Dariel: A Romance of Surrey

"What we have heard from George is not altogether what I expected. Everybody knows, though he seems to imagine that nobody ever dreamed of it, that he had found some attraction among those very strange people that live in the dell. Who they are, or what they do there, it has never concerned me to inquire. When strangers come into a neighbourhood, and desire to keep themselves to themselves, no English gentleman would ever think of obtruding himself upon them. They may be very estimable, and even of very high rank in a foreign way, as George supposes. But when they pack themselves up inside a wall, without even a bell, or if they have one with only fierce dogs to answer it, all we can do is to leave them to the Police, or the Government, or the Newspapers. The right of asylum is sacred in England. Of Continental intrigues we know nothing, and we refuse to be mixed up with them. Even with a Radical Government in power – my dear, you quite agree with me?"

"In every word that you have said, my dear. But when our George, without asking his mother, goes out of his way to make strange acquaintance, and people who pretend to look down upon us – "

"You have no right to say that, my dear. We must not think that they are so absurd. They have the highest opinion of this Country, as of course they are bound to have, except as to our one great mistake. And there, if I understand George aright, Prince – what's his name, Mari? It sounds like New Zealand, but at any rate his views do him very high credit. He spoke of Free Trade with very fine contempt; I think you told me so, George?"

"Sir, he could not find any word strong enough to describe our folly. And the testimony of an outsider – but you never use such language, sir."

"No, I leave that to younger people, who may live to see the worst of it. But this gentleman must have great perception, as well as much integrity. You think that he draws a large revenue, and this young lady is his only child."

"My dear, you forget how they live out there," said my mother, who was above lucre, and my father as well too superior to show it. "Who can tell how many wives they have? And their laws not too respectable, I am half afraid, upon such points."

"I was very well up in Geography once," my father replied with a smile at her, "I could construe some of Prometheus vinctus, and I have a coin, with the rock and the chain and the vulture, but the Titan has been eaten to nothing by time. It is extremely valuable; yet the British Museum failed to steal it. That Prince comes from the very same spot. It may have been struck by his ancestors. George says that they come in a direct line from Noah's own great-grandson."

"In that case, indeed, who are we to talk of our own children? Who, indeed, are we?" My mother glanced upward, as if to watch the whole of creation sliding. "Although to a reasonable mind the Heptarchy is as much as one requires to be sure of. But I should like to see that girl, George."

"Stop," said my father, "I am not a sceptic; Mama, you must not set a bad example. I had my little doubts about the Ark, I must confess, until so many people attacked it, among them a Bishop of our Church, who continued to enjoy his income. If he was in earnest, he scarcely could be honest, and in that case, who would listen to him? And if the Ark rested upon Ararat, that would be the neighbourhood to know all about it. I will not contradict Prince Maori."

"But it is the girl I care about;" my mother made a great point of the tempers of young women. "George is so peaceable, and he never argues. I cannot risk his happiness with a wife who may be descended from – from even the females mentioned in the Bible."

"My dear mother, what a hurry you are in. The young lady does not care a fig about me yet. And I am very much afraid that she never, never will. Only I thought that I had better let you know."

"This sort of thing has never happened to you before, and that is very greatly to your credit, George." My father looked stealthily at my mother, lest her conscience should involve her in some misconstruction here. "But we must talk it over first, your mother and myself. We could have no idea that such a thing was happening on our property, I mean – of course, what used to be ours. It seems to be departing from the proper way so much, and the practice of the family. I am sure there are plenty of nice girls round here."

"I am not so sure of that," said my mother, rather quickly, and giving me a signal to leave the rest to her; "English girls are not at all as they were in my time. They have dropped all their modest looks and delicacy. They talk slang, and they speak without being introduced, and they call one another Jack and Jemmy, and they let young men give them pairs of gloves, and they come into a room with both arms swinging; and as for their dresses, and the way they do their hair – "

"Your opinion upon all these points, dear mother, has influenced me beyond all doubt, even more than I was aware of. But you must remember that Dariel is also of the most ancient English lineage, gone by quite as much as you could wish – Crusaders, probably our Richard the first, and some of his devoted paladins. What can be nobler than to carry on a peaceful crusade of education, literature, Christianity – "

"They could never do that without plenty of money," said my father, a man as free from mercenary views as ever tried to raise a shilling. "And you spoke of some emerald mines, I think. But we must be careful, very careful, and insist upon verifying everything, quite independently of their reports. Let me see! I have met the Russian ambassador – but no, there have been two more since then. However I am not without influence altogether."

