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

She broke from the long stride of her trot into a reaching canter, as the moon grew bright between the trees, and the lane was barred with shadow. Pricking nervously her ears at every flaw or rustle, bending her neck to show her beauty, where the light fell clear on the moor–top, then with a snort of challenge plunging into the black of the hollows, yet ready to jump the road and away, if her challenge should be answered; bounding across the water–gulley and looking askance at a fern–shadow; then saying to herself, “It is only the moon, child”, and up the ascent half ashamed of herself; then shaking her bridle with reassurance to think of that mile of great danger flown by, and the mash and the warm stable nearer, and the pleasure of telling that great roan horse how brave she had been in the moonlight —

“Goodness me! Whatʼs that”?

She leaped over road and roadside bank, and into a heavy gorse–bush, and stood there quivering from muzzle to tail in the intensity of terror. If Rufus had not just foreseen her alarm, and gripped her with all his power, he must have lain senseless upon the road, spite of all his rough–riding in India.

“Who–hoa, who–hoa, then, Polly, you little fool, you are killing me! Canʼt you see itʼs only a lady”?

Polly still backed into the bush, and her unlucky rider, with every prickle running into him, could see the whites of her eyes in the moonshine, as the great orbs stood out with horror. Opposite to them, and leaning against a stile which led to a footpath, there stood a maiden dressed in black, with the moonlight sheer upon her face. She took no notice of anything; she had heard no sort of footfall; she did not know of Pollyʼs capers, or the danger she was causing. Her face, with the hunterʼs moon upon it, would have been glorious beauty, but for the broad rims under the eyes, and the spectral paleness. One moment longer she stared at the moon, as if questing for some one gone thither, then turned away with a heavy sigh, and went towards the Coffin Wood.

All this time Rufus Hutton was utterly blind to romance, being scarified in the calf and thighs beyond any human endurance. Polly backed further and further away from the awful vision before her – the wife of the horse–fiend at least – and every fresh swerve sent a new lot of furze–pricks into the peppery legs of Rufus.

“Hang it”! he cried, “here goes; no man with a haʼporth of flesh in him could stand it any longer. Thorn for thorn, Miss Polly”. He dashed his spurs deep into her flanks, the spurs he had only worn for show, and never dared to touch her with. For a moment she trembled, and reared upright in wrath worse than any horror; then away she went like a storm of wind, headlong through trees and bushes. It was all pure luck or Providence that Rufus was not killed. He grasped her neck, and lay flat upon it; he clung with his supple legs around her; he called her his Polly, his darling Polly, and begged her to consider herself. She considered neither herself nor him, but dashed through the wild wood, wilder herself, not knowing light from darkness. Any low beech branch, any scrag holly, even a trail of loose ivy, and man and horse were done for. The lights of more than a million stars flashed before Rufus Hutton, and he made up his mind to die, and wondered how Rosa would take it. Perhaps she would marry again, and rear up another family who knew not the name of Hutton; perhaps she would cry her eyes out. Smack, a young branch took him in the face, though he had one hand before it. “Go it again”! he cried, with the pluck of a man despairing, and then he rolled over and over, and dug for himself a rabbit–hole of sand, and dead leaves, and moss. There he lay on his back, and prayed, and luckily let go the bridle.

The mare had fallen, and grovelled in the rotten ground where the rabbits lived; then she got up and shook herself, and the stirrups struck fire beneath her, and she spread out all her legs, and neighed for some horse to come and help her. She could not go any further; she had vented her soul, and must come to herself, like a lady after hysterics. Presently she sniffed round a bit, and the grass smelled crisp and dewy, and, after the hot corn and musty hay, it was fresher than ice upon brandy. So she looked through the trees, and saw only a squirrel, which did not frighten her at all, because she was used to rats. Then she brought her forelegs well under her stomach, and stretched her long neck downwards, and skimmed the wet blades with her upper lip, and found them perfectly wholesome. Every horse knows what she did then and there, to a great extent, till she had spoiled her relish for supper.

