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

And when he learned it, such as it was – a proof by its false incidence how infantile our civilization is – all his motherʼs bitter wrong, her lifelong sense of shame and crushing (because she had trusted a liar, and the hollow elder–stick “institution” was held up against her, and none would take her part without money, even if she had wished it), then he had chosen his motherʼs course, inheriting her strong nature, let the shame lie where it fell by right and not by rule, and carried all his energies into Neo–Christian largeness.

All that time of angry trial now had passed before him, and the five years of his married life (which had not been very happy, for his wife never understood him, but met his quick moodiness with soft sulks); and then in his dream–review he smiled, as his children began to toddle about, and sit on his knees, and look at him.

Once he awoke, and gazed about him. The train had stopped at Winchester. He was all alone in the carriage still, and all his cash was safe. He had stowed it away very carefully in a hidden pocket. To his languid surprise, he fell back on the seat. How unlike himself, to be sure; and with so much yet to do! He strove to arise and rouse himself. He felt for the little flask of wine, which Pearl had thrust into his pocket, but he could not pull it out and drink; such a languor lay upon him. He had felt it before, but never before been so overcome by it. Once or twice, an hour or so before the sun came back again, this strange cold deadness (like a mammoth nightmare frozen) had lain on him, in his lonely bed, and then he knew what death was, and only came back to life again through cold sweat and long fainting.

He had never consulted any doctor about the meaning of this. With his bold way of thinking, and judging only by his own experience and feeling, he had long ago decided that all medical men were quacks. What one disorder could they cure? All they had learned, and that by a fluke, was a way to anticipate one: and even that way seemed worn out now.

Now he fell away, and feared, and tried to squeeze his breast, and tried to pray to God; but no words came, nor any thoughts, only sense of dying, and horror at having prayed for it. A coldness fell upon his heart, and on his brain an ignorance; he was falling into a great blank depth, and nothing belonged to him any more – only utter, utter loss, and not a dream of God.

Happy and religious folk, who have only died in theory, contemplating distant death, knowing him only as opportune among kinsfolk owning Consols, these may hope for a Prayer–book end, sacrament administered, weeping friends, the heavenward soul glad to fly through the golden door, animula, vagula, blandula, yet assured of its reception with a heavenly smile of foretaste – this may be; no doubt it may be, after the life of a Christian Bayard; though it need not always be, even then. All we who from our age know death, and have taken little trips into him, through fits, paralysis, or such–like, are quite aware that he has at first call as much variety as life has. But the death of the violent man is not likely to be placid, unless it come unawares, or has been graduated through years of remorse, and weakness, weariness, and repentance.

Then he tried to rise, and fought once more, with agony inconceivable, against the heavy yet hollow numbness in the hold of his deep, wide chest, against the dark, cold stealth of death, and the black, narrow depth of the grave.

The train ran lightly and merrily into Brockenhurst Station, while the midsummer twilight floated like universal gossamer. In the yard stood the Kettledrum “rattletrap,” and the owner was right glad to see it. In his eyes it was worth a dozen of the lord mayorʼs coach.

“None of the children come, dear?” asked Bailey, having kissed his wife, as behoves a man from London.

“No, darling, not one. That – ” here she used an adjective which sounded too much like “odious” for me to trust my senses – ”Georgie would not allow them. Now, darling, did you do exactly what I told you?”

“Yes, darling Anna, I did the best I could. I had a basin of mulligatawny at Waterloo going up, and one of mock–turtle coming back, and at Basingstoke ham–sandwiches, a glass of cold cognac and water, and some lemon–chips. Since that, nothing at all, because there has been no time.”

“You are a dear,” said Mrs. Kettledrum, “to do exactly as I told you. Now come round the corner a moment, and take two glasses of sherry; I can see quite well to pour it out. I am so glad of her new crinoline. She wonʼt get out. Donʼt be afraid, dear.”

Oh, Georgie, Georgie! To think that her own sister should be so low, so unfeeling, and treacherous! Mr. Kettledrum smacked his lips, for the sake of euphony, after the second glass of sherry; but his wife would not give him any more, for fear of spoiling his supper. Then they came back, and both got in, and squeezed themselves up together in the front seat of the old carriage, for Mrs. Corklemore occupied the whole of the seat of honour.

