LITTLE AND GREAT PEOPLE
If ever a wise man departed from wisdom, or a sober place from sobriety,
the man was John Prater, and the place Springhaven, towards the middle
of June, 1804. There had been some sharp rumours of great things before;
but the best people, having been misled so often, shook their heads
without produce of their contents; until Captain Stubbard came out in
his shirt sleeves one bright summer morning at half past nine, with a
large printed paper in one hand and a slop basin full of hot paste in
the other. His second boy, George, in the absence of Bob (who was now
drawing rations at Woolwich), followed, with a green baize apron on, and
carrying a hearth-brush tied round with a string to keep the hair stiff.
“Lay it on thick on the shutter, my son. Never mind about any other
notices, except the one about young men wanted. No hurry; keep your
elbow up; only don't dab my breeches, nor the shirt you had on Sunday.”
By this time there were half a dozen people waiting; for this shutter of
Widow Shanks was now accepted as the central board and official panel
of all public business and authorised intelligence. Not only because all
Royal Proclamations, Offers of reward, and Issues of menace were
posted on that shutter and the one beyond the window (which served as
a postscript and glossary to it), but also inasmuch as the kind-hearted
Captain, beginning now to understand the natives--which was not to be
done pugnaciously, as he had first attempted it, neither by any show of
interest in them (than which they detested nothing more), but by taking
them coolly, as they took themselves, and gradually sliding, without any
thought about it, into the wholesome contagion of their minds, and the
divine gift of taking things easily--our Captain Stubbard may be fairly
now declared to have made himself almost as good as a native, by the way
in which he ministered to their content.
For nothing delighted them more than to hear of great wonders going on
in other places--of battles, plague, pestilence, famine, and fire; of
people whose wives ran away with other people, or highwaymen stopping
the coach of a bishop. Being full of good-nature, they enjoyed these
things, because of the fine sympathies called out to their own credit,
and the sense of pious gratitude aroused towards Heaven, that they
never permitted such things among them. Perceiving this genial desire of
theirs, the stout Captain of the Foxhill battery was kind enough to meet
it with worthy subjects. Receiving officially a London newspaper almost
every other day, as soon as it had trodden the round of his friends,
his regular practice was to cut out all the pieces of lofty public
interest--the first-rate murders, the exploits of highwaymen, the
episodes of high life, the gallant executions, the embezzlements of
demagogues, in a word, whatever quiet people find a fond delight
in ruminating--and these he pasted (sometimes upside down) upon his
shutter. Springhaven had a good deal of education, and enjoyed most of
all what was hardest to read.
But this great piece of news, that should smother all the rest, seemed
now to take a terrible time in coming. All the gaffers were waiting
who had waited to see the result of Mr. Cheeseman's suicide, and their
patience was less on this occasion. At length the great Captain unfolded
his broad sheet, but even then held it upside down for a minute. It was
below their dignity to do anything but grunt, put their specs on their
noses, and lean chin upon staff. They deserved to be rewarded, and so
they were.
For this grand poster, which overlapped the shutters, was a Royal
Proclamation, all printed in red ink, announcing that His Majesty King
George the 3rd would on the 25th of June then ensuing hold a grand
review upon Shotbury Down of all the Volunteer forces and Reserve,
mounted, footmen, or artillery, of the four counties forming the
Southeast Division, to wit, Surrey, Kent, Sussex, and Hants. Certain
regiments of the line would be appointed to act with them; and officers
in command were ordered to report at once, &c., &c. God save the King.
If Shotbury Down had been ten miles off, Springhaven would have thought
very little of the matter; for no one would walk ten miles inland to
see all the sojers that ever were shot, or even the “King and Queen, and
their fifteen little ones.” Most of the little ones were very large now;
but the village had seen them in a travelling show, and expected them to
continue like it. But Shotbury Down was only three miles inland; and the
people (who thought nothing of twenty miles along the coast) resolved to
face a league of perils of the solid earth, because if they only turned
round upon their trudge, they could see where they lived from every
corner of the road. They always did all things with one accord; the
fishing fleet all should stand still on the sand, and the houses should
have to keep house for themselves. That is to say, perhaps, all except
one.
