby, why will your father give Burgundy at supper instead of Bordeaux? Some one must surely have told him accidentally it was a deadly poison, for he adheres to it with desperate fidelity.”
“I believe I know my Greek, sir,” would I say, modestly, to recall him to the theme.
“Of course you do; you'd cut a sorry figure here this morning if you did not know it. No, sir; I 'm not the man to enjoy your father's confidence, and take his money, and betray my trust His words to me were, 'Make him a gentleman, Eccles. I could find scores of fellows to cram him with Greek particles and double equations, but I want the man who can turn out the perfect article,—the gentleman.' Come now, what relations subsisted between Cyrus and Xenophon?”
“Xenophon coached him, sir.”
“So he did. Just strike a light for me. My head is splitting for want of a cigar. You may have a cigarette too. I don't object Virgil we'll keep till to-morrow. Virgil was a muff, after all. Virgil was a decentish sort of Martin Tupper, Digby. He had no wit, no repartee, no smartness; he prosed about ploughs and shepherds, like a maudlin old squire; or he told a very shady sort of anecdote about Dido, which I always doubted should be put into the hands of youth. Horace is free, too, a thought too free; but he could n't help it. Horace lived the same kind of life we do here, a species of roast-partridge and pretty woman sort of life; but then he was the gentleman always. If old Flaccus had lived now, he'd have been pretty much like Bob Eccles, and putting in his divinity lectures perhaps. By the way, I hope your father won't go and give away that small rectory in Kent. 'We who live to preach, must preach to live.' That is n't exactly the line, but it will do. Pulvis et umbra sumus, Digby; and take what care we may of ourselves, we must go back, as the judges say, to the place from whence we came. There, now, you 've had classical criticism, sound morality, worldly wisdom, and the rest of it; and, with your permission, we'll pack up the books, and stand prorogued till—let me see—Saturday next.”
Of course I moved no amendment, and went my way rejoicing.
From that hour I was free to follow my own inclinations, which usually took a horsey turn; and as the stable offered several mounts, I very often rode six hours a day. Hotham was always to be found in the pistol-gallery about four of an afternoon, and I usually joined him there, and speedily became more than his match.
“Well, youngster,” he would say, when beaten and irritable, “I can beat your head off at billiards, anyhow.”
But I was not long in robbing him of even this boast, and in less than three months I could defy the best player in the house. The fact was, I had in a remarkable degree that small talent for games of every kind which is a speciality with certain persons. I could not only learn a game quickly, but almost always attain considerable skill in it.
“So, sir,” said my father to me one day at dinner,—and nothing was more rare than for him to address a word to me, and I was startled as he did so,—“so, sir, you are going to turn out an Admirable Crichton on my hands, it seems. I hear of nothing but your billiard-playing, your horsemanship, and your cricketing, while Mr. Eccles tells me that your progress with him is equally remarkable.”
He stopped and seemed to expect me to make some rejoinder; but I could not utter a word, and felt overwhelmed at the observation and notice his speech had drawn upon me.
“It's better I should tell you at once,” resumed my father, “that I dislike prodigies. I dislike because I distrust them. The fellow who knows at fourteen what he might reasonably have known at thirty is not unlikely to stop short at fifteen and grow no more. I don't wish to be personal, but I have heard it said Cleremont was a very clever boy.”
The impertinence of this speech, and the laughter it at once excited, served to turn attention away from me; but, through the buzz and murmur around, I overheard Cleremont say to Hotham, “I shall pull him up short one of these days, and you 'll see an end of all this.”
“Now,” continued my father, “if Eccles had told me that the boy was a skilful hand at sherry-cobbler, or a rare judge of a Cuban cigar, I 'd have reposed more faith in the assurance than when he spoke of his classics.”
“He ain't bad at a gin-sling with bitters, that I must say,” said Eccles, whose self-control or good-humor, or mayhap some less worthy trait, always carried him successfully over a difficulty.
“So, sir,” said my father, turning again on me, “the range of your accomplishments is complete. You might be a tapster or a jockey. When the nobility of France came to ruin in the Revolution, the best blood of the kingdom became barbers and dancing-masters: so that when some fine morning that gay gentleman yonder will discover that he is a beggar, he 'll have no difficulty in finding a calling to suit his tastes, and square with his abilities. What's Hotham grumbling about? Will any one interpret him for me?”
