Springhaven : a Tale of the Great War Part 3

"It isn't that so much, Mr. Swipes, if only there was any way of giving satisfaction. I wish everybody who is born to it to have the very best of everything, likewise all who have fought up to it. But to make all the things and have nothing made of them, whether indigestion or want of appet.i.te, turns one quite into the Negroes almost, that two or three people go on with."

"I don't look at what he hath aten or left," Mr. Swipes made answer, loftily; "that lieth between him and his own stommick. But what hath a'

left for me, ma'am? He hath looked out over the garden when he pleased, and this time of year no weeds is up, and he don't know enough of things to think nothing of them. When his chaise come down I was out by the gate with a broom in my hand, and I pulled off my hat, but his eye never seemed to lay hold of me."

"His eye lays hold of everything, whether he makes 'em feel or no.

One thing I'm sure of--he was quite up to Miss Dolly, and the way she carries on with you know who, every blessed Sunday. If that is what they go to church for--"

"But, my dear soul," said the genial Swipes, whose heart was enlarged with the power of good beer, "when you and I was young folk, what did we go to church for? I can't speak for you, ma'am, being ever so much younger, and a baby in the gallery in long clothes, if born by that time; but so far as myself goes, it was the girls I went to look at, and most of 'em come as well to have it done to them."

"That never was my style, Mr. Swipes, though I know there were some not above it. And amongst equals I won't say that there need be much harm in it. But for a young man in the gallery, with a long stick of the vile-base in his hand, and the only clean s.h.i.+rt of the week on his back, and nothing but a plank of pitch to keep him, however good-looking he may be, to be looking at the daughter, and the prettiest one too, though not the best, some people think, of the gentleman that owns all the houses and the haven--presumption is the smallest word that I can find to use for it; and for her to allow it, fat--fat something in the nation."

"Well, ma'am," said Mr. Swipes, whose views were loose and liberal, "it seems a little shock at first to those on trust in families. But Dannel is a brave boy, and might fight his way to glory, and then they has the pick of the femmels up to a thousand pound a year. You know what happened the miller's son, no further off than Upton. And if it hadn't been for Dannel, when she was a little chit, where would proud Miss Dolly be, with her feathers and her furbelows? Natur' is the thing I holds by, and I sees a deal of it. And betwixt you and me and the bedpost, ma'am, whoever hath Miss Dolly will have to ride to London on this here scythe. Miss Faith is the la.s.s for a good quiet man, without no airs and graces, and to my judgment every bit as comely, and more of her to hold on by. But the Lord 'a mercy upon us. Mrs. Cloam, you've a-been married like my poor self; and you knows what we be, and we knows what you be. Looks 'ain't much to do with it after the first week or two. It's the cooking, and the natur', and the not going contrairy.

B'lieve Miss Dolly would go contrairy to a hangel, if her was j'ined to him three days."

"Prejudice! prejudice!" the housekeeper replied, while shaking her finger severely at him. "You ought to be above such opinions, Mr.

Swipes, a superior man, such as you are. If Miss Faith came into your garden reading books, and finding fault here and there, and sniffing at the flowers, a quarter so often as pretty Dolly does, perhaps you wouldn't make such a perfect angel of her, and run down her sister in comparison. But your wonderful Miss Faith comes peeping here and poking there into pots and pans, and asking the maids how their mothers are, as if her father kept no housekeeper. She provoked me so in the simple-room last week, as if I was hiding thieves there, that I asked her at last whether she expected to find Mr. Erle there. And you should have seen how she burst out crying; for something had turned on her mind before."

"Well, I couldn't have said that to her," quoth the tender-hearted Swipes--"not if she had come and routed out every key and every box, pot, pan, and pannier in the tool-house and stoke-hole and vinery! The pretty dear! the pretty dear! And such a lady as she is! Ah, you women are hard-hearted to one another, when your minds are up! But take my word for it, Mrs. Cloam, no one will ever have the chance of making your beautiful Miss Dolly cry by asking her where her sweetheart is."

CHAPTER VII

A SQUADRON IN THE DOWNS

"My dear girls, all your courage is gone," said Admiral Darling to his daughters at luncheon, that same Monday; "departed perhaps with Lord Nelson and Frank. I hate the new style of such come-and-go visits, as if there was no time for anything. Directly a man knows the ways of the house, and you can take him easily, off he goes. Just like Hurry, he never can stop quiet. He talks as if peace was the joy of his life, and a quiet farm his paradise, and very likely he believes it. But my belief is that a year of peace would kill him, now that he has made himself so famous. When that sort of thing begins, it seems as if it must go on."

"But, father dear," exclaimed the elder daughter, "you could have done every single thing that Lord Nelson has ever contrived to do, if you had only happened to be there, and equally eager for destruction. I have heard you say many times, though not of course before him, that you could have managed the battle of the Nile considerably better than he did. And instead of allowing the great vessel to blow up, you would have brought her safe to Spithead."

