Whatever, may be the ultimate success of Miss Jemima Hazeldean's designs
upon Dr. Riccabocca, the Machiavellian sagacity with which the Italian
had counted upon securing the services of Lenny Fairfield was speedily
and triumphantly established by the result. No voice of the parson's,
charmed he ever so wisely, could persuade the peasant-boy to go and ask
pardon of the young gentleman, to whom, because he had done as he was
bid, he owed an agonizing defeat and a shameful incarceration; and, to
Mrs. Dale's vexation, the widow took the boy's part. She was deeply
offended at the unjust disgrace Lenny had undergone in being put in the
stocks; she shared his pride, and openly approved his spirit. Nor was it
without great difficulty that Lenny could be induced to resume his
lessons at school,--nay, even to set foot beyond the precincts of his
mother's holding. The point of the school at last he yielded, though
sullenly; and the parson thought it better to temporize as to the more
unpalatable demand. Unluckily, Lenny's apprehensions of the mockery that
awaited him in the merciless world of his village were realized. Though
Stirn at first kept his own counsel the tinker blabbed the whole affair.
And after the search instituted for Lenny on the fatal night, all attempt
to hush up what had passed would have been impossible. So then Stirn
told his story, as the tinker had told his own; both tales were very
unfavourable to Leonard Fairfield. The pattern-boy had broken the
Sabbath, fought with his betters, and been well mauled into the bargain;
the village lad had sided with Stirn and the authorities in spying out
the misdemeanours of his equals therefore Leonard Fairfield, in both
capacities of degraded pattern-boy and baffled spy, could expect no
mercy,--he was ridiculed in the one, and hated in the other.
It is true that, in the presence of the schoolmaster and under the eye of
Mr. Dale, no one openly gave vent to malignant feelings; but the moment
those checks were removed, popular persecution bcgan.
Some pointed and mowed at him, some cursed him for a sneak, and all
shunned his society; voices were heard in the hedgerows, as he passed
through the village at dusk, "Who was put into the stocks?--baa!" "Who
got a bloody nob for playing spy to Nick Stirn?--baa!" To resist this
species of aggression would have been a vain attempt for a wiser head and
a colder temper than our poor pattern-boy's. He took his resolution at
once, and his mother approved it; and the second or third day after Dr.
Riccabocca's return to the Casino, Lenny Fairfield presented himself on
the terrace with a little bundle in his hand. "Please, sir," said he to
the doctor, who was sitting cross-legged on the balustrade, with his red
silk umbrella over his head,--"please, sir, if you'll be good enough to
take me now, and give me any hole to sleep in, I'll work for your honour
night and day; and as for wages, Mother says, 'just suit yourself, sir.'"
"My child," said the doctor, taking Lenny by the hand, and looking at him
with the sagacious eye of a wizard, "I knew you would come! and Giacomo
is already prepared for you! As to wages, we'll talk of them by and by."
Lenny being thus settled, his mother looked for some evenings on the
vacant chair, where he had so long sat in the place of her beloved Mark;
and the chair seemed so comfortless and desolate, thus left all to
itself, that she could bear it no longer.
Indeed the village had grown as distasteful to her as to Lenny,--perhaps
more so; and one morning she hailed the steward as he was trotting his
hog-maued cob beside the door, and bade him tell the squire that "she
would take it very kind if he would let her off the six months' notice
for the land and premises she held; there were plenty to step into the
place at a much better rent."
"You're a fool," said the good-natured steward; "and I'm very glad you
did not speak to that fellow Stirn instead of to me. You've been doing
extremely well here, and have the place, I may say, for nothing."
"Nothin' as to rent, sir, but a great deal as to feelin'," said the
widow. "And now Lenny has gone to work with the foreign gentleman, I
should like to go and live near him."
"Ah, yes, I heard Lenny had taken himself off to the Casino, more fool
he; but, bless your heart, 't is no distance,--two miles or so. Can't he
come home every night after work?"
"No, sir," exclaimed the widow, almost fiercely; "he sha'n't come home
here, to be called bad names and jeered at!--he whom my dead good man was
so fond and proud of. No, sir; we poor folks have our feelings, as I
said to Mrs. Dale, and as I will say to the squire hisself. Not that I
don't thank him for all favours,--he be a good gentleman if let alone;
but he says he won't come near us till Lenny goes and axes pardin.
Pardin for what, I should like to know? Poor lamb! I wish you could ha'
seen his nose, sir,--as big as your two fists. Ax pardin! if the squire
had had such a nose as that, I don't think it's pardin he'd been ha'
axing. But I let the passion get the better of me,--I humbly beg you'll
excuse it, sir. I'm no schollard, as poor Mark was, and Lenny would have
been, if the Lord had not visited us otherways. Therefore just get the
squire to let me go as soon as may be; and as for the bit o' hay and
what's on the grounds and orchard, the new comer will no doubt settle
that."
The steward, finding no eloquence of his could induce the widow to
relinquish her resolution, took her message to the squire. Mr.
Hazeldean, who was indeed really offended at the boy's obstinate refusal
to make the /amende honorable/ to Randal Leslie, at first only bestowed a
hearty curse or two on the pride and ingratitude both of mother and son.
