Possibly if I threw in a pint bottle, after scraping off the red pyramid, who could say that it might not land at the very feet to which all the world they ever trod upon must bow?
Encouraging these profound reflections, I sat upon the bank, and pulled out my pocket-knife, being a little sharp-set for the moment, and aware of some thrills in a quarter near the heart. There was very little more to be done that afternoon, the week having ripened into Saturday, when no man of any self-respect does more than congratulate himself upon his industry; and on this point few have a stronger sense of duty than the cultivator of the soil of Surrey. No matter what the weather is, or how important the job in hand may be, his employer may repose the purest confidence in him, that he will make off with holy zeal, right early on a Saturday.
Therefore when I heard a step behind me, I knew that it could be none of our "enlightened operatives;" not even Bob Slemmick would pull his coat off at that hour, though he would sometimes stop long enough to put away his tools. Correct was my reasoning, and with pleasure I beheld the active figure and expressive countenance of Mr. Jackson Stoneman. Not that every one would like this man, or care to have very much to do with him. Universal benevolence was not by any means the polestar of his existence, neither was it his chief employment to saunter amicably in the Milky Way. Butter for his bread, and that the very best butter, had probably been the main quest of his life; until his good stars brought him down into our county, and toward our Grace. He was even beginning to relax his mind, while he braced up his body already; and we thought that a year or two of our fine air would bring a lot of hard gold out of him.
"Glad to see you again. Somebody told us that you were off for the Mediterranean." In this careless manner did I shake hands with this 70 cubit and 20 carat Colossus of gold. There is humbug in all of us – even in me.
"Well, I was thinking of it," he replied, as he sat down beside me, and stretched his long legs, trousered a thousand times better than mine, though I knew which had most inside the cloth; "but after all, what's the good of foreign parts?"
Knowing but little about them as yet, and believing that he might traverse many thousand leagues without finding anything to come up to Surrey, I answered very simply, "You are quite right there."
"But isn't it disgusting, that in your native land, you can never make anything go to your liking?"
This was very difficult for me to answer. I could not get along for a thousand wicked reasons – Free-trade, Democracy, adulteration, sewage-butter, foot-and-mouth complaint, living wage for men who have no life, and all the other wrong end of the stick we get.
"What I mean has nothing to do with your ideas," he continued as if all my ideas must be wrong, just when I was hoping that he began to see the right; "for Constitutional questions, I don't care twopence. It has become a race of roguery between both sides. Don't look savage, George, you know it as well as I do. Your party would do anything to get into power again. When the bone is in their own mouths, will they even try to crack it? But I have not come to talk all that stuff. I am under your directions in a matter nearer home. Are you going to play fast and loose with me, while your sister is being truckled away to an idiot of an Earl?"
If my mind had not been very equable and just, I must have had a quarrel with him over this. And if he had looked at me with any defiance – but his gaze was very sorrowful, as if all his hopes were blasted.
"Jackson," I answered in a rather solemn voice, having sense of my own tribulation, and I saw that he liked me to address him thus, though the name is not purely romantic, "you are not a bit worse off than any other fellow. Do you suppose that nobody has ever been in love before? You look at things from such a narrow point of view. Consider how much worse it must be for a woman."
"Well, I wish it was." His reply upset my arguments; I found it very difficult to re-arrange them on that basis.
"So far as that goes, I can get on well enough," he proceeded as I looked at him sensibly; "I shall feel it for years, no doubt, but still – but still the blackness and the bitterness of it is this, that such a girl, such a girl as never before trod the face of the earth, or inhaled the light of the sun – " "Don't get mixed," I implored, but he regarded me with scorn – "should be sold, I say sold, like a lamb in the market, to an idiot, just because he has a title!"
"You will be sorry when you have offended me," I spoke with extraordinary self-control, taking a side glance at my own case; "for I don't come round in a hurry, I can tell you. But you really don't know what you are talking of. My father and mother have heard of no proposal, neither have I. And as for Grace herself, she despises that milksop as heartily as I do."
"George Cranleigh, I have not known you long; but this I can say without hesitation, and I should like to see any man deny it, you are the very noblest fellow that ever – "
"Trod the face of the earth, or inhaled the light of the sun. And why? Because I happen to agree with you. Ah, Jackson, allow me to improve the moment. Is there any human praise that does not flow from the like source, from the sense that the other fellow thinks as we do, and the subtle flattery of our own wisdom, and concurrence with our wishes."
"Shut up," he cried with a smile, which must have procured him much lucrative business in the City; "what has Farmer Jarge to do with moralising? But are you quite sure of what you said – that she despises him heartily?"
"Unless anybody runs him down, she never has a good word to say for him. He will be here upon some pretext or another; but you need have no fear. I see exactly how to treat the case – to praise him to the nines, and exalt him as the paragon of all manliness, and self-denial, and every tip-top element. And then to let her observe him closely, to see if he comes up to that mark – and behold she finds him a selfish little funk! That is the true policy with women, Jackson Stoneman."
The stock-broker looked at me, with puzzle in his eyes, which were ever so much keener than mine, and had a gift of creating a gable over them, like a pair of dormer-windows with the frames painted black.
"Bless my soul, if you wouldn't do up our way!" he said; and what higher praise could be given to a man? "Friend George, you are a thousand times sharper than I thought. But all I wish is fair play, and no favour; except of course favour in a certain pair of eyes."
"You shall have it, my dear fellow, you shall have it. If only you will keep yourself in the background, and do the most benevolent things you can think of, without letting anybody know it. Your money is the main point against you with her. Could you manage anyhow to be bankrupt?"
"That comes to most of us in the end," he replied, with a sigh, which I did not like at all, but hoped that it was rather of the heart than pocket; "if that were so, George, would you still take my part?"
"Not unless my sister were really committed. But if she had set her heart upon you, Stoneman, your wealth or your poverty would make no difference to me; and I am sure that it would make none to her."
"What more could a man wish? And I am sure you mean it. Come what will, I will play my game in an open and straightforward way. We must never try any tricks with women, George. Bless them, they know us better than we know ourselves. Perhaps because they pay so much more attention to the subject."
CHAPTER XIII
SMILES AND TEARS
If any one has followed my little adventures only half as carefully as I have tried to tell them, he will see that the time had now come and gone, for my second visit to St. Winifred's, otherwise Little Guinib. And I would have set forth what happened then, if it had been worth mentioning. But except for the medical treatment received, I might just as well have stayed away, for I never got a glimpse of Dariel; and her father was in such a sad state of mind, that he scarcely cared to speak at all. Being a most kind and courteous gentleman, he begged me to make due allowance for him, for this was the anniversary of the most unhappy day of his life, and in truth it would have been better for him, if he had died before he saw that day. One of the worst things of being a gentleman, or of having high-culture like Miss Ticknor, is that you must not ask questions, or even hint at your desire to know more, but sit upon the edge of curiosity in silence, although it may