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Harper's New Monthly Magazine, No. IX.—February, 1851.—Vol. II.
"'He who can despise all things,'" said he, in one of his native proverbs, "'possesses all things!' – if one despises freedom, one is free! This seat is as soft as a sofa! I am not sure," he resumed, soliloquizing, after a pause, "I am not sure that there is not something more witty than manly and philosophical in that national proverb of mine which I quoted to the fanciullo, that there are no handsome prisons! Did not the son of that celebrated Frenchman, surnamed Bras de Fer, write a book not only to prove that adversities are more necessary than prosperities, but that among all adversities a prison is the most pleasant and profitable?17 But is not this condition of mine, voluntarily and experimentally incurred, a type of my life? Is it the first time that I have thrust myself into a hobble? – and if in a hobble of mine own choosing, why should I blame the gods?"
Upon this, Dr. Riccabocca fell into a train of musing so remote from time and place, that in a few minutes he no more remembered that he was in the Parish Stocks, than a lover remembers that flesh is grass, a miser that mammon is perishable, a philosopher that wisdom is vanity. Dr. Riccabocca was in the clouds.
CHAPTER X
The dullest dog that ever wrote a novel (and, entre nous, reader – but let it go no farther – we have a good many dogs among the fraternity that are not Munitos),18 might have seen with half an eye that the Parson's discourse had produced a very genial and humanizing effect upon his audience. When all was over, and the congregation stood up to let Mr. Hazeldean and his family walk first down the aisle, (for that was the custom at Hazeldean,) moistened eyes glanced at the Squire's sun-burned, manly face with a kindness that bespoke revived memory of many a generous benefit and ready service. The head might be wrong now and then – the heart was in the right place, after all. And the lady, leaning on his arm, came in for a large share of that gracious good feeling. True, she now and then gave a little offense when the cottages were not so clean as she fancied they ought to be – and poor folks don't like a liberty taken with their houses any more than the rich do; true, that she was not quite so popular with the women as the Squire was, for, if the husband went too often to the alehouse, she always laid the fault on the wife, and said, "No man would go out of doors for his comforts, if he had a smiling face and a clean hearth at his home;" whereas the Squire maintained the more gallant opinion, that "if Gill was a shrew, it was because Jack did not, as in duty bound, stop her mouth with a kiss!" Still, notwithstanding these more obnoxious notions on her part, and a certain awe inspired by the stiff silk gown and the handsome aquiline nose, it was impossible, especially in the softened tempers of that Sunday afternoon, not to associate the honest, comely, beaming countenance of Mrs. Hazeldean with comfortable recollections of soups, jellies, and wine in sickness, loaves and blankets in winter, cheering words and ready visits in every little distress, and pretexts afforded by improvement in the grounds and gardens (improvements which, as the Squire, who preferred productive labor, justly complained, "would never finish") for little timely jobs of work to some veteran grandsire, who still liked to earn a penny, or some ruddy urchin in a family that "came too fast." Nor was Frank, as he walked a little behind, in the whitest of trowsers and the stiffest of neckcloths – with a look of suppressed roguery in his bright hazel eye, that contrasted his assumed stateliness of mien – without his portion of the silent blessing. Not that he had done any thing yet to deserve it; but we all give youth so large a credit in the future. As for Miss Jemima, her trifling foibles only rose from too soft and feminine a susceptibility, too ivy-like a yearning for some masculine oak, whereon to entwine her tendrils; and so little confined to self was the natural lovingness of her disposition, that she had helped many a village lass to find a husband, by the bribe of a marriage gift from her own privy purse; notwithstanding the assurances with which she accompanied the marriage gift, – viz., that "the bridegroom would turn out like the rest of his ungrateful sex; but that it was a comfort to think that it would be all one in the approaching crash." So that she had her warm partisans, especially among the young; while the slim Captain, on whose arm she rested her forefinger, was at least a civil-spoken gentleman, who had never done any harm, and who would doubtless do a deal of good if he belonged to the parish. Nay, even the fat footman, who came last with the family Prayer-book, had his due share in the general association of neighborly kindness between hall and hamlet. Few were there present to whom he had not extended the right-hand of fellowship, with a full horn of October in the clasp of it: and he was a Hazeldean man, too, born and bred, as two-thirds of the Squire's household (now letting themselves out from their large pew under the gallery) were.
