|THE day after Christmas Day was friendly to the fox; in other words, a
hard frost; and since Miss Rose Aynton and Letty had declined to play
at billiards with Walter until the afternoon--for it is vicious (in the
country) to indulge in that pastime in the morning, as it is to play at
cards before candle-light--that young gentleman, being no reader, felt
the time rather heavy on his hands, and strolled into the village to
get rid of it. The snow had ceased to fall, but not before, like a good
housekeeper when the family has left town, it had covered up everything
very carefully, except the tops of the chimneys, through which the
tidings of good-cheer rolled forth in dusky columns from every cottage;
for there were no abject poor in Mirk, thanks to my Lady, or any that
lacked victuals at that joyous season.
The Lisgards had ever been a free-handed race, as generous out of doors
as hospitable within; and their influence for good had been felt for
generations throughout the village. I do not say that they expected no
repayment; their rule was paternal, and they looked for something like
filial obedience in return. If a villager had passed any member of that
august family without pulling his hair, as though it were a bell-handle,
in token of respect, it would have been considered a sign of revolution,
and they would have congratulated themselves that the yeomanry were in
a state of efficiency. The feudal system was still in vogue at Mirk, but
tempered not only by excellent beef-tea in sickness, and port wine
from the Abbey cellar during convalescence, but by the best Gothic
architecture, as applied to cottages. If eleven human beings did
sometimes sleep in a single room, and the domestic arrangements
were inferior to those which Mr Chifney of the Farm provided for his
race-horses, the tenement looked outside very picturesque, as seen from
the Abbey windows. Nay, it must be owned that even this inconvenience
of overcrowding was rare in the home-village, in comparison with other
places on the Lisgard estate, not so near the family seat, about which
everything was in externals, at least, becomingly spick and span.
Dr Haldane, indeed, who had property of his own, and could afford to
entertain political opinions at variance with those in favour at the
Abbey, had been of old accustomed irreverently to adapt a certain
popular nursery ballad to the state of things at Mirk.
Who built the infant school so red?
Who set that striking-clock o'erhead,
To tell us all the time for bed?
The Lisgards.
Who made, and at such great expense,
Around our pond that iron fence,
To keep the pigs and boys from thence?
The Lisgards, &c.
In short, Mirk was a pet hamlet, and exhibited a hundred tokens of its
patron's favour. It was surely only right and proper, therefore, that
all the votes in the village at election-time, except the doctor's,
went the same way with the squire's, and that even in social
matters he exercised unquestioned sway. Mirk was as respectable as
the brotherhood of Quakers, and was rendered so by the same simple
machinery; any one in the place who shewed a disposition to be otherwise
was immediately turned out. Did a man drink, so as to cause public
disturbance, or pick up sticks (to save himself trouble) out of
the park-fences--or, worse than all, did he Poach--were it but a
pheasant's egg--he received the most peremptory notice to quit the
model village. The issuing of these ukases of banishment had been, now
and then, a severe trial to the popularity of the Lisgards; but it
had overlived all such acts--nay, more, even its favouritism, that
seemingly indispensable element of the feudal system, had been forgiven
it. Nobody now complained that George Steve, who notoriously never went
to bed quite sober, still continued tenant of the _Lisgard Arms_; while
Jacob Flail and Joseph Dibble had been condemned, with their families,
to banishment for life for a less habitual commission of the same
offence.
Much less did it strike the villagers that it was inconsistent in a
landlord, so careful for the morality of his people, to let so large a
portion of the Abbey Farm to a trainer of race-horses, of which there
were at present upwards of thirty in Mirk; and in summer, when the
Downland above was fit for their exercise, there were often twice as
many. But then Mr Chifney was not like an ordinary trainer; nor did
his jockey-boys, thanks to his strict supervision, behave like ordinary
jockey-boys. They attended divine service on alternate Sundays, and
half-a-dozen of them were in the choir. Mr Mosely (who was Anglican)
had even taken into consideration the advisability of putting these last
into surplices, but Mr Chifney had dissuaded him from that experiment.
