THE DOVE-COTE
LET us take a peep into Dove-cote Rectory, smiling in the wintry sun, as
it lies snugly sheltered from the north winds by a thick plantation, and
rejoicing in that most desirable advantage in our climate—a southern
aspect. This house is one that would make any sportsman oblivious of the
tenth commandment. Who could refrain from coveting possession of those
cheerful rooms; that fine extensive view; above all, the excellent and
commodious stables within reach of three packs of hounds, and situated
in the best grass country in England?
It is however with the _inside_ of the mansion that we have now to do,
and with those gentle beings who constitute a home, without whom a
palace is little better than a dungeon.
Breakfast has been over at the Dove-cote for an hour or so. Cissy and
her mamma have established themselves in what they call “the little
drawing-room”—a snug apartment of small dimensions, with windows opening
to the ground, and “giving,” as the French say, on a neatly laid-out
garden, in spring and summer the peculiar care of the daughter of the
house. To-day, however, flowers and blossoms are replaced by a million
sparkling gems, formed by last night’s white frost, which is melting
rapidly under the noon-day sun. Inside, the furniture is of a rich and
somewhat gaudy pattern, assorting well with the rose-tinted muslin
curtains and multiplicity of looking-glasses, which are so
characteristic of a lady’s bower; whilst a thousand pretty knick-knacks,
and a graceful litter of books, music, work, paper-lights, stray gloves,
and gossamer handkerchiefs betray at once the sex of the occupants. A
little statuette of a Cupid in tears, with nothing on but a quiver,
occupies a niche between the windows, under a portrait of Miss Dove,
depicted by the artist in a graceful attitude on the chestnut horse,
attired in a blue riding-habit, with her hat off, and her hair falling
about her shoulders, as, it is only right to observe, she is _not_ in
the habit of wearing it when taking equestrian exercise. Altogether the
painter’s idea seems to have been borrowed from a French print entitled
“The Rendezvous,” representing a disconsolate damsel waiting for a
gentleman in a wood—not in the best of humours, as is natural under the
circumstances,—and sitting her white horse in a listless, woe-begone
attitude, unworthy of an Amazon. The laggard, however, is perceptible in
the far distance, making up for lost time on an exceedingly bad goer,
whose “form” must at once absolve him of intentional unpunctuality in
the eyes of his ladye-love. As a _pendant_ to this work of art, hangs a
portrait in _crayons_ of Mrs. Dove, done some years ago, when people
wore bunches of ringlets and a high comb at the back of the head—a
fashion by no means unbecoming to the original, who must have been a
sufficiently handsome young woman when she sat for this likeness.
Indeed, the Reverend, no mean judge of “make-and-shape,” always declared
(at least in his wife’s presence) that Cissy could not hold a candle to
what her mother had been in her best days.
That matron, though somewhat voluminous in person and too highly
coloured, is by no means bad-looking even now. As she sits at the
window, shaping a little child’s shirt for a poor parishioner (Mrs. Dove
is a managing, bustling person—prejudiced, it may be, and deaf to
argument, as what woman is not? but overflowing with the milk of human
kindness), a judicious artist might tone her down into a very
picturesque study of “A lady in the prime of life.”
She looks up from her work, and casts her eye across the trim garden
over many a mile of undulating prairie, to where a dim smoke in the far
distance denotes the locality of Harborough.
“Cissy,” observes the matron, “wasn’t that Papa going round to the
stables?”
Cissy raises those killing eyelashes from her crochet, and dutifully
replies—“Yes, Mamma. He’s only going to smoke his cigar as usual. I’m
glad it’s not a hunting-day: we shall have him all to ourselves till
luncheon.”
Miss Dove pets her papa immensely; and it is needless to remark that,
although on occasion he runs rusty with his wife, his daughter can wind
him round her little finger at will.
“That reminds me,” continues Mrs. D., in the inconsequent manner in
which ladies follow out the thread of their reflections—“that reminds me
we haven’t had any visitors lately from over there,” nodding with her
head in the direction of Market Harborough.
Cissy looks very innocent in reply, and observes that “Gentlemen seem to
make hunting the one great business of life.”
Mamma, whose rest for the last five-and-twenty years has been broken
every winter whenever the nights have been symptomatic of frost, and who
can scarcely be expected to share the anxiety which drives the Reverend
at short intervals from the connubial couch to open the window and look
out, is unable to controvert so self-evident a proposition; so she tries
back on their Harborough friends.
“Mr. Crasher _never_ comes except on Sundays, or when there is a hard
frost; and the rest of the gang I would just as soon be without, for
they _will_ light their cigars in the hall—a thing I’ve quite broke your
papa of doing, till the whole place smells like a public-house. But I do
think that Mr. Sawbridge, or whatever his name is, might have called in
common civility, if it was only to ask how you were after your long
day.”
Cissy was of the same opinion; but she adhered steadily to the crochet,
and said nothing: perhaps she thought the more. She had confided to her
mamma certain passages of the nocturnal ride into Market Harborough, and
Mr. Sawyer’s categorical answers to her very pertinent queries. I do not
think, however, she had quite made what is called “a clean breast of
it.”
