Crying for the Light: or, Fifty Years Ago. Volume 3 of 3

Just at that moment he had no wish to have scandal or mystery attaching to his name. Hitherto, his appearance had been quite a success, and the British merchant and his daughter were duly impressed with the respect and attention he had everywhere commanded.

‘We’ve missed you much, Sir Watkin,’ said the lady in a tone which flattered his vanity and raised his hopes.

‘Yes, the crowd cruelly separated us for a few minutes.’

‘A few minutes!’ said the lady; ‘it seemed to me a long time.’

‘You make me proud,’ said the Baronet. ‘It is something to be missed by one who has always so many admirers.’

‘You flatter me, Sir Watkin. But, seriously, what was all the fuss about?’

‘Only a tipsy woman.’

‘How shocking! But, good gracious, there she is again.’

Sir Watkin looked in the direction pointed out, and, sure enough, there was his old enemy. Conducted off the ground by one gate, she had reappeared by another, and was bearing down, amidst the jeers of the oi polloi, straight upon himself.

‘Confound her impudence!’ he exclaimed. ‘I wish I had given her in charge.’

‘Sir Watkin, I say! Sir Watkin, hear me! I’ve something very particular to say.’

‘Yes, but you can’t say it now, my good woman. Don’t you see I am engaged?’

Again a crowd assembled in full expectation of some fun – an extra entertainment not included in the day’s programme.

Again, fortunately, the policeman appeared.

‘Now, my good woman,’ said he, ‘he hoff. Don’t you see you are creatin’ a disturbance?’

‘I am a-doin’ w’at?’ asked the party addressed.

‘You are a-creatin’ a disturbance and hinterferin’ with the gentry. It is agen the law. You’d best take yourself off.’

‘Oh, I am a-goin’, but I must speak to Sir Watkin first.’

‘Call at the Hall, old gal, and leave your card, and then Sir Watkin will be delighted to see you,’ cried one in the crowd. ‘The family dine at seven. Don’t forget the hour.’

‘Yes,’ said another, ‘Sir Watkin will be pleased to see such a beauty. He’ll want you to stop with him a month. Sir Watkin knows a pretty gal when he sees one – no one better.’

But by this time Sir Watkin and his party were off. His groom had come to the rescue and brought up the horses, and they remounted, leaving the tipsy woman to scream after him in vain.

This time, however, her blood was up, and she refused to be led quietly off. Another constable came to the rescue of his mate, and she was carried off, kicking and struggling all the while. Her cries filled the air and reached the Baronet’s party.

‘’Tis very annoying, but one can’t help such things on a public day like this,’ said he in an apologetic tone to the lady. ‘The poor woman must be cracked, I think.

‘It makes one ashamed of one’s sex,’ was her reply.

‘Such conduct ought not to be allowed. The police aren’t half sharp enough,’ said the British merchant. ‘What do we pay rates and taxes for, I should like to know, but to prevent such disturbances?’

The British merchant evidently expected the British public to be as subdued and deferential as his clerks in his counting-house, when they appeared in his august and imposing presence, or as his debtors, when bills were overdue.

The ladies of his party had left the field early – their ears stunned with the noisy scene:

‘With the striking of clocks,
Cackle of hens, crowing of cocks,
Lowing of cow and bull and ox,
Bleating of pretty pastoral flocks.’

Sir Watkin and his friend, the British merchant, had stopped to dine at the grand banquet held on the occasion, in the leading hotel of the town. An Englishman can do nothing without a public dinner. Sir Watkin had to take the chair.

‘You will excuse me, won’t you?’ said he to the young lady, as he parted with her.

‘Oh, yes!’ said she gaily. ‘I am quite aware property has its duties as well as its rights.’

‘Well, I think it is well to be neighbourly when one has the chance. But I give you my word of honour, I would far sooner ride back with you.’

‘Well, the best of friends must part,’ said the lady. ‘But you will be home in good time. Au revoir! Pray, take care of papa,’ said the lady, as she returned to the carriage that was to take her and some other ladies to the Hall, under the care of the vicar of the parish.

Meanwhile, Sir Watkin made his way with his friend to the leading hotel of Sloville, where a heavy dinner of the old-fashioned type – such as was dear to the farmer years ago – was prepared, where the feeding and the drinking were alike trying to the stoutest nerve and the strongest digestion, and where the after-dinner oratory was of a truly bucolic character.

The farmers were delighted to find their landlord in the chair, and listened to him as if he were an oracle. The dinner was a great success. As chairman, the Baronet had especially distinguished himself.

There were fireworks in the evening, and a Bacchanalian orgy such as Sloville had rarely beheld. But the Baronet and his friend did not stop for that, but got back to the Hall in time to finish the day with a ball. The old Hall was gayer that night than it had been for a long time. All the old family plate had been brought forth for the occasion, and everywhere was light and music and laughter – and bright the lamps shone on

‘Fair women and brave men.’

The revelry was loud and long, and hours after the ladies had retired the men had remained in the smoking-room to drink soda and brandy, and to talk of hunting exploits, of horses, of women, and of wine.

