The Squire's carpenters were taken from the park pales, and set to work
at the parish stocks. Then came the painter and colored them, a
beautiful dark blue, with a white border--and a white rim round the
holes--with an ornamental flourish in the middle. It was the gayest
public edifice in the whole village--though the village possessed no
less than three other monuments of the Vitruvian genius, of the
Hazeldeans: to wit, the alms-house, the school, and the parish pump.
A more elegant, enticing, coquettish pair of stocks never gladdened the
eye of a justice of the peace.
And Squire Hazeldean's eye was gladdened. In the pride of his heart he
brought all the family down to look at the stocks. The Squire's family
(omitting the _frère de loin_) consisted of Mrs. Hazeldean, his wife;
next, of Miss Jemima Hazeldean, his first cousin; thirdly, of Master
Francis Hazeldean, his only son; and fourthly, of Captain Barnabas
Higginbotham, a distant relation--who, indeed, strictly speaking, was
not of the family, but only a visitor ten months in the year. Mrs.
Hazeldean was every inch the lady--the lady of the parish. In her
comely, florid, and somewhat sunburnt countenance, there was an equal
expression of majesty and benevolence; she had a blue eye that invited
liking, and an aquiline nose that commanded respect. Mrs. Hazeldean had
no affectation of fine airs--no wish to be greater and handsomer and
cleverer than she was. She knew herself, and her station, and thanked
heaven for it. There was about her speech and manner something of that
shortness and bluntness which often characterizes royalty; and if the
lady of a parish is not a queen in her own circle, it is never the fault
of the parish. Mrs. Hazeldean dressed her part to perfection. She wore
silks that seemed heirlooms--so thick were they, so substantial and
imposing. And over these, when she was in her own domain, the whitest of
aprons; while at her waist was seen no fiddle-daddle _chatelaine_, with
_breloques_ and trumpery, but a good honest gold watch to mark the
time, and a long pair of scissors to cut off the dead leaves from her
flowers, for she was a great horticulturist. When occasion needed, Mrs.
Hazeldean could, however, lay by her more sumptuous and imperial raiment
for a stout riding-habit of blue Saxony, and canter by her husband's
side to see the hounds throw off. Nay, on the days on which Mr.
Hazeldean drove his famous fast-trotting cob to the market town, it was
rarely that you did not see his wife on the left side of the gig. She
cared as little as her lord did for wind and weather, and, in the midst
of some pelting shower, her pleasant face peeped over the collar and
capes of a stout dreadnought, expanding into smiles and bloom as some
frank rose, that opens from its petals, and rejoices in the dews. It was
easy to see that the worthy couple had married for love; they were as
little apart as they could help it. And still, on the first of
September, if the house was not full of company which demanded her
cares, Mrs. Hazeldean "stepped out" over the stubbles by her husband's
side, with as light a tread and as blithe an eye as when in the first
bridal year she had enchanted the Squire by her genial sympathy with his
sports.
So there now stands Harriet Hazeldean, one hand leaning on the Squire's
broad shoulder, the other thrust into her apron, and trying her best to
share her husband's enthusiasm for his own public-spirited patriotism,
in the renovation of the parish stocks. A little behind, with two
fingers leaning on the thin arm of Captain Barnabas, stood Miss Jemima,
the orphan daughter of the Squire's uncle, by a runaway imprudent
marriage with a young lady who belonged to a family which had been at
war with the Hazeldeans since the reign of Charles I., respecting a
right of way to a small wood (or rather spring) of about an acre,
through a piece of furze land, which was let to a brick-maker at twelve
shillings a year. The wood belonged to the Hazeldeans, the furze land to
the Sticktorights (an old Saxon family, if ever there was one). Every
twelfth year, when the fagots and timber were felled, this feud broke
out afresh; for the Sticktorights refused to the Hazeldeans the right to
cart off the said fagots and timber, through the only way by which a
cart could possibly pass. It is just to the Hazeldeans to say that they
had offered to buy the land at ten times its value. But the
Sticktorights, with equal magnanimity, had declared that they would not
"alienate the family property for the convenience of the best squire
that ever stood upon shoe leather." Therefore, every twelfth year, there
was always a great breach of the peace on the part of both Hazeldeans
and Sticktorights, magistrates, and deputy-lieutenants though they were.
