HARRY APPEARS AT THE GRANGE.
It was about four o’clock one afternoon, while Charles was smoking a
cigar--for notwithstanding his self-denying resolutions, his case was
always replenished still--that his brother Harry rode into the yard,
where he was puffing away contemplatively at an open stable-door.
“Delighted to see you, Harry. I was thinking of you this moment, by
Jove, and I can’t tell you how glad I am,” said Charles, smiling as he
advanced, yet with an anxious inquiry in his eyes.
Harry took his extended hand, having dismounted, but he was looking at
his horse, and not at Charles, as he said--
“The last mile or so I noticed something in the off forefoot; do you?
Look now--’taint brushing, nor he’s not gone lame, but tender like; do
you notice?” and he led him round a little bit.
“No,” said Charles, “I don’t see anything, but I am an ignoramus, you
know--no--I think, nothing.”
“’Taint a great deal, anyhow,” said Harry, leading him toward the open
stable-door. “I got your note, you know, and how are you all, and how
is Ally?”
“Very well, poor little thing, we are all very well. Did you come from
Wyvern?” said Charles.
“Yes.”
“And the old man just as usual, I suppose?”
“Just the same, only not growing no younger, you’ll suppose.”
Charles nodded.
“And a d--d deal crosser, too. There’s times, I can tell you, he won’t
stand no one nigh him--not even old Drake, d--d vicious.”
Harry laughed.
“They say he liked Ally--they do, upon my soul, and I wouldn’t wonder,
’tis an old rat won’t eat cheese--only you took the bit out o’ his
mouth, when you did, and that’s enough to rile a fellow, you know.”
“Who says so?” asked Charles, with a flush on his face.
“The servants--yes--and the townspeople--it’s pretty well about, and I
think if it came to the old boy’s ears there would be black eyes and
bloody noses about it, I do.”
“Well, it’s a lie,” said Charles; “and don’t, like a good fellow, tell
poor little Alice there’s any such nonsense talked about her at home,
it would only vex her.”
“Well, I won’t, if I think of it. Where’s Tom? But ’twouldn’t vex
her--not a bit--quite ’tother way--there’s never a girl in England
wouldn’t be pleased if old Parr himself wor in love wi’ her, so she
hadn’t to marry him. But the governor, by Jove, I don’t know a girl
twelve miles round Wyvern, as big an old brute as he is, would turn up
her nose at him, wi’ all he has to grease her hand. But where’s Tom?
the nag must have a feed.”
So they bawled for Tom, and Tom appeared, and took charge of the
horse, receiving a few directions about his treatment from Master
Harry, and then Charles led his brother in.
“I’m always glad to see you, Harry, but always, at the same time, a
little anxious when you come,” said Charles, in a low tone, as they
traversed the passage toward the kitchen.
“’Taint much--I have to tell you something, but first gi’ me a
mouthful, for I’m as hungry as a hawk, and a mug o’ beer wouldn’t hurt
me while I’m waitin’. It’s good hungry air this; you eat a lot, I
dessay; the air alone stands you in fifty pounds a year, I reckon;
that’s paying pretty smart for what we’re supposed to have for the
takin’.”
And Harry laughed at his joke as they entered the dark old
dining-room.
“Ally not here?” said Harry, looking round.
“She can’t be very far off, but I’ll manage something if she’s not to
be found.”
So Charles left Harry smiling out of the window at the tops of the
trees, and drumming a devil’s tattoo on the pane.
“Ho! Dulcibella. Is your mistress upstairs?”
“I think she is gone out to the garden, sir; she took her trowel and
garden gloves, and the little basket wi’ her,” answered the old woman.
“Well, don’t disturb her, we’ll not mind, I’ll see old Mildred.”
So to old Mildred he betook himself.
“Here’s Master Harry come very hungry, so send him anything you can
make out, and in the meantime some beer, for he’s thirsty, too, and,
like a good old soul, make all the haste you can.”
And with this conciliatory exhortation he returned to the room where
he had left his brother.
“Ally has gone out to visit her flowers, but Mildred is doing the best
she can for you, and we can go out and join Alice by-and-by, but we
are as well to ourselves for a little. I--I want to talk to you.”
“Well, fire away, my boy, with your big oak stick, as the Irishman
says, though I’d rather have a mouthful first. Oh, here’s the
beer--thank ye, Chick-a-biddy. Where the devil did you get that
queer-looking fair one?” he asked, when the Hebe, Lilly Dogger,
disappeared; “I’ll lay you fifty it was Ally chose that one.”
And he laughed obstreperously.
And he poured out a tumbler of beer and drank it, and then another and
drank it, and poured out a third to keep at hand while he conversed.
“There used to be some old pewter goblets here in the kitchen--I
wonder what’s gone wi’ them--they were grand things for drinking beer
out of--the pewter, while ye live--there’s nothing like it for
beer--or porter, by Jove. Have you got any porter?”
“No, not any; but do, like a good old fellow, tell me anything you
have picked up that concerns me--there’s nothing pleasant, I
know--there can be nothing pleasant, but if there’s anything, I should
rather have it now, than wait, be it ever so bad.”