The shades of night had passed, and the golden dawn was glittering in the east. The sun was commencing like a giant refreshed to renew his daily course – the simile is old, but it is true, nevertheless. A slight mist – prelude of a hot day – dimmed the valley below the Hall, and marked the line of the little trout stream, where Sir Watkin had loved to fish when a boy. In the grand old trees around, the birds were commencing their morning song of praise, while the heavy rooks were preparing to take their usual flight in search of food. The pheasants were feeding in the surrounding park.

Not yet had man gone forth to his daily toil, and there was peaceful slumber in the trim cottage and the snug farmhouse alike. Now and then the shrill cry of the petted peacock awoke the woods, or the clamour of the early cock.

Sir Watkin lingered to enjoy the loveliness of the rural scene and the freshness of the morning air. For awhile something even of sentiment filled his heart. What had he done that all that lovely landscape should he his? How could he have lived as he had in London and Paris, in Vienna or Rome? Was it true that there was a God, as they told him in church, and as he had learned on his mother’s knee – who had given him all these things richly to enjoy, and would demand, sooner or later, an account of his stewardship? Then he looked at the glass, and was shocked as he saw how bloodshot were his eyes, how dark the skin underneath; how clear were the lines marked by dissipation on his cheek and brow.

Well, it was time he settled down. He had not behaved well to his first wife, he admitted, but that was no reason why be should not treat his second wife well. Then he was little better than a lad – now he was a man who had seen something of the world and who knew the value of peace and quietness. And so resolving, he dismissed his man and undressed.

Even then sleep was shy in coming. He had a puzzle to distract him to which he could find no answer. What had that old tipsy female at the cattle-show got to tell him? – what was the secret she pretended to have in her possession? Was the mystery ever to be solved? He had seen in her something to remind him of a girl who had once been in his service, but it could not be her. Surely she had not become what he saw. Sir Watkin forgot that the beauty of a woman, when she takes to drink and low company, is of a very evanescent character.

Sleep – Nature’s restorer, balmy sleep – how hard it is to get when you want it! The morrow was to be an important day. It was to decide his fate. The fair guest had looked lovingly on him as she left the drawing-room. There was something in the way in which her hand lingered in his own that suggested to the Baronet hope. The worldly-minded father was, at any rate, safe, and was prepared to invest handsomely in a titled son-in-law. He, the latter, had been of late in a somewhat shady state; there were many whispers about him in society, and not to his credit. It was clear that in certain transactions, like other young and foolish scions (considering how they are brought up it is almost impossible for them to be otherwise), he had suffered considerable pecuniary loss – or, in other words, been uncommonly well fleeced. Stately dames who ruled in Belgravia did not seem to him as genial as formerly; doors that were once opened freely were now closed. Low Radical newspapers occasionally hinted that he was no credit to the class who neither toil nor spin. It even began to dawn on the Baronet that his career had not been a brilliant one.

Half sleeping and half waking, there came to him unpleasant thoughts, and dreams equally so – of women whom he had betrayed, of friends who had trusted to him in vain, of splendid opportunities he had missed, of time and strength frittered away on trifles, or what was worse. He must yet be a power in the land – he would yet leave behind him a name – he would yet have the world at his feet. With a title and with money what cannot a man do in this land of ours? asked the Baronet of himself. Fellows of whom he thought nothing, whom he knew as inferiors at Eton or at College – poor, patient, spiritless plodders – had passed him in that battle of life which after all is only a Vanity Fair.

Such thoughts as these kept the Baronet wide awake, much to his disgust. It was the dinner, it was the wine, it was the cigar that kept him awake. Perhaps they did. But there was something else that did so, though the Baronet did not see it – the accusal of a conscience in which he did not believe, the workings of a divine law which he laughed at.

The next day no one was up early, and no one made his appearance at the breakfast-table save the elderly members of the party. Most of the gentlemen visitors overslept themselves, and the ladies were served in their own rooms. Then came the carriages and the departure of the guests – some to town, some to fashionable health resorts. Business required the presence of the great merchant in London, and he took his daughter with him. Sir Watkin managed to get down in time to see them off, and to promise to follow them next day. The lady left quite content; she knew what was to come, and what would be her reply.

Very dull and gloomy seemed the old house as the company one by one departed. Sir Watkin took up the morning papers – there was nothing in them; the society journals – he was better informed than their writers. No novel could interest him in his then state of mind. He had a headache; he would go for a ride, a sovereign remedy for such maladies as gentlemen in his station suffer from. Accordingly the horse was brought round, and he was in the saddle. He would be back before dark, and did not require his groom, and he trotted gaily away from the ancestral Hall under the ancestral oaks, along the gravelled drive through the park, feeling a little fresher for the effort. He would see his steward, and have a talk with him on business matters.

At the lodge-gate he stopped for a moment to order a general smartening up of that quarter. Alas! on the other side was an objectionable old woman, a friend who had before given him so much trouble. Sir Watkin’s disgust was only equalled by his anger. He was in no amiable mood, as the old woman clearly saw. She almost wished she had not come; she felt all of a tremble, as she said, as she asked him kindly to stop and hear what she had got to say. He muttered something very much unlike a blessing on his tormentor. He would have ridden over her had he not stopped his horse, which strongly opposed the idea of stopping. Could that old creature have any claim on him? The idea was ridiculous. And as to listening to her, why, that was quite out of the question for so fine a gentleman. She made an effort to clutch the rein. The high-spirited steed resented the indignity. In the scuffle the Baronet was unseated, and was taken up insensible.