The Squire's carpenters were taken from the park pales, and set to
work at the parish stocks. Then came the painter and coloured 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 characterises 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-faddle
_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 brickmaker
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 faggots and timber were felled, this
feud broke out afresh; for the Sticktorights refused to the Hazeldeans
the right to cart off the said faggots 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
dependants, 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 a 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 towards 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 neighbourhood 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 towards 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
favourite, 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
month, 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 favourite
maxim of his--"that in a man, everything 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 all the rest, with the nonchalant survey of virgin
dandyism, Francis Hazeldean looked over one of the high starched
neckcloths 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, drily--
"Yes, sir; but how came the stocks to be so long out of repair?"
"Because one can't see to everything 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. No. 3 A. 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 everything 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'm 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 into 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 staunch 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 favourite 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 amongst 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 '_non quieta 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 tri buuntur mascula dicas.--
As in præsenti, perfectum format in avi.'"
"There," added the Squire, turning triumphantly towards 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
favourite 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 neighbouring cottages, and approached the site of the stocks
with much marvel, fear, and curiosity.
In fact, the renovated appearance of this monster--_à propos de
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 hedgerow, 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 in't!" said the dame with many children, and she breathed
more freely.
"Maw be," said Gaffer Solomons, "some o' ye has been sitting 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' yourselves!"
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 clamour among the females, as they retreated with
involuntary steps towards 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 ploughed, 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 labourer 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 ®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 towards 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 willanous little fist there?"
"Nothing, sir," said Lenny, opening his palm.
"Nothing--um!" said Mr Stirn much dissatisfied; and then, as he gazed
more deliberately, recognising 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 neighbours, 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 towards 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 honour 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 honours, 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.