HUGH HERON, CH. CH." The noble and the gentle heart, and only such, this volume is concerning."
Gwillim's "Heraldry."HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
©xforK ilobcl.
DEDICATED BY PERMISSION TO
H.R.H. PRINCE LEOPOLD, K.G. K.T. &c.
BY THE REV. R. ST. JOHN TYRWHITT
FORMERLY STUDENT AND RHETORIC READER OF CH. CH. OXFORD.
STRAHAN AND COMPANY LIMITED 34, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
All rights reservedCHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.JBrtitcattotu
TO H.R.H. PRINCE LEOPOLD, K.G. K.T. &c. Sir,
You have honoured me by allowing me to dedicate to you these reminiscences of a long life in Oxford. It will always be among my happiest recollections that I was allowed a share of your friendship, while you were in residence among us. And I feel that this little book is now in the hands alike of a kindly critic and a master of the English language; who will be patient of its colloquial style, and who well understands the phases of society through which its story passes.
That these reminiscences of friends grown old, and pleasures long resigned, may afford you, Sir, at least some transient amusement, is the hope of
Your obedient and obliged Servant
RICHARD ST. JOHN TYRWHITT.AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
This little " work of fiction " does not chiefly consist of fiction, as nearly all its incidents, even to detail, are personal recollections. It was written in the intervals of harder work, and was intended as a series of sketches, to be read to particular friends who shared its memories. It has since been honoured by the patronage of Prince Leopold, as an old member of Christ Church, and has consequently acquired an interest to its author which it would not otherwise have possessed.
As it extends over more than thirty years, various anachronisms have been indulged in, which are retained, to exercise the ingenuity or the memory of old Oxford men. The College Tutor will see that my hero is examined on the old system (because his chronicler was); the rowing undergraduate will detect unsoundness in the chronology of sliding-seats; the hunting man will, I trust, excuse the reappearance of the beloved name of Jem Hills. But I hope allviii
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
may recognise a kind of circumstantial accuracy in descriptions; and here and there, there may be a characteristic trait or speech. A slight tribute to the memory of Arthur Hugh Clough is attempted. But no portraiture is intended or executed, and as this is meant to be a book of harmless pleasure, I have only chosen to remember persons admired or beloved.
Two unforgotten friends are not alluded to in the text of this book. I have not the heart to speak, except with deep and deliberate regret, of what all England, beside myself, lost by the death (premature in both cases) of William Schomberg Robert, late Marquis of Lothian, and George Ward Hunt, sometime Chancellor of Her Majesty's Exchequer and Secretary for the Admiralty.
There are occasional allusions in this book to a former one by the same author, called "Our Sketching Club."
RICHARD ST. JOHN TYRWHITT,
Ch. Ch. Oxford.CONTENTS.
PAGE
PROEM .	.	i
CHAPTER I.
LETTER FROM LADY HERTHA HERON TO MRS.
CAWTHORNE	. 8
CHAPTER II.
A GROUSE-DRIVE AND A CONVERSATION .	14
CHAPTER III.
OXFORD .	.	33
CHAPTER IV.
TUTORS AND PUPILS .
50
A*X
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER V.
PAGE
SHADWELL GROVE	. 62
CHAPTER VI.
TALKS AND LETTERS	. .	86
CHAPTER VII.
KIRK OTTERSCOPE .	. Il8
CHAPTER VIII.
A WAYFARER .	. 160
CHAPTER IX.
CONVERSATIONS	. .165
CHAPTER X.
A SERMON AND A SCHOLAR	. 182
CHAPTER XI.
THE CAMBRIDGE MATCH .	. . . 206CONTENTS.	xi
CHAPTER XII.
PAGE
THE WYNGATE BALL	. 225
CHAPTER XIII.
RACE AND CLASS	. 258
CHAPTER XIV.
A NORTHERN MEETING	. 284
CHAPTER XV.
A SOLDIER TIRED.......297
CHAPTER XVI.
BESIDE THE DEER .	.	330
CHAPTER XVII.
CRAIG HOURN . .	.....356
CHAPTER XVIII.
SEHNSUCHT .	......394Xll
CONTENTS.
WADY FEIRAN .
CUP AND LIP .
CHAPTER XIX.
PAGE
•	409
CHAPTER XX.
•	447
CONCLUSION
465HUGH HERON, CH. CH.
AN OXFORD NOVEL.
PROEM.
Charles Cawthorne, A.R.A., sat by his wife Margaret, in a Kensingtongorian mansion belonging to his brother, the representative of Hallamshire in the House of Commons. Some passages in their earlier history are written in another book, but they are to be admitted to this,—while they behave themselves and make themselves generally useful. They had been called the handsomest dark-and-fair couple between Tyne and Humber. Charles had been a curled darling in his day, though rather a big and hard one—his curls were short and crisp, of a good rich yellow, not at all sandy, and darkening to a jolly English brown, hardly deeper than his neck and cheeks. But his forehead was white,
B2
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
and his eyes rather grave and wrinkled already. He said it was all the Ideal, and was glad it kept his weight down.
Margaret, or May, as all men and women called her, reclined in state and comfort on a low broad ottoman at a bay window looking into' Hyde Park ;— at least the window did, for her own eyes were for the present directed inboard, on a young gentleman, aged about a fortnight, who favoured her husband a good deal. She was all white, with her masses of purple-black hair in a pink net, and one long lock allowed over her shoulder in front, " flowing beneath her rose-hued zone." She had the faint pink-coral flush which dark cheeks only wear, and they not always ; and lay outstretched with all her soft, tall stature, like a very proper Cleopatra. She was exclaiming against the doctors' sentence of another ten days' sofa after her patriotic exertions, which had taken more out of her than she considered equitable.
" I thought this kind of thing was always got over in three weeks ? " she said. " I don't wonder strong-minded women won't stand the loss of time and temper."
" The woman wed is not as we," said her husband, with an air of calm superiority. " Lie still, May, and I'll do what I can for you."
"It's a shame to be indoors such a morning.PROEM.
3
There's the Garrow full of salmon up at home, and all t' horses above themselves."
"About how soon do you expect you're going to be put up to ride again ?"
" Well, Julia must want to come here and get rid of us; and Lady Susan, and all the other—old girls —will want so to see baby."
" Horrid little humbug," said her husband, staring at the creature till it squealed. " Is he going to have the mad staggers, May, or is it only taking notice when he kicks like that ? "
" I think he's only trying to excite interest; they get so designing at an early age, don't they, Tittums ?" said the young lady, tickling her offspring under one of the flight of little chins which led from his mouth to his sternum; which made him sneeze; which brought on a series of embraces and epithets, which, as her husband said, made him tremble for the English language.
"What can make me longer getting round than other women ?" resumed May.
" Why, you are longer than most women. Crocodiles take longer in getting round, for the same reason."
"Ah, yes, crocodiles" (with suppressed indignation) ; " now you're more like a great, large, ruminating Dugong—it's an extensive sedentary animal in the
B 24
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
Red Sea, I believe." (Charles was very anxious to preserve his form.) " 1 Mild is my Behemoth, though large his frame,' " quoted May viciously.
" By Jove, I don't believe there's another woman in London who'd say such a good thing for her husband, all to himself," said Charles, looking at his wife as she rather liked to be looked at.
" Is it good ? I only want to know what you're to do with yourself; it isn't exercise, always drawing at South Kensington and philandering with the young ladies. You've only been out twice with the Staggers, since we came, and I don't know if you went over a hurdle then."
" In ten days you'll be in a position to ask somebody. But I've been rowing, and had the gloves on, and played polo, and done some visiting—big places and small—East End, in fact."
" Well, but I don't want to be hunted, or rowed, or district-visited, or hockeyed, or boxed, and you've painted me till I'm tired. You ought to do something to amuse me. Write a novel and read it me. Oh, what an idea !" she continued, rising on her elbow.
" Now you're not to be excited, or you must go to bed again. But come now, they do say every man has one novel in him, at least. Only it can't be all about you. That's what you want, you know."PROEM.
5
" Yes, in moderation : it should be rather domestic, and not all runs and salmon."
" I should have to put a good deal of Oxford into it, unless I talked art for three volumes."
" That seems dubious ; but you've some travelling and mountaineering to tell of."
" My dear May, one may as well describe rides in a 'bus."
" Well now, I really begin to want you to begin," said May, with just the least approach to coaxing in her tone : she said it was one of the bad things one learns from being married. " It will be so nice having it read to me, and I daresay we shall think of more; people won't do anything till you've set them at it."
" Well, about a hero ?"
" A heroine's much nicer."
" Can't do without both, but just let's have a name ; it ought to be a man's name or a place's, unless it's to be all about you, and then May would do well enough."
" Write it about yourself, and call it ' The Affliction of Margaret'—Wordsworth, you know," said his wife; and he pinched her little pink ear and looked at her again, saying something rather pretty for him about having no other chief point of interest, except the Creature.6
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
"Well, a series of scenes—and perhaps two murders and a ghost in the third volume."
" Could we make a hero of Maulger Hawke ? He's too old."
" He'd come in very useful ; but why not the nephew ? Hugh Heron's a good name, and comes out of Walter Scott. I'm almost too fond of him," said May pensively ; " but perhaps he hasn't got into scrapes enough for interest."
" Well, I don't suppose you want to enlarge his experience. But we might start him in Oxford, and have an University story, and see what he'll do in it."
" Let's call Lady Helen Lady Hertha, she won't mind, and it will stimulate the reader."
" Bismilla, Ba Kaloom," was the answer. " I think we can begin with a letter; I like that way of starting things. Now, dear, you must go to sleep, your eyes are getting too large ; we'll have a reading to-morrow."
He was going, but just then two squadrons of the Blues came by from Windsor to their familiar Knights-bridge, and he watched their array wheel into the park, with a painter's eye for steel and gold, men, horses, and movement of the sinuous column. And as they entered, their band began to play " Home, sweet home !" soft and regular, with that delightful burdenPROEM.
7
of the hoofs, which every trooper knows full well. May was - very happy, and not very strong, and she raised her arms and face to her husband as he bent over her. He held her close ; and there came to them the soft cry of the silver cornets in the sweet refrain, like a girl's voice meeting her lover after years. It made their eyes bright, and then dim, and they thanked God. It was settled to press for leave from the doctors, and go back to old Craven again, so as to continue the novel in its native airCHAPTER I.
letter from lady hertha heron to mrs. cawthorne.
My dear May,
I am very uneasy in a general way, like most people, and am only peculiar in having the best friend in the world to read this letter of gossip about troubles. Or rather in one sense it's about a pleasure; we are to get rid of that boy of mine, who is going up to Oxford next week. We have settled everything, and he is as good as gold, and Charles and you have told me all I wanted ; and so now I must talk on to you because I am anxious. There are miscellaneous reasons, but they all come to this—that he is so nice now, and what will he be in a year's time ? Why can't they stay where they are ? I never could see. I always wanted to keep him in short frocks, and riding an Exmoor. That was bad enough, I'm sure, and if anything was wanted to turn me white instead of gray, why that did it; but then I lost himLETTER FROM LADY HERTHA HERON. 9
at school for ever so long, and he came back always bigger and noisier, till now I have had him at home for a whole year. And of course they say it will be the ruin of him to stay and be happy with me here, and frighten me to death in the hunting season as usual, though I ought to be used to it, since I am alive— and he is glad to go, I see it in his eyes. I never was so bold as you, and you know you will be more timid about your boys than for yourself. But I'm not so much afraid about his bones in Oxford, though they say the Marsh Gibbon double timber is very serious ; it is his orthodoxy, my dear May, that's where it is. You know what I mean. We have always looked after him, and he has been a silent sort of creature, and obedient and tender-hearted and quite good to all, male and particularly female. And he has taken religious duties willingly and regularly, just like his meals, and I only hope they are as much a part of him. He hardly seems as if he had ever been tempted, and he must be soon. I don't fear the vices so much—he is sensitive, and has too much of the hunter in him. But I suspect he will find out that he has got intellects too, and where they will carry him I really haven't an idea. One tries to have faith and hope in all things; but the end is so far off, and meanwhile one has to wait upon the event, and it is just like waiting avant Vattaqney -and it makes meIO
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
so anxious that I must write letters. It comforts me to think of you reading them in that oak room with the olive-green and gold, and blue and white china,, and Charles's studies from Tintoret.
Now does he—your husband of course, not Tintoret—know what forms of intellectual temptation are rife at present in our ancient Seats of Learning ? I believe that is the right way to put the question, and I got the greater part of the sentence out of a sermon we heard the other day at Rothercliffe, from a great popular preacher, just come into these parts; a. Mr. Noyes, of Borland Hollow, they called him. Did you ever hear him ? you may have been within a mile or so some time or the other. He certainly was rather loud, and seemed inclined from his northern pulpit to let everybody in Oxford hear something strictly to his disadvantage. I tried to be edified and quite impressed, you know, and talked about it to Hugh,, and he laughed, and gave me a horrid pinch, quite unfilial, and Maulger Hawke is just as bad ; I don't know what is come to that elderly person. He has been wonderfully good and useful for an Oxford Don, and perhaps his taste for sport makes him a better guardian for Hugh, who is really more like a well-educated retriever than anything else. They did aU the accounts right, and settled all the business with Sharpshins the agent, and saw all the tenants, and'LETTER FROM LADY HERTHA HERON, ir
talked to the men and the maids, and settled the stable, and the deer, and the dogs, and the cows, and garden, and pigs, all down to the cocks and hens; and they were quite intense about crops and muck, and now Maulger says he has no more advice to give about Hugh, and that the boy will only hate him if he does, and I'm not to bother the lad—won't I bother my own boy if I like ?—and he must go in for himself,, and every tub must stand upon its own bottom ! I asked him with suppressed emotion if he didn't know that he was quoting the words of Presumption in " The Pilgrim's Progress," and if that was proper for a Reverend Divine and Bursar of a college, and where he expected to go to, and all that; and he only pulled my ear and kissed me, which of course I don't mind at our time of life, but they won't give me an answer, any of them. Of course they can't. Well, oh dear May, he is going up next Thursday, and I suppose he will come back imbued, as the Divine Noyes put it, with Positivism and Agnosticism and Vaticanism and Hellenism. I wonder whether Rheumatism is traceable to the operations of a godless intellect ? I begin to ache all over at night sometimes, and perhaps it may be my mind. Then they all laugh at my questions, as I've told you, and there is the outside advice. Oh, how you would enjoy it! Mrs. Meggott is the most charming flighty12
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
little person in the world, always fasting or flirting, and she wrote the other day to say that a Mr. Ignition of St Isis's is thought to be distinguished for aptitude in the treatment of souls, and wouldn't it be well that Hugh should be placed under him as a director ? I don't know why, but first I answered in general terms that we thought well of Mr. Dayrell, his college tutor, because he is a good horseman, and likely to understand him. Then I found I was rather angry, and concluded not to answer her letter for awhile—and I told those two. Hugh looked rather savage for a moment, and seemed as if he would have said something rough, which he seldom does; but he only asked what Maulger thought. And he put on the regular genteel intellectual simper—so absurd with his gray whiskers—and said sweetly that he apprehended it would be unfair on the poor if all the rich were to put on private coaches for the kingdom of heaven ; indeed, he objected to that system for Oxford scholarships. I declare they set each other on to say things, and then they say I am just as bad, when, you know, I never made or understood a pleasantry in my life ; I should hope we were taught much better in those days. I believe you and your husband are at the bottom of it; at least whenever you are here we are very light-minded and frivolous, and I heard the men laugh at dinner last time, evenLETTER FROM LADY HERTHA HERON. 13
the butler. What a long letter ; it has done me good to chatter to you even on paper, and now I feel quite in high spirits.
M. has just gone up to dress, in another humour this time. I told him I was writing to you on the old matter; and he said 'Anything you like to her\ but now, my dear Hertha, say your prayers for him, and I will too : that's best of all now,'—and he stroked my head down with an air of authority, and yet in a tender sort of way, and it was nice: and so this leaves yours truly in a comfortable frame of mind, which I hope it may find you the same, and so no more at present from ever your own to command,
H. H.CHAPTER II.
A GROUSE-DRIVE AND A CONVERSATION.
I DO not remember ever seeing a description of a Yorkshire grouse-drive in a novel or elsewhere. Perhaps most readers think such a thing not worth ■describing. When you have not seen the reality— and it is only to be seen in one county—it is natural to take a disparaging view of it, as only a new form ■of battueing. As an old offender, I can only say that in those parts you can't get birds any other way, that wild grouse are very different things from tame pheasants, and the moors very unlike home coverts. Also there are drives and drives. If you get what you can over your dogs first—if you will consent not to have too many guns or beaters, and not give up all to that most vulgar idolatry of modern sport, the getting a great lot anyhow—if you give the birds a chance, besides the large resources of their own speed and cunning—and if you make everybody kill as dead as he can—why then you will have better fun, if yourA DRIVE AND A CONVERSATION. 15
bag does fall short of the tale of the great slaughters. Then, too, one late autumn or winter drive, with the birds you get at it, is worth two of the early killings. And this was the nature of the gathering on which our curtain rises. Description dispenses with verbs in modern English, but I cannot give the usual inventory of features of scenery and character without a moderate use of that part of speech, which may be allowed.
Imagine long sweeps of moor, still deep purple and crimson with dying flowers, with here and there a peep away down into the high green pastures of a Yorkshire dale ; vistas of steep quiet fields divided by gnarled thorns and weathered gray walls. It is a charm of the Dales that they are what one calls an " old " and yet a wild country. I suppose by an old country we mean something like an old estate. I do not know why England should be an old country and America a new one. The ancient rivers and everlasting hills are much the same age in both. It is like the tenure of a property: in America a new and mighty tenant comes in and orders all the land his own way : in Yorkshire you have assurance of traditional ways, and places where the same race have ploughed and sown a little, and followed the herd a great deal, and felled deer and grouse as they could ; from times of foray and raid to these days ofi6
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
chief and inferior constables. Nobody can tell the age of old English enclosures ; and the gray lichen and yellow mosses of Yorkshire walls seem to go on century by century, toning down colour and accumulating minute beauty; while the sidelong steps left in the building of them, determine ancient paths across silent fields, which priest and layman, lover and monk, shepherd, hunter, lady, and milkmaid, have trodden, life after life. How different, now, from new posts and rails! Every hunting man will acknowledge their total want of sympathy, and they really keep one out of a place instead of inviting one across it; but above, there were the high moors, rising to one or two limestone peaks in the distance, fitfully whitened by rapid snow-scuds. It was a world of russet and gold and purple-gray, and the solemn crimsons of dead heather, very far away to a distance of sapphire; or of heavy Tyrian, according to play of light and shade; with successive disappearances of everything beneath the march of great clouds, black and heavy with sleet, which seemed to drown the hills in ink, and leave them touched with silver—flying past with glooms and fresh dawns of light, and flickering odds and ends of shattered rainbows. Across the foreground of our picture ran one of those strange volcanic-looking fissures of the high moors, where either thunderbolt or waterspout hasA DRIVE AND A CONVERSATION. 17
cloven bodily through twenty feet of peat moss down to the limestone rock, and its imprisoned waters have found their way to some lower and broader channel. It was a sudden black gulf, yawning wide in the thick heather blossom; with sides fantastically hewn in every deep tint of green and purple, and a clear stream of brown water trickling on slowly at bottom, to feed the Garrow with " the filtered tribute of the rough moorland." The " butts " or waiting-places for the grouse-drive were hollowed in its banks, each marked by a small revetement of peat in front; and at its opening in the lower glen were about twenty as characteristic-looking individuals as are generally to be found together on any October day anywhere. These were Lord Wharfedale and shooting-party ; with the drivers, his tenants; the latter just starting for their long circuit to the other side of that moor, the former preparing to walk or creep up the deep " gill " to their places, to have the birds " put over " them for the first after-luncheon drive. Beecroft, the keeper, with a couple of sage retrievers in hand, was exhorting his keen little army of markers to keep a good line, and send the flank men up at last, and not to make a row unless birds turned back over them ; while the lord of the land, after a great chaff with them in their native tongue, hard to be understanded of Southerners, began conjuring the guns not to pepper
ci8
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
each other instead of the grouse, emphasizing his entreaties by the fact that Hugh Heron had already put " two corns of No. 5 " into the Rev. Maulger Hawke's aquiline nose. The 'offender, hardened for one so young, as his victim observed, pleaded that he had killed the bird, and the Parient (he always called his guardian by that name) had picked it up : so, he said, they were quite even. The injured ecclesiastic had just got the shot out, and eaten a tremendous luncheon to supply the slight loss of blood incident to that operation ; he said it put his monkey up rather, and might improve his shooting. He wouldn't give up the bird, which he said might have gone ever so far ; and so the guns walked and crept slowly to their places, and'lit their pipes, pending the circuit of the drivers, and the arrival of the game down-wind.
It is a mciuvais quart d'heure before they come. One or two birds are sure to get up before the drivers on their way to the far end of the beat, and that causes excitement and a premature shot or two. Then there is a long pause, during which guns are opened and shut, cartridges are ranged on the low fronts of the butts, and everybody feels eager and nervous. Then two or three specks like starlings appear on the horizon here and there; then something whizzes by between you and the next man before you can get your gun up—he is a wickedA DRIVE AND A CONVERSATION.
skimming old cock—but that deadly young Wharfe-dale has turned round to him—bang! and he rolls head over heels, luckily on a bare-burnt space. Firing right and left—"Look out, sir, they're comin' up at you!"—straight and low, with the speed of all the winds. You have judged your forty yards in front; now meet the first fair at that, and he comes dead to your feet just in time for you to pitch up your gun and catch the second full in the breast—he's down behind you in the gill, passive, with dropped head and wings, long before he touches ground. That is the beauty of taking them coming, one shot in the head settles all in a second ; it is very humane, and you know where they are, wh6n it comes to picking up. A brief pause, and another old bird comes askew, and you can't fire well ahead of him for fear of the next man. Turn right round, and give it him well ahead in passing— up go his white boots and breeches, and he turns a neat somerset just t' other side. "Eh, sir, look 't yon ;" and about a hundred rush over at once, while your gun's open. Roar of small artillery all along the line, to which you add your two belated barrels, without any injury to any fellow-creature, human or volatile. Heron, on the other side of you, has lost his head too, though he got all his birds at first. Old Maulger goes on with minute-guns, which generally realise something, whether he "welcomes the coming "
c 220
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
grouse in front or " speeds him parting " to the rearward. He don't care about many, but dead they shall be. The drivers are just coming in sight, their flankers well in front to keep birds in towards the butts. There's a good bit of shooting yet, and none of the easiest, for a small lot of old birds gets up, who skim down the wind obliquely, so as to cross the line without coming straight at anybody, and a strong body follows in their wake, best pace. Now twice running has the old one shot clean behind his coming bird, and not touched a feather—how they follow each other—he swings his muzzle well in front of the next—and that victim is followed by two more, who lie almost on each other.
