The guests had alighted by the time Brian reached the portico, and Vernon was in his sister’s arms. She held him away from her, to show him to her husband — a thin fair-haired boy of eleven, in a gray highland kilt and jacket, like a gillie — fresh rosy cheeks, bright blue eyes.
‘Hasn’t he grown, Brian? and isn’t he a darling?’ she asked, hugging him again.
‘He is a jolly little fellow, and he shall go out shooting with me as soon as there is anything to shoot.’
‘We can fish,’ said Vernon; ‘there’s plenty of trout; but you don’t look strong enough to throw a fly. My rod’s ever so heavy,’ he added, with a flourish of his arm.
That weakness and languor which was obvious even to the boy, was still more apparent to Mr. and Mrs. Jardine. Bessie had not seen her cousin since Christmas, when he and Ida had spent a couple of days at Kingthorpe.
‘Oh, Brian,’ she exclaimed, ‘have you been ill? Nobody told me anything.’
‘I have had no illness worth telling about; but I have not been in vigorous health. London life takes too much out of a man.’
‘Then you should not live in London. You ought to be out all day, roaming about on those pine-clad hills yonder—”hangers,” I think you call them in these parts.’
‘Yes,’ answered Ida, ‘we are very proud of our hangers; but Brian is not able to walk much just yet.’
Bessie was full of concern for Brian after this. She devoted herself to him in the interval before dinner, and left Ida free to roam about the garden with Vernie. She remembered how he had always been her favourite cousin. She had been angry with him for allowing that foolish practical joke of hers to take so fixed and fatal a form; but now she saw him wan and broken-looking she was prepared to forgive him everything.
‘You must take care of yourself, Brian,’ she said, when they were sitting side by side in one of the drawing-room windows, while Lady Palliser dispensed afternoon tea.
‘I am taking care of myself; I am here for that purpose; but it is dreary work.’
‘What! dreary work to live in this lovely place, and with such a sweet wife! But I know you never liked the country.’
‘I frankly detest it.’
‘And you miss the intellectual society to which you are accustomed in London — literary men — poets — playwrights. How delightful it must be to know the men who write books!’
‘They are not always the pleasantest people in the world. I never cared much for your deep-thinker — the man who believes he is sent into the world to promulgate his own particular gospel. But the men who write for newspapers — critics, humourists — they are jolly fellows enough.’
‘And you have glorious nights at your clubs, don’t you? We had a friend of John’s with us the other day who had met you at some literary club near the Strand. Do you ever sing comic songs now?’
‘Sometimes, after midnight. One does not feel moved to that kind of thing till the small hours.’
‘Ah!’ sighed Bessie, ‘our only idea of the small hours is getting up at four, to be ready for a five o’clock service. But I don’t think the small hours agree with you, Brian. You are looking ten years older than when you were at Kingthorpe last summer.’
‘Better wear out than rust out,’ said Brian.
After dinner Vernie was eager for an exploration of the village, and Blackman’s Hanger, the wild, pine-clad hill which sheltered the village from north-east winds and the salt breath of a distant sea.
Ida was ready to go with him, and the Jardines, always tremendous walkers, were equally anxious for a ramble; but Brian was much too languid for evening walks.
‘I’ll stay and smoke my smoke and talk to the Mater,’ he said, always contriving to keep on pleasant terms with Lady Palliser; ‘I hate bats, owls, twilight, and all the Gray’s Elegy business.’
‘But you stop such a time over your cigar,’ said the widow. ‘Last night I sat for an hour waiting tea for you. I like company over my cup of tea.’
‘To-night you shall have the advantage of intellectual society,’ said Brian. ‘I will come and dribble out my impressions of the last Contemporary Review, which I dozed over between breakfast and luncheon.’
Brian stayed in the dining-room, dimly lighted by two hanging moderator lamps, while the soft shades of evening were just beginning to steal over the landscape outside. He had his favourite pointer for company — the last Sir Vernon’s favourite, a magnificent beast, and of almost human intelligence, and he had plenty of wine in the decanters before him — choice port and claret, which had been set on the table in honour of the Jardines, who had hardly touched it. He had his cigarette case and his own thoughts, which were idle as the smoke-wreaths which went curling up to the ceiling, light as the ashes of his tobacco.
