Within a mile of Fairly Park lay the farm of another yeoman; but he was
of another character. The Hampshireman was a farmer of renown in his
profession; fifth of a family that had cultivated a small domain of one
hundred and seventy acres with sterling profit, and in a style to make
Sutton the model of a perfect farm throughout the country. Royal eyes
had inspected his pigs approvingly; Royal wits had taken hints from
Jonathan Eccles in matters agricultural; and it was his comforting joke
that he had taught his Prince good breeding. In return for the service,
his Prince had transformed a lusty Radical into a devoted Royalist.
Framed on the walls of his parlours were letters from his Prince,
thanking him for specimen seeds and worthy counsel: veritable autograph
letters of the highest value. The Prince had steamed up the salt river,
upon which the Sutton harvests were mirrored, and landed on a spot
marked in honour of the event by a broad grey stone; and from that
day Jonathan Eccles stood on a pinnacle of pride, enabling him to see
horizons of despondency hitherto unknown to him. For he had a son, and
the son was a riotous devil, a most wild young fellow, who had no
taste for a farmer's life, and openly declared his determination not to
perpetuate the Sutton farm in the hands of the Eccleses, by running off
one day and entering the ranks of the British army.
Those framed letters became melancholy objects for contemplation,
when Jonathan thought that no posterity of his would point them out
gloryingly in emulation. Man's aim is to culminate; but it is the
saddest thing in the world to feel that we have accomplished it. Mr.
Eccles shrugged with all the philosophy he could summon, and transferred
his private disappointment to his country, whose agricultural day was,
he said, doomed. “We shall be beaten by those Yankees.” He gave Old
England twenty years of continued pre-eminence (due to the impetus of
the present generation of Englishmen), and then, said he, the Yankees
will flood the market. No more green pastures in Great Britain; no
pretty clean-footed animals; no yellow harvests; but huge chimney pots
everywhere; black earth under black vapour, and smoke-begrimed faces.
In twenty years' time, sooty England was to be a gigantic manufactory,
until the Yankees beat us out of that field as well; beyond which
Jonathan Eccles did not care to spread any distinct border of prophecy;
merely thanking the Lord that he should then be under grass. The decay
of our glory was to be edged with blood; Jonathan admitted that there
would be stuff in the fallen race to deliver a sturdy fight before they
went to their doom.
For this prodigious curse, England had to thank young Robert, the
erratic son of Jonathan.
It was now two years since Robert had inherited a small legacy of money
from an aunt, and spent it in waste, as the farmer bitterly supposed.
He was looking at some immense seed-melons in his garden, lying about in
morning sunshine--a new feed for sheep, of his own invention,--when the
call of the wanderer saluted his ears, and he beheld his son Robert at
the gate.
“Here I am, sir,” Robert sang out from the exterior.
“Stay there, then,” was his welcome.
They were alike in their build and in their manner of speech. The accost
and the reply sounded like reports from the same pistol. The old man was
tall, broad-shouldered, and muscular--a grey edition of the son, upon
whose disorderly attire he cast a glance, while speaking, with settled
disgust. Robert's necktie streamed loose; his hair was uncombed; a
handkerchief dangled from his pocket. He had the look of the prodigal,
returned with impudence for his portion instead of repentance.
“I can't see how you are, sir, from this distance,” said Robert, boldly
assuming his privilege to enter.
“Are you drunk?” Jonathan asked, as Robert marched up to him.
“Give me your hand, sir.”
“Give me an answer first. Are you drunk?”
Robert tried to force the complacent aspect of a mind unabashed,
but felt that he made a stupid show before that clear-headed,
virtuously-living old, man of iron nerves. The alternative to flying
into a passion, was the looking like a fool.
“Come, father,” he said, with a miserable snigger, like a yokel's smile;
“here I am at last. I don't say, kill the fatted calf, and take a
lesson from Scripture, but give me your hand. I've done no man harm but
myself--damned if I've done a mean thing anywhere! and there's no shame
to you in shaking your son's hand after a long absence.”
Jonathan Eccles kept both hands firmly in his pockets.
“Are you drunk?” he repeated.
Robert controlled himself to answer, “I'm not.”
“Well, then, just tell me when you were drunk last.”
“This is a pleasant fatherly greeting!” Robert interjected.
“You get no good by fighting shy of a simple question, Mr. Bob,” said
Jonathan.
Robert cried querulously, “I don't want to fight shy of a simple
question.”
“Well, then; when were you drunk last? answer me that.”
“Last night.”
