CHAPTER XIV
Richard Avenel was in a state of great nervous excitement. He proposed to give an entertainment of a kind wholly new to the experience of Screwstown. Mrs. M’Catchley had described with much eloquence the Dejeunes dansants of her fashionable friends residing in the elegant suburbs of Wimbledon and Fulham. She declared that nothing was so agreeable. She had even said point-blank to Mr. Avenel, “Why don’t you give a Dejeune dansant?” And, therewith, a Dejeune dansant Mr. Avenel resolved to give.
The day was fixed, and Mr. Avenel entered into all the requisite preparations, with the energy of a man and the providence of a woman.
One morning as he stood musing on the lawn, irresolute as to the best site for the tents, Leonard came up to him with an open letter in his hand.
“My dear uncle,” said he, softly.
“Ha!” exclaimed Mr. Avenel, with a start. “Ha-well, what now?”
“I have just received a letter from Mr. Dale. He tells me that my poor mother is very restless and uneasy, because he cannot assure her that he has heard from me; and his letter requires an answer. Indeed I shall seem very ungrateful to him—to all—if I do not write.”
Richard Avenel’s brows met. He uttered an impatient “Pish!” and turned away. Then coming back, he fixed his clear hawk-like eye on Leonard’s ingenuous countenance, linked his arm into his nephew’s, and drew him into the shrubbery.
“Well, Leonard,” said he, after a pause, “it is time that I should give you some idea of my plans with regard to you. You have seen my manner of living—some difference from what you ever saw before, I calculate! Now I have given you, what no one gave me, a lift in the world; and where I place you, there you must help yourself.”
“Such is my duty and my desire,” said Leonard, heartily. “Good. You are a clever lad, and a genteel lad, and will do me credit. I have had doubts of what is best for you. At one time I thought of sending you to college. That, I know; is Mr. Dale’s wish; perhaps it is your own. But I have given up that idea; I have something better for you. You have a clear head for business, and are a capital arithmetician. I think of bringing you up to superintend my business; by and by I will admit you into partnership; and before you are thirty you will be a rich man. Come, does that suit you?”
“My dear uncle,” said Leonard, frankly, but much touched by this generosity, “it is not for me to have a choice. I should have preferred going to college, because there I might gain independence for myself and cease to be a burden on you. Moreover, my heart moves me to studies more congenial with the college than the counting-house. But all this is nothing compared with my wish to be of use to you, and to prove in any way, however feebly, my gratitude for all your kindness.”
“You’re a good, grateful, sensible lad,” exclaimed Richard, heartily; “and believe me, though I’m a rough diamond, I have your true interest at heart. You can be of use to me, and in being so you will best serve yourself. To tell you the truth, I have some idea of changing my condition. There’s a lady of fashion and quality who, I think, may condescend to become Mrs. Avenel; and if so, I shall probably reside a great part of the year in London. I don’t want to give up my business. No other investment will yield the same interest. But you can soon learn to superintend it for me, as some day or other I may retire, and then you can step in. Once a member of our great commercial class, and with your talents you may be anything,—member of parliament, and after that, minister of State, for what I know. And my wife—hem! that is to be—has great connections, and you shall marry well; and—oh, the Avenels will hold their heads with the highest, after all! Damn the aristocracy! we clever fellows will be the aristocrats, eh?” Richard rubbed his hands.
Certainly, as we have seen, Leonard, especially in his earlier steps to knowledge, had repined at his position in the many degrees of life; certainly he was still ambitious; certainly he could not now have returned contentedly to the humble occupation he had left; and woe to the young man who does not hear with a quickened pulse and brightening eye words that promise independence, and flatter with the hope of distinction. Still, it was with all the reaction of chill and mournful disappointment that Leonard, a few hours after this dialogue with his uncle, found himself alone in the fields, and pondering over the prospects before him. He had set his heart upon completing his intellectual education, upon developing those powers within him which yearned for an arena of literature, and revolted from the routine of trade.