The question was fairly fought out by their respective dependents, and
followed by various actions for assault and trespass. As the legal
question of right was extremely obscure, it never had been properly
decided: and, indeed, neither party wished it to be decided, each at
heart having some doubt of the propriety of its own claim. A marriage
between the younger son of the Hazeldeans, and a younger daughter of the
Sticktorights, was viewed with equal indignation by both families; and
the consequence had been that the runaway couple, unblessed and
unforgiven, had scrambled through life as they could, upon the scanty
pay of the husband, who was in a marching regiment, and the interest of
£1000, which was the wife's fortune, independent of her parents. They
died, and left an only daughter, upon whom the maternal £1000 had been
settled, about the time that the Squire came of age and into possession
of his estates. And though he inherited all the ancestral hostility
toward the Sticktorights, it was not in his nature to be unkind to a
poor orphan who was, after all, the child of a Hazeldean. Therefore, he
had educated and fostered Jemima with as much tenderness as if she had
been his sister; put out her £1000 at nurse, and devoted, from the ready
money which had accrued from the rents during his minority, as much as
made her fortune (with her own accumulated at compound interest) no less
than £4000, the ordinary marriage portion of the daughters of Hazeldean.
On her coming of age, he transferred this sum to her absolute disposal,
in order that she might feel herself independent, see a little more of
the world than she could at Hazeldean, have candidates to choose from if
she deigned to marry; or enough to live upon if she chose to remain
single. Miss Jemima had somewhat availed herself of this liberty, by
occasional visits to Cheltenham and other watering-places. But her
grateful affection to the Squire was such, that she could never bear to
be long away from the Hall. And this was the more praise to her heart,
inasmuch as she was far from taking kindly to the prospect of being an
old maid. And there were so few bachelors in the neighborhood of
Hazeldean, that she could not but have that prospect before her eyes
whenever she looked out of the Hall windows. Miss Jemima was indeed one
of the most kindly and affectionate of beings feminine--and if she
disliked the thought of single blessedness, it really was from those
innocent and womanly instincts toward the tender charities of hearth and
home, without which a lady, however otherwise estimable, is little
better than a Minerva in bronze. But whether or not, despite her fortune
and her face, which last, though not strictly handsome, was
pleasing--and would have been positively pretty if she had laughed more
often (for when she laughed there appeared three charming dimples,
invisible when she was grave)--whether or not, I say, it was the fault
of our insensibility or her own fastidiousness, Miss Jemima approached
her thirtieth year, and was still Miss Jemima. Now, therefore, that
beautifying laugh of hers was very rarely heard, and she had of late
become confirmed in two opinions, not at all conducive to laughter. One
was a conviction of the general and progressive wickedness of the male
sex, and the other was a decided and lugubrious belief that the world
was coming to an end. Miss Jemima was now accompanied by a small canine
favorite, true Blenheim, with a snub nose. It was advanced in life, and
somewhat obese. It sate on its haunches with its tongue out of its
mouth, except when it snapped at the flies. There was a strong Platonic
friendship between Miss Jemima and Captain Barnabas Higginbotham; for he
too was unmarried, and he had the same ill opinion of your sex, my dear
madam, that Miss Jemima had of ours. The captain was a man of a slim and
elegant figure--the less said about the face the better--a truth of
which the Captain himself was sensible, for it was a favorite maxim of
his, "that in a man, every thing is a slight, gentlemanlike figure."
Captain Barnabas did not absolutely deny that the world was coming to an
end, only he thought it would last his time.
