Читать книгу Bred in the Bone; Or, Like Father, Like Son - James Payn - Страница 6

We have said that Carew was not exclusive; so long as he had his own way in every thing he was good-tempered, and so very good-natured that he permitted not only his friends but his dependents to do pretty much as they would. He was a tyrant only by fits and starts, and in the mean time there was anarchy at Crompton. Every soul in the place, from the young lords, its master's guests, down to the earth-stopper's assistant, who came for his quantum of ale to the back-door, did pretty much as seemed right in his own eyes. There were times when every thing had to be done in a moment under the master's eye, no matter at what loss, or even risk to limb or life; but usually there was no particular time for any thing—except dinner. The guests arose in the morning, or lay in bed all day, exactly as they pleased, and had their meals in public or in their own rooms; but when the great dinner-gong sounded for the second time it was expected that every man should be ready for the feast, and wearing (with the single exception of the chaplain) a red coat. The dinner-parties at Crompton—and there was a party of the most heterogeneous description daily—were literally, therefore, very gay affairs; the banquet was sumptuous, and the great cellars were laid under heavy contribution. Only, if a guest did happen to be unpunctual, from whatever cause, even if it were illness, the host would send for his bear, or his half-dozen bull-dogs, and proceed to the sick man's room, with the avowed intention (and he always kept his word) of "drawing the badger." In spite of his four-legged auxiliaries, this was not always an easy task. His recklessness, though not often, did sometimes meet with its match in that of the badger; and in one chamber door at Crompton we have ourselves seen a couple of bullet-holes, which showed that assault on one side had met with battery upon the other. With such rough manners as Carew had, it may seem strange that he was never called to account for them at twelve paces; but, in the first place, it was thoroughly understood that he would have "gone out" (a fact which has doubtless given pause to many a challenge), and would have shot as straight as though he were partridge-shooting; and secondly, as we have said, he had a special license for practical jokes; the subjects of them, too, were not men of delicate susceptibilities, for none such, by any accident, could have been his guests. In consideration of good fare, good wine, a good mount in the hunting-field, excellent shooting, and of a loan from the host whenever they were without funds, men even of good position were found to "put up" very good-naturedly with the eccentricities of the master of Crompton, and he had his house full half the year. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that his servants were found willing to compound for some occasional ill usage, in return for general laxity of rule, and many unconsidered trifles in the way of perquisites. His huntsmen and whips got now and then a severe beating; his grooms found it very inconvenient when "Squire" took it into his mad head to sally forth on horseback across country by moonlight; and still worse, when he would have the whole stud out, and set every servant in his employ, not excepting his fat French cook, in the saddle, to see how they would comport themselves under the unaccustomed excitement of a steeple-chase. But upon the whole, the retainers at Crompton had an easy berth of it, and seldom voluntarily took their discharge.

Perhaps the best situations, as being less liable to the per contras in the shape of the master's passionate outbursts, were those of the park-keepers, of whom old Walter Grange was one. He was a bachelor, as almost all of them were. It was not good for any one with wife or daughter (if these were young, at least) to take service with Carew at all; and living in a pleasant cottage, far too large for him, in the very heart of the chase, Grange thought it no harm to take a lodger. The same old woman who cooked his victuals and kept his rooms tidy would do the same office for another who was not very particular in his food, and could rough it a little in other respects; and such a one had Walter lately found in the person of a young landscape-painter, Richard Yorke. This gentleman was a stranger to Crompton and its neighborhood; but having (as he said) happened to see a certain guarded advertisement in the Times headed, "To Artists and Others," that lodgings in the midst of forest scenery could be procured for what seemed next to nothing, he had come down from London in the autumn on the chance, and found them suitable.