“Hotham is saying that this claret is corked,” said the sea-captain, with a hoarse loud voice.
“Bottled at home!” said my father, “and, like your own education, Hotham, spoiled for a beggarly economy.”
“I 'm glad you 've got it,” muttered Cleremont, whose eyes glistened with malignant spite. “I have had enough of this; I 'm for coffee,” and he arose as he spoke.
“Has Cleremont left us?” asked my father.
“Yes; that last bottle has finished him. I told you before, Nixon knows nothing about wine. I saw that hogshead lying bung up for eight weeks before it was drawn off for bottling.”
“Why didn't you speak to him about it, then?”
“And be told that I'm not his master, eh? You don't seem to know, Norcott, that you 've got a houseful of the most insolent servants in Christendom. Cleremont's wife wanted the chestnuts yesterday in the phaeton, and George refused her: she might take the cobs, or nothing.”
“Quite true,” chimed in Eccles; “and the fellow said, 'I 'm a-taking the young horses out in the break, and if the missis wants to see the chestnuts, she'd better come withme.'**
“And as to a late breakfast now, it's quite impossible; they delay and delay till they run you into luncheon,” growled Hotham.
“They serve me my chocolate pretty regularly,” said my father, negligently, and he arose and strolled out of the room. As he went, he slipped his arm within mine, and said, in a half-whisper, “I suppose it will come to this,—I shall have to change my friends or my household. Which would you advise?”
“I 'd say the friends, sir.”
“So should I, but that they would not easily find another place. There, go and see is the billiard-room lighted. I want to see you play a game with Cleremont.”
Cleremont was evidently sulking under the sarcasm passed on him, and took up his cue to play with a bad grace.
“Who will have five francs on the party?” said my father. “I 'm going to back the boy.”
“Make it pounds, Norcott,” said Hotham.
“I'll give you six to five, in tens,” said Cleremont to my father. “Will you take it?”
I was growing white and red by turns all this time. I was terrified at the thought that money was to be staked on my play, and frightened by the mere presence of my father at the table.
“The youngster is too nervous to play. Don't let him, Norcott,” said Hotham, with a kindness I had not given him credit for.
“Give me the cue, Digby; I 'll take your place,” said my father; and Cleremont and Hotham both drew nigh, and talked to him in a low tone.
“Eight and the stroke then be it,” said my father, “and the bet in fifties.” The others nodded, and Cleremont began the game.
I could not have believed I could have suffered the amount of intense anxiety that game cost me. Had my life been on the issue, I do not think I could have gone through greater alternations of hope and fear than now succeeded in my heart Cleremont started with eight points odds, and made thirty-two off the balls before my father began to play. He now took his place, and by the first stroke displayed a perfect mastery of the game. There was a sort of languid grace, an indolent elegance about all he did, that when the stroke required vigor or power made me tremble for the result; but somehow he imparted the exact amount of force needed, and the balls moved about here and there as though obedient to some subtle instinct of which the cue gave a mere sign. He scored forty-two points in a few minutes, and then drawing himself up, said, “There 's an eight-stroke now on the table. I 'll give any one three hundred Naps to two that I do it.”
None spoke. “Or I 'll tell you what I 'll do. I 'll take fifty from each of you and draw the game!” Another as complete silence ensued. “Or here 's a third proposition, Give me fifty between you, and I 'll hand over the cue to the boy; he shall finish the game.”
“Oh, no, sir! I beg you—I entreat—” I began; but already, “Done,” had been loudly uttered by both together, and the bet was ratified.
“Don't be nervous, boy,” said my father, handing me his cue. “You see what's on the balls. You cannon and hold the white, and land the red in the middle pocket. If you can't do the brilliant thing, and finish the game with an eight stroke, do the safe one,—the cannon or the hazard. But, above all, don't lose your stroke, sir. Mind that, for I've a pot of money on the game.”
“I don't think you ought to counsel him, Norcott,” said Cleremont. “If he's a player, he's fit to devise his own game.”