The mother, as is often the case in these days of improvement, had
scarcely so much force of character as the daughter. She never dared
cross-question “Cissy” beyond a certain point. Not that the girl was
rebellious, but she had a quiet way of setting her mamma down, which was
as uncomfortable as it was irresistible.
Mrs. Dove, however, was not without her share of matronly cunning. She
had been young herself, and had not forgotten it; nay, she felt quite
young again sometimes, even now. It does not follow that because a lady
increases in bulk she should decrease in susceptibility. Look at a
German baroness—fifteen stone good, in her ball dress, and _æsthetic_ to
the tips of her plump fingers. Mamma got up to fetch her scissors; cut
the little boy’s shirt to the true _Corazza_ pattern, and, holding up
that ridiculous little garment as if to dry, went on with her argument.
“I don’t think much of that Mr. Sawbridge after all, if you ask _me_,”
said she, looking over the collar full in her daughter’s face. “He seems
very shy, by no means good-looking, and I should say has not seen much
of the world! Steadier perhaps than Brush, and not so stout as
Struggles, but yet he don’t give me the idea of a very gentlemanlike
person—like Mr. Crasher, for instance.”
The Honourable was one of the good lady’s great favourites. She admired
hugely, as country dames will, his languor, his _insouciance_, his
recklessness and dandyism—above all, his tendency to become torpid at a
moment’s notice, which latter faculty frequently provoked the
strong-minded “Cissy” beyond endurance.
The girl’s colour, always high, rose perceptibly. Like a true woman, she
stood up for her new friend.
“Indeed, Mamma,” said she, “Mr. Sawyer is quite as gentlemanlike as
anybody we meet anywhere, and as for being shy, I confess I like people
all the better for not being forward, like that rude Mr. Savage, who
told me I should look hideous with my hair _à l’Impératrice_. Now, Mr.
Sawyer at least _tries_ to make himself agreeable.”
“And seems to succeed, Cissy,” rejoined Mamma, with an arch smile that
deepened the young lady’s colour still more, and consequently heightened
her resemblance to her buxom parent. “Well, dear, I must remind Papa
about asking some of them to dinner. Shall I tell him to send Mr.
Sawbridge an invitation?”
“Really, I don’t the least care,” answered Miss Dove, with a toss of her
shining black hair. “I suppose you can’t well leave him out. But, Mamma,
I wish you would call the man by his right name. It isn’t Sawbridge, but
Sawyer.”
“I’ll try and remember, Cissy,” answered her mother, with another of
those provoking smiles, which might have been too much for the young
lady’s equanimity, had not the entrance of the Reverend, bringing with
him a strong perfume of tobacco, stables, and James’s horse-blister, put
an end to the _tête-à-tête_, and diverted Mrs. Dove’s attack to her
natural prey.
The Reverend was not in the best of humours. He had been feeling a
horse’s legs—the swelling of which no stimulant, however strong, seemed
to be able to reduce. It _was_ aggravating to make his hands smell like
a chemist’s shop, and at the same time to be aware that his favourite’s
legs were getting rounder and rounder under the application. It was
_not_ consolatory to be told by the groom that “the old ’oss was about
wore out.” Nor was it reassuring to reflect that he wanted for
half-a-dozen other purposes the couple of hundred it would take to
replace him. These, however, are the annoyances to which hunting men are
subject; the metaphorical thorns that bristle round our rose, and make
her all the dearer and the sweeter for their sharpness. As he returned
to the house _viâ_ the pigsties, he could scarcely raise sufficient
interest to examine the lately-arrived litter of nine. Spotted black and
white, they reminded him of fox-hound puppies; and to the Reverend,
short of horses as he was, the association was but suggestive of
annoyance.
When he entered the little drawing-room, Mrs. Dove knew by his face that
the moment was an unpropitious one at which to hazard a request for
anything she wanted to obtain; but having managed him for a quarter of a
century, it would have been odd if she had not known exactly how to get
her own way with him now.
“My dear,” she said, “I’ve a letter from that man at Brighton about the
house we had last year. He wants to know if we would like to engage it
for a couple of months in the spring. It would be a good opportunity to
give Cissy a little sea-bathing, you know.”
Now, the Reverend had the same horror of that, as of other
watering-places, which is usually entertained by middle-aged gentlemen
of settled habits, who do not choose to accept second-rate dissipation
and salt-water as equivalents for the comforts of a home. He had indeed,
during the previous summer, been seduced into spending two months at
Brighton, under the erroneous impression that on those Sussex downs the
harriers hunted all the year round; but, having found out his mistake,
had inwardly registered a vow never to be “let in” for such a benefit
again. It was no wonder that he rose freely at the suggestion.
“Gracious Heavens! Mrs. Dove!” exclaimed the Reverend, plumping down
into an arm-chair, and raising both hands in irritable deprecation,
“knowing what you do, how can you ask such a question? Of course, if
this house is too uncomfortable to live in, and it don’t matter about
the parish going to the d— to the dogs, and the Bishop is to be a
nonentity, and _my_ duties a farce, you are perfectly right to go
gadding about from here to Brighton, and from Brighton to London, and
from London to Halifax, if you like, and I shall be happy to indulge
you. I only wish you would tell me where the money is to come from—where
the money is to come from, Mrs. Dove—that’s all!” And, having thus
spoken, the Reverend took up the _Leicester Journal_, and looked over
the top of it at his wife, as if he had indeed propounded _a poser_.
