Towards the evening of the following day, Randal Leslie walked slowly
from a village in the main road, (about two miles from Rood Hall,)
at which he had got out of the coach. He passed through meads and
corn-fields, and by the skirts of woods which had formerly belonged to
his ancestors, but had been long since alienated. He was alone amidst
the haunts of his boyhood, the scenes in which he had first invoked the
grand Spirit of Knowledge, to bid the Celestial Still One minister to
the commands of an earthly and turbulent ambition. He paused often in
his path, especially when the undulations of the ground gave a glimpse
of the grey church tower, or the gloomy firs that rose above the
desolate wastes of Rood.
"Here," thought Randal, with a softening eye--"here, how often,
comparing the fertility of the lands passed away from the inheritance
of my fathers, with the forlorn wilds that are left to their mouldering
hall--here, how often have I said to myself--'I will rebuild the
fortunes of my house.' And straightway Toil lost its aspect of drudge,
and grew kingly, and books became as living armies to serve my thought.
Again--again--O thou haughty Past, brace and strengthen me in the
battle with the Future." His pale lips writhed as he soliloquised, for
his conscience spoke to him while he thus addressed his will, and its
voice was heard more audibly in the quiet of the rural landscape, than
amidst the turmoil and din of that armed and sleepless camp which we
call a city.
Doubtless, though Ambition have objects more vast and beneficent than
the restoration of a name,--_that_ in itself is high and chivalrous,
and appeals to a strong interest in the human heart. But all emotions,
and all ends, of a nobler character, had seemed to filter themselves
free from every golden grain in passing through the mechanism of
Randal's intellect, and came forth at last into egotism clear and
unalloyed. Nevertheless, it is a strange truth that, to a man of
cultivated mind, however perverted and vicious, there are vouchsafed
gleams of brighter sentiments, irregular perceptions of moral
beauty, denied to the brutal unreasoning wickedness of uneducated
villany--which perhaps ultimately serve as his punishment--according
to the old thought of the satirist, that there is no greater curse
than to perceive virtue, yet adopt vice. And as the solitary schemer
walked slowly on, and his childhood--innocent at least of deed--came
distinct before him through the halo of bygone dreams--dreams far purer
than those from which he now rose each morning to the active world of
Man--a profound melancholy crept over him, and suddenly he exclaimed
aloud, "_Then_ I aspired to be renowned and great--_now_, how is it
that, so advanced in my career, all that seemed lofty in the means
has vanished from me, and the only means that I contemplate are those
which my childhood would have called poor and vile? Ah! is it that I
then read but books, and now my knowledge has passed onward, and men
contaminate more than books? But," he continued, in a lower voice, as
if arguing with himself, "if power is only so to be won--and of what
use is knowledge if it be not power--does not success in life justify
all things? And who prizes the wise man if he fails?" He continued his
way, but still the soft tranquillity around rebuked him, and still his
reason was dissatisfied, as well as his conscience. There are times
when Nature, like a bath of youth, seems to restore to the jaded soul
its freshness--times from which some men have emerged, as if reborn.
The crises of life are very silent. Suddenly the scene opened on Randal
Leslie's eyes. The bare desert common--the dilapidated church--the
old house, partially seen in the dank dreary hollow, into which it
seemed to Randal to have sunken deeper and lowlier than when he saw it
last. And on the common were some young men playing at hockey. That
old-fashioned game, now very uncommon in England, except at schools,
was still preserved in the primitive vicinity of Rood by the young
yeomen and farmers. Randal stood by the style and looked on, for among
the players he recognised his brother Oliver. Presently the ball was
struck towards Oliver, and the group instantly gathered round that
young gentleman, and snatched him from Randal's eye; but the elder
brother heard a displeasing din, a derisive laughter. Oliver had shrunk
from the danger of the thick-clubbed sticks that plied around him, and
received some stroke across the legs, for his voice rose whining,and
was drowned by shouts of, "Go to your mammy. That's Noll Leslie--all
over. Butter shins."
Randal's sallow face became scarlet. "The jest of boors--a Leslie!"
he muttered, and ground his teeth. He sprang over the stile, and
walked erect and haughtily across the ground. The players cried out
indignantly. Randal raised his hat, and they recognised him, and
stopped the game. For him at least a certain respect was felt. Oliver
turned round quickly, and ran up to him. Randal caught his arm firmly,
and, without saying a word to the rest, drew him away towards the
house. Oliver cast a regretful, lingering look behind him, rubbed his
shins, and then stole a timid glance towards Randal's severe and moody
countenance.
"You are not angry that I was playing at hockey with our neighbours,"
said he deprecatingly, observing that Randal would not break the
silence.