After that, she felt grateful and good, and it repented her of the evil, and she whinnied about for the master who had outraged her feelings so deeply. She found him still insensible, on his back, beneath a beech–tree, with six or seven rabbits, and even a hare, come to see what the matter was. Then Polly, who had got the bit out of her mouth, gave him first a poke with it, and then nuzzled him under the coat–collar, and blew into his whiskers as she did at the chaff in her manger. She was beginning to grieve and get very uneasy, taking care not to step on him, and went round him ever so many times, and whinnied into his ear, when either that, or the dollop of grass half chewed which lay on his countenance, revived the great spirit of Rufus Hutton, and he opened his eyes and looked languidly. He saw two immense black eyes full upon him, tenderly touched by the moonlight, and he felt a wet thing like a sponge poking away at his nostrils.

“Polly”, he said, “oh, Polly dear, how could you serve me so? What will your poor mistress say”?

Polly could neither recriminate nor defend herself; so she only looked at him beseechingly, and what she meant was, “Oh, do get up”.

So Rufus arose, and dusted himself, and kissed Polly for forgiveness, and she, if she had only learned how, would have stooped like a camel before him. He mounted, with two or three groans for his back, and left the mare to her own devices to find the road again. It was very pretty to see in the moonlight how carefully she went with him, not even leaping the small water–courses, but feeling her footing through them. And so they got into the forest–track, some half mile from where they had left it; they saw the gleam of Bull Garnetʼs windows, and knew the straight road to the Hall.

Sir Cradock Nowell did not appear. Of course that was not expected; but kind John Rosedew came up from the parsonage to keep Rufus Hutton company. So the two had all the great dinner–table to themselves entirely; John, as the old friend, sat at the head, and the doctor sat by his right hand. Although there were few men in the world with the depth of mind, and variety, the dainty turns of thought, the lacework infinitely rich of original mind and old reading, which made John Rosedewʼs company a forest for to wander in and be amazed with pleasure; Rufus Hutton, sore and stiff, and aching in the back, thought he had rarely come across so very dry a parson.

John was not inclined to talk: he was thinking of his Cradock, and he had a care of still sharper tooth – what had happened to his Amy? He had come up much against his wishes, only as a duty, on that dreary Saturday night, just that Mr. Hutton, who had been so very kind, might not think himself neglected. John had dined four hours ago, but that made no difference to him, for he seldom knew when he had dined, and when he was expected to do it. Nevertheless he was human, for he loved his bit of supper.

Mr. Rosedew had laboured hard, but vainly, to persuade Sir Cradock Nowell to send some or any message to his luckless son. “No”, he replied, “he did not wish to see him any more, or at any rate not at present; it would be too painful to him. Of course he was sorry for him, and only hoped he was half as sorry for himself”. John Rosedew did not dream as yet of the black idea working even now in the lonely fatherʼs mind, gaining the more on his better heart because he kept it secret. The old man was impatient now even of the old friendʼs company; he wanted to sit alone all day weaving and unravelling some dark skein of evidence, and as yet he was not so possessed of the devil as to cease to feel ashamed of him. “Coarse language”! cries some votary of our self–conscious euphemism. But show me any plainer work of the father of unbelief than want of faith in our fellow–creatures, when we have proved and approved them; want of faith in our own flesh and blood, with no cause for it but the imputed temptation. It shall go hard with poor old Sir Cradock, and none shall gainsay his right to it.

Silence was a state of the air at once uncongenial to Dr. Huttonʼs system and repugnant to all his finest theories of digestion. For lo, how all nature around us protests against the Trappists, and the order of St. Benedict! See how the cattle get together when they have dined in the afternoon, and had their drink out of the river. Donʼt they flip their tails, and snuffle, and grunt at their own fine sentiments, and all the while they are chewing the cud take stock of one another? Donʼt they discuss the asilus and œstrum, the last news of the rinderpest, and the fly called by some the cow–dab, and donʼt they abuse the festuca tribe, and the dyspepsia of the sorrel? Is the thrush mute when he has bolted his worm, or the robin over his spiderʼs eggs?

So Rufus looked through his glass of port, which he took merely as a corrective to the sherry of the morning, cocked one eye first, and then the other, and loosed the golden bands of speech.

“Uncommonly pretty girls, Mr. Rosedew, all about this neighbourhood”.

“Very likely, Dr. Hutton; I see many pleasant faces; but I am no judge of beauty”. He leaned back with an absent air, just as if he knew nothing about it. And all the while he was saying to himself, “Pretty girls indeed! Is there one of them like my Amy”?

