Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 68, No 422, December 1850

"On my word, I believe that's very true; and the first idle fellow you catch in anything wrong we'll clap in, and keep him there for two hours at least."

"With the biggest pleasure, your honour – that's what it is."

And Mr Stirn, having now got what he considered a complete and unconditional authority over all the legs and wrists of Hazeldean parish, quoad the stocks, took his departure.

CHAPTER X

"Randal," said Mrs Leslie, on this memorable Sunday – "Randal, do you think of going to Mr Hazeldean's?"

"Yes, ma'am," answered Randal. "Mr Egerton does not object to it; and as I do not return to Eton, I may have no other opportunity of seeing Frank for some time. I ought not to fail in respect to Mr Egerton's natural heir!"

"Gracious me!" cried Mrs Leslie, who, like many women of her cast and kind, had a sort of worldliness in her notions, which she never evinced in her conduct – "gracious me! – natural heir to the old Leslie property!"

"He is Mr Egerton's nephew, and," added Randal, ingenuously letting out his thoughts, "I am no relation to Mr Egerton at all."

"But," said poor Mrs Leslie, with tears in her eyes, "it would be a shame in the man, after paying your schooling and sending you to Oxford, and having you to stay with him in the holidays, if he did not mean anything by it."

"Anything, mother – yes – but not the thing you suppose. No matter. It is enough that he has armed me for life, and I shall use the weapons as seems to me best."

Here the dialogue was suspended, by the entrance of the other members of the family, dressed for church.

"It can't be time for church! No! it can't!" exclaimed Mrs Leslie. She was never in time for anything.

"Last bell ringing," said Mr Leslie, who, though a slow man, was methodical and punctual. Mrs Leslie made a frantic rush at the door, the Montfydget blood being now in a blaze – whirled up the stairs – gained her room, tore her best bonnet from the peg, snatched her newest shawl from the drawers, crushed the bonnet on her head, flung the shawl on her shoulders, thrust a desperate pin into its folds, in order to conceal a buttonless yawn in the body of her gown, and then flew back like a whirlwind. Meanwhile the family were already out of doors, in waiting; and just as the bell ceased, the procession moved from the shabby house to the dilapidated church.

The church was a large one, but the congregation was small, and so was the income of the Parson. It was a lay rectory, and the great tithes had belonged to the Leslies, but they had been long since sold. The vicarage, still in their gift, might be worth a little more than £100 a-year. The present incumbent had nothing else to live upon. He was a good man, and not originally a stupid one; but penury and the anxious cares for wife and family, combined with what may be called solitary confinement for the cultivated mind, when, amidst the two-legged creatures round, it sees no other cultivated mind with which it can exchange an extra-parochial thought – had lulled him into a lazy mournfulness, which at times was very like imbecility. His income allowed him to do no good to the parish, whether in work, trade, or charity; and thus he had no moral weight with the parishioners beyond the example of his sinless life, and such negative effect as might be produced by his slumberous exhortations. Therefore his parishioners troubled him very little; and but for the influence which, in hours of Montfydget activity, Mrs Leslie exercised over the most tractable – that is, the children and the aged – not half-a-dozen persons would have known or cared whether he shut up his church or not.

But our family were seated in state in their old seignorial pew, and Mr Dumdrum, with a nasal twang, went lugubriously through the prayers; and the old people who could sin no more, and the children who had not yet learned to sin, croaked forth responses that might have come from the choral frogs in Aristophanes. And there was a long sermon apropos to nothing which could possibly interest the congregation – being, in fact, some controversial homily, which Mr Dumdrum had composed and preached years before. And when this discourse was over, there was a loud universal grunt, as if of release and thanksgiving, and a great clatter of shoes – and the old hobbled, and the young scrambled, to the church door.

Immediately after church, the Leslie family dined; and, as soon as dinner was over, Randal set out on his foot journey to Hazeldean Hall.

Delicate and even feeble though his frame, he had the energy and quickness of movement which belongs to nervous temperaments; and he tasked the slow stride of a peasant, whom he took to serve him as a guide for the first two or three miles. Though Randal had not the gracious open manner with the poor which Frank inherited from his father, he was still (despite many a secret hypocritical vice, at war with the character of a gentleman) gentleman enough to have no churlish pride to his inferiors. He talked little, but he suffered his guide to talk; and the boor, who was the same whom Frank had accosted, indulged in eulogistic comments on that young gentleman's pony, from which he diverged into some compliments on the young gentleman himself. Randal drew his hat over his brows. There is a wonderful tact and fine breeding in your agricultural peasant; and though Tom Stowell was but a brutish specimen of the class, he suddenly perceived that he was giving pain. He paused, scratched his head, and glancing affectionately towards his companion, exclaimed —

"But I shall live to see you on a handsomer beastis than that little pony, Master Randal; and sure I ought, for you be as good a gentleman as any in the land."