“Do as you like,” said Mrs. Tugwell to her husband; “nothing as you
do makes much differ to me now. If you feel you can be happy with them
thousands of young men, and me without one left fit to lift a big crock,
go your way, Zeb; but you don't catch me going, with the tears coming
into my eyes every time I see a young man to remind me of Dan--though
there won't be one there fit to stand at his side. And him perhaps
fighting against his own King now!”
“Whatever hath coom to Dannel is all along of your own fault, I tell
'e.” Captain Tugwell had scarcely enjoyed a long pipe since the night
when he discharged his paternal duty, with so much vigour, and such sad
results. Not that he felt any qualms of conscience, though his heart was
sometimes heavy, but because his good wife was a good wife no longer, in
the important sphere of the pan, pot, and kettle, or even in listening
to his adventures with the proper exclamations in the proper places.
And not only she, but all his children, from Timothy down to Solomon,
instead of a pleasant chatter around him, and little attentions, and a
smile to catch a smile, seemed now to shrink from him, and hold whispers
in a corner, and watch him with timid eyes, and wonder how soon their
own time would come to be lashed and turned away. And as for the women,
whether up or down the road--but as he would not admit, even to himself,
that he cared twopence what they thought, it is useless to give voice to
their opinions, which they did quite sufficiently. Zebedee Tugwell felt
sure that he had done the right thing, and therefore admired himself,
but would have enjoyed himself more if he had done the wrong one.
“What fault of mine, or of his, poor lamb?” Mrs. Tugwell asked, with
some irony. She knew that her husband could never dare to go to see the
King without her--for no married man in the place would venture to look
at him twice if he did such a thing--and she had made up her own mind
to go from the first; but still, he should humble himself before she did
it. “Was it I as colted him? Or was it him as gashed himself, like the
prophets of Baal, when 'a was gone hunting?”
“No; but you cockered him up, the same as was done to they, by the
wicked king, and his wife--the worst woman as ever lived. If they hadn't
gashed theirselves, I reckon, the true man of God would 'a done it for
them, the same as he cut their throats into the brook Kishon. Solomon
was the wisest man as ever lived, and Job the most patient--the same as
I be--and Elijah, the Tishbite, the most justest.”
“You better finish up with all the Psalms of David, and the Holy
Children, and the Burial Service. No more call for Parson Twemlow, or
the new Churchwarden come in place of Cheeseman, because 'a tried to
hang his self. Zebedee Tugwell in the pulpit! Zebedee, come round
with the plate! Parson Tugwell, if you please, a-reading out the ten
commandments! But 'un ought to leave out the sixth, for fear of spoiling
's own dinner afterwards; and the seventh, if 'a hopes to go to see King
George the third, with another man's woman to his elbow!”
“When you begins to go on like that,” Captain Tugwell replied, with some
dignity, “the only thing as a quiet man can do is to go out of houze,
and have a half-pint of small ale.” He put his hat on his head and went
to do it.
Notwithstanding all this and much more, when the great day came for
the Grand Review, very few people saw more of the King, or entered more
kindly into all his thoughts--or rather the thoughts that they made him
think--than Zebedee Tugwell and his wife Kezia. The place being so near
home, and the smoke of their own chimneys and masts of their smack as
good as in sight--if you knew where to look--it was natural for them to
regard the King as a stranger requiring to be taught about their place.
This sense of proprietary right is strong in dogs and birds and cows and
rabbits, and everything that acts by nature's laws. When a dog sits in
front of his kennel, fast chained, every stranger dog that comes in at
the gate confesses that the premises are his, and all the treasures they
contain; and if he hunts about--which he is like enough to do, unless
full of self-respect and fresh victuals--for any bones invested in the
earth to ripen, by the vested owner, he does it with a low tail and many
pricks of conscience, perhaps hoping in his heart that he may discover
nothing to tempt him into breach of self-respect. But now men are
ordered, in this matter, to be of lower principle than their dogs.
