"Your opinion upon all these points, dear mother, has influenced me beyond all doubt, even more than I was aware of. But you must remember that Dariel is also of the most ancient English lineage, gone by quite as much as you could wish – Crusaders, probably our Richard the first, and some of his devoted paladins. What can be nobler than to carry on a peaceful crusade of education, literature, Christianity – "
"They could never do that without plenty of money," said my father, a man as free from mercenary views as ever tried to raise a shilling. "And you spoke of some emerald mines, I think. But we must be careful, very careful, and insist upon verifying everything, quite independently of their reports. Let me see! I have met the Russian ambassador – but no, there have been two more since then. However I am not without influence altogether."
He waved his hand for me to go, and I slipped off, after a good kiss from my mother, who always gave way to the sentimental vein, when my father fell into the financial. And sure enough our finances were of a pensive character just now. My duty was clearly to allow my dear parents plenty of time to discuss me from my birth up to the present moment; and finding myself just a little in the fidgets and unfit for steady work, off I set through the park to our old house, to inquire whether Stoneman happened to be at home. For he had taken his holiday, and was come back; and so far as one could judge him by his looks and walk, he found himself better suited in his native land than elsewhere.
CHAPTER XXX
IN THE QUIET PLACES
"Gone to the City, sir," said the man, who opened the door which I knew so well, and it had a few reasons for remembering my childhood, impressed or indented upon its lower panels; "but he wanted to see you particular, Master George; and he will be home by two o'clock. I was to send down, and ask you to step this way by two o'clock, if you could any way spare the time, for he thinks to have a bit of a treat for you."
How small are our natures! I was pleased with Biddles for making a "he" of his master; when at every breath it would have been "Sir Harold," while we could afford his livery. A fine old Englishman was this, full of pure feeling, and in heart disdainful of gold in comparison with rank; though compelled by his stomach to coerce the higher organ. "How is your little Bob, Biddles?" I asked; and it was better than half-a-crown to him.
Before I had time to pick more than fifty holes in the stockbroker's taste as compared with our own, in came the man himself, full of high spirits, and alive with that vigour which the sparkling metal gives. Any man must be a cur who can snarl at a good friend, for enjoying the marrow-bone, which has dropped betwixt his paws. Jackson Stoneman was not without his faults; but it would have been mean to make them greater than they were, just because he was able to pay for them.
"Just the man I wanted – the very man," he said, as if I was worth all the Stock Exchange; "what luck I have had all day! And you are come to crown it. Here, you shall have my new Dougall, and I shall shoot with my old Lancaster."
"What a deuce of a hurry you are in!" I answered, for his mind could give me ten yards from scratch at any time. "I am not come here to shoot. I have no time for such trifles. I want to have a serious talk with you."
"Who do you think looked at me over the palings?" he spoke as if he had quaffed a fine Magnum of Champagne, although he was a man of very great discretion. "Over the palings, my boy; and after putting me down so the other day! I assure you it has quite set me up again; though I am afraid it was only an accident."
"You may be quite certain of that," I replied, for he wanted a little quenching; "she went to get the last of the globe-artichokes, and of course when she heard a horse she looked up. Old Sally looks up whenever any one goes by."
"I tell you there was no looking up about it. Globe-artichokes are as high as any woman's head. You are not going to put me down about that. And she kissed her hand to me. What do you think of that?"
"If you took off your hat, she could do no less to a kind friend of her mother. My affairs in that line are not flourishing. But I don't want another fellow to be made a fool of, Jackson. Can't you try to show a little common-sense?"
"Grapes sour, George? Well, I am sorry. But I fear you have not invested well, my son. What are those foreign girls? Do you think I would ever look at them, with a ghost of a chance of a thorough English maiden? When it comes to an English girl, you know where you are, and no mistake."
"All this is below contempt," I answered, for he had taken altogether the wrong tone with me. "Let me hear no more of such stuff; we are not boys. What is it you want me to shoot?"
