Dr. Riccabocca had secured Lenny Fairfield, and might therefore be
considered to have ridden his hobby in the great whirligig with
adroitness and success. But Miss Jemima was still driving round in her
car, handling the reins, and flourishing the whip, without apparently
having got an inch nearer to the flying form of Dr. Riccabocca.
Indeed, that excellent and only too susceptible spinster, with all her
experience of the villany of man, had never conceived the wretch to be so
thoroughly beyond the reach of redemption as when Dr. Riccabocca took his
leave, and once more interred himself amidst the solitudes of the Casino,
and without having made any formal renunciation of his criminal celibacy.
For some days she shut herself up in her own chamber, and brooded with
more than her usual gloomy satisfaction on the certainty of the
approaching crash. Indeed, many signs of that universal calamity, which,
while the visit of Riccabocca lasted, she had permitted herself to
consider ambiguous, now became luminously apparent. Even the newspaper,
which during that credulous and happy period had given half a column to
Births and Marriages, now bore an ominously long catalogue of Deaths; so
that it seemed as if the whole population had lost heart, and had no
chance of repairing its daily losses. The leading article spoke, with
the obscurity of a Pythian, of an impending CRISIS. Monstrous turnips
sprouted out from the paragraphs devoted to General News. Cows bore
calves with two heads, whales were stranded in the Humber, showers of
frogs descended in the High Street of Cheltenham.
All these symptoms of the world's decrepitude and consummation, which by
the side of the fascinating Riccabocca might admit of some doubt as to
their origin and cause, now, conjoined with the worst of all, namely, the
frightfully progressive wickedness of man,--left to Miss Jemima no ray of
hope save that afforded by the reflection that she could contemplate the
wreck of matter without a single sentiment of regret.
Mrs. Dale, however, by no means shared the despondency of her fair
friend, and having gained access to Miss Jemima's chamber, succeeded,
though not without difficulty, in her kindly attempts to cheer the
drooping spirits of that female misanthropist. Nor, in her benevolent
desire to speed the car of Miss Jemima to its hymeneal goal, was Mrs.
Dale so cruel towards her male friend, Dr. Riccabocca, as she seemed to
her husband. For Mrs. Dale was a woman of shrewdness and penetration, as
most quick-tempered women are; and she knew that Miss Jemima was one of
those excellent young ladies who are likely to value a husband in
proportion to the difficulty of obtaining him. In fact, my readers of
both sexes must often have met, in the course of their experience, with
that peculiar sort of feminine disposition, which requires the warmth of
the conjugal hearth to develop all its native good qualities; nor is it
to be blamed overmuch if, innocently aware of this tendency in its
nature, it turns towards what is best fitted for its growth and
improvement, by laws akin to those which make the sunflower turn to
the sun, or the willow to the stream. Ladies of this disposition,
permanently thwarted in their affectionate bias, gradually languish
away into intellectual inanition, or sprout out into those abnormal
eccentricities which are classed under the general name of "oddity" or
"character." But once admitted to their proper soil, it is astonishing
what healthful improvement takes place,--how the poor heart, before
starved and stinted of nourishment, throws out its suckers, and bursts
into bloom and fruit. And thus many a belle from whom the beaux have
stood aloof, only because the puppies think she could be had for the
asking, they see afterwards settled down into true wife and fond mother,
with amaze at their former disparagement, and a sigh at their blind
hardness of heart.
In all probability Mrs. Dale took this view of the subject; and
certainly, in addition to all the hitherto dormant virtues which would be
awakened in Miss Jemima when fairly Mrs. Riccabocca, she counted somewhat
upon the mere worldly advantage which such a match would bestow upon the
exile. So respectable a connection with one of the oldest, wealthiest,
and most popular families in the shire would in itself give him a
position not to be despised by a poor stranger in the land; and though
the interest of Miss Jemima's dowry might not be much, regarded in the
light of English pounds (not Milanese lire), still it would suffice to
prevent that gradual process of dematerialization which the lengthened
diet upon minnows and sticklebacks had already made apparent in the fine
and slow-evanishing form of the philosopher.
Like all persons convinced of the expediency of a thing, Mrs. Dale saw
nothing wanting but opportunities to insure its success. And that these
might be forthcoming she not only renewed with greater frequency, and
more urgent instance than ever, her friendly invitations to Riccabocca to
drink tea and spend the evening, but she so artfully chafed the squire on
his sore point of hospitality, that the doctor received weekly a pressing
solicitation to dine and sleep at the Hall.
At first the Italian pished and grunted, and said /Cospetto/, and /Per
Bacco/, and /Diavolo/, and tried to creep out of so much proffered
courtesy. But like all single gentlemen, he was a little under the
tyrannical influence of his faithful servant; and Jackeymo, though he
could bear starving as well as his master when necessary, still, when he
had the option, preferred roast beef and plum-pudding. Moreover, that
vain and incautious confidence of Riccabocca touching the vast sum at his
command, and with no heavier drawback than that of so amiable a lady as
Miss Jemima--who had already shown him (Jackeymo) many little delicate
attentions--had greatly whetted the cupidity which was in the servant's
Italian nature,--a cupidity the more keen because, long debarred its
legitimate exercise on his own mercenary interests, he carried it all to
the account of his master's!
Thus tempted by his enemy and betrayed by his servant, the unfortunate
Riccabocca fell, though with eyes not unblinded, into the hospitable
snares extended for the destruction of his--celibacy! He went often to
the Parsonage, often to the Hall, and by degrees the sweets of the social
domestic life, long denied him, began to exercise their enervating charm
upon the stoicism of our poor exile. Frank had now returned to Eton. An
unexpected invitation had carried off Captain Higginbotham to pass a few
weeks at Bath with a distant relation, who had lately returned from
India, and who, as rich as Creesus, felt so estranged and solitary in his
native isle that, when the captain "claimed kindred there," to his own
amaze "he had his claims allowed;" while a very protracted sitting of
parliament still delayed in London the squire's habitual visitors during
the later summer; so that--a chasm thus made in his society--
Mr. Hazeldean welcomed with no hollow cordiality the diversion or
distraction he found in the foreigner's companionship. Thus, with
pleasure to all parties, and strong hopes to the two female conspirators,
the intimacy between the Casino and Hall rapidly thickened; but still not
a word resembling a distinct proposal did Dr. Riccabocca breathe. And
still, if such an idea obtruded itself on his mind, it was chased
therefrom with so determined a Diavolo that perhaps, if not the end of
the world, at least the end of Miss Jemima's tenure in it, might have
approached and seen her still Miss Jemima, but for a certain letter with
a foreign postmark that reached the doctor one Tuesday morning.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The servant saw that something had gone wrong, and, under pretence of
syringing the orange-trees, he lingered near his master, and peered
through the sunny leaves upon Riccabocca's melancholy brows.
The doctor sighed heavily. Nor did he, as was his wont after some such
sigh, mechanically take up that dear comforter the pipe. But though the
tobacco-pouch lay by his side on the balustrade, and the pipe stood
against the wall between his knees, childlike lifting up its lips to the
customary caress, he heeded neither the one nor the other, but laid the
letter silently on his lap, and fixed his eyes upon the ground.
"It must be bad news indeed!" thought Jackeymo, and desisted from his
work. Approaching his master, he took up the pipe and the tobacco-pouch,
and filled the bowl slowly, glancing all the while towards that dark
musing face on which, when abandoned by the expression of intellectual
vivacity or the exquisite smile of Italian courtesy, the deep downward
lines revealed the characters of sorrow. Jackeymo did not venture to
speak; but the continued silence of his master disturbed him much. He
laid that peculiar tinder which your smokers use upon the steel, and
struck the spark,--still not a word, nor did Riccabocca stretch forth his
hand.
"I never knew him in this taking before," thought Jackeymo; and
delicately he insinuated the neck of the pipe into the nerveless fingers
of the band that lay supine on those quiet knees. The pipe fell to the
ground.
Jackeymo crossed himself, and began praying to his sainted namesake with
great fervour.
The doctor rose slowly, and as if with effort; he walked once or twice to
and fro the terrace; and then he halted abruptly and said,--
"Friend!"
"Blessed Monsignore San Giacomo, I knew thou wouldst hear me!" cried the
servant; and he raised his master's hand to his lips, then abruptly
turned away and wiped his eyes.
"Friend," repeated Riccabocca, and this time with a tremulous emphasis,
and in the softest tone of a voice never wholly without the music of the
sweet South, "I would talk to thee of my child."
CHAPTER XIX.
"The letter, then, relates to the signorina. She is well?"
"Yes, she is well now. She is in our native Italy." Jackeymo raised his
eyes involuntarily towards the orange-trees, and the morning breeze swept
by and bore to him the odour of their blossoms.
"Those are sweet even here, with care," said he, pointing to the trees.
"I think I have said that before to the padrone."
But Riccabocca was now looking again at the letter, and did not notice
either the gesture or the remark of his servant. "My aunt is no more!"
said he, after a pause.
