Читать книгу Crying for the Light: or, Fifty Years Ago. Volume 3 of 3 - James Ewing Ritchie - Страница 1

Again we are at Sloville, on the occasion of the anniversary of the flourishing Agricultural Society of the county – an occasion which fills the town with rosy-faced, ruined British farmers; which blocks up all the leading streets with flocks and herds of oxen and sheep from a thousand hills, and which not a little astonishes and vexes the soul of the true-born son of the soil, as he contemplates new-fangled machinery of every variety and for every purpose; alarms him with ominous forebodings of a time when, Othello-like, he will find his occupation gone, and the rascally steam-engine doing the work, and taking the bread out of the mouth of an honest man. He thinks of Swing and sighs. That mysterious personage had a way of putting down threshing-machines which was satisfactory for a time; but, alas! steam is king, and it is vain to fight with him. It is steam quite as much as the wickedness of the landlord, incredible as it may seem to the Radical politician, which has emptied the country and filled the town. It would be all right if steam would work off our surplus population. Alas! it does nothing of the kind, and each year the labourer finds himself of less account; nor can there be any change for the better till we get the people back on to the land, away from the crowded city with its ever-increasing drudgery and toil. Perhaps when they have settled Ireland our wise men of Gotham may look at home. There is plenty for them to do there. It is high time that we do something for our bold peasantry, once their country’s pride.

It is a fine, bright, sparkling morning, one rare in England, but to be made the most of when it comes. There are no clouds in the sky, and there is scarce a breath of air to bring them down from the vasty deep above. Every hedgerow is bright with flowers, and musical with the song of birds. Overnight there was a shower, which laid the dust and added a touch of freshness to the emerald meadows. On every side ancient oaks and wide-reaching elms cast a grateful shade. What can be dearer than an English landscape on such a day? Even the thatched clay cottage, with its roses and honeysuckle, looks picturesque, and the brown cows suggest more than milk as they lie chewing the cud, apparently at peace with themselves and all below. Here and there amidst the trees is the red-brick manor-house, or the old-fashioned farmhouse, or the gray spire of the village church, where from time immemorial the tribes have repaired. Yesterday, it were, they were teaching there the Mass; now the Mass is unsung, and we have the doctrines and Articles of the Church of England, which seem sadly at variance with one and another. To-morrow what shall we hear there? Who can say? Man and his opinions change only in our villages, the face of Nature remains the same. You travel all the world over, and you come back to your native village to find it ever the same, only a little smaller, that is all.

From the lodge of a neighbouring hall rides forth a cavalcade; Sir Watkin Strahan, well-mounted, is the leader of the party. A fair girl, the rich merchant’s daughter, is by his side; on the other is the rich merchant himself. Behind them follows a groom in livery, perhaps the best rider of the lot. As they leave the gate the keeper hands Sir Watkin an ill-written epistle on a dirty piece of paper, which Sir Watkin indignantly tears to pieces without reading. ‘If the contents are of importance,’ he says to himself, ‘they will come before him in a more legitimate manner.’

‘’Tis that old woman from the workhouse,’ says the lodge-keeper to the groom, who gives a knowing smile in reply as he passes out. ‘She’s a good deal arter the maister,’ she replies, ‘but he’s not one to take up with the likes of her. She’s a cool one, at any rate.’

They are now on the turnpike which leads to Sloville, and hence to London itself. The crowd thickens as they near the town. The tenants on the estate are numerous, and Sir Watkin has a word for them all. He inquires after their families; as to the state of their oxen and asses; what kind of a season it has been with them, and how the crops are getting on. The tenants are careful not to reply too cheerily. They are talking to their landlord, and he may put up the rent if they brag too much.

The London merchant is charmed. He has a lot more money than Sir Watkin, but it brings him no gratified courtesies either abroad or at home. He is suspicious even of his chief clerk. Everyone seems to look up to Sir Watkin. There is something in being a landowner, and the bearer of any kind of hereditary title.

‘Why,’ he asks himself, ‘does not the Queen make baronets of such as himself? Men who add to British wealth, who carry British commerce all over the world; without whom England would never have become mistress of the seas. Infinitely superior is the British merchant to the British landlord. Yet, how much we think of the one, how little of the other. Will it ever be so?’ he asks himself. Wise as he is, he fails to anticipate a time when circumstances shall break the power of the landlord, and the produce of Canada and America make the land an unsaleable commodity.

