CHAPTER XIII
KENELM knocked at the cottage door; a voice said faintly, “Come in.”
He stooped his head, and stepped over the threshold.
Since his encounter with Tom Bowles his sympathies had gone with that unfortunate lover: it is natural to like a man after you have beaten him; and he was by no means predisposed to favour Jessie’s preference for a sickly cripple.
Yet, when two bright, soft, dark eyes, and a pale intellectual countenance, with that nameless aspect of refinement which delicate health so often gives, especially to the young, greeted his quiet gaze, his heart was at once won over to the side of the rival. Will Somers was seated by the hearth, on which a few live embers despite the warmth of the summer evening still burned; a rude little table was by his side, on which were laid osier twigs and white peeled chips, together with an open book. His hands, pale and slender, were at work on a small basket half finished. His mother was just clearing away the tea-things from another table that stood by the window. Will rose, with the good breeding that belongs to the rural peasant, as the stranger entered; the widow looked round with surprise, and dropped her simple courtesy,—a little thin woman, with a mild, patient face.
The cottage was very tidily kept, as it is in most village homes where the woman has it her own way. The deal dresser opposite the door had its display of humble crockery. The whitewashed walls were relieved with coloured prints, chiefly Scriptural subjects from the New Testament, such as the Return of the Prodigal Son, in a blue coat and yellow inexpressibles, with his stockings about his heels.
At one corner there were piled up baskets of various sizes, and at another corner was an open cupboard containing books,—an article of decorative furniture found in cottages much more rarely than coloured prints and gleaming crockery.
All this, of course, Kenelm could not at a glance comprehend in detail. But as the mind of a man accustomed to generalization is marvellously quick in forming a sound judgment, whereas a mind accustomed to dwell only on detail is wonderfully slow at arriving at any judgment at all, and when it does, the probability is that it will arrive at a wrong one, Kenelm judged correctly when he came to this conclusion: “I am among simple English peasants; but, for some reason or other, not to be explained by the relative amount of wages, it is a favourable specimen of that class.”
“I beg your pardon for intruding at this hour, Mrs. Somers,” said Kenelm, who had been too familiar with peasants from his earliest childhood not to know how quickly, when in the presence of their household gods, they appreciate respect, and how acutely they feel the want of it. “But my stay in the village is very short, and I should not like to leave without seeing your son’s basket-work, of which I have heard much.”
“You are very good, sir,” said Will, with a pleased smile that wonderfully brightened up his face. “It is only just a few common things that I keep by me. Any finer sort of work I mostly do by order.”
“You see, sir,” said Mrs. Somers, “it takes so much more time for pretty work-baskets, and such like; and unless done to order, it might be a chance if he could get it sold. But pray be seated, sir,” and Mrs. Somers placed a chair for her visitor, “while I just run up stairs for the work-basket which my son has made for Miss Travers. It is to go home to-morrow, and I put it away for fear of accidents.”
Kenelm seated himself, and, drawing his chair near to Will’s, took up the half-finished basket which the young man had laid down on the table.
“This seems to me very nice and delicate workmanship,” said Kenelm; “and the shape, when you have finished it, will be elegant enough to please the taste of a lady.”
“It is for Mrs. Lethbridge,” said Will: “she wanted something to hold cards and letters; and I took the shape from a book of drawings which Mr. Lethbridge kindly lent me. You know Mr. Lethbridge, sir? He is a very good gentleman.”
“No, I don’t know him. Who is he?”
“Our clergyman, sir. This is the book.”
To Kenelm’s surprise, it was a work on Pompeii, and contained woodcuts of the implements and ornaments, mosaics and frescos, found in that memorable little city.
“I see this is your model,” said Kenelm; “what they call a patera, and rather a famous one. You are copying it much more truthfully than I should have supposed it possible to do in substituting basket-work for bronze. But you observe that much of the beauty of this shallow bowl depends on the two doves perched on the brim. You can’t manage that ornamental addition.”
“Mrs. Lethbridge thought of putting there two little stuffed canary-birds.”
“Did she? Good heavens!” exclaimed Kenelm.
“But somehow,” continued Will, “I did not like that, and I made bold to say so.”
“Why did not you do it?”
“Well, I don’t know; but I did not think it would be the right thing.”
