“And the worst of it is the fellow’s right--what a bore life
is--confound everything!--” As he gave utterance to this sweeping
anathema, Harry Coverdale lifted a shaggy Scotch terrier by the ears out
of an easy chair wherein it was reposing, and flinging himself on the
seat thus made vacant, waited disconsolately till Hazlehurst should have
finished a letter, which, with unwontedly grave brow he was perusing.
Having continued his occupation till his friend’s small stock of
patience was becoming well-nigh exhausted, Hazlehurst closed the
epistle, muttering to himself--“Well! they know best, I suppose--but
I don’t admire the scheme, all the same--” then, turning towards his
companion, he continued aloud--“I beg your pardon, my dear fellow! but
the governor’s letter contains a budget of family politics, which is, of
course, more or less interesting to me, especially as, in the event of
certain contingencies, he talks of increasing my allowance, but you’re
looking sentimental--what’s the matter?”
“Oh! nothing,” was the reply, “only that fellow Markum has been boring
about the rabbits; he says we’ve worked them quite enough, and that the
foxes will be pitching into the pheasants if they can’t get plenty
of rabbits to eat, and that so much shooting will make the birds wild
before the 1st.--I know it all as well as he does--there ought not to
be another gun fired on the property till the 1st of September, but then
what is a fellow to do with himself? I might go to Paris--but I’ve been
there and done it all--besides I hate their dissipation, it bores me to
death; London is empty, and if it wasn’t, it’s worse than Paris--more
smoke and less fun. I’d start to America, and do Niagara, and all the
other picturesque dodges, only, if the wind were to turn restive, or
anything go wrong in the boiler-bursting line, I might be delayed and
miss the first day of partridge shooting, so it would not do to risk it.”
“By no means,” rejoined Hazlehurst, shaking his head with an air of mock
solemnity--“but luckily I’ve a better plan to propose; I must make
my way home at once--you shall come with me, and stay till we are all
mutually tired of each other.”
“But your father and mother?” urged Coverdale.
“Are more anxious than I am on the subject. Read that, you unbelieving
Jew!” So saying, Hazlehurst turned down a portion of his letter, and
handed it to Coverdale; it ran thus--“Mind you bring your friend with
you; independently of our desire to become acquainted with one who has
shown you such unvarying kindness, Mr. Coverdale is just the person to
make up the party.”
“Yes, they’re very kind,” began Coverdale, returning the letter, “very
kind, but--”
“But what, man,” rejoined Hazlehurst quickly, “we want you to come to
us; you have not only no other engagement, but actually don’t know what
to do with yourself, and yet you hesitate. However, to come to the
point at once, I ask you plainly, and expect a plain answer--where’s the
hitch?”
“Well done, most learned counsel, that is the way to browbeat a witness,
and no mistake,” replied Coverdale, laughing at his friend’s vehemence;
“however, I won’t provoke any farther display of your forensic talents
by attempting to prevaricate. The fact is, I know you’ve a bevy of
sisters, she cousins, and what not, very charming girls, I dare say;
but you see I’m not fit for women’s society, and that’s the truth of
it--I’ve chosen my line--I know what suits me best--and I dare say I
shall live and die a bachelor, as the old Admiral did before me. I know
what women are, and what they expect of one; if a fellow happens to be
a little bit rough and ready, they call him a bear, and vow he’s got no
soul; ’gad, that’s what the Turks say of them, by-the-bye!--Poetical
justice; eh?”
“My dear boy, you’ll excuse my saying so, but you really are talking
great nonsense,” interrupted Hazlehurst; “You’re a thorough gentleman
in mind, manners, and appearance, if I know the meaning of the term,
and neither my sisters, nor my cousin (there is but one), have such
bad taste as to prefer a finical fop to a fine manly fellow like
yourself--no, they’re more likely to fall into the other extreme.”
“And that would be the worst of the two by long odds,” exclaimed Harry
aghast; “only fancy me with a wife in the shooting-season--bothering
me to stay at home with her, or to drive her out in a four-wheeled
arm-chair with a pair of little hopping rats of ponies, that the best
whip in the three kingdoms could not screw above six miles an hour out
of, if he were to flog their hides off; or, worse still, to take me
boxed up in a close carriage to call upon somebody’s grandmother, and I
breaking my heart all the time to be blazing away at the partridges.