As a matter of theory nothing can be more ideally beautiful than the landed system under which England has become great and flourishing; nor was any other system possible at the time it became developed in our midst. The sovereign apportioned the land between his nobles as a reward for their devotion to his service. As they became strong, they acted as a check on the sovereign himself; as the middle class began to grow strong by commerce, they acted as a check on each, and king and noble felt their importance and their power, and were ready to attach them to their side. It is to the credit of our aristocracy that they aimed to be the leaders of the people; that they did not sink into mere courtiers; that they were bold and hardy – ready to take their share in the fighting and adventure which became the necessity of our insular position. It is more to their credit that the relation between them and their tenants was pleasant and mutually advantageous. The great landlord was a power in the land, a centre of civilization, the friend of all within his sphere of influence. His sons served the State – in the army and navy and the Church. The farmer and the labourer had much in common; they worked side by side, ate at the same table, talked the same language, and were equally ready to do the will of their superiors. In time there grew up a different state of things; with that love of money which is the root of all evil, society became revolutionized – the landlord wanted higher rents; the farmer aspired to be a gentleman, and the poor labourer was deprived of his bit of common, of his sports and pastimes; his cottage was pulled down, and he had to end his days in the workhouse or in some city slum; and now Hodge has only the beer-shop or the Primitive Methodist chapel to look to for sympathy and friendship. The man of to-day is the man who makes money, no matter how.

At the time of which I write, the old tradition in favour of the landlord was still in force, and Sir Watkin was glad to show his City friends how all did him honour as they made their way amidst the ever increasing throng on their way to the cattle-show.

And the young lady – what of her? Her bosom swells, and her eye sparkles with pride. Her only recollection of her grandfather is that of a feeble old man dressed in rusty black, dependent for his bread and cheese on his more vigorous and successful son.

Sir Watkin had a hall full of the portraits of his ancestors. Some had been great lawyers, some soldiers and sailors – all more or less connected with the State. And, then, what a monarch was a landlord in his domains, almost armed with the power of life and death! How much pleasanter the talk of such a man than of one who was in a counting-house all day, and whose favourite literature was to be found in the money articles of the Times! Should she become Lady Watkin? Certainly it would be very nice, if she could not manage to secure a lord. In default of the latter, she made herself very agreeable to her host, who was old enough to be her father, and who, if he was an Israelite, was not altogether without guile.

At length our illustrious friends reach Sloville, or rather the outskirts of the town, where the Agricultural Show is held. Here the sheep are inspected; and then they pass on to the shorthorns and Herefords; and then, very evident in more ways than one were the pigs of Berks and Hants, and other choice breeds. How they were watched by the fat farmers with sympathetic eyes! How the rustic chawbacon doted on them! We hear much of the roast beef of old England, but dearer to the national heart is its roast pork, especially when it comes to us in the shape of roast pig, immortalized by the charming Elia, and the theme – the fitting theme – of one of his most eloquent essays: ‘See him,’ he writes, ‘in the dish – his second cradle – how meek he lieth! Wouldst thou have the innocent grow up to the grossness and indocility which too often accompany maturer swinehood? Ten to one he would have proved a glutton, a sloven, an obstinate, disagreeable animal wallowing in all manner of filthy conversation. From these sins he is happily snatched away.’

The horses, as the nobler animals, had a field to themselves. It was there the multitude flocked, for every Englishman thinks he knows more of horses and can manage them better than anyone else; all were there, from the Leviathan cart-horses, such as we see in brewers’ drays, to the light-built hack on which my lady canters across the park. Here Sir Watkin, as became him, was oracular, as he went from one to the other of the candidates for the honours of the day, looked into his mouth and inspected his teeth, felt his hoofs and prodded his sides, took off his hat and beat a tattoo with his riding-whip in order to get a good idea of the animal’s performance, whilst the ostler with a straw in his mouth stood admiring. The farmers were proud, for Sir Watkin was a connoisseur, and knew a thing or two.

