Dariel: A Romance of Surrey

"Hopmann is a queer fellow in his way, but in a very good sort of a way," said Jackson Stoneman, as we two filled our pipes, and he lit his half-a-crown cigar, which I would not have smoked for half-a-crown; "I am glad to see you enter into each other's merits. Now, will you fall in with a little plan which I have conceived for the good of us all? My German friend is an excellent shot. He can knock a bird over, as well as he can cook it. He was out with us on the first, when George Cranleigh would not come. Two or three swells were inclined to laugh, but he very soon turned the laugh on them. Garrod said that he never saw such a hand, which was not very graceful to the man who pays his wages. I have not yet found anything that Hopmann cannot do."

"Shackson, there are two tings vot he cannot do. He cannot ride very well ze horse, and he cannot listen to his own braises."

"Never mind, he will very soon learn both accomplishments, and then he will be absolutely perfect. But we have a little campaign in view for the day after to-morrow. We have only been round the outskirts yet, we have not touched the best part of the shooting. Herr Doctor, will you come with your 16-bore, that wiped the eye of several of our thundering twelves, and show us straight powder on Thursday?"

"I vill only come on ze onderstandings of before – that all ze bairds I do shoot shall belong to me, to take home."

"You shall carry off, and cook with their trails in, every blessed bird you knock over. And now about you, George. I have never seen you shoot, but I hear you are very good. Are you afraid to try your hand against this mighty German?"

This put me a little on my mettle, as was meant. Not that I ever cared to shoot in competition; for that, as with fishing or any other friendly sport, to my mind kills the enjoyment. Moreover I had refused Stoneman's invitation, from a sort of pride – a very false pride it might be – about walking by his leave upon land that had been ours. And I had taken no certificate this year.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," I said. "I won't bring my gun, for I have taken no licence, and I would not shoot without. But I'll come and work the dogs for you; they know me as well as they know Garrod, and I shall enjoy it quite as much."

"But Hopmann has taken no licence, either. As if any one would dare to ask you about that, for shooting round here! I should like to see them ask him even, when he is with me."

"For me it is to my conscience so," – the German had a great gift of winking both eyes, through his spectacles, with rapid alternation; "I am not a subject of this realm. I make game of ze Game-laws."

However, I was not to be persuaded; and when the day came, there were guns enough without mine, and far too many, as it seemed to me, for a free beat and small enclosure. Luckily there was no covert-shooting yet; but one or two of the dogs had most narrow escapes, and I was obliged to interfere sometimes, and declare that I would walk them all back to kennel, unless the men tried to be more careful. One dog was my own, a very handsome lemon-and-white setter-bitch, who dropped to shot almost before you could see the smoke; and yet somebody put a shot through her ear, though I did not find it out till afterwards, or home she would have gone, whatever they might think at losing the best of the bunch, as one might say.

For there were six guns, sometimes close together, – a dangerous affair for a country like that, even when every man knows his neighbour, and each is an experienced and careful shot; most Cockneyfied too, for the look of the thing; and I had a great mind to keep away from them. But Stoneman would not hear of that; he had invited Lord Melladew, so he said, purely as a compliment to me, and how could I refuse to come with him? To this I could make no reply, being taken up with my own affairs to such a degree that I was not at home concerning other people's doings. The young Earl of Melladew was staying at the "Bell," – which used to be called the "Cranleigh Arms," until we went down in the world, – and there he had his valet, and artistic outfit, and all his large ideas, in the long room with the magnificent view, where our tenant used to dry his onions. Now I am the very last to say a word against people who have gone up in life, by merits which have been denied to us. The first peer had proved himself a fine man of business, and made an exemplary fortune by lucrative Army-contracts during the Crimean war. If he compressed some dead cows in his hay, and compelled his old sheep-dogs to serve their time still by posthumous fidelity in the form of mutton, – as war correspondents on very short commons were ungrateful enough at that time to aver, – all those and greater errors he had redeemed by having a grandson as unlike him as possible.