“A beautiful girl I saw to–night. But I donʼt wish to see much more beauty in that way. Nearly cost me my life, I know. You are up in the classics so: what is it we used to read at school? – Helene, Helenaus, Helip – something – teterrima belli causa fuit. Upon my word, I havenʼt talked so much Latin and Greek – have another glass of port, just for company; the dry vintage of ’34 canʼt hurt anybody”. John Rosedew took another glass, for his spirits were low, and the wine was good, and the parson felt then that he ought to have more confidence in God. Then he brought his mind to bear on the matter, and listened very attentively while the doctor described, with a rush of warm language and plenteous exaggeration, the fright of his mare at that mournful vision, the vision itself, and the consequences.

“Sir, you must have ridden like a Centaur, or like Alexander. What will Mrs. Hutton say? But are you sure that she leaped an oak–tree”?

“Perfectly certain”, said Rufus, gravely, “clean through the fork of the branches, and the acorns rattled upon my hat, like the hail of the Himalaya”.

“Remarkable! Most remarkable”!

“But you have not told me yet”, continued Dr. Hutton, “although I am sure that you know, who the beautiful young lady is”.

“From your description, and the place, though I have not heard that they are in mourning, I think it must have been Miss Garnet”.

“Miss Garnet! What Miss Garnet? Not Bull Garnetʼs daughter? I never heard that he had one”.

“Yes, he has, and a very nice girl. My Amy knows a little of her. But he does not allow her to visit much, and is most repressive to her. Unwise, in my opinion; not the way to treat a daughter; one should have confidence in her, as I have in my dear child”.

“Oh, you have confidence in Miss Rosedew; and she goes out whenever she likes, I suppose”?

“Of course she does”, said the simple John, wondering at the question; “that is, of course, whenever it is right for her”.

“Of which, I suppose, she herself is the judge”.

“Why, no, not altogether. Her aunt has a voice in the matter always, and a very potent one”.

“And, of course, Miss Rosedew, managed upon such enlightened principles, never attempts to deceive you”?

“Amy! my Amy deceive me”! The rector turned pale at the very idea. “But these questions are surely unusual from a gentleman whom I have known for so very short a time. I am entitled, in turn, to ask your reason for putting them”. Mr. Rosedew, never suspecting indignities, could look very dignified.

“Iʼm in for it now”, thought Rufus Hutton; “what a fool I am! I fancied the old fellow had no nous, except for Latin and Greek”.

Strange to say, the old fellow had nous enough to notice his hesitation. John Rosedew got up from his chair, and stood looking at Rufus Hutton.

“Sir, I will thank you to tell me exactly what you mean about my daughter”.

“Nothing at all, Mr. Rosedew. What do you suppose I should mean”?

“You should mean nothing at all, sir. But I believe that you do mean something. And, please God, I will have it out of you”. Rufus Hutton said afterwards that he had two great frights that evening, and he believed the last was the worst. The parson never dreamed that any man could be afraid of him, except it were a liar, and he looked upon Rufus contemptuously. The man of the world was nothing before the man of truth.

“Mr. Rosedew”, said Rufus, recovering himself, “your conduct is very extraordinary; and (you will excuse my saying it) more violent than becomes a man of your position and character”.

“No violence becomes any man, whatever his position. I am sorry if I have been violent”.

“You have indeed”, said Rufus, pushing his advantage: a generous man would have said, “No, you havenʼt”, at seeing the parsonʼs distress, and so would Rufus have said, if he had happened to be in the right; “so violent, Mr. Rosedew, that I believe you almost frightened me”.

“Dear me”! said John, reflecting, “and he has just leaped an oak–tree! I must have been very bad”.

“Donʼt mention it, my dear sir, I entreat you say no more about it. We all know what a father is”. And Rufus Hutton, who did not yet, but expected to know in some three months, grew very large, and felt himself able to patronise the rector. “Mr. Rosedew, I as well am to blame. I am thoughtless, sir, very thoughtless, or rather I should say too thoughtful; I am too fond of seeing round a corner, which I have always been famous for. Sir, a man who possesses this power, this gift, this – I donʼt know the word for it, but I have no doubt you do – that man is apt to – I mean to – ”

“Knock his head against a wall”? suggested the parson, in all good faith.

