Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Volume 2 of 3

By this time, Mrs. Ducksacre was come down the stairs, screaming “Wena!” at the top of her voice the whole way; and out they ran, boy and all, to search for her, while three or four urchins came in, without medium of exchange, and filled cap, mouth, and pocket. One brat was caught upon their return, and tied up for the day in an empty potato–sack, and exposed, behind the counter, to universal execration; in which position he took such note of manner and custom, time and place, that it was never safe for the Ducksacre firm to dine together afterwards.

Meanwhile, that little black Wena, responsive and responsible to none except her master, pursued the even tenor of her way, nosing the ground, and asking many a question of the lamp–posts, as far as the Cramjam Terminus, at least three miles from Mortimer–street. The sharp little gate–clerk, animated with railway love of privacy, ran out, and clapped his hands, and shouted “hoo” at Wena; but she only buttoned her tail down, and cut across the compound. As for the stone he threw at her, she caught it up in her mouth as it rolled, and carried it on to her master.

There was Cradock, in the thick of it, standing on a narrow pile of pig–iron, one of his chief fortalices; his book was in his hand, and he was entering, as fast as he could, all the needful particulars of a goods train sliding past him.

Creak, and squeak, and puff, and shriek, – Oh, what a scene, thought Wena, – and the rattle of the ghostly chains, and the rushing about, and the roaring. She lost her presence of mind in a moment, – she always had been such a nervous dog – she tightened her tail convulsively, and dropped her ears, while her eyes came forth; and, glancing at the horrors on every side, she fled for dear life from the evil to come.

The faster she fled, the more they closed round her. She had not espied her master yet; she could not find the way back again; she was terrified out of all memory; and a host of frightful genii, more sooty than Cocytus, and riding hideous monsters, were yelling at her on every side, clapping black hands, and hooting. The dog on the Derby course, when the race rushes round the corner, was in a position of glory and safety compared to poor Wenaʼs now. Already the tip of her tail was crushed, already one pretty paw was broken; for she had bolted in and out through the trains, truck bottoms, wheels, and driving–wheels. Oh, you cowards, to yell at her! with black death grating and grinding upon her soft silky back!

At last, she gave in altogether. They had hunted her to her grave. Who may contend with destiny? She lay down under a moving coal–train, and resigned herself to die. But first she must ask for sympathy, although so unlikely to get it. She looked once more at her wounded foot, and shivered and sobbed with the agony; and then gave vent to one long low cry, to ask if no one loved a poor dog there.

Cradock heard it, and started so that it was nearly all up with him too. Thoroughly he knew the cry, wherein she had wailed for Clayton. He flung down his book, and dashed to the place, and there he saw Wena, and she saw him. She began to try to limp to him, but he held up his hand to stop her; disabled as she was, she was sure to be caught by the wheel. Could she stay there, and let the train pass her? No. At its tail was an empty horse–box, almost scraping the ground, perfectly certain to crush her. Crying, “Down, down, my poor darling!” he ran down the train, which was travelling seven or eight miles an hour, seized the side of a truck, and leaped, at the risk of his life, upon the fender in front of the horse–box. Then he got astride of the coupling–chain, and kept his right hand low to the ground, to snatch her up ere the crusher came. Knowing where she was, he caught her by the neck the instant the truck disclosed her, and, with a strong swing, heaved her up into it. But he lost his balance in doing it, and fell sideways, with his head on the other coupling–chain. Stunned by the blow, he lay there, only clinging by his right calf to the chain he had sat astride upon. The first jerk of either chain, the first swing of either carriage, and he must be ground to powder.

Luckily for him and for Amy, Morshead was not gone home yet, seeing more to do than usual. Missing his mate from the proper place, he had run up in terror to look for him, when a man in a truck, who had vainly been shouting to stop the coal–trainʼs engine, pointed and screamed to him where and what was doing. Morshead jumped on the heap of pig–iron, and sideways thence on the board of the truck just passing, as dangerous a leap as well could be, but luckily that truck was empty. He jumped into the truck, a shallow one, where poor Wena lay quite paralysed, and, stooping over the back with both arms, he got hold of Cradockʼs collar. Then, with a mighty effort, he jerked him upon the tail–board, and lugged him in, and bent over him.

