Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Volume 3 of 3

“Darling, I think you are quite right. Only donʼt tell me a word of it. It is such a dreadful matter, it would make me so unhappy – ”

“I will tell you every single word, just to prove to you, Georgie, that I have found the whole of it out.”

After this laudable resolution, Rosa may be left to have it out with Rufus. It requires greater skill than ours to interfere between man and wife, even without the tertium quid of an astounding baby.

*****

The ides of March were come and gone, the balance of day and night was struck; and Sleep, the queen of half the world, had wheeled across the equator her poppy–chintzed throne, or had got the stars to do it for her, because she was too lazy. Ha, that sentence is almost worthy of a great stump–orator. All I mean to say is, that All Foolsʼ Day was over. Blessed are the All Fools who begin the summer (which accounts for its being a mull with us); and blessed be the All Saints who begin the winter, and then hand it over to Beelzebub.

“In April she tunes her bill.” Several nightingales were at it, for the spring was early, and right early were many nests conned, planned, and contracted for. Blessed birds, that never say, “What are your expectations, sir?” or “How much will you give your daughter?” – but feather their nests without waiting for an appointment in the Treasury. Nest–eggs, too, almost as sweet as those of addled patronage, were beginning to accumulate; and it took up half a birdʼs time to settle seniority and precedence among them, fettle them all with their heads the right way, and throw overboard the cracked ones. Perhaps, in this last particular, they exercised a discretion, not only unknown to, but undreamed of, by any British Government.

It was nearly dark by this time, and two nightingales, across the valley, strove in Amoibæan song till the crinkles of the opening leaves fluttered with soft melody.

“In poplar shadows Philomel complaineth of her brood,
Her callow nestlings plunderʼd from her by the ploughman rude:
From lonely branch all night she pours her weeping musicʼs flow,
Repeats her tale, and fills the world with melody and woe.”

    Georg. iv. 511.
Mr. Garnet heeded neither crisp young leaf nor bulbul; neither did his horse appear to be a judge of music. Man and horse were drooping, flagging, jaded and bespent; wanting only the two things which, according to some philosophers, are all that men want here below – a little food, and a deal of sleep.

Bull Garnet was on his return from Winchester, whither he now went every week, for some reason known only to himself, or at least unknown to his family. It is a long and hilly ride from the west of Ytene to Winton, and to travel that distance twice in a day takes the gaiety out of a horse, and the salience out of a man. No wonder then that Mr. Garnet slouched his heavy shoulders, and let his great head droop; for at five–and–forty a powerful man jades sooner than does a slight one.

Presently he began to drowse; for the stout grey gelding knew every step of the road, and would take uncommonly good care to avoid all circumambience: and of late the rider had never slept, only dozed, and dreamed, and started. Then he muttered to himself, as he often did in sleep, but never at home, until he had seen to the fastening of the door.

“Tried it again – tried very hard and failed. Thought of Bob, at last moment. Bob to stand, and see me hang – and hate me, and go to the devil. No, I donʼt think he would hate me, though; he would say, ‘Father could not help it.’ And how nice that would be for me, to see Bob take my part. To see him with his turn–down collars standing proudly up, and saying, ‘Father was a bad man – according to your ideas – I am not going to dispute them – but for all that I love him, and so my children shall.’ If I could be sure that Bob would only think so, only make his mind up, his mind up, his mind up – for there is nothing like it – whoa, Grayling, what be looking at? – and take poor little Pearl with him, I would go to–morrow morning, and do it over at Lymington.”

“Best do it to–night, govʼnor. No time like the praysent, and us knows arl about it.”

A tall man had leaped from behind a tree, and seized Bull Garnetʼs bridle. The grey gelding reared and struck him; but he kept his hold, till the muzzle of a large revolver felt cold against his ear. Then Issachar Jupp fell back; he knew the man he had to deal with, how stern in his fury, how reckless, despite the better part of him. And Issachar was not prepared to leave his Loo an orphan.

“No man robs me,” cried Mr. Garnet, in his most tremendous voice, “except at the cost of my life, and the risk of his. I have seven and sixpence about me; I will give it up to no man. Neither will I shoot any man, unless he tries to get it.”

“Nubbody wants to rob you, govʼnor, only to have a little rattysination with you. Possible you know me now?”

Bull Garnet fell back in his saddle. He would rather have met a dozen robbers. By the voice he recognised a man whom he had once well known, and had good cause to know; – through his outrage upon whom, he had left the northern counties; the man whom he had stricken headlong down a coal–shaft, as the leader of rebellion, the night after Pearl was christened, nigh twenty years ago.

“Yes, I know you; Jupp your name is. Small credit it is to know you.”

“And smarler still to know you, Bull Garnet. Try your pistol thing, if you like. You must have rare stommick, I should think, to be up for another murder.”

“Issachar, I am sorry for you. Do you call it a murder to keep such a fellow as you off?”

“No, I dunna carl that a murder, because I be arl alive. But I do carl a murder what you did to young Clayton Nowell.”

“Fool, what do you know of it? Let go my horse, I say. You know pretty well what I am.”

“I know you haʼnʼt much patience, govʼnor, and be arlways in a hurry.”

Jupp hesitated, but would not be beaten, whatever might be the end of it.