“Oh, hang it, no,” broke in Hotham; “Norcott has a perfect right to tell him what's on the table.”
“If you object seriously, sir,” said my father proudly, “the party is at an end.”
“I put it to yourself,” began Cleremont.
“You shall not appeal to me against myself, sir. You either withdraw your objection, or you maintain it.”
“Of course he withdraws it,” said Hotham, whose eyes never wandered from my father's face.
Cleremont nodded a half-unwilling assent.
“You will do me the courtesy to speak, perhaps,” said my father; and every word came from him with a tremulous roll.
“Yes, yes, I agree. There was really nothing in my remark,” said Cleremont, whose self-control seemed taxed to its last limit.
“There, go on, boy, and finish this stupid affair,” said my father, and he turned to the chimney to light his cigar.
I leaned over the table, and a mist seemed to rise before me. I saw volumes of cloud rolling swiftly across, and meteors, or billiard-balls, I knew not which, shooting through them. I played and missed; I did not even strike a ball. A wild roar of laughter, a cry of joy, and a confused blending of several voices in various tones followed, and I stood there like one stunned into immobility. Meanwhile Cleremont finished the game, and, clapping me gayly on the shoulder, cried, “I 'm more grateful to you than your father is, my lad. That shaking hands of yours has made a difference of two hundred Naps to me.” I turned towards the fire; my father had left the room.
I had but reached my room when Eccles followed me to say my father wished to see me at once.
“Come, come, Digby,” said Eccles, good-naturedly, “don't be frightened. Even if he should be angry with you, his passion passes soon over; and, if uncontradicted, he is never disposed to bear a grudge long. Go immediately, however, and don't keep him waiting.”
I cannot tell with what a sense of abasement I entered my father's dressing-room; for, after all, it was the abject condition of my own mind that weighed me down.
“So, sir,” said he, as I closed the door, “this is something I was not prepared for. You might be forty things, but I certainly did not suspect that a son of mine should be a coward.”
Had my father ransacked his whole vocabulary for a term of insult, he could pot have found one to pain me like this.
“I am not a coward, sir,” said I, reddening till I felt my face in a perfect glow.
“What!” cried he, passionately; “are you going to give me a proof of courage by daring to outrageme?Is it by sending back my words in my teeth you assume to be brave?”
“I ask pardon, sir,” said I, humbly, “if I have replied rudely; but you called me by a name that made me forget myself. I hope you will forgive me.”
“Sit down, there, sir; no, there.” And he pointed to a more distant chair. “There are various sorts and shades of cowardice, and I would not have you tarnished with any one of them. The creature whose first thought, and indeed only one, in an emergency is his personal safety, and who, till that condition is secured, abstains from all action, is below contempt; him I will not even consider. But next to him—of course with a long interval—comes the fellow who is so afraid of a responsibility that the very thought of it unmans him. How did the fact of my wager come to influence you at all, sir? Why should you have had any thought but for the game you were playing, and how it behoved you to play it? How came I and these gentlemen to stand between you and your real object, if it were not that a craven dread of consequences had got the ascendancy in your mind? If men were to be beset by these calculations, if every fellow carried about him an armor of sophistry like this, he 'd have no hand free to wield a weapon, and the world would see neither men who storm a breach nor board an enemy. Till a man can so isolate and concentrate his faculties on what he has to do that all extraneous conditions cease to affect him, he will never be well served by his own powers; and he who is but half served is only half brave. There are times when the unreasoners are worth all the men of logic, remember that. And now go and sleep over it.”
He motioned me to withdraw, but I could not bear to go till he had withdrawn the slur he had cast on me in the word coward. He looked at me steadfastly, but not harshly, for a moment or two, and then said,—
“You are not to think that it is out of regret for a lost sum of money I have read you this lecture. As to the wager itself, I am as well pleased that it ended as it did. These gentlemen are not rich, either of them. I can afford the loss. What I cannot afford is the way I lost it.”
“But will you not say, sir, that I am no coward?” said I, faltering.
“I will withdraw the word,” said he, slowly, “the very first time I shall see you deal with a difficulty without a thought for what it may cost you. There; good-night; leave me now. I mean to have a ride with you in the morning.”