Wounded Wena crawled up, and begged to have her poor foot looked at, then, obtaining no notice at all, she felt that Cradock must be killed and dead, just as Clayton had been. Upon this conclusion, she fetched such a howl, though it shook her sore tail to do it, that the engine–driver actually looked round, and the train was stopped.

Hereupon, let me offer a suggestion – everybody now is allowed to do so, though nobody ever takes it. My suggestion is, that no man should be allowed to drive an engine without having served a twelvemonthʼs apprenticeship as an omnibus conductor. I donʼt mean to say it would improve his morals – probably rather otherwise; but it would teach him the habit of looking round; it would let him know that there really is more than one quarter of the heavens. At present, all engine–drivers seem afraid of being turned into pillars of salt. So they fix themselves, like pillars of stone, and stare, ἀχηνίαις ὀμμάτων, through their square glass spectacles.

When one of the railway bajuli – who are, on the whole, very good sort of fellows, and deserve their Christmas–boxes – came home in the cab with Cradock and Wena at the expense of the Company (which was boasted of next board–day) – when one of them came home with Crad – for Morshead had double work again – Polly Ducksacre went into strong hysterics, and it required two married men and a boy to get her out of the potato–bin.

It was all up with our Crad that night. The overwork of brain and muscle, the presence of mind required all the time when his mind was especially absent, the impossibility of thinking out any of his trains of ideas when a train of trucks was upon him, the native indignation of a man at knowing that his blood is meant to ebb down a railway sewer, and a new broom will sweep him clean – all these worries and wraths together, cogging into the mill–wheel of cares already grinding, had made such a mill–clack in his head near the left temple, where the thump was, that he could only roll on his narrow bed at imminent risk of a floor–bump.

Then the cold, long harbouring, struck into his heart and reins; and he knew not that Dr. Tink came, and was learned and diagnostic upon him; nor even that Polly Ducksacre took his feet out of bed, and rubbed them until her wrists gave way; and then, half ashamed of her womanhood, sneaked away, and cried over Wena.

Wenaʼs foot was put into splinters, Wenaʼs tail was stypticised; but no skill could save her master from a furious brain–fever.

CHAPTER XI

Leaving the son on his narrow hard pallet, to toss and toss, and turn and turn, and probably get bed–sores, let us see how the father was speeding.

Sir Cradock Nowell sat all alone in his little breakfast–room, soon after the funeral of his brother, and before Eoa came to him. For the simple, hot–hearted girl fell so ill after she heard of her loss, and recovered from the narcotic, that Biddy OʼGaghan, who got on famously with the people at the Crown, would not hear of her being moved yet, and drove Dr. Hutton all down the stairs, “with a word of sinse on the top of him,” when he claimed his right of attending upon the girl he had known in India.

That little breakfast–room adjoined Sir Cradockʼs favourite study, and was as pretty a little room as he could have wished to sit in. He had made pretence of breakfasting, but perhaps he looked forward to lunch–time, for not more than an ounce of food had he swallowed altogether.

There he sat nervously, trying vainly to bring his mind to bear on the newspaper. Fine gush of irony, serried antithesis, placid assumption of the point at issue, then logic as terse and tight as the turns of a three–inch screw–jack, withering indignation at those who wonʼt think exactly as we do, the sunrise glow of metaphor, the moonlight gleam of simile, the sparkling stars of wit, and the playful Aurora of humour – alas, all these are like water on a duckʼs back when the heart wonʼt let the brain go. If we cannot appreciate their beauty, because our opinions are different, how can we hope to do so when we donʼt care what any opinions are?

It is all very well, very easy, to talk about objectivity; but a really objective man the Creator has never shown us, save once; and even He rebuked the fig–tree, to show sympathy with our impatience.

And I doubt but it is lest we deify the grand incarnations of intellect – the Platos and the Aristotles, the Bacons and the Shakespeares – that it has pleased the Maker of great and small to leave us small tales of the great ones, mean anecdotes, low traditions; lest at any time we should be dazzled, and forget that they were but sparkles from the dross which heaven hammers on. Oh vast and soaring intellects, was it that your minds flew higher because they had shaken the soul off; or was it that your souls grew sullen at the mindʼs preponderance?