"No," replied the elder brother; "but, in associating with his
inferiors, a gentleman still knows how to maintain his dignity.
There is no harm in playing with inferiors, but it is necessary to a
gentleman to play so that he is not the laughing-stock of clowns."
Oliver hung his head, and made no answer. They came into the slovenly
precincts of the court, and the pigs stared at them from the palings,
as they had stared, years before, at Frank Hazeldean.
Mr Leslie senior, in a shabby straw hat, was engaged in feeding the
chickens before the threshold, and he performed even that occupation
with a maundering lack-a-daisical slothfulness, dropping down the
grains almost one by one from his inert dreamy fingers.
Randal's sister, her hair still and for ever hanging about her ears,
was seated on a rush-bottom chair, reading a tattered novel; and from
the parlour window was heard the querulous voice of Mrs Leslie, in high
fidget and complaint.
Somehow or other, as the young heir to all this helpless poverty stood
in the courtyard, with his sharp, refined, intelligent features, and
his strange elegance of dress and aspect, one better comprehended how,
left solely to the egotism of his knowledge and his ambition, in such a
family, and without any of the sweet nameless lessons of Home, he had
grown up into such close and secret solitude of soul--how the mind had
taken so little nutriment from the heart, and how that affection and
respect which the warm circle of the hearth usually calls forth had
passed with him to the graves of dead fathers, growing, as it were,
bloodless and ghoul-like amidst the charnels on which they fed.
"Ha, Randal, boy," said Mr Leslie, looking up lazily, "how d'ye do?
Who could have expected you? My dear--my dear," he cried, in a broken
voice, and as if in helpless dismay, "here's Randal, and he'll be
wanting dinner, or supper, or something." But, in the meanwhile,
Randal's sister Juliet had sprung up and thrown her arms round her
brother's neck, and he had drawn her aside caressingly, for Randal's
strongest human affection was for this sister.
"You are growing very pretty, Juliet," said he, smoothing back her
hair; "why do yourself such injustice--why not pay more attention to
your appearance, as I have so often begged you to do?"
"I did not expect you, dear Randal; you always come so suddenly, and
catch us _en dish-a-bill_."
"Dish-a-bill!" echoed Randal, with a groan. "_Dishabille!_--you ought
never to be so caught!"
"No one else does so catch us--nobody else ever comes! Heigho," and the
young lady sighed very heartily.
"Patience, patience; my day is coming, and then yours, my sister,"
replied Randal with genuine pity, as he gazed upon what a little care
could have trained into so fair a flower, and what now looked so like a
weed.
Here Mrs Leslie, in a state of intense excitement--having rushed
through the parlour--leaving a fragment of her gown between the
yawning brass of the never-mended Brummagem worktable--tore across the
hall--whirled out of the door, scattering the chickens to the right
and left, and clutched hold of Randal in her motherly embrace. "La,
how you do shake my nerves," she cried, after giving him a most hasty
and uncomfortable kiss. "And you are hungry too, and nothing in the
house but cold mutton! Jenny, Jenny, I say Jenny! Juliet, have you seen
Jenny? Where's Jenny? Out with the odd man, I'll be bound."
"I am not hungry, mother," said Randal; "I wish for nothing but tea."
Juliet, scrambling up her hair, darted into the house to prepare the
tea, and also to "tidy herself." She dearly loved her fine brother, but
she was greatly in awe of him.
Randal seated himself on the broken pales. "Take care they don't come
down," said Mr Leslie with some anxiety.
"Oh, sir, I am very light; nothing comes down with me."
The pigs stared up, and grunted in amaze at the stranger.
"Mother," said the young man, detaining Mrs Leslie, who wanted to set
off in chase of Jenny--"mother, you should not let Oliver associate
with those village boors. It is time to think of a profession for him."
"Oh, he eats us out of house and home--such an appetite! But as to a
profession--what is he fit for! He will never be a scholar."
Randal nodded a moody assent; for, indeed, Oliver had been sent to
Cambridge, and supported there out of Randal's income from his official
pay;--and Oliver had been plucked for his Little Go.
"There is the army," said the elder brother--"a gentleman's calling.
How handsome Juliet ought to be--but--I left money for masters--and she
pronounces French like a chambermaid."
"Yet she is fond of her book too. She's always reading, and good for
nothing else."
"Reading!--those trashy novels!
"So like you--you always come to scold, and make things unpleasant,"
said Mrs Leslie peevishly. "You are grown too fine for us, and I am
sure we suffer affronts enough from others, not to want a little
respect from our own children."
"I did not mean to affront you," said Randal sadly. "Pardon me. But who
else has done so?"
