Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Volume 1 of 3

“Iʼm in for it now”, thought Rufus Hutton; “what a fool I am! I fancied the old fellow had no nous, except for Latin and Greek”.

Strange to say, the old fellow had nous enough to notice his hesitation. John Rosedew got up from his chair, and stood looking at Rufus Hutton.

“Sir, I will thank you to tell me exactly what you mean about my daughter”.

“Nothing at all, Mr. Rosedew. What do you suppose I should mean”?

“You should mean nothing at all, sir. But I believe that you do mean something. And, please God, I will have it out of you”. Rufus Hutton said afterwards that he had two great frights that evening, and he believed the last was the worst. The parson never dreamed that any man could be afraid of him, except it were a liar, and he looked upon Rufus contemptuously. The man of the world was nothing before the man of truth.

“Mr. Rosedew”, said Rufus, recovering himself, “your conduct is very extraordinary; and (you will excuse my saying it) more violent than becomes a man of your position and character”.

“No violence becomes any man, whatever his position. I am sorry if I have been violent”.

“You have indeed”, said Rufus, pushing his advantage: a generous man would have said, “No, you havenʼt”, at seeing the parsonʼs distress, and so would Rufus have said, if he had happened to be in the right; “so violent, Mr. Rosedew, that I believe you almost frightened me”.

“Dear me”! said John, reflecting, “and he has just leaped an oak–tree! I must have been very bad”.

“Donʼt mention it, my dear sir, I entreat you say no more about it. We all know what a father is”. And Rufus Hutton, who did not yet, but expected to know in some three months, grew very large, and felt himself able to patronise the rector. “Mr. Rosedew, I as well am to blame. I am thoughtless, sir, very thoughtless, or rather I should say too thoughtful; I am too fond of seeing round a corner, which I have always been famous for. Sir, a man who possesses this power, this gift, this – I donʼt know the word for it, but I have no doubt you do – that man is apt to – I mean to – ”

“Knock his head against a wall”? suggested the parson, in all good faith.

“No, you mistake me; I donʼt mean that at all; I mean that a man with this extraordinary foresight, which none can understand except those who are gifted with it, is liable sometimes, is amenable – I mean to – to – ”

“See double. Ah, yes, I can quite understand it”. John Rosedew shut his eyes, and felt up for a disquisition, yet wanted to hear of his daughter.

“No, my dear sir, no. It is something very far from anything so commonplace as that. What I mean is – only I cannot express it, because you interrupt me so – that a man may have this faculty, this insight, this perception, which saves him from taking offence where none whatever is meant, and yet, as it were by some obliquity of the vision, may seem, in some measure, to see the wrong individual”. Here Rufus felt like the dwarf Alypius, when he had stodged Iamblichus.

“That is an interesting question, and reminds me of the state of ἀῤῥεψία as described in the life of Pyrrho by Diogenes Laertius; whose errors, if I may venture to say it, have been made too much of by the great Isaac Casaubon, then scarcely mature of judgment. It will give me the greatest pleasure to go into that question with you. But not just now. I am thrown out so sadly, and my memory fails me” – John Rosedew had fancied this, by–the–by, ever since he was thirty years old – “only tell me one thing, Dr. Hutton, and I am very sorry for my violence; you meant no harm about my daughter”? Here the grey–haired man, with the mighty forehead, opened his clear blue eyes, and looked down upon Rufus beseechingly.

“Upon my honour as a gentleman, I mean no harm whatever. I made the greatest mistake, and I see the mistake I made”.

“Will you tell me, sir, what it was? Just to ease my mind. I am sure that you will”.

“No, I must not tell you now, until I have worked the matter out. You will thank me for not doing so. But I apologise most heartily. I feel extremely uncomfortable. No claret, sir, but the port, if you please. I was famous, in India, for my nerve; but now it seems to be failing me”.

Rufus, as we now perceive, had fully discovered his mistake, and was trying to trace the consequences. The beautiful girl whom he saw in the wood, that evening, with Clayton Nowell, was not our Amy at all, but Mr. Garnetʼs daughter. He knew the face, though changed and white, when it frightened his mare in the moonlight; and, little time as he had to think, it struck him then as very strange that Miss Rosedew should be there. Bull Garnetʼs cottage, on the other hand, was quite handy in the hollow.

CHAPTER XXVI

At this melancholy time, John Rosedew had quite enough to do without any burden of fresh anxieties about his own pet Amy. Nevertheless, that burden was added; not by Dr. Huttonʼs vague questions, although they helped to impose it, but by the fatherʼs own observation of his darlingʼs strange condition. “Can it be”, he asked himself, and often longed to ask her, as he saw only lilies where roses had been, and little hands trembling at breakfast–time, “can it be that this child of mine loved the poor boy Clayton, and is wasting away in sorrow for him? Is that the reason why she will not meet Cradock, nor Cradock meet her, and she trembles at his name? And then that book which Aunt Doxy made her throw on the kitchen fire – very cruel I now see it was of my good sister Eudoxia, though at first I did not think so – that book I know was poor Claytonʼs, for I have seen it in his hand. Well, if it truly is so, there is nothing to be done, except to be unusually kind to her, and trust to time for the cure, and give her plenty of black–currant jam”.