"We will pray for her soul!" answered Jackeymo, solemnly. "But she was
very old, and had been a long time ailing. Let it not grieve the padrone
too keenly: at that age, and with those infirmities, death comes as a
friend."
"Peace be to her dust!" returned the Italian. "If she had her faults, be
they now forgotten forever; and in the hour of my danger and distress she
sheltered my infant! That shelter is destroyed. This letter is from the
priest, her confessor. And the home of which my child is bereaved falls
to the inheritance of my enemy."
"Traitor!" muttered Jackeymo; and his right hand seemed to feel for the
weapon which the Italians of lower rank often openly wear in their
girdles.
"The priest," resumed Riccabocca, calmly, "has rightly judged in removing
my child as a guest from the house in which that traitor enters as lord."
"And where is the signorina?"
"With the poor priest. See, Giacomo, here, here--this is her handwriting
at the end of the letter,--the first lines she ever yet traced to me."
Jackeymo took off his hat, and looked reverently on the large characters
of a child's writing. But large as they were, they seemed indistinct,
for the paper was blistered with the child's tears; and on the place
where they had not fallen, there was a round fresh moist stain of the
tear that had dropped from the lids of the father. Riccabocca renewed,
"The priest recommends a convent."
"To the devil with the priest!" cried the servant; then crossing himself
rapidly, he added, "I did not mean that, Monsignore San Giacomo,--forgive
me! But your Excellency does not think of making a nun of his only
child!"
[The title of Excellency does not, in Italian, necessarily express
any exalted rank, but is often given by servants to their masters.]
"And yet why not?" said Riccabocca, mournfully; "what can I give her in
the world? Is the land of the stranger a better refuge than the home of
peace in her native clime?"
"In the land of the stranger beats her father's heart!"
"And if that beat were stilled, what then? Ill fares the life that a
single death can bereave of all. In a convent at least (and the priest's
influence can obtain her that asylum amongst her equals and amidst her
sex) she is safe from trial and from penury--to her grave!"
"Penury! Just see how rich we shall be when we take those fields at
Michaelmas."
"/Pazzie/!"--[Follies]--said Riccabocca, listlessly. "Are these suns
more serene than ours, or the soil more fertile? Yet in our own Italy,
saith the proverb, 'He who sows land reaps more care than corn.' It were
different," continued the father, after a pause, and in a more resolute
tone, "if I had some independence, however small, to count on,--nay, if
among all my tribe of dainty relatives there were but one female who
would accompany Violante to the exile's hearth,--Ishmael had his Hagar.
But how can we two rough-bearded men provide for all the nameless wants
and cares of a frail female child? And she has been so delicately
reared,--the woman-child needs the fostering hand and tender eye of a
woman."
"And with a word," said Jackeymo, resolutely, "the padrone might secure
to his child all that he needs to save her from the sepulchre of a
convent; and ere the autumn leaves fall, she might be sitting on his
knee. Padrone, do not think that you can conceal from me the truth, that
you love your child better than all things in the world,--now the Patria
is as dead to you as the dust of your fathers,--and your heart-strings
would crack with the effort to tear her from them, and consign her to a
convent. Padrone, never again to hear her voice, never again to see her
face! Those little arms that twined round your neck that dark night,
when we fled fast for life and freedom, and you said, as you felt their
clasp, 'Friend, all is not yet lost.'"
"Giacomo!" exclaimed the father, reproachfully, and his voice seemed to
choke him. Riccabocca turned away, and walked restlessly to and fro the
terrace; then, lifting his arms with a wild gesture, as he still
continued his long irregular strides, he muttered, "Yes, Heaven is my
witness that I could have borne reverse and banishment without a murmur,
had I permitted myself that young partner in exile and privation. Heaven
is my witness that, if I hesitate now, it is because I would not listen
to my own selfish heart. Yet never, never to see her again,--my child!
And it was but as the infant that I beheld her! O friend, friend!" (and,
stopping short with a burst of uncontrollable emotion, he bowed his head
upon his servant's shoulder), "thou knowest what I have endured and
suffered at my hearth, as in my country; the wrong, the perfidy, the--
the--" His voice again failed him; be clung to his servant's breast, and
his whole frame shook.
"But your child, the innocent one--think now only of her!" faltered
Giacomo, struggling with his own sobs. "True, only of her," replied the
exile, raising his face, "only of her. Put aside thy thoughts for
thyself, friend,--counsel me. If I were to send for Violante, and if,
transplanted to these keen airs, she drooped and died--Look, look, the
priest says that she needs such tender care; or if I myself were summoned
from the world, to leave her in it alone, friendless, homeless, breadless
perhaps, at the age of woman's sharpest trial against temptation, would
she not live to mourn the cruel egotism that closed on her infant
innocence the gates of the House of God?"
Jackeymo was appalled by this appeal; and indeed Riccabocca had never
before thus reverently spoken of the cloister. In his hours of
philosophy, he was wont to sneer at monks and nuns, priesthood and
superstition. But now, in that hour of emotion, the Old Religion
reclaimed her empire; and the sceptical world-wise man, thinking only
of his child, spoke and felt with a child's simple faith.
CHAPTER XX.
"But again I say," murmured Jackeymo, scarce audibly, and after a long
silence, "if the padrone would make up his mind--to marry!"
He expected that his master would start up in his customary indignation
at such a suggestion,--nay, he might not have been sorry so to have
changed the current of feeling; but the poor Italian only winced
slightly, and mildly withdrawing himself from his servant's supporting
arm, again paced the terrace, but this time quietly and in silence. A
quarter of an hour thus passed. "Give me the pipe," said Dr. Riccabocca,
passing into the belvidere.
Jackeymo again struck the spark, and, wonderfully relieved at the
padrone's return to the habitual adviser, mentally besought his sainted
namesake to bestow a double portion of soothing wisdom on the benignant
influences of the weed.
CHAPTER XXI.
Dr. Riccabocca had been some little time in the solitude of the
belvidere, when Lenny Fairfield, not knowing that his employer was
therein, entered to lay down a book which the doctor had lent him, with
injunctions to leave it on a certain table when done with. Riccabocca
looked up at the sound of the young peasant's step.
"I beg your honour's pardon, I did not know--"
"Never mind: lay the book there. I wish to speak with you. You look
well, my child: this air agrees with you as well as that of Hazeldean?"
"Oh, yes, Sir!"
"Yet it is higher ground,--more exposed?"
"That can hardly be, sir," said Lenny; "there are many plants grow here
which don't flourish at the squire's. The hill yonder keeps off the east
wind, and the place lays to the south."
"Lies, not lays, Lenny. What are the principal complaints in these
parts?"
"Eh, sir?"
"I mean what maladies, what diseases?"
"I never heard tell of any, sir, except the rheumatism."
"No low fevers, no consumption?"
"Never heard of them, sir."
Riccabocca drew a long breath, as if relieved. "That seems a very kind
family at the Hall."
"I have nothing to say against it," answered Lenny, bluntly. "I have not
been treated justly. But as that book says, sir, 'It is not every one
who comes into the world with a silver spoon in his mouth.'"
Little thought the doctor that those wise maxims may leave sore thoughts
behind them! He was too occupied with the subject most at his own heart
to think then of what was in Lenny Fairfield's.
"Yes; a kind, English domestic family. Did you see much of Miss
Hazeldean?"
"Not so much as of the Lady."
"Is she liked in the village, think you?"
"Miss Jemima? Yes. She never did harm. Her little dog bit me once,--
she did not ask me to beg its pardon, she asked mine! She's a very nice
young lady; the girls say she is very affable; and," added Lenny, with a
smile, "there are always more weddings going on when she is down at the
Hall."
"Oh!" said Riccabocca. Then, after a long whiff, "Did you ever see her
play with the little children? Is she fond of children, do you think?"
"Lord, sir, you guess everything! She's never so pleased as when she's
playing with the babies."
"Humph!" grunted Riccabocca. "Babies! well, that's woman-like. I don't
mean exactly babies, but when they're older,--little girls?"
"Indeed, Sir, I dare say; but," said Lenny, primly, "I never as yet kept
company with the little girls."
"Quite right, Lenny; be equally discreet all your life. Mrs. Dale is
very intimate with Miss Hazeldean,--more than with the squire's lady.
Why is that, think you?"
"Well, sir," said Leonard, shrewdly, "Mrs. Dale has her little tempers,
though she's a very good lady; and Madame Hazeldean is rather high, and
has a spirit. But Miss Jemima is so soft: any one could live with Miss
Jemima, as Joe and the servants say at the Hall."
"Indeed! get my hat out of the parlour, and--just bring a clothes-brush,
Lenny. A fine sunny day for a walk."
After this most mean and dishonourable inquisition into the character
and popular repute of Miss Hazeldean, Signor Riccabocca seemed as much
cheered up and elated as if he had committed some very noble action; and
he walked forth in the direction of the Hall with a far lighter and
livelier step than that with which he had paced the terrace.
