Читать книгу Thorpe Regis - Frances Mary Peard - Страница 3

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Nowadays the word “change,” when applied to a place, seems so naturally to carry in itself the ideas of growth, enlargement, and progress, that we find a certain difficulty in adopting the word in its retrograde sense, or of recognising other steps than those which we are in the habit of looking upon as advancement. And yet, if it be true that, under the pressure of an ever-increasing population, hamlets have become towns and fishing-villages seaports, it is no less certain that the great march leaves behind it, or pushes out of its way, many stragglers too sick, too feeble, or too weary for its ranks. Thorpe Regis was such a straggler. Not to speak of those ancient days, the glories of which only its name now kept in faint remembrance, there had been a time when the great high road to London ran through its length. Twice a week the London coach lumbered up to the door of the Red Lion, changed horses, let out its stiff and cramped passengers to stretch their limbs in the paved space before the door, or refresh themselves with a tankard of foaming ale in the stuffy little bar; and then lumbered off again out of the midst of a gaping knot of ostlers and stable-men. Twice a week came the London coach back, bringing with it a stir of life and importance, the latest messenger from the great world unknown to Thorpe except through its medium—more peremptory, more consequential, and more exacting. There was not a boy or man about the place but felt a sense of interested proprietorship in the Defiance and the Highflyer, and a pride in their respective performances. From the tiny hamlets round, lying in their green seclusions of elm-trees and apple orchards, the rustics used to make muddy pilgrimages to Thorpe, to carry an occasional letter to its post-office, and to watch the coach with steaming leaders swinging down the hill. That was the moment of triumph. A few little half-fledged boys, who were sure to be on the lookout, would hurrah feebly and set off running as fast as their legs could carry them, and a woman or two was generally at hand to cast up her eyes and exclaim at the pace; but the majority preserved a stolid, satisfied silence. That Thorpe Regis was theirs and the London coach must stop there were facts as undeniable as the Church, the Squire’s house, and the Red lion itself, and needed no comment.

Even facts, however, come to an end sometimes. There arrived a day when the railway, which had gradually been drawing nearer and nearer, reached Underham, a little out-of-the-world village about five miles west of Thorpe, which had hitherto looked humbly up to its more important neighbour, and without a murmur had carried its little tribute of weekly budgets to deposit at the door of the Red Lion. So readily does human nature accommodate itself to added greatness, that Underham was the first to claim from Thorpe the homage which all these years it had yielded ungrudgingly, and beyond a doubt it gave additional sharpness to the stings of humiliation endured by the fallen village, to know that its sudden depression had been caused by the prosperity of its rival.

For a short time the two coaches continued to run. The Highflyer was the first to succumb, while the Defiance, acting in accordance with its name, struggled on for another six months as best it could. But—although there might be something heroic in so unequal a warfare, and a certain dogged obstinacy in the refusal to accept defeat, which appeals forcibly to our English sympathies—the result could not possibly be averted. The old people who held railway travelling to be a tempting of Providence, and would fain have clung to the old ways to the end of their days, were too few in number, and too seldom travellers at the best, to support any means of conveyance whatever. Their journeys were rare events, and the last journey of all was not far off. So gradually the struggle came to an end. Underham built, paved, started a High Street, and gathered into itself all the traffic of the district. A company was formed to cut a canal and unite the railway with the river; and there were timber-yards, black coal-wharves, and all the busy tokens of prosperity, where, in former times, thatched cottages stood in the midst of their gardens, and bees sucked the wild blossoms of the honeysuckle.