“You are very polite, to keep me so long. Innocent turtles; sweet childish anxiety! The last survivor of a wrecked train! So you took advantage, Anna dear, of my not being dressed quite so vulgarly as you are, to discuss this little matter with him, keeping me in ignorance.”

The carriage was off by this time, and open as it was, they had no fear of old coachey hearing, for it took a loud hail to reach him.

“Take the honour of a Kettledrum,” cried Bailey, smiting his bosom, “that the subject has not even been broached between my wiser part and myself. Ladies, in this pure aerial – no, I mean ethereal – air, with the shades of night around us, and the breezes wafting, would an exceedingly choice and delicately aromatic cigar – ”

“Oh, I should so like it, Bailey; and perhaps we shall have the nightingales.”

“I fear we must not think of it,” interposed Mrs. Corklemore, gently; “my dress is of a fabric quite newly introduced, very beautiful, but (like myself) too retentive of impressions. If Mr. Kettledrum smokes, I shall have to throw it away.”

“There goes the cigar instead,” cried Bailey; “the paramount rights of ladies ever have been, and ever shall be, sacred with Bailey Kettledrum.”

But Mrs. Kettledrum was so vexed that she jumped up, as if to watch the cigar spinning into the darkness, and contrived with sisterly accuracy to throw all her weight upon a certain portion of a certain lovely foot, whereupon there ensued the neatest little passes, into which we need not enter. Enough that Mrs. Corklemore, having higher intellectual gifts, “won,” in the language of the ring, “both events” – first tear, and first hysterical symptom.

“Come,” cried Mr. Kettledrum, at the very first opportunity, to wit, when both were crying; “we all know what sisters are: how they mingle the – the sweetness of their affection with a certain – ah, yes – a piquancy of expression, most pleasant, most improving, because so highly conducive to self–examination!” Here he stood up, having made a hit, worthy of the House of Commons. “All these little breezes, ladies, may be called the trade–winds of affection. They blow from pole to pole.”

“The trade–winds never do that,” said Georgie.

“They pass us by as the idle wind, when the clouds are like a whale, ladies, having overcome us for a moment, like a summer dream. Hark to that thrush, sitting perhaps on his eggs” – ”Oh, Oh!” from the gallery of nature – ”can there be, I pause for a reply, anything but harmony, where the voices of the night pervade, and the music of the spheres?”

“You – you do speak so splendidly, dear,” sobbed Mrs. Kettledrum from the corner; “but it is a nasty, wicked, cruel story, about dear papa saying that of me, and he in his grave, poor dear, quite unable to vindicate himself. I have always thought it so unchristian to malign the dead!”

“Whatʼs that?” cried Georgie, starting up, in fear and hot earnest; “you are chattering so, you hear nothing.”

A horse dashed by them at full gallop, with his rider on his neck, shouting and yelling, and clinging and lashing.

“Missed the wheel by an inch,” cried Kettledrum, drawing his head in faster than he had thrust it out; “a fire, man, or a French invasion?” But the man was out of hearing, while the Kettledrum horses, scared, and jumping as from an equine thunderbolt, tried the strength of leather and the courage of ladies.

Meanwhile at the station behind them there was a sad ado. A man was lifted out of the train, being found in the last compartment by the guard who knew his destination – a big man, and a heavy one; and they bore him to the wretched shed which served there as a waiting–room.

“Dead, I believe,” said the guard, having sent a boy for brandy, “dead as a door–nail, whoever he be.”

“Not thee knaw who he be?” cried a forester, coming in. “Whoy, marn, there be no mistaking he. He be our Muster Garnet.”

“Whew!” And the train whistled on, as it must do, whether we live or die, or when Cyclops has made mince of us.

CHAPTER XVI

That night there had been great excitement in the village of Nowelhurst. A rumour had reached it that Cradock Nowell, loved in every cottage there, partly as their own production, partly as their future owner, partly for his own sake, and most of all for his misfortunes, was thrown into prison to stand his trial for the murder of his brother. Another rumour was that, to prevent any scandal to the nobility, he had been sent to sea alone in a seventy–four gun ship, with corks in her bottom tied with wire arranged so as to fly all at once, same as if it was ginger–beer bottles, on the seventh day, when the salt–water had turned the wires rusty.

It is hard to say of these two reports which roused the greater indignation; perhaps on the whole the former did, because the latter was supposed to be according to institution. Anyhow, all the village was out in the street that night; and the folding of arms, and the self–importance, the confidential winks, and the power to say more (but for hyper–Nestorean prudence) were at their acme in a knot of gaffers gathered around Rufus Hutton, and affording him good sport.