Out of doors the evening was divine. Vernon was delighted to be frisking about upon his patrimonial soil. The five years he had lived at Wimperfield seemed the greater half of his life — seemed, indeed, almost to have absorbed and blotted out his former history. He remembered very little of the shabbier circumstances of his babyhood, and had all the feelings of a boy born in the purple, to whom it was natural to be proprietor of the landscape, and to patronise the humbler dwellers on the soil.
Blackman’s Hanger was a rugged ridge of hill above the village of Wimperfield. They lingered here to listen to the nightingales, and to admire the sunset; and then, when the glow above the western horizon was changing from golden to deepest crimson, they all went down into the village, where lights were beginning to glimmer faintly in some of the cottages.
Wimperfield was a snug primitive settlement, consisting of about five-and-twenty habitations, not one of which had been built within the last century, a general shop, a bakery, and three public-houses, a fact which shows that the brewing interests were well protected in this part of the world. One of these village taverns, a dingy old low-browed cottage, with a pile of out-buildings which served for stable, piggery, or anything else, and about half an acre of garden, stood a little way aloof from the village, and on the skirt of the copse that clothed the sloping steep below Blackman’s Hanger. There was a piece of waste land in front of this inn which served as the theatre for such itinerary exhibitors, Cheap Jacks, and Bohemians of all kinds who took quiet little Wimperfield in the course of their perambulations.
Here to-night in the dusk, there stood a covered cart of the peddler order and Vernon, who had been walking on in front with Mr. Jardine, rushed back to his sister to say that there was a Cheap Jack in front of the ‘Royal Oak.’
‘Oh, he has been there for a long time — ever since the beginning of the year,’ said Ida; ‘he is quite an institution.’
‘What’s an institution?’ asked Vernon.
‘Something fixed and lasting, don’t you know. I believe he does no end of good among the villagers — doctoring them, and advising them, and helping them when they are ill or out of work; but he has a very churlish way with the gentry. Mr. Mason, our curate, says the man always reminds him of the Black Dwarf, except that he is not so ugly, nor deformed in any way.’
‘Then he can’t be like the Black Dwarf,’ said Vernon, who knew almost all
Sir Walter’s novels, his sister having read Shakespeare, Scott, and
Dickens to him for hours on end, during the long winter evenings at
Wimperfield.
‘Does he live in that cart always?’ asked Bessie.
‘Not always; he has taken possession of that dilapidated cottage upon the Hanger, which used to be occupied by Lord Pontifex’s gamekeeper, and I believe he oscillates between the cart and the cottage. I have hardly seen him, for he is such a morose personage that he always hides when any of the gentry approach his hut.’
‘Sulks in his tent, like Achilles,’ said Mr. Jardine.
They were on the edge of the little patch of green by this time. The cart — painted a lively yellow, and with a little window on each side — stood in the middle of the green, backed by a clump of tall elms. T
here was a little crowd in front of the cart, and a man with a black beard and a red fez cap was discoursing in a deep, sonorous voice to the assembly — descanting, with seeming fluency, upon a picture which he held in his hand, his tawny, gipsy-like face only half shown by the flame of a flaring naphtha lamp, and his features rendered grotesque by the play of lights and shadows. The party from the park, however, had very little opportunity for seeing what manner of man he was; for no sooner did he catch sight of Mr. Jardine’s tail hat over the circle of rustic heads, than he flung the engraving he had been exhibiting inside the cart, extinguished his lamp, wished his audience an abrupt good night, and shut the door of his dwelling upon the outside world.
The rustics gave him a round of applause before they dispersed. The women and children moved towards the village; the men and lads lingered a little on the green, irresolute, and then slowly gravitated to the ‘Royal Oak,’ touching their hats as they passed the gentlefolks. Mr. Jardine stopped one of the men midway.
‘A curious customer that,’ he said, looking towards the cart.
‘Yes, sir, so he be; but rale right down clever.’
‘Was he trying to sell you that picture?’
