Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Volume 2 of 3. Blackmore Richard Doddridge
him, if brought into competition with those of Colonel Nowell. Meanwhile Polly was raving wild, and it took two grooms to hold her, and the white froth dribbling down her curb was to Rufus Hutton as the foam of the sea to a sailor. He did love a tearing gallop, only not through the thick of the forest.
“Good–bye, good–bye! I shall see you soon. Thank you, I will take a cheroot. But I only smoke my own. Good–bye! I am so much obliged to you. You have been so very kind. Mrs. Hutton will be miserable until you come over to us. Good–bye; once more, good–bye!”
Rufus Hutton, you see, was a man of the world, and could be false “on occasion.” John Rosedew could never have made that speech on the back of detected falsehood. Away went Polly, like a gale of wind; and Rufus (who was no rogue by nature, only by the force of circumstances, and then could never keep to it), he going along twenty miles an hour, set his teeth to the breeze, which came down the funnel of his cigar as down a steamerʼs chimney, stuck his calves well into Pollyʼs sides, and felt himself a happy man, going at a rocketʼs speed, to a home of happiness. All of us who have a home (and unless we leave our heart there, whenever we go away, we have no home at all), all of us who have a hole in this shifting sandy world – the sand as of an hour–glass – but whence we have spun such a rope as the devil can neither make nor break – I mean to say, we, all who love, without any hems, and haws, and rubbish, those who are only our future tense (formed from the present by adding “so”) – all of us who are lucky enough, I believe we may say good enough, to want no temporal augment from the prefix of society, only to cling upon the tree to the second aorist of our children, wherein the root of the man lurks, the grand indefinite so anomalous; all these fellows, if they can anyhow understand this sentence, will be glad to hear that Rufus Hutton had a jolly ride.
Rosa waited at the gate; why do his mareʼs shoes linger? Rosa ran in, and ran out again, and was sure that she heard something pelting down the hill much too fast, for her sake! but who could blame him when he knew he was coming home at last? Then Rosa snapped poor Jonahʼs head off, for being too thick to hear it.
Meanwhile, a mighty senate was held at Kettledrum Hall, Mrs. Corklemore herself taking the curule chair. After a glimpse of natural life, and the love of man and woman, we want no love of money; so we lift our laps (like the Roman envoy) and shake out war with the whole of them.
Fools who think that life needs gilding – life, whose flowing blood contains every metal but gold and silver – because they clog and poison it! Blessed is he who earns his money, and spends it all on a Saturday. He looks forward to it throughout the week; and the beacon of life is hope, even as God is its pole–star.
CHAPTER II
Mr. Garnetʼs house, well away to the west, was embraced more closely and lovingly by the gnarled arms of the Forest than the Hall, or even the Rectory. Just in the scoop of a sunny valley, high enough to despise the water, and low enough to defy the wind, there was nothing to concern it much, but the sighing of the branches. Over the brown thatch hung two oak–trees, whispering leaves of history, offering the acorn cup upon the parlour hearth, chafing their rheumatic knuckles against the stone of the chimneys, wondering when the great storm should come that would give them an inside view of it. For though the cottage lay so snugly, scarcely lifting its thatched eyebrows at the draught which stole up the valley, nevertheless those guardian oaks had wrestled a bout or two with the tempests. In the cyclone on the morning of November 29th, 1836, and again on the 7th of January, 1842, they had gripped the ground, and set hard their knees, and groaned at the thought of salt water. Since then the wind had been less of a lunatic (although there had been some ruffianly work in 1854), and they hoped there was a good time coming, and so spread their branches further and further, and thought less of the price of timber. There was only one wind that frightened them much, and that was two points north of west, the very direction whence, if they fell, crash they must come on the cottage. For they stood above it, the root–head some ten feet above the back–floor of the basement, and the branches towering high enough for a wood–pigeon not to be nervous there.
