Italic represented by underscores surrounding the _italic text_.
Small capitals have been converted to ALL CAPS.
OLIVER CONSTABLE
MILLER AND BAKER
BY
SARAH TYTLER
AUTHOR OF ‘CITOYENNE JACQUELINE’ ‘SCOTCH FIRS’ ETC.
_IN THREE VOLUMES_
VOL. III.
LONDON
SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1880
[_All rights reserved_]
CONTENTS
OF
THE THIRD VOLUME.
CHAPTER PAGE
XXIII. HARRY STANHOPE’S WANT 1
XXIV. FAN’S TRIUMPH 22
XXV. ‘THE DEVIL SHALL NOT HAVE HARRY’ 59
XXVI. THE PRICE AT WHICH HARRY STANHOPE
WAS RESCUED 96
XXVII. THE LAST PENNY PAID 126
XXVIII. OLIVER’S RETURN 140
XXIX. FRESH SERVICE 175
XXX. STUMBLED ACROSS, INTERVIEWED, TAKEN
AT HIS WORD 197
XXXI. LIFE—AND DEATH 214
XXXII. ‘DO THEY BELIEVE IN ME NOW?’ 240
OLIVER CONSTABLE,
_MILLER AND BAKER_.
CHAPTER XXIII.
HARRY STANHOPE’S WANT.
Oliver had liberally allowed Harry Stanhope six months in which to ride
his hobby and grow sick beyond endurance of his _rôle_ of yeoman.
But whereas Harry had entered on the character, on a fine summer
afternoon, in the attractive prospect of hay-making, corn-cutting,
and hop-picking, it was midwinter, with no more agreeable occupations
in view than thrashing corn, pulling turnips, turning over potatoes
in the pits, and ploughing a stiff clay soil under the murky sky of a
short day in muggy weather, still he showed no signs of throwing up the
part in satiety and disgust.
True, he had sufficient leisure to join the other farmers in presenting
himself in the hunting field, and enjoying as good mounts and glorious
runs as the squires or the M.F.H. himself.
It did not come under the head of sport. Harry was persuaded it lay at
the core of his business, that he should attend—not only the Friarton
Market, but every market within a day’s journey. He went to them no
longer in his shirt sleeves, or riding a bare-backed horse as it had
been taken to the watering, not even in the market cart in which he
had prefigured Harry and himself crossing country—out of sight, and
therefore out of danger of wounding the feelings of their aristocratic
relations. Harry had modified so far his Robinson Crusoe and Vicar of
Wakefield notions, as to have set up a trap handsome enough to have
been driven by any of his cousins. The trap was matched by an equally
well-bred, delicate, costly horse, which Harry candidly admitted was
not quite ‘the cheese’ for a yeoman. Yet why not, if he rented and
paid the rent of the paddock in which it ran, afforded the corn for
its feeds, and took care that it should do his work in running like
the wind with him and Horry to the innumerable markets and sales which
the brothers found themselves forced to attend. Harry’s pride ended
with his equipage. He was not to say guilty of affability; he was every
man’s man, in the streets, or corn exchanges, or commercial inns where
the farmers congregated. He was as ready to sit with the last man in
the bar-parlour, and try return races against his trap, as to compare
samples of grain in legitimate business. Harry was all things to all
men—not to gain some for what he fervently believed their good, but
in sheer sociality—with a vain, light-hearted, light-headed love of
popularity, which was at this time his ruling passion. Horace never
thwarted his brother in this or any other inclination. He remained the
abiding shadow inseparable from Harry’s sunshine, and in some respects
a relief from its glare.
Harry was also able to derive no small amount of animation and
amusement from such windfalls in the day’s routine, as brisk bouts of
ratting when a stack was being pulled down, or in the granary after it
was left empty; and he waited religiously every evening on the feeding
of the cattle and horses in the sheds and stables.
Harry was an extremely indulgent, if totally inconsiderate, and
occasionally capricious, master, whose lavish tolerance was only now
and then broken, like the abounding calm of tropical seas, by a storm
violent as it was brief. That Harry spoilt his retainers horribly was
not an objection which his servants were likely to take into account
in the first flush of ‘the young squire’s’ popularity. For in spite of
Harry Stanhope’s well-nigh nettled protests and vigorous acting of his
part, probably because of his over-acting, the would-be yeoman was the
young squire to his labourers, who in the middle of their stolidity
were not altogether without shrewd observation and sound deduction.