Quite apart from the rest, with the nonchalant survey of virgin
dandyism, Francis Hazeldean looked over one of the high starched
neck-cloths which were then the fashion--a handsome lad, fresh from Eton
for the summer holidays, but at that ambiguous age, when one disdains
the sports of the boy, and has not yet arrived at the resources of the
man.
"I should be glad, Frank," said the Squire, suddenly turning round to
his son, "to see you take a little more interest in duties which, one
day or other you may be called upon to discharge. I can't bear to think
that the property should fall into the hands of a fine gentleman, who
will let things go to rack and ruin, instead of keeping them up as I
do."
And the Squire pointed to the stocks.
Master Frank's eye followed the direction of the cane, as well as his
cravat would permit; and he said, dryly,
"Yes, sir; but how came the stocks to be so long out of repair?"
"Because one can't see to every thing at once," retorted the Squire,
tartly. "When a man has got eight thousand acres to look after, he must
do a bit at a time."
"Yes," said Captain Barnabas. "I know that by experience."
"The deuce you do!" cried the Squire, bluntly. "Experience in eight
thousand acres!"
"No; in my apartments in the Albany. Number 3A. I have had them ten
years, and it was only last Christmas that I bought my Japan cat."
"Dear me!" said Miss Jemima; "a Japan cat! that must be very curious!
What sort of a creature is it?"
"Don't you know? Bless me, a thing with three legs, and holds toast! I
never thought of it, I assure you, till my friend Cosey said to me, one
morning, when he was breakfasting at my rooms, 'Higginbotham, how is it,
that you, who like to have things comfortable about you, don't have a
cat?' 'Upon my life,' said I, 'one can't think of every thing at a
time;' just like you, Squire."
"Pshaw," said Mr. Hazeldean, gruffly; "not at all like me. And I'll
thank you another time, Cousin Higginbotham, not to put me out when I am
speaking on matters of importance; poking your cat into my stocks! They
look something like now, don't they, Harry? I declare that the whole
village seems more respectable. It is astonishing how much a little
improvement adds to the--to the--"
"Charm of a landscape," put in Miss Jemima, sentimentally.
The Squire neither accepted nor rejected the suggested termination; but
leaving his sentence uncompleted, broke suddenly off with,
"And if I had listened to Parson Dale--"
"You would have done a very wise thing," said a voice behind, as the
Parson presented himself in the rear.
"Wise thing! Why surely, Mr. Dale," said Mrs. Hazeldean, with spirit,
for she always resented the least contradiction to her lord and master;
perhaps as an interference with her own special right and prerogative:
"why, surely if it is necessary to have stocks, it is necessary to
repair them."
"That's right, go it, Harry!" cried the Squire, chuckling, and rubbing
his hands, as if he had been setting his terrier at the Parson.
"St--St--at him! Well, Master Dale, what do you say to that?"
"My dear ma'am," said the Parson, replying in preference to the lady;
"there are many institutions in the country which are very old, look
very decayed, and don't seem of much use; but I would not pull them down
for all that."
"You would reform them, then," said Mrs. Hazeldean, doubtfully, and with
a look at her husband, as much as to say, "He is on politics now; that's
your business."
"No, I would not, ma'am," said the Parson, stoutly.
"What on earth would you do, then?" quoth the Squire.
"Just let 'em alone," said the Parson. "Master Frank, there's a Latin
maxim which was often in the mouth of Sir Robert Walpole, and which they
ought to put in the Eton grammar--'_Quieta non movere_.' If things are
quiet, let them be quiet! I would not destroy the stocks, because that
might seem to the ill-disposed like a license to offend, and I would not
repair the stocks, because that puts it into people's heads to get into
them."
The Squire was a stanch politician of the old school, and he did not
like to think that in repairing the stocks, he had perhaps been
conniving at revolutionary principles.
