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

“Well, I rather prefer young Clayton. Having brought them both into the world, I ought to understand them. But I hope he wonʼt make a fool of himself in this matter we have been talking of”.

Mr. Garnet jerked his companionʼs arm, and his face went pale as Portland stone.

“Make a d – d rogue more likely. And he wonʼt be the first of his family”.

“Yes, as you say”, replied the doctor to all he could catch of the muttered words, which flew over the crown of his hat, “beyond all doubt the first family in this part of the kingdom, and so they must have their jubilee. But I trust you will use with the utmost caution what I thought it best to confide to you, under the bond of secrecy. Of course, I could not think of telling papa, either of lady or gentleman; and knowing how you stand with the family, you seemed to me the proper person to meet this little difficulty”.

“Beyond a doubt, I am”.

“Pooh, sir, a boy and a girl. I wonder you think so much about it. Men never know their own minds in the matter until they arrive at our age. And as for the chits on the other side – whew, they blow right and left, as the feathers on their hats do”.

“That is not the case with my family. We make up our minds, and stick to them”.

“Then your family is the exception, which only proves my rule; and I am glad that it is not concerned in the present question”.

When they came to that part of the lawn in front of the ancient Hall where the fireworks’ stage had been reared on a gently–rising mound, Cradock Nowell met them, with a book in his hand. To–morrow he would be twenty–one; and a more honest, open–hearted fellow, or a better built one, never arrived at manʼs estate, whether for wealth or poverty. He had not begun to think very deeply; indeed, who could expect it, where trouble had never entered? It is pain that deepens the channel of thought, and sorrow that sweeps the bar away. Cradock as yet was nothing more than a clever, fine young man, an elegant and accurate scholar, following thought more than leading it. Nevertheless, he had the material of a grand unselfish character – of a nature which, when perfected, could feel its imperfections. Sorrow and trial were needed for him; and God knows he soon got enough of them.

He shoved away his Tauchnitz Herodotus in his shooting–coat pocket. Neither of the men he met was a scholar; neither would feel any interest in it. Being driven forth by his fatherʼs grumbling at the little pleasure he showed in the fuss that was making about him, he had brought his genial, true cosmopolite to show him a thing which his heart would have loved. Cradock had doubled down the leaf whereon was described the building of the boat–bridge over the Hellespont. Neither had he forgotten the interment of the Scythian kings. It was not that he purposed to instruct the carpenters thence, or to shed any light on their doings; but that he hoped to learn from them some words to jot down on the margin. He had discovered already, being helped thereto by the tongue of Ytene, that hundreds of forcible Saxon words still lurk in the crafts to which the beaten race betook itself – words which are wanted sadly, and pieced out very unpleasantly by roundabout foreign fanglements.

Even the gratitude now due to the good–will of all the neighbourhood, had failed to reconcile his mind to the turgid part before him. At Oxford he had been dubbed already “Caradoc the Philosopher”; and the more he learned, the less he thought of his own importance. He had never regarded the poor around him as dogs made for him to whistle to; he even knew that he owed them some duties, and wondered how to discharge them. Though bred of high Tory lineage, and corded into it by the twists of habit and education, he never could hang by neck and gullet; he never could show basement only, as a well–roped onion does. Encased as he was by strict surroundings, he never could grow quite straight and even, without a seed inside him, as a prize cucumber does in the cylinder of an old chimney–glass.

Some of this dereliction sprang, no doubt, from his granulation, and some from the free trade of his mind with the great heart called “John Rosedew”.

Now he came up, and smiled, like a boy of fourteen, in Mr. Garnetʼs face; for he liked Bull Garnetʼs larger qualities, and had no fear of his smaller ones. Mr. Garnet never liked; he always loved or hated. He loved Cradock Nowell heartily, and heartily hated Clayton.

“Behind my time, you see, Cradock. I am glad you are doing my duty. – Ha, there! I see you, my man”.

The man was skulking his work, in rigging out with coloured lamps an old oak fifty yards off. That ancient oak, the pride of the chase, was to represent, to–morrow night, a rainbow reflecting “Cradock Nowell”. Young Crad, who regarded it all as ill–taste, if it were not positive sin, had lifted his voice especially against that oakʼs bedizenment. “It will laugh at us from every acorn”, he had said to his father. But Sir Cradock was now a man of sixty; and threescore resents being budded. The incision results in gum only.

