"What, dolt! do you suppose Dr Rickeybockey got out of his warm bed to bung up the holes in my new stocks?"
"Noa; he's too cunning to do it himself, but he may have been semminating. He's mighty thick with Parson Dale, and your honour knows as how the Parson set his face again the stocks. Wait a bit, sir – don't fly at me yet. There be a boy in this here parish" —
"A boy! – ah, fool, now you are nearer the mark. The Parson write 'Damn the stocks,' indeed! What boy do you mean?"
"And that boy be cockered up much by Mister Dale; and the Papisher went and sat with him and his mother a whole hour t'other day; and that boy is as deep as a well; and I seed him lurking about the place, and hiding hisself under the tree the day the stocks was put up – and that ere boy is Lenny Fairfield."
"Whew," said the Squire, whistling, "you have not your usual senses about you to-day, man. Lenny Fairfield – pattern boy of the village. Hold your tongue. I dare say it is not done by any one in the parish, after all; some good-for-nothing vagrant – that cursed tinker, who goes about with a very vicious donkey – whom, by the way, I caught picking thistles out of the very eyes of the old stocks! Shows how the tinker brings up his donkeys! Well, keep a sharp look-out. To-day is Sunday; worst day of the week, I'm sorry and ashamed to say, for rows and depredations. Between the services, and after evening church, there are always idle fellows from all the neighbouring country about, as you know too well. Depend on it, the real culprits will be found gathering round the stocks, and will betray themselves: have your eyes, ears, and wits about you, and I've no doubt we shall come to the rights of the matter before the day's out. And if we do," added the Squire, "we'll make an example of the ruffian!"
"In course," said Stirn; "and if we don't find him, we must make an example all the same. That's where it is, sir. That's why the stocks ben't respected; they has not had an example yet – we wants an example."
"On my word, I believe that's very true; and the first idle fellow you catch in anything wrong we'll clap in, and keep him there for two hours at least."
"With the biggest pleasure, your honour – that's what it is."
And Mr Stirn, having now got what he considered a complete and unconditional authority over all the legs and wrists of Hazeldean parish, quoad the stocks, took his departure.
CHAPTER X
"Randal," said Mrs Leslie, on this memorable Sunday – "Randal, do you think of going to Mr Hazeldean's?"
"Yes, ma'am," answered Randal. "Mr Egerton does not object to it; and as I do not return to Eton, I may have no other opportunity of seeing Frank for some time. I ought not to fail in respect to Mr Egerton's natural heir!"
"Gracious me!" cried Mrs Leslie, who, like many women of her cast and kind, had a sort of worldliness in her notions, which she never evinced in her conduct – "gracious me! – natural heir to the old Leslie property!"
"He is Mr Egerton's nephew, and," added Randal, ingenuously letting out his thoughts, "I am no relation to Mr Egerton at all."
"But," said poor Mrs Leslie, with tears in her eyes, "it would be a shame in the man, after paying your schooling and sending you to Oxford, and having you to stay with him in the holidays, if he did not mean anything by it."
"Anything, mother – yes – but not the thing you suppose. No matter. It is enough that he has armed me for life, and I shall use the weapons as seems to me best."
Here the dialogue was suspended, by the entrance of the other members of the family, dressed for church.
"It can't be time for church! No! it can't!" exclaimed Mrs Leslie. She was never in time for anything.
"Last bell ringing," said Mr Leslie, who, though a slow man, was methodical and punctual. Mrs Leslie made a frantic rush at the door, the Montfydget blood being now in a blaze – whirled up the stairs – gained her room, tore her best bonnet from the peg, snatched her newest shawl from the drawers, crushed the bonnet on her head, flung the shawl on her shoulders, thrust a desperate pin into its folds, in order to conceal a buttonless yawn in the body of her gown, and then flew back like a whirlwind. Meanwhile the family were already out of doors, in waiting; and just as the bell ceased, the procession moved from the shabby house to the dilapidated church.
The church was a large one, but the congregation was small, and so was the income of the Parson. It was a lay rectory, and the great tithes had belonged to the Leslies, but they had been long since sold. The vicarage, still in their gift, might be worth a little more than £100 a-year. The present incumbent had nothing else to live upon. He was a good man, and not originally a stupid one; but penury and the anxious cares for wife and family, combined with what may be called solitary confinement for the cultivated mind, when, amidst the two-legged creatures round, it sees no other cultivated mind with which it can exchange an extra-parochial thought – had lulled him into a lazy mournfulness, which at times was very like imbecility. His income allowed him to do no good to the parish, whether in work, trade, or charity; and thus he had no moral weight with the parishioners beyond the example of his sinless life, and such negative effect as might be produced by his slumberous exhortations. Therefore his parishioners troubled him very little; and but for the influence which, in hours of Montfydget activity, Mrs Leslie exercised over the most tractable – that is, the children and the aged – not half-a-dozen persons would have known or cared whether he shut up his church or not.
But our family were seated in state in their old seignorial pew, and Mr Dumdrum, with a nasal twang, went lugubriously through the prayers; and the old people who could sin no more, and the children who had not yet learned to sin, croaked forth responses that might have come from the choral frogs in Aristophanes. And there was a long sermon apropos to nothing which could possibly interest the congregation – being, in fact, some controversial homily, which Mr Dumdrum had composed and preached years before. And when this discourse was over, there was a loud universal grunt, as if of release and thanksgiving, and a great clatter of shoes – and the old hobbled, and the young scrambled, to the church door.
Immediately after church, the Leslie family dined; and, as soon as dinner was over, Randal set out on his foot journey to Hazeldean Hall.
Delicate and even feeble though his frame, he had the energy and quickness of movement which belongs to nervous temperaments; and he tasked the slow stride of a peasant, whom he took to serve him as a guide for the first two or three miles. Though Randal had not the gracious open manner with the poor which Frank inherited from his father, he was still (despite many a secret hypocritical vice, at war with the character of a gentleman) gentleman enough to have no churlish pride to his inferiors. He talked little, but he suffered his guide to talk; and the boor, who was the same whom Frank had accosted, indulged in eulogistic comments on that young gentleman's pony, from which he diverged into some compliments on the young gentleman himself. Randal drew his hat over his brows. There is a wonderful tact and fine breeding in your agricultural peasant; and though Tom Stowell was but a brutish specimen of the class, he suddenly perceived that he was giving pain. He paused, scratched his head, and glancing affectionately towards his companion, exclaimed —
"But I shall live to see you on a handsomer beastis than that little pony, Master Randal; and sure I ought, for you be as good a gentleman as any in the land."
"Thank you," said Randal. "But I like walking better than riding – I am more used to it."
"Well, and you walk bra'ly – there ben't a better walker in the county. And very pleasant it is walking; and 'tis a pretty country afore you, all the way to the Hall."
Randal strode on, as if impatient of these attempts to flatter or to soothe; and, coming at length into a broader lane, said – "I think I can find my way now. Many thanks to you, Tom;" and he forced a shilling into Tom's horny palm. The man took it reluctantly, and a tear started to his eye. He felt more grateful for that shilling than he had for Frank's liberal half-crown; and he thought of the poor fallen family, and forgot his own dire wrestle with the wolf at his door.
He