King George the third, who hated pomp and show, and had in his blood the
old German sense of patriarchal kingship, would have enjoyed a good talk
with Zebedee and his wife Kezia, if he had met them on the downs alone;
but, alas, he was surrounded with great people, and obliged to restrict
himself to the upper order, with whom he had less sympathy. Zebedee,
perceiving this, made all allowance for him, and bought a new Sunday hat
the very next day, for fear of wearing out the one he had taken off to
His Majesty, when His Majesty looked at him, and Her Majesty as well,
and they manifestly said to one another, what a very fine subject they
had found. Such was loyalty--aye, and royalty--in those times that we
despise.
But larger events demand our heed. There were forty thousand gallant
fellows, from the age of fifteen upwards, doing their best to look like
soldiers, and some almost succeeding. True it is that their legs and
arms were not all of one pattern, nor their hats put on their heads
alike--any more than the heads on their shoulders were--neither did they
swing together, as they would have done to a good swathe of grass; but
for all that, and making due allowance for the necessity they were under
of staring incessantly at the King, any man who understood them
would have praised them wonderfully. And they went about in such
wide formation, and occupied so much of their native land, that the
best-drilled regiment Napoleon possessed would have looked quite small
among them.
“They understand furze,” said a fine young officer of the staff, who
had ridden up to Admiral Darling's carriage and saluted three ladies who
kept watch there. “I doubt whether many of the Regular forces would
have got through that brake half so well; certainly not without double
gaiters. If the French ever land, we must endeavour to draw them into
furzy ground, and then set the Volunteers at them. No Frenchman can do
much with prickles in his legs.”
Lady Scudamore smiled, for she was thinking of her son, who would have
jumped over any furze-bush there--and the fir-trees too, according to
her conviction; Dolly also showed her very beautiful teeth; but Faith
looked at him gratefully.
“It is very kind of you, Lord Dashville, to say the best of us that you
can find to say. But I fear that you are laughing to yourself. You know
how well they mean; but you think they cannot do much.”
“No, that is not what I think at all. So far as I can judge, which is
not much, I believe that they would be of the greatest service, if the
Country should unfortunately need them. Man for man, they are as brave
as trained troops, and many of them can shoot better. I don't mean to
say that they are fit to meet a French army in the open; but for acting
on their flanks, or rear, or in a wooded country--However, I have no
right to venture an opinion, having never seen active service.”
Miss Darling looked at him with some surprise, and much approval of
his modesty. So strongly did most of the young officers who came to her
father's house lay down the law, and criticise even Napoleon's tactics.
“How beautiful Springhaven must be looking now!” he said, after Dolly
had offered her opinion, which she seldom long withheld. “The cottages
must be quite covered with roses, whenever they are not too near the
sea; and the trees at their best, full of leaves and blossoms, by the
side of the brook that feeds them. All the rest of the coast is so hard
and barren, and covered with chalk instead of grass, and the shore so
straight and staring. But I have never been there at this time of year.
How much you must enjoy it! Surely we ought to be able to see it, from
this high ground somewhere.”
“Yes, if you will ride to that shattered tree,” said Faith, “you will
have a very fine view of all the valley. You can see round the corner
of Foxhill there, which shuts out most of it just here. I think you have
met our Captain Stubbard.”
“Ah, I must not go now; I may be wanted at any moment”--Lord Dashville
had very fine taste, but it was not the inanimate beauties of
Springhaven that he cared a dash for--“and I fear that I could never see
the roses there. I think there is nothing in all nature to compare with
a rose--except one thing.”