Fash we not ourselves about it, though we pay the consequences. If we have not those great minds in the lump, we have a deal more, taking the average, and we make it go a deal further, having learned the art of economy and the division of labour. Nevertheless, Sir Cradock Nowell, being not at all an objective man, lay deep in the pot of despondency; and, even worse than that, hung, jerked thereout every now and then, by the flesh–hook of terror and nervousness. How could he go kindly with his writer when his breakfast would not so with him?

He was expecting Bull Garnet. Let alone all his other wearing troubles, he never could be comfortable when he expected Bull Garnet. At every step in the passage, every bang of a door, the proud old gentleman trembled and flushed, and was wroth with himself for doing so.

Then Hogstaff came in, and fussed about, and Sir Cradock was fain to find fault with him.

“How careless you are getting about the letters, Hogstaff. Later and later every morning! What is the reason that you never now bring me the bag at the proper time?”

It was very strange, no doubt, of Job Hogstaff, but he could not bear to be found fault with; and now he saw his way to a little triumph, and resolved to make the most of it.

“Yes, Sir Cradock; to be sure, Sir Cradock; how my old head is failing me! Very neglectful of me never to have brought the bag to–day.” Then he turned round suddenly at the door, to which he had been hobbling. “Perhaps youʼd look at the date, Sir Cradock, of the paper in your hand, sir.”

“Yesterdayʼs paper, of course, Hogstaff. What has that to do with it?”

“Oh, nothing, sir, nothing, of course. Only I thought it might have comed in the letter–bag. Perhaps it never does, Sir Cradock; you knows best, as you takes it out.” Here old Job gave a quiet chuckle, and added, as if to himself, “No, of course, it couldnʼt have come in the letter–bag this morning, or master would never have blowed me up for not bringing him the bag, as nobody else got a key to it!”

“How stupid of me, to be sure, how excessively stupid!” exclaimed Sir Cradock, with a sigh; “of course I had the bag, a full hour ago; and there was nothing in it but this paper. Job, I beg your pardon.”

“And I hope itʼs good news youʼve got there, Sir Cradock, and no cases of starvation; no one found dead in the streets, I hopes, or drownded in the Serpentine. Anyhow, thereʼs a many births, I see, and a deal too many. Children be now such a plenty nobody care about them.”

“Job, you quite forget yourself,” said his master, very grandly; but there came a long sigh after it, and Job was not daunted easily.

“And, if I do, Sir Cradock Nowell, Iʼd sooner forget myself than my children.”

Sir Cradock was very angry, or was trying to feel that he ought to be so, when a heavy tread, quite unmistakable, and yet not so firm as it used to be, shook the Minton tiles of the passage. That step used to cry to the echoes, “Make way; a man of vigour and force is coming.” Now all it said was, “Here I go, and am not in a mood to be meddled with.”

“Come in,” said Sir Cradock, fidgeting, and pretending to be up for an egg, as Mr. Garnet gave two great thumps on the panel of the door. Small as the room was, Job Hogstaff managed to be too late to let him in.

Bull Garnet first flung his great eyes on the butler; he had no idea of fellows skulking their duty. Old Hogstaff, who looked upon Garnet as no more than an upper servant, gazed back with especial obtuseness, and waved his napkin cleverly.

“Please to put that mat straight again, Mr. Garnet. You kicked it askew, as you came in. And our master canʼt abide things set crooked.”

To Jobʼs disappointment and wonder, Bull Garnet stepped back very quietly, stooped down, and replaced the sheepskin.

“Hogstaff, leave the room this moment,” shouted Sir Cradock, wrathfully; and Job hobbled away to brag how he had pulled Muster Garnet down a peg.

“Now, Garnet, take my easy–chair. Will you have a cup of coffee after your early walk?”

“No, thank you. I have breakfasted three hours and a half ago. In our position of life, we must be up early, Sir Cradock Nowell.”

There was something in the tone of that last remark, common–place as it was, without the key to it, which the hearer disliked particularly.

“I have requested the favour of your attendance here, Mr. Garnet, that I might have the benefit of your opinion upon a subject which causes me the very deepest anxiety – at least, I mean, which interests me deeply.”

“Ah!” exclaimed Mr. Garnet: he could say “ah!” in such a manner that it held three volumes uncut.

“Yes. I wish to ask your opinion about my poor son, Cradock.”

