A VISIT TO HAZELDEN.
THEY all looked toward the Malory seat on taking their places in their
own; but that retreat was deserted now, and remained so, as Tom Sedley
at very brief intervals ascertained, throughout the afternoon service;
after which, with a secret sense of disappointment, honest Sedley
escorted the Etherage "girls" up the steep road that leads through the
wooded glen of Hazelden to the hospitable house of old Vane Etherage.
Everyone in that part of the world knows that generous, pompous, and
boisterous old gentleman. You could no more visit Cardyllian without
seeing Vane Etherage, than you could visit Naples without seeing
Vesuvius. He is a fine portly bust, but little more. In his waking hours
he lives alternately in his Bath chair and in the great leathern easy
chair in his study. He manages to shuffle very slowly, leaning upon his
servant on one side, and propped on his crutch at the other, across the
hall of the Cardyllian Club, which boasts about six-and-thirty members,
besides visitors, and into the billiard-room, where he takes possession
of the chair by the fire, and enjoys the agreeable conversation of
Captain Shrapnell, hears all about the new arrivals, who they are, what
screws are loose, and where, and generally all the gossip and scandal of
the little commonwealth of Cardyllian.
Vane Etherage had served in the navy, and, I believe, reached the rank
of captain. In Cardyllian he was humorously styled "the Admiral," when
people spoke _of_ him, not _to_ him; for old Etherage was fiery and
consequential, and a practical joke which commenced in a note from an
imaginary secretary, announcing that "The Badger Hunt" would meet at
Hazelden House on a certain day, and inducing hospitable preparations,
for the entertainment of those nebulous sportsmen, was like to have had
a sanguinary ending. It was well remembered that when young Sniggers of
Sligh Farm apologised on that occasion, old Etherage had arranged with
Captain Shrapnell, who was to have been his second, that the Admiral was
to fight in his Bath chair--an evidence of resource and resolution which
was not lost upon his numerous friends.
"How do you do, Sedley? Very glad to see you, Tom--very glad indeed,
sir. You'll come to-morrow and dine; you must, indeed--and next day. You
know our Welsh mutton--you do--you know it well; it's better here than
in any other place in the world--in the whole world, sir--the Hazelden
mutton, and, egad, you'll come here--you shall, sir--and dine here with
us to-morrow; mind, you shall."
The Admiral wore a fez, from beneath which his gray hair bushed out
rather wildly, and he was smoking through an enormous pipe as Tom Sedley
entered his study, accompanied by the ladies.
"He says he's to go away to-morrow," said Miss Charity, with an
upbraiding look at Sedley.
"Pooh--nonsense--not _he_--not _you_, Tom--not a bit, sir. We won't let
you. Girls, we won't _allow_ him to go. Eh?--No--no--you dine here
to-morrow, _and_ next day."
"You're very kind, sir; but I promised, if I am still in Cardyllian
to-morrow, to run over to Ware, and dine with Verney."
"_What_ Verney?"
"Cleve Verney."
"D---- him."
"Oh, papa!" exclaimed Miss Charity, grimly.
"Boh!--I _hate_ him--I hate _all_ the Verneys," bawled old Vane
Etherage, as if hating were a duty and a generosity.
"Oh--no, papa--you _know_ you don't--that would be _extremely wicked_,"
said Miss Charity, with that severe superiority with which she governed
the Admiral.
"Begad, you're always telling me I'm wicked--and we know where the
_wicked_ go--that's catechism, I believe--so I'd like to know where's
the difference between that and d--ing a fellow?" exclaimed the portly
bust, and blew off his wrath with a testy laugh.
"I think we had better put off our bonnets and coats?--The language is
becoming rather strong--and the tobacco," said Miss Charity, with dry
dignity, to her sister, leaving the study as she did so.