This young nobleman (for so he might be called) had many very excellent and amiable points. He was gentle, generous, and upright, more eager to please than is altogether safe, except in a very rustic neighbourhood; and even less conceited and affected in his manners than a young man of good looks, fair position, and literary tendencies ought to be, for his friends to consider him natural. Everybody in our village said that without Farmer Jarge to certify it, they never could have taken his Lordship for a Lord; though, considering the Boards, and the Hyænas this and that, and the Parson that couldn't turn his coat-tails up till a secondary motion put him into his own chair in the Vestry, there was no call for any one to feel surprise if the great folk came down, and made the little ones go up. Lord Melladew also was enthusiastic as to the delights of country-life, and the glories of British industry; and this helped him much with my sister, who never could understand why we should be starved by foreign produce, when the land, and the people, and the sky above our heads were exactly the same as she could remember always, and there was as much to pay for everything as ever.

But our young nobleman proved most clearly, with an elegant sonnet in the "Cobham Comet," entitled "Sit down to your own desserts," that prosperity was to return to our land, and the Frenchman and Belgian be blown away by volleys of grape and apple shot from the bulwark of Britain at Farmer Bandilow's farm. Half a million fruit-trees would be planted in October, and ten million bushels of apples, melons, peaches, plums, grapes, pine-apples, apricots, pears, &c., would confront the poor foreigner next August if he dared to attempt a landing.

My father was scarcely so sanguine, but said, "Let them have their try, George, if rich people find the money. Things can be no worse, and some poor fellows may find employment for the winter. Perhaps Mr. Stoneman will take it up."

Stoneman, however, instead of doing that, showed an unaccountable contempt and bitterness, not only towards the scheme itself, but all who took any share in it. There seemed to be something in the matter that touched him far more closely than any question of agriculture. Was it Lord Melladew's long sojourn at the "Bell," and his frequent visits at our cottage? Even now, with this young man his guest for the day, and behaving most inoffensively, the grim stockbroker marched on in such a manner, that I thought it my duty to remonstrate. "You haven't shot him yet," I said, as we stood behind the others, "because it is not dark enough. But if he gets peppered in the dusk, I shall know whose pot it came from."

Stoneman gave me a grin, and behaved a little better, and did his best to be polite at luncheon-time, and after the narrow shaves of the morning things went on more carefully; for the men who knew nothing about a gun had now learned to be afraid of it. Until, with the sun getting low behind a wood, we came to a bit of gorse-land having a steep fall towards a valley, favourite harbour for a fox, in the days when my chief business was such pleasant sport and jollity. There were narrow rides cut through the furze down hill, and across them tussocks of welted fern, and strigs of moots that cropped up again, after the fuelling had been cleared.

"Why, this is the place where the yellow bunnies live," said Stoneman, as he opened a gate for us, and we stood on the crest of the furzy slope. "I know a man, and a clever fellow too, who has offered a guinea apiece for them. He has given up business, and set up his staff in a wild part of Wales; and there he is going in for a breed of these yellow rabbits. He has got a big name for the fur, and expects to cut out Chinchilla with it. I have heard of our golden bunnies lots of times, and seen some of them once or twice. Shall we get a sample for him, and then offer him live bunnies, if he jumps at it?"

All agreed cheerfully to this, and the dogs were taken up, while the men, peeping down the steep ridges, got a shot or two at any of the coney race who might be dining carelessly. Then, as all of these proved to be of the common grey sort, Garrod's boy was sent home for a couple of rough terriers, to run the furze thickets, while the guns should watch the rides, for two or three yellow fellows had skipped away unscathed.

That boy took a long time in carrying out his message, and when he came back with his father behind him, the dusk of September was settling in the valley, while a wisp of silvery vapour stole along the brown halberds of the gorse, and the russet clumps of bramble. But the hillside now was ringing with the merry yelps of dogs, or the squeak of some puppy in a tangled grip, while the low covert ruffled, or was channelled here and there, with the sway of some resolute terrier hot in chase.

This holiday had been a rare enjoyment to me, though crossed with anxiety now and then, among so many barrels governed less by experience than excitement. Most of all, as I said, about Lord Melladew, who strode along so poetically, clad in green velveteen, beautifully made, but terminating unluckily in very smart buff gaiters short and spruce – concerning him I had prayed all day that he were safe back in the onion loft. Not that he carried a gun to his own disadvantage as the reckless do, neither did he fire at random, but was well content, in the manner of the public, to shout according to the hit or miss.