“It would have been very bad taste, and spoiled the effect of your basket-work; and I’ll endeavour to explain why. You see here, in the next page, a drawing of a very beautiful statue. Of course this statue is intended to be a representation of nature, but nature idealized. You don’t know the meaning of that hard word, idealized, and very few people do. But it means the performance of a something in art according to the idea which a man’s mind forms to itself out of a something in nature. That something in nature must, of course, have been carefully studied before the man can work out anything in art by which it is faithfully represented. The artist, for instance, who made that statue, must have known the proportions of the human frame. He must have made studies of various parts of it,—heads and hands, and arms and legs, and so forth,—and having done so, he then puts together all his various studies of details, so as to form a new whole, which is intended to personate an idea formed in his own mind. Do you go with me?”
“Partly, sir; but I am puzzled a little still.”
“Of course you are; but you’ll puzzle yourself right if you think over what I say. Now if, in order to make this statue, which is composed of metal or stone, more natural, I stuck on it a wig of real hair, would not you feel at once that I had spoilt the work; that as you clearly express it, ‘it would not be the right thing’? and instead of making the work of art more natural, I should have made it laughably unnatural, by forcing insensibly upon the mind of him who looked at it the contrast between the real life, represented by a wig of actual hair, and the artistic life, represented by an idea embodied in stone or metal. The higher the work of art (that is, the higher the idea it represents as a new combination of details taken from nature), the more it is degraded or spoilt by an attempt to give it a kind of reality which is out of keeping with the materials employed. But the same rule applies to everything in art, however humble. And a couple of stuffed canary-birds at the brim of a basket-work imitation of a Greek drinking-cup would be as bad taste as a wig from the barber’s on the head of a marble statue of Apollo.”
“I see,” said Will, his head downcast, like a man pondering,—“at least I think I see; and I’m very much obliged to you, sir.”
Mrs. Somers had long since returned with the work-basket, but stood with it in her hands, not daring to interrupt the gentleman, and listening to his discourse with as much patience and as little comprehension as if it had been one of the controversial sermons upon Ritualism with which on great occasions Mr. Lethbridge favoured his congregation.
Kenelm having now exhausted his critical lecture—from which certain poets and novelists who contrive to caricature the ideal by their attempt to put wigs of real hair upon the heads of stone statues might borrow a useful hint or two if they would condescend to do so, which is not likely—perceived Mrs. Somers standing by him, took from her the basket, which was really very pretty and elegant, subdivided into various compartments for the implements in use among ladies, and bestowed on it a well-merited eulogium.
“The young lady means to finish it herself with ribbons, and line it with satin,” said Mrs. Somers, proudly.
“The ribbons will not be amiss, sir?” said Will, interrogatively.
“Not at all. Your natural sense of the fitness of things tells you that ribbons go well with straw and light straw-like work such as this; though you would not put ribbons on those rude hampers and game-baskets in the corner. Like to like; a stout cord goes suitably with them: just as a poet who understands his art employs pretty expressions for poems intended to be pretty and suit a fashionable drawing-room, and carefully shuns them to substitute a simple cord for poems intended to be strong and travel far, despite of rough usage by the way. But you really ought to make much more money by this fancy-work than you could as a day-labourer.”
Will sighed. “Not in this neighbourhood, sir; I might in a town.”
“Why not move to a town, then?”
The young man coloured, and shook his head.
Kenelm turned appealingly to Mrs. Somers. “I’ll be willing to go wherever it would be best for my boy, sir. But—” and here she checked herself, and a tear trickled silently down her cheeks.
Will resumed, in a more cheerful tone, “I am getting a little known now, and work will come if one waits for it.” Kenelm did not deem it courteous or discreet to intrude further on Will’s confidence in the first interview; and he began to feel, more than he had done at first, not only the dull pain of the bruises he had received in the recent combat, but also somewhat more than the weariness which follows long summer-day’s work in the open air. He therefore, rather abruptly, now took his leave, saying that he should be very glad of a few specimens of Will’s ingenuity and skill, and would call or write to give directions about them.
Just as he came in sight of Tom Bowles’s house on his way back to Mr. Saunderson’s, Kenelm saw a man mounting a pony that stood tied up at the gate, and exchanging a few words with a respectable-looking woman before he rode on. He was passing by Kenelm without notice, when that philosophical vagrant stopped him, saying, “If I am not mistaken, sir, you are the doctor. There is not much the matter with Mr. Bowles?”
The doctor shook his head. “I can’t say yet. He has had a very ugly blow somewhere.”