“I wish you’d put some other fellow on this business, I know--for
you’ll come to hate the sight of me if I’m always bringing you bad
news; but it is _not_ good, that’s a fact; that beast is getting
unmanageable. By the law, here comes something for a hungry fellow;
thank ye, my lass, God bless ye, feeding the hungry. How can I pay ye
back, my dear? I don’t know, unless by taking ye in--ha, ha,
ha!--whenever ye want shelter, mind; but you’re too sharp, I warrant,
to let any fellow take you in, with them roguish eyes you’ve got. See
how she blushes, the brown little rogue!” he giggled after her with a
leer, as Lilly Dogger, having placed his extemporized luncheon on the
table, edged hurriedly out of the room. “Devilish fine eyes she’s
got, and a nice little set of ivories, sir. By Jove, I didn’t half see
her; pity she’s not a bit taller; and them square shoulders. But
hair--she has nice hair, and teeth and eyes goes a long way.”
He had stuck his fork in a rasher while making his pretty speech, and
was champing away greedily by the time he had come to the end of his
sentence.
“But what has turned up in that quarter? You were going to tell me
something when this came in,” asked Charles.
“About the old soger? Well, if you don’t mind a fellow’s talkin’ with
his mouth full, I’ll try when I can think of it; but the noise of
eating clears a fellow’s head of everything, I think.”
“Do, like a dear fellow. I can hear you perfectly,” urged Charles.
“I’m afraid,” said Harry, with his mouth full, as he had promised,
“she’ll make herself devilish troublesome.”
“Tell us all about it,” said Charles, uneasily.
“I told you I was running up to London--we haven’t potatoes like these
up at Wyvern--and so I did go, and as I promised, I saw the old beast
at Hoxton; and hang me, but I think some one has been putting her up
to mischief.”
“How do you mean?--what sort of mischief?” asked Charles.
“I think she’s got uneasy about you. She was asking all sorts of
questions.”
“Yes--well?”
“And I wouldn’t wonder if some one was telling her--I was going to say
lies--but I mean something like the truth--ha, ha, ha! By the law,
I’ve been telling such a hatful of lies about it myself, that I hardly
know which is which, or one end from t’other.”
“Do you mean to say she was abusing me, or _what_?” urged Charles,
very uncomfortably.
“I don’t suppose you care very much what the old soger says of you. It
ain’t pretty, you may be sure, and it don’t much signify. But it ain’t
all talk, you know. She’s always grumblin’, and I don’t mind
_that_--her ticdooleroo, and her nerves, and her nonsense. She wants
carriage exercise, she says, and the court doctor--I forget his
name--ha, ha, ha! and she says you allow her next to nothing, and
keeps her always on the starving line, and she won’t stand it no
longer, she swears; and you’ll have to come down with the dust, my
boy.”
And florid, stalwart Harry laughed again as if the affair was a good
joke.
“I can’t help it, Harry, she has always had more than her share. I’ve
been too generous, I’ve been a d--d fool always.”
Charles spoke with extreme bitterness, but quietly, and there was a
silence of two or three minutes, during which Harry’s eyes were on his
plate, and the noise of his knife and fork and the crunching of his
repast under his fine teeth, were the only sounds heard.
Seeing that Harry seemed disposed to confine his attention for the
present to his luncheon, Charles Fairfield, who apprehended something
worse, said--
“If that’s all it is nothing very new. I’ve been hearing that sort of
thing for fully ten years. She’s ungrateful, and artful, and violent.
There’s no use in wishing or regretting now; but God knows, it was an
evil day for me when first I saw that woman’s face.”
Charlie was looking down on the table as he spoke, and tapping on it
feverishly with the tips of his fingers. Harry’s countenance showed
that unpleasant expression which sometimes overcame its rustic
freshness. The attempt to discharge an unsuitable smile or a dubious
expression from the face--the attempt, shall we bluntly say, of a
rogue to look simple.
It is a loose way of talking and thinking which limits the vice of
hypocrisy to the matter of religion. It counterfeits all good, and
dissimulates all evil, every day and hour; and among the men who
frankly admit themselves to be publicans and sinners, whose ways are
notoriously worldly, and who never affected religion, are some of the
worst and meanest hypocrites on earth.
Harry Fairfield having ended his luncheon, had laid his knife and fork
on his plate, and leaning back in his chair, was ogling them with an
unmeaning stare, and mouth a little open, affecting a brown study; but
no effort can quite hide the meaning and twinkle of cunning, and
nothing is more repulsive than this semi-transparent mask of
simplicity.
Thus the two brothers sat, neither observing the other much, with an
outward seeming of sympathy, but with very divergent thoughts.
Charles, as we know, was a lazy man, with little suspicion, and rather
an admiration of his brother’s worldly wisdom and activity--with a
wavering belief in Harry’s devotion to his cause, sometimes a little
disturbed when Harry seemed for a short time hard and selfish, or
careless, but generally returning with a quiet self-assertion, like
the tide on a summer day.
For my part I don’t exactly know how much or how little Harry cared
for Charles. The Fairfields were not always what is termed a “united”
family, and its individual members, in prosecuting their several
objects, sometimes knocked together, and occasionally, in the family
history, more violently and literally than was altogether seemly.