Then Mrs Leslie went into a minute and most irritating catalogue of
all the mortifications and insults she had received; the grievances
of a petty provincial family, with much pretension and small power;
of all people, indeed, without the disposition to please--without the
ability to serve--who exaggerate every offence, and are thankful for
no kindness. Farmer Jones had insolently refused to send his waggon
twenty miles for coals. Mr Giles, the butcher, requesting the payment
of his bill, had stated that the custom at Rood was too small for
him to allow credit. Squire Thornhill, who was the present owner of
the fairest slice of the old Leslie domains, had taken the liberty
to ask permission to shoot over Mr Leslie's land, since Mr Leslie
did not preserve. Lady Spratt (new people from the city, who hired
a neighbouring country seat) had taken a discharged servant of Mrs
Leslie's without applying for the character. The Lord-Lieutenant had
given a ball, and had not invited the Leslies. Mr Leslie's tenants had
voted against their landlord's wish at the recent election. More than
all, Squire Hazeldean and his Harry had called at Rood, and though Mrs
Leslie had screamed out to Jenny, "Not at home," she had been seen at
the window, and the Squire had actually forced his way in, and caught
the whole family "in a state not fit to be seen." That was a trifle,
but the Squire had presumed to instruct Mr. Leslie how to manage his
property, and Mrs Hazeldean had actually told Juliet to hold up her
head and tie up her hair, "as if we were her cottagers!" said Mrs
Leslie with the pride of a Montfydget.
All these and various other annoyances, though Randal was too sensible
not to perceive their insignificance, still galled and mortified the
listening heir of Rood. They showed, at least, even to the well-meant
officiousness of the Hazeldeans, the small account in which the fallen
family was held. As he sat still on the moss-grown pale, gloomy and
taciturn, his mother standing beside him, with her cap awry, Mr Leslie
shamblingly sauntered up, and said in a pensive, dolorous whine--
"I wish we had a good sum of money, Randal, boy!"
To do Mr Leslie justice, he seldom gave vent to any wish that savoured
of avarice. His mind must be singularly aroused, to wander out of its
normal limits of sluggish, dull content.
So Randal looked at him in surprise, and said, "Do you, sir?--why?"
"The manors of Rood and Dulmansberry, and all the lands therein, which
my great-grandfather sold away, are to be sold again when Squire
Thornhill's eldest son comes of age, to cut off the entail. Sir John
Spratt talks of buying them. I should like to have them back again!
'Tis a shame to see the Leslie estates hawked about, and bought by
Spratts and people. I wish I had a great--great sum of ready-money."
The poor gentleman extended his helpless fingers as he spoke, and fell
into a dejected reverie.
Randal sprang from the paling, a movement which frightened the
contemplative pigs, and set them off squalling and scampering. "When
does young Thornhill come of age?"
"He was nineteen last August. I know it, because the day lie was born
I picked up my fossil of the sea-horse, just by Dulmansberry church,
when the joy-bells were ringing. My fossil sea-horse! It Will be an
heirloom, Randal--"
"Two years--nearly two years--yet--ah, ah!" said Randal; and his
sister now appearing to announce that tea was ready, he threw his
arm round her neck and kissed her. Juliet had arranged her hair and
trimmed up her dress. She looked very pretty, and she had now the air
of a gentlewoman--something of Randal's own refinement in her slender
proportions and well-shaped head.
"Be patient, patient still, my dear sister," whispered Randal, "and
keep your heart whole for two years longer."
The young man was gay and good-humoured over his simple meal, while
his family grouped round him. When it was over, Mr Leslie lighted his
pipe, and called for his brandy and water. Mrs Leslie began to question
about London and Court, and the new King and the new Queen, and Mr
Audley Egerton, and hoped Mr Egerton would leave Randal all his money,
and that Randal would marry a rich woman, and that the King would make
him a prime-minister one of these days; and then she should like to
see if Farmer Jones would refuse to send his waggon for coals! And
every now and then, as the word "riches" or "money" caught Mr Leslie's
ear, he shook his head, drew his pipe from his mouth, and muttered, "A
Spratt should not have what belonged to my great-great-grandfather.
If I had a good sum of ready-money!--the old family estates!" Oliver
and Juliet sate silent, and on their good behaviour; and Randal,
indulging his own reveries, dreamily heard the words "money," "Spratt,"
"great-great-grandfather," "rich wife," "family estates;" and they
sounded to him vague and afar off, like whispers from the world of
romance and legend--weird prophecies of things to be.
Such was the hearth which warmed the viper that nestled and gnawed at
the heart of Randal, poisoning all the aspirations that youth should
have rendered pure, ambition lofty, and knowledge beneficent and divine.