"Monsignore San Giacomo, by thy help and the pipe's, the padrone shall
have his child!" muttered the servant, looking up from the garden.
CHAPTER XXII.
Yet Dr. Riccabocca was not rash. The man who wants his wedding-garment
to fit him must allow plenty of time for the measure. But from that day,
the Italian notably changed his manner towards Miss Hazeldean. He ceased
that profusion of compliment in which he had hitherto carried off in
safety all serious meaning. For indeed the doctor considered that
compliments to a single gentleman were what the inky liquid it dispenses
is to the cuttle-fish, that by obscuring the water sails away from its
enemy. Neither did he, as before, avoid prolonged conversations with the
young lady, and contrive to escape from all solitary rambles by her side.
On the contrary, he now sought every occasion to be in her society; and
entirely dropping the language of gallantry, he assumed something of the
earnest tone of friendship. He bent down his intellect to examine and
plumb her own. To use a very homely simile, he blew away that froth
which there is on the surface of mere acquaintanceships, especially with
the opposite sex; and which, while it lasts, scarce allows you to
distinguish between small beer and double X. Apparently Dr. Riccabocca
was satisfied with his scrutiny,--at all events under that froth there
was no taste of bitter. The Italian might not find any great strength of
intellect in Miss Jemima, but he found that, disentangled from many
little whims and foibles,--which he had himself the sense to perceive
were harmless enough if they lasted, and not so absolutely constitutional
but what they might be removed by a tender hand,--Miss Hazeldean had
quite enough sense to comprehend the plain duties of married life; and if
the sense could fail, it found a substitute in good old homely English
principles, and the instincts of amiable, kindly feelings.
I know not how it is, but your very clever man never seems to care so
much as your less gifted mortals for cleverness in his helpmate. Your
scholars and poets and ministers of state are more often than not found
assorted with exceedingly humdrum, good sort of women, and apparently
like them all the better for their deficiencies. Just see how happily
Racine lived with his wife, and what an angel he thought her, and yet she
had never read his plays. Certainly Goethe never troubled the lady who
called him "Mr. Privy Councillor" with whims about "monads," and
speculations on colour, nor those stiff metaphysical problems on which
one breaks one's shins in the Second Past of the "Faust." Probably it
may be that such great geniuses--knowing that, as compared with
themselves, there is little difference between your clever woman and your
humdrum woman--merge at once all minor distinctions, relinquish all
attempts at sympathy in hard intellectual pursuits, and are quite
satisfied to establish that tie which, after all, best resists wear and
tear,--namely, the tough household bond between one human heart and
another.
At all events, this, I suspect, was the reasoning of Dr. Riccabocca, when
one morning, after a long walk with Miss Hazeldean, he muttered to
himself,--
"Duro con duro
Non fete mai buon muro,"--
which may bear the paraphrase, "Bricks without mortar would make a very
bad wall." There was quite enough in Miss Jemima's disposition to make
excellent mortar: the doctor took the bricks to himself.
When his examination was concluded, our philosopher symbolically evinced
the result he had arrived at by a very simple proceeding on his part,
which would have puzzled you greatly if you had not paused, and meditated
thereon, till you saw all that it implied. /Dr. Riccabocca, took of his
spectacles!/ He wiped them carefully, put them into their shagreen case,
and locked them in his bureau,--that is to say, he left off wearing his
spectacles.
You will observe that there was a wonderful depth of meaning in that
critical symptom, whether it be regarded as a sign outward, positive, and
explicit, or a sign metaphysical, mystical, and esoteric. For, as to the
last, it denoted that the task of the spectacles was over; that, when a
philosopher has made up his mind to marry, it is better henceforth to be
shortsighted--nay, even somewhat purblind--than to be always scrutinizing
the domestic felicity, to which he is about to resign himself, through a
pair of cold, unillusory barnacles. As for the things beyond the hearth,
if he cannot see without spectacles, is he not about to ally to his own
defective vision a good sharp pair of eyes, never at fault where his
interests are concerned? On the other hand, regarded positively,
categorically, and explicitly, Dr. Roccabocca, by laying aside those
spectacles, signified that he was about to commence that happy initiation
of courtship when every man, be he ever so much a philosopher, wishes to
look as young and as handsome as time and nature will allow. Vain task
to speed the soft language of the eyes through the medium of those glassy
interpreters! I remember, for my own part, that once, on a visit to the
town of Adelaide, I--Pisistratus Caxton--was in great danger of falling
in love,--with a young lady, too, who would have brought me a very good
fortune,--when she suddenly produced from her reticule a very neat pair
of No. 4, set in tortoiseshell, and fixing upon me their Gorgon gaze,
froze the astonished Cupid into stone! And I hold it a great proof of
the wisdom of Riccabocca, and of his vast experience in mankind, that he
was not above the consideration of what your pseudo-sages would have
regarded as foppish and ridiculous trifles. It argued all the better for
that happiness which is our being's end and aim that in condescending to
play the lover, he put those unbecoming petrifiers under lock and key.
And certainly, now the spectacles were abandoned, it was impossible to
deny that the Italian had remarkably handsome eyes. Even through the
spectacles, or lifted a little above them, they were always bright and
expressive; but without those adjuncts, the blaze was softer and more
tempered: they had that look which the French call veloute, or velvety;
and he appeared altogether ten years younger. If our Ulysses, thus
rejuvenated by his Minerva, has not fully made up his mind to make a
Penelope of Miss Jemima, all I can say is, that he is worse than
Polyphemus, who was only an Anthropophagos,--
He preys upon the weaker sex, and is a Gynopophagite!
CHAPTER XXIII.
"And you commission me, then, to speak to our dear Jemima?" said Mrs.
Dale, joyfully, and without any bitterness whatever in that "dear."
DR. RICCABOCCA.--"Nay, before speaking to Miss Hazeldean, it would surely
be proper to know how far my addresses would be acceptable to the
family."
MRS. DALE.--"Ah!"
DR. RICCAROCCA.--"The squire is of course the head of the family."
MRS. DALE (absent and distraite).--"The squire--yes, very true--quite
proper." (Then, looking up, and with naivete) "Can you believe me? I
never thought of the squire. And he is such an odd man, and has so many
English prejudices, that really--dear me, how vexatious that it should
never once have occurred to me that Mr. Hazeldean had a voice in the
matter! Indeed, the relationship is so distant, it is not like being her
father; and Jemima is of age, and can do as she pleases; and--but, as you
say, it is quite proper that he should be consulted as the head of the
family."
DR. RICCASOCCA.--"And you think that the Squire of Hazeldean might reject
my alliance! Pshaw! that's a grand word indeed,--I mean, that he might
object very reasonably to his cousin's marriage with a foreigner, of whom
he can know nothing, except that which in all countries is disreputable,
and is said in this to be criminal,--poverty."
MRS. DALE (kindly)--"You misjudge us poor English people, and you wrong
the squire, Heaven bless him! for we were poor enough when he singled out
my husband from a hundred for the minister of his parish, for his
neighbour and his friend. I will speak to him fearlessly--"
DR. RICCABOCCA.---"And frankly. And now I have used that word, let me go
on with the confession which your kindly readiness, my fair friend,
somewhat interrupted. I said that if I might presume to think my
addresses would be acceptable to Miss Hazeldean and her family, I was too
sensible of her amiable qualities not to--not to--"
MRS. DALE (with demure archness).--"Not to be the happiest of men,--
that's the customary English phrase, Doctor."
RICCABOCCA (gallantly).--"There cannot be a better. But," continued he,
seriously, "I wish it first to be understood that I have--been married
before!"
MRS. DALE (astonished).--"Married before!"
RICCABOCCA.--"And that I have an only child, dear to me,--inexpressibly
dear. That child, a daughter, has hitherto lived abroad; circumstances
now render it desirable that she should make her home with me; and I own
fairly that nothing has so attached me to Miss Hazeldean, nor so induced
my desire for our matrimonial connection, as my belief that she has the
heart and the temper to become a kind mother to my little one."
MRS. DALE (with feeling and warmth).--"You judge her rightly there."
RICCABOCCA.--"Now, in pecuniary matters, as you may conjecture from my
mode of life, I have nothing to offer to Miss Hazeldean correspondent
with her own fortune, whatever that may be!"
MRS. DALE.--"That difficulty is obviated by settling Miss Hazeldean's
fortune on herself, which is customary in such cases."
Dr. Riccabocca's face lengthened. "And my child, then?" said he,
feelingly. There was something in that appeal so alien from all sordid
and merely personal mercenary motives, that Mrs. Dale could not have had
the heart to make the very rational suggestion, "But that child is not
Jemima's, and you may have children by her."
She was touched, and replied hesitatingly, "But from what you and Jemima
may jointly possess you can save something annually,--you can insure your
life for your child. We did so when our poor child whom we lost was
born" (the tears rushed into Mrs. Dale's eyes); "and I fear that Charles
still insures his life for my sake, though Heaven knows that--that--"
The tears burst out. That little heart, quick and petulant though it
was, had not a fibre of the elastic muscular tissues which are mercifully
bestowed on the hearts of predestined widows. Dr. Riccabocca could not
pursue the subject of life insurances further. But the idea--which had
never occurred to the foreigner before, though so familiar with us
English people when only possessed of a life income--pleased him greatly.