"Well, that is a gracious way of putting it, when I offer you a chance anybody else would jump at. Guy Fawkes' day not come, and behold three woodcocks marked down in the Pray-copse!"
"I don't believe a word of it. They never come here yet. The earliest I ever shot was on the fifteenth. But if you can swallow it, I don't mind going with you."
"Well said. And back to dine with me at six o'clock. No scruple about certificate in this, though to my mind the woodcock is the best of British game. We'll call for the spaniels at Ponder's cottage. Best foot foremost!"
It was a bright autumnal afternoon, after a touch of white frost, and against the sky every here and there some bronzy leaf would swing and glisten like the pendulum of a clock at winding time. But most of the foliage now had finished its career of flaunt and flutter, and was lying at our feet in soft brown strewage, or pricking its last crispage up, where a blade of grass supported it. While at every winding of the meadow path (which followed the hedge like a selvage), how pleasant it was to see afar the wavering sweeps of gentle hill, and plaits of rich embosomed valley, with copse, and turnip-field, and furzy common patched with shadow. It made me bless the Lord at heart for casting my lines in a quiet land, where a man beholds no craggy menace, black rush of blind tempests, bottomless gulfs, unfathomed forests, and peaks that would freeze him into stone. For the people that live there must be in a wild condition always; to tremble at Nature's fury, or to shudder at her majesty, or look around on all that wraps them up, with desolate indifference.
I glanced at Stoneman walking briskly with his gun upon his shoulder, and death to at least a dozen woodcocks in the keen flash of his eyes; and I said to myself – "Please God, I will take a game-certificate, next August; there is nothing like a good day's shooting to save one from blood-thirstiness."
"Jackson, my boy!" I said, with the refrain of a fine old Yankee song arising in my memory, "you have been over half the world; but have you ever been in the Caucasus?"
"No, and don't want;" he answered shortly, "get robbed enough in London village. But they strip you naked there, I hear, and send you down a waterfall. Shamyl did it to some young chap, who might have set up against him."
"That is a fiction of his enemies. The Avar Chief was dry in his manner to strangers; and who can wonder at it? But he never harmed one of his own race. I wish we had a few such patriots."
"Very well. You start the band. You are qualifying well, with all those Egyptian fellows in the valley. But George, you are much too good for that. There are pretty girls in every caravan; but we don't jump over the broom-stick with them."
Dariel and a broom-stick! Indignation may flash as fast in the meadows as in the mountains. "You idiot! You talk like an utter cad," I cried; and he being quick of temper too, stood his gun against a tree, and looked at me. I set my gun by the side of his. "Let us have it out," was all I said.
But a gleam of reason came across him. He might have polished me off, perhaps, though he would not have found it very easy, for I was the heavier of the two, and in tidy rural condition. "What rot this is!" he said, lowering his hands. "If you like to have a good smack at me, you can. But I won't hit a fellow with Grace's eyes." I knew that he had meant business, and that there was no white feather in his nature.
He begged my pardon, and we shook hands; and I felt just a little ashamed of myself, although when I think of what he said, I see no misbehaviour on my part.
Without another word, we dropped the question, and went on to look after the woodcocks. We crossed the long "pray," with the keeper and three spaniels coming after us, and whether it was that Jackson's hand shook after menacing "the eyes of Grace," or that mine was extra steady through that firm assertion of Dariel, it came to pass that I knocked over both of the birds that we put up, when they were sailing away from Jackson's gun. The other longbill saved his bacon, by keeping it out of human eyes. These lucky shots, and the pleasant walk, and very fine behaviour of the dogs – who were children of the animals I had loved and chastened, in the better days both for them and me – put me into so noble a frame of mind, that after an excellent dinner and a glass or two of Port wine with the violet bouquet in it, I up and told Stoneman my own love-story; for I knew that the whole of it must come out now.