Thorpe had long ago given up competing with its neighbouring rival. The old generation which resented the passing of its glories had passed away itself; only here and there an old man, leaning against his gate, would point with trembling finger up the hill, and in a cracked and feeble voice would tell his grandchildren how the London coach once brought the news that Nelson had beaten Bony at Trafalgar, and he, as a little lad, had clipped his hands and cheered with the rest. “They doan’t get news like that thyur down to Under’m, not they,” he would end, shaking his head scornfully. But, as a rule, it was only the old people whose memories pertinaciously resented the fallen fortunes of Thorpe. To others it was, as it had always been, a pretty old-fashioned village, set in the midst of green pastures at the foot of a tolerably steep hill, with a tangled network of lanes about it, and glimpses above the high hedges of a distant purple moorland. The cottages—broken by great outer chimneys running up like buttresses—were whitewashed, with many stages of descent between the first dazzling glaze of cleanliness and the last tumble-down exposure of the red-brown cob; while the thatch, beautiful in one season of its existence, presented as many gradations as the plaster, from its crude freshness to the time when withies were bound on it to prevent the wind from ripping it off, or the rain from dropping, as it often dropped, into the low bedroom of the family. Other houses there were of a more ambitious class. A few shops kept up a struggling existence, for although, except Weeks the butcher, no Thorpe person was rash enough to depend upon a single trade, there were combinations which developed a by no means contemptible ingenuity. Draperies and groceries were disposed from the same counter, with only an occasional inconvenience resulting from homely odours of tea or candles clinging to the materials with which they had long rested in closest neighbourhood. And a triple establishment at the corner, opposite the Red Lion, where the shoemaker kept the post-office and his wife instructed the Thorpe children in a back kitchen, was sometimes treated as the centre round which the village revolved.

Looking towards the hill which had been both the glory and the ruin of Thorpe Regis, since the flatter ground about Underham had led the surveyors for the railway to report more favourably upon its situation, the church with its red stone tower lay to the right, a little way up a lane, which in the hottest weather was hardly ever known to be dry; and the Vicarage might be entered either through the churchyard, or more directly from the village by an iron gate and drive. At the time of which I am writing, the vicar was the Rev. William Miles, whose family consisted of his wife, his son, and his daughter; and the squire of the place was old Mr. Chester of Hardlands.

Returning through the village and walking straight forward, instead of taking the road to Underham, a tall, ugly brick house, with a gravel sweep before it and a delightful old garden at the back, would soon be reached. It was inhabited by two brothers called Mannering, who had once been well-known London lawyers. Entering the house by three steps, a low and old-fashioned hall presented itself in singular contrast to the tastes of the day; a staircase with oak banisters fronted the door, to the left was the dining-room, and a door beyond led you into the study, where, about the hour of noon, it was very probable that the two brothers would be found together. At any rate it was so on the morning on which my story opens.

The room was one of those comfortable dens which man, without the aid of feminine taste and adornments, is occasionally so fortunate as to construct for himself. It was low and square, and had neither chintz nor flowers to relieve the dark furniture; but the Turkey carpet, although somewhat faded, had lost little of the richness of its finely blended colours; the books which lined the walls were bound with a care and finish which hinted at something approaching to bibliomania on the part of their owners; the pictures, though few, were choice, and the chairs were deep and inviting. Moreover, a summer noonday brightened whatever sombreness remained: sunshine came broadly in through a deep oriel-window, and the scent of flowers and newly mown grass mingled pleasantly with that of Russia leather and old morocco. The room was a cheerful room, although the cheerfulness might be of a subdued and old-world character; and the writing-table, while conveying certain suspicions of business transactions in the form of sundry bundles of papers docketed and tied with red tape, bore also a proof of more voluntary studies in a magnificently bound edition of Homer lying open upon the blotting-pad.

Mr. Mannering, who had but just pushed his chair away from the table, was standing upon some low steps in the act of drawing another volume from his amply filled book-shelves, and turning round as he did so to answer a remark of his brother Robert’s. His slim figure was dressed with scrupulous neatness; he had slender hands—one of which now rested on the top step, straight from the wrist, and, if one might draw an illustration from another member, as it were on tiptoe; his shoulders were a little stooping, his head bent and turned inquiringly; and his quiet voice and smile contained something of quaint humour, and were noticeable at once.

“My dear Robert,” he was saying, “can there be any use in my giving an opinion? So far as I understand the matter, you are blaming Stokes for not understanding the different natures of Gesnera elliptica and Gesnera elongata. How can I, who until this moment was ignorant of the existence in the world of any Gesnera at all, be an equitable arbiter?”