Harry not only continued unexpectedly constant to his vocation as he
believed it, he remained faithful to the earliest friendship he had
claimed on his arrival at Copley Grange Farm. He went more frequently
to Friarton Mill than to any other house where he was made welcome,
which was saying a good deal, seeing that Harry’s life, whether in
the way of his business requirements, or when he might be supposed
clear of their urgent obligations, was a constant round of varied
visiting. Indeed, it struck Oliver that Harry grossly abused his
privilege, and came intolerably often, and at absurdly unconventional
seasons, from ‘early morn to dewy eve’—sometimes in the raw air before
breakfast, sometimes through a setting in snowstorm after supper—to the
mill-house, during this winter.
But what could Oliver do? not turn out the thoughtless lad for whom
the elder man had a sneaking kindness, or close the doors against the
soullessly jolly young face, which, however provocative of censure,
always brought with it, when it flashed upon the man, a reflection of
unimpaired freshness, and unburdened lightness of heart.
Since Fan allowed these intrusions, and even seemed to enjoy them, what
was left for Oliver save to shrug his shoulders, grumble to himself, or
deliver the silent hint of turning his back, after the first greeting,
on his visitors? For, of course, Harry dragged over Horry in his
train. And Oliver often left Fan to entertain the two in one, while he
read on unceremoniously at the newspaper or book with which he had been
engaged on their entrance.
Alas! Harry only took the cavalier rudeness for friendliest
encouragement. ‘Don’t apologise to me, old fellow,’ he would enjoin the
master of the house, cheerfully. ‘It is not you I have come to see, it
is Miss Constable,’ Harry would say audaciously. ‘I have come to report
myself to Miss Constable. She has been so good as to take me in hand.
She is making a man—that is a veritable yeoman, of me.’
And Fan lent herself to this egregious fiction. Fan, who had never
interested herself in a single detail of her father and brother’s
trades, who had not so much as made an exception in favour of the
chicks, directed a charmed ear to all Harry Stanhope’s chatter of the
prices in the market, the field which was sown that day, the ox which
had choked itself and been brought round in its stall the night before,
the first long-legged, big-headed calf which he had bought for a song.
Sally Pope grinned at Oliver behind the backs of this most practical
young couple.
Horace Stanhope began to fidget and glance jealously at the master of
the house in his obliviousness. But not even the phenomena of Harry’s
coming at last, once or twice, without his brother, and showing some
slight self-consciousness when the unusual omission was remarked upon,
roused the suspicions of the too secure and single-minded host.
One fine frosty night Harry had walked in alone, uninvited and
unannounced. For Fan’s carefully-trained housemaid had become weary
of announcing the perpetual visitor, and, without any rebuke from
her mistress, had proceeded to treat the special duty as a work of
supererogation where Mr. Harry Stanhope was concerned.
Oliver had nodded and sat still in the shade at his father’s desk,
turning over some papers, keeping his post mainly to preserve the
liberty of pursuing his own train of reflections; while Harry Stanhope
and Fan had put their heads together over the lamp on Fan’s little
table in the chimney-corner, and were, according to Oliver’s conception
of the situation, going over the best plans for growing corn and
rearing stock, and—what was adding insult to injury in reference to
Oliver’s pets, the ducks—the latest contrivances for a high development
of poultry. Not satisfied with the solution of these momentous problems
by lamp-light, when the pair went to the window to predict from the
purple-blue sky and the glitter of the stars hung like lamps of heaven
in the dark branches of the trees of Copley Grange Park, the weather
to-morrow—whether skating on the mill-pond would be the order of the
day, or whether the frost would give way and the scent hold, so that
Harry might join the hunt ten miles off—it seemed to Oliver as if they
must have started afresh to answer the whole code of agricultural
questions over again, by starlight, till his patience was reduced to a
shred.
At last Harry took his departure somewhat abruptly in the end.
Oliver stretched himself with vicious emphasis, and growled, this was
insufferable, he did not think he could stand it much longer.
Fan, generally so quick in retort, said nothing, but she appeared to
have appropriated the observation and taken it to heart; for a moment
later, when she came to bid Oliver goodnight, she suddenly put her
hands upon his shoulders and looked wistfully in his face with tears in
her dark eyes, and her colour wavering—as he remarked with surprise.
