CHAPTER XXX.
OUR LAD STEENIE
When the flaunting and the flouting of the summer-prime are over; when the leaves of tree, and bush, and even of unconsidered weeds, hang on their stalks, instead of standing upright, as they used to do; and very often a convex surface, by the cares of life, is worn into a small concavity: a gradual change, to a like effect, may be expected in the human mind.
A man remembers that his own autumn is once more coming over him; that the light is surely waning, and the darkness gathering in; that more of his plans are shed and scattered, as the sun “draws water” among the clouds, or as the gossamer floats idly over the sere and seeded grass. Therefore it is high time to work, to strengthen the threads of the wavering plan, to tighten the mesh of the woven web, to cast about here and there for completion – if the design shall be ever complete.
So now, as the summer passed, a certain gentleman, of more repute perhaps than reputation, began to be anxious about his plans.
Sir Remnant Chapman owned large estates adjoining the dwindled but still fair acreage of the Lorraines, in the weald of Sussex. Much as he differed from Sir Roland in tastes and habits and character, he announced himself, wherever he went, as his most intimate friend and ally. And certainly he was received more freely than any other neighbour at Coombe Lorraine, and knew all the doings and ways of the family, and was even consulted now and then. Warm friendship, however, can scarcely thrive without mutual respect; and though Sir Remnant could never escape from a certain unwilling respect for Sir Roland, the latter never could contrive to reciprocate the feeling.
Because he knew that Sir Remnant was a gentleman of a type already even then departing, although to be found, at the present day, in certain parts of England. A man of fixed opinions, and even what might be accounted principles (at any rate by himself) concerning honour, and birth, and betting, and patriotism, and some other matters, included in a very small et-cetera. It is hard to despise a man who has so many points settled in his system; but it is harder to respect him, when he sees all things with one little eye, and that eye a vicious one. Sir Remnant Chapman had no belief in the goodness of woman, or the truth of man – in the beautiful balance of nature, or even the fatherly kindness that comforts us. Therefore nobody could love him; and very few people paid much attention to his dull hatred of mankind. “Contempt,” he always called it; but he had not power to make it that; neither had he any depth of root, to throw up eminence. A “bitter weed” many people called him; and yet he was not altogether that. For he liked to act against his nature, perhaps from its own perversity; and often did kind things, to spite his own spitefulness, by doing them. As for sense of right and wrong, he had none outside of his own wishes; and he always expected the rest of the world to move on the same low system. How could such a man get on, even for an hour, with one so different – and more than that, so opposite to him – as the good Sir Roland? Mr. Hales, who was not (as we know) at all a tight-laced man himself, and may perhaps have been a little jealous of Sir Remnant, put that question to himself, as well as to his wife and family; and echo only answered “how?” However, soever, there was the fact; and how many facts can we call to mind ever so much stranger?
Sir Remnant’s only son, Stephen Chapman, was now over thirty years of age, and everybody said that it was time for him to change his mode of life. Even his father admitted that he had made an unreasonably long job of “sowing his wild oats,” and now must take to some better culture. And nothing seemed more likely to lead to this desirable result than a speedy engagement to an accomplished, sensible, and attractive girl. Therefore, after a long review and discussion of all the young ladies round, it had been settled that the heir of all the Chapmans should lay close siege to young Alice Lorraine.
“Captain Chapman” – as Stephen was called by courtesy in that neighbourhood, having held a commission in a fashionable regiment, until it was ordered to the war – this man was better than his father in some ways, and much worse in others. He was better, from weakness; not having the strength to work out works of iniquity; and also from having some touches of kindness, whereof his father was intact. He was worse, because he had no sense of honour, no rudiment of a principle; not even a dubious preference for the truth, at first sight, against a lie. Captain Chapman, however, could do one manly thing, and only one. He could drive, having cultivated the art, in the time when it meant something. Horses were broken then, not trained – as nowadays they must be – and skill and nerve were needed for the management of a four-in-hand. Captain Chapman was the first in those parts to drive like Ericthonius, and it took him a very long time to get his father to sit behind him. For the roads were still very bad and perilous, and better suited for postilions, than for Stephen Chapman’s team.
