Mr. Garnetʼs house, well away to the west, was embraced more closely
and lovingly by the gnarled arms of the Forest than the Hall, or even
the Rectory. Just in the scoop of a sunny valley, high enough to
despise the water, and low enough to defy the wind, there was nothing
to concern it much, but the sighing of the branches. Over the brown
thatch hung two oak–trees, whispering leaves of history, offering the
acorn cup upon the parlour hearth, chafing their rheumatic knuckles
against the stone of the chimneys, wondering when the great storm
should come that would give them an inside view of it. For though the
cottage lay so snugly, scarcely lifting its thatched eyebrows at the
draught which stole up the valley, nevertheless those guardian oaks had
wrestled a bout or two with the tempests. In the cyclone on the morning
of November 29th, 1836, and again on the 7th of January, 1842, they
had gripped the ground, and set hard their knees, and groaned at the
thought of salt water. Since then the wind had been less of a lunatic
(although there had been some ruffianly work in 1854), and they hoped
there was a good time coming, and so spread their branches further and
further, and thought less of the price of timber. There was only one
wind that frightened them much, and that was two points north of west,
the very direction whence, if they fell, crash they must come on the
cottage. For they stood above it, the root–head some ten feet above the
back–floor of the basement, and the branches towering high enough for a
wood–pigeon not to be nervous there.
Now we only get heavy pressure of squalls from the west–north–west
after a thorough–going tempest which has begun in the southward, and
means to box half the compass. So the two great oaks were regarded by
their brethren up the hill as jolly fellows, happy dogs, born with a
silver spoon in their mouths, good for another thousand years, although
they might be five hundred old; unless, indeed—and here all the trees
shuddered—there came such another hurricane as in 1703. But which
of us knows his own brotherʼs condition? Those two oaks stood, and
each knew it, upon a steep bank, where no room was for casting out
stay–roots to east–south–east.
Bull Garnet hated those two trees, with terror added to hatred. Even
if they never crushed him, which depended much on the weather, they
_would_ come in at his bedroom window when the moon was high. Wandering
shapes of wavering shadow, with the flickering light between them,
walking slowly as a ghost does, and then very likely a rustle and tap,
a shivering, a shuddering; it made the ground–floor of his heart shake
in the nightmare hours.
Never before had he feared them so much, one quarter so much, as
this October; and, during the full and the waning moon after Clayton
Nowellʼs death, he got very little sleep for them. By day he worked
harder than ever, did more than three men ought to do, was everywhere
on the estates, but never swore at any one—though the men scratched
their ears for the want of it—laboured hard, and early, and late, if
so he might come home at night (only not in the dark), come home at
night thoroughly weary. His energy was amazing. No man anywhere felling
wood—Mr. Garnetʼs especial luxury—no man hedging and ditching,
or frithing, or stubbing up fern and brambles, but had better look
out what he had in his bag, or “the governor would be there, and no
mistake.” A workman could scarcely stand and look round, and wonder how
his sick wife was, or why he had got to work so hard, could scarcely
slap himself on the breast, or wet his hard hands for a better grip,
but there was Bull Garnet before him, with sad, fierce, dogged eyes,
worse than his strongest oaths had been.
Everybody said it was (and everybody believed it; for the gossip had
spread from the household in spite of the maidens’ fear of him) the
cause of it was, beyond all doubt, the illness of his daughter. Pearl
Garnet, that very eccentric girl, as Rufus Hutton concluded, who had
startled poor Polly so dreadfully, was prostrate now with a nervous
fever, and would not see even the doctor. Our Amy, who pleaded hard to
see her, because she was sure she could do her good, received a stern
sharp negative, and would have gone away offended, only she was so
sorry for her. Not that any fervid friendship, such as young ladies
exult in for almost a fortnight incessant, not that any rapturous love
exclusive of all _man_kind had ever arisen between them, for they had
nothing whatever in common, save beauty and tenacity, which girls do
not love in each other: only that she was always sorry for any one deep
in trouble. And believing that Pearl had loved Clayton Nowell, and was
grieving for him bitterly, how could Amy help contrasting that misery
with her own happiness?