To poet or painter's eye, indeed, the lodge was charming; it was small, of course, but very picturesquely built, and afforded the new tenant a bow-windowed sitting-room, with an outlook such as few dwellings in England, and probably none elsewhere, could offer. In the fore-ground was an open lawn, on which scores of fine-plumaged pheasants strutted briskly, and myriads of rabbits came forth at eve to play and nibble—bordered by crops of fern, above which moved statelily the antlered deer. A sentry oak or two of mighty girth guarded this open space; but on both sides vast glades shut in the prospect with a wall of checkered light and shadow that deepened into sylvan gloom. But right in front the expanding view seemed without limit, and exhibited all varieties of forest scenery; coppices with "Autumn's fiery finger" on their tender leaves; still, shining pools, where water-fowl bred and dwelt; broad pathways, across which the fallow deer could bound at leisure; or one would leap in haste, and half a hundred follow in groundless panic. The wealth of animal life in that green solitude, where the voice of man was hardly ever heard, was prodigious; the rarest birds were common there; even those who had their habitations by the sea were sometimes lured to this as silent spot, and skimmed above its undulating dells as o'er the billow. The eagle and the osprey had been caught there; and, indeed, a specimen of each was caged in a sort of aviary, which Grange had had constructed at the back of the lodge; while Yorke's sitting-room was literally stuffed full of these strange feathered visitants, which had fallen victims to the keeper's gun. The horse-hair sofa had a noble cover of deer-skin; the foot-stool and the fire-rug were made of furs, or skins that would have fetched their price elsewhere, and been held rare, although once worn by British beast or "varmint." The walls were stuck with antlers, and the very handle of the bell-rope was the fore-foot of a stag. Each of these had its story; and nothing pleased the old man better than to have a listener to his long-winded tales of how and where and when the thing was slain. All persons whose lives are passed in the open air, and in comparative solitude, seem in this respect to be descendants of Dame Quickly; their wearisome digressions and unnecessary preciseness as to date and place try the patience of all other kinds of men, and this was the chief cross which Grange's lodger had to bear as an offset to the excellence of his quarters. It must be confessed that he did not bear it meekly. To stop old Walter in mid-talk—without an open quarrel—was an absolute impossibility; but his young companion would turn the stream of his discourse, without much ceremony, from the records of slaughter into another channel (almost as natural to it)—the characteristics and peculiarities of his master Carew. Of this subject, notwithstanding that that other made him fret and fume so, Yorke never seemed to tire.

"I should like to know your master," he had said, half musingly, after listening to one of these strange recitals, soon after his arrival; to which Grange had answered, laughing: "Well, Squire's a very easy one to know. He picks up friends by every road-side, without much troubling himself as to who they are, I promise you."

The young man's face grew dark with anger; but the idea of self-respect, far less of pride, was necessarily strange to a servant of Carew's. So Grange went on, unconscious of offense: "Now, if you were a young woman," he chuckled, "and as good-looking as you are as a lad, there would be none more welcome than yourself up at the big house. Pretty gals, bless ye, need no introduction yonder; and yet one would have thought that Squire would know better than to meddle with the mischievous hussies—he took his lesson early enough, at all events. Why, he married before he was your age, and not half so much of a man to look at, neither. You have heard talk of that, I dare say, however, in London?"

Richard Yorke, as the keeper had hinted, was a very handsome lad—brown-cheeked, blue eyed, and with rich clustering hair as black as a sloe; but at this moment he did not look prepossessing. He frowned and flashed a furious glance upon the speaker; but old Grange, who had an eye like a hawk, for the objects that a hawk desires, was as blind as a mole to any evidence of human emotion short of a punch on the head, and went on unheeding:

"Well, I thought you must ha' heard o' that too. We folk down here heard o' nothing else for all that year. She got hold o' Squire, this ere woman did, though he was but a school-boy, and she old enough to be his mother, bless ye, and was married to him. And they kep' it secret for six months; and that's what bangs me most about it all. For Carew, he can keep nothing secret—nothing: he blurts all out; and that's why he seems so much worse than he is to some people. Oh, she must have been a deep one, she must!"

"You never saw her, then?" asked Yorke, carelessly shading his eyes, as though from the westering sun, which Midas-like, was turning every thing it touched in that broad landscape into gold.

"Oh yes, I see her; she was here with Squire near half a year. Mrs. Carew—the old lady, I mean—was at Crompton then; and the young one—though she was no chicken neither—she tried to get her turned out; but she wasn't clever enough, clever as she was, for that job. Carew loved his mother, as indeed he ought, for she had never denied him any thing since he was born; and so, in that pitched battle between the women, he took his mother's side. And in the end the old lady took his, and with a vengeance. I do think that if it had not been for her, young madam would have held on—Why, what's the matter, young gentleman? That was an oath fit for the mouth of Squire hisself."

"It's this cursed toothache," exclaimed Yorke, passionately. "It has worried me so ever since you began to speak that I should have gone mad if I had not let out at it a bit. Never mind me; I'm better now."