“No, you mistake me; I donʼt mean that at all; I mean that a man with this extraordinary foresight, which none can understand except those who are gifted with it, is liable sometimes, is amenable – I mean to – to – ”

“See double. Ah, yes, I can quite understand it”. John Rosedew shut his eyes, and felt up for a disquisition, yet wanted to hear of his daughter.

“No, my dear sir, no. It is something very far from anything so commonplace as that. What I mean is – only I cannot express it, because you interrupt me so – that a man may have this faculty, this insight, this perception, which saves him from taking offence where none whatever is meant, and yet, as it were by some obliquity of the vision, may seem, in some measure, to see the wrong individual”. Here Rufus felt like the dwarf Alypius, when he had stodged Iamblichus.

“That is an interesting question, and reminds me of the state of ἀῤῥεψία as described in the life of Pyrrho by Diogenes Laertius; whose errors, if I may venture to say it, have been made too much of by the great Isaac Casaubon, then scarcely mature of judgment. It will give me the greatest pleasure to go into that question with you. But not just now. I am thrown out so sadly, and my memory fails me” – John Rosedew had fancied this, by–the–by, ever since he was thirty years old – “only tell me one thing, Dr. Hutton, and I am very sorry for my violence; you meant no harm about my daughter”? Here the grey–haired man, with the mighty forehead, opened his clear blue eyes, and looked down upon Rufus beseechingly.

“Upon my honour as a gentleman, I mean no harm whatever. I made the greatest mistake, and I see the mistake I made”.

“Will you tell me, sir, what it was? Just to ease my mind. I am sure that you will”.

“No, I must not tell you now, until I have worked the matter out. You will thank me for not doing so. But I apologise most heartily. I feel extremely uncomfortable. No claret, sir, but the port, if you please. I was famous, in India, for my nerve; but now it seems to be failing me”.

Rufus, as we now perceive, had fully discovered his mistake, and was trying to trace the consequences. The beautiful girl whom he saw in the wood, that evening, with Clayton Nowell, was not our Amy at all, but Mr. Garnetʼs daughter. He knew the face, though changed and white, when it frightened his mare in the moonlight; and, little time as he had to think, it struck him then as very strange that Miss Rosedew should be there. Bull Garnetʼs cottage, on the other hand, was quite handy in the hollow.

CHAPTER XXVI

At this melancholy time, John Rosedew had quite enough to do without any burden of fresh anxieties about his own pet Amy. Nevertheless, that burden was added; not by Dr. Huttonʼs vague questions, although they helped to impose it, but by the fatherʼs own observation of his darlingʼs strange condition. “Can it be”, he asked himself, and often longed to ask her, as he saw only lilies where roses had been, and little hands trembling at breakfast–time, “can it be that this child of mine loved the poor boy Clayton, and is wasting away in sorrow for him? Is that the reason why she will not meet Cradock, nor Cradock meet her, and she trembles at his name? And then that book which Aunt Doxy made her throw on the kitchen fire – very cruel I now see it was of my good sister Eudoxia, though at first I did not think so – that book I know was poor Claytonʼs, for I have seen it in his hand. Well, if it truly is so, there is nothing to be done, except to be unusually kind to her, and trust to time for the cure, and give her plenty of black–currant jam”.

These ideas he imparted to the good Aunt Doxy, who delivered some apophthegms (which John did not want to listen to), but undertook, whatever should happen, to be down upon Amy sharply. She knew all about her tonsils and her uvula, and all that stuff, and she did not want Johnʼs advice, though she had never had a family; and thank God heartily for it!

On Monday, when the funeral came to Nowelhurst churchyard, John Rosedew felt his heart give way, and could not undertake it. At the risk of deeply offending Sir Cradock, whose nerves that day were of iron, he passed the surplice to his curate, Mr. Pell, of Rushford; and begged him, with a sad slow smile, to do the duty for him. Sir Cradock Nowell frowned, and coloured, and then bowed low with an icy look, when he saw the change which had been made, and John Rosedew fall in as a mourner. People said that from that day the old friendship was dissevered.

John, for his part, could not keep his eyes from the nook of the churchyard, where among the yew–trees stood, in the bitterness of anguish, he who had not asked, nor been asked, to attend as mourner. Cradock bowed his head and wept, for now his tears came freely, and prayed the one Almighty Father, who alone has mercy, not to take his misery from him, but to take him from it.