But to his credit be it said, that he vigorously resisted this natural disappointment, and by degrees schooled himself to look cheerfully on the path imposed on his duty, and sanctioned by the manly sense that was at the core of his character.
I believe that this self-conquest showed that the boy had true genius. The false genius would have written sonnets and despaired.
But still, Richard Avenel left his nephew sadly perplexed as to the knotty question from which their talk on the future had diverged,—namely, should he write to the parson, and assure the fears of his mother? How do so without Richard’s consent, when Richard had on a former occasion so imperiously declared that, if he did, it would lose his mother all that Richard intended to settle on her? While he was debating this matter with his conscience, leaning against a stile that interrupted a path to the town, Leonard Fairfield was startled by an exclamation. He looked up, and beheld Mr. Sprott the tinker.
CHAPTER XV
The tinker, blacker and grimmer than ever, stared hard at the altered person of his old acquaintance, and extended his sable fingers, as if inclined to convince himself by the sense of touch that it was Leonard in the flesh that he beheld, under vestments so marvellously elegant and preternaturally spruce.
Leonard shrank mechanically from the contact, while in great surprise he faltered,—
“You here, Mr. Sprott! What could bring you so far from home?”
“‘Ome!” echoed the tinker, “I ‘as no ‘ome! or rather, d’ ye see, Muster Fairfilt, I makes myself at ‘ome verever I goes! Lor’ love ye! I ben’t settled on no parridge. I wanders here and I vanders there, and that’s my ‘ome verever I can mend my kettles and sell my tracks!”
So saying, the tinker slid his panniers on the ground, gave a grunt of release and satisfaction, and seated himself with great composure on the stile from which Leonard had retreated.
“But, dash my wig,” resumed Mr. Sprott, as he once more surveyed Leonard, “vy, you bees a rale gentleman, now, surely! Vot’s the dodge, eh?”
“Dodge!” repeated Leonard, mechanically, “I don’t understand you.” Then, thinking that it was neither necessary nor expedient to keep up his acquaintance with Mr. Sprott, nor prudent to expose himself to the battery of questions which he foresaw that further parley would bring upon him, he extended a crown-piece to the tinker; and saying, with a half-smile, “You must excuse me for leaving you—I have business in the town; and do me the favour to accept this trifle,” he walked briskly off.
The tinker looked long at the crown-piece, and then sliding it into his pocket, said to himself,—
“Ho, ‘ush-money! No go, my swell cove.”
After venting that brief soliloquy he sat silent a little while, till Leonard was nearly out of sight; then rose, resumed his fardel, and creeping quick along the hedgerows, followed Leonard towards the town. Just in the last field, as he looked over the hedge, he saw Leonard accosted by a gentleman of comely mien and important swagger. That gentleman soon left the young man, and came, whistling loud, up the path, and straight towards the tinker. Mr. Sprott looked round, but the hedge was too neat to allow of a good hiding-place, so he put a bold front on it, and stepped forth like a man. But, alas for him! before he got into the public path, the proprietor of the land, Mr. Richard Avenel (for the gentleman was no less a personage), had spied out the trespasser, and called to him with a “Hillo, fellow,” that bespoke all the dignity of a man who owns acres, and all the wrath of a man who beholds those acres impudently invaded.
The tinker stopped, and Mr. Avenel stalked up to him. “What the devil are you doing on my property, lurking by my hedge? I suspect you are an incendiary!”
“I be a tinker,” quoth Mr. Sprott, not louting low, for a sturdy republican was Mr. Sprott, but, like a lord of human kind,—
“Pride in his port, defiance in his eye.”
Mr. Avenel’s fingers itched to knock the tinker’s villanous hat off his jacobinical head, but he repressed the undignified impulse by thrusting both hands deep into his trousers’ pockets.
“A tinker!” he cried,—“that’s a vagrant; and I’m a magistrate, and I’ve a great mind to send you to the treadmill,—that I have. What do you do here, I say? You have not answered my question.”