He, being pretty much in the same condition, though without anything like my excuse for it, listened as if he had never heard anything half so surprising and engrossing, and inspiriting. In fact, he seemed to take the whole of it as applicable to his own case, though it was beyond my power to perceive even the faintest analogy. His was an ordinary love-affair with nothing remarkable about it, unless it were that money, which is the usual obstacle by its absence, was the obstacle here by its presence. But in my case money was the last thing thought of. Sûr Imar had never mentioned it; and as for me, I only hoped that Dariel might never own a shilling, because then she would appreciate my few half-crowns. And I still possessed her ruby cross, and meant to keep it, until it should be mine by legal right. Ah, who can spy any chance of that through all the gloom impending?
CHAPTER XXXI
PIT-A-PAT
"She didn't say that she could never care about me," replied the stockbroker, when I asked him what he thought. "If she had, you wouldn't see me here now. I should have been off to the real Rialto; for I've got a first-rate fellow in the Avenue now."
"Jackson, my inquiry was about my own affair. I want to know what you think of my chance there." I looked at him severely, for this inattention was too bad.
"Well, and I gave you a parallel. We are almost in the same boat, I should say; though yours is a sort of savage canoe, full of Oriental fish-tails, no doubt, and liable to Vendetta, and many other frightful nuisances. To your young mind all that too probably increases the attraction. But to my mature views, there's romance enough and to spare, in a quiet English maiden, – sweet, gentle, affectionate, firm-principled, and not too sure of her own mind. Are they to be despised, because you can speak a civil word to them, without having a bullet through you? George, there is more romance really, where you know how to behave, than where you don't."
"Can't see it," I answered, "can't see it at all. Is it poetry to take up your spoon for pea-soup?"
"Poetry be hanged!" cried Jackson. And as it was only my brother who went in for it, when I never could make a blessed rhyme, why should I stand up for the Muses, who had never deigned a glance at me? Nevertheless, I was slightly shocked, for every man is, or ought to try to be, a little above the common mark, when he thinks he loves something even better than himself. And to be above the common mark is getting on for poetry.
"You go your own way, and leave me to go mine." I spoke with that elbow-lift of the mind which resembles what coachmen used to do to one another, when they met on the highroad, and did not want to raise the whip. "You will see, Jackson, if you live long enough, that I shall have a better time than you will." For I knew that Grace needed a very light hand; though girls had not got their mouths just yet, half as much as they have now.
"The Lord only grant me the chance of it!" he replied, with the happy rashness of young men. It was not for me to speak against my sister; but I knew all her little ins and outs, and I daresay she thought that she knew mine.
"Let me come down to your happy valley," he continued, with that contempt of my ideas, which I always leave Time to redress, and have seldom found him fail to do it. "I want to see this perfect wonder. Why, Shakespeare himself can have never created any heroine to compare with her. It is out of possibility, my dear George. Bless my heart – Imogen, Portia, Miranda, Rosalind, Juliet, Ophelia – no, she was weak – Sylvia, Helena, half a dozen others rolled into one, down in that little hole! I want to see her, that I may learn to despise the best English girl ever born; or try to pretend to do it, if she won't have me. Do you suppose I was born yesterday?"
When a man carries on like this, you may say what you like – though you are Solomon's Mahatma – without getting a spark of wisdom into him. I longed for Tom Erricker, who could always float on the top of a flood, because he was so light; and in a weak sort of way I had wanted him often, not to unload my mind upon him – for you might as well trust your watch to a floating bladder – but to see him look buoyant, when my mouth was full of brine. But Tom had been summoned by his electroplating parent to fall in love with a very nice young lady, whose father made dish-covers fluted in the rough. Those people had some shooting, and Tom thought that he could shoot. At any rate, it was better for him than the Bar.
"You shall not come near my happy valley," – it would never have done for me to encourage this, – "remember what you said of the hero who lives there. You took him for a forger, or a ticket-of-leave man."
"Well, I don't care a fig what he is, so long as he gives you satisfaction. But about Grace – I tell you I won't wait. If she kissed her hand to me, is not that enough to show – I shall be there to-morrow; but you must not let her know."
"Not to-morrow, Jackson. Why, it is her butter-day. And if she could ever cut up rough, I believe it would be the butter, at this time of year."