On his part, too, you could see that the Squire was 'moved withal,' and a little humbled moreover. Instead of walking erect, and taking bow and courtesy as matter of course, and of no meaning, he hung his head somewhat, and there was a slight blush on his cheek; and as he glanced upward and round him – shyly, as it were – and his eye met those friendly looks, it returned them with an earnestness that had in it something touching as well as cordial – an eye that said, as well as eye could say, "I don't quite deserve it, I fear, neighbors; but I thank you for your good-will with my whole heart." And so readily was that glance of the eye understood that I think, if that scene had taken place out of doors instead of in the church, there would have been an hurrah as the Squire passed out of sight.
Scarcely had Mr. Hazeldean got well out of the church-yard, ere Mr. Stirn was whispering in his ear. As Stirn whispered the Squire's face grew long, and his color changed. The congregation, now flocking out of the church, exchanged looks with each other; that ominous conjunction between Squire and man chilled back all the effects of the Parson's sermon. The Squire struck his cane violently into the ground. "I would rather you had told me Black Bess had got the glanders. A young gentleman, coming to visit my son, struck and insulted in Hazeldean; a young gentleman – 'sdeath, sir, a relation – his grandmother was a Hazeldean. I do believe Jemima's right, and the world's coming to an end! But Leonard Fairfield in the Stocks! What will the Parson say? and after such a sermon! 'Rich man, respect the poor!' And the good widow too; and poor Mark, who almost died in my arms. Stirn, you have a heart of stone! You confounded, lawless, merciless miscreant, who the deuce gave you the right to imprison man or boy in my parish of Hazeldean without trial, sentence, or warrant? Run and let the boy out before any one sees him: run, or I shall." – The Squire elevated the cane, and his eyes shot fire. Mr. Stirn did not run, but he walked off very fast. The Squire drew back a few paces, and again took his wife's arm. "Just wait a bit for the Parson, while I talk to the congregation. I want to stop 'em all if I can, from going into the village; but how?"
Frank heard, and replied readily —
"Give 'em some beer, sir."
"Beer! on a Sunday! For shame, Frank!" cried Mrs. Hazeldean.
"Hold your tongue, Harry. Thank you, Frank," said the Squire, and his brow grew as clear as the blue sky above him. I doubt if Riccabocca could have got him out of his dilemma with the same ease as Frank had done.
"Halt there, my men – lads and lasses too – there, halt a bit. Mrs. Fairfield, do you hear? – halt! I think his reverence has given us a capital sermon. Go up to the Great House all of you, and drink a glass to his health. Frank, go with them; and tell Spruce to tap one of the casks kept for the haymakers. Harry, [this in a whisper] catch the Parson, and tell him to come to me instantly."
"My dear Hazeldean, what has happened? you are mad."
"Don't bother – do what I tell you."
"But where is the Parson to find you?"
"Where, gad zooks, Mrs. H., at the Stocks to be sure!"
CHAPTER XI
Dr. Riccabocca, awakened out of his reverie by the sound of footsteps – was still so little sensible of the indignity of his position, that he enjoyed exceedingly and with all the malice of his natural humor, the astonishment and stupor manifested by Stirn, when that functionary beheld the extraordinary substitute which fate and philosophy had found for Lenny Fairfield. Instead of the weeping, crushed, broken-hearted captive whom he had reluctantly come to deliver, he stared, speechless and aghast, upon the grotesque but tranquil figure of the Doctor, enjoying his pipe and cooling himself under his umbrella, with a sang-froid that was truly appalling and diabolical. Indeed, considering that Stirn always suspected the Papisher of having had a hand in the whole of that black and midnight business, in which the Stocks had been broken, bunged up, and consigned to perdition, and that the Papisher had the evil reputation of dabbling in the Black Art, the hocus-pocus way in which the Lenny he incarcerated was transformed into the Doctor he found, conjoined with the peculiarly strange, eldritch, and Mephistophelean physiognomy and person of Riccabocca, could not but strike a thrill of superstitious dismay into the breast of the parochial tyrant. While to his first confused and stammered exclamations and interrogatories, Riccabocca replied with so tragic an air, such ominous shakes of the head, such mysterious, equivocating, long-worded sentences, that Stirn every moment felt more and more convinced that the boy had sold himself to the Powers of Darkness; and that he himself, prematurely, and in the flesh, stood face to face with the Arch-Enemy.