“What does I do ‘ere?” said Mr. Sprott. “Vy, you had better ax my crakter of the young gent I saw you talking with just now; he knows me.”
“What! my nephew knows you?”
“W-hew,” whistled the tinker, “your nephew is it, sir? I have a great respek for your family. I ‘ve knowed Mrs. Fairfilt the vashervoman this many a year. I ‘umbly ax your pardon.” And he took off his hat this time.
Mr. Avenel turned red and white in a breath. He growled out something inaudible, turned on his heel, and strode off. The tinker watched him as he had watched Leonard, and then dogged the uncle as he had dogged the nephew. I don’t presume to say that there was cause and effect in what happened that night, but it was what is called “a curious coincidence” that that night one of Richard Avenel’s ricks was set on fire, and that that day he had called Mr. Sprott an incendiary. Mr. Sprott was a man of a very high spirit, and did not forgive an insult easily. His nature was inflammatory, and so was that of the lucifers which he always carried about him, with his tracts and glue-pots.
The next morning there was an inquiry made for the tinker, but he had disappeared from the neighbourhood.
CHAPTER XVI
It was a fortunate thing that the dejeune dansant so absorbed Mr. Richard Avenel’s thoughts that even the conflagration of his rick could not scare away the graceful and poetic images connected with that pastoral festivity. He was even loose and careless in the questions he put to Leonard about the tinker; nor did he send justice in pursuit of that itinerant trader; for, to say truth, Richard Avenel was a man accustomed to make enemies amongst the lower orders; and though he suspected Mr. Sprott of destroying his rick, yet, when he once set about suspecting, he found he had quite as good cause to suspect fifty other persons. How on earth could a man puzzle himself about ricks and tinkers when all his cares and energies were devoted to a dejeune dansant? It was a maxim of Richard Avenel’s, as it ought to be of every clever man, “to do one thing at a time;” and therefore he postponed all other considerations till the dejeune dansant was fairly done with. Amongst these considerations was the letter which Leonard wished to write to the parson. “Wait a bit, and we will both write!” said Richard, good-humouredly, “the moment the dijeune dansant is over!”
It must be owned that this fete was no ordinary provincial ceremonial. Richard Avenel was a man to do a thing well when he set about it,—
“He soused the cabbage with a bounteous heart.”
By little and little his first notions had expanded, till what had been meant to be only neat and elegant now embraced the costly and magnificent. Artificers accustomed to dejeunes dansants came all the way from London to assist, to direct, to create. Hungarian singers and Tyrolese singers and Swiss peasant-women, who were to chant the Ranz des Vaches, and milk cows or make syllabubs, were engaged. The great marquee was decorated as a Gothic banquet-hall; the breakfast itself was to consist of “all the delicacies of the season.” In short, as Richard Avenel said to himself, “It is a thing once in a way; a thing on which I don’t object to spend money, provided that the thing is—the thing!”
It had been a matter of grave meditation how to make the society worthy of the revel; for Richard Avenel was not contented with the mere aristocracy of the town,—his ambition had grown with his expenses. “Since it will cost so much,” said he, “I may as well come it strong, and get in the county.”
True, that he was personally acquainted with very few of what are called county families. But still, when a man makes himself a mark in a large town, and can return one of the members whom that town sends to parliament; and when, moreover, that man proposes to give some superb and original entertainment, in which the old can eat and the young can dance, there is no county in the island that has not families enow who will be delighted by an invitation from THAT MAN. And so Richard, finding that, as the thing got talked of, the dean’s lady, and Mrs. Pompley, and various other great personages, took the liberty to suggest that Squire this, and Sir somebody that, would be so pleased if they were asked, fairly took the bull by the horns, and sent out his cards to Park, Hall, and Rectory, within a circumference of twelve miles. He met with but few refusals, and he now counted upon five hundred guests.