"Not a bit of it. Nothing would ever make her peppery. And she is sure to be at home, and up in your part of the premises. That is where she looks the most enthralling. But don't let her know, for the world, that I am coming."
It was fair that he should have his own way at last, after giving Grace a luxury of time to think about him, since his offer was made about ten days ago, when she put all the blame of her shilly-shally upon me! See how differently I did everything.
The following morning I gave her a hint – for my duty was to her first, and long afterwards to Jackson – that peradventure somebody in the course of the morning might turn up, to have a look at me in the harness-room; but she took the greatest pains not to understand me, and even put a particularly simple jacket on, of buff-coloured linen smocked with blue, and a delicate suggestion of retiring fronds – almost like a landscape of forget-me-not and lady-fern. But the shade of it was nothing in comparison with the shape, inasmuch as the latter was our Gracie's own; and everybody knows what that means. Only she herself had not the least idea about any part of it. All she cared for was to get on with her work; so she kept all her body and arms in motion, as if she were intent upon throwing shadows.
When the butter was coming forth, crowned with glory, – which the cleverest dairymaid may doubt about, as she has to do sometimes with a little pat or two inside her, – and the long slab of enamelled stuff (for we could not afford white marble) was tilted so that every golden patin could crisp itself without encroachment, and Grace, like a miser telling his moidores, was entering the upshot upon a white slate hanging by a scarlet ribbon, and pondering in her heart with the scales behind her, whether she had tried to cheat any one more than the good of the family demanded, suddenly a riding-glove was waved inside the door, and its fingers went about like bananas on a string, because there was no flesh inside them.
"Can't have you now, Joe," Miss Grace cried, with a presence of mind that could only be surpassed by the colour presented on her cheeks; "come again in half an hour. I am calculating now." As if old Joe Croaker had ever even seen a glove!
"I won't say a word, if I may come in. Oh, do let me come in and be calculated too. If I may only sit upon a pan upside down, or anyhow, quite out of sight in the corner. Oh, what a sweet place! I could live upon the smell of it. But I won't even go near the lace-edging of a pat."
"Mr. Stoneman! Is it possible? This is one of my brother's proceedings. That I cannot even finish a few pounds of butter! George has done many inconsiderate things – but this seems beyond even his temerity!"
"Miss Cranleigh, I give you my word of honour that I have not even seen him for the day. In fact I came to look for him, to say 'Good-bye,' before I start for Venice. One never knows when one may come back again, you see."
"Of course not. There are so many lovely things out there. The only surprising thing to me is, that any Englishman who can afford to travel spends so much of his time in this commonplace country."
"But you don't mean that! I do hope, Miss Cranleigh, that you have not so low an opinion of your own dear countrymen. And the dearer ones still, your own countrywomen! Foreign girls are all very well in their way. But who with a pair of eyes in his head – "
"You have seen more of them than I have, Mr. Stoneman. But everybody seems to say that they are most delightful. And even my poor brother George, – but I forgot, – forgive me, I am not supposed to know anything of that."
"But I do. I know everything about it," that treacherous stockbroker whispered: can any man be loyal to his best friend, when in love? "What a lucky chance that you should speak of that!"
"Excuse me, Mr. Stoneman; but I never spoke of anything. Only when a mystery is dwelling in one's mind, about one of those who naturally are the dearest to one, and when one's parents do not condescend – you see what I mean; though I really mean nothing."
"Precisely. And with such swift intelligence as yours! It is not for me to hint at my own weak ideas – such a thing as that I never do. And when no one in the family cares a fig for my opinion – "
"It is not at all fair of you to say that." Grace cast down her eyes, and then turned away in the most bewitching manner. The stockbroker jumped up from his brown milk-pan; but she looked at him, and he sat down again.
"Be careful, Mr. Stoneman, for I am afraid it has a crack. Sally says they cannot make them, as they used to do! But as I was saying, both my father and my mother are thoroughly aware of all your good-will. And there is not a tenant on the property, I am sure – "
"How can I think about the blessed tenants? Though of course I try to do my duty to them. But oh, do give me a little taste of butter after that."