Jonathan drew his hand from his pocket to thump his leg.
“I'd have sworn it!”
All Robert's assurance had vanished in a minute, and he stood like a
convicted culprit before his father.
“You know, sir, I don't tell lies. I was drunk last night. I couldn't
help it.”
“No more could the little boy.”
“I was drunk last night. Say, I'm a beast.”
“I shan't!” exclaimed Jonathan, making his voice sound as a defence to
this vile charge against the brutish character.
“Say, I'm worse than a beast, then,” cried Robert, in exasperation.
“Take my word that it hasn't happened to me to be in that state for a
year and more. Last night I was mad. I can't give you any reasons. I
thought I was cured but I've trouble in my mind, and a tide swims you
over the shallows--so I felt. Come, sir--father, don't make me mad
again.”
“Where did you get the liquor?” inquired Jonathan.
“I drank at 'The Pilot.'”
“Ha! there's talk there of 'that damned old Eccles' for a month to
come--'the unnatural parent.' How long have you been down here?”
“Eight and twenty hours.”
“Eight and twenty hours. When are you going?”
“I want lodging for a night.”
“What else?”
“The loan of a horse that'll take a fence.”
“Go on.”
“And twenty pounds.”
“Oh!” said Jonathan. “If farming came as easy to you as face, you'd be a
prime agriculturalist. Just what I thought! What's become of that money
your aunt Jane was fool enough to bequeath to you?”
“I've spent it.”
“Are you a Deserter?”
For a moment Robert stood as if listening, and then white grew his face,
and he swayed and struck his hands together. His recent intoxication had
unmanned him.
“Go in--go in,” said his father in some concern, though wrath was
predominant.
“Oh, make your mind quiet about me.” Robert dropped his arms. “I'm
weakened somehow--damned weak, I am--I feel like a woman when my father
asks me if I've been guilty of villany. Desert? I wouldn't desert from
the hulks. Hear the worst, and this is the worst: I've got no money--I
don't owe a penny, but I haven't got one.”
“And I won't give you one,” Jonathan appended; and they stood facing one
another in silence.
A squeaky voice was heard from the other side of the garden hedge of
clipped yew.
“Hi! farmer, is that the missing young man?” and presently a neighbour,
by name John Sedgett, came trotting through the gate, and up the garden
path.
“I say,” he remarked, “here's a rumpus. Here's a bobbery up at Fairly.
Oh! Bob Eccles! Bob Eccles! At it again!”
Mr. Sedgett shook his wallet of gossip with an enjoying chuckle. He was
a thin-faced creature, rheumy of eye, and drawing his breath as from a
well; the ferret of the village for all underlying scandal and tattle,
whose sole humanity was what he called pitifully 'a peakin' at his
chest, and who had retired from his business of grocer in the village
upon the fortune brought to him in the energy and capacity of a third
wife to conduct affairs, while he wandered up and down and knitted
people together--an estimable office in a land where your house is so
grievously your castle.
“What the devil have you got in you now?” Jonathan cried out to him.
Mr. Sedgett was seized by his complaint and demanded commiseration, but,
recovering, he chuckled again.
“Oh, Bob Eccles! Don't you never grow older? And the first day
down among us again, too. Why, Bob, as a military man, you ought to
acknowledge your superiors. Why, Stephen Bilton, the huntsman, says,
Bob, you pulled the young gentleman off his horse--you on foot, and him
mounted. I'd ha' given pounds to be there. And ladies present! Lord
help us! I'm glad you're returned, though. These melons of the farmer's,
they're a wonderful invention; people are speaking of 'em right
and left, and says, says they, Farmer Eccles, he's best farmer
going--Hampshire ought to be proud of him--he's worth two of any others:
that they are fine ones! And you're come back to keep 'em up, eh, Bob?
Are ye, though, my man?”
“Well, here I am, Mr. Sedgett,” said Robert, “and talking to my father.”
“Oh! I wouldn't be here to interrupt ye for the world.” Mr. Sedgett made
a show of retiring, but Jonathan insisted upon his disburdening himself
of his tale, saying: “Damn your raw beginnings, Sedgett! What's been up?
Nobody can hurt me.”
“That they can't, neighbour; nor Bob neither, as far as stand up man to
man go. I give him three to one--Bob Eccles! He took 'em when a boy.