He durst not drive up Coombe Lorraine, or at any rate he feared the descent as yet, though he meant some day to venture it. And now that he was come upon his wooing, he left his gaudy equipage at the foot of the hill, to be sent back to Steyning and come for him at an appointed time. Then he and his father, with mutual grumblings, took to the steep ascent on foot.
Sir Roland had asked them, a few days ago, to drive over and dine with him, either on Thursday, or any other day that might suit them. They came on the Thursday, with their minds made up to be satisfied with anything. But they certainly were not very well pleased to find that the fair Mistress Alice had managed to give them the slip entirely. She was always ready to meet Sir Remnant, and discharge the duties of a hostess to him; but, from some deep instinctive aversion, she could not even bear to sit at table with the Captain. She knew not at all what his character was; neither did Sir Roland know a tenth part of his ill repute; otherwise he had never allowed him to approach the maiden. He simply looked upon Captain Chapman as a fashionable man of the day, who might have been a little wild perhaps, but now meant to settle down in the country, and attend to his father’s large estates.
However, neither of the guests suspected that their visit had fixed the date of another little visit pending long at Horsham; and one girl being as good as another to men of the world of that stamp, they were well content, when the haunch went out, to clink a glass with the Rector’s daughters, instead of receiving a distant bow from a diffident and very shy young lady.
“Now, Lorraine,” began Sir Remnant, after the ladies had left the room, and the Captain was gone out to look at something, according to arrangement, and had taken the Rector with him, “we have known one another a good many years; and I want a little sensible talk with you.”
“Sir Remnant, I hope that our talk is always sensible; so far at least as can be expected on my part.”
“There you are again, Lorraine, using some back meaning, such as no one else can enter into. But let that pass. It is your way. Now I want to say something to you.”
“I also am smitten with a strong desire to know what it is, Sir Remnant.”
“Well, it is neither more nor less than this. You know what dangerous times we live in, with every evil power let loose, and Satan, like a roaring lion, rampant and triumphant. Thank you, yes, I will take a pinch; your snuff is always so delicious. With the arch-enemy prowling about, with democracy, nonconformity, infidelity, and rick-burnings – ”
“Exactly so. How well you express it! I was greatly struck with it in the George and Dragon’s report of your speech at the farmers’ dinner at Billinghurst.”
“Well, well, I may have said it before; but that only makes it the more the truth. Can you deny it, Sir Roland Lorraine?”
“Far be it from me to deny the truth. I am listening with the greatest interest.”
“No, you are not; you never do. You are always thinking of something to yourself. But what I was going to say was this, that it is high time to cement the union, and draw close the bonds of amity between all good men, all men of any principle – by which I mean – come now, you know.”
“To be sure: you mean all stanch Tories.”
“Yes, yes; all who hold by Church and State, land and the constitution. I have educated my son carefully in the only right and true principles. Train up a child – you know what I mean. And you, of course, have brought up your daughter upon the same right system.”
“Nay, rather, I have left her to form her own political opinions. And, to the best of my belief, she has formed none.”
“Lorraine, I am heartily glad to hear it. That is how all the girls should be. When I was in London, they turned me sick with asking my opinion. The less they know, the better for them. Knowledge of anything makes a woman scarcely fit to speak to. My poor dear wife could read and write, and that was quite enough for her. She did it on the jam-pots always, and she could spell most of it. Ah, she was a most wonderful woman!”
“She was. I often found much pleasure in her conversation. She knew so many things that never come by way of reading.”
“And so does Stephen. You should hear him. He never reads any sort of book. Ah, that is the true learning. Books always make stupid people. Now it struck me that – ah, you know, I see. A wink’s as good as a nod, of course. No catching a weasel asleep.” Here Sir Remnant screwed up one eye, and gave Sir Roland a poke in the ribs, with the most waggish air imaginable.