Now there are ever so many grouse alighting about a hundred and fifty yards in front. They will all come over like a whirlwind together, or else—such is the perfidious nature of the bird, and so poor his opinion of human nature—they will turn and fly right away back, with a disregard as perfect as the wild ass's to the crying of all the drivers, who now behave like Yorkshiremen possessed. Yet still they come, aslant and skimming, and a hundred miles an hour— and, sport or no sport, it is seen now who can shoot and who cannot. Hugh fires point-blank at a bird at thirty yards, who doesn't seem to care about it anyways, but comes at him stone-dead in the air, borneA DRIVE AND A CONVERSATION.
by his reft life and the wind in his wings ; he knocks his slayer's hat off, and is ultimately found in it at the bottom of the gill beyond. One more great rush of wings ; but many do not bear their owners over, for the men all hold straight now, and they fall as the leaves fall. Then the drivers come right in, gathering up the dead as they walk, and the guns come out of their holes and wonder where all their birds are. Wharfedale's setters are busy, and keeper, under-keeper, and their dogs, pass from gun to gun ferreting out the fallen in deep heather. But the cleft behind has received many, who are found in its hollows, and the ground has been burnt in front of the butts ; so but few. birds are lost, and the claims of the guns, who have kept count of their dead, as well as the process of killing will allow, are pretty well satisfied.
It certainly is not equal to ranging the moor oneself with dogs; but that in modern Yorkshire is simply unavailing after the first fortnight of the season. The wide level moors enable the old birds to see dogs at work at any distance, and they quite understand what it means, so that it comes to a choice between getting a great many grouse or none at all. And this must be added, that by driving you secure your share of old and barren birds, the biggest and wariest of their race, who rise at once before the22
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
beaters, and are the first to fall at the butts, while men are steady. Left till next season they would be absolute pests to the young or breeding grouse, and the worst of vermin. Slain in time, they are the most beautiful and delightful birds that ever flew, swiftest of the swift, and gamest of all game.
Another less productive drive followed, and a beat in line homewards across the moor—then they had a final battue at a long boundary wall. At last about seventy brace of dead were counted out, which, with eighty more before lunch, made a fair day's sport for seven guns. There is something melancholy about the long line of beautiful creatures, so passive and quiet, so soft and downy, plumed to their very claws, and glowing in all tints of brown, crimson, and purple, with coquettish touches of pure white, fringing and speckling breasts, wings, and legs. Et ils ont vn lever Vaurore. Ah dear, the strong pinions and gamecock bodies, the scarlet wattles and eyelids, the powerful beaks and hawk-like heads, with bright eyes half-veiled and sad, or sealed for ever ! Oh beauties, were we so hard, and must we eat you, and are you no good now except for that ? At all events your life was pleasant and your death was quick—forgive— and agree with us at last. Lie down at rest, like the lamb inside the lion.
There was a general chat with the drivers, and allA DRIVE AND A CONVERSATION. 23
the sherry-flasks and cigar-cases were emptied, until the local news (principally about beasts, cattle and feathered fowls) was quite exhausted. All the horses were brought out of various farm-stables where they had sojourned during the day. Hugh and old Hawke had been staying some days at Ravensgill Towers-with Lord Wharfedale, and their baggage had been sent home to Kirk Otterscope, the younger man's abode. The pair said farewell at last, mounted and turned homewards by a well-known track, with a last half-hour of wild sunset to show them their rough path. For a time they picked their way almost in silence/ making for remembered points; but ere long they struck on a familiar cattle-road, and a conversation, to which both had more ■ or less looked forward, began on Hugh's forthcoming change. •
" You'll be in old Ch. Ch. this day week," said the. senior, throwing away the end of a cigarette, and: turning to his ward after an interval of brown study; wheeling round in his saddle with the air of a man about to take up his parable.
"Yes, how jolly;" and Telemachus looked up at his mentor kindly enough, but with some indications of preparing for a short address, as lads do, by preoccupying his thoughts with some other subject, totally unconnected with the tenor of the expected observations.24
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
" Not going to worry you if I know it; but your mother's anxious about you."
" They frequently'are," said Hugh, with a tolerable imitation of Artemus Ward. " But I'm going to do just what she tells me anyhow ; now do tell me about it all before I go, uncle."
" Only uncle-in-law, but I care for you, you know; and the fact is, Lady Hertha wants you to mind what I say just now, and—in fact I don't know what to say. At all events I must now—it's about spiritual matters, and what you believe. You know it's hard to talk about those things practically, because they both are and are not every-day matters."
Hugh was half-frightened, but only half; he was not a lad to refuse kind words, and had little dread of his elders, because he had been taught some respect for them. He answered quickly : "Do say anything to me now—a child might play with me, Fm so tired," he was going to add ; but he saw a sort of trouble on the dark red face so near him, and only said something about wanting good advice.
"Well, dear boy, I'm not sufficient for these things, and never was. But tell me, you do believe I care much—everything—about them ? If I didn't I should not say so now, or talk at all. And don't be offended anyway; it's so hard to say things that have to beA DRIVE AND A CONVERSATION. 25
said. Look, you are really a Christian, in holding by the Creeds, are you not ?"
" Why, what else ? Why on earth do you ask,unky ?"
" Because so many about your age are avowedly nothing of the kind; and we don't want that sort to get hold of you in Oxford."
" I don't know why they should, I'm sure I don't want to change, never thought of it." Then he felt in a moment that his kinsman was relieved, and said : " Please tell me what you think about Oxford, if that's the matter."
" Well, you see, I know just enough about the place to be aware I know very little of the lads you'll be with ; and so much depends on them, and particularly on how you hit it off with Dayrell. He's a good tutor for your work, and very anxious for your good, but he's many lads to look after; and it vexes him when he cannot go on with the old tutorial confidence—that half-friendship, half-discipline that they used to aim at. There's mighty little discipline now, and a man goes to lectures all over the University; —he's nothing to his tutor; it used to touch me on the raw before I left the House and was Bursar of St. Ives's."
" I liked the look of him, I'm sure," said Hugh ; " but about discipline, he said I might hunt twice a week."2 6
HUGH HERON, Cir. Ch.
" It's not that; it's other things. There's morning chapel, they make it optional in many places, and I hope you won't take it so."
" Never meant to, on my honour ; when it's put before one, one ought."
" Well, it's a great comfort to me, do you know. Nobody ever mistrusted you, but you've never been tried, or not as you will be there. You've always been fine-mouthed and handy, but now you're to be turned loose; and can you do as well with your liberty as you did when you had to obey orders at school ?"
" Why, isn't Mamma satisfied ? "
"Yes, but that's why she wants you to go on as you are, and knows that you must change with years ; and it only mustn't be in the great matter. Now you don't think I'm only a conventional old duffer, or any expression of that sort, because I shoot grouse with you, and look after the land ?"
" Gammon, uncle."
" I mentioned chapel, you see, because it's an easy sort of test. You need not go, in fact. Now, if you begin by choosing a laxity, why you grow more lax, and then you find out how reasonable it is to do nothing at all ; and see how many distinguished intellects of your own age do nothing, and despise ecclesiasticism, worn-out creeds, and that sort of thing. There never was a time whenA DRIVE AND A CONVERSATION. 27
fellows slipped so easily from mere failure of duty to reasoning defiance of duty to God and man. And that's why we want you to be a little bit strict at first. Nothing like showing what you mean, without challenging anybody. You know the man in Bunyan who had a stout countenance, and said ' Set down my name, sir ?' Pve seen you start in a run looking like that; and I'd like to see you start in life so, next Saturday morning that ever is."
" Well, all right," said Hugh pensively ; " but the good books and things seem to say one ought to go wrong, somehow—to see what it's like, you know. Really," he went on, waxing confidential as he hit on a bit of self-analysis, and looking very like his mother, " one keeps expecting symptoms of inquiry and materialism, and all that sort of thing, till one's quite uncomfortable because they don't come. Look at Kingsley's books—and even Miss Yonge's—they make good young men go through I don't know what doubts, and I haven't begun yet."
" You want to go and get done with your fighting, and come home to tea. But it isn't that way. Look now, you talk of novels ; the really awkward thing is that Miss Yonge is about the only notable person left in that way, who makes Christianity a real living motive of her characters; and that is one reason they are really like life. She don't leave Hamlet28
HUGH HERON, CH. Cii.
out of the play. But with others who describe modern life the subject is an awkward one, and they don't attempt Christian heroes, not knowing well if there can be any such thing. That is what will try you, having to live by rules which others will not recognise;—unless you join a particular party, under this or that leader—and One is your leader."
" Then what do you really want me to do in the spiritual way ?"
" Just the duties that lie near, and offer themselves ; look out for duty, and don't go in search of difficulty ; it will come when you see the way men go on, living clever brilliant lives without a creed, and, for aught I know, good moral ones too. And then, again, what's worse, you'll see our side go wrong, and do absurd things ; some you'll think too ascetic, and some too silky, and some fussy and overbearing. You can't help being bewildered with various Church views and machinery in Oxford ; why it's like a religious engine-room—there is a horrible row, and you see more of the wheels than of the work."
" Never heard that before," said Hugh, laughing low and long after his wont, as he pondered over a new fancy, and was more and more tickled.
" Well, there's no harm in it, and it's ad rem. You'll feel moved to new strictnesses and practices,A DRIVE AND A CONVERSATION. 29
perhaps ; well, all I have to say is, Don't do anything only because others do ; and, still less, because they don't. I mistrust emulation ; and it is just the worst thing in the world to do religious things in a party way. But if you like to try confessing to Mr. Ignition, or this or that other great light, why do so, and don't let's quarrel about it." And Maulger's heart smote him, for he had made a great concession in his own mind, and dreaded its acceptance as a matter of course. But Hugh's nostril opened wide and curled angrily at the notion.
" I'll tell you anything," he said ; " but that letter was infernal."
" Don't use such words, certainly not about a lady's note—but still, I shall be always at hand, and so will Dayrell. Direction, not dictation's his way. You've done well so far, with great advantages; they've fought round you in the battle, and you've been safe like Eachin Maclan ; your mother and almost all the people round you, have shown you a form of the Faith in practice, and tried to teach it you. Now you will see other varieties, and do remember they are or should be all one. It's very like Corinth, you see."
" Paul, Apollos, and Cephas, I suppose
" Yes, and Gallio, who cares for nothing, the most dogmatic of the lot."3°
HUGH HERON, Ch. Ch.
"I don't think I shall take kindly to him," said Hugh, spreading his nostril again like a stag feeling the wind, and looking rather queer and vicious, to his observant elder's delight.
" I've no more to say, dear." The Bursar had an odd feminine way of using the adjective to people he was very fond of; and, as Lady Hertha said, it sounded rather absurd through his heavy gray beard; but many had heard it with little inclination to laugh. " New thoughts, and wishes, and ideals of what's best, must come to you; I think your mind's more active than it seems. But don't be shaken, and don't think us alienated, if you want to do or be something we are not I hope we shall hold together always, testudine et facie--"
" Where did you get that, uncle ? Rank and file it means, I suppose ?"
" I don't know, but it's good Latin, and was one of the last words of Kant. I found it in De Quincey, who seems to have been the only man who ever had a poetical idea of the old Roman soldiering ; I hope you'll study it a little with your history. And there's Little-go at the end of this term, you know—don't drop your hind-legs in there."
" Merton said I was quite fit, last week."
" Yes, but there's time to forget. You ought to have a deal of fun and be very happy, and so youA DRIVE AND A CONVERSATION. 31
will, if you don't insist on everything at once. Don't enjoy against time, and try to cram pleasures into a day, or a term or year ; no such horrid mistake as what they call ' having your fling ' at Oxford. It means taking all the sweetness out of youth in twelve terms—if not worse. That's good advice enough for a spell, and here's your outer lodge. Things must be called yours, now. Why, there's your mother."
" Well, what sort of a day ?" said Lady Hertha, looking very grand in dark brown homespun, with a brown deerstalker's hat, and a single yellow Dijon last rose of summer in her breast; meeting her son's eyes, exactly like her own in size, brown-blackness,, long lashes, and melting quality.
" Capital; one hundred and fifty brace picked up,, and Hugh and I made good practice."
" How many, each of you ?"
" I got twenty brace and Hugh twenty-three, and. he shot me in the nose besides."
"What an unnatural nephew; just like George Barnwell, I declare. I only see one speck and the skin off the bridge of it, Maulger—don't squint now— there's nothing noticeable—let me put on something."
"Not a bit, dear, let it alone. We're rather late, but we rode slow."
"And we had a good talk," said Hugh, as he32
HUGH HERON, CH. Cii.
alighted. And he took his mother off her feet into his arms, grand as she was, and held her close and looked into her eyes, so that they grew dim with the thought of him, and of his dead father. He said no more, but she knew that he had heard something not a little to her and his advantage, and sent him off southward with spirits almost as high as his own.CHAPTER III.
OXFORD.
" How do, Barraclough ? Horses all right ?"
These were the remarkable words with which Hugh Heron "inaugurated" his first appearance at Oxford Station as a resident undergraduate. They were addressed to an old groom, long, gray, and light; who looked like a preliminary anatomical sketch for the rather Achillean form of his master.
" Yes, Master Hugh, they be fit as fiddles, and you're 'bout that too, ar hope. You'll happen not be able to get to Weston Green to-morrow ? "
" Can't go early, anyhow. I've all our Dons to call on. Must do everything right, like a good boy, or what will you say ? "
" Ar'll have Mayflower saddled and turned round at ten, whatever. Yon's our luggage, lad, two portmantys, two bags, and a packin'-case—ar've got your goon and the coats. Stables,, is nigh-hand
D34
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
Tom Gate, Master Hugh—you're best come and see them now."
It was a regular Oxford fine day in the Autumn Term—that is to say, there had been sun and early frost, which had given way to soft warm wind, with promise of rain to-morrow; but just now it was stripping the many-coloured groves, and driving the flying gold of the ruined woodlands about the streets. Appalling ruffians drove despairing horses to and fro in pestiferous cabs, strictly in accordance with the regulations of an enlightened Town Council, over sex, age, and respectability, without mercy. All the men were coming up at once, as all the colleges assembled next morning. Most of the Dons were already settled in rooms, and came out in pairs for quiet constitutionals in the midst of the hurlyburly. They had all been to the ends of the earth, of course. There were piles of luggage at college-gates, and loud recognitions everywhere. Hugh did not remember much of the place ; he had only seen it when he matriculated, and his memory was burdened by the examination of that day, which had procured him an exhibition he didn't want; or, perhaps, it was obscured by the extensive supper-party which had followed his literary triumph. He did not think very much of Oxford consequently, till he got to Carfax and the top of St. Aldate's, andOXFORD.
35
got a look down High Street, and then towards Christ Church. The bustle was just like London, but so far the place looked like nothing more than an old country town with some unusual hubbub going on —it might have been a school-board election for aught he knew. But he rattled down to the gray-old tower and its wide portal—it was all golden above with sunset and alive with starlings, and below was in a whirl of brilliant yellow leaves drifted from the meadow—and he thought it a jolly old place, quite equal to anything he.was used to; but he drove on to the stables just below, where his horses had been established for some days. They were two: Catamount, son of Catapult, and a large brown Irish mare, whom Lady Hertha had called Mayflower, forbidding her original male title of Spalpeen. The horse's name Hugh got out of Whyte Melville; his mother wouldn't let him be called Calcraft, as had been intended, from the fact of his having nearly succeeded in breaking his master's and his groom's neck in the course of his education. He was a dark chestnut colt, nearly sixteen hands, but so long and deep a horse as to appear somewhat lower. He was violent, but not vicious, quite pleasant to ride after the first quarter of an hour, and in every way calculated to deliver a heavy weight at the required point, with combined punctuality, despatch, and security;
D 236
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
Bob Barraclough had already found the higher circles of Oxford groomhood open to him, from his connection with two such horses ; but at present he did not encourage new acquaintances, and confined himself to the society of his subordinate boy, a fox-terrier, and Catamount's own personal body-cat, who had come all the way from Holderness in a tin bucket.
It did not take Hugh long to visit his large playmates, who rubbed noses against him, and laid back their ears, and ate carrot, and whinnied like killing a pig. As he came out of the yard, which formed part of Ch. Ch. stables, he fell in with two dismounting Dons, who greeted him to his immediate alarm and subsequent pleasure.
" Why, Mr. Heron, is that you here already ?" said Charley Combermere, Student and Rhetoric Reader of Ch. Ch., who prided himself on "never forgetting the lads' faces." " Going to lodge here regularly ? You've got rooms in college, you know, and you'll have to get leave if you mean to sleep in the hayloft. By-the-way, here's your tutor. Dayrell, receive your interesting charge;" and the Rhetorician shook hands vigorously, and strode away in his long napoleons like a clerical Macheath, musical and mercurial.
" I haven't forgotten you, Mr. Heron," saidOXFORD.
37
Dayrell, "though I didn't recognise you at the moment—that's our friend's specialty; perhaps I didn't brand you properly ; one ought to mark one's pupils in the ear or somewhere when they matriculate; —don't see that I have nicked your person anywhere. But I've heard of you, and I'm glad you're my pupil. I do hope you'll make me of use. Your rooms are in New Buildings, you know. Bolton has made you his tenant for this term, and perhaps another—you're very fortunate. Will you come to me in half-an-hour or so before hall, if you want to ask me anything ? and call on the Dean to-morrow ? and on me again on Monday about lectures ? Your mother, Lady Hertha, I hope she's quite well—she's written me a capital letter about you, and I want to tell you one or two things. That your horse coming in ? I've been admiring him for a week ; see you again directly."
Hugh went back to Tom Gate with his luggage, and a little feeling of pleasure at finding somebody to welcome him, as a shade of strangeness had fallen on him in the new place ;—he felt instinctively that he had exchanged good first impressions. As he followed his traps through the quadrangle, escorted by the renowned One-Arm (who already knew his name, face, " place " in the country, number of horses he kept, and much more), he indulged in speculation about his pastors and masters, according to his wonb38
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
which was both active and pensive, or even, dreamy.
" Both the Dons seemed younger, or younger-looking, than he had expected. Rather hard to look at, Dayrell and his horse; and a good cob of the other man's. Was either of them in old Maulger's style ? Dayrell might grow like him, little bit more of a Don now; but then he's not one's uncle. Capital eye he had, racy and keen, and half absent, I think ; perhaps a bit of reckless, too. Good seat, seemingly; horse something like Catamount behind, and rare sloping shoulders. Curious how those two parsons look sporting and proper at the same time. Thank you, that's the last of my things—college messenger, eh ?' Mr.— One-Arm, did you say? Don't know yourself by any other name ? Now, I'll give you another shilling if you'll tell me your real one ? Couldn't do it—not got none to speak of? Well, good evening. Key, do you want it, Bob ? They don't dress for dinner here ;. give me a black cutaway and waistcoat, these bags will do. That's all I want, thanks. Peculiar people regular old Oxford men are, clerical, and not sacerdotal ; wonder where I got that now ? Did mamma say it ? Should like to see her letter to Dayrell ; wonder if he'd ever show it me ? Whew ! what cold water; frosty to-morrow, perhaps. Hounds will be late at Weston Green, may have a gallop " (plunge andOXFORD.
39
gasp) ; " well, these are jolly rooms " (violent application of towel and subsequent hair-brushes). " Those two blokes are for making much of me, I think ; black eyes, Dayrell's, all wrinkle and twinkle. Missis seems to believe in him; old High Church cut, 'perhaps ; rather young himself though. Black tie for dinner, I think—awfully tanned I am to be sure, look just like a ' fust' whip. Well, perhaps there is a dash of swell somewhere; bah, I wish there weren't any looking-glasses. Rather awful somehow to see oneself looking at oneself. Yoiire the party that is so like a young bear, all troubles to come; is you ? Mind what you're at; curious how the uncle understood my way of day-dreaming, telling me always to think of that when I take a look at myself. Never will shave if I know it. How shall I look when I'm dead ?"
Here Hugh shut his eyes, but obtained no answer that way from his mirror. So he gave it up, and went off to DayrelFs large rooms in Tom ; where he found him just ready for Hall, answering letters and chatting with two big undergraduates, one in the then nearly exploded gentleman-commoner's gown. They sat together on a horsehair sofa by the fire, exactly as if at lecture, but grinned at their tutor, and answered much at ease.
" Come in. Oh, Mr. Heron ; I was talking about4°
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
you to Sir Francis Roundell here. You've met in the north, I'm sure."
" Several times at York, and I've seen Heron out hunting," said the mighty baronet. " Chipchase knows him too, don't you, old man ?"
"Yes, I've been at Otterscope two or three times. I'm very glad you've come here, Heron; shouldn't have liked to have you rowing against us in the B. N. C. boat—we should have quite detested each other."
"That would hardly do at home," said Hugh, shaking hands eagerly with both.
Meanwhile the Censor had rapidly digested his last note and pitched it into the ample rubbish-basket which yawned under his writing-table.