Bull Garnet said not a word, but conveyed to the ceiling his astonishment that the housemaid had left such cobwebs there.

“I fear, Garnet, you cannot sympathize with me. You are so especially fortunate in your own domestic circumstances.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Garnet, still contemplating the cornice. “Oh exclamantis est,” beautifully observes the Eton grammar.

“Yes, your son is a perfect pattern. So gentle and gentlemanly; so amiable and poetical. I had no idea he was so brave. Shall I ever see him to thank him for saving the life of my niece?”

“He is a fine fellow, a noble fellow, Sir Cradock. The dearest and the best boy in the whole wide world.”

The old man long had known that the flaw in Bull Garnetʼs armour was the thought of his dear boy, Bob.

“And can you not fancy, Garnet, that my son, whatever he is, may also be dear to me?”

“I should have said so, I must have thought so, but for the way you have treated him.”

Bull Garnet knew well enough that he was a hot and hasty man; but he seldom had felt that truth more sharply than now, when he saw the result of his words. Nevertheless, he faltered not. He had made up his mind to deliver its thoughts, and he was not the man to care for faces.

“Sir Cradock Nowell, I am a violent, hot, and passionate man. I have done many things in my fury which I would give my life to undo; but I would rather have them all on my soul than such cold–blooded, calm, unnatural cruelty as you have shown to your only – I mean to your own – son. I suppose you never cared for him; suppose! I mean of course you did not.”

He looked at Sir Cradock Nowell, with thunder and hail in his eyes. The old man could not glance it back; neither did he seem to be greatly indignant at it.

“Then – then – I suppose you donʼt think – you donʼt believe, I mean, Garnet – that he did it on purpose?”

Mr. Garnet turned pale as a winding–sheet, and could not speak for a moment. Then he looked away from Sir Cradockʼs eyes, and asked, “Is it possible that you have ever thought so?”

“I have tried not,” answered Sir Cradock, with his wasted bosom heaving. “God knows that I have struggled against it. Garnet, have pity upon me. If you have any of our blood in you, tell me the truth, what you think.”

“I not only think, but know, that the devil only could have suggested such an idea to you. Man, for the sake of the God that made you, and made me as well as your brother, and every one of us brethren, rather put a pistol to your heart than that damned idea. In cold blood! in cold blood! And for the sake of gain! A brother to – do away with – a brother so! Oh, what things have come upon me! Where is my God, and where is yours?”

“I am sure I donʼt know,” replied the old man, gazing round in wonderment, as if he expected to see Him – for the scene had quite unnerved him – “I suppose He is – is somewhere in the usual place, Mr. Garnet.”

“Then thatʼs not in this neighbourhood,” replied Bull Garnet, heavily; “He is gone from me, from all of us. And His curse is on my children. Poor innocents, poor helpless lambs! The curse of God is on them.”

He went away to the window; and, through his tears, and among the trees, tried to find his cottage–roof.

Sir Cradock Nowell was lost to thought, and heard nothing of those woeful words, although from the depth of that labouring chest they came like the distant sea–roar.

Bull Garnet returned with his fierce eyes softened to a womanʼs fondness, and saw, with pity as well as joy, that his last words had not been heeded. “Ever hot and ever hasty, until it comes to my own death,” he muttered, still in recklessness; “perhaps then I shall be tardy. For my sonʼs sake, for my Bob and Pearl, I must not make such a child of myself. Nevertheless, I cannot stay here.”

“Garnet,” said Sir Cradock Nowell, slowly recovering from his stupor, a slight cerebral paralysis, “say nothing of what has passed between us – nothing, I entreat you; and not another word to me now. I only understand that you assert emphatically my son Cradockʼs innocence.”

“With every fibre of my heart. With every tissue of my brain.”

“Then I love you very much for it; although you have done it so rudely.”

“Donʼt say that. Never say it again. I canʼt bear it now, Sir Cradock.”

“Very well, then, I wonʼt, Garnet. Though I think you might be proud of my gratitude; for I never bestow it rashly.”

“I am very thankful to you. Gratitude is an admirable and exceedingly scarce thing. I am come to give you notice – as well as to answer your summons – notice of my intention to quit your service shortly.”

“Nonsense!” replied Sir Cradock, gasping; “nonsense, Garnet! You never mean that – that even you would desert me?”