“Again and again I assure you,” said his host, “that I have not the smallest idea what you mean. Your theory about books has in me the most thorough confirmation.”
“Aha! it is all very well – all very well to pretend, Lorraine. Another pinch of snuff, and that settles it. Let them set up their horses together as soon as ever they please – eh?”
“Who? What horses? Why will you thus visit me with impenetrable enigmas?”
“Visit you! Why, you invited me yourself! Who indeed? Why, of course, our lad Steenie, and your girl Lallie!”
“Captain Chapman and my Alice! Such a thought never entered my mind. Do you know that poor Alice is little more than seventeen years old? And Captain Chapman must be – let me see – ”
“Never mind what he is. He is my son and heir, and there’ll be fifty thousand to settle on his wife, in hard cash – not so bad nowadays.”
“Sir Remnant Chapman, I beg you not to say another word on the subject. Your son must be twice my daughter’s age, and he looks even more than that – ”
“Dash my wig! Then I am seventy, I suppose. What the dickens have his looks got to do with the matter? I don’t call him at all a bad-looking fellow. A chip of the old block, that’s what he is. Ah, many a fine woman, I can tell you – ”
“Now, if you please,” Sir Roland said, with a very clear and determined voice – “if you please, we will drop this subject. Your son may be a very good match, and no doubt he is in external matters; and if Alice, when old enough, should become attached to him, perhaps I might not oppose it. There is nothing more to be said at present; and, above all things, she must not hear of it.”
“I see, I see,” answered the other baronet, who was rather short of temper. “Missy must be kept to her bread-and-milk, and good books, and all that, a little longer. By the by, Lorraine, what was it I heard about your son the other day – that he had been making a fool of himself with some grocer’s daughter?”
“I have not heard of any grocer’s daughter. And as he will shortly leave England, people perhaps will have less to say about him. His commission is promised, as perhaps you know; and he is not likely to quit the army because there is fighting going on.”
Sir Remnant felt all the sting of that hit; his face (which showed many signs of good living) flushed to the tint of the claret in his hand, and he was just about to make a very coarse reply, when luckily the Rector came back suddenly, followed by the valiant Captain. Sir Roland knew that he had allowed himself to be goaded into bad manners for once, and he strove to make up for it by unwonted attention to the warrior.
CHAPTER XXXI.
IN A MARCHING REGIMENT
It was true that Hilary had attained at last the great ambition of his life. He had changed the pen for the sword, the sand for powder, and the ink for blood; and in a few days he would be afloat, on his way to join Lord Wellington. His father’s obstinate objections had at last been overcome; for there seemed to be no other way to cut the soft net of enchantment and throw him into a sterner world.
His Uncle Struan had done his best, and tried to the utmost stretch the patience of Sir Roland, with countless words, until the latter exclaimed at last, “Why, you seem to be worse than the boy himself! You went to spy out the nakedness of the land, and you returned in a fortnight with grapes of Eschol. Truly this Danish Lovejoy is more potent than the great Canute. He turns at his pleasure the tide of opinion.”
“Roland, now you go too far. It is not the Grower that I indite of, but his charming daughter. If you could but once be persuaded to see her – ”
“Of course. Exactly what Hilary said. In him I could laugh at it; but in you – Well, a great philosopher tells us that every jot of opinion (even that of a babe, I suppose) is to be regarded as an equal item of the ‘universal consensus.’ And the universal consensus becomes, or forms, or fructifies, or solidifies, into the great homogeneous truth. I may not quote him aright, and I beg his pardon for so lamely rendering him. However, that is a rude sketch of his view, a brick from his house – to mix metaphors – and perhaps you remember it better, Struan.”
“God forbid! The only thing that I remember out of all my education is the stories – what do you call them? – mythologies. Capital some of them are, capital! Ah, they do so much good to boys – teach them manliness and self-respect.”
