Riccabocca. – "Exceedingly so. Very fine battle-piece!"
Mrs Dale. – "So kind-hearted."
Riccabocca. – "All ladies are. How naturally that warrior makes his desperate cut at the runaway!"
Mrs Dale. – "She is not what is called regularly handsome, but she has something very winning."
Riccabocca, with a smile. – "So winning, that it is strange she is not won. That gray mare in the foreground stands out very boldly!"
Mrs Dale, distrusting the smile of Riccabocca, and throwing in a more effective grape charge. – "Not won yet; and it is strange! – she will have a very pretty fortune."
Riccabocca. – "Ah!"
Mrs Dale. – "Six thousand pounds, I daresay – certainly four."
Riccabocca, suppressing a sigh, and with his wonted address. – "If Mrs Dale were still single, she would never need a friend to say what her portion might be; but Miss Jemima is so good that I am quite sure it is not Miss Jemima's fault that she is still – Miss Jemima!"
The foreigner slipped away as he spoke, and sate himself down beside the whist-players.
Mrs Dale was disappointed, but certainly not offended. – "It would be such a good thing for both," muttered she, almost inaudibly.
"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he was undressing, that night, in the large, comfortable, well-carpeted English bedroom, with that great English four-posted bed in the recess which seems made to shame folks out of single-blessedness – "Giacomo, I have had this evening the offer of probably six thousand pounds – certainly of four thousand."
"Cosa meravigliosa!" exclaimed Jackeymo – "miraculous thing!" and he crossed himself with great fervour. "Six thousand pounds English! why, that must be a hundred thousand – blockhead that I am! – more than a hundred and fifty thousand pounds Milanese!" And Jackeymo, who was considerably enlivened by the Squire's ale, commenced a series of gesticulations and capers, in the midst of which he stopped and cried, "But not for nothing?"
"Nothing! no!"
"These mercenary English! – the Government wants to bribe you."
"That's not it."
"The priests want you to turn heretic."
"Worse than that," said the philosopher.
"Worse than that! O Padrone! for shame!"
"Don't be a fool, but pull off my pantaloons – they want me never to wear these again!"
"Never to wear what?" exclaimed Jackeymo, staring outright at his master's long legs in their linen drawers – "never to wear – "
"The breeches," said Riccabocca laconically.
"The barbarians!" faltered Jackeymo.
"My nightcap! – and never to have any comfort in this," said Riccabocca, drawing on the cotton head-gear; "and never to have any sound sleep in that," pointing to the four-posted bed. "And to be a bondsman and a slave," continued Riccabocca, waxing wroth; "and to be wheedled and purred at, and pawed, and clawed, and scolded, and fondled, and blinded, and deafened, and bridled, and saddled – bedevilled and – married."
"Married!" said Jackeymo, more dispassionately – "that's very bad, certainly; but more than a hundred and fifty thousand lire, and perhaps a pretty young lady, and" —
"Pretty young lady!" growled Riccabocca, jumping into bed and drawing the clothes fiercely over him. "Put out the candle, and get along with you – do, you villanous old incendiary!"
CHAPTER IX
It was not many days since the resurrection of those ill-omened stocks, and it was evident already, to an ordinary observer, that something wrong had got into the village. The peasants wore a sullen expression of countenance; when the Squire passed, they took off their hats with more than ordinary formality, but they did not return the same broad smile to his quick, hearty "Good day, my man." The women peered at him from the threshold or the casement, but did not, as was their wont, (at least the wont of the prettiest,) take occasion to come out to catch his passing compliment on their own good looks, or their tidy cottages. And the children, who used to play after work on the site of the old stocks, now shunned the place, and, indeed, seemed to cease play altogether.
On the other hand, no man likes to build, or rebuild, a great public work for nothing. Now that the Squire had resuscitated the stocks, and made them so exceedingly handsome, it was natural that he should wish to put somebody into them. Moreover, his pride and self-esteem had been wounded by the Parson's opposition; and it would be a justification to his own forethought, and a triumph over the Parson's understanding, if he could satisfactorily and practically establish a proof that the stocks had not been repaired before they were wanted.
Therefore, unconsciously to himself, there was something about the Squire more burly, and authoritative, and menacing than heretofore. Old Gaffer Solomons observed, "that they had better mind well what they were about, for that the Squire had a wicked look in the tail of his eye – just as the dun bull had afore it tossed neighbour Barnes's little boy."
For two or three days these mute signs of something brewing in the atmosphere had been rather noticeable than noticed, without any positive overt act of tyranny on the one hand, or rebellion on the other. But on the very Saturday night in which Dr Riccabocca was installed in the four-posted bed in the chintz chamber, the threatened revolution commenced. In the dead of that night, personal outrage was committed on the stocks. And on the Sunday morning, Mr Stirn, who was the earliest riser in the parish, perceived, in going to the farmyard, that the nob of the column that flanked the board had been feloniously broken off; that the four holes were bunged up with mud; and that some Jacobinical villain had carved, on the very centre of the flourish or scroll work, "Dam the stoks!" Mr Stirn was much too vigilant a right-hand man, much too zealous a friend of law and order, not to regard such proceedings with horror and alarm. And when the Squire came into his dressing-room at half-past seven, his butler (who fulfilled also the duties of valet) informed him, with a mysterious air, that Mr Stirn had something "very partikler to communicate, about a most howdacious midnight 'spiracy and 'sault."
The Squire stared, and bade Mr Stirn be admitted.
"Well?" cried the Squire, suspending the operation of stropping his razor.
Mr Stirn groaned.
"Well, man, what now?"
"I never knowed such a thing in this here parish afore," began Mr Stirn, "and I can only 'count for it by s'posing that them foreign Papishers have been semminating" —
"Been what?"
"Semminating" —
"Disseminating, you blockhead – disseminating what?"
"Damn the stocks," began Mr Stirn, plunging right in medias res, and by a fine use of one of the noblest figures in rhetoric.
"Mr Stirn!" cried the Squire, reddening, "did you say 'Damn the stocks?' – damn my new handsome pair of stocks!"
"Lord forbid, sir; that's what they say: that's what they have digged on it with knives and daggers, and they have stuffed mud in its four holes, and broken the capital of the elewation."
The Squire took the napkin off his shoulder, laid down strop and razor; he seated himself in his arm-chair majestically, crossed his legs, and in a voice that affected tranquillity, said —
"Compose yourself, Stirn; you have a deposition to make, touching an assault upon – can I trust my senses? – upon my new stocks. Compose yourself – be calm. NOW! What the devil is come to the parish?"
"Ah, sir, what indeed?" replied Mr Stirn; and then, laying the forefinger of the right hand on the palm of the left, he narrated the case.
"And whom do you suspect? Be calm now, don't speak in a passion. You are a witness, sir – a dispassionate, unprejudiced witness. Zounds and fury! this is the most insolent, unprovoked,