“I am in no hurry now, Jupp; I will listen to all you have to say. But not with your hand on my bridle.”

“There goeth free then. Arl knows you be no liar.”

“I am glad you remember that, Issachar. Hold the horse, while I get off. Now throw the bridle over that branch, and I will sit down here. Come here into the moonlight, man; and look me in the face. Here is the pistol for you, if you bear me any revenge.”

Scarcely knowing what he did, because he had no time to think, Jupp obeyed Bull Garnetʼs orders even to the last – for he took the pistol in his hand, and tried to look straight at his adversary; but his eyes would not co–operate. Then he laid the pistol on the bank; but so that he could reach it.

“Issachar Jupp,” said Mr. Garnet, looking at him steadily, and speaking very quietly; “have you any children?”

“Only one – a leetle gal, but an oncommon good un.”

“How old is she?”

“Five year old, plase God, come next Valentineʼs Day.”

“Now, when she grows up, and is pure and good, would you like to have her heart broken?”

“Iʼd break any coveʼs head as doed it.”

“But supposing she were betrayed and ruined, made a plaything, and then thrown away – what would you do then?”

“God Almighty knows, man. I canʼt abide to think of it.”

“And if the – the man who did it, was the grandson of the man who had ruined your own mother, lied before God in the church to her, and then left her to go to the workhouse, with you his outcast bastard – while he rolled in gold, and laughed at her – what would you do then, Jupp?”

“By the God that made me, Iʼd have my revenge, if I went to hell for it.”

“I have said enough. Do exactly as you please. Me you cannot help or harm. Death is all I long for – only for my children.”

Still he looked at Issachar, but now without a thought of him; only as a man looks out upon the sea or sky, expecting no return. And Issachar Jupp, so dense and pig–headed – surly and burly, and weasel–eyed – in a word, retrospectively British – gazing at Bull Garnet then, got some inkling of an anguish such as he who lives to feel – far better were it for that man that he had never been born.

CHAPTER VIII

To bar the entail of crime. A bitter and abortive task; at least, in this vindictive world, where Christians dwell more on Mount Sinai than on the mount that did not quake and burn with fire.

And yet for this, and little else, still clung to fair fame and life the man who rather would have lain beneath the quick–lime of Newgate. It was not for the empty part, the reputation, the position, the respect of those who prove the etymon of the word by truly looking backward – not for these alone, nor mainly, did Bull Garnet bear the anguish now from month to month more bitter, deeper, less concealable. He strove with himself, and checked himself, and bit his tongue, and jerked back his heart, and nursed that shattered lie, his life, if so might be that Pearl and Bob should start anew in another land, with a fair career before them. Not that he cared, more than he could help, whether they might be rich or poor; only that he would like them to have the chance of choosing.

This chance had not been fair for him, forsaken as he was, and outcast; banned by all the laws of men, because his mother had been trustful, and his father treacherous. Yet against all chances, he, by his own rightful power, deeply hating and (which was worse) conscientiously despising every social prejudice, made his way among smaller men, taught himself by day and night, formed his own strong character, with the hatred of tyranny for its base, and tyranny of his own for its apex; and finally gained success in the world, and large views of Christianity. And in all of this he was sincere!

It was a vile and bitter wrong to which he owed his birth. Sir Cradock Nowell, the father of the present baronet, had fallen in love of some sort with a comely Yorkshire maiden, whose motherʼs farm adjoined the moors, whereon the shooting quarters were. Then, in that period of mean license, when fashionable servility was wriggling, like a cellar–slug, in the slime–track of low princes, Sir Cradock Nowell did what few of his roystering friends would have thought of – unfashionable Tarquinian, he committed a quiet bigamy. He had lived apart from Lady Nowell, even before her second confinement; because he could not get on with her. So Miss Garnet went with him to the quiet altar of a little Yorkshire church, and fancied she was Lady Nowell; only that must be a secret, “because they had not the kingʼs consent, for he was not in a state to give it.”

When she learned her niddering wrong, and the despite to her unborn child, she cast her curse upon the race, not with loud rant, but long scorn, and went from her widowed mother, to a cold and unknown place.

So soon as Bull Garnet was old enough to know right from wrong, and to see how much more of the latter had fallen to his share, two courses lay before him. Two, I mean, were possible to a strong and upright nature; to a false and weak one fifty would have offered, and a little of each been taken. Conscious as he was of spirit, energy, and decision, he might apply them all to very ungenial purposes, to sarcasm, contemptuousness, and general misanthropy. Or else he might take a larger view, pity the poor old–fashioned prigs who despise a man for his fatherʼs fault, and generously adapt himself to the broadest Christianity.

The latter course was the one he chose; in solid earnest, too, because it suited his nature. And so perhaps we had better say that he chose no course at all, but had the wiser one forced upon him. Yet the old Adam of damnable temper too often would rush out of Paradise, and prove in strong language that he would not be put off together with his works. Exeter Hall would have owned him, in spite of all his backslidings, as a very “far–advanced Christian;” because he was so “evangelical.” And yet he never dealt in cant, nor distributed idyllic tracts, Sabbatarian pastorals, where godly Thomas meets drunken John, and converts him to the diluted vappa of an unfermented Sunday.