And he nodded twice, and smiled, and dismissed me.
There was nothing, certainly, very flattering to me in this reception. It cost me dearly while it lasted, and yet—I cannot explain why—I came away with a feeling of affection for my father, and a desire to stand well in his esteem, such as I had not experienced till that moment. It was his utter indifference up to this that had chilled and repelled me. Any show of interest, anything that might evidence that he cared what I was or what I might become, was so much better than this apathy that I welcomed the change with delight. Accustomed to the tender solicitude of a loving mother, no niggard of her praise, and more given to sympathize than blame, the stern reserve of my father's manner had been a terrible reverse, and over and over had I asked myself why he took me from where I was loved and cherished, to live this life of ceremonious observance and cold deference.
To know that he felt even such interest in me as this, was to restore me to self-esteem at once. He would not have his son a coward, he said; and as I felt in my heart that I was not a coward, as I knew I was ready then and there to confront any peril he could propose to me, all that the speech left in my memory was a sense of self-satisfaction.
In each of the letters I had received from my mother she impressed on me how important it was that I should win my father's affection, and now a hope flashed across me that I might do this. I sat down to tell her all that had passed between us; but somehow, in recounting the incident of the billiard-room, I wandered away into a description of the house, its splendors and luxury, and of the life of costly pleasure that we were living. “You will ask, dearest mamma,” I wrote, “how and when I find time to study amidst all these dissipations? and I grieve to own that I do very little. Mr. Eccles says he is satisfied with me; but I fear it is more because I obtrude little on his notice than that I am making any progress. We are still in the same scene of the Adrian that I began with you; and as to the Greek, we leave it over for Saturdays, and the Saturdays get skipped. I have become a good shot with the rifle; and George says I have the finest, lightest hand he knows on a horse, and that he 'll make me yet a regular steeple-chase horseman. I have a passion for riding, and sometimes get four mounts on a day. Indeed, papa takes no interest in the stable, and I give all the orders, and can have a team harnessed for me—which I do—when I am tired with the saddle. They have not quite given up calling me 'that boy of Norcott's;' only now, when they do so, it is to say how well he rides, and what a taste he shows for driving and shooting.
“Don't be afraid that I am neglecting my music. I play every day, and take singing lessons with an Italian: they call him the Count Guastalla; but I believe he is the tenor of the opera here, and only teaches me out of compliment to papa. He dines here nearly every day, and plays piquet with papa all the evening.
“There is a very beautiful lady comes here,—Madame Cleremont. She is the wife of the Secretary to the Legation. She is French, and has such pleasing ways, and is so gay, and so good-natured, and so fond of gratifying me in every way, that I delight in being with her; and we ride out together constantly, and I am now teaching her to drive the ponies, and she enjoys it just as I used myself. I don't think papa likes her, for he seldom speaks to her, and never takes her in to dinner if there is another lady in the room; and I suspect she feels this, for she is often very sad. I dislike Mr. Cleremont; he is always saying snappish things, and is never happy, no matter how merry we are. But papa seems to like him best of all the people here. Old Captain Hotham and I are great friends, though he's always saying, 'You ought to be at sea, youngster. This sort of life will only make a blackleg of you.' But I can't make out why, because I am very happy and have so much to interest and amuse me, I must become a scamp. Mdme. Cleremont says, too, it is not true; that papa is bringing me up exactly as he ought, that I will enter life as a gentleman, and not be passing the best years of my existence in learning the habits of the well-bred world. They fight bitterly over this every day; but she always gets the victory, and then kisses me, and says, 'Mon cher petit Digby, I 'll not have you spoiled, to please any vulgar prejudice of a tiresome old sea-captain,' This she whispers, for she would not offend him for anything. Dear mamma, how you would love her if you knew her! I believe I 'm to go to Rugby to school; but I hope not, for how I shall live like a schoolboy after all this happiness I don't know; and Mdme. Cleremont says she will never permit it; but she has no influence over papa, and how could she prevent it? Captain Hotham is always saying, 'If Norcott does not send that boy to Harrow or Rugby, or some of these places, he 'll graduate in the Marshalsea—that's a prison—before he's twenty.' I am so glad when a day passes without my being brought up for the subject of a discussion, which papa always ends with, 'After all I was neither an Etonian nor Rugbeian, and I suspect I can hold my own with most men; and if that boy doesn't belie his breeding, perhaps he may do so too.'