He waved his hand for me to go, and I slipped off, after a good kiss from my mother, who always gave way to the sentimental vein, when my father fell into the financial. And sure enough our finances were of a pensive character just now. My duty was clearly to allow my dear parents plenty of time to discuss me from my birth up to the present moment; and finding myself just a little in the fidgets and unfit for steady work, off I set through the park to our old house, to inquire whether Stoneman happened to be at home. For he had taken his holiday, and was come back; and so far as one could judge him by his looks and walk, he found himself better suited in his native land than elsewhere.

CHAPTER XXX

IN THE QUIET PLACES

"Gone to the City, sir," said the man, who opened the door which I knew so well, and it had a few reasons for remembering my childhood, impressed or indented upon its lower panels; "but he wanted to see you particular, Master George; and he will be home by two o'clock. I was to send down, and ask you to step this way by two o'clock, if you could any way spare the time, for he thinks to have a bit of a treat for you."

How small are our natures! I was pleased with Biddles for making a "he" of his master; when at every breath it would have been "Sir Harold," while we could afford his livery. A fine old Englishman was this, full of pure feeling, and in heart disdainful of gold in comparison with rank; though compelled by his stomach to coerce the higher organ. "How is your little Bob, Biddles?" I asked; and it was better than half-a-crown to him.

Before I had time to pick more than fifty holes in the stockbroker's taste as compared with our own, in came the man himself, full of high spirits, and alive with that vigour which the sparkling metal gives. Any man must be a cur who can snarl at a good friend, for enjoying the marrow-bone, which has dropped betwixt his paws. Jackson Stoneman was not without his faults; but it would have been mean to make them greater than they were, just because he was able to pay for them.

"Just the man I wanted – the very man," he said, as if I was worth all the Stock Exchange; "what luck I have had all day! And you are come to crown it. Here, you shall have my new Dougall, and I shall shoot with my old Lancaster."

"What a deuce of a hurry you are in!" I answered, for his mind could give me ten yards from scratch at any time. "I am not come here to shoot. I have no time for such trifles. I want to have a serious talk with you."

"Who do you think looked at me over the palings?" he spoke as if he had quaffed a fine Magnum of Champagne, although he was a man of very great discretion. "Over the palings, my boy; and after putting me down so the other day! I assure you it has quite set me up again; though I am afraid it was only an accident."

"You may be quite certain of that," I replied, for he wanted a little quenching; "she went to get the last of the globe-artichokes, and of course when she heard a horse she looked up. Old Sally looks up whenever any one goes by."

"I tell you there was no looking up about it. Globe-artichokes are as high as any woman's head. You are not going to put me down about that. And she kissed her hand to me. What do you think of that?"

"If you took off your hat, she could do no less to a kind friend of her mother. My affairs in that line are not flourishing. But I don't want another fellow to be made a fool of, Jackson. Can't you try to show a little common-sense?"

"Grapes sour, George? Well, I am sorry. But I fear you have not invested well, my son. What are those foreign girls? Do you think I would ever look at them, with a ghost of a chance of a thorough English maiden? When it comes to an English girl, you know where you are, and no mistake."

"All this is below contempt," I answered, for he had taken altogether the wrong tone with me. "Let me hear no more of such stuff; we are not boys. What is it you want me to shoot?"

"Well, that is a gracious way of putting it, when I offer you a chance anybody else would jump at. Guy Fawkes' day not come, and behold three woodcocks marked down in the Pray-copse!"

"I don't believe a word of it. They never come here yet. The earliest I ever shot was on the fifteenth. But if you can swallow it, I don't mind going with you."

"Well said. And back to dine with me at six o'clock. No scruple about certificate in this, though to my mind the woodcock is the best of British game. We'll call for the spaniels at Ponder's cottage. Best foot foremost!"

It was a bright autumnal afternoon, after a touch of white frost, and against the sky every here and there some bronzy leaf would swing and glisten like the pendulum of a clock at winding time. But most of the foliage now had finished its career of flaunt and flutter, and was lying at our feet in soft brown strewage, or pricking its last crispage up, where a blade of grass supported it. While at every winding of the meadow path (which followed the hedge like a selvage), how pleasant it was to see afar the wavering sweeps of gentle hill, and plaits of rich embosomed valley, with copse, and turnip-field, and furzy common patched with shadow. It made me bless the Lord at heart for casting my lines in a quiet land, where a man beholds no craggy menace, black rush of blind tempests, bottomless gulfs, unfathomed forests, and peaks that would freeze him into stone. For the people that live there must be in a wild condition always; to tremble at Nature's fury, or to shudder at her majesty, or look around on all that wraps them up, with desolate indifference.