Mr. Stirn had not yet recovered his wonted intelligence, which, to do him justice, was usually prompt enough – when the Squire, followed hard by the Parson, arrived at the spot. Indeed, Mrs. Hazeldean's report of the Squire's urgent message, disturbed manner, and most unparalleled invitation to the parishioners, had given wings to Parson Dale's ordinarily slow and sedate movements. And while the Squire, sharing Stirn's amazement, beheld indeed a great pair of feet projecting from the stocks, and saw behind them the grave face of Doctor Riccabocca, under the majestic shade of the umbrella, but not a vestige of the only being his mind could identify with the tenancy of the Stocks, Mr. Dale, catching him by the arm, and panting hard, exclaimed with a petulance he had never before been known to display – except at the whist-table —
"Mr. Hazeldean, Mr. Hazeldean, I am scandalized – I am shocked at you. I can bear a great deal from you, sir, as I ought to do; but to ask my whole congregation, the moment after divine service, to go up and guzzle ale at the Hall, and drink my health, as if a clergyman's sermon had been a speech at a cattle-fair! I am ashamed of you, and of the parish! What on earth has come to you all?"
"That's the very question I wish to Heaven I could answer," groaned the Squire, quite mildly and pathetically – "What on earth has come to us all! Ask Stirn: " (then bursting out) "Stirn, you infernal rascal, don't you hear? – what on earth has come to us all?"
"The Papisher is at the bottom of it, sir," said Stirn, provoked out of all temper. "I does my duty, but I is but a mortal man, arter all."
"A mortal fiddlestick – where's Leonard Fairfield, I say?"
"Him knows best," answered Stirn, retreating mechanically, for safety's sake, behind the Parson, and pointing to Dr. Riccabocca. Hitherto, though both the Squire and Parson had indeed recognized the Italian, they had merely supposed him to be seated on the bank. It never entered into their heads that so respectable and dignified a man could by any possibility be an inmate, compelled or voluntary, of the Parish Stocks. No, not even though, as I before said, the Squire had seen, just under his nose, a very long pair of soles inserted in the aperture – that sight had only confused and bewildered him, unaccompanied as it ought to have been with the trunk and face of Lenny Fairfield. Those soles seemed to him optical delusions, phantoms of the overheated brain; but now, catching hold of Stirn, while the Parson in equal astonishment caught hold of him – the squire faltered out, "Well, this beats cock-fighting! The man's as mad as a March hare, and has taken Dr. Rickeybockey for little Lenny!"
"Perhaps," said the Doctor, breaking silence, with a bland smile, and attempting an inclination of the head as courteous as his position would permit – "perhaps, if it be quite the same to you, before you proceed to explanations – you will just help me out of the Stocks."
The Parson, despite his perplexity and anger, could not repress a smile, as he approached his learned friend, and bent down for the purpose of extricating him.
"Lord love your reverence, you'd better not!" cried Mr. Stirn. "Don't be tempted – he only wants to get you into his claws. I would not go a-near him for all the – "
The speech was interrupted by Dr. Riccabocca himself, who now, thanks to the Parson, had risen into his full height, and half a head taller than all present – even than the tall Squire – approached Mr. Stirn, with a gracious wave of the hand. Mr. Stirn retreated rapidly toward the hedge, amidst the brambles of which he plunged himself incontinently.
"I guess whom you take me for, Mr. Stirn," said the Italian, lifting his hat with his characteristic politeness. "It is certainly a great honor; but you will know better one of these days, when the gentleman in question admits you to a personal interview in another and – a hotter world."
CHAPTER XII
"But how on earth did you get into my new Stocks?" asked the Squire, scratching his head.
"My dear sir, Pliny the elder got into the crater of Mount Etna."
"Did he, and what for?"
"To try what it was like, I suppose," answered Riccabocca.
The Squire burst out a-laughing.
"And so you got into the Stocks to try what it was like. Well, I can't wonder – it is a very handsome pair of Stocks," continued the Squire, with a loving look at the object of his praise. "Nobody need be ashamed of being seen in those Stocks – I should not mind it myself."
"We had better move on," said the Parson drily, "or we shall be having the whole village here presently, gazing on the lord of the manor in the same predicament as that from which we have just extricated the Doctor. Now pray what is the matter with Lenny Fairfield? I can't understand a word of what has passed. You don't mean to say that good Lenny Fairfield (who was absent from church by-the-by) can have done any thing to get into disgrace?"