"I thought it might be that _Kiffyn_ Verney--the uncle
fellow--Honourable Kiffyn Verney--_dis_-honourable, _I_ call him--that
old dog, sir, he's no better than a cheat--and I'd be glad of an
opportunity to tell him so to his face, sir--you have no _idea_, sir,
how he has behaved to me!"
"He has the character of being a very honourable, sir--I'm sorry you
think so differently," said honest Tom Sedley, who always stood up for
his friends, and their kindred--"and Cleve, I've known from my
childhood, and I assure you, sir, a franker or more generous fellow I
don't suppose there is on earth."
"I know nothing about the jackanape, except that he's nephew of his
roguish uncle," said the florid old gentleman with the short high nose
and double chin. "He wants to take up Llanderis, and he _shan't have_
it. He's under covenant to renew the lease, and the devil of it is, that
between me and Wynne Williams we have put the lease astray--and I can't
find it--nor _he_ either--but it will turn up--I don't care two-pence
about it--but no one shall humbug me--I won't be gammoned, sir, by all
the Verneys in England. _Stuff_--sir!"
Then the conversation took a happier turn. The weather was sometimes a
little squally with the Admiral--but not often--genial and
boisterous--on the whole sunny and tolerably serene--and though he
sometimes threatened high and swore at his servants, they knew it did
not mean a great deal, and liked him.
People who lived all the year round in Cardyllian, which from November
to May, every year, is a solitude, fall into those odd ways and little
self-indulgences which gradually metamorphose men of the world into
humorists and grotesques. Given a sparse population, and difficult
intercommunication, which in effect constitute solitude, and you have
the conditions of barbarism. Thus it was that Vane Etherage had grown
uncouth to a degree that excited the amazement of old contemporaries who
happened, from time to time, to look in upon his invalided retirement at
Cardyllian.
The ladies and Tom Sedley, in the drawing-room, talked very merrily at
tea, while old Vane Etherage, in his study, with the door between the
rooms wide open, amused himself with a nautical volume and his
terrestrial globe.
"So," said Miss Agnes, "you admired the Malory young lady--Margaret, our
maid says, she is called--very much to-day?"
"I did, by Jove. Didn't you?" said Tom, well pleased to return to the
subject.
"Yes," said Agnes, looking down at her spoon--"Yes, I admired her; that
is, her features are very regular; she's what I call extremely handsome;
but there are prettier girls."
"_Here_ do you mean?"
"Yes--here."
"And who are they?"
"Well, I don't say here _now_; but I do think those Miss Dartmores, for
instance, who were here last year, and who used to wear those blue
dresses, were decidedly prettier. The heroine of Malory, whom you have
fallen in love with, seems to me to want animation."
"Why, she couldn't show a great deal of animation over the Litany," said
Tom.
"I did not see her then; I happened to be praying myself during the
Litany," said Miss Agnes, recollecting herself.
"It's more than _I_ was," said Tom.
"You ought not to talk that way, Mr. Sedley. It isn't _nice_. I wonder
you can," said Miss Charity.
"I would not say it, of course, to strangers," said Tom. "But then, I'm
so intimate here--and it's really true, that is, I mean, it was to-day."
"I wonder what you go to church for," said Miss Charity.
"Well, of course, you know, it's to pray; but I look at the bonnets a
little, also; every fellow does. By Jove, if they'd only say truth, I'm
certain the clergymen peep--I often saw them. There's that little
fellow, the Rev. Richard Pritchard, the curate, you know--I'd swear I've
seen that fellow watching you, Agnes, through the chink in the
reading-desk door, while the sermon was going on; and I venture to say
he did not hear a word of it."
"You ought to tell the rector, if you really saw that," said Miss
Charity, severely.
"Pray do no such thing," entreated Agnes; "a pleasant situation for me!"
"Certainly, if Mr. Pritchard behaves himself as you describe," said Miss
Charity; "but I've been for hours shut up in the same room with
him--sometimes here, and sometimes at the school--about the children,
and the widows' fund, and the parish charities, and I never observed the
slightest levity; but you are joking, I'm sure."