I will do him the justice to say that he preferred it to the thought of
actually appropriating to himself and to his child a portion of Miss
Hazeldean's dower.
Shortly afterwards he took his leave, and Mrs. Dale hastened to seek her
husband in his study, inform him of the success of her matrimonial
scheme, and consult him as to the chance of the squire's acquiescence
therein. "You see," said she, hesitatingly, "though the squire might be
glad to see Jemima married to some Englishman, yet if he asks who and
what is this Dr. Riccabocca, how am I to answer him?"
"You should have thought of that before," said Mr. Dale, with unwonted
asperity; "and, indeed, if I had ever believed anything serious could
come out of what seemed to me so absurd, I should long since have
requested you not to interfere in such matters. Good heavens!" continued
the parson, changing colour, "if we should have assisted, underhand as it
were, to introduce into the family of a man to whom we owe so much a
connection that he would dislike, how base we should be, how ungrateful!"
Poor Mrs. Dale was frightened by this speech, and still more by her
husband's consternation and displeasure. To do Mrs. Dale justice,
whenever her mild partner was really either grieved or offended, her
little temper vanished,--she became as meek as a lamb. As soon as she
recovered the first shock she experienced, she hastened to dissipate the
parson's apprehensions. She assured him that she was convinced that,
if the squire disapproved of Riccabocca's pretensions, the Italian would
withdraw them at once, and Miss Hazeldean would never know of his
proposals. Therefore, in that case, no harm would be done.
This assurance, coinciding with Mr. Dale's convictions as to Riccabocca's
scruples on the point of honour, tended much to compose the good man; and
if he did not, as my reader of the gentler sex would expect from him,
feel alarm lest Miss Jemima's affections should have been irretrievably
engaged, and her happiness thus put in jeopardy by the squire's refusal,
it was not that the parson wanted tenderness of heart, but experience in
womankind; and he believed, very erroneously, that Miss Jemima Hazeldean
was not one upon whom a disappointment of that kind would produce a
lasting impression. Therefore Mr. Dale, after a pause of consideration,
said kindly,--
"Well, don't vex yourself,--and I was to blame quite as much as you.
But, indeed, I should have thought it easier for the squire to have
transplanted one of his tall cedars into his kitchen-garden than for you
to inveigle Dr. Riccabocca into matrimonial intentions. But a man who
could voluntarily put himself into the parish stocks for the sake of
experiment must be capable of anything! However, I think it better that
I, rather than yourself, should speak to the squire, and I will go at
once."
CHAPTER XXIV.
The parson put on the shovel-hat, which--conjoined with other details in
his dress peculiarly clerical, and already, even then, beginning to be
out of fashion with Churchmen--had served to fix upon him emphatically
the dignified but antiquated style and cognomen of "Parson;" and took his
way towards the Home Farm, at which he expected to find the squire. But
he had scarcely entered upon the village green when he beheld Mr.
Hazeldean, leaning both hands on his stick, and gazing intently upon the
parish stocks. Now, sorry am I to say that, ever since the Hegira of
Lenny and his mother, the Anti-Stockian and Revolutionary spirit in
Hazeldean, which the memorable homily of our parson had a while averted
or suspended, had broken forth afresh. For though while Lenny was
present to be mowed and jeered at, there had been no pity for him, yet no
sooner was he removed from the scene of trial than a universal compassion
for the barbarous usage he had received produced what is called "the
reaction of public opinion." Not that those who had mowed and jeered
repented them of their mockery, or considered themselves in the slightest
degree the cause of his expatriation. No; they, with the rest of the
villagers, laid all the blame upon the stocks. It was not to be expected
that a lad of such exemplary character could be thrust into that place of
ignominy, and not be sensible to the affront. And who, in the whole
village, was safe, if such goings-on and puttings-in were to be tolerated
in silence, and at the expense of the very best and quietest lad the
village had ever known? Thus, a few days after the widow's departure,
the stocks was again the object of midnight desecration: it was bedaubed
and bescratched, it was hacked and hewed, it was scrawled over with pithy
lamentations for Lenny, and laconic execrations on tyrants. Night after
night new inscriptions appeared, testifying the sarcastic wit and the
vindictive sentiment of the parish. And perhaps the stocks was only
spared from axe and bonfire by the convenience it afforded to the malice
of the disaffected: it became the Pasquin of Hazeldean.
As disaffection naturally produces a correspondent vigour in authority,
so affairs had been lately administered with greater severity than had
been hitherto wont in the easy rule of the squire and his predecessors.
Suspected persons were naturally marked out by Mr. Stirn, and reported to
his employer, who, too proud or too pained to charge them openly with
ingratitude, at first only passed them by in his walks with a silent and
stiff inclination of his head; and afterwards, gradually yielding to the
baleful influence of Stirn, the squire grumbled forth "that he did not
see why he should be always putting himself out of his way to show
kindness to those who made such a return. There ought to be a difference
between the good and the bad." Encouraged by this admission, Stirn had
conducted himself towards the suspected parties, and their whole kith and
kin, with the iron-handed justice that belonged to his character. For
some, habitual donations of milk from the dairy and vegetables from the
gardens were surlily suspended; others were informed that their pigs were
always trespassing on the woods in search of acorns, or that they were
violating the Game Laws in keeping lurchers. A beer-house, popular in
the neighbourhood, but of late resorted to over-much by the grievance-
mongers (and no wonder, since they had become the popular party), was
threatened with an application to the magistrates for the withdrawal of
its license. Sundry old women, whose grandsons were notoriously ill-
disposed towards the stocks, were interdicted from gathering dead sticks
under the avenues, on pretence that they broke down the live boughs; and,
what was more obnoxious to the younger members of the parish than most
other retaliatory measures, three chestnut-trees, one walnut, and two
cherry-trees, standing at the bottom of the Park, and which had, from
time immemorial, been given up to the youth of Hazeldean, were now
solemnly placed under the general defence of "private property." And the
crier had announced that, henceforth, all depredators on the fruit trees
in Copse Hollow would be punished with the utmost rigour of the law.
Stirn, indeed, recommended much more stringent proceedings than all these
indications of a change of policy, which, he averred, would soon bring
the parish to its senses,--such as discontinuing many little jobs of
unprofitable work that employed the surplus labour of the village. But
there the squire, falling into the department and under the benigner
influence of his Harry, was as yet not properly hardened. When it came
to a question that affected the absolute quantity of loaves to be
consumed by the graceless mouths that fed upon him, the milk of human
kindness--with which Providence has so bountifully supplied that class of
the mammalia called the "Bucolic," and of which our squire had an extra
"yield"--burst forth, and washed away all the indignation of the harsher
Adam.
Still your policy of half-measures, which irritates without crushing its
victims, which flaps an exasperated wasp-nest with a silk pocket-
handkerchief, instead of blowing it up with a match and train, is rarely
successful; and after three or four other and much guiltier victims than
Lenny had been incarcerated in the stocks, the parish of Hazeldean was
ripe for any enormity. Pestilent Jacobinical tracts, conceived and
composed in the sinks of manufacturing towns, found their way into the
popular beer-house,--Heaven knows how, though the tinker was suspected of
being the disseminator by all but Stirn, who still, in a whisper, accused
the Papishers. And, finally, there appeared amongst the other graphic
embellishments which the poor stocks had received, the rude gravure of a
gentleman in a broad-brimmed hat and top-boots, suspended from a gibbet,
with the inscription beneath, "A warnin to hall tirans--mind your hi!---
sighnde Captin sTraw."
It was upon this significant and emblematic portraiture that the squire
was gazing when the parson joined him. "Well, Parson," said Mr.
Hazeldean, with a smile which he meant to be pleasant and easy, but which
was exceedingly bitter and grim, "I wish you joy of your flock,--you see
they have just hanged me in effigy!"
The parson stared, and though greatly shocked, smothered his emotion; and
attempted, with the wisdom of the serpent and the mildness of the dove,
to find another original for the effigy.
"It is very bad," quoth he, "but not so bad as all that, Squire; that's
not the shape of your bat. It is evidently meant for Mr. Stirn."
"Do you think so?" said the squire, softened. "Yet the top-boots--Stirn
never wears top-boots."
"No more do you, except in the hunting-field. If you look again, those
are not tops, they are leggings,--Stirn wears leggings. Besides, that
flourish, which is meant for a nose, is a kind of hook, like Stirn's;
whereas your nose--though by no means a snub--rather turns up than not,
as the Apollo's does, according to the plaster cast in Riccabocca's
parlour."