"Well, that's like the Squire again," returned the keeper, admiringly. "He seems allus to find hisself better for letting out at things, and at people too, for the matter of that. To hear him sometimes, one would almost think the ground must open; not that he means any harm, but it's a way he's got; but it does frighten them as is not used to him, surely. I mind that day when he first took the fox-hounds out, and Mr. Howard the sheriff as was that year—he's dead and gone long since, and his grandson is sheriff now again, which is cur'ous—well, he happened to ride a bit too forward with the dogs, and our young master—Oh dear, dear," and the old man began to chuckle like a hen that has laid two eggs at a time, "how he did swear at the old man!"

"You were talking about Mrs. Carew the elder," observed the artist, coolly.

"Was I? True, so I was. Well, she and the young Squire was for all the world like a deer with her fawn—all tenderness and timidity, so long as he was let alone; but when this 'ere woman came, as she considered his enemy, she was as bold as a red stag—nay, as one of our wild-cattle. It was through her, I say, that the bride got the sack at last; and when that was done the old lady seemed to have done her work, and was content enough when her son portioned her off, and persuaded her to live at the dower-house at Morden; and indeed she could hardly have staid at Crompton, with such goings on as there are now—feastings and fightings and flirtings—"

"Just so," interrupted the young painter; "she got her way, I know. But with respect to the younger lady, Mrs. Charles Carew, what was she like, and what did people say of her?"

"Well, not much good, I reckon. What could they say of a school-mistress who marries her pupil?"

"A school-mistress, was she?" said Yorke, in a strange husky voice. "We never heard that in London."

"Well, she was summut of that sort, Sir, though I don't know exactly what. Young as he was, Carew was not quite child enough to be at a dame's school, that's true. But she was not a mere servant-girl, as some said, any way, for she could play and sing—ay, songs that pleased him too—and she had book-learning, I've heard, such as would have astonished you; so that some folks said she was a witch, and had the devil's help to catch Carew. But a woman don't want magic, bless you, to come over a lad of seventeen—not she. What nonsense people talk! If any pretty girl about Crompton was to take a fancy to you now, as is like enough, do you suppose—"

"But I thought you said that Mrs. Charles Carew was not a girl?"

"Nor more she was: she was five-and-thirty if she was a day; and yet—there was the wonder of it—she did not look much over twenty! I've heard our gentlemen, when out shooting, liken her to some fine Frenchwoman as never grew old, and was fell in love with unbeknown by her grandson. Now, what was her name? I got it written down somewhere in my old pocket-book; it was summut like Longclothes."

"Ninon de l'Enclos?" suggested Yorke, without a smile.

"Ay, that's the name. Well, Mrs. Charles Carew, as you call her, was just like her, and a regular everlasting! She was not what you would call pretty, but very "taking" looking, and with a bloom and freshness on her as would have deceived any man. Her voice was like music itself, and she moved like a stag o' ten; and the Squire being always manly looking and swarthy, like yourself, there was really little difference between them to look at. I dare say she's gone all to pieces now, as women will do, while the Squire looks much the same as he did then."

"I have never even seen him," said the landscape-painter, moodily.

"Well, don't you stare at him, young master, when you do get that chance, that's all. Some comes down here merely to look at him, as if he was a show, and that puts him in a pretty rage, I promise you; though to get to know him, as I say, is easy enough, if you go the right way about it. If you were a good rider, for instance, and could lead the field one day when the hunting begins, he'd ask you to dinner to a certainty; or if you could drive stags—why, he would have given you a hundred pounds last midsummer, when we couldn't get the beasts to swim the lake. There's a pretty mess come o' that, by-the-by; for, out of the talk there was among the gentlemen about that difficulty, the Squire laid a bet as he would drive stags; not as we do, mind you, but in harness, like carriage-horses; and, cuss me, if he hasn't had the break out half a dozen times with four red deer in it, and you may see him tearing through the park, with mounted grooms and keepers on the right and left of him, all galloping their hardest, and the Squire with the ribbons, a-holloaing like mad! For my part, I don't like such pranks, and would much sooner not be there to see 'em. There will be mischief some day with it yet, for all that old Lord Orford, down at Newmarket some fifty years ago, used to do the same thing, they say. It ain't in nature that stags should be druv four-in-hand, even by Carew. However, the Squire won his wager; and we haven't seen none o' that wild work o' late weeks, though we may see it again any day."