Nothing now could be done in Nowelhurst without Rufus Hutton. He had that especial knack (mistaken sometimes in a statesman for really high qualities) which becomes in a woman true capacity for gossip. By virtue thereof Rufus Hutton was now prime–minister of Nowelhurst; and Sir Cradock, the king, being nothing more now than the shadow of a name, his deputyʼs power was absolute. He knew the history by this time of every cottage, and pigsty, and tombstone in the churchyard; how much every man got every week, and how much he gave his wife out of it, what he had for dinner on Sundays, and how long he made his waistcoat last. Suddenly the double–barrelled noise which foreruns a horse at full gallop came from the bridge, and old folk hobbled, and young got ready to run.

“Hooraw – hooraw!” cried a dozen and a half of boys, “here be Hempror o’ Roosia coming.”

Boys will believe almost anything, when they get excited (having taken the trick from their fathers), but even the women were disappointed, when the galloping horse stopped short in the crowd, and from his withers shot forward, and fell with both hands full of mane, a personage not more august than the porter at Brockenhurst Station.

“Catch the horse, you fool!” cried Rufus.

“Cuss the horse,” said the porter, trying to draw breath; “better been under a train I had. Donʼt stand gaping, chawbacons. Is ever a sawbones, surgeon, doctor, or what the devil you call them in these outlandish parts, to be got for love or money?”

“I am a sawbones,” said Rufus Hutton, coming forward with his utmost dignity; “and itʼs a mercy I donʼt saw yours, young man, if thatʼs all you know of riding.”

The porter touched his hair instead of his hat (which was gone long ago), while the “chawbacons” rallied, and laughed at him, and one offered him a “zide–zaddle,” and all the women of the village felt that Dr. Hutton had quenched the porter, and vindicated Nowelhurst.

“When you have recovered your breath, young man,” continued Rufus, pushing, as he always did, his advantage; “and thanked God for your escape from the first horse you ever mounted, perhaps you will tell us your errand, and we chawbacons will consider it.”

A gruff haw–haw and some treble he–heʼs added to the porterʼs discomfiture, for he could not come to time yet, being now in the second tense of exhaustion, which is even worse than the first, being rather of the heart than lungs.

“Station – Mr. Garnet – dead!” was all the man could utter, and that only in spasms, and with great chest–heavings.

Rufus Hutton leaped on the horse in a moment, caught up old Channingʼs stick, and was out of sight in the summer dusk ere any one else in the crowd had done more than gape, and say, “Oh Lor!” By dint of skill he sped the old horse nearly as quickly to the station as the fury of Jehu had brought him thence, and landed him at the door with far less sign of exhaustion. Then walking into the little room, in the manner of a man who thoroughly knows his work, he saw a sight which never in this world will leave him.

Upon a hard sofa, shored up with an ash–log where the mahogany was sprung, and poked up into a corner as if to get a bearing there, with blankets piled upon him heavily and tucked round the collar of his coat, and his great head hanging over the rise where the beading of the brass ends, lay the ill–fated Bull Garnet, – a man from birth to death a subject for pity more than terror. Fifty years old – more than fifty years – and scarce a twelvemonth of happiness since the shakings of the world began, and childhoodʼs dream was over. Toiling ever for the future, toiling for his children, ever since he had them, labouring to make peace with God, if only he might have his own, where passion is not, but love abides. The room smelled strongly of bad brandy, some of which was oozing now down his broad square chin, and dripping from the great blue jaw. Of course he could not swallow it; and now one of the women (for three had rushed in) was performing that duty for him.

“Turn out that drunken hag!” cried Dr. Hutton, feeling he had no idea how. “Up with the window. Bring the sofa here; and take all but one of those blankets off.”

“But, master,” objected another woman, “heʼll take his death of cold.”

“Turn out that woman also!” He was instantly obeyed. “Now roll up one of those blankets, and put it under his head here – this side, canʼt you see? Good God, what a set of fellows you are to let a manʼs head hang down like that! Hot water and a sponge this instant. Nearly boiling, mind you. Plenty of it, and a foot–tub. Now donʼt stare at me.”

With a quick light hand he released the blue and turgid throat from the narrow necktie, then laid his forefinger upon the heart and watched the eyelids intently.