When the mould was cast upon the coffin, black Wena came between peopleʼs legs, gave a cry, and jumped in after it, thinking to retrieve her master, like a stick from the water. She made such a mournful noise in the grave, and whimpered, and put her head down, and wondered why no one said “Wena, dear”, that all the school–girls burst out sobbing – having had apples from Clayton lately – and Octavius Pell, the great cricketer, wanted something soft for his throat.

That evening, when all was over, and the grave heaped snugly up, and it was time to think of other things and begin to wonder at sorrow, John Rosedew went to Sir Cradock Nowell, not only as a fellow–mourner and a friend of ancient days, but as a minister of Christ. It had cost John many struggles; and, what with his sense of worldly favours, schoolday–friendship, delicacy, he could scarce tell what to make of it, till he just went down on his knees and prayed; then the learned man learned his duty.

Sir Cradock turned his head away, as if he did not want him. John held out his hand, and said nothing.

“Mr. Rosedew, I am surprised to see you. And yet, John, this is kind of you”.

John hoped that he only said “Mr. Rosedew”, because the footman was lingering, and he tried not to feel the difference.

“Cradock, you know what I am, as well as I know what you are. Fifty years, my dear fellow, fifty years of friendship”.

“Yes, John, I remember when I was twelve years old, and you fought Sam Cockings for me”.

“And, Cradock, I thrashed him fairly; you know I thrashed him fairly. They said I got his head under the form; but you know it was all a lie. How I do hate lies! I believe it began that day. If so, the dislike is subjective. Perhaps I ought to reconsider it”.

“John, I know nothing in your life which you ought to reconsider, except what you are doing now”.

Sir Cradock Nowell began the combat, because he felt that it must be waged; and perhaps he knew in that beginning that he had the weaker cause.

“Cradock, I am doing nothing which is not my simple duty. When I see those I love in the deepest distress, can I help siding with them”?

“Upon that principle, or want of it, you might espouse, as a duty, the cause of any murderer”.

The old man shuddered, and his voice shook, as he whispered that last word. As yet he had not worked himself up, nor been worked up by others, to the black belief which made the living lost beyond the dead.

“I am sure I donʼt know what I might do”, said John Rosedew, simply, “but what I am doing now is right; and in your heart you know it. Come, Cradock, as an old man now, and one whom God has visited, forgive your poor, your noble son, who never will forgive himself”.

But for one word in that speech, John Rosedew would perhaps have won his cause, and reconciled son and father.

“My noble son indeed, John! A very noble thing he has done. Shall I never hear the last of his nobility? And who ever called my Clayton noble? You have been unfair throughout, John Rosedew, most unfair and blind to the merits of my more loving, more simple–hearted, more truly noble boy, I tell you”.

Mr. Rosedew, at such a time, could not of course contest the point, could not tell the bereaved old man that it was he himself who had been unfair.

“And when”, asked Sir Cradock, getting warmer, “when did you know my poor boy Violet stick up for political opinions of his own at the age of twenty, want to drain tenants’ cottages, and pretend to be better and wiser than his father”?

“And when have you known Cradock do, at any rate, the latter”?

“Ever since he got that scholarship, that Scotland thing at Oxford” – Sir Cradock knew the name well enough, as every Oxford man does – “he has been perfectly insufferable; such arrogance, such conceit, such airs! And he only got it by a trick. Poor Viley ought to have had it”.

John Rosedew tried to control himself, but the gross untruth and injustice of that last accusation were a little too much for him.

“Perhaps, Sir Cradock Nowell, you will allow that I am a competent judge of the relative powers of the two boys, who knew all they did know from me, and from no one else”.

“Of course, I know you are a competent judge, only blinded by partiality”.

John allowed even that to go by.

“Without any question of preference, simply as a lover of literature, I say that Clayton had no chance with him in a Greek examination. In Latin he would have run him close. You know I always said so, even before they went to college. I was surprised, at the time, that they mentioned Clayton even as second to him”.

“And grieved, I dare say, deeply grieved, if the truth were told”!

“It is below me to repel mean little accusations”.

“Come, John Rosedew”, said Sir Cradock, magnanimously and liberally, “I can forgive you for being quarrelsome, even at such a time as this. It always was so, and I suppose it always will be. To–day I am not fit for much, though perhaps you do not know it. Thinking so little of my dead boy, you are surprised that I should grieve for him”.