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

Mrs. Corklemore knew well enough that he meant nothing of the sort; but the opportunity for the suggestion was too fine to be lost.

“Oh,” said Sir Cradock, with a grim smile, “you consider that my duty, do you? No, it was not on that subject I was anxious for your opinion, but as to sending the child to school, or taking some other means to finish her education.”

“She wonʼt go,” replied Mrs. Corklemore, seeing some chance of a quarrel here; “of course it would be the best thing for her; but I am quite certain the sweet creature never will go.”

“The sweet creature must, if I make her.”

“To be sure, Uncle Cradock; but I donʼt believe you can. Has she not favoured you with her intentions as to settling in life, rather – well, perhaps rather prematurely?”

“Yes,” replied the old man, laughing, “she has informed me, with all due ceremony, of her intention to marry Bob Garnet, the moment she is out of mourning for her dearest father.”

“Master Garnet has not asked her yet. And I have reason to believe” – here Georgie softly hesitated.

“What?” asked Sir Cradock, anxiously, for he was very fond of Eoa; she was such a novelty to him.

“That Master Bob Garnet, just come from school, loves Amy Rosedew above Eoa, toffee, rock, or peppermint.”

“Amy Rosedew is a minx,” answered the old man, hotly. “I offered to shake hands with her, when I met her on Wednesday, and was even going to kiss her, because she is my god–daughter, and – and – an uncommonly pretty girl, you know, and what do you think she said?”

“Oh donʼt tell me, Uncle Cradock, if it was anything impudent. You know I could not stand it, thinking what I do of those Rosedews.”

“She threw herself back with her great eyes flashing, and the colour in her cheeks dark crimson, and she said, ‘No, thank you. No contact for me with unnatural injustice!’ And she drew her frock around her, and swept away as if the road was not wide enough for both of us. Nice behaviour, was not it? And I fear her father endorses it.”

“I know he does,” answered Georgie, whose face during that description had been a perfect study of horror contending with humour; “I know that Mr. Rosedew, one of the best men in the world, if, indeed, he is sincere – which others may doubt, but not I – he, poor man, having little perception, except of his own interest, has taken a most unfavourable view of everything we do here. Oh, I am so sorry. It almost makes one feel as if we must be in the wrong.” Beautiful Georgie sighed heavily, like a fair woman at a confessional.

“His own interest, Georgie! Ourselves in the wrong! I donʼt quite understand you.”

“As if we were harsh, you know, Uncle Cradock; when, Heaven be thanked, we have not concluded, as too, too many – But, not to talk of that absurdity, and not to pain you, darling uncle, you must know what I meant about Mr. Rosedewʼs interest.”

“No, indeed, I donʼt, Georgie. I donʼt see how John – I mean Mr. Rosedewʼs interest is at all involved in the matter.”

“He had a daughter passing fair,” sang Mrs. Corklemore, without thinking. “Oh, uncle, I forgot; I am so light–headed and foolish, I forget everything now. It is Nowellʼs fault for worrying me, as he does every week, about income.”

She passed her hand across her forehead, and swept the soft dark hair back, as if worldly matters were too many for her poor childish brain. Who could look at her without wishing that she really cared for herself, just a little?

“I insist upon knowing what you mean, Georgie,” said Sir Cradock, frowning heavily, for he was not at all sentimental; “John Rosedewʼs daughter is Amy; and Amy, I know, is perfectly honest, though as obstinate as the devʼ – hem, I beg your pardon; I mean that Amy is very obstinate, as well as exceedingly bigoted, and I might almost say insolent.”

“Oh no; I can never believe that, Uncle Cradock, even upon your authority.” In the heat of truth, Mrs. Corklemore stood up and faced Sir Cradock.

“But I tell you she is, Georgie. Donʼt try to defend her. No young woman of eighteen ought to have spoken as she did to me when I met her last Wednesday. ‘Outrageous’ is the mildest word I can use to describe her manner.”

“Very likely you thought so, dearest Uncle Cradock; and so very likely I might have thought, or any of the old–school people. But we must make allowances – you know we are bound to do so – for young people brought up to look at things from a different point of view.”