"Thank you," said Randal. "But I like walking better than riding – I am more used to it."

"Well, and you walk bra'ly – there ben't a better walker in the county. And very pleasant it is walking; and 'tis a pretty country afore you, all the way to the Hall."

Randal strode on, as if impatient of these attempts to flatter or to soothe; and, coming at length into a broader lane, said – "I think I can find my way now. Many thanks to you, Tom;" and he forced a shilling into Tom's horny palm. The man took it reluctantly, and a tear started to his eye. He felt more grateful for that shilling than he had for Frank's liberal half-crown; and he thought of the poor fallen family, and forgot his own dire wrestle with the wolf at his door.

He staid lingering in the lane till the figure of Randal was out of sight, and then returned slowly. Young Leslie continued to walk on at a quick pace. With all his intellectual culture, and his restless aspirations, his breast afforded him no thought so generous, no sentiment so poetic, as those with which the unlettered clown crept slouchingly homeward.

As Randal gained a point where several lanes met on a broad piece of waste land, he began to feel tired, and his step slackened. Just then a gig emerged from one of these by-roads, and took the same direction as the pedestrian. The road was rough and hilly, and the driver proceeded at a foot's-pace; so that the gig and the pedestrian went pretty well abreast.

"You seem tired, sir," said the driver, a stout young farmer of the higher class of tenants, and he looked down compassionately on the boy's pale countenance and weary stride. "Perhaps we are going the same way, and I can give you a lift?"

It was Randal's habitual policy to make use of every advantage proffered to him, and he accepted the proposal frankly enough to please the honest farmer.

"A nice day, sir," said the latter, as Randal sat by his side. "Have you come far?"

"From Rood Hall."

"Oh, you be young Squire Leslie," said the farmer, more respectfully, and lifting his hat.

"Yes, my name is Leslie. You know Rood, then?"

"I was brought up on your father's land, sir. You may have heard of Farmer Bruce?"

Randal. – "I remember, when I was a little boy, a Mr Bruce, who rented, I believe, the best part of our land, and who used to bring us cakes when he called to see my father. He is a relation of yours?"

Farmer Bruce. – "He was my uncle. He is dead now, poor man."

Randal. – "Dead! I am grieved to hear it. He was very kind to us children. But it is long since he left my father's farm."

Farmer Bruce, apologetically. – "I am sure he was very sorry to go. But, you see, he had an unexpected legacy – "

Randal. – "And retired from business?"

Farmer Bruce. – "No. But, having capital, he could afford to pay a good rent for a real good farm."

Randal, bitterly. – "All capital seems to fly from the lands of Rood. And whose farm did he take?"

Farmer Bruce. – "He took Hawleigh, under Squire Hazeldean. I rent it now. We've laid out a power o' money on it. But I don't complain. It pays well."

Randal. – "Would the money have paid as well, sunk on my father's land?"

Farmer Bruce. – "Perhaps it might, in the long run. But then, sir, we wanted new premises – barns and cattle-sheds, and a deal more – which the landlord should do; but it is not every landlord as can afford that. Squire Hazeldean's a rich man."

Randal. – "Ay!"

The road now became pretty good, and the farmer put his horse into a brisk trot.

"But which way be you going, sir? I don't care for a few miles more or less, if I can be of service."

"I am going to Hazeldean," said Randal, rousing himself from a reverie. "Don't let me take you out of your way."

"Oh, Hawleigh Farm is on the other side of the village, so it be quite my way, sir."

The farmer then, who was really a smart young fellow – one of that race which the application of capital to land has produced, and which, in point of education and refinement, are at least on a par with the squires of a former generation – began to talk about his handsome horse, about horses in general, about hunting and coursing: he handled all these subjects with spirit, yet with modesty. Randal pulled his hat still lower down over his brows, and did not interrupt him till past the Casino, when, struck by the classic air of the place, and catching a scent from the orange trees, the boy asked abruptly – "Whose house is that?"

"Oh, it belongs to Squire Hazeldean, but it is let or lent to a foreign Mounseer. They say he is quite the gentleman, but uncommonly poor."

"Poor," said Randal, turning back to gaze on the trim garden, the neat terrace, the pretty belvidere, and (the door of the house being open) catching a glimpse of the painted hall within – "poor, the place seems well kept. What do you call poor, Mr Bruce?"

The farmer laughed. "Well, that's a home question, sir. But I believe the Mounseer is as poor as a man can be who makes no debts and does not actually starve."

"As poor as my father?" asked Randal openly and abruptly.