They had always been accustomed to the most tight-fitting of garments,
strait-waistcoats, buck-skin breeches, and gaiters--and perhaps he
thought the transition would be too abrupt. Their habits, in some other
respects, were loose, and yet they were suffered to breathe the Lisgard
air. Mr Chifney's boys were like the servants of ambassadors at
foreign courts, who enjoy a separate jurisdiction from that to which the
native inhabitants submit. The law itself--at least in the case of
petty offences--was not called in to punish these young gentlemen; but
I believe they were “colted”--for the whole discipline was
“horsey”--by Mr Chifney's head-groom. I do not know the exact
manner in which this chastisement was inflicted, but it must have
differed from the ordinary method, since they never failed to pursue
their daily equestrian duties as usual. Mr Chifney looked after that
himself, and exceedingly sharp. Nothing went amiss through oversight in
his establishment, and his employers had every reason to put confidence
in him. He left no means untried to insure the success of the costly
animals it was his mission to groom and guard. His very acceptance of
the post of churchwarden had been described by his enemies as an attempt
to “hedge”--to make friends with those powers of good which are
generally supposed, to be antagonistic, if they have anything to do
with it at all, to the profession of horse-racing. It is certain that Mr
Chifney, whose occupations seldom permitted his own attendance at
public worship, never failed to come to church upon those Sundays which
immediately preceded the Derby and the St Leger, and indeed it is very
likely that he treated them (without knowing it) as the eves of his
patron saints' days.
It was to the Abbey Farm that Mr Walter Lisgard was now bound; for to
the young gentlemen of England, what is a more interesting spectacle
than a racing-stable--what is a more charming subject of conversation
than the next Great Event? And who more fitted to afford every
information upon that important topic--if he chose--than Mr Tite
Chifney? _If he chose_. Therein lay the whole matter; for Mr Chifney
was reticent, as became one intrusted with a hundred thousand pounds'
worth of horseflesh, upon whose performances depended perhaps, in the
aggregate, millions of money. He had put “Master Walter” up to a
“good thing,” however, more than once, and the captain had no doubt
but that he would do it again. He never did doubt of his own success
either with man or woman. Confidence, but without swagger, self-content,
but without vanity, were evident enough in those handsome features,
illuminated almost at all times with the desire to please. He lit his
cigar at the hall-door, smoothed away a fallen spark from his sealskin
waistcoat, and took his way down the leafless avenue, humming the
latest lively air, as he crunched the snow beneath his dainty boots.
How different from Sir Richard's measured step and haughty silence,
thought the gatekeeper's wife, as she hastened out of the lodge, from
the side-window of which she had marked her favourite approach. “Never
mind me, Martha,” cried he laughing; “I'm tall enough now to lift
the latch for myself. My boots are thicker than yours are--look--and I
have no rheumatism, which, I am afraid, you have not quite got rid of
yet. There--I won't speak a word with you till you go inside. How's
the guidman? Ah, out, is he? How's little Polly? Hullo, Polly, how
you're grown! Why, I daresay she won't kiss me now, as she always
used to do.”
“Oh yes, she'll kiss you, Master Walter,” answered the old dame;
“there's no harm in kissing o' _you_; although I wouldn't say
that to my daughter of ne'er another young man in the county.--Come,
lass, you need not blush so, for I've had many a one from the same
young gentleman.” And the old dame laughed and chuckled, until that
dread enemy of honest-hearted mirth, the lumbago, twitched her into her
chair.
Polly, a very pretty country lassie, about sixteen, stood pink and
hesitating while the captain removed his cigar, and waited--smiling
demigod--for the promised favour.
