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

“Couldnʼt have been Amy, at any rate”, he said to himself, in extinction of some very vague ideas; “I defy her to come at the pace I have done. No, no; it must have been in answer to my desperate prayer”.

Amy was gone, though her cup was there, when Cradock entered the drawing–room. “Well”, he thought, “how hard–hearted she is! But it cannot matter now, much. Though I never believed she would be so”.

Being allowed by his kind entertainers to do exactly as he pleased, poor Cradock had led the life of a hermit more than that of a guest among them. He had taken what little food he required in the garret he had begged for, or carried it with him into the woods, where most of his time was spent. Of course all this was very distressing to the hospitable heart of Miss Doxy; but her brother John would have it so, for so he had promised Cradock. He could understand the reluctance of one who feels himself under a ban to meet his fellow–creatures hourly, and know that they all are thinking of him. So it came to pass that Miss Eudoxia, who now sat alone in the drawing–room, was surprised as well as pleased at the entrance of their refugee. As he hesitated a moment, in doubt of his reception, she ran up at once, took both his hands, and kissed him on the forehead.

“Oh, Cradock, my dear boy, this is kind of you; most kind, indeed, to come and tell me at once of your success. I need not ask – I know by your face; the first bit of colour I have seen in your poor cheeks this many a day”.

“Thatʼs because I have been running, Miss Rosedew”.

“Miss Rosedew, indeed; and now, Cradock! Aunt Eudoxia, if you please, or Aunt Doxy, with all my heart, now”.

He used to call her so, to tease her, in the happy days gone by; and she loved to be teased by him, her pet and idol.

“Dear Aunt Eudoxia, tell me truly, do you think – I can hardly ask you”.

“Think what, Cradock? My poor Cradock; oh, donʼt be like that”!

“Not that I did – I donʼt mean that – but that it was possible for me to have done it on purpose”?

“Done what on purpose, Cradock”?

“Why, of course, that horrible, horrible thing”.

“On purpose, Cradock! My poor innocent! Only let me hear any one dream of it, and if I donʼt come down upon them”.

An undignified sentence, that of Aunt Doxyʼs, as well as a most absurd one. How long has she been in the habit of hearing people dream?

“Some one not only dreams it, some one actually believes that I did it so”.

“The low wretch – the despicable – who”?

“My own father”.

I will not repeat what Miss Rosedew said, when she recovered from her gasp, because her language was stronger than becomes an elderly lady and the sister of a clergyman, not to mention the Countess of Driddledrum and Dromore, who must have been wholly forgotten.

“Then you donʼt think, dear Aunt Eudoxia, that – that Uncle John would believe it”?

“What, my brother John! Surely you know better than that, my dear”.

“Nor – nor – perhaps not even cousin Amy”?

“Amy, indeed! I do believe that child is perfectly mad. I canʼt make her out at all, she is so contradictory. She cries half the night, I am sure of that; and she does not care for her school, though she goes there; and her flowers she wonʼt look at”.

Seeing that Cradockʼs countenance fell more and more at all this, Miss Rosedew, who had long suspected where his heart was dwelling, told him a thing to cheer him up, which she had declared she would never tell.

“Darling Amy is, you know, a very odd girl indeed. Sometimes, when something happens very puzzling and perplexing, some great visitation of Providence, Amy becomes so dreadfully obstinate, I mean she has such delightful faith, that we are obliged to listen to her. And she is quite sure to be right in the end, though at the moment, perhaps, we laugh at her. And yet she is so shy, you can never get at her heart, except by forgetting what you are about. Well, we got at it somehow this afternoon; and you should have heard what she said. Her beautiful great eyes flashed upon us, like the rock that was struck, and gushed like it, before she ended. ‘Can we dare to think’, she cried, ‘that our God is asleep like Baal – that He knows not when He has chastened His children beyond what they can bear? I know that he, who is now so trampled and crushed of Heaven, is not tried thus for nothing. He shall rise again more pure and large, and fresh from the hand of God, and do what lucky men rarely think of – the will of his Creator’. And, when John and I looked at her, she fell away and cried terribly”.

Cradock was greatly astonished: it seemed so unlike young Amy to be carried away in that style. But her comfort and courage struck root in his heart, and her warm faith thawed his despair. Still he saw very little chance, at present, of doing anything but starving.