“Wrong, Charles, wrong. That is not the question; in fact, that has nothing whatever to do with the question,” said Mr. Robert, resuming his hasty march up and down the room. “Stokes is a fool, and, as he never was anything else, I suppose he can’t help himself. I don’t complain of that. What I complain of is, that he should attempt to be more than a fool. Haven’t I told you fifty times,” he continued, stopping suddenly before the delinquent, “that your business is to mind my orders, and not to think that or think this, as if you were setting up for having a head on your shoulders? Haven’t I told you that, eh?—answer me, sir.”

“ ’Tain’t no fault of mine,” rejoined the gardener, slowly and doggedly. “If this here Gehesnear had had a quiet time and no worriting of charcoal and korkynit and such itemy nonsense, you wouldn’t ha’ seen a mossel of dry-rot in the bulb. That’s what I says, and what Mr. Anthony says, too.”

“Confound your impudence, and Mr. Anthony’s with it. So you have been taking him into consultation? No wonder my Gesnera has come to a bad end between your two wise heads. Charles, do you hear?”

“Mr. Anthony has mastered horticulture, has he?” said Mr. Mannering, turning his back upon the combatants, whose wrath was rapidly subsiding. “If the boy goes on in this fashion there must be a new science created for his benefit ere long. Well, Robert, science has always had its martyrs, and you should submit with a good grace to your Gesnera being among them. When did Mr. Anthony come back?”

“Tuesday night, sir. He comed up here yesterday, but you was to Under’am.”

“I forbid his going within ten yards of the stove plants,” cried Mr. Robert, hastily. “If I find him trying experiments in my hot-houses, you shall be packed off, Stokes, as surely as I have put up with your inconceivable ignorance for seven years. I’ve not forgotten what Anthony Miles’s experiments are like. Didn’t he nearly blow up Underham with the chemicals he got hold of when that idiot Salter’s back was turned? Didn’t he bribe the doctor’s assistant, and half poison poor old Miss Philippa with learning how to mix medicines, forsooth? Didn’t he upset his mother, and frighten her out of the few wits she possesses, by trying a new fashion of harnessing? And now, as if all this were not enough, my poor plants are to be the victims. I forbid his coming within the great gate—I forbid your speaking to him while he is possessed with this mania—I forbid his looking at my Farleyense—”

“He’ve a seen that, sir,” said Stokes, with his stolid features relaxing into a grin.

“O, he has seen that, has he?” said Mr. Robert, struggling between indignation and gratified pride. “Do you hear that, Charles? Actually, before I’ve had time to give my orders. And, pray, what had Mr. Anthony to say of my Farleyense?”

“He said,” replied the gardener, doling out the sentences to his impatient master with irritating slowness, “as how he had comed through Lunnon, and been to one o’ they big flower-shows they talk so much about. And he said as there were a Farlyensy there—”

“Well, well?”

“As belonged to a dook—”

“Yes—well, what did he say? Can’t you speak?”

“As warn’t fit to hold a candle to owers,” burst out Stokes triumphantly, slapping his leg with an emphasis which made Mr. Mannering, who had returned to his seat at the writing-table, start and look round in, mild expostulation. His brother was rubbing his hands, and beaming in every feature of his round face.

“To be sure, to be sure,” he said in a tone of supreme satisfaction. “Just what one would have expected. But I am glad Anthony happened to be up there just at this time, and I will say for the lad that he makes better use of his eyes than three parts of the young fellows one meets with. So it was an inferior sort of article, was it?—with fronds half the size, I’ll lay a wager. You hear, Charles, don’t you? Well, Stokes, you have been exceedingly careful to treat that Farleyense in the manner I showed you—I knew it would answer—here, man, here’s half a sovereign for you, and mind the earth doesn’t get too dry.”

“Thank ye, sir, thank ye,” said Stokes, prudently abstaining from the contradiction in which at another time he might have indulged.

“And, Stokes—”

“Yes, Mr. Robert.”

“If Mr. Anthony comes up again, just let me know. I should wish him to see one or two of the other things in the house, but I prefer showing them to him myself.”