“Come, gi'e it to him, and ha' done wi' it,” cried the old
lady, exasperated by her torments. Thereupon the girl stepped forward,
head aside. Master Walter met her, touched her soft cheek with his lip,
and as his silken moustache brushed her ear, whispered an airy something
which turned her crimson. There was nothing in the words themselves save
the merest compliment; their magic lay in the tone of him who used them;
so tender, yet so frank, so familiar, and yet so gracious. Then, with a
smile, he bade them both “good-bye,” and strolling through the gate,
resumed his interrupted ditty, as though kissing were the most innocent
as well as the most natural of all pastimes; but Polly pressed her
throbbing brow against the pane for its very coolness, and watched him
saunter down the village street with quite a flutter at her heart, and
promised to herself that she would not forget the captain's kiss--no,
not though Joe, the under-gardener, should speak his mind next
“feast” (as it was rumoured in well-informed circles that he
intended to do), and “keep her company” in earnest.
That she was doing no wrong in this was certain, for not only her
mother, but everybody else in Mirk, agreed that there was no sort of
harm in Master Walter, let him do what he might. He had a way of doing
things so very different from others. How the very dogs fawned upon him
as he sauntered on, and the old horse in the straw-yard stretched its
gray head over the gate in hopes of a caress as he went by! How the boys
by the roadside left their Snow-man an unfinished torso, and ran to make
their bows before the good-natured captain, with an eye to _largesse_,
in the form of a copper scramble; and how the school-girls courtesied,
with admiring awe, as they pictured to themselves how fine a figure
handsome Master Walter must needs cut in gold and scarlet! He had a nod
or a word for almost everybody, young or old; but if his look but lit
upon another's face, it left a pleasure there, as the Sun leaves when
it has shone upon one. Delayed by these reciprocal manifestations
of good-will, like a young prince making a Royal Progress among a
well-affected people, Walter Lisgard at length got free of the village,
and climbing a steep hill (never used by the race-horses even in much
less slippery weather), arrived at his destination, the Abbey Farm. This
was a long, low, ancient building, belonging to one could scarce tell
what date, so pieced, and restored, and added to, had been the original
structure; but when the Abbey was an Abbey, the Abbey Farm had been a
sort of branch-establishment, in the occupation of the monks; there were
traces of their sojourn even now: over the pointed porch yet stood a
cross of stone, though broken; and in the garden, now all white and
hoar, that lay between the house and road, there was a mighty sundial,
carved like a font with noseless saints in niches, and round the rim a
scripture, of which alone the words _nox venit_ could be deciphered. The
night _had_ come, not only upon those who built and blessed such things,
but on the faith which they professed. The very memory of themselves and
it had faded from men's minds. Not one in ten at Mirk--where all had
owned the Abbot for liege-lord, and bowed their heads before his meanest
monk, in token of their soul's humility, but a few centuries back--not
one in ten, I say, could tell even what that niche on the south side
of the communion-table meant, which the learned called _Piscina_. The
mighty bower that had once been the granary of the Abbey, and to which
the poor had looked with thankful eyes in times of scarcity, still stood
beside the homestead, but the remembrance of its very use was gone; the
only legend clinging to its moss-grown walls was that a Long Parliament
had once held its sittings there. Save the farmhouse and the barn, all
relics of the past had been swept away. Immediately behind them
was quite a town of stables and loose boxes, all of the most modern
construction, and furnished with the latest inventions for equine
comfort. The enormous farmyard, strewn with a thick carpet of clean
straw, was now the exercising-ground for the horses; but in the summer,
a gate at the back of the premises opened immediately upon the grassy
upland, the proximity of which had tempted Mr Tite Chifney to pitch his
tent and enlarge his boundaries at the Abbey Farm. So high had been the
rent he offered for this eligible situation, that the late Sir Robert
had removed his own agricultural head-quarters elsewhere, and suffered
Mr Chifney and his race-horses to occupy the whole place, which was
now the capital of the Houwhyhims--the largest establishment in Great
Britain, wherein man held the secondary position, and the Horse the
principal.