‘No, sir; him don’t often sell things to we; sometimes him do — knives, and comforters, and corderoy waistcoats, and flannel shirts, and such like, and oncommon good they be, too, and oncommon cheap. He wor givin’ we a bit of a lecture loike, on lions and tigers, and ryenosed-horses, and such-loike beasts, and on they queer creatures wot lived before the flood. Lord! there was one beast with a long neck, and paddles for swimmin’ with, as made we all ready to bust with laughin’ when him showed us the pictur’ of his skeleton.’
‘Does he often give you a lecture of that kind?’
‘Yes, sir; him do lecture we about all manner o’ things — flowers, and ferns, and insects — kindness to hanimals — hinstinct in dogs — Lord knows what; but he have a way of makin’ it all go down — much better nor parson; and ha allus gets a good laugh out o’ we. And when there’s any on us ill, or out o’ work, then Cheap Jack be a real good friend, and very ready with the brass.’
‘But can he afford to help you? is he so much better off than you are?’
‘Well, sir, you see him haven’t got no missus nor young ‘uns, and I fancy him’s got a few pounds saved in a old stocking. Him don’t drink, nayther — not so much as a mug o’ beer.’
‘Is he a native of these parts?’
‘Lor no, sir, him’s a furriner; why, his skin’s as brown as a berry!’
‘Is he a gipsy, do you think?’
‘I ain’t sure o’ that, but him can talk their patter; and when the gipsies come this way him and them is as thick as thaves.’
‘I see — half a gipsy and half a foreigner, and altogether a rover, I suppose. Well, I’m glad he gives you a little instruction and amusement now and then, and I hope he’ll find the way to keep you out of the public-house,’ said Mr. Jardine.
‘Why, you see, parson, a man must have his mug o’ beer; but it’s summot to the good if he don’t sit down over it and make it three or four mugs o’ beer. There ain’t been so much sitting down since Cheap Jack comed among us.’
‘Isn’t that a desolate hovel up on the hill where he lives sometimes?’
‘It was oncommon deserlate till Cheap Jack took it in hand; there ain’t a owl in the wood that would have liked to live in it; but Jack hammers a bit of wood here, and a plank there, and a bit o’ matting up agen the walls, and puts in a stove from Petersfield, and makes it as snug as a burd’s nest. I’ve smoked many a pipe with him alongside that stove, and drank many a cup o’ coffee. That’s Jack’s drink — not a drain o’ beer or sperrits ever goes inside o’ he.’
‘That accounts for the money in the stocking,’ said Bessie.
The rustic shook his head dubiously.
‘Him ain’t got no childer,’ he said. ‘It’s them as makes the coin go.’
‘I wish he’d come out again and go on lecturing,’ exclaimed Vernon, with an aggrieved air. ‘I do so want to hear him.’
‘Oh, but him won’t show the end of his nose now you’re here, Sir Vernon,’ answered the rustic. ‘Him can’t abide gentlefolks. Parson ha’ tried his hardest to get round he, but Jack shuts the door in parson’s face. Him don’t want nothing of ‘em, and don’t want their company.’
‘A natural corollary,’ said Mr. Jardine, laughing. ‘But I’m afraid your friend is a desperate radical.’
‘Well, I don’t know, sir. Him don’t speak hard agen the Queen; him don’t want to do away with soldiers and sailors, like grocer down street; and though Jack don’t go to church, Jack reads his Bible, and holds by his Bible. I fancy as some rich gentleman must ha’ done he a great injury once upon a time, and that it turned he agen the breed.’
‘Very like the Black Dwarf,’ said Mr. Jardine to Ida. ‘I daresay I shall hear of your playing the part of Isabella Vere, and interviewing this half-savage, half-Christian recluse. But do you mean to tell me that he has lived here six months, within a mile and a half of your house, and you have never seen him?’
‘It is a fact. You had a specimen of his manners just now. Whenever I have passed his cottage he has shut the door or the window in my face, if he happened to be standing at either. To Mr. Mason he has been absolutely rude.’
‘It isn’t every man who appreciates the privilege of being interviewed by a parson,’ said John Jardine.
‘Oh, Jack,’ cried Bessie! ‘all your people love to see you at their doors.’