I glanced at Stoneman walking briskly with his gun upon his shoulder, and death to at least a dozen woodcocks in the keen flash of his eyes; and I said to myself – "Please God, I will take a game-certificate, next August; there is nothing like a good day's shooting to save one from blood-thirstiness."

"Jackson, my boy!" I said, with the refrain of a fine old Yankee song arising in my memory, "you have been over half the world; but have you ever been in the Caucasus?"

"No, and don't want;" he answered shortly, "get robbed enough in London village. But they strip you naked there, I hear, and send you down a waterfall. Shamyl did it to some young chap, who might have set up against him."

"That is a fiction of his enemies. The Avar Chief was dry in his manner to strangers; and who can wonder at it? But he never harmed one of his own race. I wish we had a few such patriots."

"Very well. You start the band. You are qualifying well, with all those Egyptian fellows in the valley. But George, you are much too good for that. There are pretty girls in every caravan; but we don't jump over the broom-stick with them."

Dariel and a broom-stick! Indignation may flash as fast in the meadows as in the mountains. "You idiot! You talk like an utter cad," I cried; and he being quick of temper too, stood his gun against a tree, and looked at me. I set my gun by the side of his. "Let us have it out," was all I said.

But a gleam of reason came across him. He might have polished me off, perhaps, though he would not have found it very easy, for I was the heavier of the two, and in tidy rural condition. "What rot this is!" he said, lowering his hands. "If you like to have a good smack at me, you can. But I won't hit a fellow with Grace's eyes." I knew that he had meant business, and that there was no white feather in his nature.

He begged my pardon, and we shook hands; and I felt just a little ashamed of myself, although when I think of what he said, I see no misbehaviour on my part.

Without another word, we dropped the question, and went on to look after the woodcocks. We crossed the long "pray," with the keeper and three spaniels coming after us, and whether it was that Jackson's hand shook after menacing "the eyes of Grace," or that mine was extra steady through that firm assertion of Dariel, it came to pass that I knocked over both of the birds that we put up, when they were sailing away from Jackson's gun. The other longbill saved his bacon, by keeping it out of human eyes. These lucky shots, and the pleasant walk, and very fine behaviour of the dogs – who were children of the animals I had loved and chastened, in the better days both for them and me – put me into so noble a frame of mind, that after an excellent dinner and a glass or two of Port wine with the violet bouquet in it, I up and told Stoneman my own love-story; for I knew that the whole of it must come out now.

He, being pretty much in the same condition, though without anything like my excuse for it, listened as if he had never heard anything half so surprising and engrossing, and inspiriting. In fact, he seemed to take the whole of it as applicable to his own case, though it was beyond my power to perceive even the faintest analogy. His was an ordinary love-affair with nothing remarkable about it, unless it were that money, which is the usual obstacle by its absence, was the obstacle here by its presence. But in my case money was the last thing thought of. Sûr Imar had never mentioned it; and as for me, I only hoped that Dariel might never own a shilling, because then she would appreciate my few half-crowns. And I still possessed her ruby cross, and meant to keep it, until it should be mine by legal right. Ah, who can spy any chance of that through all the gloom impending?

CHAPTER XXXI

PIT-A-PAT

"She didn't say that she could never care about me," replied the stockbroker, when I asked him what he thought. "If she had, you wouldn't see me here now. I should have been off to the real Rialto; for I've got a first-rate fellow in the Avenue now."

"Jackson, my inquiry was about my own affair. I want to know what you think of my chance there." I looked at him severely, for this inattention was too bad.

"Well, and I gave you a parallel. We are almost in the same boat, I should say; though yours is a sort of savage canoe, full of Oriental fish-tails, no doubt, and liable to Vendetta, and many other frightful nuisances. To your young mind all that too probably increases the attraction. But to my mature views, there's romance enough and to spare, in a quiet English maiden, – sweet, gentle, affectionate, firm-principled, and not too sure of her own mind. Are they to be despised, because you can speak a civil word to them, without having a bullet through you? George, there is more romance really, where you know how to behave, than where you don't."

"Can't see it," I answered, "can't see it at all. Is it poetry to take up your spoon for pea-soup?"

"Poetry be hanged!" cried Jackson. And as it was only my brother who went in for it, when I never could make a blessed rhyme, why should I stand up for the Muses, who had never deigned a glance at me? Nevertheless, I was slightly shocked, for every man is, or ought to try to be, a little above the common mark, when he thinks he loves something even better than himself. And to be above the common mark is getting on for poetry.