"Yes, he has though," cried the Squire. "Stirn, I say – Stirn." But Stirn had forced his way through the hedge and vanished. Thus left to his own powers of narrative at second-hand, Mr. Hazeldean now told all he had to communicate: the assault upon Randal Leslie, and the prompt punishment inflicted by Stirn; his own indignation at the affront to his young kinsman, and his good-natured merciful desire to save the culprit from the addition of public humiliation.
The Parson, mollified toward the rude and hasty invention of the beer-drinking, took the Squire by the hand. "Ah, Mr. Hazeldean, forgive me," he said repentantly; "I ought to have known at once that it was only some ebullition of your heart that could stifle your sense of decorum. But this is a sad story about Lenny, brawling and fighting on the Sabbath-day. So unlike him, too – I don't know what to make of it."
"Like or unlike," said the Squire, "it has been a gross insult to young Leslie; and looks all the worse because I and Audley are not just the best friends in the world. I can't think what it is," continued Mr. Hazeldean, musingly, "but it seems that there must be always some association of fighting connected with that prim half-brother of mine. There was I, son of his own mother – who might have been shot through the lungs, only the ball lodged in the shoulder – and now his wife's kinsman – my kinsman, too – grandmother a Hazeldean – a hard-reading sober lad, as I am given to understand, can't set his foot into the quietest parish in the three kingdoms, but what the mildest boy that ever was seen – makes a rush at him like a mad bull. It is Fatality!" cried the Squire solemnly.
"Ancient legend records similar instances of totality in certain houses," observed Riccabocca. "There was the House of Pelops – and Polynices and Eteocles – the sons of Œdipus!"
"Pshaw," said the Parson; "but what's to be done?"
"Done?" said the Squire; "why, reparation must be made to young Leslie. And though I wished to spare Lenny, the young ruffian, a public disgrace – for your sake, Parson Dale, and Mrs. Fairfield's; yet a good caning in private – "
"Stop, sir!" said Riccabocca mildly, "and hear me." The Italian then, with much feeling and considerable tact, pleaded the cause of his poor protégé, and explained how Lenny's error arose only from mistaken zeal for the Squire's service, and in the execution of the orders received from Mr. Stirn.
"That alters the matter," said the Squire, softened: "and all that is necessary now will be for him to make a proper apology to my kinsman."
"Yes, that is just," rejoined the Parson; "but I still don't learn how he got out of the Stocks."
Riccabocca then resumed his tale; and, after confessing his own principal share in Lenny's escape, drew a moving picture of the boy's shame and honest mortification. "Let us march against Philip!" cried the Athenians when they heard Demosthenes —
"Let us go at once and comfort the child!" cried the Parson, before Riccabocca could finish.
With that benevolent intention, all three quickened their pace, and soon arrived at the widow's cottage. But Lenny had caught sight of their approach through the window; and not doubting that, in spite of Riccabocca's intercession, the Parson was come to upbraid, and the Squire to re-imprison, he darted out by the back way, got among the woods, and lay there perdu all the evening. Nay, it was not till after dark that his mother – who sate wringing her hands in the little kitchen, and trying in vain to listen to the Parson and Mrs. Dale, who (after sending in search of the fugitive) had kindly come to console the mother – heard a timid knock at the door and a nervous fumble at the latch. She started up, opened the door, and Lenny sprang to her bosom, and there buried his face, sobbing loud.
"No harm, my boy," said the Parson, tenderly; "you have nothing to fear – all is explained and forgiven."
Lenny looked up, and the veins on his forehead were much swollen. "Sir," said he, sturdily, "I don't want to be forgiven – I ain't done no wrong. And – I've been disgraced – and I won't go to school, never no more."
"Hush, Carry!" said the Parson to his wife, who, with the usual liveliness of her little temper, was about to expostulate. "Good-night, Mrs. Fairfield. I shall come and talk to you to-morrow, Lenny; by that time you will think better of it."
The Parson then conducted his wife home, and went up to the Hall to report Lenny's safe return; for the Squire was very uneasy about him, and had even in person shared the search. As soon as he heard Lenny was safe – "Well," said the Squire, "let him go the first thing in the morning to Rood Hall, to ask Master Leslie's pardon, and all will be right and smooth again."
"A young villain!" cried Frank, with his cheeks the color of scarlet; "to strike a gentleman and an Etonian, who had just been to call on me! But I wonder Randal let him off so well – any other boy in the sixth form would have killed him!"