At the sound of that tremendous voice, the man ran recklessly out on the branch, the creaking of which had alarmed him. Snap went the branch at a cankered part, and the poor fellow dropped from a height of nearly forty feet. But the crashing wood caught in the bough beneath, which was sound and strong, and there hung the man, uninjured as yet, clinging only by one arm, and struggling to throw his feet up. In a moment Cradock had seized a ladder, reared, and fixed, and mounted it, and helped the poor fellow to slide off upon it, and stayed him there gasping and quivering. Bull Garnet set foot on the lowest rung, and Rufus Hutton added his weight, which was not very considerable. A dozen workmen came running up, and the man, whose nerves had quite failed him, was carefully eased to the ground.

“Mr. Garnet”, said Cradock, with flashing eyes, “would you have walked on that branch yourself”?

“To be sure I would, after I had looked at it”.

“But you gave this poor man no time to look. Is it brave to make another do what you yourself would fear”?

“Give me your hand, my boy. I was wrong, and you are right. I wish every man to hear me. Jem, come to my house this evening. You owe your life to Mr. Cradock”.

Nature itself is better than the knowledge of human nature. Mr. Garnet, by generosity quicker than quickest perception, had turned to his credit an incident which would have disgraced a tyrant. A powerful manʼs confession of wrong always increases his power. While the men were falling to work again, every one under the stewardʼs eyes, Sir Cradock Nowell and Clayton his son came cantering up from the stables. The dry leaves crackled or skirred away crisply from their horsesʼ feet, for the day was fine and breezy; the nags were arching their necks and pricking their ears with enjoyment; but neither of the riders seemed to be in high spirits. The workmen touched their hats to them in a manner very different from that with which they received Mr. Garnet or Cradock Nowell. There was more of distant respect in it, and less of real interest.

Sir Cradock now was a perfect specimen of the well–bred Englishman at threescore years of age. Part of his life had been touched by sorrow, but in the main he had prospered. A man of ability and high culture, who has not suffered deeply, is apt, after passing middle age, to substitute tact for feeling, and common sense for sympathy. Mellow and blest is the age of the man who soberly can do otherwise.

Sir Cradock Nowell knew his age, and dressed himself accordingly. Neither stiffness nor laxity, neither sporting air nor austerity, could be perceived in his garb or manner. He respected himself and all whom he met, until he had cause to the contrary. But his heart, instead of expanding, had narrowed in the loneliness of his life; and he really loved only one in the world – the son who rode beside him. He had loved John Rosedew well and truly for many an honest year; of late, admiration was uppermost, and love grown a thing to be thought about. The cause of the change was his own behaviour, and Johnʼs thorough hate of injustice. That old friend of the family could not keep silence always at the preference of Clayton, and the disparagement of Cradock. The father himself could not have told whence arose this preference. Year by year it had been growing, for a long time unsuspected; suspected then and fought with, then smothered at once and justified; allowed at last to spread and thrive on the right of its own existence. And yet any one, to look at Sir Cradock, would have thought him justice personified. And so he was, as Chairman of the Quarter Sessions. Clear intelligence, quick analysis, keen perception of motive in others, combined with power to dispense (when nature so does) with reason, and used with high sense of honour – all these things made him an oracle to every one but himself. Although he had never been in the army, he looked like a veteran soldier; and his seat on horseback was stiff and firm, rather than easy and graceful. Tall, spare figure, and grey moustache, Roman nose, and clear, bright eyes, thin lips, and broad white forehead – the expression of the whole bespoke an active, resolute, upright man, not easily pleased or displeased.

As every one was to keep holiday, the farmers had challenged the Ringwood club to play them a game of cricket, and few having seen a bat till now, some practice seemed indispensable. Accordingly, while Bull Garnet was busy among the working men, the farmers, being up for play, were at it in hard earnest, labouring with much applause and merriment, threshing or churning, mowing or ploughing, and some making kicks at the ball. Rufus Hutton looked on in a spirited manner, and Cradock was bowling with all his might at the legs of a petty tyrant, when his father and brother rode up between the marquees and awnings. The tyrannical farmer received a smart crack on the shin, and thought (though he feared to say) “d – n”.

“Hurrah, Crad! more jerk to your elbow”! cried Clayton, who also disliked the man; “Blackers, you mustnʼt break the ball, itʼs against the laws of cricket”.

Grinning sympathy and bad wit deepened the bruise of the tibia, till Farmer Blackers forgot all prudence in the deep jar of the marrow.

“Boul awai, meester, and be honged to you. I carries one again you, mind”.

To the great surprise of all present there, Sir Cradock did not look at the speaker, but turned on his son with anger.

“Sir, you ought to know better. Your sense of justice will lead you, I hope, to apologise to that man”.

