IN THE QUIET PLACES
"Gone to the City, sir," said the man, who opened the door which I knew
so well, and it had a few reasons for remembering my childhood,
impressed or indented upon its lower panels; "but he wanted to see you
particular, Master George; and he will be home by two o'clock. I was to
send down, and ask you to step this way by two o'clock, if you could any
way spare the time, for he thinks to have a bit of a treat for you."
How small are our natures! I was pleased with Biddles for making a "he"
of his master; when at every breath it would have been "Sir Harold,"
while we could afford his livery. A fine old Englishman was this, full
of pure feeling, and in heart disdainful of gold in comparison with
rank; though compelled by his stomach to coerce the higher organ. "How
is your little Bob, Biddles?" I asked; and it was better than
half-a-crown to him.
Before I had time to pick more than fifty holes in the stockbroker's
taste as compared with our own, in came the man himself, full of high
spirits, and alive with that vigour which the sparkling metal gives. Any
man must be a cur who can snarl at a good friend, for enjoying the
marrow-bone, which has dropped betwixt his paws. Jackson Stoneman was
not without his faults; but it would have been mean to make them greater
than they were, just because he was able to pay for them.
"Just the man I wanted--the very man," he said, as if I was worth all
the Stock Exchange; "what luck I have had all day! And you are come to
crown it. Here, you shall have my new Dougall, and I shall shoot with my
old Lancaster."
"What a deuce of a hurry you are in!" I answered, for his mind could
give me ten yards from scratch at any time. "I am not come here to
shoot. I have no time for such trifles. I want to have a serious talk
with you."
"Who do you think looked at me over the palings?" he spoke as if he had
quaffed a fine Magnum of Champagne, although he was a man of very great
discretion. "Over the palings, my boy; and after putting me down so the
other day! I assure you it has quite set me up again; though I am afraid
it was only an accident."
"You may be quite certain of that," I replied, for he wanted a little
quenching; "she went to get the last of the globe-artichokes, and of
course when she heard a horse she looked up. Old Sally looks up whenever
any one goes by."
"I tell you there was no looking up about it. Globe-artichokes are as
high as any woman's head. You are not going to put me down about that.
And she kissed her hand to me. What do you think of that?"
"If you took off your hat, she could do no less to a kind friend of her
mother. My affairs in that line are not flourishing. But I don't want
another fellow to be made a fool of, Jackson. Can't you try to show a
little common-sense?"
"Grapes sour, George? Well, I am sorry. But I fear you have not invested
well, my son. What are those foreign girls? Do you think I would ever
look at them, with a ghost of a chance of a thorough English maiden?
When it comes to an English girl, you know where you are, and no
mistake."
"All this is below contempt," I answered, for he had taken altogether
the wrong tone with me. "Let me hear no more of such stuff; we are not
boys. What is it you want me to shoot?"
"Well, that is a gracious way of putting it, when I offer you a chance
anybody else would jump at. Guy Fawkes' day not come, and behold three
woodcocks marked down in the Pray-copse!"
"I don't believe a word of it. They never come here yet. The earliest I
ever shot was on the fifteenth. But if you can swallow it, I don't mind
going with you."
"Well said. And back to dine with me at six o'clock. No scruple about
certificate in this, though to my mind the woodcock is the best of
British game. We'll call for the spaniels at Ponder's cottage. Best foot
foremost!"
It was a bright autumnal afternoon, after a touch of white frost, and
against the sky every here and there some bronzy leaf would swing and
glisten like the pendulum of a clock at winding time. But most of the
foliage now had finished its career of flaunt and flutter, and was lying
at our feet in soft brown strewage, or pricking its last crispage up,
where a blade of grass supported it. While at every winding of the
meadow path (which followed the hedge like a selvage), how pleasant it
was to see afar the wavering sweeps of gentle hill, and plaits of rich
embosomed valley, with copse, and turnip-field, and furzy common patched
with shadow. It made me bless the Lord at heart for casting my lines in
a quiet land, where a man beholds no craggy menace, black rush of blind
tempests, bottomless gulfs, unfathomed forests, and peaks that would
freeze him into stone. For the people that live there must be in a wild
condition always; to tremble at Nature's fury, or to shudder at her
majesty, or look around on all that wraps them up, with desolate
indifference.
I glanced at Stoneman walking briskly with his gun upon his shoulder,
and death to at least a dozen woodcocks in the keen flash of his eyes;
and I said to myself--"Please God, I will take a game-certificate, next
August; there is nothing like a good day's shooting to save one from
blood-thirstiness."
"Jackson, my boy!" I said, with the refrain of a fine old Yankee song
arising in my memory, "you have been over half the world; but have you
ever been in the Caucasus?"
"No, and don't want;" he answered shortly, "get robbed enough in London
village. But they strip you naked there, I hear, and send you down a
waterfall. Shamyl did it to some young chap, who might have set up
against him."
"That is a fiction of his enemies. The Avar Chief was dry in his manner
to strangers; and who can wonder at it? But he never harmed one of his
own race. I wish we had a few such patriots."
"Very well. You start the band. You are qualifying well, with all those
Egyptian fellows in the valley. But George, you are much too good for
that. There are pretty girls in every caravan; but we don't jump over
the broom-stick with them."
Dariel and a broom-stick! Indignation may flash as fast in the meadows
as in the mountains. "You idiot! You talk like an utter cad," I cried;
and he being quick of temper too, stood his gun against a tree, and
looked at me. I set my gun by the side of his. "Let us have it out," was
all I said.
But a gleam of reason came across him. He might have polished me off,
perhaps, though he would not have found it very easy, for I was the
heavier of the two, and in tidy rural condition. "What rot this is!" he
said, lowering his hands. "If you like to have a good smack at me, you
can. But I won't hit a fellow with Grace's eyes." I knew that he had
meant business, and that there was no white feather in his nature.
He begged my pardon, and we shook hands; and I felt just a little
ashamed of myself, although when I think of what he said, I see no
misbehaviour on my part.
Without another word, we dropped the question, and went on to look after
the woodcocks. We crossed the long "pray," with the keeper and three
spaniels coming after us, and whether it was that Jackson's hand shook
after menacing "the eyes of Grace," or that mine was extra steady
through that firm assertion of Dariel, it came to pass that I knocked
over both of the birds that we put up, when they were sailing away from
Jackson's gun. The other longbill saved his bacon, by keeping it out of
human eyes. These lucky shots, and the pleasant walk, and very fine
behaviour of the dogs--who were children of the animals I had loved and
chastened, in the better days both for them and me--put me into so noble
a frame of mind, that after an excellent dinner and a glass or two of
Port wine with the violet bouquet in it, I up and told Stoneman my own
love-story; for I knew that the whole of it must come out now.
He, being pretty much in the same condition, though without anything
like my excuse for it, listened as if he had never heard anything half
so surprising and engrossing, and inspiriting. In fact, he seemed to
take the whole of it as applicable to his own case, though it was beyond
my power to perceive even the faintest analogy. His was an ordinary
love-affair with nothing remarkable about it, unless it were that money,
which is the usual obstacle by its absence, was the obstacle here by its
presence. But in my case money was the last thing thought of. Sûr Imar
had never mentioned it; and as for me, I only hoped that Dariel might
never own a shilling, because then she would appreciate my few
half-crowns. And I still possessed her ruby cross, and meant to keep it,
until it should be mine by legal right. Ah, who can spy any chance of
that through all the gloom impending?