"Bless the fellow! Well, you are hard hit, or you would not carry on in this style." Tom turned his eyeglass upon me in a manner which might have provoked me, if I had been capable of thinking twice about him now. "In a blue study, George? Everything looks blue, even the mist in the valley. Has she got blue eyes? Ah! there is nothing like them."
"Blue eyes have no depth. What do you know about eyes?" I spoke with some warmth, as was natural. And then, just to show him how calmly I took his childish and shallow observation, I proceeded as if he had never spoken.
"You see that long mass of black ivy to the right, cutting a sort of jag, or perhaps it is a great curve out of the flat steep line of the meadow?"
"Yes, to be sure I do. Nothing could be plainer. A jag which is a curve at the same time; and a flat meadow which is also steep!"
"Never mind the meadow. You are not so stupid that you can't see the wall, and the ivy on it. Now, Tom Erricker, what do you suppose that to be?"
"How can I tell, about two miles away? Let us go on, and make it out, old chap."
"Not another step. I am not at all sure that I ought to have brought you so far as this. However, you can hold your tongue, I know; and you are upon your honour about all this. Well, that is the wall of an old monastery, more than five hundred years old, I believe, and connected with that ancient chapel on the hills. Naturally, it is all in ruins now, and there has been an attempt to set a mill up in its place."
"The best thing to be done with it," Tom replied, for his nature was not reverent. "But a mill should have paid, if it had any water. Free trade has not had time to destroy the pounders yet, although it has killed the producers. But I don't want to hear about monks and mills. The lovely nuns are more to my taste."
"What nuns could there be in a monastery, Tom? You are even more abroad than usual. But though I have not been near the place, since the time I told you of, and we have nothing to do with that valley now, I have put a few quiet questions here and there, and I find that the old place has been sold to a foreign gentleman, whose name our fine fellows cannot pronounce."
"Oho! That becomes very interesting. He's papa of the beautiful nymph, no doubt. But you never mean to say that you left off there?"
"Certainly I do. How could I go prying? What Englishman would ever think of meddling with his neighbours? And a foreigner, too, who has come here for quiet——"
"Bother!" replied Tom. "If they have lovely daughters, everybody has a right to find out all about them. I'll bet you a hat it is some wicked old conspirator, a Nihilist perhaps, or at least an Anarchist, taking advantage of our stupid hospitality, to hatch some fiendish plot, and blow up some foreign monarch, with whom we pretend to be in strict friendship. Why, only a few months ago——"
"No more of that. I hoped to have found a little common-sense in you. As if it were possible that that—that perfect——"
"Angel!" cried Tom. "You can't get beyond that. And I am blessed if I ever could have believed that a sensible, slow-going bloke like you, George——"
I took hold of his bridle, and turned Amabel homeward, and gave her such a sharp little flick behind that my friend had as much as he could do to keep in the saddle, for the best part of the way back to our cottage. For we never grudged oats to our horses.
CHAPTER IV MR. STONEMAN
No man who has to contend with the world, and support those he loves against it, cares twopence about being taken for a fool by the people he has to contend with. Their opinion to this effect frequently is of some service to him, and very seldom hurts him, unless he wants to get into their employment, or to borrow money from them. And in the latter point it even helps him, when he has good security to give.
There is a certain worm, whose name I know not, being all abroad in natural history, whose habit it is to come out of the ground and give himself an airing late at night. And then if you moisten him from above, in September or October, so grateful is he—or, if you deny him that lofty feeling, so sensitive—that he glitters like any glow-worm.
With no less amplitude, perhaps, a man who has deep emotions, such as shy ambition, or literary yearnings, or passionate humanity, or true love of a woman, sometimes lets himself out at night, when small things are lost to the eyes, and the larger objects begin to assert themselves. For after all, what are the toys of the day, for which we sweat, and fight, and crawl, and rack our poor brains till they cry for the revolver—even if we get such gauds, what are they, to make up for the gentle delight we have lost, of the days when we loved all the world, and the moments when some one tried to do the like to us?
Now nothing of this kind comes in here, for verily I had been cheated too often to rush into the embrace of the universe. But for the life of me, I cannot tell how to explain the behaviour of a man, keener by a thousandfold, and harder than in my worst moments I could long to be, except by such principles, or (if they are not that) such want of principle, such backsliding, such loosening of texture, and relapse into nature, as we feel even in ourselves sometimes, and are more ashamed of them in voice than heart. However, let every one judge for himself.
It must have been close upon St. Swithin's Day, for people were watching the weather as they do, to keep up the fine old legend, when after a long turn among the hay, which was very late that year, I sat in my little den after dark, considering my pipe, or perhaps allowing it to consider for me, because I was tired with a hard day's work, and fit for nothing but putting my legs up. While we were so busy with the only thing worth growing now in England, because it grows itself, the wisest plan was to dine, or at least to feed, among it, and be content. And to feed upon it is what the true Briton must come to, whenever a great war arises. The man who has shut his eyes, must also shut his mouth, as the proverb hath it.
While I was nodding at every puff, and full of the sleepy scent of hay, the sound of a step, and the darkening of my open doorway, aroused me. "Come in, Bob," I said, "anything the matter?" For some of our ricks had been carried rather green, and we were still obliged to watch them.
"Excuse me for taking you thus by surprise. If you can spare me a few minutes, Mr. Cranleigh, you will do a great favour. It is Jackson Stoneman."
Having seen this rich gentleman chiefly at a distance, and not cared much to look at him, I wondered at his coming in upon me thus, and was rather inclined to resent it. But the thought of my father and mother, and of the great help that his tenancy was to them, compelled me to drop such little points, and receive him with all civility. My snuggery was but a very little place, forming a part of the harness-room, and resigned (whenever the door was shut) to a very modest share of daylight coming through leaded diamonds, which were certainly not brilliants. So I lit my candles, still having a pair, and offered him my one armchair, an ancient Windsor, with a cushion in the bottom, more cosy than most of the easy-chairs made now to be gazed at rather than sat upon. He thanked me, but took his seat upon an oaken bench, and looked at me steadily, as if to search my humour. Being of an equable and by no means rapid temper, I returned his gaze with interest, and left him to begin.
"First of all, I must have this settled,"—his voice was very clear and rather pleasant, though he showed some signs of nervousness; "it must be understood that whether I am right or wrong in coming to you like this, you will not be annoyed, and turn against me."
"Very well," I said, for the promise was a light one. What harm could I do to a man of his wealth? And if a man offends me, I let him alone, until it is cowardice to do so.
"You attach much importance, I think, Mr. Cranleigh, to questions of birth, and position in the county, and ancient family, and so on?"
"I am not at all aware that I do so. The fact is, that I am too busy now to dwell much upon such things. And their period seems to be over."
I