"Poor Stirn!" said the squire, in a tone that evinced complacency, not
unmingled with compassion, "that's what a man gets in this world by being
a faithful servant, and doing his duty with zeal for his employer. But
you see things have come to a strange pass, and the question now is, what
course to pursue. The miscreants hitherto have defied all vigilance, and
Stirn recommends the employment of a regular nightwatch, with a lanthorn
and bludgeon."
"That may protect the stocks certainly; but will it keep those detestable
tracts out of the beer-house?"
"We shall shut the beer-house up the next sessions."
"The tracts will break out elsewhere,--the humour's in the blood!"
"I've half a mind to run off to Brighton or Leamingtongood hunting at
Leamington--for a year, just to let the rogues see how they can get on
without me!"
The squire's lip trembled.
"My dear Mr. Hazeldean," said the parson, taking his friend's hand, "I
don't want to parade my superior wisdom; but, if you had taken my advice,
'quieta non movere!' Was there ever a parish so peaceable as this, or a
country gentleman so beloved as you were, before you undertook the task
which has dethroned kings and ruined States,--that of wantonly meddling
with antiquity, whether for the purpose of uncalled-for repairs, or the
revival of obsolete uses."
At this rebuke, the squire did not manifest his constitutional tendencies
to choler; but he replied almost meekly, "If it were to do again, faith,
I would leave the parish to the enjoyment of the shabbiest pair of stocks
that ever disgraced a village. Certainly I meant it for the best,--an
ornament to the green; however, now the stocks is rebuilt, the stocks
must be supported. Will Hazeldean is not the man to give way to a set of
thankless rapscallions."
"I think," said the parson, "that you will allow that the House of Tudor,
whatever its faults, was a determined, resolute dynasty enough,--high-
hearted and strong-headed. A Tudor would never have fallen into the same
calamities as the poor Stuart did!"
"What the plague has the House of Tudor got to do with my stocks?"
"A great deal. Henry VIII. found a subsidy so unpopular that he gave it
up; and the people, in return, allowed him to cut off as many heads as he
pleased, besides those in his own family. Good Queen Bess, who, I know,
is your idol in history--"
"To be sure!--she knighted my ancestor at Tilbury Fort."
"Good Queen Bess struggled hard to maintain a certain monopoly; she saw
it would not do, and she surrendered it with that frank heartiness which
becomes a sovereign, and makes surrender a grace."
"Ha! and you would have me give up the stocks?"
"I would much rather the stocks had remained as it was before you touched
it; but, as it is, if you could find a good plausible pretext--and there
is an excellent one at hand,--the sternest kings open prisons, and grant
favours, upon joyful occasions. Now a marriage in the royal family is of
course a joyful occasion! and so it should be in that of the King of
Hazeldean." Admire that artful turn in the parson's eloquence!---it was
worthy of Riccabocca himself. Indeed, Mr. Dale had profited much by his
companionship with that Machiavellian intellect.
"A marriage,--yes; but Frank has only just got into coattails!"
"I did not allude to Frank, but to your cousin Jemima!"
CHAPTER XXV.
The squire staggered as if the breath had been knocked out of him, and,
for want of a better seat, sat down on the stocks. All the female heads
in the neighbouring cottages peered, themselves unseen, through the
casements. What could the squire be about? What new mischief did he
meditate? Did he mean to fortify the stocks? Old Gaffer Solomons, who
had an indefinite idea of the lawful power of squires, and who had been
for the last ten minutes at watch on his threshold, shook his head and
said, "Them as a cut out the mon a hanging, as a put it in the squire's
head!"
"Put what?" asked his grand-daughter.
"The gallus!" answered Solomons,--"he be a going to have it hung from the
great elfin-tree. And the parson, good mon, is a quoting Scripter agin
it; you see he's a taking off his gloves, and a putting his two han's
together, as he do when he pray for the sick, Jeany."
That description of the parson's mien and manner, which with his usual
niceness of observation, Gaffer Solomons thus sketched off, will convey
to you some idea of the earnestness with which the parson pleaded the
cause he had undertaken to advocate. He dwelt much upon the sense of
propriety which the foreigner had evinced in requesting that the squire
might be consulted before any formal communication to his cousin; and he
repeated Mrs. Dale's assurance, that such were Riccabocca's high standard
of honour and belief in the sacred rights of hospitality, that, if the
squire withheld his consent to his proposals, the parson was convinced
that the Italian would instantly retract them. Now, considering that
Miss Hazeldean was, to say the least, come to years of discretion, and
the squire had long since placed her property entirely at her own
disposal, Mr. Hazeldean was forced to acquiesce in the parson's corollary
remark, "That this was a delicacy which could not be expected from every
English pretender to the lady's hand." Seeing that he had so far cleared
the ground, the parson went on to intimate, though with great tact, that
since Miss Jemima would probably marry sooner or later (and, indeed, that
the squire could not wish to prevent her), it might be better for all
parties concerned that it should be with some one who, though a
foreigner, was settled in the neighbourhood, and of whose character what
was known was certainly favourable, rather than run the hazard of her
being married for her money by some adventurer, or Irish fortune-hunter,
at the watering-places she yearly visited. Then he touched lightly on
Riccabocca's agreeable and companionable qualities; and concluded with a
skilful peroration upon the excellent occasion the wedding would afford
to reconcile Hall and parish, by making a voluntary holocaust of the
stocks.
As he concluded, the squire's brow, before thoughtful, though not sullen,
cleared up benignly. To say truth, the squire was dying to get rid of
the stocks, if he could but do so handsomely and with dignity; and had
all the stars in the astrological horoscope conjoined together to give
Miss Jemima "assurance of a husband," they could not so have served her
with the squire as that conjunction between the altar and the stocks
which the parson had effected!
Accordingly, when Mr. Dale had come to an end, the squire replied, with
great placidity and good sense, "That Mr. Rickeybockey had behaved very
much like a gentleman, and that he was very much obliged to him; that he
[the squire] had no right to interfere in the matter, further than with
his advice; that Jemima was old enough to choose for herself, and that,
as the parson had implied, after all she might go farther and fare
worse,--indeed, the farther she went (that is, the longer she waited) the
worse she was likely to fare. I own, for my part," continued the squire,
"that though I like Rickeybockey very much, I never suspected that Jemima
was caught with his long face; but there's no accounting for tastes. My
Harry, indeed, was more shrewd, and gave me many a hint, for which I only
laughed at her. Still I ought to have thought it looked queer when
Mounseer took to disguising himself by leaving off his glasses, ha, ha!
I wonder what Harry will say; let's go and talk to her."
The parson, rejoiced at this easy way of taking the matter, hooked his
arm into the squire's, and they walked amicably towards the Hall. But on
coming first into the gardens they found Mrs. Hazeldean herself, clipping
dead leaves or fading flowers from her rose-trees. The squire stole
slyly behind her, and startled her in her turn by putting his arm round
her waist, and saluting her smooth cheek with one of his hearty kisses;
which, by the way, from some association of ideas, was a conjugal freedom
that he usually indulged whenever a wedding was going on in the village.
"Fie, William!" said Mrs. Hazeldean, coyly, and blushing as she saw the
parson. "Well, who's going to be married now?"
"Lord! was there ever such a woman?--she's guessed it!" cried the
squire, in great admiration. "Tell her all about it, Parson."
The parson obeyed.
Mrs. Hazeldean, as the reader may suppose, showed much less surprise than
her husband had done; but she took the news graciously, and made much the
same answer as that which had occurred to the squire, only with somewhat
more qualification and reserve. "Signor Riccabocca had behaved very
handsomely; and though a daughter of the Hazeldeans of Hazeldean might
expect a much better marriage in a worldly point of view, yet as the lady
in question had deferred finding one so long, it would be equally idle
and impertinent now to quarrel with her choice,--if indeed she should
decide on accepting Signor Riccabocca. As for fortune, that was a
consideration for the two contracting parties. Still, it ought, to be
pointed out to Miss Jemima that the interest of her fortune would afford
but a very small income. That Dr. Riccabocca was a widower was another
matter for deliberation; and it seemed rather suspicious that he should
have been hitherto so close upon all matters connected with his former
life. Certainly his manners were in his favour, and as long as he was
merely an acquaintance, and at most a tenant, no one had a right to
institute inquiries of a strictly private nature; but that, when he was
about to marry a Hazeldean of Hazeldean, it became the squire at least to
know a little more about him,--who and what he was. Why did he leave his
own country? English people went abroad to save: no foreigner would
choose England as a country in which to save money! She supposed that a
foreign doctor was no very great things; probably he had been a professor
in some Italian university. At all events, if the squire interfered at
all, it was on such points that he should request information."
"My clear madam," said the parson, "what you say is extremely just.
As to the causes which have induced our friend to expatriate himself,
I think we need not look far for them. He is evidently one of the many
Italian refugees whom political disturbances have driven to a land of
which it is the boast to receive all exiles of whatever party. For his
respectability of birth and family he certainly ought to obtain some
vouchers. And if that be the only objection, I trust we may soon
congratulate Miss Hazeldean on a marriage with a man who, though
certainly very poor, has borne privations without a murmur; has preferred
all hardship to debt; has scorned to attempt betraying the young lady
into any clandestine connection; who, in short, has shown himself so
upright and honest, that I hope my dear Mr. Hazeldean will forgive him
if he is only a doctor--probably of Laws--and not, as most foreigners
pretend to be, a marquis or a baron at least."