For Amy was nice and happy now, in spite of Cradockʼs departure, and
the trouble he had departed in. He loved her almost half as much, she
believed, as she loved him; and was not that enough for anybody? His
troubles would flow by in time; who on earth could doubt it, unless
they doubted God? He was gone to make his way in the world, and her
only fear was lest he should make it too grand for Amy to share in.
She liked the school–children so, and the pony, and to run out now
and then to the kitchen, and dip a bit of crust in the dripping–pan;
and she liked to fill her dear fatherʼs pipe, and spread a thin
handkerchief over his head. Would all these pleasures be out of her
sphere, when Cradock came back, with all London crowning him the
greatest and best man of the age? Innocent Amy, never fear. “Nemo, nisi
ob homicidium, repente fuit clarissimus.”
Mr. Garnet would have felled those oaks, in spite of Sir Cradockʼs
most positive orders, if there had not been another who could not
command, but could plead for them. Every morning as the steward came
out, frowned and shook his fist at them, the being whom he loved most
on earth—far beyond himself, his daughter, and the memory of their
mother, all multiplied into each other,—that boy Bob came up to him,
and said, “Father, donʼt, _for my sake_.”
We have not heard much of Bob Garnet yet; we have scarcely shaped him
feebly; by no means was he a negative character, yet described most
briefly by negatives. In every main point, except two, he was his
fatherʼs cardinal opposite. Those two were generosity (which combines
the love of truth with a certain warmth of impulse) and persevering
energy. Even those two were displayed in ways entirely different, but
the staple was very similar.
Bob Garnet was a naturalist. Gentle almost as any girl, and more so
than his sister, he took small pleasure in the ways of men, intense
delight in those of every other creature. Bob loved all things God
had made, even as fair Amy did. All his day, and all his life, he
would have spent, if he had the chance, among the ferns and mosses,
the desmidiæ of the forest pools, the sun–dew and the fungi, the
buff–tips and red underwings, privet–hawks, and emperors. He knew all
the children of the spring and handmaids of the summer, all of autumnʼs
laden train and the comforters of winter. The happiest of mankind is he
whose stores of life are endless, whose pure delights can never cloy,
who sees and feels in every birth, in every growth or motion, his own
Almighty Father; and loving Him is loved again, as a child who spreads
his arms out.
Mr. Garnetʼs affection for this boy surpassed the love of women. He
petted, and patted, and coaxed him, and talked nonsense to him by the
hour; he was jealous even of Bobʼs attachment to his sister Pearl; in
short, all the energy of his goodness, which, like the rest of his
energies, transcended the force of other menʼs, centred and spent
itself mainly there. But of late Bob had passed all his time with his
mother—I mean, of course, with Nature; for his mother in the flesh was
dead many a year ago. He had now concluded, with perfect contentment,
that his education was finished; and to have the run of the forest at
this unwonted season more than consoled him for the disgrace of his
recent expulsion from school.
Scarcely any one would believe that Bob Garnet, the best and gentlest
boy that ever cried over Euripides—not from the pathos of the poet
certainly, but from his own—Bob Garnet, who sang to snails to come
out, and they felt that he could not beat them, should have been
expelled disgracefully from a private school, whose master must
needs expel his own guineas with every banished pupil. However, so
it was, and the crime was characteristic. He _would_ sit at night in
the lime–trees. Those lime–trees overhung the grey stone wall of the
playground near Southampton; and some wanton boys had been caught
up there, holding amoibæans with little nursemaids and girls of all
work, come out to get lung–and–tongue food. Thereupon a stern ukase
was issued that the next boy caught up there would be expelled without
trial, as the corrupter of that pure flock. The other boys laughed, I
am sorry to say, when “Bob, the natural,” as they called him, meaning
thereby the naturalist, was the first to be discovered there, crawling
upon a branch as cleverly as a looper caterpillar. Even then the
capital sentence was commuted that time, for every master knew, as well
as every boy, that Bob could never “say bo” to anything of the feminine
gender capable of articulating. So Bob had to learn the fourth Georgic
by heart, and did most of it (with extreme enjoyment) up in that very
same tree. For he kept all his caterpillars there, his beetle–traps,
his moth–nets, even some glorious pupæ, which were due at the end
of August; and he nursed a snug little fernery, and had sown some
mistletoe seeds, and a dozen other delicious things, and the lime–hawks
wanted to burrow soon; in a word, it was Bobʼs hearth and heart–place,
for no other boy could scale it. But just when Bob had got to the
beginning of Aristæus, and the late bees were buzzing around him,
although the linden had berried, an officious usher spied him out—a
dirty little fellow, known and despised by all the more respectable
_σιωπητέαι_ of Southampton. With hottest indignation, that mean low
beggar cried out—
“Boy in the tree there! I see you! Your name this moment, you rascal!”