"This constant desire of innovation," said Miss Jemima, suddenly
mounting the more funereal of her two favorite hobbies, "is one of the
great symptoms of the approaching crash. We are altering, and mending,
and reforming, when in twenty years at the utmost the world itself may
be destroyed!" The fair speaker paused, and--
Captain Barnabas said, thoughtfully, "Twenty years!--the insurance
offices rarely compute the best life at more than fourteen." He struck
his hand on the stocks as he spoke, and added, with his usual
consolatory conclusion--"The odds are, that it will last our time,
Squire."
But whether Captain Barnabas meant the stocks or the world, he did not
clearly explain, and no one took the trouble to inquire.
"Sir," said Master Frank to his father, with that furtive spirit of
quizzing, which he had acquired among other polite accomplishments at
Eton; "sir, it is no use now considering whether the stocks should or
should not have been repaired. The only question is, whom you will get
to put into them."
"True," said the Squire, with much gravity.
"Yes, there it is!" said the Parson, mournfully. "If you would but learn
'_quieta non movere_!'"
"Don't spout your Latin at me, Parson!" cried the Squire, angrily; "I
can give you as good as you bring, any day--
'Propria quæ maribus tribuuntur mascula dicas--
As in presenti, perfectum format in avi.'
There," added the Squire, turning triumphantly toward his Harry, who
looked with great admiration at this unprecedented burst of learning on
the part of Mr. Hazeldean; "there, two can play at that game! And now
that we have all seen the stocks, we may as well go home, and drink tea.
Will you come up and play a rubber, Dale? No! hang it, man, I've not
offended you--you know my ways."
"That I do, and they are among the things I would not have altered,"
cried the Parson, holding out his hand cheerfully. The Squire gave it a
hearty shake, and Mrs. Hazeldean hastened to do the same. "Do come; I am
afraid we've been very rude; we are sad blunt folks. Do come; that's a
dear good man; and of course poor Mrs. Dale too." Mrs. Hazeldean's
favorite epithet for Mrs. Dale was _poor_, and that for reasons to be
explained hereafter.
"I fear my wife has got one of her bad headaches, but I will give her
your kind message, and at all events you may depend upon me."
"That's right," cried the Squire, "in half-an-hour, eh? How d'ye do, my
little man?" as Lenny Fairfield, on his way home from some errand in the
village, drew aside and pulled off his hat with both hands. "Stop--you
see those stocks--eh? Tell all the bad little boys in the parish to take
care how they get into them--a sad disgrace--you'll never be in such a
quandary!"
"That at least I will answer for," said the Parson.
"And I too," added Mrs. Hazeldean, patting the boy's curly head. "Tell
your mother I shall come and have a good chat with her to-morrow
evening."
And so the party passed on, and Lenny stood still on the road, staring
hard at the stocks, which stared back at him from its four great eyes.
But Lenny did not remain long alone. As soon as the great folks had
fairly disappeared, a large number of small folks emerged timorously
from the neighboring cottages, and approached the site of the stocks
with much marvel, fear, and curiosity.
In fact, the renovated appearance of this monster--_à propos des
bottes_, as one may say--had already excited considerable sensation
among the population of Hazeldean. And even as when an unexpected owl
makes his appearance in broad daylight, all the little birds rise from
tree and hedge-row, and cluster round their ominous enemy, so now
gathered all the much excited villagers round the intrusive and
portentous Phenomenon.
"D'ye know what the diggins the Squire did it for, Gaffer Solomons?"
asked one many-childed matron, with a baby in arms, an urchin of three
years old clinging fast to her petticoat, and her hand maternally
holding back a more adventurous hero of six, who had a great desire to
thrust his head into one of the grisly apertures. All eyes turned to a
sage old man, the oracle of the village, who, leaning both hands on his
crutch, shook his head bodingly.
"Maw be," said Gaffer Solomons, "some of the boys ha' been robbing the
orchards."
"Orchards," cried a big lad, who seemed to think himself personally
appealed to, "why the bud's scarce off the trees yet!"
"No more it isn't!" said the dame with many children, and she breathed
more freely.