“Nobody likes contradicting papa, especially when he says anything in a certain tone of voice, and whenever he uses this, the conversation turns away to something else.
“I forgot to say in my last, that your letters always come regularly. They arrive with papa's, and he sends them up to me at once, by his valet, Mons. Durand, who is always so nicely dressed, and has a handsomer watch-chain than papa.
“Mdme. Cleremont said yesterday: 'I'm so sorry not to know your dear mamma, Digby: but if I dared, I'd send her so many caresses,de ma part.' I said nothing at the time, but I send them now, and am your loving son,
“Digby Norcott.”
This letter was much longer than it appears here. It filled several sides of note-paper, and occupied me till daybreak. Indeed, I heard the bell ringing for the workmen as I closed it, and shortly after a gentle tap came to my door, and George Spunner, our head groom, entered.
“I saw you at the window, Master Digby,” said he, “and I thought I'd step up and tell you not to ride in spurs this morning. Sir Roger wants to see you on May Blossom, and you know she's a hot 'un, sir, and don't want the steel. Indeed, if she feels the boot, she's as much as a man can do to sit.”
“You 're a good fellow, George, to think of this,” said I. “Do you know where we 're going?”
“That's what I was going to tell you, sir. We are going to the Bois de Cambre, and there's two of our men gone on with hurdles, to set them up in the cross alleys of the wood, and we 're to come on 'em unawares, you see.”
“Then why don't you give me Father Tom or Hunger-ford?”
“The master would n't have either. He said, 'A child of five years old could ride the Irish horse;' and as for Hungerford, he calls him a circus horse.”
“But who knows if Blossom will take a fence?”
“I'll warrant she'll go high enough; how she'll come down, and where, is another matter. Only don't you go a-pullin' at her, ride her in the snaffle, and as light as you can. Face her straight at what she's got to go over, and let her choose her own pace.”
“I declare I don't see how this is a fair trial of my riding, George. Do you?”
“Well, it is, and it isn't,” said he, scratching his head. “You might have a very tidy hand and a nice seat, and not be able to ride the mare; but then, sir, you see, if you have the judgment to manage her coolly, and not rouse her temper too far, if you can bring her to a fence, and make her take off at a proper distance, and fly it, never changing her stride nor balk, why then he'll see you can ride.”
“And if she rushes, or comes with her chest to a bank, or if—as I think she will—she refuses her fence, rears, and falls back, what then?”
“Then I think the mornin's sport will be pretty nigh over,” growled he; as though I had suggested something personally offensive to him.
“What time do we go, George?”
“Sir Roger said seven, sir, but that will be eight or half-past. He's to drive over to the wood, and the horses are to meet him there.”
“All right. I'll take a short sleep and be sharp to time.”
As he left the room, I tore open my letter, to add a few words. I thought I'd say something that, if mischance befell me, might be a comfort to my dear mother to read over and dwell on, but for the life of me I did not know how to do it, without exciting alarm or awakening her to the dread of some impending calamity. Were I to say, I 'm off for a ride with papa, it meant nothing; and if I said, I 'm going to show him how I can manage a very hot horse, it might keep her in an agony of suspense till I wrote again.
So I merely added, “I intend to write to you very soon again, and hope I may do so within the week.” These few commonplace words had a great meaning to my mind, however little they might convey to her I wrote them to; and as I read them over, I stored them with details supplied by imagination,—details so full of incident and catastrophe that they made a perfect story. After this I lay down and slept heavily.
“Dearest Mamma,—Don't be shocked at my bad writing, for I had a fall on Tuesday last, and hurt my arm a little; nothing broken, but bruised and sore to move, so that I lie on my bed and read novels. Madame never leaves me, but sits here to put ice on my shoulder and play chess with me. She reads out Balzac for me, and I don't know when I had such a jolly life. It was a rather big hurdle, and the mare took it sideways, and caught her hind leg,—at least they say so,—but we came down together, and she rolled over me. Papa cried out well done, for I did not lose my saddle, and he has given me a gold watch and a seal with the Norcott crest. Every one is so kind; and Captain Hotham comes up after dinner and tells me all the talk of the table, and we smoke and have our coffee very nicely.
