“If the Madonna send us luck, and we could hire a lad cheap?” said Jackeymo, doubtfully.
“Piu vale un presente che dui futuri,”—[“A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.”]—said Riccabocca.
“Chi non fa quando pub, non pub, fare quando vuole,”—[“He who will not when he may, when he wills it shall have nay.”]—answered Jackeymo, as sententiously as his master. “And the Padrone should think in time that he must lay by for the dower of the poor signorina.”
Riccabocca sighed, and made no reply.
“She must be that high now!” said Jackeymo, putting his hand on some imaginary line a little above the balustrade. Riccabocca’s eyes, raised over the spectacles, followed the hand.
“If the Padrone could but see her here—”
“I thought I did,” muttered the Italian.
“He would never let her go from his side till she went to a husband’s,” continued Jackeymo.
“But this climate,—she could never stand it,” said Riccabocca, drawing his cloak round him, as a north wind took him in the rear.
“The orange trees blossom even here with care,” said Jackeymo, turning back to draw down an awning where the orange trees faced the north. “See!” he added, as he returned with a sprig in full bud.
Dr. Riccabocca bent over the blossom, and then placed it in his bosom.
“The other one should be there too,” said Jackeymo.
“To die—as this does already!” answered Riccabocca. “Say no more.”
Jackeymo shrugged his shoulders; and then, glancing at his master, drew his hand over his eyes.
There was a pause. Jackeymo was the first to break it. “But, whether here or there, beauty without money is the orange tree without shelter. If a lad could be got cheap, I would hire the land, and trust for the crop to the Madonna.”
“I think I know of such a lad,” said Riccabocca, recovering himself, and with his sardonic smile once more lurking about the corners of his mouth,—“a lad made for us.”
“Diavolo!”
“No, not the Diavolo! Friend, I have this day seen a boy who—refused sixpence!”
“Cosa stupenda!” exclaimed Jackeymo, opening his eyes, and letting fall the watering-pot.
“It is true, my friend.”
“Take him, Padrone, in Heaven’s name, and the fields will grow gold.”
“I will think of it, for it must require management to catch such a boy,” said Riccabocca. “Meanwhile, light a candle in the parlour, and bring from my bedroom that great folio of Machiavelli.”
CHAPTER X
In my next chapter I shall present Squire Hazeldean in patriarchal state,—not exactly under the fig-tree he has planted, but before the stocks he has reconstructed,—Squire Hazeldean and his family on the village green! The canvas is all ready for the colours.
But in this chapter I must so far afford a glimpse into antecedents as to let the reader know that there is one member of the family whom he is not likely to meet at present, if ever, on the village green at Hazeldean.
Our squire lost his father two years after his birth; his mother was very handsome—and so was her jointure; she married again at the expiration of her year of mourning; the object of her second choice was Colonel Egerton.
In every generation of Englishmen (at least since the lively reign of Charles II.) there are a few whom some elegant Genius skims off from the milk of human nature, and reserves for the cream of society. Colonel Egerton was one of these terque quaterque beati, and dwelt apart on a top shelf in that delicate porcelain dish—not bestowed upon vulgar buttermilk—which persons of fashion call The Great World. Mighty was the marvel of Pall Mall, and profound was the pity of Park Lane, when this supereminent personage condescended to lower himself into a husband. But Colonel Egerton was not a mere gaudy butterfly; he had the provident instincts ascribed to the bee. Youth had passed from him, and carried off much solid property in its flight; he saw that a time was fast coming when a home, with a partner who could help to maintain it, would be conducive to his comforts, and an occasional hum-drum evening by the fireside beneficial to his health. In the midst of one season at Brighton, to which gay place he had accompanied the Prince of Wales, he saw a widow, who, though in the weeds of mourning, did not appear inconsolable. Her person pleased his taste; the accounts of her jointure satisfied his understanding; he contrived an introduction, and brought a brief wooing to a happy close. The late Mr. Hazeldean had so far anticipated the chance of the young widow’s second espousals, that, in case of that event, he transferred, by his testamentary dispositions, the guardianship of his infant heir from the mother to two squires whom he had named his executors. This circumstance combined with her new ties somewhat to alienate Mrs. Hazeldean from the pledge of her former loves; and when she had borne a son to Colonel Egerton, it was upon that child that her maternal affections gradually concentrated.
William Hazeldean was sent by his guardians to a large provincial academy, at which his forefathers had received their education time out of mind. At first he spent his holidays with Mrs. Egerton; but as she now resided either in London, or followed her lord to Brighton, to partake of the gayeties at the Pavilion, so as he grew older, William, who had a hearty affection for country life, and of whose bluff manners and rural breeding Mrs. Egerton (having grown exceedingly refined) was openly ashamed, asked and obtained permission to spend his vacations either with his guardians or at the old Hall. He went late to a small college at Cambridge, endowed in the fifteenth century by some ancestral Hazeldean; and left it, on coming of age, without taking a degree. A few years afterwards he married a young lady, country born and bred like himself.
Meanwhile his half-brother, Audley Egerton, may be said to have begun his initiation into the beau monde before he had well cast aside his coral and bells; he had been fondled in the lap of duchesses, and had galloped across the room astride on the canes of ambassadors and princes. For Colonel Egerton was not only very highly connected, not only one of the Dii majores of fashion, but he had the still rarer good fortune to be an exceedingly popular man with all who knew him,—so popular, that even the fine ladies whom he had adored and abandoned forgave him for marrying out of “the set,” and continued to be as friendly as if he had not married at all. People who were commonly called heartless were never weary of doing kind things to the Egertons. When the time came for Audley to leave the preparatory school at which his infancy budded forth amongst the stateliest of the little lilies of the field, and go to Eton, half the fifth and sixth forms had been canvassed to be exceedingly civil to young Egerton. The boy soon showed that he inherited his father’s talent for acquiring popularity, and that to this talent he added those which put popularity to use. Without achieving any scholastic distinction, he yet contrived to establish at Eton the most desirable reputation which a boy can obtain,—namely, that among his own contemporaries, the reputation of a boy who was sure to do something when he grew to be a man. As a gentleman-commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, he continued to sustain this high expectation, though he won no prizes, and took but an ordinary degree; and at Oxford the future “something” became more defined,—it was “something in public life” that this young man was to do.
While he was yet at the University,