He did not wait to see the effect of this public reproof, which was heard by a hundred people, but struck his mare hastily on the shoulder, called Clayton, and rode away. Cradock, who now had the ball in his hands, threw it a hundred feet high.

“Catch it who will”, he said; “I shall bowl no more to–day. Farmer Blackers, I apologise to you; I did not know you were so tender”.

Feeling far more tender himself (for all that was the youthʼs bravado), he went away, doubting right and wrong, to his own little room on the ground floor. There he would smoke his pipe, and meditate, and condemn himself, if the verdict were true. That young fellowʼs sense of justice was larger, softer, more deeply fibred, than any Sir Cradock Nowellʼs.

CHAPTER XIV

Men of high culture and sensitive justice, who have much to do with ill–taught workmen, lie under a terrible disadvantage. They fear to presume upon the mere accident of their own position, they dread to extract more dues from another than they in his place would render, they shrink from saying what may recall the difference betwixt them, they cannot bear to be stiff and dogmatic, yet they know that any light word may be taken in heavy earnest. True sympathy is the only thing to bring master and man together; and sympathy is a subtle vein, direct when nature hits it, but crooked and ungrammatical to the syntax of education. Cradock Nowell often touched it, without knowing how; and hence his popularity among the “lower classes”. Clayton hit upon it only in the softer sex. Bull Garnet knew how to move it deeply, and owed his power to that knowledge, even more than to his energy.

Cradock was pondering these things in the pipe of contemplation, when a pair of keen eyes twinkled in at the window, and a shrewd, shrill voice made entry.

“Pray let me in, Mr. Cradock Nowell; I want to inquire about the grapes”.

“What a wonderful man that is”! said Cradock to himself, as he came from his corner reluctantly to open the French window; “there is nothing he doesnʼt inquire about. Erotetic philosopher! He has only been here some three or four days, and he knows all our polity better than we do! I wish his wife would come; though I believe he is an honest fellow”.

Unconscious of any satirical antithesis, he opened the window, and admitted the polypragmonic doctor; and, knowing that homœopathic treatment is the wisest for garrulous subjects, he began upon him at once. Nor omitted a spice of domesticity, which he thought would be sovereign.

“Now, Dr. Hutton, it is too bad of you to wander about like a bachelor. How long before we have the pleasure of seeing Mrs. Hutton”?

“My dear boy, you know the reason; I hope you know the reason. Your roads are very rough for ladies, especially when in delicate health, and our four–wheel is being mended. So I rode over alone; and what a lovely ride it is! Ah, Clayton – yes, I saw Clayton somewhere. But your father has promised most kindly to send a carriage to–morrow to Geopharmacy Lodge – the name of our little place, sir”.

At the thought of his home, the little doctor pulled up both his shirt–collars, and looked round the room disparagingly.

“Oh, I am very glad to hear it. Meanwhile, you would like to see our grapes. Let me show you the way to the vinery; though I cannot take you without misgivings. Your gardening fame has frightened us. Our old man, Snip, is quite afraid of your new lights and experience”.

“Sensible lad”, muttered Rufus Hutton, who was pleasantly conceited – “uncommonly sensible lad! I am not at all sure that he isnʼt a finer fellow than Clayton. But I must take my opportunity now, while he has his stock off. There is something wrong: I am sure of it”.

“Excuse me a moment”, said Cradock; “I am sorry to keep you waiting, but I must just put on my neckerchief, if I can only find it. How very odd! I could have declared I put it on that table”.

“Whatʼs that I see on the floor there, by the corner of the bookcase”? Rufus pointed his cane at the tie, which lay where himself had thrown it.

“Oh, thank you; I must be getting blind, for I am sure I looked there just now”.

While the young man stooped forward, the little doctor, who had posted himself for the purpose, secured a quick glimpse at the back of his neck, where the curling hair fell sideways. That glance increased his surprise, and confirmed his strange suspicions. The surprise and suspicion had broken upon him, as he stood by the farmerʼs wicket, and Cradock sprang up to the bowling crease; now, in his excitement and curiosity, he forgot all scruples. It was strange that he had felt any, for he was not very sensitive; but Cradock, with all his good nature, had a certain unconscious dignity, from which Dr. Hutton retreated.

“The grapes I came to inquire about”, said Rufus, with much solemnity, “are not those in the vinery, which I have seen often enough, but those on your neck, Mr. Nowell”.

Cradock looked rather amazed, but more at the inquirerʼs manner than at his seeming impertinence.

“I really cannot see how the ‘grapes’, as some people call the blue lines on my neck, can interest you, sir, or are important enough to be spoken of”.