Faith had a lovely moss-rose in her hat--a rose just peeping through
its lattice at mankind, before it should open and blush at them--and she
knew what it was that he admired more than the sweetest rose that
ever gemmed itself with dew. Lord Dashville had loved her, as she was
frightened to remember, for more than a year, because he could not help
it, being a young man of great common-sense, as well as fine taste, and
some knowledge of the world. “He knows to which side his bread will be
buttered,” Mr. Swipes had remarked, as a keen observer. “If 'a can only
get Miss Faith, his bread 'll be buttered to both sides for life--his
self to one side, and her to do the tother. The same as I told Mother
Cloam--a man that knoweth his duty to head gardeners, as his noble
lordship doth, the same know the differ atwixt Miss Faith--as fine a
young 'ooman as ever looked into a pink--and that blow-away froth of a
thing, Miss Dolly.”
This fine young woman, to use the words of Mr. Swipes, coloured softly,
at his noble lordship's gaze, to the tint of the rose-bud in her hat;
and then spoke coldly to countervail her blush.
“There is evidently something to be done directly. All the people are
moving towards the middle of the down. We must not be so selfish as to
keep you here, Lord Dashville.”
“Why, don't you see what it is?” exclaimed Miss Dolly, hotly resenting
the part of second fiddle; “they are going to have the grand march-past.
These affairs always conclude with that. And we are in the worst part of
the whole down for seeing it. Lord Dashville will tell us where we ought
to go.”
“You had better not attempt to move now,” he answered, smiling as he
always smiled at Dolly, as if she were a charming but impatient child;
“you might cause some confusion, and perhaps see nothing. And now I
must discharge my commission, which I am quite ashamed of having left
so long. His Majesty hopes, when the march-past is over, to receive a
march-up of fair ladies. He has a most wonderful memory, as you know,
and his nature is the kindest of the kind. As soon as he heard that Lady
Scudamore was here, and Admiral Darling's daughters with her, he said:
'Bring them all to me, every one of them; young Scudamore has done good
work, good work. And I want to congratulate his mother about him. And
Darling's daughters, I must see them. Why, we owe the security of the
coast to him.' And so, if you please, ladies, be quite ready, and allow
me the honour of conducting you.”
With a low bow, he set off about his business, leaving the ladies in a
state of sweet disturbance. Blyth Scudamore's mother wept a little, for
ancient troubles and present pleasure. Lord Dashville could not repeat
before her all that the blunt old King had said: “Monstrous ill-treated
woman, shameful, left without a penny, after all her poor husband did
for me and the children! Not my fault a bit--fault of the Whigs--always
stingy--said he made away with himself--bad example--don't believe a
word of it; very cheerful man. Blown by now, at any rate--must see
what can be done for her--obliged to go for governess--disgrace to the
Crown!”
Faith, with her quiet self-respect, and the largeness learned from
sorrow, was almost capable of not weeping that she had left at home her
apple-green Poland mantlet and jockey bonnet of lilac satin checked with
maroon. But Dolly had no such weight of by-gone sorrow to balance
her present woe, and the things she had left at home were infinitely
brighter than that dowdy Faith's.
“Is there time to drive back? Is there time to drive home? The King
knows father, and he will be astonished to see a pair of frumps, and
he won't understand one bit about the dust, or the sun that takes the
colour out. He will think we have got all our best things on. Oh,
Lady Scudamore, how could you do it? You told us to put on quite plain
things, because of the dust, and the sun, and all that; and it might
come to rain, you said--as if it was likely, when the King was on the
hill! And with all your experience of the King and Queen, that you told
us about last evening, you must have known that they would send for us.
Gregory, how long would it take you to go home, at full gallop, allow us
half an hour in the house, and be back here again, when all these people
are gone by?”
“Well, miss, there be a steepish bit of road, and a many ockard
cornders; I should say 'a might do it in two hours and a half, with a
fresh pair of nags put in while you ladies be a-cleaning of yourselves,
miss. Leastways, if Hadmiral not object.”
“Hadmiral, as you call him, would have nothing to do with it”--Dolly was
always free-spoken with the servants, which made her very popular with
some of them--“he has heavier duty than he can discharge. But two hours
and a half is hopeless; we must even go as we are.”