"You're not to talk boating in my rooms," he said ; " I've done with you two old offenders, so please vanish till Monday morning, and sport the oak behind you. How boys do bang doors, Heron." (Hugh took note of the first abolition of Mr.) " And now just listen to me a little. As to rooms, you're well off as Bolton's tenant. Some of his things are there, and you're on honour to treat them well; but you'll have room for your own, and I hope you're not of an upholsterous turn of mind—I mean, given to decorative furniture and sham picturesque."
" No, sir, I've lived in a tent in Norway, and liked it of all things—at least in fine weather."OXFORD.
4i
" Capital! Well, you know, Bolton will get something in all probability; they want him back at Eton, in fact. You will very likely be able to stay in his rooms all through. And, to tell truth, I don't want you to go into Peckwater. You'll be able to if you like—but not just yet, and I'd rather you didn't."
" Might one ask why, sir ? I beg pardon, but one or two fellows I knew at Winchester said they would like to have me there."
" How long ago ?—excuse me, but do you care for them yourself, or do they only want you as a jolly fellow in their set ? You know what I mean, my dear Mr. Heron." ("Tutorial again," thought Hugh.) "It makes all the difference, as I see it, whether they care for your person or your company."
" I don't quite know, sir; but you've given me capital rooms, I'm sure."
" You see it's handy for boats and stables, both. And you'll have a chance there of reading when you're not at play. Now we've got to the subject— and I do hope you will do something—did Lady Hertha say anything to you about it ?"
" No," said Hugh promptly, and it was true ; but then he added, with a certain quickness of honour, which often serves a man well at some unconscious need, " but I think she thought the more."
" Now I think better of you for that. Well, I've42
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
long had the honour of admiring Lady Hertha as one of the best women in England; and, without turning on the domestic affections' stop at once, you know you should take your father's place with her—you must always be the first man in the world to her;
and there's your sister--" There was a pause for a
moment, and Dayrell went on: " You see I only have you for a few minutes at a time; and all this is true, though I must talk like a book. Sit down a bit yet; it's such a comfort to have a young one to speak to who is not like a colt with a turn of vice, always showing one his heels. You understand, I don't think you can get through Oxford in idleness without coming to grief,—mind or character, or both. You will dissipate to spend the time, or you will think vaguely and crudely to spend the time, and, in either case, you will give us all a life of it. If you were a stupid man there would be some excuse, and getting your degree would fill up your time pretty well. Roundell's a little that way—not stupid, but slow at classics ; he has to read, and is quite happy. But you ought to do more for us, just because you can. You've had a tutor at home, haven't you, for the last year ?"
" Merton of Oriel."
"To be sure—a capital coach for books, and a very cultivated woman for ideas. That wasn't allOXFORD.
43-
given you to waste. Now if you try to do without books here it will be a bad change from home your mother says how good you've been, and I suppose there's something in it at least) ; and, as to ideas, there are plenty of the very worst all a-going about here; very unlike hers, and not one bit sharper or brighter, Fm sure. You'll change, not for the better, and all you'll get in return will be hunting and acquaintances ; neither as good as what you have at Otterscope. Do read for a class."
" Well, do you think I can get one ? "
" Yes ; and if I didn't I should advise the same. But you've a turn for history, and for the why and wherefore of things, and should go in for Second School honours and Modern History. Do make use of all of us, that's what we're here for. I don't want to stop your hunting, and I do want you to row in the boat while Chipchase and the rest are in it; you can't possibly be in a better set. You see, my dear lad, it isn't the boating that makes idleness, or the hunting either: it's the eternal talking about both, and hanging about your stables, and bits of betting, and match-making, and sloping from room to room ; all that makes Peckwater such a worry to our tutorial souls. There was Crackington the cricketer, why, he might have done well in the schools, and played in all the matches too, if he hadn't passed all his44
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
mornings in oiling bats and drinking shandygaff—he did, I declare.
" There, my sermon's lasted twenty minutes, and I've said nothing of the graver reasons for doing your best here. They're quite real and you know them. I don't tell you of temptations :—they all say you have come through well so far. But you know it's like the Pilgrim's Progress, you must drop upon Apollyon somewhere. You are sure to see enough of Oxford fast life, it's often better than fast life elsewhere, but bad's the best in that line. (Hall bell, that's a quarter of an hour to dinner, you know.) Your life may be such a pleasant one; but, if you get into a row, do try and come to me early in it. Then you've no end of money, I suppose ? Do be a little canny, and anyhow pay all at the end of term, then you can't do very badly. And be content with a day's pleasure in a day; and don't play cards all night when you've been out hunting from nine to seven, or so. And remember all I haven t said, about the weightiest things. They'll show you your place in Hall. Freshmen's mess to-night, I suppose? You'll soon be able to choose your friends, but don't be in a hurry. And be careful in your rooms, and don't set the House on fire—or the Thames."
The light and noise and jolly confusion in the great swarming Hall rather excited Heron, and hisOXFORD.
45
figure and good looks caught Chipchase's eye, as he sat at the senior end of the students' table. He was captain of the college eight-oar, then at the head of the river, and men in that lofty position are always looking out for recruits. Chipchase's form might always be observed under the Hall arch at a matriculation, with his glass in his eye, running over the thews and sinews of the Ch. Ch. neophytes. The captaincy of an eight-oar is a serious business if you try to do it well, and he was as grave as Cromwell about it, and said he always wanted " yeomen's sons whose hearts were in the work." He also laid down the principle that no man who could not swim and row in perfect form was fit to live; and when he called anything " fatal," he paid it the highest compliment in his power or knowledge.
" That's a likely-looking colt opposite," he said to Jack Whinyate, smallest and most sagacious of coxswains.
" Which ? that nigger with the eyes, at the freshmen's table ?"
"A lusty knave, and apparently capable of enthusiasm ;—and might do at three, if he's any form. He's a new Slade, from the wilds of Holderness, and we've got him instead of B. N. C. Come and meet him. Charles," he said to the duteous waiter, "go across to Mr. Heron, that tall freshman just4 6
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
sitting down, and ask him to wine with me after Hall."
As the judicious Mr. Whinyate has just called Hugh a nigger, we may as well explain that he wasn't like one. He was a North-countryman of the Danish or dark-haired type of ravagers on both sides Humber. How far his pedigree went back nobody knew; he said himself it was involved in mythology and larceny, and was far too canny ever to allude to it in other terms. But twenty descents of hunter and soldier had not entirely deprived him of the look of the Waster of lands. Long hard limbs, great depth of chest, straight clear-looking face, and fine hands and feet, made a pleasant exterior enough; but the eyes and mouth were his great point—the first so large and liquid, and changing so truly with the regular bow of his firm red lips. There was a look of honesty and soft heart about him, while his square jaws and loose double-jointed strength made him look formidable enough ; though all that might have been gaunt or wolf-like in his limbs was veiled by the flowing lines of youth. His face was generally rather dreamy and pensive, but it changed at need to keen and dogged; it was already rather swarthy, with a red-brown glow on the cheeks, and certain indications of dark beard and moustache. He was rather lean, for it took both exercise andOXFORD.
47
temperance to enable him to ride twelve stone seven. I like to think of him so, having seen many lads of that form, who seemed to be beginning life in Oxford very happily, and whose bright youth has often given me some reflex of my own, which was not bright; though it has lasted a long time in a fragmentary way. Golden lads and girls is not quite the right English for jeunesse dorfo ; but I have certainly known many of the latter to whom the former terms seemed to apply with accuracy. It is such a pity they will carry out Mr. Phcebus's celebrated system of never reading anything, so very literally. If we could strike a balance here between the scorn of letters and the trade of letters, between knowledge vulgarised and no knowledge at all; how very nice it would be for the resident tutors! It seems so hard that you so often can't teach a gentleman to think what his brains are worth, or a lad who has learnt the use of his brains to think like a gentleman. Of course there are happy mediums and felicitous exceptions, or the place would be utterly untenable.
However, Hugh found himself at wine with half-a-dozen tough-looking members of the Ch. Ch. Boat Club, and was given to understand that he was to be tried in earnest in a four-oar next day at two. He gave up Weston Green; and that .time duly came48
HUGH HERON,, Ch. Ch.
round, after he had seen tutors and lecturers, and given Mayflower a gallop on Port Meadow.
" Now we've put you well over your work/' said Chipchase, stooping over him as he sat at his oar by the barge-side. " Can you clear your knees well ? If Messenger taught you, you'll know all about it; only remember not to slide too soon. Gripe the water well forward ; and don't slide till you're upright again. You're to row us a stroke, and I shall bully you all the way down at three. There's 'opes o' you, young man, and the sooner we know the worst of you the better."
The boat was a strong light four-oar, roomy enough for skilful heavy-weights; and Hugh's critical companions, after some injunctions about flattening his back and sticking in his heels, formed a good opinion of him. They gave him a protracted lesson in skittles at Sandford, and a little warm beer ; and they got by almost everything on the home journey. Whinyate sat silent and bending forward as he steered themr holding the flying craft, in successive bee-lines, for his well-known points at various distances. Once or twice he laughed low, and observed that she did travel; he was enjoying the peculiar pleasure of a light-weight coxswain with a good crew, feeling the harmonious swing and shoot of the whole boat, like a living thing under him, with the impulse of aOXFORD.
49
galloping horse at every stroke ; and at the same time, the oily smoothness of the even keel, that seems to glide on always in peace between the wrath and foam of the oar-blades on each side. And there is something remarkably jolly in seeing the perspective of Olympian arms and chests, and bright-flushed eager faces—like extremely Gothic angels—darting at one all together in rhythm at thirty-six or so a minute ; and in feeling their mighty slash, and the instantaneous leap of the craft. Little was said as they lounged up to Hall, except that Hugh's services would be required till further notice, that he would be allowed two hunting-days, and that it was very good of his seniors to keep him so entirely out of mischief. He was to take a walk or run early, and go to bed at eleven, and B. N. C. was to have a wiry time of it next summer. They won the four-oar race that November, and Hugh won high favour, as a swell who was used to have his own way, and yet understood about discipline.
" He's made a good social start," wrote Maulger to Lady Hertha, "and Dayrell says he knows his grammars, and can write a bit of Latin."CHAPTER IV.
TUTORS AND PUPILS.
OXFORD was in a sort of transition state in those days; from the quiet and rather honeycombed University that is no more, to the competitive Phrontisterium of the present—half old, half new, and all to pieces, just like its buildings. Society was not so large or varied. There were a good many married M.A.'s and professors, and pleasant company out of college; but then, people really found each other pleasant, and did not fly from each other to the other side of nowhere at the end of every term. Men's opinions were in the earlier stage of progress. All the negative side of thought was in full blast, but atheism wasn't a dogmatic faith yet, and men talked Comte esoterically, instead of Tom Paine in public. There was yet a certain hesitation, since exploded, as to the morality of taking a large living when you did not believe any creeds ; at least the immorality had not been referred to the creeds themselves.TUTORS AND PUPILS.
5i
It was a rougher time in the undergraduate world. Vice was less recondite, and the devil was more of the roaring lion, and did not glide about with the polite hiss of modern days. There was coarse talk in certain sets, who had not yet been cultured into Hellenism, and accepting Nature for what she is; but, on the other hand, decency was considered decent and not "prurient." The Vices are so far unlike " The Old Vice" in Shakespeare's song, that they never carry daggers of lath, anywhere that I know of. A few men still got drunk now and then ; there was play in So-and-So's rooms; gross words were said and sometimes rendered into act ; and the abundance of idleness which vexed poor Dayrell and the Dons, bore the usual fruits. But Hugh had the great advantage of starting in a good set; and in one way or another he almost escaped the freshman-stage of Oxford life, which most public-school men pass through very easily, and which used to involve some of the dangers of following a multitude. Most of the men he knew were clean livers ; and though their talk was often rather cynical, and they only thought debauchery wouldn't do, there always seemed to be a standard of positive duty somewhere about. In a large college, with all its inconveniences, there is great social liberty; and it is wonderful how much fun a lad may have without being led, or even invited,
e 252
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into mischief. Black sheep fall together, as easily as a charge of B-shot in a bagful of peas—they have more affinity for each other than for the honest white seed.
And having admitted that there is a certain amount of vice in these parts, small in proportion to the number of lads who are here assembled, and set almost at liberty, I am not going to describe it, for that has been done already; nor to take my hero through it, for this is a story of personal experiences, and everyday characters of the more harmless sort. So Hugh would not play anything but whist, and he hated that ; he said he had enough on his mind with "sums " for Little-go, and never would do any calculation if he could help it. He always held bad cards, and lost small sums with equanimity, for the good of the present company. For drinking, his youth, strong stomach, and soft easy temper would have kept him composed and competent through much more than he ever had to undergo ; and indeed he was pleasant enough sober. He had not the style of a fool, and nobody wanted to see him in that character; moreover, being inclined to like most men, he could not bear to see anybody made a butt of. Conversation of a certain kind he never seemed to understand, so that he slid through various temptations—or things which are temptations to the doomed race—without being much the worse.TUTORS AND PUPILS.
53
Of course in that day there was, so to speak, a sound in the ears of the more thoughtful Dons and quicker-witted lads. A crisis or period of the standing " spiritual combat" between the Liberal and High-Church parties was just over ; and, as usual, the moderates were roughly handled on both sides, and little pleased with themselves. There had been secessions to Rome of men highly esteemed and loved ; and though, with one or two ambitious exceptions, they honourably avoided propagandism, their example had an attraction, since all men felt that they had sacrificed much to a definite faith, and given assurance of spiritual reality. The outer world bawled " No Popery! " with a will ; the religious side of the Liberal party, and the Liberal side of the High-Church party, tried to be as charitable as they could to each other, but generally quarrelled whenever they talked about charity. The Evangelicals stubbornly held their own ground; and on the extreme flanks, they had Jesuitism calling itself Exclusive Christianity, and Nihilism calling itself Protestantism. Few of the men cared much either way ; they were rather amused at the Dons' quarrelling; and what religion they had (you never know how much there is) was generally brought from home. But the real underlying questions were yet only felt heaving under the feet of more thoughtful combatants, who could not help54
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
seeing that a good many of their contemporaries were only taking off their hats to a God dethroned from His place in their hearts. The view that a man is and may do what he chooses was not formulated ; and youthful orthodoxy had not been shattered by the axiom that undergraduates are the measure of all things. Debebatur pneris reverentia, so most men thought; it was not a common practice to unsettle all a young fellow's notions at once for the fun of the thing. The word Agnosticism had not been invented, nor the taste created by which it is to be enjoyed; and in consequence the drums and trumpets of advanced ceremonial were less deafening than at present, and good lads were allowed to consider their souls in some sense their own.
Nevertheless, Dayrell, who was a kind of nondescript Liberal-High-Churchman, who wanted to know what everybody really meant, saw that Liberality and Liberalism were different things ; and that the latter went a great deal farther than the former, quite out of sight of definite creed, in fact; and he was troubled with visions of Rome and the Revolution contending for his lads. The usual complaints of unendowed intellect and rusticated innocence, that tutors don't care for the learning or morality of their pupils, are not perhaps strictly in accordance with fact. But as the cleverest lads who don't get fellowships often takeTUTORS AND PUPILS.
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to the press and abuse Oxford in it, their execrations must go for what they are worth. At present they go for rather more. ' Undefined responsibility is very disagreeable; and neither Dayrell nor any of the younger men of the older party could take it at all easily. New books and quasi-novel ideas were pouring in on either side, and could not be stopped. Every fresh mare's-nest was occupied as a position, in that free fight for present endowment and future promotion which calls itself Oxford Politics. The younger scions of intellect were gradually acquiring the French language by the study of Comte and Renan ; and they made up for their still more imperfect knowledge of German by assuming that Teutonic philology meant abolition of creeds and sequestration of endowments. The profession of advanced thought began to be crowded; and it is awkward that its representatives so often want somebody else's money as a mental stimulus. The competitive system had got 'well to work, and had certainly brought an amount of youthful cupidity to bear on Oxford which was rather difficult to manage. All sorts of clever fellows came up, fully expecting to be provided with classes, fellowships, marriage portions, and endowment for research ; and it couldn't be done. The impression had spread among parents and guardians, and certainly among upper boys56
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
at school, that a first class entitles a young- gentleman to maintenance from an admiring country for his natural life. Further, it was conjectured that advanced thought paid in the schools, and everybody went in for it. The consequences were dismal and painful to Hawkeand Dick Ripon, and Latchford and Wigley, and other seniors; who sulked or made bad jokes, or held their tongues as men do who know the tide is against them and do not know why. But they were not nearly so well baited as half-Liberals, like Dayrell, or the one or two sages, who really made themselves felt in modern thought, and whose weird it continually was to strive with the new learning, and the difficulties of the coming race. They were worst off after all. They really were scholars desiring to think and to instruct, and they found themselves made into political projectiles. They were good teachers and disciplinarians, and found themselves adored by young men who wanted chiefly to annoy their own tutors. They longed for quiet kingdoms of the mind, and patient companions to help them to understand themselves and possess their own souls— and they found themselves ticketed in review articles; while their best pupils became partisans, as if they had taught nothing but premature politics. As men grew hot in faction, in learning they waxed cold—and the great Liberal leaders had their trials,TUTORS AND PUPILS.
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though all the clever lads in the University ran after them. What they went through from the horrible crudity and precipitancy of the ingenious competition-wallah, could only be known to themselves, and by themselves were best forgotten. Atticus of St. Green's, and Cratylus of St. Isis's, were on good terms with Dayrell and the elder Philistines of the large house on the other side of Oxford. There was a Clarendon Club where many of the older tutors used to dine together, and rather enjoyed each other's society—the younger pundits called it the Feast of Weaks. They who live in Oxford are not always aware how little the outer world knows or cares abo.ut their secret thoughts, their works and ways, as Bishop Ken psalmodically puts it. It seems to think old M.A.'s only talk about impositions, crosses, and details of ineffectual discipline; which indeed have their turn. It may seem impossible that the following confessions by old Atticus to Dayrell, over the decent evening cigar and coffee, can ever be supposed to have been made anyhow or anywhere.
" Well, it's a comfort to think we're only dealing with boys after all, with plenty of time, and life, and, let's hope, other chances when they are out of our hands. For what I see, you can't get young fellows into the intellectual life because they're not up to it; and it's just as bad for us, because all of ours want to58
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
make money by it. Don't fancy we are satisfied with ourselves. There's no aspiration, or barren honour, or care for the truth, or generous madness. It's all class, class, class, scholarships and prizes, cram, tips, and money in one form or another—that's all they care for. They are like endless successive generations of the horseleech; and I'm not a parent Plutus to find an income for everybody who knows his books. You say yours want honourable ambition ; well, if that means pure desire for honour, I don't think they are very different from others. Of course it does not quite mean that; to us it means ambition to get honours by our pupils' honours—and when it comes to quocunque modo class, oh, how dismal it is to do with them !"
" I shouldn't mind a year or two of success at it— you always win with them, you know."
" Yes, we get thrown in your faces by the papers, and so on ; these people won't see that the supply of first classes is limited, and that if one house gets the pick of all the schools, another can't have it. Then really, as to the great matter, in spiritual things, and thoughts about that, competition is beginning to be a great evil. They think Negation pays. Really," said Atticus, slackening speed for a moment, and looking at his young friend with grave appeal, not unheeded, " after all, Christianus sum;TUTORS AND PUPILS.
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and the kind of fungoid cynicism we meet with now and then is hideous, I declare. You at all events won't say they learn it from us. They seem to •come up full of it, or pick up maggots from each other. I am the fashion, and sharp schoolboys come to me—to get rid of their doubts, they say;. and I often find they want to get rid of their consciences. Always negative—I must feel how they can't believe this and can't see that;—really it's wonderful how many things a man can't see at twenty."
" I never quite agreed with the old Duke's saying about clever devils," said Dayrell. "They seem to be bad; but I'm sure stupid people are quite diabolical enough. And then you have a lot of good ones."
" Yes, we've our share; but one hiss pierces through general consent. I'm afraid, between us and the crammers, they all get overtaught for their age. They are so precocious—that wanting to buy learning and sell it again like apples in the streets "—("Always was like that fruit," said Dayrell)—" their greediness and their self-satisfaction both require a sharp-cut new theory about everything; they think negative knowledge as good as affirmative, and fancy they can all be Mirabeaus if they swallow formulas enough. I'm older than you, my dear boy ; and I think you're vexed about not being able to direct lads right, when the good books about tutor and pupil tell you6o
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
you ought to do it. Then I'm held out to you, and so's Cratylus, as a pair of neologian ogres and corrupters of youth. Why, some of them seem to have been reared in the regular know-nothing atmosphere; they don't know respect, or regard, or natural affection, or anything but cram and its prizes. And their ambition—why it's only a sense of their right to have everything before they've done anything.
" We have that sort; and do you think they come to us, dull or clever, in that condition that we can make High Churchmen of them ? We do make some by repulsion, I believe. We have our set of young acolytes, who naturally look on C. and me as if we were the beast and the false prophet. It's all centrifugal force, sir ; whichever way the Dons seem to go, the men will go just the other."
" Yes," laughed Dayrell, " but it's very hard when ours do take to learning ; they have such speechless faith in you, and throw us over to that extent."
"Ah, to see how you like it!—it's fashion, and always was; but go on and get what you can out of your country athletes."
" Some of them have a turn for history, and I think governors are more inclined to push their sons about working for those schools. They often like to hear about early England, and law, and so on; andTUTORS AND PUPILS.
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some of them have an eye for locality, and the maps, and can understand a campaign, and how a fight comes off on a bit of country."
" There's such a one beginning to come to my Roman History lectures," said Atticus ; " seems to write away hard all the time, and knows some facts."
"Is that young Heron? a good-looking long lad ?" (Atticus nodded.) " Well, I think we've set our hearts on him a little, so far ; I hope his orthodoxy won't suffer among the Oxford solvents."
" I don't think we shall hurt him, or the Pope either ; he seems well taught at home."
" Well, he's had great advantages ; a very sensible High-Church mother's the chief. I think he has religion enough to live by, and don't want to take it up as a subject."