This was exactly what that dear artful woman wanted. She knew that when
he had blown off his steam, her husband would settle down into his usual
easy temper, and become perfectly malleable in about five minutes. So
she folded the poor parishioner’s little shirt with the nicest accuracy,
and replied in the most perfect good-humour—
“Well, dear, I’m sure I don’t want to move from here till we go to
London. You know I’m so fond of my garden in the spring, and I like you
to get your hunting as long as you can: it does you so much good. My
idea is, London about the time of the Derby; then Ascot for a week; and
home again by the beginning of July. After all, we are wonderfully well
situated here for the country as regards society, and Harborough never
was so full as it seems this season. What should we do in this part of
the world if it wasn’t for hunting?”
Precious, in proportion to their rarity, opinions so orthodox sank like
music in the Reverend’s ear. Five-and-twenty years’ experience had
failed to teach him, that such congenial sentiments must as necessarily
be followed by a request, as a soft southerly wind is succeeded by rain.
And this is the strangest feature in our subservience to the other sex.
Though they deceive us ninety-nine times, we believe them the hundredth,
and, more foolish than the feathered biped, though its meshes be spread
in our very sight, rush open-eyed, neck-and-heels into the net of the
fowler.
The Reverend glanced at the wife of his bosom, and thought her
wonderfully like that picture done a score of years ago. He said as
much: but the compliment by no means diverted Mrs. Dove from the object
she had in view. “Cissy and I were just talking,” said she simply, “of
your friend Mr. Crasher, and the rest of them. By the bye, you really
ought to ask some of them to dinner. There’s a barrel of oysters come by
rail last night, and our turkeys this year are finer than usual. Better
say Tuesday, don’t you think, Papa?” added she coaxingly.
But the Reverend was not so hospitably inclined as he would have been
had the old horse been sound. “They can have plenty of oysters at
Harborough,” said he. “They won’t care to drive all that way in the
dark. Bad roads, wet nights, perhaps, and nobody to meet them. Better
put it off, I think, Dottie, till the days get a little longer.”
You or I would hardly have thought of calling so ample a lady as Mrs.
Dove, whose baptismal name indeed was Dorothy, by the above diminutive.
Nevertheless, when in his best humour, it was the Reverend’s habit to
address her by the old pet name, and she returned to the charge
accordingly.
“Better do it at once, dear,” she replied. “The end of the season comes
upon us before we know where we are. And if frost should arrive, or
anything, they are all off to London by the express train. As for not
liking to come, they’ll _jump_ at it. Mr. Crasher says yours is the best
claret within three counties, and I’m sure you all sit long enough at it
to appreciate its merits. How you _will_ talk about hunting: won’t they,
Cissy? Well, we can’t wonder at it—gentlemen are so enthusiastic. Why,
if I was a man, with such wine as _that_, I’d sell ’em every horse in my
stable before coffee came in.”
The Reverend burst out laughing. The last argument was irresistible.
“Have it your own way, Dottie,” said he; “I must be off to write my
sermon.” And he betook himself to his study accordingly, leaving his
wife and daughter to issue the invitations.
Of these it is unnecessary for us to trace the delivery of more than
one. Mr. Sawyer, eating devilled kidneys the following morning for
breakfast, felt his heart leap into his mouth at the reception of a
primrose-coloured, highly-scented billet, in a long narrow envelope,
bearing on the reverse what is called a “monogram”—a thing not unlike
the puzzle-wit lock on a gate—consisting of the letter D and others
twisted into every variety of shape. Though his experience in ladies’
letters was limited, being indeed confined to one from Miss Mexico at
the conclusion of their intercourse, in which she “wished to have no
further communication with him, but hoped always to remain _friends_,”
something told him that the delicate, neatly-written superscription must
have been indited by a fair hand. For an instant, the delightful
suggestion flashed across him, that Miss Dove, forgetting maidenly
reserve in the ardour of her affection, had plunged into a
correspondence with himself, and he turned hot and cold by turns.
Opening the missive with a trembling hand, it proved to be, if not from
the young lady, at least from her mamma, and as it lay open all that day
on his table, it is no breach of confidence on my part to publish its
contents for the reader’s benefit. Thus it ran:—
“DEAR MR. SAWYER,
“Can you give us the pleasure of your company at dinner on Tuesday
next, at half-past seven o’clock? Mr. Dove desires me to say that as
you will probably drive, you had better not attempt the short way,
but come by the high-road. My daughter unites with me in hoping that
your poor horse has recovered the hard day in which he carried you
so well, and I remain,
“Dear Mr. Sawyer,
“Yours sincerely,
“DOROTHY DOVE.
“Dove-cote Rectory, Friday.”
There is nothing ambiguous in the above. It seems a simple invitation to
dinner enough; you or I can gather its drift at a glance. Why the man
should have read it over at least half-a-dozen times is more than I can
divine.
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