“Garnet, sir, Bob Garnet. And if you please, sir, I am not a rascal.”
“Come down, sir, this very instant; or else Iʼll come up after you.”
“I donʼt think you can, sir,” replied Bob, looking down complacently;
for, as we shall see by–and–by, he was no coward in an emergency. “If
you please, sir, no boy in the school can climb this tree except me,
sir, since Brown senior left.”
“I can tell you one thing, Garnet: itʼs the last time youʼll ever climb
it.”
“Oh, then I must collect my things; I am sorry to keep you waiting,
sir. But they are such beauties, and I canʼt see well to pack them.”
Bob packed up his treasures deliberately in his red
pocket–handkerchief, and descended very cleverly, holding it with his
teeth. The next morning he had to pack his box, and became in the
school a mere legend.
His father flew into a violent passion, not with the son, but the
schoolmaster: however, he was so transported with joy at getting his
own Bob home again, that he soon forgave the cause of it. So the boy
got the run of the potato–fields, pollard–trees, and rushy pools, and
hunted and grubbed and dabbled, and came home sometimes with three
handkerchiefs, not to mention his hat, full. One lovely day this
October, before the frost set in—a frost of a length and severity most
rare at that time of year—Bob Garnet took his basket and trowel, nets,
lens, &c., and set out for a sandy patch, not far from the stream by
the Rectory, where in his July holidays he had found some Gladiolus
Illyricus, a bloom of which he had carried home, and now he wanted some
roots of it. He could not think why his father left him so very much to
himself now, and had ceased from those little caresses and fondlings,
which used to make Bob look quite ashamed sometimes in the presence of
strangers. He felt that his father loved him quite as much as ever,
and he had found those strong eyes set upon him with an expression,
as it appeared to him, of sorrow and compassion. He had a great mind
to ask what the matter was; but his love for his father was a strange
feeling, mixed with some dread and uncertainty. He would make Pearl
tell him all about it, that would be the best way; for she as well had
been carrying on very oddly of late. She sat in her own room all day
long, and would never come down to dinner, and would never come out for
a stroll with him, but slipped out by herself sometimes in the evening;
that, at least, he was sure of. And to tell him indeed, him going on
now for seventeen years of age, that he was too young to ask questions!
He would let her know, he was quite resolved, that because she happened
to be two years older—a pretty reason that was for treating him like a
baby! She who didnʼt know a wire–worm from a ring–worm, nor an elater
from a tipula, and thought that the tippet–moth was a moth that fed
upon tippets! Recalling fifty other instances of poor Pearlʼs deep
ignorance, Bob grew more and more indignant, as he thought of the way
she treated him. He would stand it no longer. If she was in trouble,
that was only the greater reason—— Holloa!
Helter–skelter, off dashed Bob after a Queen of Spain fritillary,
the first he had ever seen on the wing, and a grand prize for any
collector, even of ten times his standing. It was one of the second
brood, invited by the sun to sport awhile. And rare sport it afforded
Bob, who knew it at once from the other fritillaries, for the shape of
the wings is quite different, and he had seen it in grand collections.