"As to that," cried the squire, "It is the best thing I know about
Rickeybockey that he don't attempt to humbug us by any such foreign
trumpery. Thank Heaven, the Hazeldeans of Hazeldean were never tuft-
hunters and title-mongers; and if I never ran after an English lord, I
should certainly be devilishly ashamed of a brother-in-law whom I was
forced to call markee or count! I should feel sure he was a courier,
or runaway valley-de-sham. Turn up your nose at a doctor, indeed,
Harry!--pshaw, good English style that! Doctor! my aunt married a Doctor
of Divinity--excellent man--wore a wig and was made a dean! So long as
Rickeybockey is not a doctor of physic, I don't care a button. If he's
that, indeed, it would be suspicious; because, you see, those foreign
doctors of physic are quacks, and tell fortunes, and go about on a stage
with a Merry-Andrew."
"Lord! Hazeldean, where on earth did you pick up that idea?" said Harry,
laughing.
"Pick it up!--why, I saw a fellow myself at the cattle fair last year--
when I was buying short-horns--with a red waistcoat and a cocked hat,
a little like the parson's shovel. He called himself Dr. Phoscophornio,
and sold pills. The Merry-Andrew was the funniest creature, in salmon-
coloured tights, turned head over heels, and said he came from Timbuctoo.
No, no: if Rickeybockey's a physic Doctor, we shall have Jemima in a pink
tinsel dress tramping about the country in a caravan!"
At this notion both the squire and his wife laughed so heartily that the
parson felt the thing was settled, and slipped away, with the intention
of making his report to Riccabocca.
CHAPTER XXVI.
It was with a slight disturbance of his ordinary suave and well-bred
equanimity that the Italian received the information that he need
apprehend no obstacle to his suit from the insular prejudices or the
worldly views of the lady's family. Not that he was mean and cowardly
enough to recoil from the near and unclouded prospect of that felicity
which he had left off his glasses to behold with unblinking, naked eyes,
--no, there his mind was made up; but he had met in life with much that
inclines a man towards misanthropy, and he was touched not only by the
interest in his welfare testified by a heretical priest, but by the
generosity with which he was admitted into a well-born and wealthy
family, despite his notorious poverty and his foreign descent. He
conceded the propriety of the only stipulation, which was conveyed to him
by the parson with all the delicacy that became one long professionally
habituated to deal with the subtler susceptibilities of mankind,--namely,
that, amongst Riccabocca's friends or kindred, some person should be
found whose report would confirm the persuasion of his respectability
entertained by his neighbours,--he assented, I say, to the propriety of
this condition; but it was not with alacrity and eagerness. His brow
became clouded. The parson hastened to assure him that the squire was
not a man /qui stupet in titulis/,--["Who was besotted with titles."]--
that he neither expected nor desired to find an origin and rank for his
brother-in-law above that decent mediocrity of condition to which it was
evident from Riccabocca's breeding and accomplishments he could easily
establish his claim. "And though," said he, smiling, "the squire is a
warm politician in his own country, and would never see his sister again,
I fear, if she married some convicted enemy of our happy constitution,
yet for foreign politics he does not care a straw; so that if, as I
suspect, your exile arises from some quarrel with your government,--
which, being foreign, he takes for granted must be insupportable,--he
would but consider you as he would a Saxon who fled from the iron hand of
William the Conqueror, or a Lancastrian expelled by the Yorkists in our
Wars of the Roses."
The Italian smiled. "Mr. Hazeldean shall be satisfied," said he, simply.
"I see, by the squire's newspaper, that an English gentleman who knew me
in my own country has just arrived in London. I will write to him for a
testimonial, at least to my probity and character. Probably he may be
known to you by name,--nay, he must be, for he was a distinguished
officer in the late war. I allude to Lord L'Estrange."
The parson started.
"You know Lord L'Estrange?--profligate, bad man, I fear."
"Profligate! bad!" exclaimed Riccabocca. "Well, calumnious as the world
is, I should never have thought that such expressions would be applied to
one who, though I knew him but little,--knew him chiefly by the service
he once rendered to me,--first taught me to love and revere the English
name!"
"He may be changed since--" the parson paused.
"Since when?" asked Riccabocca, with evident curiosity. Mr. Dale seemed
embarrassed. "Excuse me," said he, "it is many years ago; and in short
the opinion I then formed of the nobleman you named was based upon
circumstances which I cannot communicate."
The punctilious Italian bowed in silence, but he still looked as if he
should have liked to prosecute inquiry.
After a pause he said, "Whatever your impression respecting Lord
L'Estrange, there is nothing, I suppose, which would lead you to doubt
his honour, or reject his testimonial in my favour?"
"According to fashionable morality," said Mr. Dale, rather precisely,
"I know of nothing that could induce me to suppose that Lord L'Estrange
would not, in this instance, speak the truth. And he has unquestionably
a high reputation as a soldier, and a considerable position in the
world." Therewith the parson took his leave. A few days afterwards, Dr.
Riccabocca inclosed to the squire, in a blank envelope, a letter he had
received from Harley L'Estrange. It was evidently intended for the
squire's eye, and to serve as a voucher for the Italian's respectability;
but this object was fulfilled, not in the coarse form of a direct
testimonial, but with a tact and delicacy which seemed to show more than
the fine breeding to be expected from one in Lord L'Estrange's station.
It evinced that most exquisite of all politeness which comes from the
heart; a certain tone of affectionate respect (which even the homely
sense of the squire felt, intuitively, proved far more in favour of
Riccabocca than the most elaborate certificate of his qualities and
antecedents) pervaded the whole, and would have sufficed in itself to
remove all scruples from a mind much more suspicious and exacting than
that of the Squire of Hazeldean. But, to and behold! an obstacle now
occurred to the parson, of which he ought to have thought long before,--
namely, the Papistical religion of the Italian. Dr. Riccabocca was
professedly a Roman Catholic. He so little obtruded that fact--and,
indeed, had assented so readily to any animadversions upon the
superstition and priestcraft which, according to Protestants, are the
essential characteristics of Papistical communities--that it was not
till the hymeneal torch, which brings all faults to light, was fairly
illumined for the altar, that the remembrance of a faith so cast into the
shade burst upon the conscience of the parson. The first idea that then
occurred to him was the proper and professional one,--namely, the
conversion of Dr. Riccabocca. He hastened to his study, took down from
his shelves long neglected volumes of controversial divinity, armed
himself with an arsenal of authorities, arguments, and texts; then,
seizing the shovel-hat, posted off to the Casino.
CHAPTER XXVII.
The parson burst upon the philosopher like an avalanche! He was so full
of his subject that he could not let it out in prudent driblets. No, he
went souse upon the astounded Riccabocca--
"Tremendo
Jupiter ipse rueus tumultu."
The sage--shrinking deeper into his armchair, and drawing his dressing-
robe more closely round him--suffered the parson to talk for three
quarters of an hour, till indeed he had thoroughly proved his case; and,
like Brutus, "paused for a reply."
Then said Riccabocca mildly: "In much of what you have urged so ably, and
so suddenly, I am inclined to agree. But base is the man who formally
forswears the creed he has inherited from his fathers, and professed
since the cradle up to years of maturity, when the change presents itself
in the guise of a bribe; when, for such is human nature, he can hardly
distinguish or disentangle the appeal to his reason from the lure to his
interests,--here a text, and there a dowry!--here Protestantism, there
Jemima! Own, my friend, that the soberest casuist would see double
under the inebriating effects produced by so mixing his polemical
liquors. Appeal, my good Mr. Dale, from Philip drunken to Philip sober!
--from Riccabocca intoxicated with the assurance of your excellent lady,
that he is about to be 'the happiest of men,' to Riccabocca accustomed to
his happiness, and carrying it off with the seasoned equability of one
grown familiar with stimulants,--in a word, appeal from Riccabocca the
wooer to Riccabocca the spouse. I may be convertible, but conversion is
a slow progress; courtship should be a quick one,--ask Miss Jemima.
/Finalmente/, marry me first, and convert me afterwards!"
"You take this too jestingly," began the parson; "and I don't see why,
with your excellent understanding, truths so plain and obvious should not
strike you at once."
"Truths," interrupted Riccabocca, profoundly, "are the slowest growing
things in the world! It took fifteen hundred years from the date of the
Christian era to produce your own Luther, and then he flung his Bible at
Satan (I have seen the mark made by the book on the wall of his prison in
Germany), besides running off with a nun, which no Protestant clergyman
would think it proper and right to do nowadays." Then he added, with
seriousness, "Look you, my dear sir, I should lose my own esteem if I
were even to listen to you now with becoming attention,--now, I say,
when you hint that the creed I have professed may be in the way of my
advantage. If so, I must keep the creed and resign the advantage. But
if, as I trust not only as a Christian but a man of honour, you will
defer this discussion, I will promise to listen to you hereafter; and
though, to say truth, I believe that you will not convert me, I will
promise you faithfully never to interfere with my wife's religion."