Next to the horses, the ladies affected the poultry. Perhaps a time will come when the British farmer will condescend to think of such small fry, and divert into his own pocket the millions we send to France and elsewhere for eggs and poultry. Sir Watkin did not care much about them – nor did the British merchant – so long as he got his fresh egg for breakfast, and his little bit of the breast with a glass of sherry for lunch; but the lady was not to be gainsaid, and so a half-hour was devoted to the noisy neighbourhood of Brahmas and Dorkings and Cochin-Chinas; while rival cocks – happily far apart – challenged each other to mortal combat, and proudly hurled defiance from the prison walls. A short distance off we the improved ploughs and tumbrels and waggons, and the reaping machines, for which we are indebted to America, and which testify how much may be done by machinery on large farms held by farmers of sufficient means. Here the spectators were of a more select class, high farming not being in everyone’s way. Instead of the rosy, stupid, sleek bucolic, you saw men learned in machinery, and with some of the smartness of the town men, bent on improvement and eager to turn science to profitable account. Wheat was threshed and dressed in the most efficient manner. The rustic farmer stared, open-mouthed, questioning whether it were safer to continue as his fathers before him or to give in to machinery which promised him such beneficent results. As it was, he seemed to be much exercised in his mind. The elder men shook their heads, the young ones seemed ready for novelty. Perhaps the truth lay between the two. Had we not of late suffered much from potato disease? said the old farmer, and did one ever hear of that before we had the railway? That was a poser, as they thought, which there was no getting over, however plausible the speech of agricultural implement maker or vendor of artificial manure.

As usual, the refreshment booths were the most patronized parts of the exhibition. There the learned and the ignorant, the old-fashioned farmer and the man of the present time, met on an equality. There was to be found the touch of nature which makes the whole world kin. The townspeople understood that part of the business as well as the farmer who had come out for a spree; and in a little while the fun was fast and furious.

The outskirts of the field devoted to the exhibition assumed the aspect of a fair. Here a crowd witnessed that popular domestic drama known as Punch and Judy. There the youths of the district played madly with Aunt Sally. In one quarter champions from London demonstrated the art of self-defence; in another was Mrs. Jarley with her moral wax-works. The peasantry were in great force, as they always are when beer is to be had or anything out of the way to be seen. So dense was the crowd it was a wonder someone was not hurt, as reckless farmers, under the influence of beer, and in order to show off the prowess of their steeds, galloped up and down. Boys, of course, were always in the way. Unfortunately a special providence watched over them.

All at once Sir Watkin Strahan found that he was followed by an old woman in a workhouse garb, who had got out for a holiday, and who had evidently been indulging in liquor to an extent that embarrassed her movements and impaired her forces of speech. It was a very disagreeable situation for him. He was well known to everyone there, and, besides, he had a lady under his escort in whose eye he wished to assume a good figure. As a popular landlord and well-known county man, so far he had succeeded to his heart’s content.

The swells had deferred to his opinion; the farmers had applauded his jokes, whilst their wives and daughters beamed with smiles; and the plebeians had eyed him with reverence from afar. Representatives of leading firms had besought his attention and patronage as they explained the peculiar merits of their own machines. His own part in the show had been very successful. He had won a prize with one of his own bullocks, his sheep were classed in A 1, and his fine porkers, of the real Berkshire breed, had attracted honourable mention; but wherever he went, there was this old hag in his way, making signs to him which he could not or would not understand. All at once he was separated from his friends, and the woman, seeing her opportunity, rushed at him.

‘What the deuce do you want?’ said he angrily, holding up his riding-whip as if about to hit her.

‘I’ve got something to say to yer honour.’

‘Well, say on,’ said he impatiently.

‘But I cant say it here,’ was the reply.

‘I suppose,’ said the Baronet, ‘you want some money? There is half a crown,’ continued he, hastily tossing it her. ‘But don’t spend it in beer, my good woman; you have had too much already.’

‘No, ’tis not money. I can tell yer honour something you would like to know.’

‘Much obliged, I am sure; but I fear you are labouring under a delusion.’

‘No, no, Sir Watkin.’

‘You’re drunk, I tell you. Be off, or I’ll give you in charge.’

‘Me drunk, Sir Watkin? A poor lone widow as has lived respectable in Sloville for years, though unfortunate, but that is neither here nor there. Me drunk? No, no, Sir Watkin!’

‘But I tell you you are, my good woman.’

‘Drunk or sober, Sir Watkin, you must listen to me.’

‘I’ll do nothing of the kind.’

‘If you don’t hear me, Sir Watkin, you’ll be sorry as long as you live.’

By this time the crowd had been attracted to the spot, and the situation was becoming unpleasant to the Baronet, who formed the centre of an amazed group, to whom the annoyance of the Baronet and the tipsy gravity of the woman were more than slightly amusing.

Sir Watkin attempted to move off.

The poor woman endeavoured to stop him. In the attempt she overbalanced herself, and fell prostrate on the earth, to the intense delight of the spectators, who enjoyed the scene amazingly.

‘Sir Watkin, I say,’ said his persecutor, rising slowly from her recumbent position; ‘Sir Watkin, I say!’