“How wonderfully good you all are to me! But I canʼt talk about it, though I shall think of it as long as I live. I am going away to–night, Aunt Doxy, but I must first see Uncle John”.

Of course Miss Rosedew was very angry, and proved it to be quite impossible that Cradock should leave them so; but, before very long, her good sense prevailed, and she saw that it was for the best. While he stayed there, he must either persist to shut himself up in solitude, or wander about in desert places, and never look with any comfort on the face of man. So she went with him to the door of the book–room, and left him with none but her brother.

John Rosedew sat in his little room, with only one candle to light him, and the fire gone out as usual: his books lay all around him, even his best–loved treasures, but his heart was not among them. The grief of the old, though not wild and passionate as a young manʼs anguish, is perhaps more pitiable, because more slow and hopeless. The young tree rings to the keen pruning–hook, the old tree groans to the grating saw; but one will blossom and bear again, while the other gapes with canker. None of his people had heard the rector quote any Greek or Latin for a length of time unprecedented. When a sweet and playful mind, like his, has taken to mope and be earnest, the effect is far more sad and touching than a stern manʼs melancholy. Ironworks out of blast are dreary, but the family hearth moss–grown is woeful.

Uncle John leaped up very lightly from his brooding (rather than reading), and shook Cradock Nowell by the hand, as if he never would let him go, all the time looking into his face by the light of a composite candle. It was only to know how he had fared, and John read his face too truly. Then, as Cradock turned away, not wanting to make much of it, John came before him with sadness and love, and his blue eyes glistened softly.

“My boy, my boy”! was all he could say, or think, for a very long time. Then Cradock told him, without a tear, a sigh, or even a comment, but with his face as pale as could be, and his breath coming heavily, all that his father had said to him, and all that he meant to do through it.

“And so, Uncle John”, he concluded, rising to start immediately, “here I go to seek my fortune, such as it will and must be. Good–bye, my best and only friend. I am ten times the man I was yesterday, and shall be grander still to–morrow”. He tried to pop off like a lively cork, but John Rosedew would not have it.

“Young man, donʼt be in a hurry. It strikes me that I want a pipe; and it also strikes me that you will smoke one with me”.

Cradock was taken aback by the novelty of the situation. He had never dreamed that Uncle John could, under any possible circumstances, ask him to smoke a pipe. He knew well enough that the rector smoked a sacrificial pipe to Morpheus, in a room of his own up–stairs; only one, while chewing the cud of all he had read that day. But Mr. Rosedew had always discouraged, as elderly smokers do, any young aspirants to the mystic hierophancy. It is not a vow to be taken rashly, for the vow is irrevocable; except with men of no principle.

And now he was to smoke there – he, a mere bubble–blowing boy, to smoke in the middle of deepest books, to fumigate a manuscript containing a lifeful of learning, which John could no more get on with; and – oh Miss Eudoxia! – to make the hall smell and the drawing–room! The oxymoron overcame him, and he took his pipe: John Rosedew had filled it judiciously, and quite as a matter of course; he filled his own in the self–same manner, with a digital skill worthy of an ancient fox trying on a foxglove. All the time, John was shyly wondering at his own great force of character.

“Now”, said John Rosedew, still keeping it up, “I have a drop of very old Schiedam – Schnapps I think, or something – of which I want your opinion; Crad, my boy, I want your opinion, before we import any more. I am no judge of that sort of thing; it is so long since I was at Oxford”.

Without more ado, he went somewhither, after lighting Cradockʼs yard of clay – which the young man burnt his fingers about, for he wouldnʼt let the old man do it – and came back like a Bacchanal, with a square black–jack beneath his arm, and Jenny after him, wondering whether they had not prayed that morning enough against the devil. It was a good job Miss Amy was out of the way; the old cat was bewitched, that was certain, as well as her dear good master. Miss Doxy was happy in knowing not that she was called “the old cat” in the kitchen.

CHAPTER XXVIII

“Now, Craddy, my dear, dear boy”, said Uncle John, when things had been done with lemon and cold water, and all that wherein discussion so utterly beats description, “you know me too well to suppose that I wish to pass things lightly. I know well enough that you will look the hard world full in the face. And so should I do, in your case. All I wish is that you should do it, not with spite, or bile, or narrowness, but broadly as a Christian”.

