"But how on earth did you get into my new stocks?" asked the squire,
scratching his head.
"My dear sir, Pliny the elder got into the crater of Mount Etna."
"Did he, and what for?"
"To try what it was like, I suppose," answered Riccabocca. The squire
burst out a laughing.
"And so you got into the stocks to try what it was like. Well, I can't
wonder,--it is a very handsome pair of stocks," continued the squire,
with a loving look at the object of his praise. "Nobody need be ashamed
of being seen in those stocks,--I'should not mind it myself."
"We had better move on," said the parson, dryly, "or we shall have the
whole village here presently, gazing on the lord of the manor in the same
predicament as that from which we have just extricated the doctor. Now,
pray, what is the matter with Lenny Fairfield? I can't understand a word
of what has passed. You don't mean to say that good Lenny Fairfield (who
was absent from church, by the by) can have done anything to get into
disgrace?"
"Yes, he has though," cried the squire. "Stirn, I say, Stirn!" But
Stirn had forced his way through the hedge and vanished. Thus left to
his own powers of narrative at secondhand, Mr. Hazeldean now told all he
had to communicate,--the assault upon Randal Leslie, and the prompt
punishment inflicted by Stirn; his own indignation at the affront to his
young kinsman, and his good-natured merciful desire to save the culprit
from public humiliation.
The parson, mollified towards the rude and hasty invention of the beer-
drinking, took the squire by the hand. "Ah, Mr. Hazeldean, forgive me,"
he said repentantly; "I ought to have known at once that it was only some
ebullition of your heart that could stifle your sense of decorum. But
this is a sad story about Lenny brawling and fighting on the Sabbath-day.
So unlike him, too. I don't know what to make of it."
"Like or unlike," said the squire, "it has been a gross insult to young
Leslie, and looks all the worse because I and Audley are not just the
best friends in the world. I can't think what it is," continued Mr.
Hazeldean, musingly; "but it seems that there must be always some
association of fighting connected with that prim half-brother of mine.
There was I, son of his own mother,--who might have been shot through the
lungs, only the ball lodged in the shoulder! and now his wife's kinsman--
my kinsman, too--grandmother a Hazeldean,--a hard-reading, sober lad, as
I am given to understand, can't set his foot into the quietest parish in
the three kingdoms, but what the mildest boy that ever was seen makes a
rush at him like a mad bull. It is FATALITY!" cried the squire,
solemnly.
"Ancient legend records similar instances of fatality in certain houses,"
observed Riccabocca. "There was the House of Pelops, and Polynices and
Eteocles, the sons of OEdipus."
"Pshaw!" said the parson; "but what's to be done?"
"Done?" said the squire; "why, reparation must be made to young Leslie.
And though I wished to spare Lenny, the young ruffian, a public disgrace
--for your sake, Parson Dale, and Mrs. Fairfield's--yet a good caning in
private--"
"Stop, sir!" said Riccabocca, mildly, "and hear me." The Italian then,
with much feeling and considerable tact, pleaded the cause of his poor
protege, and explained how Lenny's error arose only from mistaken zeal
for the squire's service, and in the execution of the orders received
from Mr. Stirn.
"That alters the matter," said the squire, softened; "and all that is
necessary now will be for him to make a proper apology to my kinsman."
"Yes, that is just," rejoined the parson; "but I still don't learn how he
got out of the stocks."
Riccabocca then resumed his tale; and, after confessing his own principal
share in Lenny's escape, drew a moving picture of the boy's shame and
honest mortification. "Let us march against Philip!" cried the Athenians
when they heard Demosthenes--
"Let us go at once and comfort the child!" cried the parson, before
Riccabocca could finish.
With that benevolent intention all three quickened their pace, and soon
arrived at the widow's cottage. But Lenny had caught sight of their
approach through the window; and not doubting that, in spite of
Riccabocca's intercession, the parson was come to upbraid and the squire
to re-imprison, he darted out by the back way, got amongst the woods, and
lay there perdu all the evening. Nay, it was not till after dark that
his mother--who sat wringing her hands in the little kitchen, and trying
in vain to listen to the parson and Mrs. Dale, who (after sending in
search of the fugitive) had kindly come to console the mother--heard a
timid knock at the door and a nervous fumble at the latch. She started
up, opened the door, and Lenny sprang to her bosom, and there buried his
face, sobbing aloud.
"No harm, my boy," said the parson, tenderly; "you have nothing to fear,
--all is explained and forgiven."
Lenny looked up, and the veins on his forehead were much swollen. "Sir,"
said he, sturdily, "I don't want to be forgiven,--I ain't done no wrong.
And--I've been disgraced--and I won't go to school, never no more."
"Hush, Carry!" said the parson to his wife, who with the usual liveliness
of her little temper, was about to expostulate. "Good-night, Mrs.
Fairfield. I shall come and talk to you to-morrow, Lenny; by that time
you will think better of it."
The parson then conducted his wife home, and went up to the Hall to
report Lenny's safe return; for the squire was very uneasy about him, and
had even in person shared the search. As soon as he heard Lenny was
safe--"Well," said the squire," let him go the first thing in the morning
to Rood Hall, to ask Master Leslie's pardon, and all will be right and
smooth again."
"A young villain!" cried Frank, with his cheeks the colour of scarlet;
"to strike a gentleman and an Etonian, who had just been to call on me!
But I wonder Randal let him off so well,--any other boy in the sixth form
would have killed him!"
"Frank," said the parson, sternly, "if we all had our deserts, what
should be done to him who not only lets the sun go down on his own wrath,
but strives with uncharitable breath to fan the dying embers of
another's?"
The clergyman here turned away from Frank, who bit his lip, and seemed
abashed, while even his mother said not a word in his exculpation; for
when the parson did reprove in that stern tone, the majesty of the Hall
stood awed before the rebuke of the Church. Catching Riccabocca's
inquisitive eye, Mr. Dale drew aside the philosopher, and whispered to
him his fears that it would be a very hard matter to induce Lenny to beg
Randal Leslie's pardon, and that the proud stomach of the pattern-boy
would not digest the stocks with as much ease as a long regimen of
philosophy had enabled the sage to do. This conference Miss Jemima soon
interrupted by a direct appeal to the doctor respecting the number of
years (even without any previous and more violent incident) that the
world could possibly withstand its own wear and tear.
"Ma'am," said the doctor, reluctantly summoned away to look at a passage
in some prophetic periodical upon that interesting subject,--"ma'am, it
is very hard that you should make one remember the end of the world,
since, in conversing with you, one's natural temptation is to forget its
existence."
Miss Jemima's cheeks were suffused with a deeper scarlet than Frank's
had been a few minutes before. Certainly that deceitful, heartless
compliment justified all her contempt for the male sex; and yet--such is
human blindness--it went far to redeem all mankind in her credulous and
too confiding soul.
"He is about to propose," sighed Miss Jemima.
"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he drew on his nightcap, and stepped
majestically into the four-posted bed, "I think we shall get that boy for
the garden now!"
Thus each spurred his hobby, or drove her car, round the Hazeldean
whirligig.