An active little chap it was, greatly preferring life to death, and
thoroughly aware that man is the latterʼs chief agent. Once Bob made
quite sure of it, for it had settled on a blackberry–spray, and smack
the net came down upon it, but a smack too hard, for the thorns came
grinning out at the bottom, and away went the butterfly laughing. Bob
made good the net in a moment with some very fine pins that he carried,
and off again in still hotter pursuit, having kept his eyes on dear
Lathonia. But the prey was now grown wondrous skeary since that narrow
shave, and the huntsman saw that his only chance was a clever swoop in
mid air. So he raised his net high, and zig–zagged recklessly round the
trees, through the bushes, up the banks and down them. At last he got
quite close to her, but she flipped round a great beech–trunk; Bob made
a cast at hazard, and caught not the Queen, but Amy.
Amy was not frightened much, neither was she hurt, though her pretty
round head came out through the net—for she had taken her hat off—and
the ring lay upon her shoulders, which the rich hair had shielded from
bruises. She would have been frightened terribly, only she knew what
was going on, and had stepped behind the tree to avoid the appearance
of interfering. For she did not wish—she knew not why—but, by some
instinct, she did not wish to have much to do with the Garnets. She
regarded poor Bob as a schoolboy, who was very fond of insects, and
showed his love by killing them.
But if Amy was not frightened much, Bob, the captor, was. He dropped
the handle of his net, and fell back against the beech–tree. Then Amy
laughed, and took off the net, or the relics of the gauze at least, and
kindly held out her hand to him, and said,
“Oh, how you are grown!”
“And so are you. Oh dear me, have you seen her? Have you seen her?”
“Seen whom?” asked Amy, “my Aunt Eudoxia? She is on there, by the
ash–tree.”
“The Queen of Spain, Miss Rosedew, the Queen of Spain fritillary! Oh,
tell me which way she went! If I lose her, I am done for!”
“Then, I fear, Master Garnet”—[“Confound it,” thought Bob, “how all
the girls do patronize me!”]—“I am very much afraid you must make up
your mind to annihilation, if by the ‘Queen of Spain’ you mean that
common brown little butterfly you wanted just now to kill so much.”
“Is she gone across the river, then? That is nothing, I assure you. I
would go through fire after her. Oh, tell me, only tell me.”
Amy could not help laughing; poor Bob looked so ridiculous, fitting a
new net all the time upon the ring of the old one, the crown of his hat
come to look for his head, his trousers kicked well up over his boots,
and his coat an undoubted ventilator.
“I really donʼt know,” said Amy; “how could you expect me to see
through your shrimp–net, Master Garnet?”
“Oh, I beg your pardon—how stupid I am, to be sure—I beg your pardon
a thousand times; really I might have hurt you. I would not do that
for——”
“Even the Queen of Spain. To tell you the truth, Master Garnet, if I
knew where she was gone I would not tell you, because I canʼt bear to
have things killed. In my opinion, it is so cruel.”
“Oh!” cried Bob, a very long “oh,” drawn out into half an ell; and he
looked at Amy all the time he was saying it, which was a wonderful
thing for him to do. Then it occurred to his mind, for the first time
possibly, what a beautiful creature she was, more softly shaded than a
Chalk–hill blue, and richer than a cream–spotted tiger–moth! The moment
he felt this Bob was done for; Amy had caught her captor.
Flushed as he was with the long hot chase, his cheeks grew hotter and
redder, as he got a dim consciousness of a few of the things which he
was feeling. He was like a chrysalis, touched in the winter, when it
goes on one side from the crust of the thorax, and sometimes can never
get right again. After having said “oh,” with emphasis and so much
diæresis, Bob did not feel called upon for any further utterance till
Amy was gone to her Aunt Eudoxia; and then he contrived to say, “Ah!”
He was more put out than he had been even when his pet poplar–hawk
caterpillar was devoured alive by ichneumon grubs. He went round the
tree ever so many times, and wondered what was the matter with him, how
he came there, and what he was doing.