“No – by – George I wonʼt. I have heard that stuff too often. Spirit of the age, and all that balderdash. Because a set of young jackanapes are blessed with impudence enough to throw to the dogs all the teachings of ages, just when it doesnʼt suit them, is it likely that we, who are old enough to see the beauty of what they despise, are to venerate and bow down to infantile inspiration, which itself bows down to nothing? Georgie, you are too soft, too mild. Your forbearance quite provokes me. Leave me, if you please, to form my own opinions, especially about people whom I know so much better than you do.”

“I am sure, Uncle Cradock,” answered Georgie, pouting, “I never presume in any way to interfere with your opinions. Your judgment is proverbial; whereas I have none whatever. Only it was natural that I should wish you to think well of one who is likely to be so nearly related to you. What! why you look surprised, uncle? Ah, you think me wrong in alluding to it. What a simple silly I am, to be sure! But please not to be angry, uncle. I never dreamed that you wished it kept secret, dear, when all the parish is talking of it.”

“Georgie Corklemore, have the goodness to tell me what you mean.”

“Oh, donʼt look at me so, uncle. I never could bear a cross look. I mean no mystery whatever, only Amy Rosedewʼs engagement to your unlucky – I mean your unhappy son. Of course it has your sanction.”

“Amy engaged to my – to that crafty Cradock! I cannot believe it. I will not believe it; and at a time like this!”

“Well, I thought the time ill–chosen. But I am no judge of propriety. And they say that the poor – poor darling who is gone, was himself attached – let us hope that it was not so; however, I cannot believe, Uncle Cradock, that you have not even been told of it.”

“But I tell you, Georgie, that it is so. Perhaps you disbelieve me in your anxiety to screen them?”

“You know better than that, dear uncle. I believe you, before all the world. And I will screen them no longer, for I think it bad and ungrateful of them. And after all you have done for them! Why, surely, you gave them the living! It makes me feel quite ill. Ingratitude always does.” Georgie pressed her hand to her heart, and was obliged to get up and walk about. Presently she came back again, with great tears in her eyes, and her face full of anger and pity.

“Oh, uncle dear, I cannot tell you how grieved I am for your sake. It does seem so hard–hearted of them. How I feel my own helplessness that I cannot comfort you! What a passion my Nowell will be in, when I tell him this! His nature is so warm and generous, so upright and confiding, and he looks up to you with such devotion, and such deep respect. I must not tell him at night, poor fellow, or he would not sleep a wink. And the most contumelious thing of all: that pompous old maid, Miss Eudoxia Rosedew, to be going about and boasting of it – the title and the property – before any one had the manners even to inform so kind a friend, and so affectionate a father! The title and the property! How I hate such worldliness. I never could understand how people could scheme and plot for such things. And to make so little of you, uncle, because they relied upon the entail!”

This was quite a shot in the dark, for she knew not whether any entail subsisted; and, as it was a most essential point to discover this, Georgie fixed her swimming eyes – swimming with love and sympathy – full upon poor Sir Cradockʼs. He started a little, but she scarcely knew what to augur thence. She must have another shot at it; but not on the present occasion.

It is scarcely needful, perhaps, to say, knowing Mrs. Corklemore and Miss Rosedew as we do, that there was not a syllable of truth in what the former said of the latter. Sir Cradock himself would have doubted it, if he had been any judge of women; for Miss Eudoxia Rosedew thought very little of baronets. How could she help it, she of the illustrious grandmother? Oh her indignation, if she only could have dreamed of being charged with making vaunt over such a title! Neither was it like her, even if she had thought great things of any pledged alliance, to go about and share her sentiments with the “common people.” The truth of the matter was this: Georgie, with her natural craft – no, no! skill I mean; how a clumsy pen will stumble – and ten more years of life to drill it, had elicited Amyʼs sentiments; as one who, having stropped a razor, carves his ladyʼs pincushion, or one who blowing on bright gimlet tempts the spigot of bonded wine, or varlet who with a knowing worm giveth taste of Stilton. Or even,

“As when a man, a sluice–captain, adown from a backwater headspring,
All through his plants and garden a waterflow is pioneering,
Holding a shovel in hand, from the carrier casting the sods out;
Then as it goes flowing forward, the pebbles below in a bevy
Swirl about, and it rapidly wimpling down paterooneth,
In a spot where a jump of the ground is, and overgets even the guideman.”