"Maw be," said Gaffer Solomons, "some o' ye has been setting snares."
"What for?" said a stout sullen-looking young fellow, whom conscience
possibly pricked to reply. "What for, when it beant the season? And if a
poor man did find a hear in his pocket i' the hay time, I should like to
know if ever a squire in the world would let un off wi' the stocks--eh?"
That last question seemed a settler, and the wisdom of Gaffer Solomons
went down fifty per cent. in the public opinion of Hazeldean.
"Maw be," said the Gaffer, this time with a thrilling effect, which
restored his reputation, "Maw be some o' ye ha' been getting drunk, and
making beestises o' yoursels!"
There was a dead pause, for this suggestion applied too generally to be
met with a solitary response. At last one of the women said, with a
meaning glance at her husband, "God bless the Squire; he'll make some on
us happy women, if that's all!"
There then arose an almost unanimous murmur of approbation among the
female part of the audience; and the men looked at each other, and then
at the Phenomenon, with a very hang-dog expression of countenance.
"Or, maw be," resumed Gaffer Solomons, encouraged to a fourth
suggestion by the success of its predecessor, "Maw be some o' the
Misseses ha' been making a rumpus, and scolding their goodmen. I heard
say in my granfeythir's time, that arter old Mother Bang nigh died o'
the ducking-stool, them 'ere stocks were first made for the women, out
o' compassion like! And every one knows the Squire is a koind-hearted
man, God bless un!"
"God bless un!" cried the men heartily; and they gathered lovingly round
the Phenomenon, like heathens of old round a tutelary temple. But then
rose one shrill clamor among the females, as they retreated with
involuntary steps toward the verge of the green, whence they glared at
Solomons and the Phenomenon with eyes so sparkling, and pointed at both
with gestures so menacing, that Heaven only knows if a morsel of either
would have remained much longer to offend the eyes of the justly enraged
matronage of Hazeldean, if fortunately Master Stirn, the Squire's
right-hand man, had not come up in the nick of time.
Master Stirn was a formidable personage--more formidable than the Squire
himself--as, indeed, a squire's right-hand is generally more formidable
than the head can pretend to be. He inspired the greater awe, because,
like the stocks, of which he was deputed guardian, his powers were
undefined and obscure, and he had no particular place in the out-of-door
establishment. He was not the steward, yet he did much of what ought to
be the steward's work; he was not the farm-bailiff, for the Squire
called himself his own farm-bailiff; nevertheless, Mr. Hazeldean sowed
and plowed, cropped and stocked, bought and sold, very much as Mr. Stirn
condescended to advise. He was not the park-keeper, for he neither shot
the deer nor superintended the preserves; but it was he who always found
out who had broken a park-pale or snared a rabbit. In short, what may be
called all the harsher duties of a large landed proprietor devolved by
custom and choice upon Mr. Stirn. If a laborer was to be discharged, or
a rent enforced, and the Squire knew that he should be talked over, and
that the steward would be as soft as himself, Mr. Stirn was sure to be
the avenging [Greek: angelos] or messenger, to pronounce the words of
fate; so that he appeared to the inhabitants of Hazeldean like the
Poet's _Sæva Necessitas_, a vague incarnation of remorseless power,
armed with whips, nails, and wedges. The very brute creation stood in
awe of Mr. Stirn. The calves knew that it was he who singled out which
should be sold to the butcher, and huddled up into a corner with beating
hearts at his grim footstep; the sow grunted, the duck quacked, the hen
bristled her feathers and called to her chicks when Mr. Stirn drew near.
Nature had set her stamp upon him. Indeed it may be questioned whether
the great M. de Chambray himself, surnamed the Brave, had an aspect so
awe-inspiring as that of Mr. Stirn; albeit the face of that hero was so
terrible, that a man who had been his lackey, seeing his portrait after
he had been dead twenty years, fell a-trembling all over like a leaf!