" Not a bad frame of mind ; how one notices good looks—can't help it."
" Yes, till a fellow gets hard-eyed, or dissipated, or too horsey ; and then—oh dear! "
" Ah, he's not hard-eyed," said Atticus, finishing his coffee. " He'll be dangerous to the other sex some day, I suspect—mox virgines tepebunt, wish him well through it. He said he had a sister, and I wished myself twenty-five again, and in his way of life."CHAPTER V.
shadwell grove.
" shadwell Grove to-morrow, young man ?" said Tom Bagot at dinner—Buffer Bagot was chief among his many synonyms. " Rain to-night—scent will lie to-morrow—sure to draw Weldon Wood."
Hugh was a week from his little-go viva voce, but he had done his papers well, and read his work through. He thought of Catamount ready to jump out of his skin, and gave ear to his jolly tempter. " I've a horse wants riding," he said. " May I come with you or after you ? you know the country and the hounds so well."
"Well, you're such a crasher, I shall come after you as soon as they're away. I've got my arm tied up still."
Bagot was a heavy weight, and not a perfect horseman, but he had a good eye for country and the run of a fox, and was fond of the thing at heart. It was horrid to see him face timber with a loose rein ;SHAD WELL GROVE.
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but it did one's heart good too, and he was generally-well enough mounted to save accidents, in a light country, as Oxfordshire is for the most part. He had broken the small bone of his arm in a great gallop from Coulter's Farm ; after behaving to a succession of stone fences in a manner which made Jem Hills liken him to Joshua and the walls of Jericho, and his familiars call him Rams.
Hugh was all for good behaviour at this point of his career, and got excused from Dayrell's and Combermere's lectures next day, on personal security not to get behindhand with the work. Morning chapel at Ch. Ch. is not unlike the remnant of Popery called a hunting-mass, in respect of brevity; and Hugh was soon cantering along with Bagot, on soft enough road, suited to the temper of the excited Catamount, who was rather inclined to violence. Bagot was in pink, with the virginal (if not angelic) white leathers and tops, then generally-affected by the Oxford undergraduate. We presume they symbolised a spotless seat of stainless honour. Hugh was gravely black at present, in brown cords and tops, cleaned as Barraclough knew how to get it done—there was little enough fault to find from his hat to his horse's hoofs.
" Lets out a bit," said the Buffer, well out of reach on the other side the road, as Catamount expressed64
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
a natural but powerful disgust for a man on a bicycle, and kicked as if he wanted to stand on his head.
" Oh, he's a good-hearted horse enough, only rather cheery—quiet in the stable and all that— steady now, lad"—Catamount kicked again, and Hugh did the same with both spurs, and made him jump into the air, and then gallop a mile or two, which restored order for the time.
Shadwell Brake, or Grove, is the favourite and unfailing trysting-place of the Redesdale ; and thither a select Ch. Ch. party had betaken themselves on wheels or hack, doing their twenty miles to cover with the happy elasticity of their age. Sometimes it is a mere impertinence going long distances ; motived, as Mr. Jorrocks says, by the taste for wearing scarlet, and winking at the other sex along a longer line of road. But this fixture was exceptional; it always produced its fox, and he always went a cracker. The Brake was peculiarly favoured by the vulpine race in the daytime, as it never contained rabbits or hares, and was favourable to that tranquil sleep which is their custom generally in the forenoon. Of course it was jealously protected, and was, moreover, just the right shape and size, so that a fox could almost be forced into the way he should go, across the large pastures and stone walls of North Oxfordshire. When he took that line, a field might generally indulge inSHAD WELL GROVE.
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the most rapid transit between walls ; and " get over " and " get on " again with their utmost punctuality and despatch.
There was rather a large assemblage when Hugh and his friends arrived. Catamount was exchanged for Mayflower, and they all kept a good deal more together than is usual, the cover being so shaped that a fox had generally to face his field to begin with ; which not only didn't exactly make him travel slower, but gave everybody a view, and made most people keen. As our authority just mentioned observes : " It's a great thing to get a good view of a fox when he breaks ; because then you cut away after him naturally, as if he'd got your watch." The regulars of four packs were there ; it was genuine country, there was no big town near to bring down hosts of " blustering railers " by train. Our Ch. Ch. pair kept rather aside and in the background; and did not recognise many acquaintances. However, there sat Miss Crakanthorpe of S. Vitus's, the best and best-beloved that ever came out of Oxford to show the ruder sex the way. She allowed more followers than foreriders, and those who didn't go after her from motives of personal devotion, generally did so because she was such a pilot. She was to be Lady Wharfedale immediately, if she didn't happen to break her neck that day; and was riding a
F66
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great brown horse, rather violent for a lady, but better behaved with her than with anyone else. She had a perfect habit on a perfect figure, all supple strength, and a mass of golden hair with a peculiar metallic lustre of its own, which made her like a star of chase to her numerous attendants. She passed and greeted Hugh with a smile, and an enquiry after Mrs. Cawthorne, her dearest friend, as usual. There was Lord Crashingdon, the neatest heavy-weight in Oxfordshire or elsewhere, point device from cap to spur, on a long low bay; and Charley Gamboy of Troy Farm, and Bill Berridge of Winterford; both favourite tenants, and not unwilling to show their raking five-year-olds before his eyes. Swells and yeomen in about equal proportion, mostly well or very well mounted. The Oxford workmen were headed by Tom Seasons, the special crasher of the county. He has his following; but who is that very small joint of the tail, that meekest and palest of small boys near him on the little chestnut ? Rather pretty, but so very mild, and not the least dandified ; only in a short pea-jacket and leather leggings, like a keeper's urchin ? That's little, or third Hawke; and if you note his seat and hands, you will observe that they are rather beyond his years for quietude and form. He is not twelve, and this is the third season during which he has piously attended every meet of foxhounds, forSHAD WELL GROVE.
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which his utmost powers of entreaty have induced papa to let him have the pony. If you keep with that little pair, you will see a good deal of it, and you won't be last. " Where that chestnut small is seen, the bravest be, or late have been," as Byron says. The creature itself is an Exmoor Arab or Barb, with the Eastern points—fine flat legs and solid small hoofs, powerful neck and great slope of shoulder, hocks and quarters like a deer, with slight quagga marks across, and the Desert head and muzzle. He is very fast, can jump anything off and on, and has long given up all thoughts of parting company with his quiet little rider; who sits down, never moves, and seldom turns away in his pursuit of some well-chosen leader. To-day he will bustle along with young Hawke of Ch. Ch., who has got a mount from a sympathising friend ; and old Hawke of Ch. Ch. is close at hand on a " useful" horse in hard condition, prepared to hang on as long as circumstances permit. They got just inside cover, down wind, at a corner.
" Rarum olus in dumis—there's a rare scent in cover, as you construed the other day," says young Hawke to Bagot.
" Gone back ; but they're too near for him to turn again. Look at Jack Goddard at the far corner."
The first whip was at the top corner of the cover, which crested a gentle slope, and his cap was in
f 268
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
the air. Old Hawke had marked the one soft place in a dividing bullfinch, and through it he slipped straightway; Hugh, Bagot, young Hawke, little Hawke, crash after crash, like the outbreak of a fire. They neared the top of the hill, and luckily the trembling and longing horses consented to be quiet for fifty seconds.
" Gee-roosalem ! " said Bagot, " what a whopper !" as a great brown fox broke twenty yards off. He is half across the next field—hounds heard coming up—and the next minute Jack Goddard gives vent to a " Gone away! " which may or may not have been heard on the other side of Jordan, but is quite loud enough to bring the whole pack out of cover, the field pouring forth below by a gateless cartway.
"Tally-ho! forrard away!"—wow, wow, wow— twang, twang, twang—up come master and huntsmen —twang, twang, twit—Mayflower is nearly stark-mad as the hounds crash out of cover with a yell, and then stream away, mute and fast and all together.
" All right, gentlemen—fonvard ! " said the master, as his bay "gave his hoofs to the winds." Hugh still held Mayflower in a grasp of iron away from the body of the field; he let her go at last, and all seemed peace, as soon as the eager creature had ascertained by two or three tosses of her head that the gripe of the gag-snaffle was withdrawn. She gallopedSHAD WELL GROVE.
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her first wall without touching, though her hind-legs seemed to shave it; she was steadied at the second and nipped over like a red deer; then she dropped on her bit, and was perfectly happy with her master. They were near the hounds, going like mad over grass and fallow, topping the low walls like winking, with about a dozen of the field ahead, though fifty horsemen were pounding away close in rear.
There is no way round at Shadwell Grove, and you may go or stay as you like. The Hawkes let Hugh lead, knowing the powers of his Irish mare; the little one keeps far back, scrambles his pony over the gaps, and manages just to keep in it; but the first burst is a sharp one. Straight goes old Jim on his white horse, sitting down and gathering him a little at each jump, his white hair shining like a small nimbus below his hunting-cap ; happy in the scent and the pace, and with plenty of room to ride.
" Hullo, wor' drain ! " roars Hugh, as old Maulger's horse comes right on his nose and rolls on his side, just pinching the Bursar's leg for a moment. The horse is up first, and Maulger won't let go—he is dragged along, happily on soft ground. How the old villain hangs on till nearly the next fence, defying bangs and chancing kicks! His dutiful son rides them into a corner, a labourer gets hold of the horse's head; young Hawke just sees the governor's foot in7°
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
stirrup again and vanishes over a gap, followed unflinchingly by the little one. Not a dozen men or two hundred yards have passed, before the old one comes up again, with a bloody nose and hands all crimson, grinding his teeth, but shooting over his walls or knocking off the top stones, secundum artem. He is stroking and patting his horse between, and both are full of running. It is quite lovely to see the first flight nip over the stone fences. " Forrard away !"
They have twenty-five minutes as hard as they can go, and then a check on a turnip-field. Hugh lands with others in a green lane well to the left of the pack, as they cast forward along the fence. The master contemplates him for a moment with mingled feelings ; but he has kept a scrupulous distance throughout, and he and his great striding brown mare are regarded with qualified suspicion. Bagot soon joins him in high spirits, and begins to tell him about a beautiful damsel on a violent thoroughbred, who has fascinated him at long range—" Not the Marchioness as is to be. She's coming through the gate now. Well, he is an awkward one, what a plunge that was!"
" He's away with her, by Guy!" said Hugh, shoving the indignant Mayflower into the grassy ditch at the lane-side. The curb-chain has broken and cut his cheek; she can't hold him a bit; sheSHAD WELL GROVE.
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flashes past Hugh, just grazes the startled Tom Berridge, and cannons hard against the solid strength of Bagot. His foot or knee catches hers, and tosses her from her saddle with a flying fall right over her horse, and turning round in the air. None who saw it are likely to forget the sight, or the dull sound of what seemed a fatal shock from its sheer violence. There were gasping exclamations; Bagot sat paralysed, and Hugh rolled out of his saddle in an instant, and left the mare to wander at her own sweet will.
"Just lift her 'ed, sir, and undo the stud at her throat," said the farmer. Hugh shivered from head to foot as he raised the most beautiful head and shoulders he had ever seen in his life. But the jaw was dropped, and the flower-like face set hard, all stern and apathetic. They looked aghast at each other. Suddenly the life fled back to the lips and eyes, though hardly the full sense.
" Well, where am I ? has anything happened ? " said a soft voice in a tone of quick enquiry, as if taking up a broken thread of thought after sleep.
Nobody answered, only Hugh trembled more and more, worse frightened than before; but even then taking note that nothing seemed broken. The field passed by and went on; they could do nothing, and hounds were running hard. The Crakanthorpe72
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
lingered a minute, but saw help all round and more coming, and vanished through a gap into the fields. They set the fallen one on her feet, and she could stand.
" Horse never touched her. Well, I du think there's little the worse," said the farmer. " Here's Sir 'Arry."
" Thank you, that'll do," said an authoritative voice to Hugh, as the speaker, a tall, keen, elderly man, took his place at the lady's side. " Much obliged to you ; I'm in charge; the carriage will be here in five minutes. Grace, my dear, lean on me." And he turned his shoulder to the sympathising group, evidently desiring their absence, with which all indulged him. Hugh caught Mayflower quite easily ; she had understood, as favourite horses do, that something was the matter, and she must be quiet. Her master lingered a moment to place a very pretty and efficient hunting-whip of feminine size by that of the last speaker, which he had thrown down in dismounting. He saw a raven crest and G. R. on the mounting, picked up his own, and swung into his saddle. A large waggonette came ploughing down the lane with a pair of horses, and the lady was helped in, still half stunned, and giving Hugh an unconsciously Parthian glance from wide eyes in which the soul was yet asleep. Many a day and night afterwards heSHAD WELL GROVE.
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pondered over those regular, dark-flushed features— and I rather think I shall marry him to their pro-prietrix at the end of this book. But the match can't come off till then, and we ought to know more of them, and they of each other.
As the carriage moved on, Hugh gave Mayflower both spurs, and went crash into the fallow next the lane. He had had rather a painful and violent shock, and felt a dim presentiment that something had happened to him personally besides the fright. He had never associated hunting with any idea of danger to himself, having ridden good horses freely all his life without anything worse than two broken ribs long since forgotten; but to see such an apparent " cracker " in such danger so close to him was as much as he could bear. He had felt the warm long hands, he had touched the soft throat, she had rested against his shoulder, he was in a dream—but hounds were running. He saw the field disappearing, and started after them as hard as he could go, availing himself of many recent gaps at the bucketing pace that was necessary. Mayflower was in her glory, and disposed of a number of easy places, casting fence after fence behind her in a way which soon brought him into the main body of a field now reduced to hand-gallop, with colder scent over one or two ploughs. Hugh's heart did not rise properly with the74
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
fun ; he just saw the Hawkes ridifig with Miss Crakanthorpe, and faintly noticed how beautifully she led them over two fences, which he flew beside them sternly on his own line. He swept mazedly past one man after another, to his mare's delight, and, at last, suddenly the pace quickened, and they crossed two fields in full cry, till the Blanketon Road appeared in view. " They are running for their fox ! " thought Hugh, and he shook to the front in earnest. Mayflower seemed the least bit blown ; but they viewed him quite near, and the next fence was into the road —a stake-and-bound—and wide ditch with a drop. Hugh is with Jack Goddard and another, and rides with a careless heart, trusting his horse, as he well may. The great whip glides over and lights like bird on brier. By the powers, the other swerves against Mayflower right at the take-off! The mare is game; she gets over by sheer jumping power, with an unearthly side-spring, just touching the turf with knees and nose on the landing side. Hugh is on her neck, and feels a violent paralysing pain in his near thigh ; he can't get back into the saddle, and jumps off on his feet on that side. He can hardly stand, hears a man or two laugh behind him, and gets hastily out of the way as they come over ; he can't get his foot up to the stirrup, and his thigh is swelling to the shape of a leg of mutton. " Whohoop ! "SHAD WELL GROVE.
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in front. Hugh growls with rage and pain, lets his horse go, and scrambles up the opposite bank, in time to see they have killed at the wall beyond. He has his holloa, and gets back into the road rather faint, finding Mayflower held by an old groom, an abbreviated edition of Barraclough.
" You'll be hurt, sir, I'm thinking."
" Yes, my thigh's gone, and I'm' damaged with the pommel. What a tailor I am, to be sure ; just seen the finish anyhow—how far is it to Oxford ?"
" Happen twelve mile."
" Happen ?—why you're one of us, Yorkshireman, eh ?"
"Yes, sir, out o' Craven ; can ye ride home?"
" Happen ar mout, av ar could get oop," said Hugh in his native tongue.
" Ar'll had him by t' footpath."
Hugh managed to climb up, and produced his flask and half-a-crown ; he thought he had seen the man, and asked who was his governor.
" Sir 'Arry Wychwode, thank ye, sir; the young lady's little the worse ar think," and he touched his hat; " but can ye hold t' mare ?"
Hugh was grinding his teeth and sitting all on one side, and could only say he must get home quick.
The old man looked after him as he cantered off, balanced on his saddle with one side helpless. " Ye7 6
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can ride a bit, whatever. Know ye that lad, Jim?" he said to a Oxford-looking groom.
"Young Christ Church man; Heron's his name, I think ; anything wrong with him ? "
" Hurt his thigh jumpin' into t' road; none t' worse ar think."
" Nothing hurts they young devils; I see him precious near the hounds all that first burst, him and his 'oss as mad as hatters ; lucky for him he didn't go nearer and catch it. I see Sir 'Arry a-surweying of him."
" Well, ar picked up one of our young ladies, an' behaved vary well." And they dispersed in opposite directions.
Hugh rode into Blanketon in some pain, rather vexed at a calamity right in front of everybody, but comforted by the free action and evident sympathy of the mare, who cantered on quite tenderly, hardly changing her leg. Barraclough had preceded him with Catamount; he got off with some difficulty, had a glass of ale, and got a quantity of brandy rubbed into his thigh, was hoisted on Mayflower again, and journeyed into Oxford as well as he could. He was getting rather faint when he reached the abode of the universal curator of all young men's bones within the liberties of Rhedycina.
"Please ring for me, and can you help me off?" ASHAD WELL GROVE.
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servant came out, and they got him on his feet just able to stand. " Home to Ch. Ch., and see she's fed before cleaning," he said to One-Arm, whom he had met on the way, and then sent up his name.
The great man received him at once, with his usual quiet air of absolute leisure to attend to that special case, and mild but particular interest in it. " Your thigh, is it, Mr. Heron ? Well, you can walk on it; I've heard about you, and expected to have you in my hands. There's afternoon tea, but have a glass of sherry; you must, please. Not in much pain, are you? You look rather drawn and tired; come and have something before I look at you. I shan't hurt you; don't be anxious. My wife—Mr. Heron of Ch. Ch., a Yorkshireman and a great shooter, as everybody says."
So Hugh was ministered to by the fairest hands, and pitied in the softest voices in the world; thought himself in great luck, as he was; told his unknown fair one's adventure with spirit and delicacy ; and was considered quite the old sort of young gentleman. Who could the young lady be ? not one of Sir Harry's girls, they were both regular blondes. Then he was inspected in the surgery, and told to go home to a hot bath and bed, which latter part of his sentence he got commuted into sofa. The groom had told his scout to be in the way, and he was soon macerating his bruised muscles before the fire. Bagot and78
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Hawke came in about six, the latter with a face all swished with brambles, so that Hugh told him he was like a portrait by Clawed. They were glad to find there wasn't much the matter, having heard contradictory accounts on the road.
"Trying to read ? " said Bagot. " Excited young beggar you are; one would think you'd never had a cropper before. Look at me, now, I'm always rolling about, and it never makes me read a bit—more's the pity. But, I say, Roundell and I'll come in this evening and bring little Ashley to play to us, if you'll give us some claret. There's only one wine to go to, rather a large one. I met the doctor galloping out to see that young woman, and he said you were to have plenty to drink."
" What a jolly doctor ! Do come in after dinner."
" And you're not to mind all your thigh turning black, from the hip to the knee ; he hopes it will hurt you enough to keep you quiet."
Hugh did feel too excited to read or doze, and he wondered if he should hear more of the beauty ; so he began a long descriptive letter to his mother, much in her own discursive style, which he enjoyed imitating.
Hugh to Lady Hertha.
"This is from your dear boy horizontal on the bed of sickness, where old Splinters says I shall haveSHAD WELL GROVE.
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to stay (on the sofa, I mean, not in bed) for the next three days before viva voce. I sprained my thigh with Mayflower this morning over a place with a drop. Luckily she's quite right—May I mean—and I'm very comfortable, and think I shall sleep all the time. I picked up a young lady nearly killed, and hope she is none the worse; I think it made me rather nervous and careless afterwards. Now I've time to tell you a little about this first term, and how very pleasant it has been. I have been quite the fashion from the first, in fact I never felt strange. Knowing Roundell and others made me quite- free of the place, and Dayrell was as if he'd known me ever since Winchester; and the old Dean, whom everybody seems afraid of, made me sit by him and talked about Yorkshire; and I told him a story or two out of Craven that made him laugh. I'm afraid I'm rather a corky freshman, but people are very good-natured. We won the four-oars, as I told you ; hammer and tongs all the journey till the other crew fell off; we couldn't go any faster, I know, but it seems we did for them. Then there was a great supper, and a row afterwards. They took up the stone gutters and made a Druidical circle in Peckwater, within which they sacrificed a figure of Wolf the Censor, with heathen orgies; and they did some landscape gardening in Tom, with arrangements of8o
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mops and brooms. But I had to read for Little-go, or 1 said so, and went to bed early; they drank my health in connexion with fox-hunting, and made me sing 'By Kirby Gate the gorse we drew.' It goes wonderfully to 'John Peel.' They say I have done enough to pass in the paper-work, and I'm in on Tuesday at latest ; after that come collections, and I think I am to be introduced to the Captain of Clan Chattan at St. Alfred's, who is also skipper of the University boat. They say they are going to try me next term, or indeed this; he wants to have his crew well together as early as possible.
" You say I am to tell you about the men, without scandal; and it's rather difficult—not that we are very scandalous, as far as I know. Lanercost is one of the tufts here; he looks quite a little fellow now, to what he did, but is very good-looking, and enjoys rowing bow in the boat. Frank Roundell you know, I think ; and Chipchase, and Hawke; then there are two or three aesthetic men who furnish their rooms according to a period, and read lots of poetry about beautiful ladies, and go in for Hellenism. I think Charley Malinger is their chief. He is always in rows about lying in bed, and keeping on permanent aegers, and then going out driving a pair of ponies; but he is very agreeable and, they all say, awfully clever. There are a good many reading fellows; most of them row, orSHAD WELL GROVE.