‘You are not angry, Oliver, dear?’ she said, with one of her rare
caressing gestures and phrases, which coming as they did unlooked for,
from a high-spirited almost hard little woman like Fan, were apt to sap
a man’s defences, and melt his heart like wax on the spot. ‘You are
not angry, Oliver?’ repeated Fan with a slight quaver in the wistful
earnestness of her voice.
‘Of course I am not angry with _you_, you goose of a Fanchen?’ said
Oliver with affectionate bluster. ‘How can you help Stanhope’s
unconscionable coolness, which begins to be rank impudence? But why
in the name of justice, should I blame you for his faults?’ enquired
Oliver in all simplicity. ‘You are compelled to listen to his rigmarole
in your own house, when I turn him over to you. I own I ought not to
do it, to such an extent,’ admitted Oliver, contritely; ‘but the young
wretch is so indefatigable in preying on our hospitality, and has
acquired such a fatal fluency in airing his farming bosh, that I must
have some relief, or knock him down. I often admire your powers of
endurance, but don’t give the beggar too much line, Fan, if you love
me. I am not sure, whether, after all, his class are the finest judges
of courtesy.’
Fan had flushed crimson at her brother’s words. She knitted her
delicate brows—black brows at the same time, and then as if she had
thought better of it, her lips parted in a half-smile. ‘No, no; don’t
speak treason either of me, or of another,’ she said; and then she
added, a little incoherently, ‘I believe there is nobody so good and
kind as you are, yourself, Oliver, in the whole world. Remember I have
said so, though we quarrelled some time ago, and may quarrel again.
Remember I have told you that you are always my own dear good boy, whom
I have loved all through our lives, whom I love with all my heart at
this moment, whom I could have served, if you would have let me,’ and
Fan fairly hugged Oliver, who resisted stoutly in his mystification,
with a dim apprehension that he might otherwise pledge himself to
something he did not in the least understand.
‘What do you mean?’ cried Oliver. ‘Is Fan also among the wheedlers? For
what mighty boon can she deign to wheedle?’
‘Never mind, it is too late to ask me now—good night.’
Fan succeeded in making her retreat, and in the act of doing so, Oliver
might have seen, if he had been quick at reading women’s faces, that
all the soft relenting and indescribable yearning which had been in
hers a moment ago, had vanished and was replaced by such unmingled
exultation that the girl looked radiant.
It was the last loving altercation which passed between the brother and
sister for many a day.
The next morning, Harry Stanhope wound up his offences against
domestic privacy by re-appearing at Friarton Mill, as if he had
slept at the gate, seeking admission to Oliver before the latter had
completed his toilet. Only the most urgent business could warrant such
pressing attendance. Harry himself, in his superb self-complacency
and confidence, betrayed, nevertheless, a shadow of a doubt of his
reception.
‘You will think I am always here, Constable?’ he said with a confused
laugh.
‘Well, you are here pretty often,’ the aggrieved Oliver put it mildly.
‘I am afraid your other engagements must suffer from your paying us the
compliment of being so much at Friarton Mill; and your brother—he is
not with you this morning—will miss you.’
‘Oh! hang Horry!’ exclaimed Harry hastily; ‘no, I don’t mean that, of
course, and old Horry won’t stand in the way. He’s all right. Besides,
if one’s father and mother, when a fellow possesses them, an’t counted,
a brother can’t have much to say either way, can he?’
‘I don’t know what you’re after,’ said Oliver in perfect sincerity. ‘If
I were a supernumerary in an old play, I ought to exclaim, “Anan,” to
that last enigmatical sentence of yours.’
‘Well, it ain’t easy to come out with it,’ protested Harry, struggling
with what was, for him, the most extraordinary hesitation. ‘Your
sister, Constable—you must have seen she has been goodness itself to
me. I know she will have to furnish the brains and backbone, for my
head-piece ain’t worth much, and my pluck is of the rough and ready
sort, but since she graciously consents to do for me and Horry—to make
a true farmer’s wife, which will be an inestimable advantage to us—I
may take it that you will not have any great objection to accepting me
for a brother-in-law?’
‘Stanhope, have you lost your wits?’ burst out Oliver. ‘Come, there
must be no more of this absurd nonsense. I tell you I will have no such
foolish jesting where my sister is concerned.’