But the baronet was gone, and, instead, the woman found herself being assisted gently off the ground by an efficient policeman, who, seeing a crowd of a peaceful character, thought it becoming to interfere.

Had the crowd been of a different complexion, and had there been any fighting going on, the chances are the policeman – with the usual instinct of his order for a sound skin or an uncracked skull – would have been looking steadfastly in quite an opposite direction. They all do it, and it is natural.

The man had already asked Sir Watkin if he would have her given in charge, an offer Sir Watkin declined. He had no wish, he said, to be hard on her; he only wished her to leave him alone. That was quite enough.

The crowd naturally sided with the Baronet. He was the great man of the district.

‘What business had a wretched woman like that to interfere with him? Just like her imperence!’ said the majority.

One or two, more curious than the rest, followed the woman, with a view to learn further particulars; but she was, for a wonder, reticent. She was not Sall – but Sall’s friend and ally. Not if wild horses were to drag her in twain would she disclose her secret. It was one between Sir Watkin and herself alone.

Sir Watkin rejoined his friends, trusting that they had not been eye-witnesses of his adventure.

Just at that moment he had no wish to have scandal or mystery attaching to his name. Hitherto, his appearance had been quite a success, and the British merchant and his daughter were duly impressed with the respect and attention he had everywhere commanded.

‘We’ve missed you much, Sir Watkin,’ said the lady in a tone which flattered his vanity and raised his hopes.

‘Yes, the crowd cruelly separated us for a few minutes.’

‘A few minutes!’ said the lady; ‘it seemed to me a long time.’

‘You make me proud,’ said the Baronet. ‘It is something to be missed by one who has always so many admirers.’

‘You flatter me, Sir Watkin. But, seriously, what was all the fuss about?’

‘Only a tipsy woman.’

‘How shocking! But, good gracious, there she is again.’

Sir Watkin looked in the direction pointed out, and, sure enough, there was his old enemy. Conducted off the ground by one gate, she had reappeared by another, and was bearing down, amidst the jeers of the oi polloi, straight upon himself.

‘Confound her impudence!’ he exclaimed. ‘I wish I had given her in charge.’

‘Sir Watkin, I say! Sir Watkin, hear me! I’ve something very particular to say.’

‘Yes, but you can’t say it now, my good woman. Don’t you see I am engaged?’

Again a crowd assembled in full expectation of some fun – an extra entertainment not included in the day’s programme.

Again, fortunately, the policeman appeared.

‘Now, my good woman,’ said he, ‘he hoff. Don’t you see you are creatin’ a disturbance?’

‘I am a-doin’ w’at?’ asked the party addressed.

‘You are a-creatin’ a disturbance and hinterferin’ with the gentry. It is agen the law. You’d best take yourself off.’

‘Oh, I am a-goin’, but I must speak to Sir Watkin first.’

‘Call at the Hall, old gal, and leave your card, and then Sir Watkin will be delighted to see you,’ cried one in the crowd. ‘The family dine at seven. Don’t forget the hour.’

‘Yes,’ said another, ‘Sir Watkin will be pleased to see such a beauty. He’ll want you to stop with him a month. Sir Watkin knows a pretty gal when he sees one – no one better.’

But by this time Sir Watkin and his party were off. His groom had come to the rescue and brought up the horses, and they remounted, leaving the tipsy woman to scream after him in vain.

This time, however, her blood was up, and she refused to be led quietly off. Another constable came to the rescue of his mate, and she was carried off, kicking and struggling all the while. Her cries filled the air and reached the Baronet’s party.

‘’Tis very annoying, but one can’t help such things on a public day like this,’ said he in an apologetic tone to the lady. ‘The poor woman must be cracked, I think.

‘It makes one ashamed of one’s sex,’ was her reply.

‘Such conduct ought not to be allowed. The police aren’t half sharp enough,’ said the British merchant. ‘What do we pay rates and taxes for, I should like to know, but to prevent such disturbances?’

The British merchant evidently expected the British public to be as subdued and deferential as his clerks in his counting-house, when they appeared in his august and imposing presence, or as his debtors, when bills were overdue.

The ladies of his party had left the field early – their ears stunned with the noisy scene:

Sir Watkin and his friend, the British merchant, had stopped to dine at the grand banquet held on the occasion, in the leading hotel of the town. An Englishman can do nothing without a public dinner. Sir Watkin had to take the chair.

‘You will excuse me, won’t you?’ said he to the young lady, as he parted with her.