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else ride, or are volunteers ; and Dayrell has introduced me to some of the cracks, and to one of his own particular favourites, a capital rough diamond from our parts—North Riding, at least; his name is Broadbeans, and he is an exhibitioner—servitor they used to call them, but the name's done with now. I made an arrangement about him which I hope you will like. He hasn't much tin ; and I was talking to some of our set about not liking to have forty pounds a year of College money, when I've lots of my own; and Roundell said, if I gave it old B. through Dayrell, and put him on as coach for a year or two, it would help him a good deal, and be worth more to me than if I spent it in gormandizing; that was his expression, though he knows I don't care about eating and drinking two bad words. We have had on the gloves a little of evenings in Miller's large rooms, which were cleared away for that domestic purpose. Roundell and I had three heavy rounds, they lasted some time, and I was very glad when they were all over. He knocked me head over heels once. I don't quite know what I did to him, but he was a gory and filthy spectacle at the end, like Mike Lambourne; and I must have been worse, if anything; I think he is too many for me at present. But the lighter weights seenled impressed ; and Dayrell told us accidentally, next day but one, that we were too old to slog each other
G82
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like rival cocks of a school. From which I infer that we did pretty well; and then I am so glad to think we shan't have to do it again—neither of us seem to wish it; and though gloves save one a good deal, they bang awfully when one's five or six minutes at half-arm. They say I'm quick, and a glutton ; but I don't think I like it. As Dr. Goggles is said to have observed: ' It indisputably hurts, and is unquestionably unremunerative.' It might be nice to whop somebody calmly, as you say, in an earnest spirit, and with proper tendencies; but one has to fight in a hurry, I have generally observed, and in any frame of mind that comes to hand.
" I believe the young lady who was hurt's name, or the young lady's name who was hurt (only no imputation rests on her name), is Miss Rokeby. Did you ever hear of her ?
" Ever your Son,
"H. H.
" Will you tell Mrs. Cawthorne that her husband is more talked of up here than any of the other old birds, and that she herself seems to be remembered as gone from the Dons' and everybody's gaze like a beyootiful dream. Shouldn't wonder, I'm sure."
A college cock and toadstools (such was the termSHAD WELL GROVE.
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used at that period for spread-eagle fowl and mushrooms) was duly set before the recumbent Hugh soon after he had finished his letter; he consumed it bodily, with a fair allowance of ale, after which he waited with a gratifying sense of a well-spent half-hour till his friends appeared. They asked him which had come into the road first, his horse or himself; and Bagot said the betting had been at first even, then two to one on Hugh. The run was exhaustively discussed, and they were all recalled to the subject of its casualties by his medical attendant, who walked quietly into the room well splashed, and found them in great peace in all manner of easy-chairs.
" Don't get up," said the Seraphic Doctor ; by this title, as cognate with the Flying Doctor, he generally went among hunting undergraduates. " You can't, I expect, Heron. Give me one glass of sherry; I've just got back from the Wychwodes'; left my hack, and caught the last train at Hollington. You're to be quiet all to-morrow and next day, then walk about if you can, and get into the boat in warm things ; yes, that's the right stuff to rub in, and you should have another hot bath. Chipchase, as captain of the crew you ought to keep your lads in better order. Tell him to send his horses home, all but one."
"You'll want to keep the young one, I suppose,
g 284
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Heron ?" said the Skipper interrogatively, as a matter of course.
Hugh looked a queer look at him, but said he would put the head of submission into the bag of penitence; still, he would like to have Catamount under his own eye. His commander nodded approvingly, and then rewarded him by asking the Doctor after the young lady who had come to grief.
" Oh, Miss Rokeby ?—perfectly well, not a mark, except perhaps a general black-and-blue. She never knew anything about it till about two hours ago, when she woke up quietly to late tea ; at which I saw her on the sofa. She had to be shown her smashed hat before she understood it all. They cussed themselves for letting her ride that brute ; and she handled him perfectly till he broke his curb-chain and tore his mouth badly ; went off then quite mad. Cannoned against you, Bagot, didn't she ?"
" Yes, I shall never get over it."
" Why, you don't look any more the worse than she. Heron's the only victim ; take you two Northerners down a little, you always think nobody can ride out of Yorkshire. Doesn't she come from somewhere near you ? "
" Rokeby of Shoreswood I think, not Rokeby of Rokeby near us ; I never saw her before—a—a—SHAD WELL GROVE.
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how old is she, do you think — I wonder ?" said Hugh, rather blushing as everybody laughed at the question.
" It's very difficult to get a look at their mouths," said the other gravely ; " but she'd have come about your time, or a little after, I think. She's like you, rather ashamed of a casualty in the south. Now, remember your health belongs to Ch. Ch. while you're in the boat, and go to bed early. No whist here to-night, but you may all split B.'s and S.'s Goodnight, everybodyCHAPTER VI.
talks and letters.
"Well, Mr. Heron/' said dry Mr. Piers Plowman, Master of the Schools (or Little-go Examiner), " you haven't done yourself any particular credit; because you can't, in such an easy examination. But you've made it easier for us by knowing your work, and we're obliged to you. Thank you, we've done with you now." He looked at the other exhausted examiner, himself enectus arando, gave Hugh a short nod of approval, and called up the next man ; who came up anything"; but smiling, under the sense of an imperfect knowledge of grammar.
Hugh made his bow, and walked off by Brasenose to the corner of High Street by St. Mary's, where Barraclough was waiting with Mayflower and his felt hat. It was a fine evening with a wild autumn sunset, and he went twice round Port Meadow, stiff as his thigh still was, and finished with a good gallop ; the mare was going home next day. His testamurTALKS AND LETTERS.
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lay on his table when he got back to College, and he put it in an envelope and sent it to his mother with a brief note. Dayrell came to him in Hall and asked him to tea at nine if he wasn't engaged ; and after an enormous dinner, two wines, a cigar, and a short nap, he duly limped up to the tutor's rooms.
" Well, I'm glad you're not going to a big supper, Heron; many would after Little-go."
Hugh laughed, and told him Plowman's observations, and that he thought the only supper he had been to rather smoky and tedious.
" Well, we always give leave for boat suppers, and 50 on; but I hate them—they seem to give occasion for getting drunk as a matter of ritual. And such quiet men break out so sometimes. ' Hinc canibus blandis rabies venit,' " quoted Dayrell—"' madness comes upon the mild dogs.' "
" I don't think I ever was quite drunk," said Hugh ; " but to-night I only meant to smoke and read ' Lothair.'"
" Well, you can do both here if that's all; you're rather like one of the Premier's heroes yourself. Don't wan't to flatter you, but I've heard the name applied."
" Dear me, how nice to be like a man in a novel; except the peerage."
" Well, you'll be in the other House some day,88
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
and that's why you ought to read history here; there'll be no time when you go from this."
" Everybody seems to say there is so much hurry when one gets into life. I hope I shall be able to take my time and have some liberty."
" Well, I'm quite as green as you are about the world, or all the different worlds. Tutors' work in Oxford is living in a Goshen of one's own—at least, one's time belongs to other people; but it's an independent life, more so than the political or commercial lines, or if one was a doctor in practice, or anyhow on one's way to great prizes. One pays for riding one's own hobbies by ignorance of the world. But leisure or liberty come irregularly. We all have to take work when we can get it, or fall out of the market. Few men dare send a job away when it's offered them. Look, I go on with articles for classical dictionaries ; it's tiresome hard work on the top of my lectures, and there's very little pay; but if I refused somebody else would come in, and I might lose some very interesting bits of writing."
" It's honour and glory, I suppose ?"
"Yes, but I think it a very nice honour when people give you a high market-price because they must. I like being praised as well as any man, but being paid is being done sacrifice to. Of all the fun I ever knew, the praise of the better sort ofTALKS AND LETTERS.
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American publishers is the greatest. They really think it makes up for pirating one's works ; and it is better than nothing. But only the other day I heard from over there that some sermons of mine had been highly approved by a bishop, who had at once ordered them to be reprinted, and sold for the benefit of his flock, without delay or even acknowledgment. It's all right, but rather odd."
" Do you get reviewed much ?" said Hugh, who was aware that his mentor was systematically assailed by Mr. Puffington-Blowington, the art-critic, and now and then by the tremendous Dr. Wamba.
" Oh yes, I'm pretty well abused ; but, of course, I only read the pleasant notices. If there's anything to be said, one can get it said for one ; but, after all, if your work sells, and you've done your best for the money, it's all right. Don't you take to writing till you've got a subject."
" I never thought of that; but sometimes I've envied Cawthorne and his painting. He seems so happy and absorbed, and he's made a name with all of us in the North, and in London, too, I suppose. He says no painter or sculptor ought to ask for much money, first because he hasn't time to spend it, and then because it's the only trade where you work because you like, and when you like, and as you like."9°
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
" Only the thing is he likes it always, every hour of good light all day."
" But it really is tempting," said Hugh. " Couldn't I take to it ? I did a good deal of the drudgery as a small boy, mamma was so keen about it."
" No, it's all or nothing. You should do enough drawing to know what drawing is, then you'll know what criticism is worth—that's easy enough. But you're not called to it as Ca'wthorne was. He was a younger brother, and a proper fellow of his hands ; and what with sport and art, and marrying his beautiful cousin and her money, he has had a pleasanter and freer life than you can as master of a big place. You've a regular business, you know— 'The trade of owning land,' as Carlyle says. Have you read much Carlyle ? They run him down now, all the intellectual Kafirs ; and that's just why you should mind him."
" Oh yes, ' Heroes and Hero Worship,' and ' The French Revolution ' over and over again, and some of 'Friedrich' I'm reading now, and 'Sartor Resartus' I began; but was rather offended because I was like Herr Towgood. He doesn't think much of young men from the country."
" Why, he thinks so much of what they might be."
"That's what you all say," said Hugh, breaking out, to his senior's delight. He had been tremendouslyTALKS AND LETTERS.
9i
excited by Carlyle and Kingsley, only he did not see how he was to be like Mirabeau, Dr. Johnson, Amyas Leigh, and Alton Locke all together. " We're always jawed at for being so happy, and having opportunities and money and all that; but what are we to do. or to be ? There's school, and degree, and then one's land ; and one feels as if one had better be a monk, or a missionary, or a working tailor."
" No, that won't be best; you have your land, and that's your work."
" It's easy enough so far; I've always been told what to do."
" My dear boy, don't fret because you've had the blessing of good guiding, and the far greater blessing of following it. But when you have to take the command, and go into politics and county matters, you'll see the other side ; and you'll come in contact with the British attorney and rough. Not that I know harm of either; but they like their own way, and may not like you."
" But now, can you tell me anything I ought to do next term ?"
" Read, of course."
" I will; but as to poor people, and those who haven't got Kirk Otterscope, and all their own way?"
" Well, I think you may learn how they live while92
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you're here. You know you cannot make the poor cease out of the land ; you must see what it is to grind in the mill, and work for life; but it is the common lot, though you're excepted at present. You will learn how they live, and form your own idea of what is possible for them. But do you know your own tenants and labourers?"
" Yes, all our own people, of course—my father did before me ; they said he never commanded anybody, and few ever disobeyed him ; and that was something, for ours are an independent lot—they do as well as drink permits."
"Well, it's good for you to see life in the real sense. I don't mean going about London with policemen, and seeing thieves' kitchens and rookeries ; and behind the scenes : not equivocal life or sensational life. See the men who work, and the women who weep—that generally means being kicked ; see the poor old people who are past weeping. You'll live and learn, and you maybe able to do something in time, in this great population-struggle that's breaking John Bull's back—broad as it is. But I won't have you give up a page of your reading. Your own capacity of right thought is your best gift, and first duty. The poor will always be with us, and you're not to neglect your work to be an amateur curate. I think some good devout-tempered lads are rather crude and rashTALKS AND LETTERS.
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about that. Can you give up a horse, and spare three hours a week, never from your reading ? "
" One nag will do me all next term ; I never had one that wanted so much riding as Catamount."
" Then I'll talk to your uncle, and I think Lister will be a good man for you. He's got some of the hardest work in Oxford, and he's Evangelical. Your zeal for good works won't hold water, unless you can do them under a man you partly disagree with. He will give you some people to visit, now and then; they won't all be nice people, and you must put up with them, and never be riled, 2nd be done as seldom as you can. Mind, when you take people up you must not drop them without grave reason : because in fact you take them up in the Lord's Name, and you cannot drop them easily. And don't be always trying to say good words; they know who your Master is. Try and be confidential and pleasant to them, giving ever so little at a time; and hear them talk with no end of patience, and don't think you're expected to be Boniface, or Xavier, or Wesley, but Mr. Heron of Ch. Ch."
Hugh thought this rather prosaic, but did as he was bid, and took service under Mr. Lister—a tall grave young man, with a heavy beard, wearied, observant eyes, and a civil way of settling things ; who admonished him to the following purpose—what94
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converse he may have held with old Maulger is not our affair.
" It's very good of you all this, Mr. Heron; I thank God you're what you are, and so may you too. But you can't go visiting about St. Allbutt's or St. Evans's: unless you are a curate, or an old lady ; and you won't very well pass for either. Excuse my talking about your appearance, but it's too—well, too fashionable, or too swell, or what not—for Oxford slums; they would think you went about for no good, and I should have to answer for it in the end." (Hugh conceived an intense disgust for him.) " I can't help the suspicions of the lower middle classes, but you would really be like a hawk in a rookery, and an imprudence would set me all wrong in my work. It's a shaky fabric" (Hugh thought he might be right) ;; "they all suspect everybody a step above them ; and their scandal about each other—well, it's as senseless, as ours, and much grosser. Now, don't think me a cur" (Hugh did not); " I can only ask you to go and see a few old disabled people, whom I'll take you to for the first time or so. You may make one or two small weekly allowances, as you're rich; I see you don't mind my valuing your money almost as much as your zeal for good works, and that looks as if the zeal would wash. If you see these once a fortnight, it's quite enough; your work is your education now, but your good looks will do them good." (HughTALKS AND LETTERS.
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blushed internally ; any shy person will know what I mean—he grew warm across his stomach, and there was no change in his brown cheeks.) On went the young vicar like a clock alarum : "Two of the strappers in Ch. Ch. stables are mine, and there's a cabman, a brother of one of them, a fair specimen. Will you speak to them now and then about their children, and patronize him, and pay schooling for one or two ? That will be all right. And you'll give us something for school-treats—that's the straight way to popularity; sic itur ad astra, in a poor parish ; and it's a good way for you, because, all the boys and girls get to know you by sight, and you'll never be annoyed. It's part of my scheme that everybody should know who cares for them, and does things ; and you may be patron to a clientele. Organising charity is very well when you have plenty of nice visitors, and are lenient ; otherwise you only come to an elaborate enquiry-office, and bureau for the refusal of help generally. I can't leave the Gospel and serve poor-law boards. Good-bye ; do as little as you will, but do it with a pleasant face; that's not hard for you. You are almost too young to scold anybody, and they are mostly accustomed to worse words than you can ever give them. And I'm always at home on Saturday morning, if you want to talk anything over."
*	jJC	^c	%
Lady Hertha was much relieved to hear of her96
HUGH HERON,\ Ch. CH.
son as through his Little-go, and again on horseback ; and all his vacation was love, confidence, and cover-shooting. Nevertheless, her other misgivings took their usual epistolary form after he had returned to Oxford—and she wrote to May Cawthorne. Part of the earlier history of this young woman is written elsewhere, as I said. Let it suffice for this, that her husband was a rather successful painter, second son of old Mr. Cawthorne of Red Scaurs ; he followed the Venetian school, and worked out his pictures after Bellini and Carpaccio, while he was at the same time much given to studies of the wilder forms of landscape. They said his wife did a good deal of these ; but the northern public bought them with a steady voracity; perhaps for her sake, for many said she carried more love on her than any woman in England. She had two children, and, as she said, everything else she could think of wanting; but she had done much ministry to poor and sick people, and seen the operation of the original sentence on the world. This is why a ministering life, when well begun, cannot well be left off, and is both engrossing and distressing to deep-hearted tender people. May was young, and cast off her inner cares, and showed a great deal of humour; but she was afflicted with the affliction of the world beneath, and found what the upper world calls pleasure increasingly disagree-TALKS AND LETTERS.
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able. She was the exact contrary of a frisky matron, and would have had enemies enough in that profession but for her grand insouciant good-nature, the pronounced opinion of men, and the fact that a good many women could hardly live without her. She was seldom in London except for a short season with her husband, when pictures were rife; and so she escaped the "grififes" of many excellent ladies of fluent speech. Scandal was rather afraid of her eyebrows, her nostrils, and her shoulders. It could not see much of the last; but they sometimes acted with the other features in ah expression it didn't like. In short, she was Lady Hertha Heron's best correspondent and nearest friend. The latter had thought more of Hugh's affair with Miss Rokeby than so slight a matter seemed to warrant, because, in the first place, she thought rather too much of all his affairs ; and, in the second, she had a pretty distinct remembrance of casually first meeting her own fate in the person of George Heron, Esq., deceased; who, as she expressed it, "met one at an evening somewhere, and never let one alone afterwards. He was so handsome, my dear, and I was as foolish about him as if I'd been a man." Many had envied him, and indeed her, when he carried her off from the Earl of East Anglia's great palace, to reign over him in the North Country. He declared from the first she should do so; and accordingly got
H98
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his own way quite as much as he desired, in and out of a large house, park, garden, home-farm, and breeding-stable. They laughed at each other, and went in for everything together, achieved triumphant success at home with all their people, and were rather admired in town year by year. And George went into the House, and spoke not badly, and was talked of for office if ever the Conservatives came in again ; and his wife was beginning for the first time to feel ambition for him—when he had a fever and never got over it. A hot sweltering London summer, with rapid transitions between House and home—then heavy grouse-shooting in the old fashion, which involved violent exercise and exposure—other people's business, and utter neglect of himself, brought him' within range of some subtle pestilence of midnight or noonday, and he died. His wife seemed to take it in a quiet grave-eyed way, saying little to any creature excepting Hugh and Fan, his sister. As the years went on, she had had a great deal of help and advice from Maulger, her son's guardian and half-uncle ; who was an Oxford man of the older type of scholar, knowing more of texts than of books about books; and considerably addicted to horsemanship and other matters. He was a widower, and had often worked hard for her; and always with a degree of sympathy and affection which led to absolute con-TALKS AND LETTERS.
99
fidence, and had the effect of making Hertha take a really active share in her children's education. Hawke had a full share of originality and a good deal of reading, and supplying ideas to so quick and charming a person was an unspeakable pleasure to him, year after year; so that to a certain extent he took their father's place with the children. They were twelve and nine respectively, when it was left vacant, and Hugh, the eldest, passed under a heavier shadow of death than his sister. It was not so much the last illness, with its anxieties and its duties, nor any parting scene; for George had sunk quietly in the faint hours between night and morning, as so many of us do—and all had known for many days that it must be. It was that their mother lived on, again calm and even humorous, and took up her little tone of simplicity and quaint sayings once more, and hit off things and people in piquant letters, as of old—all the time dwelling on George beyond the grave as a tangible prospect and awaiting presence. " I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me," she often said at first, with a reflective precision, as if trying to realise the words. Many a day,
With a glassy countenance,
Like some bold seer in a trance,
Seeing all his own mischance
—she looked down the stream of her still life. Hugh
H 2TOO
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
had not troubled its waters much: health and strength, a sharp wit and a tender heart, a practical honesty in hard work like his father's, and a turn of her own wandering imagination—all this fulness of life seemed to grow on contentedly under the shadow of early apprehended death, and in willing compliance with the Faith, as yet untried by searching strain. He had her way of taking hints and of silent remembrance, and he had never forgotten their first service at the old church at Otterscope after his father's death. His mother walked into their accustomed place in the chancel with her veil up, and her glorious face as quiet as stone, and made him, with one movement and a glance of her dark eye, kneel where papa had always knelt, and just touched his head in silence with her long hand, and Fan's on the other side, before she bowed her own between them. Hertha had always had difficulty in religious talk, beyond the usual explanations and instructions, at which she worked hard. " Things were too much for her," she said ; "and words did not seem made for these great things." And she had learnt from Maulger, who had a good deal of historical reading, to desire precision of statement and cautious expression on high matters, and be rather afraid of enthusiastic irruption where angels fear to tread. She made her children read the Bible, with endless pictures ; let us be thankful thatTALKS AND LETTERS.
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women teach religion when men won't, and that they teach it with proper appeal to the musing imagination, which men despise. Then there was " The Pilgrim's Progress," and Hugh was quite ready-to go at eight years of age, only he thought his pony would be very useful on the way, and almost a necessary addition ; he was proud to have identified the white wicket into Bardon Brake, with the small keeper's lodge, as the opening of the Way ; and he could look west of evenings from there, and had an idea that the sunset came from the Celestial City. All this he gradually imparted to Fan, and it would have fully contented Lady Hertha if he hadn't been suddenly struck by an analogy between Bob Jagger in wet oilskin and one of the Shining Ones ; which she did not know how to take. They read as much Milton as they could assimilate, in a dutiful way; and then Dante's " Purgatorio "—a great deal of it— and Keble, and Bishop Wilson ; and as they grew up, Butler and Anselm's " Cur Deus Homo." Pope's Homer, and all Scott's poems and novels, were a good deal easier to swallow ; but Hertha found, as anxious parents find now, that her children were not interested exactly as she had been, and liked modern stories much better. Duty reading may be dictated ; but one cannot expect young girls or boys to understand the Antiquary, or Caleb Balderstone.102
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
The lady of Otterscope was still about the handsomest woman in England of her time, tall and fine and rounded, with delicately-faded cheeks, and long hair of the beautiful whiteness of a far greater age. Her maid once cried over it, and said it
had changed "ever since poor"-when her mistress
languidly got up and took her in her arms, kissed her on both cheeks, and sat down again under the brushes without making any observation. There was a Lawrence portrait of herself to match one of her husband's, and both hung opposite her always in the dining-room ; she said it comforted her for getting old, to look at that picture—no change could come amiss— but things must all stay as they were till Hugh took possession. Her own sitting-room was panelled in oak, and hung with good water-colours ; moorlands by Alfred Hunt, or Morte d'Arthur by Burne Jones ; some grand storm-drawings, with Charles Cawthorne's Desert-groups, and pale granite mountains of the Sinai range. There was some old Oriental china, and a little blue and white; a number of masculine easy-chairs and writing-tables of her husband's, a good piano and harp. The knicknacks were not numerous—there were a great many books, and great piles of plain work; May and Lady Hertha delighted in things old women could wear, and only made lace at company times, by way ofTALKS AND LETTERS.
ornamental occupation. The room was on the south side of the house, and opened into a small conservatory, and that into a vinery, with which the large drawing-room again communicated. The view was on the large rough park, where a few red deer yet remained in a separate enclosure of moorland ; and Highland beasts and fallow bucks and does predominated near the house. Two stags a year on his own moors had been permitted to Hugh by his mother and the old forester for the last two seasons. There was a set of stew-ponds of ancient tench, to whom being eaten must have made a change, but no great difference, in the even tenor of their days ; below these there was a long winding water or succession of pools on different levels, fed from the high moors. The heather came down quite near the ihouse, and you could hear the gor-cock (let us give him his Highland name) crow, from the garden at morn and eve.