“In for a penny in for a pound,” said Mr. Richard Avenel. “I wonder what Mrs. M’Catchley will say?” Indeed, if the whole truth must be known,—Mr. Richard Avenel not only gave that dejeune dansant in honour of Mrs. M’Catchley, but he had fixed in his heart of hearts upon that occasion (when surrounded by all his splendour, and assisted by the seductive arts of Terpsichore and Bacchus) to whisper to Mrs. M’Catchley those soft words which—but why not here let Mr. Richard Avenel use his own idiomatic and unsophisticated expression? “Please the pigs, then,” said Mr. Avenel to himself, “I shall pop the question!”
CHAPTER XVII
The Great Day arrived at last; and Mr. Richard Avenel, from his dressing-room window, looked on the scene below as Hannibal or Napoleon looked from the Alps on Italy. It was a scene to gratify the thought of conquest, and reward the labours of ambition. Placed on a little eminence stood the singers from the mountains of the Tyrol, their high-crowned hats and filigree buttons and gay sashes gleaming in the sun. Just seen from his place of watch, though concealed from the casual eye, the Hungarian musicians lay in ambush amidst a little belt of laurels and American shrubs. Far to the right lay what had once been called horresco referens the duckpond, where—“Dulce sonant tenui gutture carmen aves.” But the ruthless ingenuity of the head-artificer had converted the duck-pond into a Swiss lake, despite grievous wrong and sorrow to the assuetum innocuumque genus,—the familiar and harmless inhabitants, who had been all expatriated and banished from their native waves. Large poles twisted with fir branches, stuck thickly around the lake, gave to the waters the becoming Helvetian gloom. And here, beside three cows all bedecked with ribbons, stood the Swiss maidens destined to startle the shades with the Ranz des Vaches. To the left, full upon the sward, which it almost entirely covered, stretched the great Gothic marquee, divided into two grand sections,—one for the dancing, one for the dejeune.
The day was propitious,—not a cloud in the sky. The musicians were already tuning their instruments; figures of waiters hired of Gunter—trim and decorous, in black trousers and white waistcoats—passed to and fro the space between the house and marquee. Richard looked and looked; and as he looked he drew mechanically his razor across the strop; and when he had looked his fill, he turned reluctantly to the glass and shaved! All that blessed morning he had been too busy, till then, to think of shaving.
There is a vast deal of character in the way that a man performs that operation of shaving! You should have seen Richard Avenel shave! You could have judged at once how he would shave his neighbours, when you saw the celerity, the completeness with which he shaved himself,—a forestroke and a backstroke, and tondenti barba cadebat. Cheek and chin were as smooth as glass. You would have buttoned up your pockets instinctively if you had seen him.
But the rest of Mr. Avenel’s toilet was not completed with correspondent despatch. On his bed, and on his chairs, and on his sofa, and on his drawers, lay trousers and vests and cravats enough to distract the choice of a Stoic. And first one pair of trousers was tried on, and then another—and one waistcoat, and then a second, and then a third. Gradually that chef-d’oeuvre of civilization—a man dressed—grew into development and form; and, finally, Mr. Richard Avenel emerged into the light of day. He had been lucky in his costume,—he felt it. It might not suit every one in colour or cut, but it suited him.
And this was his garb. On such occasion, what epic poet would not describe the robe and tunic of a hero?
His surtout—in modern phrase his frockcoat—was blue, a rich blue, a blue that the royal brothers of George the Fourth were wont to favour. And the surtout, single-breasted, was thrown open gallantly; and in the second button-hole thereof was a moss-rose. The vest was white, and the trousers a pearl gray, with what tailors style “a handsome fall over the boot.” A blue and white silk cravat, tied loose and debonair; an ample field of shirt front, with plain gold studs; a pair of lemon-coloured kid gloves, and a white hat, placed somewhat too knowingly on one side, complete the description, and “give the world assurance of the man.” And, with his light, firm, well-shaped figure, his clear complexion, his keen, bright eye, and features that bespoke the courage, precision, and alertness of his character,—that is to say, features bold, not large, well-defined, and regular,—you might walk long through town or country before you would see a handsomer specimen of humanity than our friend Richard Avenel.