He may, you know, he may have the law agin him, and by George! if he
do--why, a man's no match for the law. No use bein' a hero to the
law. The law masters every man alive; and there's law in everything,
neighbour Eccles; eh, sir? Your friend, the Prince, owns to it, as much
as you or me. But, of course, you know what Bob's been doing. What
I dropped in to ask was, why did ye do it, Bob? Why pull the young
gentleman off his horse? I'd ha' given pounds to be there!”
“Pounds o' tallow candles don't amount to much,” quoth Robert.
“That's awful bad brandy at 'The Pilot,'” said Mr. Sedgett, venomously.
“Were you drunk when you committed this assault?” Jonathan asked his
son.
“I drank afterwards,” Robert replied.
“'Pilot' brandy's poor consolation,” remarked Mr. Sedgett.
Jonathan had half a mind to turn his son out of the gate, but the
presence of Sedgett advised him that his doings were naked to the world.
“You kicked up a shindy in the hunting-field--what about? Who mounted
ye?”
Robert remarked that he had been on foot.
“On foot--eh? on foot!” Jonathan speculated, unable to realize the image
of his son as a foot-man in the hunting-field, or to comprehend the
insolence of a pedestrian who should dare to attack a mounted huntsman.
“You were on foot? The devil you were on foot! Foot? And caught a man
out of his saddle?”
Jonathan gave up the puzzle. He laid out his fore finger decisively,--
“If it's an assault, mind, you stand damages. My land gives and my land
takes my money, and no drunken dog lives on the produce. A row in the
hunting-field's un-English, I call it.”
“So it is, sir,” said Robert.
“So it be, neighbour,” said Mr. Sedgett.
Whereupon Robert took his arm, and holding the scraggy wretch forward,
commanded him to out with what he knew.
“Oh, I don't know no more than what I've told you.” Mr. Sedgett twisted
a feeble remonstrance of his bones, that were chiefly his being, at the
gripe; “except that you got hold the horse by the bridle, and wouldn't
let him go, because the young gentleman wouldn't speak as a gentleman,
and--oh! don't squeeze so hard--”
“Out with it!” cried Robert.
“And you said, Steeve Bilton said, you said, 'Where is she?' you said,
and he swore, and you swore, and a lady rode up, and you pulled, and
she sang out, and off went the gentleman, and Steeve said she said, 'For
shame.'”
“And it was the truest word spoken that day!” Robert released him. “You
don't know much, Mr. Sedgett; but it's enough to make me explain the
cause to my father, and, with your leave, I'll do so.”
Mr. Sedgett remarked: “By all means, do;” and rather preferred that his
wits should be accused of want of brightness, than that he should miss
a chance of hearing the rich history of the scandal and its origin.
Something stronger than a hint sent him off at a trot, hugging in his
elbows.
“The postman won't do his business quicker than Sedgett 'll tap this
tale upon every door in the parish,” said Jonathan.
“I can only say I'm sorry, for your sake;” Robert was expressing his
contrition, when his father caught him up,--
“Who can hurt me?--my sake? Have I got the habits of a sot?--what you'd
call 'a beast!' but I know the ways o' beasts, and if you did too,
you wouldn't bring them in to bear your beastly sins. Who can hurt
me?--You've been quarrelling with this young gentleman about a
woman--did you damage him?”
“If knuckles could do it, I should have brained him, sir,” said Robert.
“You struck him, and you got the best of it?”
“He got the worst of it any way, and will again.”
“Then the devil take you for a fool! why did you go and drink I could
understand it if you got licked. Drown your memory, then, if that filthy
soaking's to your taste; but why, when you get the prize, we'll say, you
go off headlong into a manure pond?--There! except that you're a damned
idiot!” Jonathan struck the air, as to observe that it beat him, but
for the foregoing elucidation: thundering afresh, “Why did you go and
drink?”
“I went, sir, I went--why did I go?” Robert slapped his hand
despairingly to his forehead. “What on earth did I go for?--because I'm
at sea, I suppose. Nobody cares for me. I'm at sea, and no rudder to
steer me. I suppose that's it. So, I drank. I thought it best to take
spirits on board. No; this was the reason--I remember: that lady,
whoever she was, said something that stung me. I held the fellow under
her eyes, and shook him, though she was begging me to let him off. Says
she--but I've drunk it clean out of my mind.”
“There, go in and look at yourself in the glass,” said Jonathan.
“Give me your hand first,”--Robert put his own out humbly.
“I'll be hanged if I do,” said Jonathan firmly. “Bed and board you shall
have while I'm alive, and a glass to look at yourself in; but my hand's
for decent beasts. Move one way or t' other: take your choice.”