"My dear, you must have quite misunderstood me. Be sure that you never express such opinions, which are entirely your own, in the presence of naval officers. Though I will not say that they are quite without foundation."

"Why, papa," cried Miss Dolly, who was very truthful, when her own interests were not involved, "you have often said twice as much as that.

How well I remember having heard you say--"

"You young people always back up one another, and you don't care what you make your poor father say. I wonder you don't vow that I declared I could jump over the moon with my uniform on. But I'll tell you what we'll do, to bring back your senses--we will go for a long ride this fine afternoon. I've a great mind to go as far as Stonnington."

"Now how many times have you told us that? I won't believe it till we get there," young Dolly answered, with her bright eyes full of joy. "You must be ashamed of yourself, papa, for neglecting your old friend's son so long."

"Well, to tell you the truth, I am, my dear," confessed the good-natured Admiral; "but no one but myself has the least idea of the quant.i.ty of things I have to do."

"Exactly what old Swipes said this very morning, only much more impressively. And I really did believe him, till I saw a yellow jug, and a horn that holds a pint, in the summer-house. He threw his coat over them, but it was too late."

"Dolly, I shall have to put you in the blackhole. You belong too much to the rising generation, or the upstart generation is the proper word.

What would Lord Nelson say? I must have him back again. He is the man for strict discipline."

"Oh, I want to ask one thing about my great G.o.dfather. You know he only came down with one portmanteau, and his c.o.c.ked-hat box, and two hampers.

But when I went into his bedroom to see, as a G.o.ddaughter should, that his pillow was smooth, there he had got tacked up at the head of his bed a picture of some very beautiful lady, and another at the side, and another at the foot! And Jenny Shanks, who couldn't help peeping in, to see how a great hero goes to sleep, wishes that she may be an old maid forever if she did not see him say his prayers to them. Now the same fate befall me if I don't find out who it is. You must know, papa, so you had better tell at once."

"That hussy shall leave the house tomorrow. I never heard of anything so shameless. Mrs. Cloam seems to have no authority whatever. And you too, Dolly, had no business there. If any one went to see the room comfortable, it should have been Faith, as the lady of the house. Ever since you persuaded me that you were too old for a governess, you seem to be under no discipline at all."

"Now you know that you don't mean that, papa. You say those cruel things just to make me kiss you," cried Dolly, with the action suited to the word, and with her bright hair falling upon his snowy beard the father could not help returning the salute; "but I must know who that lady is.

And what can he want with three pictures of her?"

"How should I know, Dolly? Perhaps it is his mother, or perhaps it is the Queen of Naples, who made a Duke of him for what he did out there.

Now be quick, both of you, or no ride to-day. It is fifteen long miles to Stonnington, I am sure, and I am not going to break my neck. As it is, we must put dinner off till half past six, and we shall all be starved by that time. Quick, girls, quick! I can only give you twenty minutes."

The Admiral, riding with all the vigor of an ancient mariner, looked well between his two fair daughters, as they turned their horses' heads inland, and made over the downs for Stonnington. Here was beautiful cantering ground, without much furze or many rabbit-holes, and lovely air flowing over green waves of land, to greet and to deepen the rose upon young cheeks. Behind them was the broad sea, looking steadfast, and spread with slowly travelling tints; before them and around lay the beauty of the earth, with the goodness of the sky thrown over it. The bright world quivered with the breath of spring, and her smile was shed on everything.

"What a lovely country we have been through! I should like to come here every day," said Faith, as they struck into the London road again. "If Stonnington is as nice as this, Mr. Scudamore must be happy there."

"Well, we shall see," her father answered. "My business has been upon the coast so much, that I know very little about Stonnington. But Scudamore has such a happy nature that nothing would come much amiss to him. You know why he is here, of course?"

"No, I don't, papa. You are getting so mysterious that you never tell us anything now," replied Dolly. "I only know that he was in the navy, and now he is in a grammar school. The last time I saw him he was about a yard high."

"He is a good bit short of two yards now," said the Admiral, smiling as he thought of him, "but quite tall enough for a sailor, Dolly, and the most active young man I ever saw in my life, every inch of him sound and quick and true. I shall think very little of your judgment unless you like him heartily; not at first, perhaps, because he is so shy, but as soon as you begin to know him. I mean to ask him to come down as soon as he can get a holiday. His captain told me, when he served in the Diomede, that there was not a man in the s.h.i.+p to come near him for nimbleness and quiet fearlessness."

"Then what made him take to his books again? Oh, how terribly dull he must find them! Why, that must be Stonnington church, on the hill!"