I know what it is--I was staying down in Leicestershire, before I
went abroad, with poor Phil Anderton, as stanch a sportsman, and as
thoroughly good a fellow, as ever drew trigger, before he married Lady
Mirvinia Bluebas. Well, they hadn’t been coupled six months before she’d
got him so tight in hand that he daren’t smoke a cigar without a special
licence. The first season, she let him shoot Wednesdays and Fridays, and
hunt Thursdays and Saturdays. The next year she made him sell off his
guns, dogs, and horses, and carried him over to the Continent. What was
the result?--why, the poor fellow became so bored and miserable, that he
took to gambling, lost every farthing he had in the world at roulette,
and--didn’t blow his brains out; so my lady has the pleasure of keeping
him, and living herself, upon five hundred a-year pin-money.”
“Verdict, served her right”--observed Hazlehurst judicially; “but you
forget, my dear boy, that Anderton, though a good fellow enough in his
way, was made of such yielding materials, that anybody could do what
they liked with him--rather soft here,” he continued, tapping his
forehead; “now you have got sterner stuff in you, and if a woman were to
try it on with you in that style, it strikes me she’d find her master.”
“Ah! I don’t know,” sighed Coverdale reflectively; “its easier to talk
about managing women than to do it--they’ve got a way with ’em, at
least the pleasant ones have, of coming over a fellow somehow, and
making him fancy for the moment (it doesn’t last, mind you--and there’s
the nuisance of it), that he’d rather do what they wish him, than
what he wants to do himself. Then again, if a man offends you, you can
quietly knock him down, and if he feels aggrieved, he can have you out
(not that I admire duelling); but if you quarrel with a woman, there’s
no _dernier ressort_, you can’t knock _her_ down, poor weak thing, and so
you’re reduced to growl like a dog, and she to spit like a cat, and you
leave off as you began, without having attained any definite result.”
“I have heard of such a thing as moral force,” suggested Hazlehurst
ironically.
“That’s one’s only chance,” returned Coverdale, “though it is one that,
to speak seriously and sensibly, I’ve tolerably strong faith in. A
fellow must be wanting in manliness of character, if he cannot contrive
to manage a woman by moral force, as you call it; there’s a quiet way
of doing that as well as everything else, only it’s such a confoundedly
slow process.”
“No making ’em to come to the point, eh?” rejoined Hazlehurst; “Well,
I have my own ideas about it; how they would work, remains to be proved;
but as you’ve such splendid theories on the subject, don’t pretend
you’re unfitted for woman’s society. Why, man, you’re equal to a
whole seminary of young ladies--your ‘quiet manner’ would prove as
irresistible with them as it did with the redoubtable Mr. Styles.”
By way of reply to this impertinent allusion, Coverdale shook his
clenched fist (which still bore traces of his late encounter) in his
friend’s face with a pseudo-threatening gesture. Hazlehurst sprang back
in pretended alarm, with to sudden a movement as to arouse the Scotch
terrier from his nap, who, waking up in a fright, immediately recurred
to his leading idea that there were thieves in the house, and rushed
to the door barking furiously. When the laughter, which this little
incident excited, had in some degree abated, Hazlehurst resumed--
“But seriously, Harry, I want you to come home with me, and I’ll tell
you in confidence why. You and I have known each other from the time
we were schoolboys together, and though, as _in re_ Styles, you act a
little hastily sometimes, there is no man on whose clear judgment and
high principle I’ve greater reliance than on yours. I’ve received a
letter from home this morning, which has annoyed me more than I can tell
you. To come to the point at once, the case stands thus:--My father’s
pet weakness (rather a creditable one) is family pride; now the Grange
has belonged to the Hazlehursts for the last three hundred years, but in
my great-grandfather’s time the estate became woefully diminished--the
old scamp was a regular wild one, and not only made ducks and drakes of
everything he could lay his hands on, but as soon as my grandfather came
of age, induced him to cut on the entail, and sold the best half of the
family property; some of this my grandfather contrived to redeem in his
lifetime, and my Governor has been scheming and screwing all his days in
order to buy back the rest. In an evil hour he was induced to invest his
savings in a railroad, hoping to attain his object sooner; of course it
paid beautifully at first; of course in due time a crash came, and the
Pater not only lost all his savings, but was forced to sell a farm of
five hundred acres, dear to him as the apple of his eye. The individual
who purchased it, and who owns the property my great-grandfather sold,
is a certain millionaire cotton spinner, as rich as Crœsus; the fellow
is said to have £20,000 a-year. Well, since the railroad affair, a jolly
old aunt has died, and left the Governor some tin, and he’s breaking his
heart to buy back the farm, but cotton spinner refuses to sell. How at
the last Hunt Ball, my eldest sister, came out--she is very pretty, and
a nice, taking sort of girl in society--and said cotton spinner
came, saw, and was conquered! so much so, that having offered serious
intentions ever since, he has ended by offering himself. Thereupon arose
a difference of opinion between Alice and the Governor--Alice pleading
that she didn’t love cotton spinner one bit, and didn’t expect she ever
should do so, and Governor declaring that it was all sentimental bosh,
and that if she married the man, as much love as it was at all proper
for a young lady to feel, would come afterwards. At last, they made a
compromise--Alice was to consent to see more of Mr. Crane, and do her
best to like him, in which case, said Crane would allow her to postpone
her decision till a future period: to this Alice was fain to consent,
and now the suitor is coming to the Grange, on approval, and the
Governor’s asked a party of people to meet him.”