“Papa comes every night before supper, and is very good to me. He says that Blossom is now my own, but I must teach her to come cooler to her fences. I can't write more, for my pain comes back when I stir my arm. You shall hear of me constantly, if I cannot write myself.
“Oh, dearest mamma, when papa is kind there is no one like him,—so gentle, so thoughtful, so soft in manner, and so dignified all the while. I wish you could see him as he stood here. A thousand loves from your own boy,
“DIGBY.”
Madame Cleremont wrote by the same post. I did not see her letter; but when mamma's answer came I knew it must have been a serious version of my accident, and told how, besides a dislocated shoulder, I had got a broken collar-bone, and two ribs fractured. With all this, however, there was no danger to life; for the doctor said everything had gone luckily, and no internal parts were wounded.
Poor mamma had added a postscript that puzzled Madame greatly, and she came and showed it to me, and asked what I thought she could do about it. It was an entreaty that she might be permitted to come and see me. There was a touching humility in the request that almost choked me with emotion as I read it. “I could come and go unknown and unnoticed,” wrote she. “None of Sir Roger's household have ever seen me, and my visit might pass for the devotion of some old follower of the family, and I will promise not to repeat it.” She urged her plea in the most beseeching terms, and said that she would submit to any conditions if her prayer were only complied with.
“I really do not know what to do here,” said Madame to me. “Without your father's concurrence this cannot be done; and who is to ask him for permission?”
“Shall I?”
“No, no, no,” cried she, rapidly. “Such a step on your part would be ruin; a certain refusal, and ruin to yourself.”
“Could Mr. Eccles do it?”
“He has no influence whatever.”
“Has Captain Hotham?”
“Less, if less be possible.”
“Mr. Cleremont, then?”
“Ah, yes, he might, and with a better chance of success; but—” She stopped, and though I waited patiently, she did not finish her sentence.
“But what?” asked I at last.
“Gaston hates doing a hazardous thing,” said she; and I remarked that her expression changed, and her face assumed a hard, stern look as she spoke. “His theory is, do nothing without three to one in your favor. He says you 'll always gets these odds, if you only wait.”
“But you don't believe that,” cried I, eagerly.
“Sometimes—very seldom, that is, I do not whenever I can help it.” There was a long pause now, in which neither of us spoke. At last she said, “I can't aid your mother in this project. She must give it up. There is no saying how your father would resent it.”
“And how will you tell her that?” faltered I out.
“I can't tell. I'll try and show her the mischief it might bring upon you; and that now, standing high, as you do, in your father's favor, she would never forgive herself, if she were the cause of a change towards you. This consideration will have more weight with her than any that could touch herself personally.”
“But it shall not,” cried I, passionately. “Nothing inmyfortune shall stand between my mother and her love for me.”
She bent down and looked at me with an intensity in her stare that I cannot describe; it was as if, by actual steadfastness, she was able to fix me, and read me in my inmost heart.
“From which of your parents, Digby,” said she, slowly, “do you derive this nature?”
“I do not know; papa always says I am very like him.”
“And do you believe that papa is capable of great self-sacrifice? I mean, would he let his affections lead him against his interests?”
“That he would! He has told me over and over the head is as often wrong as right,—the heart only errs about once in five times.” She fell on my neck and kissed me as I said this, with a sort of rapturous delight. “Your heart will be always right, dear boy,” said she; once more she bent down and kissed me, and then hurried away.
This scene must have worked more powerfully on my nerves than I felt, or was aware of, while it was passing; at all events, it brought back my fever, and before night I was in wild delirium. Of the seven long weeks that followed, with all their alternations, I know nothing. My first consciousness was to know myself, as very weak and propped by pillows, in a half-darkened room, in which an old nurse-tender sat and mingled her heavy snorings with the ticking of the clock on the chimney. Thus drowsily pondering, with a debilitated brain, I used to fancy that I had passed away into another form of existence, in which no sights or sounds should come but these dreary breathings, and that remorseless ticking that seemed to be spelling out “eternity.”