‘Oh, yes!’ said she gaily. ‘I am quite aware property has its duties as well as its rights.’

‘Well, I think it is well to be neighbourly when one has the chance. But I give you my word of honour, I would far sooner ride back with you.’

‘Well, the best of friends must part,’ said the lady. ‘But you will be home in good time. Au revoir! Pray, take care of papa,’ said the lady, as she returned to the carriage that was to take her and some other ladies to the Hall, under the care of the vicar of the parish.

Meanwhile, Sir Watkin made his way with his friend to the leading hotel of Sloville, where a heavy dinner of the old-fashioned type – such as was dear to the farmer years ago – was prepared, where the feeding and the drinking were alike trying to the stoutest nerve and the strongest digestion, and where the after-dinner oratory was of a truly bucolic character.

The farmers were delighted to find their landlord in the chair, and listened to him as if he were an oracle. The dinner was a great success. As chairman, the Baronet had especially distinguished himself.

There were fireworks in the evening, and a Bacchanalian orgy such as Sloville had rarely beheld. But the Baronet and his friend did not stop for that, but got back to the Hall in time to finish the day with a ball. The old Hall was gayer that night than it had been for a long time. All the old family plate had been brought forth for the occasion, and everywhere was light and music and laughter – and bright the lamps shone on

The revelry was loud and long, and hours after the ladies had retired the men had remained in the smoking-room to drink soda and brandy, and to talk of hunting exploits, of horses, of women, and of wine.

The shades of night had passed, and the golden dawn was glittering in the east. The sun was commencing like a giant refreshed to renew his daily course – the simile is old, but it is true, nevertheless. A slight mist – prelude of a hot day – dimmed the valley below the Hall, and marked the line of the little trout stream, where Sir Watkin had loved to fish when a boy. In the grand old trees around, the birds were commencing their morning song of praise, while the heavy rooks were preparing to take their usual flight in search of food. The pheasants were feeding in the surrounding park.

Not yet had man gone forth to his daily toil, and there was peaceful slumber in the trim cottage and the snug farmhouse alike. Now and then the shrill cry of the petted peacock awoke the woods, or the clamour of the early cock.

Sir Watkin lingered to enjoy the loveliness of the rural scene and the freshness of the morning air. For awhile something even of sentiment filled his heart. What had he done that all that lovely landscape should he his? How could he have lived as he had in London and Paris, in Vienna or Rome? Was it true that there was a God, as they told him in church, and as he had learned on his mother’s knee – who had given him all these things richly to enjoy, and would demand, sooner or later, an account of his stewardship? Then he looked at the glass, and was shocked as he saw how bloodshot were his eyes, how dark the skin underneath; how clear were the lines marked by dissipation on his cheek and brow.

Well, it was time he settled down. He had not behaved well to his first wife, he admitted, but that was no reason why be should not treat his second wife well. Then he was little better than a lad – now he was a man who had seen something of the world and who knew the value of peace and quietness. And so resolving, he dismissed his man and undressed.

Even then sleep was shy in coming. He had a puzzle to distract him to which he could find no answer. What had that old tipsy female at the cattle-show got to tell him? – what was the secret she pretended to have in her possession? Was the mystery ever to be solved? He had seen in her something to remind him of a girl who had once been in his service, but it could not be her. Surely she had not become what he saw. Sir Watkin forgot that the beauty of a woman, when she takes to drink and low company, is of a very evanescent character.

Sleep – Nature’s restorer, balmy sleep – how hard it is to get when you want it! The morrow was to be an important day. It was to decide his fate. The fair guest had looked lovingly on him as she left the drawing-room. There was something in the way in which her hand lingered in his own that suggested to the Baronet hope. The worldly-minded father was, at any rate, safe, and was prepared to invest handsomely in a titled son-in-law. He, the latter, had been of late in a somewhat shady state; there were many whispers about him in society, and not to his credit. It was clear that in certain transactions, like other young and foolish scions (considering how they are brought up it is almost impossible for them to be otherwise), he had suffered considerable pecuniary loss – or, in other words, been uncommonly well fleeced. Stately dames who ruled in Belgravia did not seem to him as genial as formerly; doors that were once opened freely were now closed. Low Radical newspapers occasionally hinted that he was no credit to the class who neither toil nor spin. It even began to dawn on the Baronet that his career had not been a brilliant one.