"I have heard of that strange exploit," observed Yorke; "but as driving deer, even in the ordinary way, is not my calling, and as I am no great rider, even if I had a horse, I don't see how I am to introduce myself to your mad Squire, and yet I have a great fancy for his acquaintance. Do you think he'd buy any of these drawings, taken in his own park, from his own timber?" The young man touched a portfolio, already well stocked with studies of oak and beech. "Here is a sketch of the Decoy Pond, for instance, with the oldest tree in the chase beside it; would not that interest him, think you? You think not?"

"Well, young gentleman," said the keeper, frankly, "if I say no, it ain't that I mean any slight to your drawing. It's like the tree enough, for certain, with the very hoop of iron as I put round it with my own hands twenty years ago—and, by the same token, it will want another before this winter's out; but I don't think the Squire cares much for such matters. He might, maybe, just give a look at it, or he might bid you go to the devil for a paper-staining son of a—well—what you will. He does not care a farthing, bless 'ee, for all the great pictures in his own gallery, though they cost his grandfather a mint of money, and are certainly a fine sight—so far as the frames go. And, on the other hand, if he happens to be cross-grained that day, he might tear it up before you could say 'Hold,' and kick you down the Hall steps into the bargain, as he has done to many a one. That's where it is, you see, the Squire is so chancy."

"I don't think he would kick me down his Hall steps," said Yorke, grimly.

The keeper grinned. "Well, you see, nobody can tell that till it's tried. The Squire is a regular bruiser, I promise you, though I grant you are a strapping young fellow, and you have told me that you know how to use your fists. That's a great thing, mind you, for a man to ha' learnt; a deal better than Latin or such-like, in my opinion. Folks talk of life-preservers and pistols, but there's nothing like a good pair of well-handled fists when one has to tackle a poacher. I've been at Crompton, man and boy, these fifty years, and had a good many rough-and-tumbles with that sort, and I have never had the worst of it yet. It prevents bloodshed on both sides; for if you haven't no shooting-iron, there's few Englishmen, poachers or not, who will draw trigger on you; and as for a bludgeon, it's as likely to be in my hand as another's after the first half minute."

"Is there much poaching now at Crompton?" inquired Yorke, mechanically. It would have been plain to any less obtuse observer than his companion that he no longer gave him his attention.

"Well, no; nothing to be called serious has happened lately; though I dare say we shall have some scrimmages as the winter comes on; there's allus a good deal of what I calls hanky-panky work in the fawn season. Women and children—especially children—will come into the park, under pretense o' picking up sticks; and they'll put away a new dropped fawn in their bundles, if they get the chance; and then they take it home, to be reared until it grows up, and can be sold for venison."

"I should have thought there would have been no market for such a commodity—that is, in the case of people such as you describe," observed Yorke, yawning.

"Market!" echoed the keeper, contemptuously; "there'd be a market to-morrow morning for the whole herd o' our wild-cattle, if they were stolen to-night; there'd be a market for a rhinoceros or a halligator, if we happened to keep 'em, bless 'ee, as easy as for a sucking pig! But I don't call that poaching—I mean the fawn-stealing. It's the professionals from the Midland towns as come by tens and twenties at a time as is our trouble. We generally gets wind of 'em beforehand, and then out we all goes, and Squire with us—for he dearly loves a fight—and then there's broken crowns and bloody noses; but, thank God, there's been no murder done, at least, not in my time, at Crompton. And that reminds me, Sir, that it's time for me to start on my evening rounds."

"Well, when you next have any news of such an incursion, Grange, I hope you will let me make one of your party," said Yorke, good-humoredly. "I can hit out straight from the shoulder; and perhaps I might get to know the Squire that way."

"And as likely a road to lead you into his good graces, Sir," said the keeper, rising, "as any I know. Are you for a walk round the park this fine evening, Sir?"

"No; not to-night, thank you, Grange. I have got to fill in this sketch a bit that I took this morning."

"Then, good-night, Sir, for I sha'n't return before daylight."

But it was not till long after the keeper had taken his departure that Richard Yorke turned hand or eye to his unfinished drawing. He sat staring straight before him with steadfast eyes and thoughtful face, for hours, murmuring to himself disjointed sentences; and ever and anon he started up and paced the little room with rapid strides. "He shall see me, and know me, too," muttered he, at last, between his clenched teeth, "though it should cost one of us our lives. She shall not say I came down to this wilderness, like some hunted beast to covert, for nothing."