Lady Hertha sat in a deep bay of her thick-walled hold, looking out on ghostly trees pearled with March frost, and moors white and sparkling under blue ether and delicate mist. All within was deep colour and glow of warmth; all without was exquisite glitter of fresh cold. It was like a song without words to her pensive mood, which hovered, as now it often did, between anxious fears andHUGH HERON, Ch. Ch.
hopeful fancies, as sweet as tears in dreams. She had known something of the Rokebys of Shoreswood. There had been a kind of well-sustained family-coolness between them and the Herons, and that for centuries ; there were no grievances, but the races had been on different sides since Cromwell. Perhaps Lady Hertha had a notion that her lot might have been joined with the other house if she had wished it; before her marriage, or perhaps after her widowhood.
Sir Ralph Rokeby was a widower and a good deal older than she ; but he had more than once shown a grave and grim admiration for her, both Puritan and knightly in its character ; and nobody but she herself ever knew how far it had got into word or deed. One thing was certain, that they met no oftener than of old, that they talked a good deal for rather silent people when they did meet, but that Ralph's voice was as hard and measured to Hertha as to anyone else, and that he seemed at once to attend upon her and brood over her. They looked each other straight in the face when they shook hands, and did not do so very often ; on the whole there seemed to be an odd painful friendship between them, which had grown a little less cold as the baronet's health seemed to fail. They wondered why he had grown so irritable of late: " He had gout flyingTALKS AND LETTERS.
about him, really was getting older," and so on. It was true enough; he had come to the stage when pleasure is over, except in rest from pain, and strength of will is turning to weakness of temper— he knew it, and took it silently; but the worst sign of age to him was to see Hertha older. He had at least wished to marry her, and he thought of it no more now; but she represented a disappointment and longing, and the sense of the sore might-have-been ; and he felt his own " passing " the more to think of hers.
" I like that last paragraph, Charles ; I was afraid you were going to make a mystery of Lady Hertha. ' No scandal about Queen Elizabeth,' I hope."
" All right, May ; don't you interrupt for the sake of a quotation. You're given to quoting, you know, and I don't always know where it comes from ; which is wrong in you."
"What would George have thought about Hugh and Grace ?" Hertha thought on in her bay-window. "Beauty, of course ; well, perhaps, women don't think enough about it—two of a trade never agree. He ought to have the best of everything. I should like him to marry a little money too ; they are so extravagant when they come from pinching and find they have something to spend. It's just as bad forio6
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
us, his being married for his money, as his taking a girl for hers ; but any of them will take him from me all the same. Like others,motirrcti seule—my son's my son till he gets him a wife, my daughter's my daughter—of course she is—where are you, Fan ? "
Two young ladies at least appear necessary in a novel; it is as difficult to manage with one as it is to keep an isolated cock or hen. There is a solitary duck in " The Caxtons." I wonder if he had any remembrance of other ducks, and if at such times he was good company for Pisistratus the Elder ? Or let me remark that it is impossible to keep a single love-bird. I once knew a pair of those extraordinary little beings, and when one died, the other died ; but that may have been connected with the absurd regularity of all their living habits. We called them Xerxes and Arter-xerxes, as Mr. Jorrocks called his tandem horses ; because one—we never ascertained whether he was the cock or the hen—invariably took his meals, his ablutions, and his bit of exercise just before the other, every day in the year ; it would have been quite irritating if they had not been so very small. Fanny Heron was not a small person. (It will be found, I think, by those who will investigate the subject, which I decline to attempt, that little women in stories are more difficult to manage than full-sized ones; they run about so.) But Lady Hertha called Fan, and theTALKS AND LETTERS.	107
young person who habitually " answered to that name " did so once more, looking up from her drawing with immense eyes, which were as yet seldom raised, except to make answer.
There was a turn of old fashion about her appearance and style. She had an atmosphere of her own, a sort of still activity in which she lived, and did things as in a picture; she was rather slender for her height, with sloping shoulders, and a long throat which had a very thoroughbred spring from the collarbone. She had grave eyes and brown English hair, which was generally dressed in some kind of Lady-bettyish style, becoming to country damsels of degree. Maulger looked at her once and said, " Sicut Lilium," which she did not quite understand; but Charles Cawthorne said she was quite Sir Joshua, and her only piece of coquetry at present was to dress to the great Mr. Cawthorne's taste.
" Do you remember much of Grace Rokeby of Shoreswood, Fan ? You've met less than you ought."
" Only she was rather friendly, and I thought her so pretty two years ago at Bewerley; don't you remember we went to Bolton, and she jumped over the Strid?"
" Well, should you like her for a sister-in-law ? "
" What, has Hugh proposed to her ?"
" No, nor said a word ; but he picked her upio8
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
insensible, and he took her in his arms, you know. He said no more about it, but it's made an impression on him, I'm sure."
" But isn't she engaged, or something, to one of the Inglerams—that rather wild one who went out to India, I think ? She said something of having been considered his property ever since she could remember, and being rather afraid of him."
" Well, she seems not to be timid, and he must be formidable; a good deal older than she, I should think."
" He said he had saved her out of a pond when she was eight years old, and that had been the beginning of it."
" And Malham Priors keeps it up, I suppose ; he is likely to come into all that property of his uncle's. Just mention that in your letter to Hugh—I wrote yesterday."
" He won't be vexed, will he ?" said Fan.
" No. I told him I thought she belonged to somebody else, or words to that effect. He may feel a little sentimental or so, but he daren't show it much. People would say it is so absurd—not that it is in the least."
"Well, she was insensible," said her daughter meditatively, "so she must be all right anyhow."
" I hope she was. Hugh would be very handsome under the circumstances—it is so dangerousTALKS AND LETTERS.
beginning- in that way ; both excited and off their guard—and looking they don't know how, or how well. I think we'd better ask somebody to meet him in town ; but he may meet her again before. Oh dear, I wish there were no young men or young women, it's worse than when you were little ; and I'm so ridiculous to be anxious about nothing."
" Hadn't you better write to Mrs. Cawthorne, mamma ? Her letters always do you good."
And Lady Hertha indited, and was answered, as below :
"My dear May,
"I know you are engaged at home till Easter at Red Scaurs; but, as soon as you can in the spring holidays, do come and give us a long visit, before Hugh goes back, if you can. It is so nice to have a few cozes by the fire together, when I can have you a little to myself, and haven't always to speak to two other people in the same breath, as one has in the season. That is why one thinks more of London friends in absence, because, when their bodies are present, one always has to think of somebody else. I always think what a chilly inattentive dowager I must seem to all the young people; the only comfort is, it will be just the same with my dear May in a few years. To be sure, young people think thatno
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
they ought, in the nature of things, to be the foremost, if not the only object in the mind of everybody they have met more than twice. I don't wonder; they really are more interesting than people at our time of life—of course my being five-and-twenty years older than you makes no difference as to using that expression. Really it is profitable and to edification to find Charles so affable, now he is a great man; he has written me such an account of his visit to Hugh at Oxford, and says my son reminds him exactly of what he himself was at that age, which, he continues, must be a very great comfort and pleasure for me to think of. He is the most impudent young man in England, your young man; and I only hope you will bring up little Charley to take warning by his poor papa, who is particularly nice, you know, because he has some relics of what we used to call wit, and says the things gentlefolks used to say to please each other; instead of being profoundly ironical and bitingly humorous, as people are now to vex each other.
" But Hugh has been telling me about Miss Rokeby, whom you know better than I do. It seems she had a fall, out hunting, in Oxfordshire, and that he picked her up. He insists particularly on having only had one look at her, which makes me fear that that one may have been enough. HardTALKS AND LETTERS.
hi
boys are very sentimental—at least, he always was; and this one observation seems to enable him to describe her quite closely. They are a very riding family, are they not ? Do you know if she is a good girl ? I couldn't bear his taking to an fonyhe, or a stupid one, or a fast one—but I never heard any harm of her or hers.
" So young Wharfedale is fairly given over to his Oxford flame ; and your friend Gerty Crack will for ever go out of the room before us both. That may be distressing; but I know you are fond of her, and I am inclined to like her very much. Since the great Headless-Cross day, which I suppose you haven't forgotten, her character as a hard-riding young lady is quite settled, and Yorkshire ought to do something for her after that. Sedentary young men always raise outcries against girls who are not as timid as they are themselves. I suppose Charles will have to paint her on Redrose—wasn't that her horse's name ? I declare I feel the old match-making fever coming on me again ; and I am so glad the young people are by way of being settled. I own it did occur to me he might have waited to take a look at Fan, who is really growing a very dangerous girl indeed, she is so unconscious. Excuse a partial mother, as you always excuse everybody; and we shall see how she looks this season. I suppose I shall have to stay twice as112
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
long- as usual ; but I look forward to seeing all the pictures of the year with you and your husband. This is a mere note, and doesn't count; now write me a nice long letter—can you ?
" HERTHA."
Mrs. Cawthorne to Lady Heron.
" My dearest Hertha,
" I am so glad to get your letter, and I can't help beginning about the Headless-Cross run which you remind me of. We have a considerable grief connected with it; Charles rode old Catapult that day, you know—in front from end to end—and she is gone. I hope it isn't flying in the face of Providence, but excepting Charles, who always bleeds inwardly, we have all been crying over the dear old thing. She had to be put away last Tuesday, having trodden hard with her near forefoot on a sharp piece of granite, which I wish had been molten beneath the crust of the earth at the time, instead of mending the road, and split her pastern all to pieces: 'The poor bones felt like a bag of marbles,' as Hannam the groom said in great distress. Luckily it happened when he was on her, and not C., who would always have worried himself about his weight doing it. We had the best advice, and it was death ; and to the last, though she was in such pain, she kept nibbling bits of apple outTALKS AND LETTERS.
"3
of my hand ; and then I went away, very bad indeed ; and Charles shot her, so that she never moved, but was dead instantly. He looked dreadful, and hardly spoke all day, though he continually petted me ; but at night he went out with all the men, and buried her himself in the fruit-garden. Hannam's saying was the best: ' Ah, mar' dear, warldly friends is vary well ; but when ye coom to look for a friend to carry ye forty minnats best pace close to 'um, they are bad to light on.'
" Hugh certainly makes the most favourable impression on everybody. I think he is the handsomest lad in Oxford, and he is so delightfully attentive and old-fashioned, to me, and to all women ; and he seems quite to take a lead already. I think he does remind one of Charles, and he is so very like Fan. I look forward to her first appearance on the London boards, though I suppose she is too late for Lord Wharfedale. He lost his heart fairly years ago, I think before I knew Gerty. He has waited so well and been so constant, that I think he is good enough for her. They talk of next summer, in the chapel at Ravensgill Towers, I suppose; at all events our bells will ring for them at Rotherclifife. What a wild time all that past seems now! She says they are going to Beallach-na-hara for a deer-stalking honeymoon ; and I have my own opinion, founded on recollections of
iH4
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
Charles at Tombuie about that time in our lives, that he won't go out seriously above two days a week.
" I must say I hope it is the beginning of a romany that affair with Grace Rokeby, though I should think she will hardly forgive Earl Percy for having seen her fall in the South Country; but as you say he was down the same day, she may excuse him. I think they may just retain an impression, but it can't be any more. I say they, because she told me about her accident, and said she tackled the horse again afterwards, and he went perfectly in a gag-snaffle. In that stunned condition she had the faintest consciousness that some ' unusual-looking,' she said, 'person did something for her, and vanished.' You will guess what I think of her; I am sure she is one of the best girls I ever knew; and oh, dear Hertha, if you don't like it really, please tell me so franchement, and it never need be anything; but if it is once started, they will be no more able to leave each other than Tristram and Yseult. (I always thought Tristram had very hard measure in the story, and particularly in Tennyson ; and Dante might have let him off; and Hugh is so like him before he went wrong.) But by what I know of them both, they are quite fresh, and young, and dear, even for their age ; and I couldn't bear her having a disappointment with him, or pay him a higher com-TALKS AND LETTERS.
pliment than in saying so. You know their family is as old as your own almost—and she will have her mother's fortune; indeed, I believe she has it already— and she is as good as gold, and tender to every person or thing that wants help, and a little High Church like ourselves—in the earlier manner, of Miss Yonge, except that she has a peculiarly insane sense of fun—something like affectionate feeling for oddity, you know. And she is strong and patient, and brought up to honour and noblesse oblige. I know that is not so good as religious sense of duty, but it helps wonderfully, and she has both. Perhaps they may be coming to town this season ; at all events we shall meet there.
" It is so nice to write you a long letter. I quite want to talk on about the old mare. It is odd how deep her loss seems to go, there was something so human about her. Charley's painter eye did him no good this time, for he says he cannot get rid of her dreadful look of appeal to him—that sort of hopeless entreaty to do something for her. Life always ends tragically—that must be; but really where there has been such real love on both sides as there was between the old thing and us, one cannot help wondering what soul really is, and if she had not something of the sort capable of real affection, and which may endure while that endures. There was
I 2n6
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
once with poor old Catty, in the first winter with Charles, when she and I quarrelled about a hurdle or something, and she was angry all day, and I'm afraid I gave it her with rather a sharp spur. I went to her the next morning as usual, to make it up, with some cut carrot; and first she looked away from me and wouldn't have any. So I stroked her down her crest and neck, and said, ' Catty dear;' and she looked at me—oh me!—and put her nose to me, and cried, great large tears, and I couldn't bear it a moment, but broke out too against her neck all at once; and Charles found us both kissing and weeping over the carrots ; and when I told him, he held me in his arms for I don't know how long, and said he never knew how dear I was. I have had my way in everything ever since, not that I am sure I did not have it before; and sometimes one fancies it might be jolly to quarrel with him, and make it up; but he might not like it, and I don't fancy experiments. But as he said, the old mare must have been a very nice person before she was a mare. Then there is the empty box and the particular bridle, and the others going out for exercise and she not there, and Kitty (Mariquita, you know, the little bay) seeming to look for her; in short, I am ashamed of myself, and half-frightened to think of all the common blessings one has, and depends upon, and never notices. Fancy having come to takeTALKS AND LETTERS.
117
old Charles as a matter of course, when I used to think him too good—or at least too nice—to be true; and now he persists in saying he was more in love than I all the time, and won't let me alone.
" Ever your affectionate
"MAY."
" Oh Charley," said May, " did you ever see that letter ?"
He spake with his lips in answer, but words are not recorded. Perhaps there were not any. We need not inquire; since it is written in Aldrich's Logic that " Voces quas Natura sponte suggerit, extra artem censentur."CHAPTER VII.
kirk otterscope.
" They've a fine Oxford fellow staying at Methley," said Maulger; " Arthur HighclifFe's his name ; he was. head at Roughborough, and got everything that could be got; and an athlete, and very popular, you know;: rising man with Dons and men, I think. Let's have him over here for a week ; Hugh had better know him at home."
" Why, Hugh does know of him ; chiefly as awful at freethinking and football," said Lady Hertha.
" I've thought of that; but, my dear Hertha, they must meet each other in Oxford ; they know so many of each other's friends. I can't help his freethinking ; that is to say, I can't prevent people from calling it that. The fact is, I think he's as good a believer as, you or I at heart, in desire to believe; but he can't cipher it all out for himself; and that's what they've taught him to try at."
" How do you mean ?"KIRK OTTERSCOPE.
119
"Well, at Roughborough they teach lads to use their reason and moral sense, and all that; and some of them won't use anything else. Precocious thought— or rather the common mistake that boys' arguing is thought! Now Highcliffe hasn't learnt to put up with understanding so very little as is given us to understand, here in this world. He's been rather spoilt intellectually; but if he's what they say he is, Hugh might find him a good friend, because he's all honour and conscience. I'd rather our lad heard of difficulties from him than from anybody else."
" Why from anybody else, or at all ?"
" No clever thinking lad can get through Oxford or any mixed place of men's society, without having them put right before him ; and it's better a very able fellow with heart and conscience should do it, if it must be done. Besides, our lad's a good lad, and may be good for the genius. And they have met in Oxford, and nobody can stop it. Let him come here and talk to him yourself; you might do him a great deal of good without knowing it."
" Goodness, Maulger! me talk to sceptical young Dons ? They despise one's sex, age, and respectability together."
" He's not that sort; he's more likely to look at you as a sort of patron saint; I don't think he's ever been in society, or lived in a country house. It's very120
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
pleasant here, and you are so nice, my dear Hertha. After Oxford polemics, life at Otterscope will give him a chance of rest."
" He won't take to Fan, will he ? A merely clever person I shouldn't mind, but a real genius, with ever so many fresh ideas would—unsettle her, perhaps."
" Not likely; he'd be very admiring and respectful; but those fellows' minds are always introverted—they can't think about anything but themselves."
" He'll stay a fortnight or so, I suppose, and go back with Hugh ? You don't want me to keep her here, and they want her at Shoreswood ?"
" Oh, send her anywhere you like ; but, my dear, I think Hugh is struck with this Fellow of St. Homo-novus's already, and wants him here in fact. It's one of the great difficulties of Oxford, introductions for one's boys. You can make them known to Principal This and Provost That, and get them a few dinner invitations, and better things too, perhaps. But it's a great thing to know the younger leaders, even when they're not what you wish ; you know what's o'clock, and the way the wind blows, and all that, by knowing them. If Highcliffe sees you, he'll be more careful of your son, you may swear to that. He's not cocktailed in the least, or ungrateful."
" Perhaps it would be safer if he was. I don't think my boy would like anybody's trying openlyKIRK OTTERSCOPE.
121
to get him from me. But I'll write him a note, and say everything nice/'
When the note was gone, old Hawke indulged in some misgivings. He had given Hugh shrewd and good advice many a time, and had never seemed unwelcome up to present date; but the boy was choosing his own friends now, and it must be. He knew a good deal of Highcliffe; enough for a fair estimate of his ideas as well as his character. He knew that he had been brought up in rather dry conformity, taught everything as fact and nothing as truth ; and then awakened to his own conscience of right and wrong, honour and dishonour, without ever having any connexion established between it and the currents of spiritual motive. Nothing could have been better than Highcliffe's early teaching in many respects, for it had begun with the deep-lying imagination. He had been brought up on the Iliad and the Odyssey, and Walter Scott and Milton, and on stories of great deeds and of endurance of martyrs, Primitive and Protestant. But his father and mother had not made it clear to him why great deeds were done, or what or whom martyrdoms were suffered for. They had not given him the definite teaching of a creed, or quite owned to one before his eyes; and as they had lived in America for some part of his boyhood, he had not had the help of that preparatory122
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
regularity of service, which may not be altogether so-ineffective as people say; which, at all events, bows down a number of youthful necks for good. Then he had gone to Roughborough with a knowledge of the Catechism, and without attaching the least shadow of meaning to it; and perhaps he was not troubled much about it there. But he heard of conscience, and honour, and truth, and right, and sound morals, and decent life; and having in him the desire for alL things good and true, and the generous sense of hero-worship which is often a lad's best discipline, he grew up a Christian unattached; conforming to Church, service and creed willingly enough, but always more and more self-centred and independent, and gradually losing the sense of God in this world. It will not do (at least from any believer's point of view) to appeal to the conscience of a whole heap of boys, and never tell them where their conscience came from. And in the presence of a definite creed, you must either connect it with their conscience or not; and if not, it will go to the wall, unless they have been well taught the Faith at home ; in which case they will wonder why you don't teach it. Now Highcliffe, like so many, had been brought up in the ways of the Church of England without knowing them, and without seeing any special good in them; only a great deal of respectability and comfortable decent life. And he was exactly the young man, andKIRK OTTERSCOPE.
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his time of life exactly the time of life, for general and particular discontent with respectability and comfort.
There is a great turn of spiritual life, which comes hardest perhaps on the best or strongest. It is the time of first real consciousness of evil and the curse which is on the world. They are happy, who find it accounted for in their thoughts; even by rote, by repetition, by religious forms not yet apprehended ; for they can oftentimes, with help, and fair fortune of the soul, learn to compare the half-seen Fact of evil with the half-learnt Hope of deliverance; and so willingly accept their share of a burden which they see is common to all men. All creeds, definite and indefinite, right and wrong, have but one answer to the great dilemma; which is, to wait on the-God you know not yet; and it is thus most true that they also serve who only stand and wait. But strong eager lads with good intellects cannot learn this at once. And to have been brought up at school to think you are always to be right, and right is always to prevail, without fit preparation for the daemonic nature of things, however good a fellow you may be—exposes you to rude shocks in the world ; not always because the world maltreats you, but because you see how others are handled, and can't make it out.