“Do they? However, to return to this lovely daughter of the Kentish Alcinous – by the way, if his ancestors were Danes who took to gardening, it suggests a rather startling analogy. The old Corycian is believed (though without a particle of evidence) to have been a pirate in early life, and therefore have taken to pot-herbs. Let that pass. I could never have believed it, except for this instance of Lovejoy.”
“And how, if you please,” broke in the Rector, who was always jealous of “Norman blood,” because he had never heard that he had any; “how were the Normans less piratical, if you please, than the Danes, their own grandfathers? Except that they were sick at sea – big rogues all of them, in my opinion. The Saxons were the only honest fellows. Ay, and they would have thrashed those Normans, but for the slightest accident. When I hear of those Normans, without any shoulders – don’t tell me; they never would have built such a house as this is, otherwise – what do you think I feel ready to do, sir? Why, to get up, and to lift my coat, and – ”
“Come, come, Struan; we quite understand all your emotions without that. This makes you a very bigoted ambassador in our case. You meant to bring back all the truth, of course. But when you found the fishing good, and the people roughly hospitable, and above all, a Danish smack in their manners, and figures, and even their eyes, which have turned on the Kentish soil, I am told, to a deep and very brilliant brown – ”
“Yes, Roland, you are right for once. At any rate, it is so with her.”
“Very well. Then you being, as you always are, a sudden man – what did you do but fall in love (in an elderly fatherly manner, of course) with this – what is her name, now again? I never can recollect it.”
“You do. You never forget anything. Her name is Mabel. And you may be glad to pronounce it pretty often, in your old age, Sir Roland.”
“Well, it is a pretty name, and deserves a pretty bearer. But, Struan, you are a man of the world. You know what Hilary is; and you know (though we do not give ourselves airs, and drive four horses in a hideous yellow coach, and wear diamond rings worth a thousand pounds), you know what the Lorraines have always been – a little particular in their ways, and a little inclined to, to, perhaps – ”
“To look down on the rest of the world, without ever letting them know it, or even knowing it yourselves, perhaps. Have I hit it aright, Sir Roland?”
“Not quite that. Indeed, nothing could be further from what I was thinking of.” Sir Roland Lorraine sighed gently here; and even his brother-in-law had not the least idea why he did so. It was that Sir Roland, like all the more able Lorraines for several centuries, was at heart a fatalist. And this family taint had perhaps been deepened by the infusion of Eastern blood. This was the bar so often fixed between them and the rest of the world – a barrier which must hold good, while every man cares for his neighbour’s soul, so much more than his own for ever.
“Is it anything in religion, Roland?” the Rector whispered kindly. “I know that you are not orthodox, and a good deal puffed up with carnal knowledge. Still, if it is in my line at all; I am not a very high authority – but perhaps I might lift you over it. They are saying all sorts of things now in the world; and I have taken two hours a-day, several days – now you need not laugh – in a library we have got up at Horsham, filled with the best divinity; so as to know how to answer them.”
“My dear Struan,” Sir Roland replied, without so much as the gleam of a smile, “that was really good of you. And you now have so many other things to attend to with young dogs, and that; and the 1st of September next week, I believe! What a relief that must be to you!”
“Ay, that it is. You cannot imagine, of course, with all your many ways of frittering time away indoors, what a wearing thing it is to have nothing better than rabbit-shooting, or teaching a dog to drop to shot. But now about Hilary: you must relent – indeed you must, dear Roland. He is living on sixpence a-day, I believe – virtuous fellow, most rare young man! Why, if that dirty Steve Chapman now had been treated as you have served Hilary – note of hand, bill-drawing, post-obits, – and you might even think yourself lucky if there were no big forgery to hush up. Ah, his father may think what he likes; but I look on Hilary as a perfect wonder, a Bayard, a Crichton, a pelican!”
“Surely you mean a paragon, Struan? What young can he have to feed from his own breast?”
“I meant what I said, as I always do. And how can you know what young he has, when you never even let him come near you? Ah, if I only had such a son!” Here the Rector, who really did complain that he had no son to teach how to shoot, managed to get his eyes a little touched with genial moisture.