"Shut up all," I called out sharply; "too dark, too dark! I expect to see at least a dog shot, every moment."

A dog indeed! If I had said a man, and that man a live Earl – for bang, bang, went the guns, just as if I had never spoken, and four or five puffs of smoke, as if the hillside were on fire, rose from the avenues poor bunny had to cross. "Yellow! Did you see, Shorje? yellow as ze gold is!" The German doctor shouted as he pointed down a ride. "Shackson shot too, but ze rabbit is to me. I will have ze guinea. Ach, mein Gott!"

Instead of a rabbit giving the last kick of death, what did we see half-way down the slope but two buff coneys flying ever so much faster than any coney ever flew before, each flashing in front of each other, as if father fox were after both of them. "I am blowed if it isn't my Lord," cried Garrod; "the foreigner have shot him morshial!"

"Vat you know, ze clods-having-to-hop-by-night-as-well-as-by-day fe-loe? But keep your business, good fe-loe. If I have put ze shot in, I can pull him out again. You shall see."

Guns were laid aside, and the doctor left there (for he seemed to make nothing of peppering a lord, in comparison with basting partridges), and down the steep pitch we raced after the Earl, who with a long start was going like the wind. Do all we might, we could not get near him, until he was brought up by a heavy post and rail, where the Dorking road winds along the bottom. There he struck his chest, and in spite of being winded, did no small credit to his lungs, by a power of shrieks that rent the valley.

"What a coward!" cried Stoneman, who had kept up with me, though we both had "gone croppers" once or twice. "He is all there for holloaing, at any rate!"

But the worst of the business was yet to come. As we drew a pull of breath, before rushing to the rescue, we heard a sudden clatter in the road below, then we saw a wild dash of something dark, and a woman lay on her back under a low tree. I leaped the rail fence, to which the Earl was still clinging, and there lay my sister Grace, in her riding-habit, while the sound of the runaway pony's hoofs came clanging round the corner.

I lifted my darling sister Grace, and set her against the hedge-bank, and my heart went out of me, as I knelt and whispered to her. If it had been even Dariel, could my terror have been so terrible? I pulled her riding-gloves off, and found a penny in them, the change the dear frugal soul had taken from the last turnpike gate she paid. And then when I saw her sweet kind face as white as a shroud, and the bright eyes closed, and the long black lashes that I used to vow she dyed – when I wanted to put her in a passion – lying upon the waxen cheeks, without caring a dump what any other chap might think, I lifted up my voice and wept.

"Shush, shush, don't be a fool, Shorje," said some fellow, pushing me away; "ze gairl is only what you called shtunned. All raight, all raight, in ten skips of ze vlea. My tear, I am ze dochtor."

I went across the road, and stood by Jackson Stoneman, who was standing as firm as a rock, and pretending to play with the whip he had picked up. "Look here," I said, "she will never pay another pike."

"Take a turn with me, my dear fellow," he replied; "Hopmann will get on better without us. My housekeeper's mother lives round the corner. Though the Lord knows that if all we want is a woman – Lord Melladew, I am so sorry for your little accident. You mustn't wear yellow spats, the next time you go shooting. Garrod will help you to your inn, and the doctor will come, when he has seen to this more urgent case. Garrod, let his lordship throw all his weight on you. Stop a moment. Send your boy at full speed to 'The Bell,' and order their low four-wheeler here. He is not to say why, for fear of frightening Lady Cranleigh. And let him take that villain of a pony to 'The Bell.'"

In less than an hour, I had the great joy of hearing that Grace was quite conscious, and had no limbs broken, nor any other injury that a few days would not cure. When the pony bolted at the shrieks and kicks and swaying figure of his lordship, a branch across the road had swept my sister from the saddle, but luckily it did not strike any vulnerable part, unless the part that often wounds a man is such. In a word it was her lump of hair, or what ladies call their chignon, into which she was obliged to coil her tresses tight for riding, that received the impact of the too obtrusive tree. But I scarcely knew what to conclude about the doctor, or Stoneman himself, who had been so uneasy about a young Earl hanging out so near our Grace, when, as sure as English words were ever uttered by a German, I heard Hopmann whisper this condolence to himself – "Zat was ze graidest shot as ever I did make. One fire, leetle bepper, bring me down two bagients."