Alas, poor Bob! Nature, who overlooks nothing, was well aware of the
difficulties when she cried, “Jump up on my lap, Bob, and never be
weaned from me.” She knew that things of all sorts would come between
herself and her child, some of them drawn from her own mother–milk,
but most of them from manʼs muzzling. Of the latter she had not much
fear with Bob; but the former, she knew, were beyond her, and she had
none but herself to thank for them. She knew that the lad, so strongly
imbued with her own pleasant affluences, was almost sure to be touched
with that one which comes from her breast the warmest. And then what
would become of zoology, phytology, entomology, and all the other
yard–long names which her children spin out of her apron–strings?
While Bob was still fiddling with his fingers, and forgetting all about
butterflies, Miss Eudoxia, fetched by Amy, came to hold discourse with
him.
“Why, Master Robert, I do declare, Robert, my butterfly boy! I have not
seen you for such a time, Robert.” And she held out her hand, which Bob
took with very little sense of gratitude. To be called a “butterfly
boy” before Amy, and Amy to acquiesce in it!
“Ah, you think I have nothing for you, Robert. You school–boys live
upon suction. But just wait a moment, my dear.”
She drew forth an old horn comfit–box, which had belonged to her
grandmother, and was polished up like amber from the chafing of
many a lining. This she opened with much ado, poured three crinkled
sugar–plums on her gloved palm, and a smooth one as large as a
hazel–nut, and offered them all to Robert, with a smile of the finest
patronage.
“No, thank you, Miss Rosedew; no, thank you. I am very much obliged to
you.”
Miss Eudoxia had been wondering at her own generosity, and thought that
he was overcome with it. So her smile became one of encouragement and
assurance against self–sacrifice.
“Oh, you need not be afraid, Robert. And you can put some under your
pillow, and wake up in the night and suck them. How nice that will be,
to be sure! You see I know what boys are. And I have plenty left for
the infant–school. And they donʼt deserve them as you do, Robin.”
“Miss Rosedew,” said Bob, in his loftiest manner, though he was
longing for them, only that Amy was there; “you will believe me when I
assure you that I never touch sweets of any sort; not even at a late
dinner–party.”
Miss Eudoxia turned her eyes up, and almost dropped the sugar–plums.
But Amy, instead of being impressed, merrily laughed, and said,
“Give them to me, then, auntie, please. Some of the men at the
night–school eat sweets after early suppers.”
Bob said “good–bye” disconsolately, for he knew that he had affronted
Miss Doxy, without rising in Amyʼs opinion. He forgot all about the
gladiolus, and let many great prizes escape him; for the day was the
last of the soft and sunny, which tempt forth the forest denizens ere
the frosty seal is set on them. In the glimpses of every brown arcade,
in the jumbled gleam of the underwood, in the alleys between the
upstanding trees, even in the strong light where the golden patches
shone, and the wood fell back to look at them, in all of these he
seemed to see and then to lose his angel. Her face he could not see
clearly yet, hard as he strove to do it; affection is, but love is not,
a photographic power. Still he could see her shadowly; her attitude,
the fall of her hair, the manner of her gestures; even the ring of her
voice would seem to dwell about the image. But he never got them all
together; one each time was the leading thing; vague; and yet it went
through him.
He made one attempt—for he feared from the first, although he never
could feel it so, that his love was a thorough wild–goose chase—the
poor boy made one last attempt to catch at some other pursuit.
“Father,” he said that very same night, after sitting for hours of
wandering, “will you give me a gun and let me take to shooting?”
“A gun!” cried Bull Garnet, starting; “a gun, Bob! What do you mean by
it?”
“I meant nothing at all, father. Only I know the way to stuff birds,
and there are some rare ones here sometimes, and I want to make a
collection.”
“Bob Garnet, as long as I am alive, you never shall have a gun.”
“Then, will you lend me yours, father? I know very well how to use it.
I mean your patent——”
“Never, Bob. My son, if you love me, never speak of it again.”