Bull Garnet was touched by the old manʼs tone – the helplessness, the misery. “Well,” he answered, “Iʼll try to bear with it for a little longer, in spite of the daily agony. I owe you everything; all I can do. Iʼll get things all into first–rate order, and then I hope, most truly, your son will be back again, sir.”

“It isnʼt only the stewardship, Garnet; it isnʼt only that. You are now as one of the family, and there are so few of us left. Your daughter Pearl; I begin to love her as of my own flesh and blood. Who knows but what, if my Cradock comes back, he may take a liking to her? Amy Rosedew has not behaved well lately, any more than her father has.”

“Do you mean to say that you, Sir Cradock, with all your prejudices of birth, legitimacy, and station, would ever sanction – supposing it possible – any affection of a child of yours for a child of mine?”

“To be sure – if it were a true one. A short time ago I thought very differently. But oh! what does it matter? I am not what I was, Garnet.”

“Neither am I,” thought Mr. Garnet; “but I might have been, if only I could ever have dreamed this. God has left me, for ever left me.”

“Why donʼt you answer me, Garnet? Why do you shut your Pearl up so? Let her come to me soon; she would do me good; and I, as you know, have a young lady coming, who knows little of English society. Pearl would do her a great deal of good. Pearl is a thorough specimen of a well–bred English maiden. I think I like her better than Amy – since Amy has been so cold to me.”

To Sir Cradockʼs intense astonishment, Bull Garnet, instead of replying, rushed straight away out of the room, and, not content with that, he rushed out of the house as well, and strode fiercely away to the nearest trees, and was lost to sight among them.

“Well,” said the old man, “he always was the oddest fellow I ever did know; and I suppose he always will be. And yet what a man for business!”

That same forenoon, Mrs. Brownʼs boy and donkey came with a very long message from a lady who had tucked him on the head because he could not make out her meaning. He believed her name was Mrs. Jogging, and he was to say that Miss Oh Ah was fit to come home to–day, please, if theyʼd please to send the shay for her. And they must please to get ready Satanʼs room, where the daffodil curtains was, because the young woman loved to look at the yeast, and to have a good fire burning. And please they must send the eel–skin cloak, and the foot–tub in the shay, because the young woman was silly.

“Chilly, you stupid,” replied Mrs. Toaster. “She shall have the foot–warmer and the seal–skin cloak; but what Satanʼs room with the daffodil curtains is, only the Lord in heaven knows; and how she is to see any yeast there! Are you certain that was the message?”

“Sartin, maʼam. I said it to myself ever so many times; more often than I stuck the Neddy.”

Sir Cradock Nowell, upon appeal, speedily decided that the satin room was meant – the room with the rose–coloured curtains, and the windows facing the east; but the boy stuck out for the daffodil; leastways he was certain it was some flower.

It was nearly dark when the carriage returned; and Sir Cradock came down to the great entrance–hall to meet his brotherʼs child. He was trembling with anxiety; for his nerves were rapidly failing him; and, from Dr. Huttonʼs account, he feared to see in his probable heiress – for now he had no heir – something very outlandish and savage. Therefore he was surprised and delighted when a graceful and beautiful girl, with high birth and elegance in every movement, flung off her cloak, and skipped up to him with the lightness of a gazelle, and threw her arms round his neck, and kissed him.

“Oh, uncle, I shall love you so! You are so like my darling – you have got his nose exactly, and just the same shaped legs. Oh, to think he should ever have left me!” And she burst into tears then and there before half a dozen servants. “Oh, Uncle Cradock, you have got a fine house; but I never shall get over it.”

“Hush, my dear; come with me, my child!” Sir Cradock was always wide awake upon the subject of proprieties.

“I am not your child; and I wonʼt be your child, if you try to stop me like that. I must cry when I want to cry, and it is so stupid to stop me.”

“What a pretty dear you are!” said Sir Cradock, scarcely knowing what to say, but having trust in feminine vanity.

“Am I indeed? I donʼt think so at all. I was very pretty, I know, until I began to cry so. But now my cheeks are come out, and my eyes gone in; but, oh dear! what does it matter, and my father never, never to take me on his lap again? Hya! Hya! Hya!”