Seeing Robert hesitate, he added, “I shall have a damned deal more
respect for you if you toddle.” He waved his hand away from the
premises.
“I'm sorry you've taken so to swearing of late, sir,” said Robert.
“Two flints strike fire, my lad. When you keep distant, I'm quiet enough
in my talk to satisfy your aunt Anne.”
“Look here, sir; I want to make use of you, so I'll go in.”
“Of course you do,” returned Jonathan, not a whit displeased by his
son's bluntness; “what else is a father good for? I let you know the
limit, and that's a brick wall; jump it, if you can. Don't fancy it's
your aunt Jane you're going in to meet.”
Robert had never been a favourite with his aunt Anne, who was Jonathan's
housekeeper.
“No, poor old soul! and may God bless her in heaven!” he cried.
“For leaving you what you turned into a thundering lot of liquor to
consume--eh?”
“For doing all in her power to make a man of me; and she was close on
it--kind, good old darling, that she was! She got me with that money
of hers to the best footing I've been on yet--bless her heart, or her
memory, or whatever a poor devil on earth may bless an angel for! But
here I am.”
The fever in Robert blazed out under a pressure of extinguishing tears.
“There, go along in,” said Jonathan, who considered drunkenness to be
the main source of water in a man's eyes. “It's my belief you've been at
it already this morning.”
Robert passed into the house in advance of his father, whom he quite
understood and appreciated. There was plenty of paternal love for him,
and a hearty smack of the hand, and the inheritance of the farm, when
he turned into the right way. Meantime Jonathan was ready to fulfil
his parental responsibility, by sheltering, feeding, and not publicly
abusing his offspring, of whose spirit he would have had a higher
opinion if Robert had preferred, since he must go to the deuce, to go
without troubling any of his relatives; as it was, Jonathan submitted
to the infliction gravely. Neither in speech nor in tone did he solicit
from the severe maiden, known as Aunt Anne, that snub for the wanderer
whom he introduced, which, when two are agreed upon the infamous
character of a third, through whom they are suffering, it is always
agreeable to hear. He said, “Here, Anne; here's Robert. He hasn't
breakfasted.”
“He likes his cold bath beforehand,” said Robert, presenting his cheek
to the fleshless, semi-transparent woman.
Aunt Anne divided her lips to pronounce a crisp, subdued “Ow!” to
Jonathan after inspecting Robert; and she shuddered at sight of
Robert, and said “Ow!” repeatedly, by way of an interjectory token of
comprehension, to all that was uttered; but it was a horrified “No!”
when Robert's cheek pushed nearer.
“Then, see to getting some breakfast for him,” said Jonathan. “You're
not anyway bound to kiss a drunken--”
“Dog's the word, sir,” Robert helped him. “Dogs can afford it. I never
saw one in that state; so they don't lose character.”
He spoke lightly, but dejection was in his attitude. When his aunt Anne
had left the room, he exclaimed,--
“By jingo! women make you feel it, by some way that they have. She's a
religious creature. She smells the devil in me.”
“More like, the brandy,” his father responded.
“Well! I'm on the road, I'm on the road!” Robert fetched a sigh.
“I didn't make the road,” said his father.
“No, sir; you didn't. Work hard: sleep sound that's happiness. I've
known it for a year. You're the man I'd imitate, if I could. The devil
came first the brandy's secondary. I was quiet so long. I thought myself
a safe man.”
He sat down and sent his hair distraught with an effort at smoothing it.
“Women brought the devil into the world first. It's women who raise the
devil in us, and why they--”
He thumped the table just as his aunt Anne was preparing to spread the
cloth.
“Don't be frightened, woman,” said Jonathan, seeing her start fearfully
back. “You take too many cups of tea, morning and night--hang the
stuff!”
“Never, never till now have you abused me, Jonathan,” she whimpered,
severely.
“I don't tell you to love him; but wait on him. That's all. And I'll
about my business. Land and beasts--they answer to you.”
Robert looked up.
“Land and beasts! They sound like blessed things. When next I go to
church, I shall know what old Adam felt. Go along, sir. I shall break
nothing in the house.”
“You won't go, Jonathan?” begged the trembling spinster.
“Give him some of your tea, and strong, and as much of it as he can
take--he wants bringing down,” was Jonathan's answer; and casting a
glance at one of the framed letters, he strode through the doorway,
and Aunt Anne was alone with the flushed face and hurried eyes of her
nephew, who was to her little better than a demon in the flesh. But
there was a Bible in the room.
An hour later, Robert was mounted and riding to the meet of hounds.