"Yes, and the old grammar school close by. I was very near going there once myself, but they sent me to Winchester instead. It was partly through me that he got his berth here, though not much to thank me for, I am afraid. Sixty pounds a year and his rations isn't much for a man who has been at Cambridge. But even that he could not get in the navy when the slack time came last year. He held no commission, like many other fine young fellows, but had entered as a first-cla.s.s volunteer.

And so he had no rating when this vile peace was patched up--excuse me, my dear, what I meant to say was, when the blessings of tranquillity were restored. And before that his father, my dear old friend, died very suddenly, as you have heard me say, without leaving more than would bury him. Don't talk any more of it. It makes me sad to think of it."

"But," persisted Dolly, "I could never understand why a famous man like Sir Edmond Scudamore--a physician in large practice, and head doctor to the King, as you have often told us--could possibly have died in that sort of way, without leaving any money, or at least a quant.i.ty of valuable furniture and jewels. And he had not a number of children, papa, to spend all his money, as I do yours, whenever I get the chance; though you are growing so dreadfully stingy now that I never can look even decent."

"My dear, it is a very long sad story. Not about my stinginess, I mean--though that is a sad story, in another sense, but will not move my compa.s.sion. As to Sir Edmond, I can only tell you now that, while he was a man of great scientific knowledge, he knew very little indeed of money matters, and was not only far too generous, but what is a thousand times worse, too trustful. Being of an honorable race himself, and an honorable sample of it, he supposed that a man of good family must be a gentleman; which is not always the case. He advanced large sums of money, and signed bonds for a gentleman, or rather a man of that rank, whose name does not concern you; and by that man he was vilely betrayed; and I would rather not tell you the rest of it. Poor Blyth had to leave Cambridge first, where he was sure to have done very well indeed, and at his wish he was sent afloat, where he would have done even better; and then, as his father's troubles deepened, and ended in his death of heart complaint, the poor boy was left to keep his broken-hearted mother upon nothing but a Latin Grammar. And I fear it is like a purser's dip. But here we are at Stonnington--a long steep pitch. Let us slacken sail, my dears, as we have brought no c.o.c.kswain. Neither of you need land, you know, but I shall go into the schoolroom."

"One thing I want to know," said the active-minded Dolly, as the horses came blowing their breath up the hill: "if his father was Sir Edmond, and he is the only child, according to all the laws of nature, he ought to be Sir Blyth Scudamore."

"It shows how little you have been out--as good Mrs. Twemlow expresses it--that you do not even understand the laws of nature as between a baronet and a knight."

"Oh, to be sure; I recollect! How very stupid of me! The one goes on, and the other doesn't, after the individual stops. But whose fault is it that I go out so little? So you see you are caught in your own trap, papa."

CHAPTER VIII

A LESSON IN THE AENEID

In those days Stonnington was a very pretty village, and such it continued to be until it was ravaged by a railway. With the railway came all that is hideous and foul, and from it fled all that is comely. The cattle-shed, called by rail-highwaymen "the Station," with its roof of iron Pan-pipes and red bull's-eyes stuck on stack-poles, whistles and stares where the grand trees stood and the village green lay sleeping.

On the site of the gray-stone grammar school is an "Operative Inst.i.tute," whose front (not so thick as the skin of a young a.s.s) is gayly tattooed with a ringworm of wind-bricks. And the old manor-house, where great authors used to dine, and look out with long pipes through the ivy, has been stripped of every shred of leaf, and painted red and yellow, and barge-boarded into "the Temperance Tap."

Ere ever these heathen so furiously raged, there was peace and content, and the pleasure of the eyes, and of neighborly feeling abundance.

The men never burst with that bubble of hurry which every man now is inflated with; and the women had time enough to mind one another's affairs, without which they grow scandalous. And the trees, that kept company with the houses, found matter for reflection in their calm blue smoke, and the green crop that promised a little grove upon the roof.

So that as the road went up the hill, the traveller was content to leave his legs to nature, while his eyes took their leisure of pleasant views, and of just enough people to dwell upon.

At the top of the hill rose the fine old church, and next to it, facing on the road itself, without any kind of fence before it, stood the grammar school of many generations. This was a long low building, ridged with mossy slabs, and ribbed with green, where the drip oozed down the b.u.t.tresses. But the long reach of the front was divided by a gable projecting a little into the broad high-road. And here was the way, beneath a low stone arch, into a porch with oak beams bulging and a bell-rope dangling, and thence with an oaken door flung back into the dark arcade of learning.

This was the place to learn things in, with some possibility of keeping them, and herein lay the wisdom of our ancestors. Could they ever have known half as much as they did, and ten times as much as we know, if they had let the sun come in to dry it all up, as we do? Will even the fourteen-coated onion root, with its bottom exposed to the sun, or will a clever puppy grow long ears, in the power of strong daylight?