Then Highcliffe had fallen into the midst ofHUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
Oxford polemics ; and from unmitigated self-reliance was invited to give himself up to ascetic observance, under direction of Brother This, or Father That. Attempts were being made to revive the drastic mediaeval discipline of St. Norscius of Noricum in Oxford; and 'Clifife looked out of his queer eyes at the brethren as they went about in pairs. And he went to their and other High services, and was asked to the refections of sympathizers, and overtures were made to him ; with what result may be supposed. Not that he minded incense, or lights, or vestments, or anything ; but he said they didn't help him to say his prayers, and that was what he wanted, wanted very bad, in fact. Confess to Father Ignition ? Wouldn't Atticus do as well ? He was a good old experienced party, who understood one as well as one did oneself. In short he was soon given up ; not meaning to be so, but feeling all the time the value of true devotion and zeal for good works, and admiring the genuine self-sacrifice of many of his friends. How could it be mixed up with such grotesques of nonsense and bad taste ? Here were people talking about Religious Art, and there was St. Fad's adorned with painted plaster images, and colours evidently derived by zealous ladies from the taste of their milliners. There was to be a new Church with every parson his own bishop, or indeed pope. As aKIRK OTTERSCOPE.
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Radical he had no objection to independence, but did not like the prospect of a lot of shifting congregations competing for offertories with what he called the loud cymbals.
Then he went and heard the preaching of one or two of the true leaders of the Oxford movement, who lead no more ; and felt, perhaps, a truer follower than many a hatchet-faced enthusiast, who only listened to know how far the preacher meant to go. Highcliffe's notions of religion soon grew altogether personal, and fluctuated accordingly; he went with this man or said ditto to that; and was unstable, not with the fickleness of ignorance, but with genuine and distressing effort towards the side of truth he saw for the time. His father had been all his days in commerce in one of the old Western cities, with a radical connexion ; and the son's eager imagination had learnt democracy too early; it grew like a religion to him—he identified it with all that was glorious in Greece and Rome. And with all the political earnestness of Puritanism, he would not accept the State Church as a faith, because it was managed and owned so much by lords and country squires. It was easy enough to conform ; there was good sense and liberality, and after all they seemed pretty right as to history. But this tame Church was too tame ; one could not believe in a set of compromises. In726
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
short, he did as so many do who do not happen at the time to be possessed by the Spirit of Religion : he gave no other person or institution near him credit for any, and ceased to think Faith a modern possibility. There were ages of faith, and unless you were born in them you couldn't have any. He thought because books were sharp and positive, Saints and Martyrs had thought like books, and were as obsolete. He had no notion of One Spirit in all faithful people. He did not know that a Church consists of souls as well as documents; and that people's attempting compromises on ecclesiastical authority does not invalidate their belief in the Apostles' Creed, or shake the truth of that formula as fact.
Meanwhile he had had a great career in Oxford, whatever that is worth ; and it has another value besides the purely pecuniary, when you can gain success without losing love. We don't profane the word by using it of the generous hero-worship which lads really feel for each other, often at distance as great as a knight of low degree might feel for a king's daughter, of Hongrie or elsewhere. So-and-so can ride rather, or row just above a bit, or he does write such stunning verses, or his sisters are such crackers, or he has such tremendous convictions on the nonentity of existence, or he has such an "owdacious " kick at football. For one of these gifts a man is respected; for two he isKIRK OTTERSCOPE.
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extolled; three make him a public character; and anything above that is apotheosis—or at least, as Sir Henry Boyle observed, immortality for the term of his natural existence. Now Highcliffe was emphatically the best goal-keeper of his age, and a great runner, and general athlete; and he never thought anything of himself. It was that wonderfully unaffected and crack performance, not only with his soul in the work, or the game, and his artistic view of whatever it was —so that he did not care for his own glory, but went in for the thing itself, to do it as well as it could be done—this, I think, made everybody value his accomplishments above other people's. Then there was something commanding about his great square forehead and face, with the shoulders, and limbs so fully qualified to back thought and firm will with their hard strength. And he was best-natured of -men; sometimes he was silent, and listened pleased to others, and then broke into torrents of words when the right step was put on, or sometimes jerked in this or that word to the purpose, when he was in a sententious humour. And he seldom snubbed or shut up anybody, or, if he did, generally set him up again in his own esteem—in short, he was a great and good conversationist among the talking lads of his time ; so much the more because at times he moped and moulted, as it were; and sat still128
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with his feathers all rough, and wouldn't say anything". Fire, Heart, and Honesty ; those are the great secular qualities. It is rather a pity that so many of those who possess and admire them cannot see that the ecclesiastical nomenclature of Faith, Hope, and Charity, is the most accurate after all, and affords by far the best hypothesis of their origin. Anyhow, ' Cliffe, and his rough red face, brown or black-eyed, were a power in Oxford ; adored by undergraduates, who made him the centre of duty, because he wasn't their tutor or governor; and contemplated by elder Dons with a grumbling effort to understand what on earth he meant or wanted, and an acknowledgment that he was the best of these new sort of fellows after all.
He came over to Otterscope in his best form, that is to say in an interval of real enjoyment. He was self-conscious, and self-tormenting to a degree; and that made him suffer. But he was free from craving vanity or devouring envy, and had the quickest sense of every overture that could be made him; from a child's asking him what o'clock it was, to Lady Hertha's consulting him about Hugh's reading. Without undervaluing his commercial friends in Whernfield or Rothercliffe one whit, he got off into Craven, and then through the wilder Dales, with great satisfaction at the free airKIRK OTTERSCOPE.
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and moorland horizon. He was going to see what these swell barbarians were like. Hugh was waiting for him at Fell Foot station, with a large open vehicle very broad in the axle,—something between inside-car and waggonette,—a tremendous brown horse, and a boy. The turn-out looked rough, but the quadruped was unmistakable, and they did seven or eight miles over the moors at a rate of speed which would have gratified any spectator who might have been on the spot, and in fact was not; for they met hardly a soul. Few paths are more lonely than these grass-covered moor-roads trodden by hunter and herdsman ; with just six inches on a side of smooth wheel-track, mossy stones and grassy herbage between and on each side ; up to the ferny or brambled dykes of granite or hard limestone. Highcliffe's spirits rose, and he felt himself taking to his young host, as the wheels rattled and spun along the hard narrow road ; Hugh sitting with his feet forward and his shoulders back, and giving and taking with the powerful nag before them.
" Yorkshiremen hippodamoio s, all you swells up here," said Highclifife, as a grouse got up close to the road and the horse swerved into and out of the side-drain, luckily a shallow and soft one.
" Yes, we're always at it, and it's wonderful how little we get hurt; we've a smash or so every
K13°
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year at Otterscope, but there's only the bill; and we do a deal of work at home, and often save that."
" You're not timid, anyhow, and that's half ■ the battle."
" I suppose so," said Hugh. " I'm often in a funk—particularly at first; but the great thing is driving oneself, and having the horse to attend to. /shouldn't have liked that lurch now if I'd not been driving ; but I had to cut him on the quarter, and that braced my nerves."
" Nerves—have you got any ? No, by-the-bye, you do your books well, and must have something of the sort; but you don't show it."
" Mrs. Mordaunt said something to me about that, as she does, half-sugar, half-vinegar ; we were talking about Assheton Smith, and his motto of no danger where there's no fear; and she put out her lip at me, and said : ' I saw you come to utter grief the other day, Mr. Heron, and so I suppose that saying's no truer than others.'"
" Why, I don't know about these things, but I should have been considerably pleased, and thought I was being made a little love to."
" Pooh, she's married and has five children ; exemplary to a degree. Here we come on the Peppercaster Pike. Go ahead now, old man—home,'"KIRK OTTERSCOPE.
he said to the horse, who, perfectly understanding the fact, arched his neck and bent his knees, and threw out his forefeet, and sprung off his hocks alternately, with the action of a steam-engine. They were in Otterscope woods in a few minutes, driving through a mile or two of rough covers, big oaks and ashes, and yews and hollies, with a thick undergrowth of bracken and bramble. The winter day began to darken in; ground and leaves seemed to grow crisper and harder together, as the minute teeth of the frost ran through all things. They rose a long gentle slope, came out on the park, and spanked up to the wide hall-door with its large porch. Lady Hertha came from her rooms, just fresh and brilliant from a long drive and walk. She had taken Fan to Shoreswood two days before, and just returned herself, and gone her home-circuit of visits, farm and garden.
"Well, I'm so glad to see you, Mr. Highcliffe; we know a great deal about you from Hugh and Mr. Hawke, and now you're coming to investigate us. Isn't it a wild place, and didn't you expect to find us painted somehow?" said she, determined on a confidential flirtation.
"Why—a—I'm sure if there is anything in the world I didn't expect, it was that," shot out Highcliffe, with a look of natural admiration at
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Lady Hertha which considerably advanced his interests in that direction.
" Nonsense, you're not to be so sharp ; I meant painted blue, in star-and-fish patterns, you know."
" Not even that—but—a—a—at all events, I expected a great deal, and the reality's quite beyond-"
Then he thought he was going too fast, which may have been the case, and stopped and blushed.
" Well, you must stay as long as you can ; I want to ask you about so many things. It's not only that you know all about Oxford; but you are quite young, you know, compared with Maulger and me, and you see things as young people see them. It's too dark to look at our pictures, though there are one or two we are proud of. I hope you don't despise afternoon tea?"
"It would hardly suit our habits in Oxford, but it's very nice anywhere else."
"You're to have something with it, for we don't dine till eight," said Hugh. "I say, there's such a wild frosty sunset, outside—come and look down t' dale a bit—it's 'one of our sights when we get the sun low, all along the woods."
He was right—they had the advantage, rare and precious among the mountains, of a space of comparatively low sunset; and the streaming of level raysKIRK OTTERSCOPE.
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along the countless spots they knew, invested all welcome old places with an ever-fresh charm, which seemed to make them great and novel. The sun went down in gloom and splendour, and defined masses of frozen cloud as hard in outline as the hills ; he glared upon them and sunk slowly among them, driving them hither and thither ; like the great chief of a falling cause among the foes of his last battle, living yet a little for battle's sake, but readier to look on death than ruin. There was a belt of mist on the long horizon, which made the orb within it like one great globe of red-hot gold; and above it his light still prevailed and had its time, and gilded one mass after another of the solid vapours which engulfed him. Faster he rushed down, himself unchanged; and what a change he left behind !
"Balder is dead," said Highcliffe unsympathizingly; " allons souper—Lady Hertha, you were kind enough to say you'd give us some tea."
"Why, you said you didn't care about it, and I thought you would have made some beautiful observation about the sunset."
" Well, I did say something rather neat; you know Balder is a solar myth—so's Hercules; so are lots of people; it's all in Max Miiller's ' Chips.' "
" Yes, I remember something of it; but, dear134
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
Mr. Highcliffe, I wish you'd tell me all about it, and not only talk to me in short marginal notes, as if I was a classic ; I'm not old enough for that."
" Why, there's so much about it, and the thing is so grand to see—and don't you think one ought to have one's tea first ?"
" People are so greedy. But I see it's ready in the hall. Sugar and cream, of course—cream is a thing we rather think we can do in these parts."
In short Lady Hertha had taken to Highcliffe, having found an entirely new sort of young man to study and compare with her son; and she chatted away to him; and he alternately listened and broke out himself, and they never left off till it was time to dress for dinner; and when she came down she poked Hugh with her fan, and said she thought she could "do" with his friend pretty well.
'Cliffe had been pleased enough before, but when he found Lady Hertha no longer in gray tweed, but in black velvet with slashed sleeves, pearls, and a coif after Bess of Hardwicke (as in the Gallery at South Kensington some time ago), he thought he had never seen her like before ; which may have been the case. And by way of further enchantment and distraction, he sat next to May Cawthorne, who had just come on a winter visit, for which Lady HerthaKIRK OTTERSCOPE.
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always claimed her, with or without her husband. She had heard of and was rather interested in him, as Charles had known and liked him at Oxford. He asked eagerly about her husband, who was coming after her in a few days, she said; and they began to talk about pictures, and art in general; more or less driven out of their course from time to time, by the changes and chances of a miscellaneous and rapid conversation all round the table. It was the first evening of a large shooting-party in the house, with various neighbour guests.
" I almost wonder Cawthorne did not take up the story of Balder, or some of the Sagas," said Highcliffe, half-remembering the sunset; " they must be full of grand subjects ; chain-mail and mists, and red beards and battle-axes."
" Why, do you know I detest blood and wounds ; I used to walk a hospital once, and saw sad things enough. Do you care for terror in paintings? Somehow it does not seem to be the object."
"Why, I think your husband might paint something really terrible, and stir up people a little."
" I don't know," said May. " If it could be done very fast and all at a heat, it would be easier; but Charles always wants to do things thoroughly; and working out a ghastly or very exciting subject, with all the properties and details, you know; it's136
HUGH HERON, Cn. Cir.
a great strain, and it makes him distrait and gloomy ; and I want him to take care of me and the children."
" I thought ladies were always inspiring their husbands, and putting them up to great deeds."
" Not after we're married," said May, looking rather saucy, and putting out her under-lip a little at him. " Our own great sufferings are sure to be enough to think of. Besides, you know, it's not every striking poetical subject that will paint."
" Isn't there a book called Lessing's ' Laocoon ' about those things ? "
" I read some of it once, but it was very hard German. I think there was something about the painter only having a moment of time allowed him, whereas the poet can tell you all, before and after, and talk all round his subject."
" But the power is so great, to make one see the thing."
" Yes, but that's what I mean," said May. " Great and dreadful things happen in moments, and take ever so long to realise; and one gets so very tired ; and it affects one. You want a man to horrify himself and his wife for six months, that you may enjoy a gentle shock for ten minutes. You mustiit see bad things. Do let the woodcut men do the horrors, and we'll do all that's nice."KIRK OTTERSCOPE.
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" What a word ' nice' is ! What do you mean by it ?"
" Well, natural things I mean ; nice means Nature."
" I declare you ought to come to us in Oxford ; I believe you've hit on a capital thing."
" For the Derby, I trust," interrupted Jack Outram on May's other side. " Do put us all on, my dear Mrs. Cawthorne."
"It's 'Laocoon;' do you know him ?" said May instantly, and quite undaunted. " Mr. Lessing's ' Laocoon ;' some say he's a roarer though."
" Not in it, that I've heard; but I believe you're only talking about books, and that won't do always. Now do let me into it, and have a conversation suited to my powers,—in words of one syllable."
" Well, we were talking about pictures. Do you like grand horrible subjects ? "
" No. High Art, I suppose. I like-"
" Now, do tell me what you do like."
"Well, I think, Landseer; or if one could get anybody like him who could do horses. Rosa Bonheur isn't bad—I remember the ' Rochers de Fontaine-bleau'—and I like a bit of landscape, when I've seen the place; only fellows always will paint hurricanes and avalanches, and simooms and maelstroms, and all that sort of thing."i38
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
" I suppose, if one had been in the Maelstrom, one would like a picture of it, and it would be a bit of landscape one knew," said Highcliffe.
" Yes, a ' 'sperience,' as Topsy says. But I never saw but one good picture of a grouse-drive ; and they often are capital scenes—landscape and figures. Hugh, don't you remember the dinner-party of beaters, all Wharfedale's tenants — that day you peppered your uncle, you know ?"
" Sport seems so much more fit for pictures in the north," said Highcliffe.
" Is that so, May ?" said Outram. Everybody called Mrs. Cawthorne " May." Old neighbours call each other by christian-names naturally in Yorkshire : her acquaintance was very large, and, as her husband said, May was ' a capital name to holler'—like Shot for a retriever. Anyhow, the monosyllable was held to be her special property, and she answered of course, though rather pensively, for the question was one which she and her husband had often turned over.
"Yes, I think the moors, and high ground, and becks, and whinstones, make all the difference. And then, you know, gentlemen wear rougher coats, and are not quite so spruce. Most men are more picturesque in shooting things."
" Why won't hunting things do ?"
" I think it's the boots; and the pinks are tooKIRK OTTERSCOPE.
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florid; and Charles says art is averse to shininess in all things. If you would wear tan butcher-boots, or red Russia leather now—that and rough square-cut grooms' jackets—not coats, you know—ancj have nothing bright but stirrups and bits and spurs-"
" I don't know why we shouldn't, except that half the men wouldn't go out, they say, if it was not for the scarlet. What do you say, Highcliffe ?—you ought to help us."
" Mrs. Cawthorne's quite right, I think. I never had a red coat myself, or even tops, or anything, except a pair of leggings; but I've been out with Lord Crashingdon, and the O. B.; and I've often thought nobody has ever done fox-hunting as it might be done, and that nobody but Cawthorne is likely to do it, or nobody so well as he. I hope you'll ask him." And he looked at May, who laughed and shook her head.
" Didn't you have a grand accident once ?" said her other neighbour. "We ought to have that in iles. I don't even know the story."
" Mrs. Cawthorne went over some awful place, and killed herself and her horse, to avoid jumping on an old farmer; or for some other frivolous and feminine reason," Outram said, turning to 'Cliffe, who looked with a kind of wonder on the rich dark face, which would have been voluptuous but for its140
HUGH HERON, Ch. Ch.
wistful sensitive eyes and arched intellectual mouth, and glanced on to the magnificent figure in its grave Catherine-Parr bodice and heavy lace. He was a hard bold fellow, but had a good deal of woman-worship in him of the old style; and he looked red and rather scared, and said he didn't wonder Mr. Cawthorne couldn't paint that. She slid away from the subject.
" Charles didn't see it," she said, " or anybody, I think, except Lady Wharfedale—who is to be—and Mr. Ripon of Ch. Ch.; and I saw nothing except a number of stars, which weren't there at the time. These things are instants, and nobody knows what they are like—that is why they can't be done."
" Lessing's theory of the painter's instant comes to grief there," said Outram.
" If he is only allowed a point of action and time, and nobody at such points of time ever sees the whole action, how is he to paint it ?"
" He can imagine, construct, and convince himself how it was," said 'Cliffe. " Some men are so wonderful that way, it all seems to come to them in a glance. Have you read—only the second volume of ' Modern Painters,' about imagination of truth and reality, you know ? "
" Oh come, I have read that; I think I did it all, and didn't skip. But it's so very hard to under-KIRK OTTERSCOPE.
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stand the imaginative gift without having it oneself."
"We all talk of inspiration now," said 'Clifife meditatively, " and we don't know what it means. There must be something superhuman, or beyond man's reach, or what not, in having a vision of what you mean to paint come swooping into your brain. A sort of wild feeling it must be ; don't you think so, Miss Creyke ?" he said to a damsel as yet rather taciturn, whom he had brought in to dinner, and to whom he now felt with alarm that he had not said much.
" Don't frighten me," she said ; " I suppose it's like that; but you'll make me dread the notion of ever having an idea; and I suppose that happens to everybody once or twice in life."
" I suppose I've had them in my time, but mine were mostly read-up ideas, awakened by books, I mean ; those things come to order. I mean a great intuition like Newton's apple, or whatever the first sketch of Tintoret's ' Crucifixion' may have been in his brain."
"And have you seen Tintoret?" said his neighbour, turning quickly to him. " Do you care for Venice?"
" I should rather think I did ;" and he looked straight into a pair of bright brown eyes, rather large and now twinkling with pleasure. He further observed142
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
two red cheeks with lips to match, a pretty chin and throat, with a quick darting movement like a hawk's, which the true aquiline Yorkshire face rather assisted. Caroline Creyke was a country girl of some natural taste and feeling, who had lived great part of her life without much study, and then developed a taste for painting and a delight in reading about it. She had read the "Stones of Venice" in Venice ; and everybody who does that has a way before him into the intellectual-imaginative world; to which her eyes had opened. It may be supposed accordingly that she plunged into Italian travel with a good will; and Highcliffe and she got up such a conversation at their end, and made such a noise, that Lady Hertha was quite grateful to them for " making things go off so."
The shooting-party next morning was another success, in itself and for Highcliffe. He had been out once or twice in the south, but had never taken much interest in the exercise, or acquired more experience than went to make him a tolerably safe companion in cover; not quite so universal a good quality as might be wished. He thought low-country shooting rather dull, because he could not hunt the dogs himself; but there was something about the wildness of the northern covers which suited his taste for the picturesque. The breakfast was tolerablyKIRK OTTERSCOPE.
early, and simply riotous ; May made tea at one end, Lady Hertha dispensed coffee at the other; and neither, it was loudly complained, would give anybody sugar and cream enough. There was a ro^v about eggs ; for Hugh produced a chaffinch's skull out of his, and averred solemnly it belonged to a chicken he had found there ; and Lady Hertha, who particularly insisted on her poultry-yard, was specially indignant. There was a noisy arrangement about a lottery for whoever got most cocks; and a discussion as to whether a Shropshireman had any business to call a woodcock a timber-doodle in Yorkshire. Several dogs came in, in a general way, during the meal, and one of them nearly upset one of the elder servants, an attached and roomy person who had been in the house time out of mind, and whom Lady Hertha profanely called her "shield and butler." And everybody was demoralised, till all manner of conveyances came round to drive up-dale to their ground. They were to beat all the gills and high covers on the hill-sides, which involved plenty of rough walking, not a little eccentric driving, and a tolerable chance of getting shot as well as shooting. However, Hugh knew his own hills pretty well, and had his dogs and men in tolerable order, with a knack of guessing where everybody was, and seeing everything. There was not much rating, but things didn't get passed over.144
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" Oh dear, I do hope you'll all come back safe," said Lady Hertha to Highcliffe, as he stood rather apart at the door, everybody else being engaged with four couple of Clumber spaniels, and no end of retrievers. " One can't hear oneself speak ; what I do go through is quite unknown, Mr. Highcliffe, nobody ever lets me tell them about it. Now do you
think that horse--" Our friend the brown was at
that moment standing on his hind legs, apparently in permanence, as if he meant to address a few earnest observations in season to the other horses, and didn't intend to commence them, or resume his usual posture, till they behaved themselves better. " Oh, he'll be over backwards, I declare—ah ! not this time ; but he'll be the death of somebody."
" I hope not, dear Lady Hertha ; Hugh's going to drive him, with Charley Yorke and myself, and a groom besides ; and we're quite happy about it, really."
" I've no patience, you're as reckless as the rest ; and we haven't Maulger here, though he's not much better."
