Читать книгу The Hillyars and the Burtons - Henry Kingsley - Страница 14

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THE talk of the colony, for a week or so, turned upon nothing else but the gallant exploit of Lieutenant Hillyar with the bush-rangers. He became the hero of the day. His orderly persuaded him to have his hair cut; and the locks went off like smoke at half-a-crown apiece; so fast, indeed, that the supply fell short of the demand, and had to be supplied from the head of a young Danish trooper, who, after this, happening to get drunk in Palmerston, while in plain clothes, and not being recognized, was found to be so closely cropped that it was necessary to remand him for inquiries, as it was obvious to the meanest capacity that he had n't been out of jail more than a couple of days.

The papers had leading articles upon it. The Palmerston Sentinel (squatter* interest, conservative, aristocratic,) said that this was your old English blood, and that there was nothing like it. The Mohawk (progress of the species and small farm interest,) said, on the other hand, that this Lieutenant Hillyar was one of those men who had been unjustly hunted out of his native land by the jealousy of an accursed and corrupt aristocracy, in consequence of his liberal tendencies, and his fellow-feeling for the (so--called) lower orders. And this abominable Mohawk, evidently possessed of special knowledge, in trying to prove the habitual condescension of George Hillyar towards his inferiors, did so rake up all his old blackguardisms that Mr. Secretary Oxton was as near mad as need be.

It is hardly necessary to say that, when poor little Gerty Neville heard the news, George Hillyar was, to her, transformed from a persecuted, ill-used, misunderstood man, into a triumphant hero. She threw herself, sobbing, into her sister's arms, and said,--

"Now, Aggy! Now, who was right? Was not I wiser than you, my sister? My noble hero! Two to one, Agnes, and he is so calm and modest about it. Why, James and you were blind. Did not I see what he was; am I a fool?"

Mrs. Oxton was very much inclined to think she was. She was puzzled by this undoubted act of valor on George Hillyar's part. She had very good sense of her own, and the most profound belief in one of the cleverest men in the world,--her husband. Her husband's distrust of the man had reacted on her; so, in the midst of Gerty's wild enthusiasm, she could only hope that things would go right, though she tried to be enthusiastic for Gerty's sake.

Things were very near going right just now. The Secretary and his wife knew too little of their man. The man's antecedents were terribly bad, but the man had fallen in love, and become a hero within a very few months. The Secretary knew men well enough, and knew how seldom they reformed after they had gone as far as (he feared) Lieutenant Hillyar had gone. Both Mr. and Mrs. Oxton were inclined to distrust and oppose him still, in spite of his act of heroism.

But the man himself meant well. There was just enough goodness and manhood left in him to fall in love with Gerty Neville: and a kind of reckless, careless pluck which had been a characteristic of him in his boyhood, had still remained to him. It had been latent, exhibiting itself only in causeless quarrels and headlong gaming, until it had been turned into a proper channel by his new passion, the only serious one of his life. The one cause combined with the other; golden opportunity came in his way: and suddenly he, who had been a distrusted and despised man all his life, found himself a hero, beloved by the beauty of the community, with every cloud cleared away from the future; a man whose name was mentioned by every mouth with enthusiastic praise. It was a glimpse of heaven. His eye grew brighter, his bearing more majestic, his heart softer towards his fellow--creatures. He was happy for the first time in his life. As the poor godless fellow put it to himself, his luck had turned at last.

But we must go a little way back in our story. While he and Mr. Oxton were still trying to make the wounded cadet comfortable, assistance arrived, and it was announced that the other bush-rangers were captured. (The cadet recovered, my dear madam, and is now the worthy and highly respected chief commissioner of police for Cooksland.) So the Secretary and the Lieutenant rode away together.

"I'll tell you what I would do, Hillyar," said the Secretary; "I should ride down to Palmerston as quick as I could, and report this matter at head--quarters; you will probably get your Inspectorship,--I shall certainly see that you do. And I tell you what, I shall go with you myself. I must talk over this with the Governor at once. We can get on to my house to-night, and I shall be pleased to see you as my guest."

"That is very kind of you," said Hillyar.

"I cannot conceal from you," said the Secretary, with emphasis, "that I am aware of your having proposed yourself for my brother-in-law."

"I supposed you would know it by this time. I have laid my fortune and my title at Miss Neville's feet, and have been accepted."