“It is hard to talk about that now”, said Cradock, inhaling charity, and puffing away all acrimony; “Uncle John, I hope I may come to it as my better spirit returns to me”.

“I hope it indeed, and believe it, Crad; I donʼt see how it can be otherwise, with a young man of your breadth of mind, and solid faith to help you. An empty lad, who snaps up stuff because he thinks it fine, and garbles it into garbage, would become an utter infidel, under what you have suffered. With you, I believe, it will be otherwise; I believe you will be enlarged and purified by sorrow – the night which makes the guiding–star so much the clearer to us”. John Rosedew was drinking no Schiedam – allow me to explain – though pretending rare enjoyment of it, and making Cradock drink a little, because his heart was down so.

After they had talked a pipeful longer, not great weighty sentiments, but a deal of kindly stuff, the young fellow got up quietly, and said, “Now, Uncle John, I must go”.

“My boy, I can trust you anywhere, after what you have been telling me. Of human nature I know nothing, except” – for John thought he did know something – “from my own little experience. I find great thoughts in the Greek philosophers; but somehow they are too general, and too little genial. One thing I know, we far more often mistrust than trust unwisely. And now I can trust you, Cradock; in the main, you will stand upright. Stop, my boy; you must have a scrip; I was saving it for your birthday”.

“You donʼt despise me, I hope”? said Cradock; “you donʼt think me a coward for running away so? After what has happened to–day, I should go mad, if I stopped here. Not that that would matter much; only that, if it were so, I should be sure to do it”.

John Rosedew had no need to ask what he meant by the last two words, for the hollow voice told him plainly. But for him, it is likely enough that it would have been done ere this; at any rate, in the first horror, his hand alone had prevented it. The parson trembled at the idea, but thought best not to dwell upon it.

“‘Reformidare mortem est animi pusillanimi’, but ‘reformidare vitam’ is ten times worse, because impious. Therefore in your case, my boy, it is utterly impossible, as well as ignoble towards us who love you so. Remember that you will break at least two old hearts you owe some duty to, if you allow your own to be broken. And now for your viaticum; see how you have relieved me. While you lived beneath Hymettian beams in the goods of Tyre and Cyprus, I, even I your godfather, knew not what to give you. The thought has been vexing me for months, and now what a simple solution! You shall have it in the original dross, to pay the toll on the Appian road, at least the South–Western Railway. Figs to Athens, I thought it would be, or even as eels to Copaïs; and now ‘serves iturum Cæsarem’. I believe it is at the twenty–first page of my manuscript, such as it is, upon the Sabellian elements”.

After searching in three or four drawers – for he was rather astray at the moment, though generally he could put his hand, even in the dark, upon any particular one of his ten thousand books – he came upon the Sabellian treatise, written on backs of letters, on posters, on puffing circulars, even on visiting–cards, and cast–away tradesmenʼs tickets; and there, at the twenty–first page or deltis, lay a 50l. Bank of England note, with some very tough roots arranged diamond–wise on the back, and arrows, and hyphens, and asterisks, flying about thickly between them. These he copied off, in a moment, on a piece of old hat–lining, and then triumphantly waved the bank–note in the air. It was not often poor Uncle John got hold of so much money; too bitterly knew Aunt Doxy how large was the mesh of his purse.

While Cradock gazed with great admiration, John Rosedew, with his fingers upon his lips, and looking half ashamed of himself, went to a cupboard, whose doors, half open, gave a glimpse of countless sermons. From among them he drew a wide–mouthed bottle of leeches, and set it upon the table. Then he pulled out the stopper, unplugged it, and lo! from a hole in the cork fell out two sovereigns and a half one. As this money rolled on the table, John could not help chuckling a little.

“Ha, good sister Eudoxia, have I overreached thee again? Double precaution there, you see, Crad. She has a just horror of my sermons, and she runs at the sight of a leech. ‘Non missura cutemʼ – be sure, not a word about it, Crad. That asylum is inviolable, and sempitern, I hope. I shall put more there next week”.

Cradock took the money at once, with the deepest gratitude, but no great fuss about it; for he saw how bitterly that good man would feel it, if he were small enough to refuse.

I shall not dwell upon their good–bye, as we have had enough valediction; only Cradock promised to write from London, so soon as he could give an address there; then leaving sadness behind him, carried a deal of it with him. Only something must yet be recounted, which befell him in Nowelhurst. And this is the first act of it.