"And any children you may have?"
"Children!" said Dr. Riccabocca, recoiling; "you are not contented with
firing your pocket-pistol right in my face! you must also pepper me all
over with small shot. Children! well, if they are girls, let them follow
the faith of their mother; and if boys, while in childhood, let them be
contented with learning to be Christians; and when they grow into men,
let them choose for themselves which is the best form for the practice of
the great principles which all sects have in common."
"But," began Mr. Dale again, pulling a large book from his pocket.
Dr. Riccabocca flung open the window, and jumped out of it.
It was the rapidest and most dastardly flight you could possibly
conceive; but it was a great compliment to the argumentative powers of
the parson, and he felt it as such. Nevertheless, Mr. Dale thought it
right to have a long conversation, both with the squire and Miss Jemima
herself, upon the subject which his intended convert had so ignominiously
escaped.
The squire, though a great foe to Popery, politically considered, had
also quite as great a hatred to renegades and apostates. And in his
heart he would have despised Riccabocca if he could have thrown off his
religion as easily as he had done his spectacles. Therefore he said
simply, "Well, it is certainly a great pity that Rickeybockey is not of
the Church of England; though, I take it, that would be unreasonable to
expect in a man born and bred under the nose of the Inquisition" (the
squire firmly believed that the Inquisition was in full force in all the
Italian States, with whips, racks, and thumbscrews; and, indeed, his
chief information of Italy was gathered from a perusal he had given in
early youth to "The One-Handed Monk"); "but I think he speaks very
fairly, on the whole, as to his wife and children. And the thing's gone
too far now to retract. It's all your fault for not thinking of it
before; and I've now just made up my mind as to the course to pursue
respecting the d---d stocks!"
As for Miss Jemima, the parson left her with a pious thanksgiving that
Riccabocca at least was a Christian, and not a Pagan, Mahometan, or Jew!
CHAPTER XXVIII.
There is that in a wedding which appeals to a universal sympathy. No
other event in the lives of their superiors in rank creates an equal
sensation amongst the humbler classes.
From the moment the news that Miss Jemima was to be married had spread
throughout the village, all the old affection for the squire and his
House burst forth the stronger for its temporary suspension. Who could
think of the stocks in such a season? The stocks were swept out of
fashion,--hunted from remembrance as completely as the question of Repeal
or the thought of Rebellion from the warm Irish heart, when the fair
young face of the Royal Wife beamed on the sister isle.
Again cordial courtesies were dropped at the thresholds by which the
squire passed to his own farm; again the sunburned brows uncovered--no
more with sullen ceremony--were smoothed into cheerful gladness at his
nod. Nay, the little ones began again to assemble at their ancient
rendezvous by the stocks, as if either familiarized with the phenomenon,
or convinced that, in the general sentiment of good-will, its powers of
evil were annulled.
The squire tasted once more the sweets of the only popularity which is
much worth having, and the loss of which a wise man would reasonably
deplore,--namely, the popularity which arises from a persuasion of our
goodness, and a reluctance to recall our faults. Like all blessings, the
more sensibly felt from previous interruption, the squire enjoyed this
restored popularity with an exhilarated sense of existence; his stout
heart beat more vigorously; his stalwart step trod more lightly; his
comely English face looked comelier and more English than ever,--you
would have been a merrier man for a week to have come within hearing of
his jovial laugh.
He felt grateful to Jemima and to Riccabocca as the special agents of
Providence in this general /integratio amoris/. To have looked at him,
you would suppose that it was the squire who was going to be married a
second time to his Harry!
One may well conceive that such would have been an inauspicious moment
for Parson Dale's theological scruples to have stopped that marriage,
chilled all the sunshine it diffused over the village, seen himself
surrounded again by long sulky visages,--I verily believe, though a
better friend of Church and State never stood on a hustings, that, rather
than court such a revulsion, the squire would have found jesuitical
excuses for the marriage if Riccabocca had been discovered to be the Pope
in disguise! As for the stocks, its fate was now irrevocably sealed. In
short, the marriage was concluded,--first privately, according to the
bridegrooms creed, by a Roman Catholic clergyman, who lived in a town
some miles off, and next publicly in the village church of Hazeldean.
It was the heartiest rural wedding! Village girls strewed flowers on the
way; a booth was placed amidst the prettiest scenery of the Park on the
margin of the lake--for there was to be a dance later in the day. Even
Mr. Stirn--no, Mr. Stirn was not present; so much happiness would have
been the death of him! And the Papisher too, who had conjured Lenny out
of the stocks nay, who had himself sat in the stocks for the very purpose
of bringing them into contempt,--the Papisher! he had a lief Miss Jemima
had married the devil! Indeed he was persuaded that, in point of fact,
it was all one and the same. Therefore Mr. Stirn had asked leave to go
and attend his uncle the pawnbroker, about to undergo a torturing
operation for the stone! Frank was there, summoned from Eton for the
occasion--having grown two inches taller since he left--for the one inch
of which nature was to be thanked, for the other a new pair of
resplendent Wellingtons. But the boy's joy was less apparent than that
of others. For Jemima, was a special favourite with him, as she would
have been with all boys,--for she was always kind and gentle, and made
him many pretty presents whenever she came from the watering-places; and
Frank knew that he should miss her sadly, and thought she had made a very
queer choice.
Captain Higginbotham had been invited; but to the astonishment of Jemima,
he had replied to the invitation by a letter to herself, marked "private
and confidential."
"She must have long known," said the letter, "of his devoted attachment
to her! motives of delicacy, arising from the narrowness of his income
and the magnanimity of his sentiments, had alone prevented his formal
proposals; but now that he was informed (he could scarcely believe his
senses or command his passions) that her relations wished to force her
into a BARBAROUS marriage with a foreigner of MOST FORBIDDING APPEARANCE,
and most abject circumstances, he lost not a moment in laying at her feet
his own hand and fortune. And he did this the more confidently, inasmuch
as he could not but be aware of Miss Jemima's SECRET feelings towards
him, while he was proud and happy to say, that his dear and distinguished
cousin, Mr. Sharpe Currie, had honoured him with a warmth of regard which
justified the most brilliant EXPECTATIONS,--likely to be soon realized,
as his eminent relative had contracted a very bad liver complaint in the
service of his country, and could not last long!"
In all the years they had known each other, Miss Jemima, strange as it
may appear, had never once suspected the captain of any other feelings
to her than those of a brother. To say that she was not gratified by
learning her mistake would be to say that she was more than woman.
Indeed, it must have been a source of no ignoble triumph to think that
she could prove her disinterested affection to her dear Riccabocca by a
prompt rejection of this more brilliant offer. She couched the
rejection, it is true, in the most soothing terms. But the captain
evidently considered himself ill used; he did not reply to the letter,
and did not come to the wedding.
To let the reader into a secret, never known to Miss Jemima, Captain
Higginbotham was much less influenced by Cupid than by Plutus in the
offer he had made. The captain was one of that class of gentlemen who
read their accounts by those corpse-lights, or will-o'-the-wisps, called
expectations. Ever since the squire's grandfather had left him--then in
short clothes--a legacy of L500, the captain had peopled the future with
expectations! He talked of his expectations as a man talks of shares in
a Tontine; they might fluctuate a little,--be now up and now down,--but
it was morally impossible, if he lived on, but that he should be a
millionnaire one of these days. Now, though Miss Jemima was a good
fifteen years younger than himself, yet she always stood for a good round
sum in the ghostly books of the captain. She was an expectation to the
full amount of her L4000, seeing that Frank was an only child, and it
would be carrying coals to Newcastle to leave him anything.
Rather than see so considerable a cipher suddenly sponged out of his
visionary ledger, rather than so much money should vanish clean out of
the family, Captain Higginbotham had taken what he conceived, if a
desperate, at least a certain, step for the preservation of his property.
If the golden horn could not be had without the heifer, why, he must take
the heifer into the bargain. He had never formed to himself an idea that
a heifer so gentle would toss and fling him over. The blow was stunning.
But no one compassionates the misfortunes of the covetous, though few
perhaps are in greater need of compassion. And leaving poor Captain
Higginbotham to retrieve his illusory fortunes as he best may among "the
expectations" which gathered round the form of Mr. Sharpe Currie, who was
the crossest old tyrant imaginable, and never allowed at his table any
dishes not compounded with rice, which played Old Nick with the captain's
constitutional functions, I return to the wedding at Hazeldean, just in
time to see the bridegroom--who looked singularly well on the occasion--
hand the bride (who, between sunshiny tears and affectionate smiles, was
really a very interesting and even a pretty bride, as brides go) into a
carriage which the squire had presented to them, and depart on the
orthodox nuptial excursion amidst the blessings of the assembled crowd.