"And what the plague are you all doing here?" said Mr. Stirn, as he
waved and smacked a great cart-whip which he held in his hand, "making
such a hullabaloo, you women, you! that I suspect the Squire will be
sending out to know if the village is on fire. Go home, will ye? High
time indeed to have the stocks ready, when you get squalling and
conspiring under the very nose of a justice of the peace, just as the
French Revolutioners did afore they cut off their King's head; my hair
stands on end to look at ye." But already, before half this address was
delivered, the crowd had dispersed in all directions--the women still
keeping together, and the men sneaking off toward the ale-house. Such
was the beneficent effect of the fatal stocks on the first day of their
resuscitation!
However, in the break up of every crowd there must be always some one
who gets off the last; and it so happened that our friend Lenny
Fairfield, who had mechanically approached close to the stocks, the
better to hear the oracular opinions of Gaffer Solomons, had no less
mechanically, on the abrupt appearance of Mr. Stirn, crept, as he hoped,
out of sight behind the trunk of the elm tree which partially shaded the
stocks; and there now, as if fascinated, he still cowered, not daring to
emerge in full view of Mr. Stirn, and in immediate reach of the
cart-whip, when the quick eye of the right-hand man detected his
retreat.
"Hallo, you sir--what the deuce, laying a mine to blow up the stocks!
just like Guy Fox and the Gunpowder Plot, I declares! What ha' you got
in your willainous little fist, there?"
"Nothing, sir," said Lenny, opening his palm.
"Nothing--um!" said Mr. Stirn, much dissatisfied; and then, as he gazed
more deliberately, recognizing the pattern boy of the village, a cloud
yet darker gathered over his brow; for Mr. Stirn, who valued himself
much on his learning--and who, indeed, by dint of more knowledge as well
as more wit than his neighbors, had attained his present eminent station
in life--was extremely anxious that his only son should also be a
scholar; that wish,
"The Gods dispersed in empty air."
Master Stirn was a notable dunce at the Parson's school, while Lenny
Fairfield was the pride and boast of it; therefore Mr. Stirn was
naturally, and almost justifiably ill-disposed toward Lenny Fairfield,
who had appropriated to himself the praises which Mr. Stirn had designed
for his son.
"Um!" said the right-hand man, glowering on Lenny malignantly, "you are
the pattern boy of the village, are you? Very well, sir--then I put
these here stocks under your care--and you'll keep off the other boys
from sitting on 'em, and picking off the paint, and playing three holes
and chuck farthing, as I declare they've been a-doing, just in front of
the elewation. Now you knows your sponsibilities, little boy--and a
great honor they are too, for the like o' you. If any damage be done, it
is to you I shall look; d'ye understand? and that's what the Squire says
to me; so you sees what it is to be a pattern boy, Master Lenny!"
With that Mr. Stirn gave a loud crack of the cart-whip, by way of
military honors, over the head of the vicegerent he had thus created,
and strode off to pay a visit to two young unsuspecting pups, whose ears
and tails he had graciously promised their proprietor to crop that
evening. Nor, albeit few charges could be more obnoxious than that of
deputy governor or _chargé d'affaires extraordinaire_ to the Parish
Stocks, nor one more likely to render Lenny Fairfield odious to his
contemporaries, ought he to have been insensible to the signal advantage
of his condition over that of the two sufferers, against whose ears and
tails Mr. Stirn had no especial motives of resentment. To every bad
there is a worse--and fortunately for little boys, and even for grown
men, whom the Stirns of the world regard malignly, the majesty of law
protects their ears, and the merciful forethought of nature deprived
their remote ancestors of the privilege of entailing tails upon them.
Had it been otherwise--considering what handles tails would have given
to the oppressor, how many traps envy would have laid for them, how
often they must have been scratched and mutilated by the briars of life,
how many good excuses would have been found for lopping, docking, and
trimming them--I fear that only the lap-dogs of fortune would have gone
to the grave tail-whole.