‘Never was farther from jesting in my life!’ declared poor Harry
indignantly.
‘Then let me say, once for all, you must get rid of this idiotic
idea. It won’t do. My sister is not for a fellow like you. I don’t
want to hurt your feelings, but you have somehow tumbled into the
hugest blunder, and I must speak out. I can answer for Fan: she did
not dream of encouraging such a vain delusion, she will be terribly
vexed and annoyed. This comes of masquerading and making-believe. It
seems to me you don’t want a wife for twenty years to come: when you
do, take my advice—if you will excuse me for offering it, after what
I have said—marry strictly within your own class; you of all fellows
require such a safeguard, and the more influential your wife’s people,
the better both for her and you!’ muttered Oliver _sotto voce_. Then
he resumed aloud, ‘Wait till you can persuade a lady to share your
lot—if you will cultivate prudence, you may make it not a bad one—as a
gentleman-farmer.’
Harry was looking at Oliver with such a strong sense of superior
knowledge and wisdom that it disarmed any rising resentment on the
lad’s part, at the tone of provoked disdainful repudiation of the
proposal which Oliver could not help betraying. The contrast between
the truth as Harry realised it and Oliver’s undoubting convictions,
brought out the comic element in the affair so dear to Harry’s boyish
heart, even in the serious mood which had been on him, when he
‘declared his intentions.’
‘Make-believe, indeed!’ cried Harry, lightly; ‘who plays at being
miller and baker?’
‘Not I!’ denied Oliver hotly. ‘I have taken up my father’s business,
which is no unusual thing for a tradesman’s son to do, and I have not
adopted it as a mere makeshift, or as the last resource for a man who
would otherwise be idle; I desire to make it the object of my life;
I do not think any honest trade is unworthy of the dedication of the
trader’s talents to render it as good in every respect as possible. I
trust to do no discredit to my father’s business.’
‘At least you need not be so cocky over other people whose fathers had
not the luck to be in trade,’ remonstrated Harry. ‘As to not wanting
a wife—I being a farmer, and having no competent young woman with my
interest at heart,’ went on Harry, his blue eyes twinkling, ‘to look
after the butter and cheese, the feeding of the calves, the fattening
of the geese, and the multiplying of the eggs and chickens, when I
find I have quite enough to do, even with Horry for my _aide_, to
manage the labourer fellows in the fields and offices, and attend the
markets—if you think I don’t want a wife dreadfully, it is little
you know of a yeoman’s difficulties. As to consenting to try for an
imitation farmer’s wife, why you yourself politely hinted a minute ago
that there was quite enough of the mock article at Copley Grange Farm
already. No, thanks. I knew exactly what the position was when Aggie
spent her holiday weeks at the Farm. The babe could not have told
barley from oats if they had not been in the ear; and though that did
not matter much, I am morally certain she was shaky on the important
question of hens’ nests—whether they were not to be found in bushes,
if not on tree-tops. She spoilt all the dairy produce while she was
here, by insisting on dabbling in it in her ignorance, my housekeeper
complained. And the child was always begging to be amused, and seeking
to go and look at the horses and cattle when it was not convenient and
I ought to have been hard at work elsewhere. She would not be put off
with Horry’s escort; fact was, all my energies were employed in keeping
the peace between the little girl and the cantankerous old man.’
Oliver was forced to laugh, but he laughed harshly. ‘Stanhope, you’re a
donkey if you propose to marry my sister, that she may act as your head
dairymaid and principal hen-wife. That is not her _forte_,’ he said.
‘Do you mean to insult me?’ cried Harry, firing up in spite of his easy
temper. ‘By Jove, you may thank Fan if I bear it. I may have cracked
an ill-timed joke, but it was you who tempted me to it. Fan believes
me; she understands how I love and honour her, and choose her before
all other women; and if she does me the honour to choose me in return,
I suppose she is at liberty to make her choice? Not even a Turk of a
brother, since he is not her father, and she is of age, can prevent
it,’ ended Harry defiantly.
‘This preposterous stuff must be put an end to. I will see my sister.’
Oliver flung out of his room, and encountered Fan hovering over the
breakfast-table, and looking fresh yet pale, like a solitary daisy
blooming in a sheltered corner.