“It’s most likely he’ll be up again to-day, sir. He wants Miss Winifred to have a look at the plant.”

“Certainly, certainly. You can send in word when they come. And, Stokes—”

Stokes, who by this time had his hand upon the door, having tucked the luckless Gesnera out of sight, turned obediently.

“No experiments, mind, no experiments.”

“No, Mr. Robert ’Specially korkynit,” added the gardener in an audible whisper, as he went out. Whether or not Mr. Robert heard him, it is impossible to say. Something like a red flush rose in his face, and he looked hurriedly at his brother; but Mr. Mannering was sitting back in his deep chair, his elbows on its arms, his fingers joined at the tips, his eyes fixed upon the volume before him, and if the shadow of a smile just hovered about his lips, it might have been excited by some touch of subtile humour in the pages which apparently absorbed his attention. The younger brother fidgeted, went to the window, altered a slight crookedness about the blind, stood there in his favourite attitude, with his hands behind his back, and at length returned to the writing-table, and took up one of the bundles of papers which were lying upon it.

“You have written to Thompson about the mortgage, I suppose?” he said in a business-like tone which contrasted oddly with his previous bustling excitement.

“Really, Robert,” said Mr. Mannering, looking up, and speaking apologetically, “I believe I have done nothing of the kind. Upon my word, I do not know where my memory is going. I had the pen in my hand to begin the letter, and something must have put the matter out of my head.”

“Never mind. If you can make room I’ll sit down at once, and give the fellow a summary of what he has to do.”

But Mr. Mannering was evidently annoyed with himself.

“I am growing old, that is the truth,” he said despondingly.

“Old?—pooh! Go and look in the glass, Charles, before you talk of getting old to a man that is but three years your junior. Old?—why, there isn’t a Mannering that comes to his prime before seventy. I expect to grow younger every day, and to have a game of leap-frog with you before many years are past;—do you recollect the leap-frog in the play-ground of the Grammar school?—why, it seems but yesterday that great lout of a fellow, Hunt, went flying over my head, and struck out with his hob-nailed shoes, and caught me just across the knuckles. I can feel the sting yet. There, glance over this, and see if it will do for Thompson. I wonder where old Hunt is now.”

“I met him in the city the other day with a grandson on either side.”

“I dare say. He was always too much of a blundering blockhead to understand that the way to grow old is to have a tribe of children treading on your heels. You and I know better. Here we live, as snug a pair of cronies as is to be met with for twenty miles round, without any such sharp contrasts disturbing our equanimity.”

In answer to his brother’s cheery words, and the hand which grasped his as they were spoken, Mr. Mannering shook his head a little sadly.

“Things might have been different—for you, Robert, especially. Do you think I have forgotten Margaret Hare?”

“Why should you forget, or I either? Things might have been different, as you say, but it does not follow they would have been better. Look here, Charles; we have not spoken much of Margaret Hare of late years. I don’t forget her, though I am an old blustering fellow, I don’t forget her, but I can look back and say God bless her, and thank him, too, that things are as they are. I don’t want any change, and I have never repented.”

“It does my heart good to hear you say that, Robert.”

“Well, there, it’s said and done with. Are you going to Underham to-day?”

“I promised Bennett to look in. He wants me to dine with him to-morrow.”

“That’s very well for young fellows like you, but don’t accept for me. If I go off the premises we shall be having Anthony Miles up here with an infallible compound for destroying caterpillars and all the plants into the bargain. I shall administer a lecture to-day, when he brings Miss Winifred.”

“Get her to do it.”

“I’m half afraid she does it too much already. It seems to me that love-making is more altered than leap-frog since our day, Charles—Well, well, some things don’t change, and luckily luncheon is a permanent institution. Come, and spare Mrs. Jones’s feelings.”

“I am losing my appetite,” said Mr. Mannering, sighing.

“Come in, at all events.” And, with a little show of reluctance on the part of the elder, the brothers walked off to the long dining-room lying on one side of the library, and looking out upon the cheerful and sunny garden which had somehow caught the spirit of Robert Mannering’s kindliness.