“It was just under the left ear. I did not aim at that exact spot: but Bowles unluckily swerved a little aside at the moment, perhaps in surprise at a tap between his eyes immediately preceding it: and so, as you say, it was an ugly blow that he received. But if it cures him of the habit of giving ugly blows to other people who can bear them less safely, perhaps it may be all for his good, as, no doubt, sir, your schoolmaster said when he flogged you.”
“Bless my soul! are you the man who fought with him,—you? I can’t believe it.”
“Why not?”
“Why not! So far as I can judge by this light, though you are a tall fellow, Tom Bowles must be a much heavier weight than you are.”
“Tom Spring was the champion of England; and according to the records of his weight, which history has preserved in her archives, Tom Spring was a lighter weight than I am.”
“But are you a prize-fighter?”
“I am as much that as I am anything else. But to return to Mr. Bowles, was it necessary to bleed him?”
“Yes; he was unconscious, or nearly so, when I came. I took away a few ounces; and I am happy to say he is now sensible, but must be kept very quiet.”
“No doubt; but I hope he will be well enough to see me to-morrow.”
“I hope so too; but I can’t say yet. Quarrel about a girl,—eh?”
“It was not about money. And I suppose if there were no money and no women in the world, there would be no quarrels and very few doctors. Good-night, Sir.”
“It is a strange thing to me,” said Kenelm, as he now opened the garden-gate of Mr. Saunderson’s homestead, “that though I’ve had nothing to eat all day, except a few pitiful sandwiches, I don’t feel the least hungry. Such arrest of the lawful duties of the digestive organs never happened to me before. There must be something weird and ominous in it.”
On entering the parlour, the family party, though they had long since finished supper, were still seated round the table. They all rose at the sight of Kenelm. The fame of his achievements had preceded him. He checked the congratulations, the compliments, and the questions which the hearty farmer rapidly heaped upon him, with a melancholic exclamation, “But I have lost my appetite! No honours can compensate for that. Let me go to bed peaceably, and perhaps in the magic land of sleep Nature may restore me by a dream of supper.”
CHAPTER XIV
KENELM rose betimes the next morning somewhat stiff and uneasy, but sufficiently recovered to feel ravenous. Fortunately, one of the young ladies, who attended specially to the dairy, was already up, and supplied the starving hero with a vast bowl of bread and milk. He then strolled into the hayfield, in which there was now very little left to do, and but few hands besides his own were employed. Jessie was not there. Kenelm was glad of that. By nine o’clock his work was over, and the farmer and his men were in the yard completing the ricks. Kenelm stole away unobserved, bent on a round of visits. He called first at the village shop kept by Mrs. Bawtrey, which Jessie had pointed out to him, on pretence of buying a gaudy neckerchief; and soon, thanks to his habitual civility, made familiar acquaintance with the shopwoman. She was a little sickly old lady, her head shaking, as with palsy, somewhat deaf, but still shrewd and sharp, rendered mechanically so by long habits of shrewdness and sharpness. She became very communicative, spoke freely of her desire to give up the shop, and pass the rest of her days with a sister, widowed like herself, in a neighbouring town. Since she had lost her husband, the field and orchard attached to the shop had ceased to be profitable, and become a great care and trouble; and the attention the shop required was wearisome. But she had twelve years unexpired of the lease granted for twenty-one years to her husband on low terms, and she wanted a premium for its transfer, and a purchaser for the stock of the shop. Kenelm soon drew from her the amount of the sum she required for all,—L45.
“You be n’t thinking of it for yourself?” she asked, putting on her spectacles, and examining him with care.
“Perhaps so, if one could get a decent living out of it. Do you keep a book of your losses and your gains?”
“In course, sir,” she said proudly. “I kept the books in my goodman’s time, and he was one who could find out if there was a farthing wrong, for he had been in a lawyer’s office when a lad.”
“Why did he leave a lawyer’s office to keep a little shop?”
“Well, he was born a farmer’s son in this neighbourhood, and he always had a hankering after the country, and—and besides that—”
“Yes.”
“I’ll tell you the truth; he had got into a way of drinking speerrits, and he was a good young man, and wanted to break himself of it, and he took the temperance oath; but it was too hard on him, for he could not break himself of the company that led him into liquor. And so, one time when he came into the neighbourhood to see his parents for the Christmas holiday, he took a bit of liking to me; and my father, who was Squire Travers’s bailiff, had just died, and left me a little money. And so, somehow or other, we came together, and got this house and the land from the Squire on lease very reasonable; and my goodman being well eddyeated, and much thought of, and never being tempted to drink, now that he had a missis to keep him in order, had a many little things put into his way. He could help to measure timber, and knew about draining, and he got some bookkeeping from the farmers about; and we kept cows and pigs and poultry, and so we did very well, specially as the Lord was merciful and sent us no children.”