“And how do you stand affected towards the proposed alliance?” inquired
Coverdale, lifting the Skye terrier into his lap by the nape of its
neck, and then curling it up like a fried whiting.
“Not over favourably,” returned Hazlehurst, “which, by the way, is very
disinterested of me; for if the affair comes off, and the Governor
buys his farm back again--which of course is what he is looking to--he
promises to settle the residue of the aunt’s legacy upon me, by which
I should be some £200 a-year the better; but it would not be a match
to please me. I’m very fond of Alice; she is a dear good girl as ever
lived, and I don’t admire the cotton spinner: in the first place, he’s
nearly, or quite forty, while she was nineteen last term; in the second
place, he’s a slow coach, good-natured enough, and all that, but nothing
in him.”
“No soul”--suggested Harry.
“Not enough to animate a kitten, I should imagine,” was the
reply;--“not that the man’s a fool--indeed, in his own line he is said
to be clever. He invented some dodge to simplify his machinery, by which
he nearly doubled his fortune.”
“_That_ was decidedly clever”--remarked Harry, busily engaged in
dressing the “Skye” in a muslin “anti-macassar,” placed clean upon the
sofa that morning.
“To come to the point, however,” continued Hazlehurst--“I want you to
see the man, and try and find out what he’s made of.”
“Fool’s-flesh probably”--suggested Coverdale _sotto voce_.
“I wish you would try and be serious for five minutes,” returned
Hazlehurst testily; “nothing is more provoking than small attempts at
wit, when one wants a man to give his attention sensibly to that which
one is saying.”
“I stand, or more properly sit, corrected: so continue, most sapient and
surly brother!”--was the mocking answer.
Hazlehurst tried to look angry and dignified, but a glance at his
friend’s handsome, merry, and, withal, slightly impudent face, disarmed
his wrath, and muttering--“Confound you for a stupid, provoking, old
humbug”--he burst into a fit of laughter. As soon as he had recovered
his gravity, he resumed: “As I said before, I want you to come and make
your observations on the cotton spinner, and if your opinion agrees
with mine, you must back me up in making a serious remonstrance with the
Governor. I know the old gentleman well, and am sure he’ll think twice
as much of what I say when he finds that you, a man of the world and a
large landed proprietor (that’ll tell with him immensely) look upon the
matter in the same light. And now you know my reasons, what do you say?”
“Say! what can I say but that I--ahem!--respect the sacred call of
friendship, and am prepared to sacrifice myself upon its altar: that’s
the correct phraseology, isn’t it? I tell you what, though,” continued
Harry gravely, “I make one condition, without which I don’t stir a
peg: I’m at your service and that of the cotton spinner, as much as you
please; but beyond the requirements of society, I’m not to be expected
to concern myself about the women--I’m not to be forced into tête-a-tête
drives in pony-chaises, or set to turn over music-books at the piano--I
know what all that sort of thing leads to well: is it a bargain?”
“Of course it is,” returned Hazlehurst eagerly; “come to please me, and I
leave you to please yourself when you get there.”
“Then, as Sam Weller says, ‘You may take down the bill, for I’m let to
a single gentleman,’” was Coverdale’s reply--and so the affair was
settled.