It may be thought strange by the unreflective that these rural spectators
should so have approved and blessed the marriage of a Hazeldean of
Hazeldean with a poor, outlandish, long-haired foreigner; but besides
that Riccabocca, after all, had become one of the neighbourhood, and was
proverbially "a civil-spoken gentleman," it is generally noticeable that
on wedding occasions the bride so monopolizes interest, curiosity, and
admiration that the bridegroom himself goes for little or nothing. He is
merely the passive agent in the affair,--the unregarded cause of the
general satisfaction. It was not Riccabocca himself that they approved
and blessed,--it was the gentleman in the white waistcoat who had made
Miss Jemima Madam Rickeybockey!
Leaning on his wife's arm (for it was a habit of the squire to lean on
his wife's arm rather than she on his, when he was specially pleased; and
there was something touching in the sight of that strong sturdy frame
thus insensibly, in hours of happiness, seeking dependence on the frail
arm of woman),--leaning, I say, on his wife's arm, the squire, about the
hour of sunset, walked down to the booth by the lake.
All the parish-young and old, man, woman, and childwere assembled there,
and their faces seemed to bear one family likeness, in the common emotion
which animated all, as they turned to his frank, fatherly smile. Squire
Hazeldean stood at the head of the long table: he filled a horn with ale
from the brimming tankard beside him. Then he looked round, and lifted
his hand to request silence; and ascending the chair, rose in full view
of all. Every one felt that the squire was about to make a speech, and
the earnestness of the attention was proportioned to the rarity of the
event; for (though he was not unpractised in the oratory of the hustings)
only thrice before had the squire made what could fairly be called "a
speech" to the villagers of Hazeldean,--once on a kindred festive
occasion, when he had presented to them his bride; once in a contested
election for the shire, in which he took more than ordinary interest, and
was not quite so sober as he ought to have been; once in a time of great
agricultural distress, when in spite of reduction of rents, the farmers
had been compelled to discard a large number of their customary
labourers, and when the squire had said, "I have given up keeping the
hounds because I want to make a fine piece of water (that was the origin
of the lake), and to drain all the low lands round the Park. Let every
man who wants work come to me!" And that sad year the parish rates of
Hazeldean were not a penny the heavier.
Now, for the fourth time, the squire rose, and thus he spoke,--at his
right hand, Harry; at his left, Frank; at the bottom of the table, as
vice-president, Parson Dale, his little wife behind him, only obscurely
seen. She cried readily, and her handkerchief was already before her
eyes.
CHAPTER XXIX.
THE SQUIRE'S SPEECH.
"Friends and neighbours, I thank you kindly for coming round me this day,
and for showing so much interest in me and mine. My cousin was not born
amongst you as I was, but you have known her from a child. It is a
familiar face, and one that never frowned, which you will miss at your
cottage doors, as I and mine will miss it long in the old Hall--"
Here there was a sob from some of the women, and nothing was seen of Mrs.
Dale but the white handkerchief. The squire himself paused, and brushed
away a tear with the back of his hand. Then he resumed, with a sudden
change of voice that was electrical,--
"For we none of us prize a blessing till we have lost it! Now, friends
and neighbours, a little time ago, it seemed as if some ill-will had
crept into the village,--ill-will between you and me, neighbours!--why,
that is not like Hazeldean!"
The audience hung their heads! You never saw people look so thoroughly
ashamed of themselves. The squire proceeded,--
"I don't say it was all your fault; perhaps it was mine."
"Noa, noa, noa," burst forth in a general chorus.
"Nay, friends," continued the squire, humbly, and in one of those
illustrative aphorisms which, if less subtle than Riccabocca's, were more
within reach of the popular comprehension,--"nay, we are all human, and
every man has his hobby; sometimes he breaks in the hobby, and sometimes
the hobby, if it is very hard in the mouth, breaks in him. One man's
hobby has an ill habit of always stopping at the public house!
[Laughter.] Another man's hobby refuses to stir a peg beyond the door
where some buxom lass patted its neck the week before,--a hobby I rode
pretty often when I went courting my good wife here! [Much laughter and
applause.] Others have a lazy hobby that there's no getting on; others,
a runaway hobby that there's no stopping: but to cut the matter short, my
favourite hobby, as you well know, is always trotted out to any place on
my property which seems to want the eye and hand of the master. I hate,"
cried the squire, warming, "to see things neglected and decayed, and
going to the dogs! This land we live in is a good mother to us, and we
can't do too much for her. It is very true, neighbours, that I owe her a
good many acres, and ought to speak well of her; but what then? I live
amongst you, and what I take from the rent with one hand, I divide
amongst you with the other. [Low but assenting murmurs.] Now the more I
improve my property, the more mouths it feeds. My great-grandfather kept
a Field-book in which were entered not only the names of all the farmers
and the quantity of land they held, but the average number of the
labourers each employed. My grandfather and father followed his example:
I have done the same. I find, neighbours, that our rents have doubled
since my great-grandfather began to make the book. Ay,--but there are
more than four times the number of labourers employed on the estate, and
at much better wages too! Well, my men, that says a great deal in favour
of improving property, and not letting it go to the dogs. [Applause.]
And therefore, neighbours, you will kindly excuse my bobby: it carries
grist to your mill. [Reiterated applause.] Well, but you will say,
'What's the squire driving at?' Why this, my friends: There was only one
worn-out, dilapidated, tumble-down thing in the parish of Hazeldean, and
it became an eyesore to me; so I saddled my hobby, and rode at it. Oh,
ho! you know what I mean now! Yes, but, neighbours, you need not have
taken it so to heart. That was a scurvy trick of some of you to hang me
in effigy, as they call it."
"It warn't you," cried a voice in the crowd, "it war Nick Stirn."
The squire recognized the voice of the tinker; but though he now guessed
at the ringleader, on that day of general amnesty he had the prudence and
magnanimity not to say, "Stand forth, Sprott: thou art the man." Yet his
gallant English spirit would not suffer him to come off at the expense of
his servant.
"If it was Nick Stirn you meant," said he, gravely, "more shame for you.
It showed some pluck to hang the master; but to hang the poor servant,
who only thought to do his duty, careless of what ill-will it brought
upon him, was a shabby trick,--so little like the lads of Hazeldean, that
I suspect the man who taught it to them was never born in the parish.
But let bygones be bygones. One thing is clear,--you don't take kindly
to my new pair of stocks! The stocks has been a stumbling-block and a
grievance, and there's no denying that we went on very pleasantly without
it. I may also say that, in spite of it, we have been coming together
again lately. And I can't tell you what good it did me to see your
children playing again on the green, and your honest faces, in spite of
the stocks, and those diabolical tracts you've been reading lately,
lighted up at the thought that something pleasant was going on at the
Hall. Do you know, neighbours, you put me in mind of an old story which,
besides applying to the parish, all who are married, and all who intend
to marry, will do well to recollect. A worthy couple, named John and
Joan, had lived happily together many a long year, till one unlucky day
they bought a new bolster. Joan said the bolster was too hard, and John
that it was too soft. So, of course, they quarrelled. After sulking all
day, they agreed to put the bolster between them at night." (Roars of
laughter amongst the men; the women did not know which way to look,
except, indeed, Mrs. Hazeldean, who, though she was more than usually
rosy, maintained her innocent genial smile, as much as to say, "There is
no harm in the squire's jests.") The orator resumed, "After they had
thus lain apart for a little time, very silent and sullen, John sneezed.
'God bless you!' says Joan, over the bolster. 'Did you say God bless
me?' cries John, 'then here goes the bolster!'"
Prolonged laughter and tumultuous applause.
"Friends and neighbours," said the squire, when silence was restored, and
lifting the horn of ale, "I have the pleasure to inform you that I have.
ordered the stocks to be taken down, and made into a bench for the
chimney-nook of our old friend Gaffer Solomons yonder. But mind me,
lads, if ever you make the parish regret the loss of the stocks, and the
overseers come to me with long faces, and say, 'The stocks must be
rebuilded,' why--" Here from all the youth of the village rose so
deprecating a clamour, that the squire would have been the most burgling
orator in the world, if he said a word further on the subject. He
elevated the horn over his head--"Why, that's my old Hazeldean again!
Health and long life to you all!"
The tinker had sneaked out of the assembly, and did not show his face in
the village for the next six months. And as to those poisonous tracts,
in spite of their salubrious labels, "The Poor Man's Friend," or "The
Rights of Labour," you could no more have found one of them lurking in
the drawers of the kitchen dressers in Hazeldean than you would have
found the deadly nightshade on the flower-stands in the drawing-room of
the Hall. As for the revolutionary beerhouse, there was no need to apply
to the magistrates to shut it up,--it shut itself up before the week was
out.
O young head of the great House of Hapsburg, what a Hazeldean you might
have made of Hungary! What a "Moriamur pro rege nostro!" would have rung
in your infant reign,--if you had made such a speech as the squire's!