“And what does the shop bring in a year since your husband died?”
“You had best judge for yourself. Will you look at the book, and take a peep at the land and apple-trees? But they’s been neglected since my goodman died.”
In another minute the heir of the Chillinglys was seated in a neat little back parlour, with a pretty though confined view of the orchard and grass slope behind it, and bending over Mrs. Bawtrey’s ledger.
Some customers for cheese and bacon coming now into the shop, the old woman left him to his studies. Though they were not of a nature familiar to him, he brought to them, at least, that general clearness of head and quick seizure of important points which are common to most men who have gone through some disciplined training of intellect, and been accustomed to extract the pith and marrow out of many books on many subjects. The result of his examination was satisfactory; there appeared to him a clear balance of gain from the shop alone of somewhat over L40 a year, taking the average of the last three years. Closing the book, he then let himself out of the window into the orchard, and thence into the neighbouring grass field. Both were, indeed, much neglected; the trees wanted pruning, the field manure. But the soil was evidently of rich loam, and the fruit-trees were abundant and of ripe age, generally looking healthy in spite of neglect. With the quick intuition of a man born and bred in the country, and picking up scraps of rural knowledge unconsciously, Kenelm convinced himself that the land, properly managed, would far more than cover the rent, rates, tithes, and all incidental outgoings, leaving the profits of the shop as the clear income of the occupiers. And no doubt with clever young people to manage the shop, its profits might be increased.
Not thinking it necessary to return at present to Mrs. Bawtrey’s, Kenelm now bent his way to Tom Bowles’s.
The house-door was closed. At the summons of his knock it was quickly opened by a tall, stout, remarkably fine-looking woman, who might have told fifty years, and carried them off lightly on her ample shoulders. She was dressed very respectably in black, her brown hair braided simply under a neat tight-fitting cap. Her features were aquiline and very regular: altogether there was something about her majestic and Cornelia-like. She might have sat for the model of that Roman matron, except for the fairness of her Anglo-Saxon complexion.
“What’s your pleasure?” she asked, in a cold and somewhat stern voice.
“Ma’am,” answered Kenelm, uncovering, “I have called to see Mr. Bowles, and I sincerely hope he is well enough to let me do so.”
“No, sir, he is not well enough for that; he is lying down in his own room, and must be kept quiet.”
“May I then ask you the favour to let me in? I would say a few words to you, who are his mother if I mistake not.” Mrs. Bowles paused a moment as if in doubt; but she was at no loss to detect in Kenelm’s manner something superior to the fashion of his dress, and supposing the visit might refer to her son’s professional business, she opened the door wider, drew aside to let him pass first, and when he stood midway in the parlour, requested him to take a seat, and, to set him the example, seated herself.
“Ma’am,” said Kenelm, “do not regret to have admitted me, and do not think hardly of me when I inform you that I am the unfortunate cause of your son’s accident.”
Mrs. Bowles rose with a start. “You’re the man who beat my boy?”
“No, ma’am, do not say I beat him. He is not beaten. He is so brave and so strong that he would easily have beaten me if I had not, by good luck, knocked him down before he had time to do so. Pray, ma’am, retain your seat and listen to me patiently for a few moments.”
Mrs. Bowles, with an indignant heave of her Juno-like bosom, and with a superbly haughty expression of countenance which suited well with its aquiline formation, tacitly obeyed.
“You will allow, ma’am,” recommenced Kenelm, “that this is not the first time by many that Mr. Bowles has come to blows with another man. Am I not right in that assumption?”
“My son is of hasty temper,” replied Mrs. Bowles, reluctantly, “and people should not aggravate him.”
“You grant the fact, then?” said Kenelm, imperturbably, but with a polite inclination of head. “Mr. Bowles has often been engaged in these encounters, and in all of them it is quite clear that he provoked the battle; for you must be aware that he is not the sort of man to whom any other would be disposed to give the first blow. Yet, after these little incidents had occurred, and Mr. Bowles had, say, half killed the person who aggravated him, you did not feel any resentment against that person, did you? Nay, if he had wanted nursing, you would have gone and nursed him.”