“Faix, thin, me darlinʼ,” cried Mrs. OʼGaghan, stroking her down in a shampoo manner, “itʼs meself as knows how to dale with you. Lave her to me; Sir Crayduck; sheʼs pure and parfict, every bit on her. I knows how to bring her out, and sheʼll come to your room like a lamb, now jist. – Git out of the way, the lot on you” – to several officious maidens – “me honey, put your hand in my neck, your blissed leetle dove of a hand, and fale how me heart goes pat for you. Sir Crayduck, me duty to you, but you might ‘ave knowed how to git out of the way, and lave the ladies to the ladies.”

Sir Cradock Nowell marched away, thinking what a blessing it was that he had not had much to do with women. Then he reproached himself for the thought, as he remembered his darling Violet, the mother of his children. But, before he had brooded very long in the only room he liked to use now, his study just off from the library, a gentle knock came to the door – as Biddy always expressed it – and Eoa, dressed in deepest mourning (made at Lymington, from her own frock, while she lay ill at the Crown), came up to him steadily, and kissed him, and sat on a stool at his feet.

“Oh, uncle, I am so sorry,” she said, with her glorious hair falling over his knees, and her deep eyes looking up at him, “I am so sorry, Uncle Cradock, that I vexed you so, just now.”

“You did not vex me, my pretty. I was only vexed for you. Now, remember one thing, my darling – for I shall love you as my own daughter – I have been very harsh and stern where, perhaps, I had no right to be so: if I am ever unkind to you, my dear, if I ever say anything hard, only say ‘Clayton Nowell’ to me, and I will forgive you directly.”

“You mean I must forgive you, uncle. I suppose thatʼs what you mean. If you are unkind to me, what will you want to forgive me for? But I couldnʼt do it. I couldnʼt say it, even if I had done any harm. Please to remember that I either love or I hate people. I know that I shall love you. But you must not contradict me. I never could endure it, and I never will.”

“Well,” said Sir Cradock, laughing; “I will try to remember that, my dear. Though, in that respect, you differ but little from our English young ladies.”

“If you please, Uncle Cradock, I must go to–night to see where you have put my father. There, I wonʼt cry any more, because he told me never to vex you, and I see that my crying vexes you. Did you cry, yourself, Uncle Cradock, when you heard of it first?”

She looked at him, as she asked this question, with such wild intensity, as if her entire opinion of him would hang upon his reply, that the old man felt himself almost compelled to tell “a corker.”

“Well, my dear, I am not ashamed to confess – ”

“Ashamed to confess, indeed! I should rather hope not. But you ought to be ashamed, I know, if you hadnʼt cried, Uncle Crad. But now I shall love you very much, now I know you did cry. And how much have you got a year, Uncle Crad?”

“How much what, my dear? What beautiful eyes you have, Eoa; finer than any of the Nowells!”

“Yes, I know. But that wonʼt do, Uncle Crad; you donʼt want to answer my question. What I want to know is a very simple thing. How much money have you got a year? You must have got a good deal. I know, because everybody says so, and because this is such a great place, as big as the palaces in Calcutta.”

“Really, Eoa, it is not usual for young people, especially young ladies, to ask such very point–blank questions.”

“Oh, I did not know that, and I canʼt see any harm in it. I know the English girls at Calcutta used to think of nothing else. But I am not a bit like them; it isnʼt that I care for the money a quarter so much as tamarinds; but I have a particular reason; and Iʼll find out in spite of you. Just you see if I donʼt, now.”

“A very particular reason, Eoa, for inquiring into my income! Why, what reason can you have?”

“Is it usual for old people, especially old gentlemen, to ask such very point–blank questions?”

Sir Cradock would have been very angry with any other person in the world for such a piece of impertinence; but Eoa gave such a smile of triumph at having caught him in his own net (as she thought), and looked so exquisite in her beauty, as she rose, and the firelight flashed on her; then she tossed her black hair over her shoulders, and gave him such a kiss (with all the spices of India in it) that the old man was at her mercy quite, and she could do exactly what she liked with him.

Oh, Mrs. Nowell Corklemore – so proud of having obtained at last an invitation to Nowelhurst, so confident that, once let in, you can wedge out all before you, like Alexanderʼs phalanx – call a halt, and shape your wiles, and look to belt and buckler, have every lance fresh set and burnished, every sword like a razor; for verily the fight is hard, when art does battle with nature.