Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Volume 2 of 3

“Yes, your son is a perfect pattern. So gentle and gentlemanly; so amiable and poetical. I had no idea he was so brave. Shall I ever see him to thank him for saving the life of my niece?”

“He is a fine fellow, a noble fellow, Sir Cradock. The dearest and the best boy in the whole wide world.”

The old man long had known that the flaw in Bull Garnetʼs armour was the thought of his dear boy, Bob.

“And can you not fancy, Garnet, that my son, whatever he is, may also be dear to me?”

“I should have said so, I must have thought so, but for the way you have treated him.”

Bull Garnet knew well enough that he was a hot and hasty man; but he seldom had felt that truth more sharply than now, when he saw the result of his words. Nevertheless, he faltered not. He had made up his mind to deliver its thoughts, and he was not the man to care for faces.

“Sir Cradock Nowell, I am a violent, hot, and passionate man. I have done many things in my fury which I would give my life to undo; but I would rather have them all on my soul than such cold–blooded, calm, unnatural cruelty as you have shown to your only – I mean to your own – son. I suppose you never cared for him; suppose! I mean of course you did not.”

He looked at Sir Cradock Nowell, with thunder and hail in his eyes. The old man could not glance it back; neither did he seem to be greatly indignant at it.

“Then – then – I suppose you donʼt think – you donʼt believe, I mean, Garnet – that he did it on purpose?”

Mr. Garnet turned pale as a winding–sheet, and could not speak for a moment. Then he looked away from Sir Cradockʼs eyes, and asked, “Is it possible that you have ever thought so?”

“I have tried not,” answered Sir Cradock, with his wasted bosom heaving. “God knows that I have struggled against it. Garnet, have pity upon me. If you have any of our blood in you, tell me the truth, what you think.”

“I not only think, but know, that the devil only could have suggested such an idea to you. Man, for the sake of the God that made you, and made me as well as your brother, and every one of us brethren, rather put a pistol to your heart than that damned idea. In cold blood! in cold blood! And for the sake of gain! A brother to – do away with – a brother so! Oh, what things have come upon me! Where is my God, and where is yours?”

“I am sure I donʼt know,” replied the old man, gazing round in wonderment, as if he expected to see Him – for the scene had quite unnerved him – “I suppose He is – is somewhere in the usual place, Mr. Garnet.”

“Then thatʼs not in this neighbourhood,” replied Bull Garnet, heavily; “He is gone from me, from all of us. And His curse is on my children. Poor innocents, poor helpless lambs! The curse of God is on them.”

He went away to the window; and, through his tears, and among the trees, tried to find his cottage–roof.

Sir Cradock Nowell was lost to thought, and heard nothing of those woeful words, although from the depth of that labouring chest they came like the distant sea–roar.

Bull Garnet returned with his fierce eyes softened to a womanʼs fondness, and saw, with pity as well as joy, that his last words had not been heeded. “Ever hot and ever hasty, until it comes to my own death,” he muttered, still in recklessness; “perhaps then I shall be tardy. For my sonʼs sake, for my Bob and Pearl, I must not make such a child of myself. Nevertheless, I cannot stay here.”

“Garnet,” said Sir Cradock Nowell, slowly recovering from his stupor, a slight cerebral paralysis, “say nothing of what has passed between us – nothing, I entreat you; and not another word to me now. I only understand that you assert emphatically my son Cradockʼs innocence.”

“With every fibre of my heart. With every tissue of my brain.”

“Then I love you very much for it; although you have done it so rudely.”

“Donʼt say that. Never say it again. I canʼt bear it now, Sir Cradock.”

“Very well, then, I wonʼt, Garnet. Though I think you might be proud of my gratitude; for I never bestow it rashly.”

“I am very thankful to you. Gratitude is an admirable and exceedingly scarce thing. I am come to give you notice – as well as to answer your summons – notice of my intention to quit your service shortly.”

“Nonsense!” replied Sir Cradock, gasping; “nonsense, Garnet! You never mean that – that even you would desert me?”

Bull Garnet was touched by the old manʼs tone – the helplessness, the misery. “Well,” he answered, “Iʼll try to bear with it for a little longer, in spite of the daily agony. I owe you everything; all I can do. Iʼll get things all into first–rate order, and then I hope, most truly, your son will be back again, sir.”

“It isnʼt only the stewardship, Garnet; it isnʼt only that. You are now as one of the family, and there are so few of us left. Your daughter Pearl; I begin to love her as of my own flesh and blood. Who knows but what, if my Cradock comes back, he may take a liking to her? Amy Rosedew has not behaved well lately, any more than her father has.”

“Do you mean to say that you, Sir Cradock, with all your prejudices of birth, legitimacy, and station, would ever sanction – supposing it possible – any affection of a child of yours for a child of mine?”

“To be sure – if it were a true one. A short time ago I thought very differently. But oh! what does it matter? I am not what I was, Garnet.”

“Neither am I,” thought Mr. Garnet; “but I might have been, if only I could ever have dreamed this. God has left me, for ever left me.”

“Why donʼt you answer me, Garnet? Why do you shut your Pearl up so? Let her come to me soon; she would do me good; and I, as you know, have a young lady coming, who knows little of English society. Pearl would do her a great deal of good. Pearl is a thorough specimen of a well–bred English maiden. I think I like her better than Amy – since Amy has been so cold to me.”