“I don’t know as to nursing,” said Mrs. Bowles, beginning to lose her dignity of mien; “but certainly I should have been very sorry for him. And as for Tom,—though I say it who should not say,—he has no more malice than a baby: he’d go and make it up with any man, however badly he had beaten him.”
“Just as I supposed; and if the man had sulked and would not make it up, Tom would have called him a bad fellow, and felt inclined to beat him again.”
Mrs. Bowles’s face relaxed into a stately smile.
“Well, then,” pursued Kenelm, “I do but humbly imitate Mr. Bowles, and I come to make it up and shake hands with him.”
“No, sir,—no,” exclaimed Mrs. Bowles, though in a low voice, and turning pale. “Don’t think of it. ‘Tis not the blows; he’ll get over those fast enough: ‘tis his pride that’s hurt; and if he saw you there might be mischief. But you’re a stranger, and going away: do go soon; do keep out of his way; do!” And the mother clasped her hands.
“Mrs. Bowles,” said Kenelm, with a change of voice and aspect,—a voice and aspect so earnest and impressive that they stilled and awed her,—“will you not help me to save your son from the dangers into which that hasty temper and that mischievous pride may at any moment hurry him? Does it never occur to you that these are the causes of terrible crime, bringing terrible punishment; and that against brute force, impelled by savage passions, society protects itself by the hulks and the gallows?”
“Sir; how dare you—”
“Hush! If one man kill another in a moment of ungovernable wrath, that is a crime which, though heavily punished by the conscience, is gently dealt with by the law, which calls it only manslaughter; but if a motive to the violence, such as jealousy or revenge, can be assigned, and there should be no witness by to prove that the violence was not premeditated, then the law does not call it manslaughter, but murder. Was it not that thought which made you so imploringly exclaim, ‘Go soon; keep out of his way’?”
The woman made no answer, but, sinking back in her chair, gasped for breath.
“Nay, madam,” resumed Kenelm, mildly; “banish your fears. If you will help me I feel sure that I can save your son from such perils, and I only ask you to let me save him. I am convinced that he has a good and a noble nature, and he is worth saving.” And as he thus said he took her hand. She resigned it to him and returned the pressure, all her pride softening as she began to weep.
At length, when she recovered voice, she said,—
“It is all along of that girl. He was not so till she crossed him, and made him half mad. He is not the same man since then,—my poor Tom!”
“Do you know that he has given me his word, and before his fellow-villagers, that if he had the worst of the fight he would never molest Jessie Wiles again?”
“Yes, he told me so himself; and it is that which weighs on him now. He broods and broods and mutters, and will not be comforted; and—and I do fear that he means revenge. And again, I implore you to keep out of his way.”
“It is not revenge on me that he thinks of. Suppose I go and am seen no more, do you think in your own heart that that girl’s life is safe?”
“What! My Tom kill a woman!”
“Do you never read in your newspaper of a man who kills his sweetheart, or the girl who refuses to be his sweetheart? At all events, you yourself do not approve this frantic suit of his. If I have heard rightly, you have wished to get Tom out of the village for some time, till Jessie Wiles is—we’ll say, married, or gone elsewhere for good.”
“Yes, indeed, I have wished and prayed for it many’s the time, both for her sake and for his. And I am sure I don’t know what we shall do if he stays, for he has been losing custom fast. The Squire has taken away his, and so have many of the farmers; and such a trade as it was in his good father’s time! And if he would go, his uncle, the veterinary at Luscombe, would take him into partnership; for he has no son of his own, and he knows how clever Tom is: there be n’t a man who knows more about horses; and cows, too, for the matter of that.”
“And if Luscombe is a large place, the business there must be more profitable than it can be here, even if Tom got back his custom?”
“Oh yes! five times as good,—if he would but go; but he’ll not hear of it.”
“Mrs. Bowles, I am very much obliged to you for your confidence, and I feel sure that all will end happily now we have had this talk. I’ll not press further on you at present. Tom will not stir out, I suppose, till the evening.”
“Ah, sir, he seems as if he had no heart to stir out again, unless for something dreadful.”
“Courage! I will call again in the evening, and then you just take me up to Tom’s room, and leave me there to make friends with him, as I have with you. Don’t say a word about me in the meanwhile.”
“But—”
“‘But,’ Mrs. Bowles, is a word that cools many a warm impulse, stifles many a kindly thought, puts a dead stop to many a brotherly deed. Nobody would ever love his neighbour as himself if he listened to all the Buts that could be said on the other side of the question.”