    Il. xxi. 257.
So sweet Amy, being under–drawn of her native crystal by many a sly innuendo and many an Artesian auger, gushed out, like liquid diamonds, upon the skilful Georgie, and piled upon her a flood of truth, a Scamander upon Achilles. Oh water upon a duckʼs back, because Georgie always swam in truth; please not to say that Castalia, rore puro, wets not the kerchief of a lady thrice dipped in Styx.

And so it came to pass that young Amy let out everything, having a natural love of candour and a natural hatred of Georgie, and expecting to overwhelm her with the rolling seventh billow of truth. Mrs. Corklemore, softly smiling, reared her honest head out of the waters, sleeked her soft luxuriant locks, and the only thing likely to overwhelm her was sympathy unfathomable. Amy did not wish for that, and begged her, very dryly, by no means to exhaust herself; for Amy had moral scent of a liar, even as her father had.

Now that father – the finest fellow, take him for all in all, whom one need wish to look upon – was (according to a good manʼs luck) in fearful tribulation. Fearful, at least, to any man except John Rosedew himself; but John, though fully alive to the stigmotype of his position, allowed his epidermis to quill toward the operator, and abstracted all his too sensitive parts into a Sophistic apory.

John, sitting in his book–room, had got an apron tucked well under his rosy chin – an apron with two pockets in it, and the strings in a bow at the back of his neck; and he trembled for his ear–lobes, whenever he forgot his subject. Around him, with perpetual clatter, snip and snap and stirabout, hovered, like a Jewish maiden fingering the mill–stone, who but his Eudoxia?

In her strong right hand was a pair of shears, keen as those of Atropos, padded at the handles, lest to hurt the thumb, but the blades, the trenchant edges – oh what should keep their bright love asunder? No human ear, for a moment; nay, nor the nose of a mortal. Neither was this risk and tug, and frequent fullersʼ–teaseling, the whole or even the half of the agony John was undergoing. For though he sat with a pile of books heaped in fair disorder round him – though three were pushing about on his lap, dusting themselves on his well–worn kersey, like sparrows on a genial highway – though one was even perched on his right hand and another on his left, yet he had no more fruition of them (save in the cud of memory) than had Prometheus of his fire–glow in the frost of Strobilus, or than the son of Jove and Pluto, whom Ulysses saw, had of his dessert.

“Nay, then I looked at Tantalus having a rough tribulation,
Standing fast in a lake, and it came quite home to his chin–beard;
Nevertheless he stood thirsting, and had not to seize and to quaff it;
For every time when the old man would stoop in his longing to quaff it,
Then every time the water died, swallowed back, and at his ancles
Earth shone black in a moment, because a divinity parched it.
Trees as well, leafing loftily, over his head poured fruitage,
Pear–trees, and pomegranates, and apple–trees glittering–fruited,
Fig–trees of the luscious, and olive–trees of the luxuriant;
Whereat whenever the old man shot out his hands to grasp them,
Away the wind would toss them into the shadowy cloudland.”

    Od. xi. 581.
“Now, John, you are worse than ever, I do declare you are; why, you wonʼt even hold your neck straight. I try to make you look decent: I try so very hard, John; and you havenʼt even the gratitude to keep your chin up from the apron. You had much better go to a barber, and get half your hair pulled out by the roots, and the other half poisoned with a leaden comb, and then youʼll appreciate me, perhaps.”

“We read,” said John Rosedew, complacently gazing at his white locks as they tumbled and took little jumps on the apron, “that when the Argives lost Thyrea, they pledged themselves to a law and a solemn imprecation, that none of the men should encourage his hair, and none of the ladies wear gold.”