To Sir Cradockʼs intense astonishment, Bull Garnet, instead of replying, rushed straight away out of the room, and, not content with that, he rushed out of the house as well, and strode fiercely away to the nearest trees, and was lost to sight among them.

“Well,” said the old man, “he always was the oddest fellow I ever did know; and I suppose he always will be. And yet what a man for business!”

That same forenoon, Mrs. Brownʼs boy and donkey came with a very long message from a lady who had tucked him on the head because he could not make out her meaning. He believed her name was Mrs. Jogging, and he was to say that Miss Oh Ah was fit to come home to–day, please, if theyʼd please to send the shay for her. And they must please to get ready Satanʼs room, where the daffodil curtains was, because the young woman loved to look at the yeast, and to have a good fire burning. And please they must send the eel–skin cloak, and the foot–tub in the shay, because the young woman was silly.

“Chilly, you stupid,” replied Mrs. Toaster. “She shall have the foot–warmer and the seal–skin cloak; but what Satanʼs room with the daffodil curtains is, only the Lord in heaven knows; and how she is to see any yeast there! Are you certain that was the message?”

“Sartin, maʼam. I said it to myself ever so many times; more often than I stuck the Neddy.”

Sir Cradock Nowell, upon appeal, speedily decided that the satin room was meant – the room with the rose–coloured curtains, and the windows facing the east; but the boy stuck out for the daffodil; leastways he was certain it was some flower.

It was nearly dark when the carriage returned; and Sir Cradock came down to the great entrance–hall to meet his brotherʼs child. He was trembling with anxiety; for his nerves were rapidly failing him; and, from Dr. Huttonʼs account, he feared to see in his probable heiress – for now he had no heir – something very outlandish and savage. Therefore he was surprised and delighted when a graceful and beautiful girl, with high birth and elegance in every movement, flung off her cloak, and skipped up to him with the lightness of a gazelle, and threw her arms round his neck, and kissed him.

“Oh, uncle, I shall love you so! You are so like my darling – you have got his nose exactly, and just the same shaped legs. Oh, to think he should ever have left me!” And she burst into tears then and there before half a dozen servants. “Oh, Uncle Cradock, you have got a fine house; but I never shall get over it.”

“Hush, my dear; come with me, my child!” Sir Cradock was always wide awake upon the subject of proprieties.

“I am not your child; and I wonʼt be your child, if you try to stop me like that. I must cry when I want to cry, and it is so stupid to stop me.”

“What a pretty dear you are!” said Sir Cradock, scarcely knowing what to say, but having trust in feminine vanity.

“Am I indeed? I donʼt think so at all. I was very pretty, I know, until I began to cry so. But now my cheeks are come out, and my eyes gone in; but, oh dear! what does it matter, and my father never, never to take me on his lap again? Hya! Hya! Hya!”

“Faix, thin, me darlinʼ,” cried Mrs. OʼGaghan, stroking her down in a shampoo manner, “itʼs meself as knows how to dale with you. Lave her to me; Sir Crayduck; sheʼs pure and parfict, every bit on her. I knows how to bring her out, and sheʼll come to your room like a lamb, now jist. – Git out of the way, the lot on you” – to several officious maidens – “me honey, put your hand in my neck, your blissed leetle dove of a hand, and fale how me heart goes pat for you. Sir Crayduck, me duty to you, but you might ‘ave knowed how to git out of the way, and lave the ladies to the ladies.”

Sir Cradock Nowell marched away, thinking what a blessing it was that he had not had much to do with women. Then he reproached himself for the thought, as he remembered his darling Violet, the mother of his children. But, before he had brooded very long in the only room he liked to use now, his study just off from the library, a gentle knock came to the door – as Biddy always expressed it – and Eoa, dressed in deepest mourning (made at Lymington, from her own frock, while she lay ill at the Crown), came up to him steadily, and kissed him, and sat on a stool at his feet.

“Oh, uncle, I am so sorry,” she said, with her glorious hair falling over his knees, and her deep eyes looking up at him, “I am so sorry, Uncle Cradock, that I vexed you so, just now.”

“You did not vex me, my pretty. I was only vexed for you. Now, remember one thing, my darling – for I shall love you as my own daughter – I have been very harsh and stern where, perhaps, I had no right to be so: if I am ever unkind to you, my dear, if I ever say anything hard, only say ‘Clayton Nowell’ to me, and I will forgive you directly.”

“You mean I must forgive you, uncle. I suppose thatʼs what you mean. If you are unkind to me, what will you want to forgive me for? But I couldnʼt do it. I couldnʼt say it, even if I had done any harm. Please to remember that I either love or I hate people. I know that I shall love you. But you must not contradict me. I never could endure it, and I never will.”

“Well,” said Sir Cradock, laughing; “I will try to remember that, my dear. Though, in that respect, you differ but little from our English young ladies.”

“If you please, Uncle Cradock, I must go to–night to see where you have put my father. There, I wonʼt cry any more, because he told me never to vex you, and I see that my crying vexes you. Did you cry, yourself, Uncle Cradock, when you heard of it first?”

She looked at him, as she asked this question, with such wild intensity, as if her entire opinion of him would hang upon his reply, that the old man felt himself almost compelled to tell “a corker.”