“This is grievous,” Sir Roland answered; “and a little more than I ever expected, or can have enabled myself to deserve. Now, Struan, will you cease from wailing, if I promise one thing?”
“That must depend upon what it is. It will take a good many things, I am afraid, to make me think well of you again.”
“To hear such a thing from the head of the parish! Now, Struan, be not vindictive. I ought to have let you get a good day’s shooting, and then your terms would have been easier.”
“Well, Roland, you know that we can do nothing. The estates are tied up in such a wonderful way, by some lawyer’s trick or other, through a whim of that blessed old lady – she can’t hear me, can she? – that Hilary has his own sister’s life between him and the inheritance; so far as any of us can make out.”
“So that you need not have boasted,” answered Sir Roland, with a quiet smile, “about his being a Bayard, in refraining from post-obits.”
“Well, well; you know what I meant quite well. The Jews are not yet banished from England. And there is reason to fear they never will be. There are plenty of them to discount his chance, if he did what many other boys would do.”
Sir Roland felt the truth of this. And he feared in his heart that he might be pushing his only son a little too hard, in reliance upon his honour.
“Will you come to the point for once?” he asked, with a look of despair and a voice of the same. “This is my offer – to get Hilary a commission in a foot-regiment, pack him off to the war in Spain; and if in three years after that he sticks to that Danish Nausicaa, and I am alive – why, then, he shall have her.”
Mr. Hales threw back his head – for he had a large, deep head, and when it wanted to think it would go back – and then he answered warily:
“It is a very poor offer, Sir Roland. At first sight it seems fair enough. But you, with your knowledge of youth, and especially such a youth as Hilary, rely upon the effects of absence, change, adventures, dangers, Spanish beauties, and, worst of all, wider knowledge of the world, and the company of coarse young men, to make him jilt his love, or perhaps take even a worse course than that.”
“You are wrong,” said Sir Roland, with much contempt. “Sir Remnant Chapman might so have meant it. Struan, you ought to know me better. But I think that I have a right, at least, to try the substance of such a whim, before I yield to it, and install, as the future mistress, a – well, what do you want me to call her, Struan?”
“Let it be, Roland; let it be. I am a fair man, if you are not; and I can make every allowance for you. But I think that your heir should at least be entitled to swing his legs over a horse, Sir Roland.”
“I, on the other hand, think that it would be his final ruin to do so. He would get among reckless fellows, to whom he is already too much akin. It has happened so with several of my truly respected ancestors. They have gone into cavalry regiments, and ridden full gallop through their estates. I am not a penurious man, as you know; and few think less of money. Can you deny that, even in your vitiated state of mind?”
“I cannot deny it,” the Rector answered; “you never think twice about money, Roland – except, of course, when you are bound to do so.”
“Very well; then you can believe that I wish poor Hilary to start afoot, solely for his own benefit. There is very hard fighting just now in Spain, or on the confines of Portugal. I hate all fighting, as you are aware. Still it is a thing that must be done.”
“Good Lord!” cried the Rector, “how you do talk! As if it was so many partridges!”
“No, it is better than that – come, Struan – because the partridges carry no guns you know.”
“I should be confoundedly sorry if they did,” the Rector answered, with a shudder. “Fancy letting fly at a bird who might have a long barrel under his tail!”
“It is an appalling imagination. Struan, I give you credit for it. But here we are, as usual, wandering from the matter which we have in hand. Are you content, or are you not, with what I propose about Hilary?”
In this expressly alternative form, there lurks a great deal of vigour. If a man says, “Are you satisfied?” you begin to cast about and wonder, whether you might not win better terms. Many side-issues come in and disturb you; and your way to say “yes” looks too positive. But if he only clench his inquiry with the option of the strong negative, the weakest of all things, human nature that hates to say “no,” is tampered with. This being so, Uncle Struan thought for a moment or so; and then said, “Yes, I am.”