"O Lord!" said the Secretary, as if he had a sudden twinge of toothache, "I know all about it. It is not your fortune nor your title I want to talk about. What sort of a name can you give her? Can you give her an unsullied name? I ask you as a man of the world, can you do that?"

"As a man of the world, bey?" said the Lieutenant; "then, as a man of the world, I should say that Miss Gertrude Neville had made a far better catch than any of her sisters; even a better catch, saving your presence, than her sister Agnes. Such is the idiotic state of English society, that a baronet of old creation with ten thousand a year, and a handsome lady-like wife, will be more répandu in London than a mere colonial official, whose rank is so little known in that benighted city, that on his last visit, the Mayor of Palmerston was sent down to dinner before him at Lady Noahsark's. If you choose to put it as a man of the world, there you are."

"The fellow don't want for wit," thought the Secretary. "I have got the dor this time." But he answered promptly,--

"That is all very fine, Hillyar; but you are under a cloud, you know."

"I must request you, once and forever, sir, not to repeat that assertion. I am under no cloud. I was fast and reckless in England, and I have been fast and reckless here. I shall be so no longer. I have neglected my police duties somewhat, though not so far as to receive anything more than an admonition. What man, finding himself an heir-expectant to a baronetcy and a fortune, would not neglect this miserable drudgery. What young fellow, receiving an allowance of three hundred a year, would have submitted to the drudgery of a cadetship for fourteen months? Answer me that, sir?"

The Secretary could n't answer that, but he thought,--"I wonder why he did it? I never thought of that before." He said aloud, "Your case certainly looks better than it did, Hillyar."

"Now hear me out," said George Hillyar. "My history is soon told. When I was seven years old my mother--Well, sir, look the other way,--she bolted."

"O, dear, dear me," said the Secretary. "O, pray don't go on, sir. I am so very sorry, Hillyar."

"Bolted, sir," repeated George, with an angry snarl, "and left me to be hated worse than poison by my father in consequence. How do you like that?"

There was a mist in the good Secretary's eyes; and in that mist he saw the dear, happy old manor-house in Worcestershire; a dark, mysterious, solemn house, beneath the shadowing elms; the abode of gentle, graceful, domestic love for centuries. And he saw a bent figure with a widow's cap upon her gray hair, which wandered still among the old flower-beds, and thought for many an hour in the autumn day, whether her brave son would return from his honor and wealth, in far off Australia, and give her one sweet kiss, before she lay down to sleep beside his father, in the quiet churchyard in the park.

"No more, sir!" said the Secretary. "Not another word. I ask your pardon. Be silent."

George would not.

"That is my history. The reason I stayed in the police at all, was that I might stand well with my father; that he might not think I had gone so utterly to the devil as he wished: for he married again,--married a milkmaid, or worse,--to spite me. And the son he had by her is, according to all accounts, idolized, while I am left here to fight my way alone. I hate that boy, and I will make him feel it."

His case would have stood better without this last outbreak of temper which jarred sharply on the Secretary's sentimental mood. But he had made his case good. The fight was over. That night he was received at the Secretary's station as an accepted suitor. The next he dined at Government House, and sat all the evening in a corner with Lady Rumbolt (the Governor's wife), and talked of great people in England, about whom he knew just enough to give her ladyship an excuse for talking about them, which she liked better than anything in the world, after gardening and driving. So nothing could be more charming; and the Secretary, seeing that it was no use to struggle, gave it up, and determined to offer no opposition to the marriage of his sister-in-law to a man who would be a wealthy baronet in England.

And this is what made him so excessively mad about those abominable, indiscreet leaders in the Mohawk, in praise of the gallant Lieutenant. He had used strong language about the Mohawk continually, ever since the first number appeared, in the early days of the colony, printed on whitey--brown sugar-paper, with a gross libel upon himself in the first six lines of its leader. But it was nothing to the language he used now. Mr. Edward Fitzgerald Emmet, the editor of the Mohawk, found out that he was annoying the Secretary, and continued his allusions in a more offensive form. Until, so says report, Miss Lesbia Burke let him know that, if he continued to annoy James Oxton, she would horsewhip him. Whereupon the Mohawk was dumb. * The "squatters" of Australia are the great pastoral aristocrats, who lease immense tracts from government for pasturage. Some of them are immensely wealthy. I speak from recollection, when I say that one of Dr. Kerr's stations, on the Darling downs, when sold in 1864, contained 102.000 sheep, whose value at that time was about 25s. a piece. An improvement on Saville Row, decidedly.