Now we only get heavy pressure of squalls from the west–north–west after a thorough–going tempest which has begun in the southward, and means to box half the compass. So the two great oaks were regarded by their brethren up the hill as jolly fellows, happy dogs, born with a silver spoon in their mouths, good for another thousand years, although they might be five hundred old; unless, indeed – and here all the trees shuddered – there came such another hurricane as in 1703. But which of us knows his own brotherʼs condition? Those two oaks stood, and each knew it, upon a steep bank, where no room was for casting out stay–roots to east–south–east.
Bull Garnet hated those two trees, with terror added to hatred. Even if they never crushed him, which depended much on the weather, they would come in at his bedroom window when the moon was high. Wandering shapes of wavering shadow, with the flickering light between them, walking slowly as a ghost does, and then very likely a rustle and tap, a shivering, a shuddering; it made the ground–floor of his heart shake in the nightmare hours.
Never before had he feared them so much, one quarter so much, as this October; and, during the full and the waning moon after Clayton Nowellʼs death, he got very little sleep for them. By day he worked harder than ever, did more than three men ought to do, was everywhere on the estates, but never swore at any one – though the men scratched their ears for the want of it – laboured hard, and early, and late, if so he might come home at night (only not in the dark), come home at night thoroughly weary. His energy was amazing. No man anywhere felling wood – Mr. Garnetʼs especial luxury – no man hedging and ditching, or frithing, or stubbing up fern and brambles, but had better look out what he had in his bag, or “the governor would be there, and no mistake.” A workman could scarcely stand and look round, and wonder how his sick wife was, or why he had got to work so hard, could scarcely slap himself on the breast, or wet his hard hands for a better grip, but there was Bull Garnet before him, with sad, fierce, dogged eyes, worse than his strongest oaths had been.
Everybody said it was (and everybody believed it; for the gossip had spread from the household in spite of the maidens’ fear of him) the cause of it was, beyond all doubt, the illness of his daughter. Pearl Garnet, that very eccentric girl, as Rufus Hutton concluded, who had startled poor Polly so dreadfully, was prostrate now with a nervous fever, and would not see even the doctor. Our Amy, who pleaded hard to see her, because she was sure she could do her good, received a stern sharp negative, and would have gone away offended, only she was so sorry for her. Not that any fervid friendship, such as young ladies exult in for almost a fortnight incessant, not that any rapturous love exclusive of all mankind had ever arisen between them, for they had nothing whatever in common, save beauty and tenacity, which girls do not love in each other: only that she was always sorry for any one deep in trouble. And believing that Pearl had loved Clayton Nowell, and was grieving for him bitterly, how could Amy help contrasting that misery with her own happiness?
For Amy was nice and happy now, in spite of Cradockʼs departure, and the trouble he had departed in. He loved her almost half as much, she believed, as she loved him; and was not that enough for anybody? His troubles would flow by in time; who on earth could doubt it, unless they doubted God? He was gone to make his way in the world, and her only fear was lest he should make it too grand for Amy to share in. She liked the school–children so, and the pony, and to run out now and then to the kitchen, and dip a bit of crust in the dripping–pan; and she liked to fill her dear fatherʼs pipe, and spread a thin handkerchief over his head. Would all these pleasures be out of her sphere, when Cradock came back, with all London crowning him the greatest and best man of the age? Innocent Amy, never fear. “Nemo, nisi ob homicidium, repente fuit clarissimus.”
Mr. Garnet would have felled those oaks, in spite of Sir Cradockʼs most positive orders, if there had not been another who could not command, but could plead for them. Every morning as the steward came out, frowned and shook his fist at them, the being whom he loved most on earth – far beyond himself, his daughter, and the memory of their mother, all multiplied into each other, – that boy Bob came up to him, and said, “Father, donʼt, for my sake.”
We have not heard much of Bob Garnet yet; we have scarcely shaped him feebly; by no means was he a negative character, yet described most briefly by negatives.