"I'm _not_, upon my honour. I don't say it's the least harm. I don't see
how he can help it; I know if _I_ were up in the air--in a reading-desk,
with a good chink in the door, where I thought no one could see me, and
old Doctor Splayfoot preaching his pet sermon over my head--_wouldn't_ I
peep?--that's all."
"Well, I really think, if he makes a habit of it, I _ought_ to speak to
Doctor Splayfoot. I think it's my _duty_," said Miss Charity, sitting up
very stiffly, as she did when she spoke of duty; and when once the
notion of a special duty got into her head, her inflexibility, as Tom
Sedley and her sister Agnes knew, was terrifying.
"For mercy's sake, my dear Charry, do think of _me_! If you tell Doctor
Splayfoot he'll be certain to tell it all to Wynne Williams and Doctor
Lyster, and Price Apjohn, and every creature in Cardyllian will know
everything about it, and a great deal more, before two hours; and once
for all, if that ridiculous story is set afloat, into the church door
I'll never set my foot again."
Miss Agnes' pretty face had flushed crimson, and her lip quivered with
distress.
"How _can_ you be such a fool, Aggie! I'll only say it was at _our
seat_--and no one can possibly tell which it was at--you or me; and I'll
certainly tell Dr. Splayfoot that Mr. Sedley saw it."
"And I'll tell the Doctor," said Sedley, who enjoyed the debate
immensely, "that I neither saw nor said any such thing."
"I don't think, Thomas Sedley, you'd do anything so excessively wicked!"
exclaimed Miss Charity, a little fiercely.
"Try me," said Tom, with an exulting little laugh.
"Every _gentleman_ tells the truth," thrust she.
"Except where it makes mischief," parried Tom, with doubtful morality
and another mischievous laugh.
"Well, I suppose I had better say nothing of _Christianity_. But what
_you_ do is your own affair! _my_ duty I'll perform. I shall think it
over; and I shan't be ruffled by any folly intended to annoy me." Miss
Charity's thin brown cheeks had flushed to a sort of madder crimson.
Excepting these flashes of irritability, I can't charge her with many
human weaknesses. "I'll not say _who_ he looked at--I've promised that;
but unless I change my present opinion, Dr. Splayfoot shall hear the
whole thing to-morrow. I think in a clergyman any such conduct in church
is _unpardonable_. The effect on other people is positively ruinous.
_You_, for instance, would not have talked about such things in the
light you do, if you had not been encouraged in it, by seeing a
clergyman conducting himself so."
"Mind, you've _promised_ poor little Agnes, you'll not bring her into
the business, no matter what _I_ do," said Sedley.
"I have, certainly."
"Well, I'll stay in Cardyllian to-morrow, and I'll see Doctor
Splayfoot." Sedley was buttoning his coat and pulling on his gloves,
with a wicked smile on his good-humoured face. "And I'll tell him that
you think the curate ogles you through a hole in the reading-desk. That
_you_ like _him_, and _he's_ very much gone about _you_; and that you wish
the affair brought to a point; and that you're going to appeal to
him--Doctor Splayfoot--to use his authority either to affect _that_, or
to stop the ogling. I will, upon my honour!"
"And I shall speak to papa to prevent it," said Miss Charity, who was
fierce and literal.
"And that will bring about a duel, and he'll be shot in his Bath chair,
and I shall be hanged"--old Vane Etherage, with his spectacles on, was
plodding away serenely at the little table by the fire, over his _Naval
Chronicle_--"and Pritchard will be deprived of his curacy, and you'll go
mad, and Agnes will drown herself like Ophelia, and a nice little
tragedy you'll have brought about. Good night; I'll not disturb him"--he
glanced toward the unconscious Admiral--"I'll see you both to-morrow,
after I've spoken to the Rector." He kissed his hand, and was gone.