"Am I a rogue, that I should dare do such a thing? Twenty-two pounds there, and not a pennyweight to spare. And old Mrs. Ramshorn made a fuss last time. After a cigar, how can you taste? Your taste must be very far from perfect."
"My taste is absolute perfection; and that is why – what I mean is, why I enjoy this most exquisite result. But a coward is ever so much worse than a rogue; and to shrink from the test is cowardly. I could never have believed it of Miss Cranleigh."
"Very well. But you shall pay for what you eat. I will take it from one of your own pats, that are going to the Hall in half an hour. But you must not blame me if it is not first-rate. Slemmick, the cleverest man we have, says that there is a leaf coming down now, which gets between the blades of grass, and it is useless for the cows to blow at it, for it makes a point of getting into their very finest butter. George calls it nonsense. But what right has he, when Slemmick was brought up so much more out of doors?"
"Slemmick is sure to know most about it. A man who has never heard the names of things, always knows most about them. Therefore do let me give true judgment on the butter."
"Then you have never heard the name of butter!"
"Oh dear, oh dear! you leave one less than a shred of the soundest argument," was the reply of the infatuated stockbroker. "Reason" would have been the noun to use, after a twelvemonth of matrimony.
"Now you must understand," said Grace, in the flush of that triumph of intellect, "that nothing ever tastes its best, when taken out of its proper course. No metal should ever be used with fresh butter. This is a blade of hard white wood, I quite forget the name of it. But I can easily find out. Let me run and ask old Sally. You can't wait? Very well, then I must cut it short, and tell you when you come back from Venice. But to think that I made all of those, and the ready money they will fetch!"
She dropped her eyelids just a little, and spread one palm above them, as if the dance of pleasure in her eyes required veiling; and then she finished her sentence. "It is a lovely place, I hear. How nice it will be, to be there! How much you will enjoy yourself!"
"You are quite wrong there," replied Stocks and Stones. "I expect to have a most wretched time. What do I care for the Stones of Venice? I am not going to please my very miserable self. You know why I am going, Miss Cranleigh."
"Mr. Stoneman! How should I know? I have not the very smallest idea!" Oh, what a dreadful story, Grace! And did you make it better or worse, by a blush, and quick palpitation of the guilty breast that harboured it?
"Then I am going for this cause. There is somebody in this country who has got me entirely underfoot, and tramples on me every day. There is no cure for it, but to run away. I have no spirit left. My eyes are always on the ground."
"Indeed! Well, I have not perceived that. But if you have no will of your own, what else is there for you to do? But it seems so un-English to run away. You are not weak, Mr. Stoneman. My brother says that you are very strong. And he would be only too glad to help you. He is too fond of what the reporters love to describe as personal violence."
"If it were a man, I might have some hope, even without such a champion. But when the tyrant is a lady, and the most perfect of her sex, one against whom it is impossible to rebel – "
"This does you the very highest credit. And it is so unusual. A great friend of mine, and such a sweet girl, quite adores her stepmother. But men – though I know so little of them – but I fancied that they were apt to feel a kind – a kind of prejudice. Narrow, no doubt, but violent."
"It is worse than fifty stepmothers. My step is a quiet, sweet-tempered woman; and I wish that I saw more of her; but she seems to prefer her own relatives. Now, as if you did not know what I mean! What did I tell you the other day?"
"A variety of things. And what did I tell you? And didn't you say very clearly that you liked me all the better for my objections?"
"No, no. Come, that is a twist! I said that I respected your objections, but thought them extremely romantic, and would live in the hope of your trying to get over them. May I sit upon this tub, and reason with you? Oh, how I wish I was a dairyman!"
"My brother George is in love with a lady," said Grace, who never saw the way to miss the very worst of jokes, "who will want a lot of practice before she can sit down. What on earth will he do with her when he gives a dinner-party?" This was a thoroughly vulgar error, as I have shown most distinctly above.