Half sleeping and half waking, there came to him unpleasant thoughts, and dreams equally so – of women whom he had betrayed, of friends who had trusted to him in vain, of splendid opportunities he had missed, of time and strength frittered away on trifles, or what was worse. He must yet be a power in the land – he would yet leave behind him a name – he would yet have the world at his feet. With a title and with money what cannot a man do in this land of ours? asked the Baronet of himself. Fellows of whom he thought nothing, whom he knew as inferiors at Eton or at College – poor, patient, spiritless plodders – had passed him in that battle of life which after all is only a Vanity Fair.

Such thoughts as these kept the Baronet wide awake, much to his disgust. It was the dinner, it was the wine, it was the cigar that kept him awake. Perhaps they did. But there was something else that did so, though the Baronet did not see it – the accusal of a conscience in which he did not believe, the workings of a divine law which he laughed at.

The next day no one was up early, and no one made his appearance at the breakfast-table save the elderly members of the party. Most of the gentlemen visitors overslept themselves, and the ladies were served in their own rooms. Then came the carriages and the departure of the guests – some to town, some to fashionable health resorts. Business required the presence of the great merchant in London, and he took his daughter with him. Sir Watkin managed to get down in time to see them off, and to promise to follow them next day. The lady left quite content; she knew what was to come, and what would be her reply.

Very dull and gloomy seemed the old house as the company one by one departed. Sir Watkin took up the morning papers – there was nothing in them; the society journals – he was better informed than their writers. No novel could interest him in his then state of mind. He had a headache; he would go for a ride, a sovereign remedy for such maladies as gentlemen in his station suffer from. Accordingly the horse was brought round, and he was in the saddle. He would be back before dark, and did not require his groom, and he trotted gaily away from the ancestral Hall under the ancestral oaks, along the gravelled drive through the park, feeling a little fresher for the effort. He would see his steward, and have a talk with him on business matters.

At the lodge-gate he stopped for a moment to order a general smartening up of that quarter. Alas! on the other side was an objectionable old woman, a friend who had before given him so much trouble. Sir Watkin’s disgust was only equalled by his anger. He was in no amiable mood, as the old woman clearly saw. She almost wished she had not come; she felt all of a tremble, as she said, as she asked him kindly to stop and hear what she had got to say. He muttered something very much unlike a blessing on his tormentor. He would have ridden over her had he not stopped his horse, which strongly opposed the idea of stopping. Could that old creature have any claim on him? The idea was ridiculous. And as to listening to her, why, that was quite out of the question for so fine a gentleman. She made an effort to clutch the rein. The high-spirited steed resented the indignity. In the scuffle the Baronet was unseated, and was taken up insensible.

‘Sure ’nough he’s dead as a stone,’ said the ploughman, who had first noticed him.

‘He’s nothing of the kind,’ said the gate-keeper, who was soon on the spot, ‘Get on the horse and ride to Sloville for the doctor,’ said he to the ploughman, while he and the other servants bore the body to the lodge-gate, where it was laid upon a bed.

The doctor came. ‘No bones broken,’ said he, after a cursory examination, ‘but a severe concussion of the brain. Draw down the blinds; put ice on his forehead; keep him quiet, and he may yet rally. In the meantime I will telegraph to London for the great surgeon, Sir Henry Johnson. If anybody can save him he can.’

The hours that day in that low lodge moved very slowly. No wife, no mother, no sister was there. The old mother had left that day for Scotland. Only one sister was alive, and she was with her husband in Italy; only the housekeeper from the Hall was there to sit and watch and sigh, for she had known Sir Watkin from a baby, and was as proud of him as it behoved her to be, never believing any of the scandals connected with his name, and, indeed, scarcely hearing of them, for his wilder life was out of her sight and hearing. At home he was the model English gentleman; and then, again, when evil things were said of him, she refused to listen.

‘It was not her place,’ she said, ‘to hear bad spoken of any of the family of which she and hers generations before had been retainers.’

About mid-day came a telegram to say that the great Sir Henry was coming down, and that there was to be a carriage at the railway-station to meet him. In a couple of hours after came Sir Henry himself – a calm, dignified man of science, who lived in a world of which science is god, and was interested in humanity as a subject of dissection or operation. Apart from that, he had a poor opinion of human nature.

‘It is a bad case – very bad,’ said he to the country doctor, who had explained to him all the particulars of the accident. ‘It is a very bad case, but I think science is equal to the emergency. I suppose we must have an operation. I have brought my assistant with me, and my case of instruments. We’d better begin at once.’ Turning to look at the insensible patient, the great Sir Henry exclaimed: ‘I have come down for nothing; Sir Watkin is dead!’