CHAPTER XVIII

A LOVEBIRD

Thus again, without any effort of his own, was the clever stockbroker quit of rivalry; for although the Earl did not leave the village for some weeks, he was not in a condition to do much poetic wooing, even if he could have found a partner. And this was not the only good result from that serious double accident; for the necessity of daily enquiry at our cottage became so pressing, and Stoneman so gallantly rose to this occasion, that the stiffness and coldness which had hitherto marked my mother's reception of him could no longer be maintained, but glided very quietly into goodwill and gratitude. All of us began to forgive him, more and more, for the crime of not belonging to an ancient county family, while the merits of his affluence almost drove us to maintain them against his own indifference.

"You go along," I said, for I had come to know him now, and could talk of his cash without tapping at it; "you know as well as I do, that the first consideration with nine out of ten of us is – Money."

"I am afraid it is," he answered, as he stopped to make a bow, across a thousand cobblestones, to my sister, who was descending from the sky no doubt to attend to her milk-pans, and to know of nothing else; "I am afraid it is, with those who have not got it; and there is a great deal to be said for them. But I should be ashamed if it were so, with those who have obtained it. Moreover, it would be contrary to human nature, for does any man value a thing that is his own? As long as it seems beyond his reach, it is all that is lovely and charming; but the moment he has reduced the chose in action, as the lawyers express it, into possession, all its glory is gone, till he loses it again."

"Very well. There is your chose in action over there." I pointed to the dairy window. "I shall take care to tell her how you mean to estimate her, if ever she becomes your property."

"For Heaven's sake," he cried, while he caught me by the sleeve, as if I were going straightway to denounce him, "don't suppose that such impious doctrines apply to – to the one exception of all human laws."

"I am afraid that they do, and ever so much quicker than they apply to money. But once more, when are you going to try your luck?"

For he had pestered me perpetually about his feelings now, and I had advised him not to be in too much of a hurry. I felt that he was further on than I was, in acquaintance with the lovely object; for he must have had about thirty opportunities, to my three, counting dog-dialogues and everything. But he had not done half so much as I had; and women are wise enough to take one deed deeper to the dear heart, than a hundred thousand words. In fact, it is difficult to get that out again, if done by a man of the right age and manner, and if they were sensitive just then with fright. The thought of this bore me up against friend Jackson's flowing opportunities, and made me an impartial critic of his work.

He looked at me uneasily, when I brought him to this point; and all his experience in "carrying over," and contingoes, and settling days, and whatever else they call it, was of very little use to him with such a ticklish stock.

"Come in here, George," he said; "how am I to talk, as if it were a question of exchange and discount, when I see her bright hair dancing in the sun like that? But let me look. Don't say a word, until she goes away."

"Here are two cart-saddles and a pair of blinkers, and a truss of clover hay. If her young spring-carrots can dance through all that, they must beat Berenice's and Helen's of Troy. Don't be quite a fool, Jack. You ought to know that girls can't abide being stared at with their slops on. They have got a finer word for it – peg something, in the novels. But Grace never gets herself up for a rustic surprise, like those fashionable dairymaids."

"I should hope not indeed! She is nature itself. And all nature is sweetest in the morning. But there is not a spark of poetry about you, George. All that has gone into the female line. What would I give, to see you frightfully in love!"

The piercing glance he gave me completely turned the tables; but I pulled him back so briskly that he came home to himself; for he was got up very bucklish in some Volunteer apparel, on his way to a swell rifle-meeting; and it may be imagined that he longed for Grace to look at him, almost as much as he longed to look at Grace. However, that was no concern of mine. He returned very modestly to his own affairs, and sat down where he could not see the window.