"Poor George, what a fool he is making of himself! But no brother of yours could ever be a fool. Forgive me: for the moment I was forgetting the great mental powers of your family, Miss Cranleigh."
"You need not call me that, unless you wish it. I mean at least – you need not call me that, so often. After all that you have done for us, it sounds so formal."
"Bless your kind heart! what have I ever done for you? But Grace is what I should love to call you; Grace, Grace, and nothing else. Unless I might add another word, beginning with a d – "
"All words beginning with a d are bad. But there can't be much harm in Grace, that I know of. Only you shouldn't say it very often."
"Oh dear, no! Not more than every time I breathe. Very often is superlative. And so are you. And therefore I am to say it, every time I say you. So I will; am I not a worshipper of the Graces?"
"You must not say it, every time you say me. And I made a dreadful slip, as you must perceive. I wasn't thinking for the moment. And surely you would never dream of taking an advantage – "
"Now come all they that wish me evil; all they that against me have imagined a vain thing – "
"What else are you doing yourself, if you please? If you would only allow me one moment to explain – "
"In the name of the Lord will I destroy them."
"Oh, Mr. Jackson Stoneman!"
She looked at him in doubt of his ferocity, or sanity; and he, in high spirits, clapped his heels on the floor and sprang up, and began to draw nearer. "No tub will do for me. I must have a throne. I am the King of the City, and of Surrey. Grace Cranleigh has proclaimed it."
"Truly you are in a great haste to crown yourself. She has never done anything of the kind. But if to make an ell out of half an inch is kingly – "
"If I did that, I will soon put it right. Let me make half an inch out of the ell now."
"No, no! I insist upon your staying where you are. There is a little door going out, between these two pans; and unless you are quite sensible, you will see no more of me."
"How can I be quite sensible, when I see any? Oh, Grace, Grace, you cannot conceive what a relief to me it is, to be able to utter your name, with a joy, with a pride, with an ecstasy inconceivable!"
"Mr. Stoneman, you are upon the Stock Exchange, and a certified dealer – is not that the proper term? Very well then; you don't deal with any property, until you get it."
"Don't we, though? Oh, Grace, if we did not, where in the world would our business be? But I don't want to talk shop now at all. I want to talk something far outside of that."
"Shop-windows, perhaps." And then her heart reproached her, as it ought to do with one who has made a flippant stroke. But he had overdone his hit with her as well, and had the sagacity to wait for her remorse.
"I did not mean anything rude," she said, edging her own tub a little nearer, while the forget-me-nots on her bosom danced like flowers on a river, when the mill-stream lifts; "I say things I ought not to say – what I mean is, I say things without meaning them."
"Whatever you say is the sweetest of the sweet," he answered with a sigh, that made his waistcoat keep the tune; "and it is right to remind me of my distance, Miss Cranleigh; because I was taking liberties."
"I defy you to say such a thing to me again. You have not the least idea what I am like, when – when I feel that I have been unkind."
"Let me know what it is like," he whispered, "when – when you feel that you are getting kind again. O Grace, Grace, how I do love you!" She looked at him softly, and her blue eyes fell; and then she spoke submissively.
"Now don't pretend to say it; you must not pretend to say it – unless you are quite certain. Shall I tell you why?"
"I say it a thousand times, and I will spend my life in saying it. You know it as well as I do. Certain indeed! But tell me why?"
"Only that I should feel it very much indeed, if I were not sure that it is perfectly true."
There were tears on her cheeks – the true playground of smiles; neither did they look out of place, for there was not much sorrow in them.
To reassure herself, she whispered something altogether repugnant to the spirit of the Stock Exchange, silver, and gold, and even jewels. But that blessed stockbroker knew the quickest way to close transactions. He swept back a mint-worth of ductile gold from the sapphires whose lustre was tremulous with dew, and he gazed at them gently, tenderly, triumphantly, yet not without fear and diffidence. "All this committed to my charge?" he asked, with the other arm defining the flexuous circuit of his future realm.
"It may be a very poor investment," answered Grace; "but one thing is certain – what little there is, is entirely a genuine article."