Coachman Gregory smiled in his sleeve. He knew that the Admiral had that
day a duty far beyond his powers--to bring up his Sea-Fencibles to see
the King--upon which they had insisted--and then to fetch them all
back again, and send them on board of their several craft in a state of
strict sobriety. And Gregory meant to bear a hand, and lift it pretty
frequently towards the most loyal part of man, in the large festivities
of that night. He smacked his lips at the thought of this, and gave a
little flick to his horses.
After a long time, long enough for two fair drives to Springhaven and
back, and when even the youngest were growing weary of glare, and dust,
and clank, and din, and blare, and roar, and screeching music, Lord
Dashville rode up through a cloud of roving chalk, and after a little
talk with the ladies, ordered the coachman to follow him. Then stopping
the carriage at a proper distance, he led the three ladies towards the
King, who was thoroughly tired, and had forgotten all about them. His
Majesty's sole desire was to get into his carriage and go to sleep; for
he was threescore years and six of age, and his health not such as it
used to be. Ever since twelve o'clock he had been sitting in a box made
of feather-edged boards, which the newspapers called a pavilion, having
two little curtains (both of which stuck fast) for his only defence
against sun, noise, and dust. Moreover, his seat was a board full of
knots, with a strip of thin velvet thrown over it; and Her Majesty
sitting towards the other end (that the public might see between them),
and weighing more than he did, every time she jumped up, he went down,
and every time she plumped down, he went up. But he never complained,
and only slowly got tired. “Thank God!” he said, gently, “it's all over
now. My dear, you must be monstrous tired; and scarcely a bit to eat all
day. But I locked some in the seat-box this morning--no trusting anybody
but oneself. Let us get into the coach and have at them.” “Ja, ja,
meinherr,” said the Queen.
“If it please your Majesties”--a clear voice entered between the
bonnet-hoods of the curtains--“here are the ladies whose attendance I
was ordered to require.”
“Ladies!--what ladies?” asked King George, rubbing his eyes, and
yawning. “Oh yes, to be sure! I mustn't get up so early to-morrow. Won't
take a minute, my dear. Let them come. Not much time to spare.”
But as soon as he saw Lady Scudamore, the King's good-nature overcame
the weariness of the moment. He took her kindly by the hand, and looked
at her face, which bore the mark of many heavy trials; and she, who had
often seen him when the world was bright before her, could not smother
one low sob, as she thought of all that had been since.
“Don't cry, don't cry, my dear,” said the King, with his kind heart
showing in his eyes; “we must bow to the will of the Lord, who gives sad
trials to every one of us. We must think of the good, and not the evil.
Bless me, keep your spirits up. Your son is doing very well indeed,
very well indeed, from all I hear. Good chip of the old block, very good
chip. Will cure my grandchildren, as soon as they want it; and nobody is
ever in good health now.”
“No, your Majesty, if you please, my son is in the Royal Navy, fighting
for his Country and his King. And he has already captured--”
“Three French frigates. To be sure, I know. Better than curing three
hundred people. Fine young officer--very fine young officer. Must come
to see me when he gets older. There, you are laughing! That's as it
should be. Goodbye, young ladies. Forty miles to go tonight, and very
rough roads--very rough indeed. Monstrous pretty girls! Uncommon glad
that George wasn't here to see them. Better stay in the country--too
good for London. Must be off; sha'n't have a bit o' sleep to-night,
because of sleeping the whole way there, and then sure to be late in
the morning, not a bit of breakfast till eight o'clock, and all the day
thrown upside down! Darlings, Darlings--the right name for them! But
they mustn't come to London. No, no, no. Too much wickedness there
already. Very glad George wasn't here to-day!”
His Majesty was talking, as he always did, with the firm conviction
that his words intended for the public ear would reach it, while
those addressed, without change of tone, to himself, would be strictly
private. But instead of offending any one, this on the whole gave great
satisfaction, and impressed nine people out of ten with a strong and
special regard for him, because almost every one supposed himself to be
admitted at first sight to the inner confidence of the King. And to what
could he attribute this? He would do his own merits great demerit unless
he attributed it to them, and to the King an unusual share of sagacity
in perceiving them.