"Has she said anything about me lately? Does she seem to have the least idea? You know how I have tried to keep myself in the background according to your advice, which was most kindly meant. But meanwhile other fellows have been making play. Thank God, we have settled Melladew; I was most afraid of him. Coronet, and sonnets, and a head of curly hair. Foremost of her sex although she is – but, no, what am I talking of? Her mind is far too lofty. When I behold her in her graceful simplicity, like an Angel ministering what they get out of the cows – but allow me to hang that cart-saddle on the other peg, George."

To my vexation there was Grace again, standing in the doorway, with a great spoon in her hand – for a type of the greater one not so very far away – giving a taste of some white stuff to old Sally, who was stooping a hunchified back to save spilling. To see the light poise of the youthful figure, and the merry smile while the white froth was tilted carefully into that ancient mouth, little would you think that within so short a period, all this bright life had missed the grave by half an inch.

"Thank God!" whispered Stoneman. "How little heed we take of their goodness, George! All men in comparison ought to be killed."

"Not a bit of it," I answered. "Perhaps Melladew ought. He couldn't have made more row if he had been kilt, as an Irishman is being always. But perhaps he could not help it; for it is his nature to."

"In any other case I should not have blamed him much, though it is not altogether perhaps the style of Englishmen. But one thing we always forget – how intensely some people feel what to others is a flea-bite. And the ankle is a very nasty place after all, though the shot only just broke the skin, Hopmann says. You heard him claim the shot? Well, now he puts it upon me! However, he is quite welcome, for the tale might go against him with his 'bagients.' Ta, ta! I'm off to enquire for my lord, and I always let him know where I come from. Won't Hopmann make a fine thing out of this! I have lent him a trap and a man, to make the most of it. The man drives like a fury and calls out to everybody, 'Can't stop – very sorry – let them all know – the poor Hearl, he is in such hagony!' Hopmann's new letter-box is full already, and his hat is a hoarding of turnpike tickets."

"What a friend you are! What a friend to have!" I exclaimed, as he jumped upon his highly polished horse, for Grace had tripped away with a little turn of neck, which meant, "Wouldn't you like to come with me?" And Stoneman was hoping to get another glimpse from the saddle over the palings. Ay, and he did so too, as the light in his eyes made clear to me.

A firm friend is likely to be a faithful lover, and a true husband when the gloss is off the love; but whether Grace had any sense of this, or even thought at all about him, was more than I could say at present. Quick of perception as she was, it seemed almost impossible that she could have failed to observe his attention, or it might be called his entire devotion to her. Yet when I tried her with a lot of little dodges, such as a brother must have at command, if he wants to keep time with his sisters, she never turned a hair – as the sporting people say – and she looked me out of countenance sometimes, as if I were inferior to the female race. Knowing what she was, I was unable to suppose that there could be any depth in her beyond my understanding, so I said to myself, "Let her mind the milk. What can a sweet girl desire beyond that?"

To do good, to be kind, to be always cheerful, and to find their happiness in making ours – that was the proper thing, when I was young, for the rising generation of the better sex. Of our faults they must have no knowledge, but be as hard as possible upon their own; and in that particular they had every help from their own sex, whose time was ripening into criticism. Somehow or other they have changed all that, and flung themselves far into the opposite extreme.

Nothing could have made me dwell upon such little things, unless there had been one of them that was all the world to me. And while I was endeavouring to explain my sister to the clearest of my understanding, and blaming her for my failure, there must have been some other purpose behind, which was even more than brotherly. I was able to give very good advice to Jackson Stoneman, and he was quite right in adopting it; but that masterful inaction did not seem to suit my case. What might be going on even now – that was the great point for me to ascertain – in a matter beyond all discretion or cold comfort? Saturday was come; and I had been attending, with a grandeur of benevolence beyond all praise, to a love-affair deeply interesting, but in which you might call me a spectator only. Surely my own state of puzzle was enough, without trying to make dovetails of another pair.

Therefore, as soon as I had paid the men, at three o'clock that afternoon, which was the proper time, I saddled Old Joe, and without a word to Grace, who might think what she liked – let her mind her own affairs – off I set for St. Winifred's valley, where I knew an old shed that would entertain the horse. Let this old fellow get enough to eat, which he might pull from the hayrick, and all time, all friends, any fatherland would be just alike to him.