Handsome, and feeling that he was handsome; rich, and feeling that he was rich; lord of the fete, and feeling that he was lord of the fete, Richard Avenel stepped out upon his lawn.
And now the dust began to rise along the road, and carriages and gigs and chaises and flies might be seen at near intervals and in quick procession. People came pretty much about the same time-as they do in the country—Heaven reward them for it!
Richard Avenel was not quite at his ease at first in receiving his guests, especially those whom he did not know by sight. But when the dancing began, and he had secured the fair hand of Mrs. M’Catchley for the initiary quadrille, his courage and presence of mind returned to him; and, seeing that many people whom he had not received at all seemed to enjoy themselves very much, he gave up the attempt to receive those who came after,—and that was a great relief to all parties.
Meanwhile Leonard looked on the animated scene with a silent melancholy, which he in vain endeavoured to shake off,—a melancholy more common amongst very young men in such scenes than we are apt to suppose. Somehow or other, the pleasure was not congenial to him; he had no Mrs. M’Catchley to endear it; he knew very few people, he was shy, he felt his position with his uncle was equivocal, he had not the habit of society, he heard, incidentally, many an ill-natured remark upon his uncle and the entertainment, he felt indignant and mortified. He had been a great deal happier eating his radishes and reading his book by the little fountain in Riccabocca’s garden. He retired to a quiet part of the grounds, seated himself under a tree, leaned his cheek on his hand, and mused. He was soon far away;—happy age, when, whatever the present, the future seems so fair and so infinite!
But now the dejeune had succeeded the earlier dances; and, as champagne flowed royally, it is astonishing how the entertainment brightened.
The sun was beginning to slope towards the west, when, during a temporary cessation of the dance, all the guests had assembled in such space as the tent left on the lawn, or thickly filled the walks immediately adjoining it. The gay dresses of the ladies, the joyous laughter heard everywhere, and the brilliant sunlight over all, conveyed even to Leonard the notion, not of mere hypocritical pleasure, but actual healthful happiness. He was attracted from his revery, and timidly mingled with the groups. But Richard Avenel, with the fair Mrs. M’Catchley—her complexion more vivid, and her eyes more dazzling, and her step more elastic than usual—had turned from the gayety just as Leonard had turned towards it, and was now on the very spot (remote, obscure, shaded by the few trees above five years old that Mr. Avenel’s property boasted) which the young dreamer had deserted.
And then! Ah, then! moment so meet for the sweet question of questions, place so appropriate for the delicate, bashful, murmured popping thereof!—suddenly from the sward before, from the groups beyond, there floated to the ears of Richard Avenel an indescribable, mingled, ominous sound,—a sound as of a general titter, a horrid, malignant, but low cachinnation. And Mrs. M’Catchley, stretching forth her parasol, exclaimed, “Dear me, Mr. Avenel, what can they be all crowding there for?”
There are certain sounds and certain sights—the one indistinct, the other vaguely conjecturable—which, nevertheless, we know, by an instinct, bode some diabolical agency at work in our affairs. And if any man gives an entertainment, and hears afar a general, ill-suppressed, derisive titter, and sees all his guests hurrying towards one spot, I defy him to remain unmoved and uninquisitive. I defy him still more to take that precise occasion (however much he may have before designed it) to drop gracefully on his right knee before the handsomest Mrs. M’Catchley in the universe, and—pop the question! Richard Avenel blurted out something very like an oath; and, half guessing that something must have happened that it would not be pleasing to bring immediately under the notice of Mrs. M’Catchley, he said hastily, “Excuse me. I’ll just go and see what is the matter; pray, stay till I come back.” With that he sprang forward; in a minute he was in the midst of the group, that parted aside with the most obliging complacency to make way for him.
“But what’s the matter?” he asked impatiently, yet fearfully. Not a voice answered. He strode on, and beheld his nephew in the arms of a woman!
“God bless my soul!” said Richard Avenel.