It may be supposed, however, that his second thoughts were more gentle,
since that evening, though he did not go himself to the widow, he sent
his "Harry." Now, though Harry was sometimes austere and brusque enough
on her own account, and in such business as might especially be
transacted between herself and the cottagers, yet she never appeared as
the delegate of her lord except in the capacity of a herald of peace and
mediating angel. It was with good heart, too, that she undertook this
mission, since, as we have seen, both mother and son were great
favourites of hers. She entered the cottage with the friendliest beam
in her bright blue eye, and it was with the softest tone of her frank
cordial voice that she accosted the widow. But she was no more
successful than the steward had been. The truth is, that I don't believe
the haughtiest duke in the three kingdoms is really so proud as your
plain English rural peasant, nor half so hard to propitiate and deal with
when his sense of dignity is ruffled. Nor are there many of my own
literary brethren (thin-skinned creatures though we are) so sensitively
alive to the Public Opinion, wisely despised by Dr. Riccabocca, as that
same peasant. He can endure a good deal of contumely sometimes, it is
true, from his superiors (though, thank Heaven! that he rarely meets with
unjustly); but to be looked down upon and mocked and pointed at by his
own equals--his own little world--cuts him to the soul. And if you can
succeed in breaking this pride and destroying this sensitiveness, then he
is a lost being. He can never recover his self-esteem, and you have
chucked him half-way--a stolid, inert, sullen victim--to the perdition of
the prison or the convict-ship.
Of this stuff was the nature both of the widow and her son. Had the
honey of Plato flowed from the tongue of Mrs. Hazeldean, it could not
have turned into sweetness the bitter spirit upon which it descended.
But Mrs. Hazeldean, though an excellent woman, was rather a bluff, plain-
spoken one; and after all she had some little feeling for the son of a
gentleman, and a decayed, fallen gentleman, who, even by Lenny's account,
had been assailed without any intelligible provocation; nor could she,
with her strong common-sense, attach all the importance which Mrs.
Fairfield did to the unmannerly impertinence of a few young cubs, which
she said truly, "would soon die away if no notice was taken of it." The
widow's mind was made up, and Mrs. Hazeldean departed,--with much chagrin
and some displeasure.
Mrs. Fairfield, however, tacitly understood that the request she had made
was granted, and early one morning her door was found locked, the key
left at a neighbour's to be given to the steward; and, on further
inquiry, it was ascertained that her furniture and effects had been
removed by the errand cart in the dead of the night. Lenny had succeeded
in finding a cottage on the road-side, not far from the Casino; and
there, with a joyous face, he waited to welcome his mother to breakfast,
and show how he had spent the night in arranging her furniture.
"Parson!" cried the squire, when all this news came upon him, as he was
walking arm in arm with Mr. Dale to inspect some proposed improvement in
the Almshouse, "this is all your fault. Why did you not go and talk to
that brute of a boy and that dolt of a woman? You've got 'soft sawder
enough,' as Frank calls it in his new-fashioned slang."
"As if I had not talked myself hoarse to both!" said the parson, in a
tone of reproachful surprise at the accusation. "But it was in vain!
O Squire, if you had taken my advice about the stocks,--'quieta non
movere'!"
"Bother!" said the squire. "I suppose I am to be held up as a tyrant, a
Nero, a Richard the Third, or a Grand Inquisitor, merely for having
things smart and tidy! Stocks indeed! Your friend Rickeybockey said he
was never more comfortable in his life,--quite enjoyed sitting there.
And what did not hurt Rickeybockey's dignity (a very gentlemanlike man he
is, when he pleases) ought to be no such great matter to Master Leonard
Fairfield. But 't is no use talking! What's to be done now? The woman
must not starve; and I'm sure she can't live out of Rickeybockey's wages
to Lenny,--by the way, I hope he don't board the boy upon his and
Jackeymo's leavings: I hear they dine upon newts and sticklebacks, faugh!
I'll tell you what, Parson, now I think of it, at the back of the cottage
which she has taken there are some fields of capital land just vacant.
Rickeybockey wants to have 'em, and sounded me as to the rent when he was
at the Hall. I only half promised him the refusal. And he must give up
four or five acres of the best land round the cottage to the widow--just
enough for her to manage--and she can keep a dairy. If she want capital,
I'll lend her some in your name,--only don't tell Stirn; and as for the
rent--we'll talk of that when we see how she gets on, thankless,
obstinate jade that she is! You see," added the squire, as if he felt
there was some apology due for this generosity to an object whom he
professed to consider so ungrateful, "her husband was a faithful servant,
and so--I wish you would not stand there staring me out of countenance,
but go down to the woman at once, or Stirn will have let the land to
Rickeybockey, as sure as a gun. And hark ye, Dale, perhaps you can
contrive, if the woman is so cursedly stiffbacked, not to say the land is
mine, or that it is any favour I want to do her--or, in short, manage it
as you can for the best." Still even this charitable message failed.
The widow knew that the land was the squire's, and worth a good L3 an
acre. "She thanked him humbly for that and all favours; but she could
not afford to buy cows, and she did not wish to be beholden to any one
for her living. And Lenny was well off at Mr. Rickeybockey's, and coming
on wonderfully in the garden way, and she did not doubt she could get
some washing; at all events, her haystack would bring in a good bit of
money, and she should do nicely, thank their honours."
Nothing further could be done in the direct way, but the remark about the
washing suggested some mode of indirectly benefiting the widow; and a
little time afterwards, the sole laundress in that immediate
neighbourhood happening to die, a hint from the squire obtained from the
landlady of the inn opposite the Casino such custom as she had to bestow,
which at times was not inconsiderable. And what with Lenny's wages
(whatever that mysterious item might be), the mother and son contrived to
live without exhibiting any of those physical signs of fast and
abstinence which Riccabocca and his valet gratuitously afforded to the
student in animal anatomy.