"Frank," said the Parson, sternly, "if we all had our deserts, what should be done to him who not only lets the sun go down on his own wrath, but strives with uncharitable breath to fan the dying embers of another's?"
The clergyman here turned away from Frank, who bit his lip, and seemed abashed – while even his mother said not a word in his exculpation; for when the Parson did reprove in that stern tone, the majesty of the Hall stood awed before the rebuke of the Church. Catching Riccabocca's inquisitive eye, Mr. Dale drew aside the philosopher, and whispered to him his fears that it would be a very hard matter to induce Lenny to beg Randal Leslie's pardon, and that the proud stomach of the pattern-boy would not digest the Stocks with as much ease as a long regimen of philosophy had enabled the sage to do. This conference Miss Jemima soon interrupted by a direct appeal to the Doctor respecting the number of years (even without any previous and more violent incident) that the world could possibly withstand its own wear and tear.
"Ma'am," said the Doctor, reluctantly summoned away, to look at a passage in some prophetic periodical upon that interesting subject – "ma'am, it is very hard that you should make one remember the end of the world, since, in conversing with you, one's natural temptation is to forget its existence."
Miss Jemima blushed scarlet. Certainly that deceitful, heartless compliment justified all her contempt for the male sex; and yet, such is human blindness, it went far to redeem all mankind in her credulous and too confiding soul.
"He is about to propose," sighed Miss Jemima.
"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he drew on his nightcap, and stepped majestically into the four-posted bed. "I think we shall get that boy for the garden now!"
Thus each spurred his hobby, or drove her car, round the Hazeldean whirligig.
(To be continued.)ON BIRDS, BALLOONS, AND BOLUSES
The bird of Æsculapius ought, certainly, to have been a goose; for "Quack, quack, quack," should be the great motto of medicine. One professor invents an ointment for other people's bad legs, which keeps him comfortably on his own, while another makes a harvest of every body's corn, and a third publishes a pill to smooth the pillow of every invalid, or a bolus to render his bolster bearable. In another phase of quackery, we find specifics for the hair recommended to those who are ready to take any nonsense into their heads, and will boldly stand "the hazard of the dye," in the vain hope that the gray, indicating the twilight or winter time of life, may be exchanged for the dark, brown tints of summer, or autumn at the latest; and we are constantly being invited to "remove our baldness" in advertisements, which we know to be the very essence of balderdash.
Quackery, however, seems to be successful in some cases, for the public will swallow any thing from a puff to a pill, from music to medicine, from a play to a plaster, and there is no doubt that (to paraphrase Macbeth, when speaking of the possibility that Birnam Wood being come to Dunsinane:)
"If Barnum would but come to Drury Lane,"
he would, by his force of quackery, make that pay him which has paid no one else during the last quarter of a century. Such is the spirit of the age, that, reading the accounts from America relative to our own protégée, Jenny Lind, we are disposed to think that the nightingale is being made a goose of in the United States – so vast is the amount of quackery with which her name is just now identified.
As there is good to be got from every evil, we are justified in expecting that the puff and quack malady will cure itself, and if things are likely to mend when they get to the worst, we may congratulate ourselves upon humbug having reached almost the antipodes of sense and propriety. The balloon mania has already nearly exhausted the utmost resources of absurdity; for M. Poitevin on a donkey – how very like putting butter upon bacon! has failed to attract, and three or four women suspended in the air are now necessary to tempt the curiosity of the Parisian public when a balloon ascends from the Hippodrome. We expect to hear next that Poitevin intends going up attached to the balloon by the hair of his head, for he seems quite silly enough to become the victim of such a very foolish attachment. —Punch.
CAROL FOR THE NEW YEAR
BY ALFRED TENNYSON"Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,The flying cloud, the frosty light.The year is dying in the night;Ring out, wild bells, and let him die."Ring out the old, ring in the new,Ring, happy bells, across the snow,The Year is going, let him go;Ring out the false, ring in the true."Ring out the grief that saps the mind,For those that here we see no more;Ring out the feud of rich and poor,Ring in redress to all mankind."Ring out a slowly dying cause,And ancient forms of party strife;Ring in the nobler modes of life,With sweeter manners, purer laws."Ring out the want, the care, the sin,The faithless coldness of the times;Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,But ring the fuller minstrel in."Ring out false pride in place and blood,The civic slander and the spite;Ring in the love of truth and right,Ring in the common love of God."Ring out the shapes of foul disease,Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;Ring out the thousand wars of old,Ring in the thousand years of peace."