These ideas he imparted to the good Aunt Doxy, who delivered some apophthegms (which John did not want to listen to), but undertook, whatever should happen, to be down upon Amy sharply. She knew all about her tonsils and her uvula, and all that stuff, and she did not want Johnʼs advice, though she had never had a family; and thank God heartily for it!

On Monday, when the funeral came to Nowelhurst churchyard, John Rosedew felt his heart give way, and could not undertake it. At the risk of deeply offending Sir Cradock, whose nerves that day were of iron, he passed the surplice to his curate, Mr. Pell, of Rushford; and begged him, with a sad slow smile, to do the duty for him. Sir Cradock Nowell frowned, and coloured, and then bowed low with an icy look, when he saw the change which had been made, and John Rosedew fall in as a mourner. People said that from that day the old friendship was dissevered.

John, for his part, could not keep his eyes from the nook of the churchyard, where among the yew–trees stood, in the bitterness of anguish, he who had not asked, nor been asked, to attend as mourner. Cradock bowed his head and wept, for now his tears came freely, and prayed the one Almighty Father, who alone has mercy, not to take his misery from him, but to take him from it.

When the mould was cast upon the coffin, black Wena came between peopleʼs legs, gave a cry, and jumped in after it, thinking to retrieve her master, like a stick from the water. She made such a mournful noise in the grave, and whimpered, and put her head down, and wondered why no one said “Wena, dear”, that all the school–girls burst out sobbing – having had apples from Clayton lately – and Octavius Pell, the great cricketer, wanted something soft for his throat.

That evening, when all was over, and the grave heaped snugly up, and it was time to think of other things and begin to wonder at sorrow, John Rosedew went to Sir Cradock Nowell, not only as a fellow–mourner and a friend of ancient days, but as a minister of Christ. It had cost John many struggles; and, what with his sense of worldly favours, schoolday–friendship, delicacy, he could scarce tell what to make of it, till he just went down on his knees and prayed; then the learned man learned his duty.

Sir Cradock turned his head away, as if he did not want him. John held out his hand, and said nothing.

“Mr. Rosedew, I am surprised to see you. And yet, John, this is kind of you”.

John hoped that he only said “Mr. Rosedew”, because the footman was lingering, and he tried not to feel the difference.

“Cradock, you know what I am, as well as I know what you are. Fifty years, my dear fellow, fifty years of friendship”.

“Yes, John, I remember when I was twelve years old, and you fought Sam Cockings for me”.

“And, Cradock, I thrashed him fairly; you know I thrashed him fairly. They said I got his head under the form; but you know it was all a lie. How I do hate lies! I believe it began that day. If so, the dislike is subjective. Perhaps I ought to reconsider it”.

“John, I know nothing in your life which you ought to reconsider, except what you are doing now”.

Sir Cradock Nowell began the combat, because he felt that it must be waged; and perhaps he knew in that beginning that he had the weaker cause.

“Cradock, I am doing nothing which is not my simple duty. When I see those I love in the deepest distress, can I help siding with them”?

“Upon that principle, or want of it, you might espouse, as a duty, the cause of any murderer”.

The old man shuddered, and his voice shook, as he whispered that last word. As yet he had not worked himself up, nor been worked up by others, to the black belief which made the living lost beyond the dead.

“I am sure I donʼt know what I might do”, said John Rosedew, simply, “but what I am doing now is right; and in your heart you know it. Come, Cradock, as an old man now, and one whom God has visited, forgive your poor, your noble son, who never will forgive himself”.

But for one word in that speech, John Rosedew would perhaps have won his cause, and reconciled son and father.

“My noble son indeed, John! A very noble thing he has done. Shall I never hear the last of his nobility? And who ever called my Clayton noble? You have been unfair throughout, John Rosedew, most unfair and blind to the merits of my more loving, more simple–hearted, more truly noble boy, I tell you”.

Mr. Rosedew, at such a time, could not of course contest the point, could not tell the bereaved old man that it was he himself who had been unfair.

“And when”, asked Sir Cradock, getting warmer, “when did you know my poor boy Violet stick up for political opinions of his own at the age of twenty, want to drain tenants’ cottages, and pretend to be better and wiser than his father”?

“And when have you known Cradock do, at any rate, the latter”?

“Ever since he got that scholarship, that Scotland thing at Oxford” – Sir Cradock knew the name well enough, as every Oxford man does – “he has been perfectly insufferable; such arrogance, such conceit, such airs! And he only got it by a trick. Poor Viley ought to have had it”.

John Rosedew tried to control himself, but the gross untruth and injustice of that last accusation were a little too much for him.

“Perhaps, Sir Cradock Nowell, you will allow that I am a competent judge of the relative powers of the two boys, who knew all they did know from me, and from no one else”.

“Of course, I know you are a competent judge, only blinded by partiality”.

John allowed even that to go by.

“Without any question of preference, simply as a lover of literature, I say that Clayton had no chance with him in a Greek examination. In Latin he would have run him close. You know I always said so, even before they went to college. I was surprised, at the time, that they mentioned Clayton even as second to him”.

“And grieved, I dare say, deeply grieved, if the truth were told”!