Sometimes one, sometimes two or three persons would enter the room, approach the bed, and talk together in whispers, and I would languidly lift up my eyes and look at them, and though I thought they were not altogether unknown to me, the attempt at recognition would have been an effort so full of pain that I would, rather than make it, fall back again into apathy. The first moment of perfect consciousness—when I could easily follow all that I heard, and remember it afterwards—was one evening, when a faint but delicious air came in through the open window, and the rich fragrance of the garden filled the room. Captain Hotham and the doctor were seated on the balcony smoking and chatting.
“You 're sure the tobacco won't be bad for him?” asked Hotham.
“Nothing will be bad or good now,” was the answer. “Effusion has set in.”
“Which means, that it's all over, eh?”
“About one in a thousand, perhaps, rub through. My own experience records no instance of recovery.”
“And you certainly did not take such a gloomy view of his case at first. You told me that there were no vital parts touched?”
“Neither were there; the ribs had suffered no displacement, and as for a broken clavicle, I 've known a fellow get up and finish his race after it This boy was doing famously. I don't know that I ever saw a case going on better, when some of them here—it's not easy to say whom—sent off for his mother to come and see him. Of course, without Norcott's knowledge. It was a rash thing to do, and not well done either; for when the woman arrived, there was no preparation made, either with the boy or herself, for their meeting; and the result was that when she crossed the threshold and saw him she fainted away. The youngster tried to get to her and fainted too; a great hubbub and noise followed; and Norcott himself appeared. The scene that ensued must have been, from what I heard, terrific. He either ordered the woman out of the house, or he dragged her away,—it's not easy to say which; but it is quite clear that he went absolutely mad with passion: some say that he told them to pack off the boy along with her, but, of course, this was sheer impossibility; the boy was insensible, and has been so ever since.”
“I was at Namur that day, but they told me when I came back that Cleremont's wife had behaved so well; that she had the courage to face Norcott; and though I don't believe she did much by her bravery, she drove him off the field to his own room, and when his wife did leave the house for the railroad, it was in one of Norcott's carriages, and Madame herself accompanied her.”
“Is she his wife? that's the question.”
“There's not a doubt of it. Blenkworth of the Grays was at the wedding.
“If I were to be examined before a commission of lunacy to-morrow,” said the doctor, solemnly, “I 'd call that man insane.”
“And you'd shut him up?”
“I'd shut him up!”
“Then I 'm precious glad you are not called on to give an opinion, for you 'd shut up the best house in this quarter of Europe.”
“And what security have you any moment that he won't make a clean sweep of it, and turn you all into the streets?”
“Yes; that's on the cards any day.”
“He must have got through almost everything he had; besides, I never heard his property called six thousand a year, and I 'll swear twelve wouldn't pay his way here.”
“What does he care! His father and he agreed to cut off the entail; and seeing the sort of marriage he made, he 'll not fret much at leaving the boy a beggar.”
“But he likes him; if there's anything in the world he cares for, it's that boy!”
The other must have made some gesture of doubt or dissent, for the doctor quickly added, “No, no, I 'm right about that. It was only yesterday morning he said to me with a shake in the voice there's no mistaking, 'If you can come and tell me, doctor, that he's out of danger, I 'll give you a thousand pounds.'”
“Egad, I think I 'd have done it, even though I might have made a blunder.”
“Ye 're no a doctor, sir, that's plain;” and in the emotion of the moment he spoke the words with a strong Scotch accent.
There was a silence of some minutes, and Hotham said, “That little Frenchwoman and I have no love lost between us, but I 'm glad she cut up so well.”
“They 're strange natures, there 's no denying it They 'll do less from duty and more from impulse than any people in the world, and they 're never thoroughly proud of themselves except when they 're all wrong.”
“That's a neat character for Frenchwomen,” said Hotham, laughing.
“I think Norcott will be looking out for his whist by this time,” said the other; and they both arose, and passing noiselessly through the room, moved away.
I had enough left me to think over, and I did think over it till I fell asleep.