‘Yes, they are a sociable lot. That comes from living on Salisbury Plain, far from the madding crowd.’
After this they went home, watching the golden summer moon rise above the pine-clad Hanger as they went. They found Lady Palliser nodding in her arm-chair in front of the low tea table, the teapot still intact. It was ten o’clock, but Brian had not come in to talk to her after her tea. John Jardine went in quest of him, and found him in the dining-room, mooning over his wine. He murmured a vague excuse about feeling too tired to talk to anybody, and then bade Mr. Jardine good night, and went up to his room; not to sleep, but to fling the window wide open, and lean his elbows on the sill, and stare out into the exquisite summer night, the leafy wood, the moon-kissed crest of the hill, in a half-dreamy, half-hysterical state of mind.
‘I begin to think I am like Swift, and shall go first at top,’ he said to himself; ‘this quiet life is killing; and yet if I was to go back I should be worse. The nights in Elm Court, when I went home alone after a glorious evening, were devilish.
CHAPTER XXV.
‘MY SEED WAS YOUTH, MY CROP WAS ENDLESS CAKE.’
Mr. and Mrs. Jardine went back to their Wiltshire parsonage after a two days’ visit, and Ida had her boy all to herself. His education, from a classical and mathematical point of view, had only begun when he went to John Jardine; but the foundations of education, the development of thought and imagination had begun long ago at Les Fontaines, when Ida and he took their long wintry rambles together, and the girl talked to the child of all things in heaven and earth, imparting in the easiest way much of that information which she had acquired as pupil and teacher in the educational mill at Mauleverer. Beyond learning to read and to write, and the most elementary forms of arithmetic, this oral instruction was all the education which Vernie had received up to the time of his leaving home; but then what a large range of information can be imparted by an intelligent woman who reads a great deal, and who reads with the student’s deep love of knowledge. Vernon, without being a prodigy, like the infant Goethe, or that wondrous product of paternal scholarship, John Stuart Mill, knew more about things in general, from the course of the planets to the constitution of the glowworms in the hedges, than many full-grown undergraduates. Flowers and ferns, shells and minerals, had been his playthings. His sister had taught him the nature and attributes of all the animals and birds he loved, or slaughtered; and then his imagination had been fed upon Shakespeare and Scott, D
ickens and Goldsmith. He had derived his first vivid impressions of history from Shakespeare and Scott, his knowledge of a wide range of life outside his own home from Dickens; and with that knowledge a quickened sympathy with the joys and sorrows of the humbler classes. All that Vernon knew of the struggles of the lower middle classes was derived from that great panorama of life which Charles Dickens painted for us. His own small experiences of village life had taught the boy very little; for he had only seen the rustic from that outside and smoothly varnished aspect which the tiller of the soil presents to the squire.
And now the boy had come home, after an absence of some months, and he wanted to absorb Ida from morning till night. She must walk and drive with him, read to him, play with him, be interested in his dogs, his guns, his fishing-tackle, every detail of his busy young life.
Ida was never happier than when thus occupied. The boy seemed to her the incarnate spirit of youth, and joy, and hope, and all those bright impulses which wear out in ourselves at so early a stage of life’s journey that we are very glad to taste them vicariously in the unspoiled ardour of childhood. To be with Vernon was to escape from the narrowness of her own fettered life, to forget its disappointments, its disillusions, its one deep incurable regret — regret for her own mad folly, which had bartered freedom for a sordid hope — folly as mad as Esau’s when he sold his birthright — regret for him who loved her too late.
Unhappily, even her unselfish delight in her brother’s society was not unalloyed with pain. She never forgot her duty as a wife, nor failed in any act of attention to her husband. And yet Brian’s morbid jealousy of the boy was but too evident. He rarely spoke of Vernon without a sneer, when he and his wife were alone; although he was careful not to say anything uncivil before Lady Palliser. He scoffed at the little lad’s position, as if it had been an offence in the child himself — called him the microscopic baronet, the baby thane, laughed with bitterest laughter at any little touch of arrogance which clouded the natural sweetness of the boy’s character.
Delphi Works of M. E. Braddon Page 825