" But Hugh's very careful too, and very bold ; I'm sure I'm utterly timid; I know nothing about driving, but I feel quite safe with him—as safe as one's any right to be in a dog-cart. He's such a general, too ; he saw half the horses put to, and addressed a few words to the dogs personally."KIRK OTTERSCOPE.
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" Shove your gun into the break, under the seat, 'Clifife," said the subject of these remarks. "Cartridges, waterproofs, dry boots, and stockings—we lunch all together at the Abomination of Desolation " (this was a shepherd's hut above the woods, at the edge of some rather wild moors). "Everybody remember those four things, and his pocket-flask. Now, Jagger, you've got three couple, and Diver '11 run by you. Go ahead and show the way. Up now, Yorke; we want your weight behind to balance 'Clifife. All right, Bob, let him go."
The brown made one plunge, but found he had his head almost to himself, and started quietly enough, for him. The whole party got under way, and there was something like peace in hall for awhile. Charles Cawthorne was to arrive about twelve, and drive with some of the ladies to join the guns at luncheon. He kept tryste, and, when they reached the Abomination, the scene was as wild and pretty as could well be. There was a shimmer of haze and lingering frost, which would hardly yield to the winter's sun, on the dales, and defied him on the moors. But he lit up the frosted trees, and threw deep blue shadows over all the dells, and covered ings, and holms, and gills, and all those Yorkshire phenomena, with glittering tree-trunks and feathered boughs. Hill-side trees have so much character, and show their forms so much
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better as they stand one above another, open to sun and air. It seemed odd that the soft blue mist allowed so many gradations of distance ; but their view over the moors, though all varied in grays and purples, seemed infinite in its gradations ; from the farthest film of northern mountains to Aire Fell across the dale. All was gleaming and flickering with silvery gray, and, as Charles said, it was the most Turneresque day he had seen for years. They looked down a long woodland, on both sides of a dean—or dingle is proper Yorkshire—and by successive bangs and puffs of smoke could make out the advancing line of guns and beaters.
Jagger, the head-keeper, came up and told Charles Mr. Hugh said he was to meet him and Lord Craxingham at the high corner; they were beating to that, and a lot of rocketers mostly got up at that corner. " Mr. Hugh would be over t' farther side, and he'd be careful not to fire into t' coover." Of course Charles was glad to get a glimpse of Hugh and Highcliffe, just established quietly on the other side, well out of his reach. Up came the tall peer, long and lean, handsome, quick, and early weather-beaten ; said to miss or lose fewer birds than any man in England. A cock pheasant got up between them, on Charles's side of a thick mass of birch and spruce, and the painter slew it as soon as itKIRK OTTERSCOPE.
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was clear of the trees, by way of announcing his whereabouts—a highly necessary precaution at the end of a cover.
" Why, well killed, Cawthorne—he must have run a good way—regular old cock—big as a Norfolk bird, I declare—so glad you've come, keep your eye in— Heron's over yonder with the Oxford fellow—killed some shots the Don has ; good sort of bird for a new light—leveret—it's no use letting him off—wouldn't get through the winter " (bang !).
There was a whirr at the other side of the dean, and two pheasants rose and fell. Then came three or four rocketers, high in air, and there were successive bangs and heavy thudding falls, and 'Cliffe had his first experience of a hot corner. He was awfully excited, but cooler than might have been expected, since, as he said, "it was all up in the air, and - one couldn't hit anybody, if one didn't hit anything." Also he held on (as he afterwards confessed, to Craxingham's amusement and applause) to his only idea about shooting, which was to shut your eyes and shove your gun forward. The consequence was he decidedly killed two pheasants, before everybody, one a long way off; and then and there earned a reputation he never quite sustained. And he was ashamed even at the moment to feel how happy it made him.
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HUGH HERON, Ch. Cn.
"Why, ye killed him reet well," said old Jagger. "Ye may fire more shots, an* ye'll get more birds."
" Did I do him, Jagger ? I only just opened my eyes in time to see him coming down. But I did hold on him."
"Eh, he's yours; but ye'd best not shut your eyes ; ye should know whar y'r bird lies, to walk up to 'im."
They assembled for lunch in a long shed, heather-and-turf-covered, and well screened from the wind. All was still frosty; but light large cumuli were heaving slowly into sight on the horizon, threatening snow and tempest from afar; and a slow mournful wind arose and shook the rime from the larches and Scotch firs. There was a note of atmospheric change, and Craxingham, who thought of everything, hoped old Maulger wouldn't come over Raygill that night, but go round by Yellerton and the train.
" Not he, the Uncle likes the moors too well; and then there are some sick gipsies at Raygill he rather affects ; besides, he'd never miss old Wilkinson at any price. He's our old watcher, ninety years or so ; and he looks upon Maulger as a goodish young man just beginning woodcraft, and thinks what a pity he's a parson."
" I've heard that said too, in another sense," said Craxingham ; " but I betrayed impatience, and shut upKIRK OTTERSCOPE.
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the individual who made the statement. The Cheerful didn't half like it—Noyes, that's his name, one of our local clergy, and not a bad party ; but he was wrong, and a gentle rate did him no harm. He's very low and crusty in the wood, and they call him the Cheerful Noyes. Well, May, and you've come all the way after your huzzy: Ellen lets me alone."
" I really mean to do the same, Lord Craxingham, I assure you ; you needn't be alarmed ; and do put away your gun, you don't want it to keep me off."
" No cartridges in it, I assure you."
" You know it's a law of nature that they go off of themselves whenever they are near ladies."
So he handed the offending weapon to Jagger, and was rewarded with a large triangle or pyramid of rabbit-pie; and a near approach to silence followed, as all the appetites were of the healthiest, and a good deal of work was left for the short daylight. Cold plum-pudding was allowed, but discouraged for the shooters.
The ladies went dalewards soon after luncheon, as the threatened snow-storm seemed likely to begin before they reached Kirk Otterscope. There was little wind, and only a few flakes came down now and then; but there was a sort of quietly-increasing purplish darkness in the air, all chilly formless cloud, which indicated what Highlanders call a "feeding storm"—
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
no passing scud or transient whiteness, but one of the persevering downfalls, when the firmament seems to go on renewing earth's winding-sheet for long appointed days of death and rest. All the more vigorously the men worked away through the long hill-side covers. The wild pheasants rattled up in panic, and died on their wings, and first drifted downwards, gently as snowflakes, then fell kersquosh in obedience to the laws of gravity. I don't know how many hares and rabbits they got, but three couple of cocks were added to four obtained in the morning, and great was the rejoicing over them. The beautiful varied bag was counted out and went home in a light cart; some of the men got on horseback or into traps, and some trudged home in the snow, which began to fill the air with its wild light and motion. Highcliffe was among the latter. " He always enjoyed falling snow," he said, " because it whirled one's intellects about, and one could tramp on, thinking of nothing at all." And Craxingham determined to try the same means of self-oblivion in his company.
" How I like a wild day's gunnin' like this," he said. " Such a rough country and glorious uncertainty. At least, one knows Heron always has birds,, and he does his best for one; but there's not much certainty of getting at them in these high covers."KIRK OTTERSCOPE.
" I suppose we've done pretty well to-day. I never was out cover-shooting before; I didn't think it was anything like this."
" No, you shot well though; confess now, you enjoyed knocking them over clean ; there weren't many runners all day."
" Yes, but don't you like this better than great battues ?"
" I do, indeed; but there's the worst of it, men are so given over to getting a lot anyhow; we're like a lot of poulterers, I declare. Have to do it, you know —habits of society. You don't think much of modern society and our ways, do you, Mr. Highcliffe?"
" I was born and brought up on the democratic line, my lord."
" My lord serves me right. Please call me Craxingham, and let me call you Highcliffe, while we're here ; and after too, if you like."
" Well, thank you very much indeed ; but I can't help the notions I've always swallowed; and at Roughborough one was taught all about Athenian and Roman democracy and equality; though there wasn't much in either, except oligarchy and slavery, that I see ; but, after all, the word People is a big word, and England a bigger."
" Well, I went through a stage of that; but I can't give up Craxholm ; and there's a deal to manage152
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
there too. But you haven't told me what you new lights really think of us."
" How can I ? I'm only a Don, and have seen very little. I don't think there's the same bitter political feeling there used to be ; the fact is, you're so much more civil to us ; but as to society, I don't know what goes on. Newspapers are horribly scandalous, and I don't read them much, on principle."
"Well, you're original, at all events. But I think you're right; and I tell you what, the people that you hear of really are like the great toes of the assembly, not the worthiest members."
" More prominent than eminent."
" Regular Oxford saying; make a note of for a speech, may I ? But you'll like people here."
" Indeed I do already. Lady Hertha's like a great lady in a fairy tale ; and in a goody novel, too. And—I never met anybody like Mrs. Cawthorne."
" No—she's bad to beat; but she's hardly in society—I mean she goes so little into it. They're all ready enough to have her."
" I understand Carlyle now, when I think of those two ladies. They ought to govern one—at least, a good deal—only one has to be educated up to understand them, if one isn't born in their set."
" Well, d'you know, I think half the richer women in Manchester are just as well-taught and accom-KIRK OTTERSCOPE.
153
plished ; and, in fact, as good down to the ground. I'm democrat enough about good looks and good manners. But Carlyle's a historic old man, and has an idea—when he looks at anybody like Lady Hertha —of a whole succession of Chatelaines—all very good and pretty, like Sidney's sister and Pembroke's mother, you know," said Craxingham, who had more ideas and quotations than he cared to clothe in appropriate words, and interested 'Clifife accordingly. Both the young men seemed to be drawn to each other by the strange way of mutual intelligence and similarity of idea. It is only possible between perfectly unaffected persons with habits of thought; and if Craxingham had any affectation, it was that of not being a thinking man; when in fact his mind never rested.
"Then there's such a setting to the jewel, you know," continued Highcliffe; " they have such an entourage, that suits them so exactly. And country ladies have so much to do in home work, and are— a—more like Eve, I suppose, with their gardens and things."
"Capital notion—what fun that was about the eggs this morning."
" I mean it's very difficult for a lady to have anything to do with a mill, and she can do a great deal about a farm. The fact is, you have the best of it; and you must be envied a little."154
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
" Well, I believe so ; I'm happier up here than in town ; but I must be there, and try to speak now and then. Do you ever think of politics ?"
"Sometimes; but I don't think I'm fit. I never know my own mind, or what I really think."
" Perhaps you're more for literature; but you might have a start on the other side, if not with us Tories. I've known the time—or rather my father's known it—when he could have put you into the House without pledge, if he thought enough of you.-'*
"I don't know; I've plenty of work and good pay in Oxford now; and I think I'd rather write things."
" You ought to see public business though, as a part of life.—But here's the back way in by the stables."
All the dogs were in full concert as the party jumped out of break, waggonette, and dog-cart, like an Arctic expedition, in all manner of outer garments. The snow whirled into the porch and hall. Lady Craxingham came out with her husband's letters, and carried him off upstairs. May began making five-o'clock tea, dinner being postponed to eight, on account of the woodcocks, who were to be eaten fresh and raw. She told Highcliffe she had been quite anxious about his shooting, and was so glad; and he blushed as he looked at her, and she at him with wide eyes of frank pleasure and liking. Charles and he had been friendsKIRK OTTERSCOPE.
i55
in Oxford, and the painter had formed and imparted to his wife a pretty correct estimate of his disturbed state of mind. How to make much of him without his falling in love with her was a problem which just now interested the young lady a good deal; and her intuitions led her to feel that considerable frankness and quiet intimacy of thought were her safest way; so she always asked him about literature and her husband's pictures; and Charles used to set them at each other, and listen.
" I shouldn't have thought you approved so much of killing things," said 'Cliffe to May.
" Why, one can't eat them alive; and woodcock is so—it really makes one greedy."
"We're sad carnivora after all. Have you read the ' Coming Race ?' You know down there they are absolute vegetarians, and think it very nice."
" I haven't seen many vegetarian babies yet," said May. " I should have my doubts about their getting on. But, do you know, that book did me good; it made me contented with my lot on earth while it lasts."
"Why, doesn't it seem much better, that ideal of a passionless life ? "
" No doubt, but one feels the utter impossibility of it ; and I think it would be horribly dull. I thought it was so odd that a man who had seen so veryi56
HUGH HERON, Ch. Ch.
much of life and all the world, with great imagination and all that—such great power of working out his ideas, I mean—couldn't give one the least notion of happiness/'
"Yes, the whole interest centres on Zee losing her love—or rather on her caring for such a snob. Imperfection's her charm, you see."
" I think if we were to get into an earthly paradise, as we are, we should regret ' le bon vieux temps, quancl 11011s etions si malheureux.' "
He laughed, but answered sadly : " You've seen a good deal, and worked for others, and you've a right to talk ; but I should like a paradise where nobody was poor."
" Ay de mi" said May quietly. " But that book seems to show that a statesman cannot imagine such a place."
" Why do you like it, then, if it's all impossibility and despair to you ? "
" I have hope, you know—and hope seems to prove itself, since it lives on still against so much— there remaineth a rest, I feel sure."
" Hope ?—well, you're like Pandora there ; the fairest of all women, with nothing else left in her box."
" Well, when I do get a compliment, I like a good big one. What's Lady Hertha anxious about ?—KIRK OTTERSCOPE.
157
looking for Hugh or me ?" The Chatelaine came up, smiling, but uneasy.
" May dear, it's going to snow all night, and the wind's rising again, and Maulger's sure to be coming over the high moors. It's such a rough wild road ; and he's got a sad old horse and trap—and I'm scared."
" He knows the way and the Fell as well as a shepherd ; and it's not so very far from the last house in Scarsdale to Bob Newbold's. I daresay he's on our side by this time : or he may have turned back. He's sure to be late, if he comes at all; so don't be anxious yet."
" No, but I wish he was here, and I must be in a fuss about something," said Lady Hertha, going off to see that her Bursar's usual quarters, two adjoining attics like Oxford rooms, were ready for his late and wet arrival.
Dinner was not so noisy as breakfast, as they were all quieter, wearier, and hungrier. Lady Crax-ingham and her husband, who liked historical Radicalism, drew Highcliffe out rather successfully about Florence and the Renaissance. Lady Hertha complained that the latter was always talked about as if she was somebody, and that it was so hard that all naughty things should be regarded as feminine persons. She said she couldn't get rid of the notion that the Renaissance was a tall lady, rather overdressedHUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
and undressed, very clever and learned, who wouldn't believe in anything—just like Miss Martineau, if she could be imagined as good-looking. Highcliffe did battle manfully for Miss Martineau, but did not obtain much sympathy. The woodcocks were everything that could be desired ; and the party thought little of Maulger till Hugh came into the drawing-room, after the other men, and spoke low to his mother apart.
"Maulger's lad's come, mamma,—he's all right," he said, as her eyes opened wild and wide; " but they've found somebody on t' road, and he wants hot blankets ready; let May see all right—it's a young woman, that's all the boy . knows ; and the Uncle's obliged to lead the horse down-hill with her in the trap: Harman and Bob are gone on with lanterns, and they'll be close here by now."
Nevertheless it was past twelve before the Bursar got in the back way—he and his old horse having rolled about in drains, and plunged into snow-wreaths, and come on their noses with balling snow, and been pretty well bewildered and nearly stifled in the wild eddies of the frozen clouds which still swept howling over the dale. He had reached Newbold's farm on the home side the fell; had there heard that a young woman had passed in the opposite direction—been alarmed at not meeting her—made a happy con-KIRK OTTERSCOPE.
iS9
jecture at a well-known hollow where she might have sat down to rest—tried back with success, and found her asleep or senseless; and then, he said, as the Newbolds were teetotalers, and had neither brandy nor common sense, he had pushed on for Kirk Otterscope; partly expending his pocket-flask on the inner woman of his charge, and partly rubbing it into her hands and feet. She was all swathed in plaids and rugs; and all Hugh saw was that she was young and worn-out looking, with long brown hair, fine, and apparently well ordered, and that her hands and feet looked rather small, and her dress of thick blue serge was close-fitting and well made. Thus much he communicated to the party. Mrs. Cawthorne and mamma had put her to bed; she had come to ; and he believed they had rubbed her down and done her up for the night, and left her to Mrs. Ripley the housekeeper. She wasn't to be on view that night, but ladies might take any amount of interest in her next morning, he said, as the party separated, and the men sought the smoking-room. "Mr. Hawke's a good deal done, and can't tell the story till he's had a night's rest. She'd some lace and things to sell, and was by way of doing sewing about here for a few days; but they don't know who she is, or why she was heading all alone for Heybridge over fell."CHAPTER VIII.
a wayfarer.
" Then it is life, once more," said a faint whispering voice to Lady Hertha, in a small comfortable bedroom near her own, where the lost woman, or damsel, or person, had been put to bed and tended. " I thought one moment it was such rest—and such a face—and I had forgotten all. Oh, I wish it had been over."
" Nonsense, my dear, don't be naughty," said Lady Hertha, stroking down some long golden-brown hair which, as she said, she couldn't keep her hands off, because it was just Fan's tint and texture. "Lie still, and have something nice. Your pulse isn't very strong yet, I'm afraid ; but you'll soon get round if you can manage that."
The sufferer looked up, and seemed to see—as many-did—some new comfort in the gentle-falcon's face and snow-white hair. Her eyes wandered again a little, and she said abstractedly, "Will one like this meet me there ?" And with an effort she placed a small hand in her hostess's, and said : " Will you tell me what has happened ? You are some great lady, are you not ? "A WAYFARER.
161
" They call me Lady Hertha Heron, and this is Kirk Otterscope. You've nearly been starved or smothered in the snow on Raygill. How could you try to get over, such a night ? "
" I thought I knew my way; but I seem to have no strength now, and my breath failed, and my heart beat; but I've felt no pain, I think,—or I forget. But how good you are to me, my lady. I never—please," as Lady Hertha held a hot cup of Liebig and port-wine to her lips, lifting her head and shoulders scientifically with the other arm.
" Lie still a little now, and I'll come back."
After two hours' quiet sleep and more refreshment her patient was much stronger, and managed to sit up. She thanked her eagerly and tearfully, but seemed unwilling to give much account of herself. " I can do nothing for you," she said, " unless I might work you something. I can make lace well."
"I'd rather you knitted a pair of stockings for some poor old body who wants them, my dear ; that would be your present and mine. But come now, don't be uneasy. We'll have you driven anywhere you like as soon as you are strong enough ; and you needn't tell us anything you don't like."
There was a look of real gratitude in the eyes, and Lady Hertha could now judge of their possessor as a slight and still beautiful woman of twenty-five or thirty, faded with long-past passion or endurance,
M162
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
and brought very low by present exhaustion. She made an effort, and answered both the kind words and kinder thought.
" I've much to be ashamed of," she said, " but not of late years, and you'd not like to hear of troubles you can't mend. Stay, there is one thing they've told me in the dale, and it is for you to know something I can tell, maybe."
" What, my dear ?"
"Your daughter's not to be married to Colonel Ingelram, that was of Malham Priors, and has the place left to him now, is she ?"
" Certainly not; we don't know him; he has never seen her. Besides, he is still in India."
" He'll be comi-ng home again. But that's well, very well. My lady, I cannot" (she spoke with the least intonation of Lancashire), " cannot tell you all. It's not that I've aught to say against him, but I must see him before he's wed."
Lady Hertha stroked her hand quietly. " I don't think much harm of you," she said, " and if you've begun repentance at your age, you must feel by now it's not too late or in vain. But try to forgive and look forward. Life is a long long thing till it is done, at least Time must drag through all the hours and minutes; but you'll find work and rest in time. You're not in want ? "A WAYFARER.
"Nay, I've enough, and to spare, with what I have and what I do. And I've naught to forgive. I
was wrong eno' often eno', but he owt-" And
she said no more.
" Curious people do turn up in the world," said Lady Hertha next day. " That little thing's been in India, only think. I can't think what made her try to get over the moors in snow ; she either knew nothing at all about them, or must have thought she knew her way of old. And Ripley believes she's seen her before."
" Where did she stay in the village ?"
" Oh, she lodged at Oddie's, and did some work at Mrs. Gray's and the Low Moor farm; but what on earth should make her ask me if Fan was married yet ? and to Colonel Ingelram ? Our Fan, you know, who never saw him."
" Did she ask you that ?" said old Hawke, who had been doing sums with Hugh all the morning, and had come in to luncheon. " I'll take another look at her before she goes. Bob can drive her over to Heybridge when she's fit. Yes, I mind Ingelram fine —wildish, but not half a bad one. Wonder how he's turned out ? but he won't have Fan this time or next."
j(C	Sjc
" I say, Charles," said May, on her cushions, " in
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HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
the first place it didn't happen all quite like that"— ("Silence," said her husband; "don't let anything out to the reader") ;—"and, in the next, I can't have my private motives analysed, about going on with your friend Mr. Highcliffe. I tell you what, I really did like him, always. And then there isn't excitement enough about Hugh. He can't marry anybody without proper troubles. Is this young person in the snow by way of forbidding his banns ? "
" You'll see. As for Hugh, he's going to be suspected, all the second volume—of—of—of dropping his tutor down the Oxford Drainage. Thrilling discovery of pieces of a Don at the Kennington outfall. Identification of his bands, cassock, and tights—description of somebody forty years ago ; that'll do the trick for an Oxford Novel."
" Now I won't have that. You've put us both in by name, and I can't be mixed up with such doings."
" It's only suspicion, you know; there needn't be anybody. One would have to describe such a horrid mess and smell, to be sure," said Charley thoughtfully. "Couldn't he tumble down himself? I can't give up the Oxford Sanitary system—such a modern feature."
" Disgusting and unacademical," said his wife. " If you marry him it's bad enough, at least for the lady ; but I want some more serious Oxford."CHAPTER IX.
CONVERSATIONS.
HlGHCLlFFE began to have just the least fear of backsliding. The old scholar-like democratic fervour was upon him, nothing weakened by life in a great manufacturing city. He was very happy at Otterscope ; but felt he must not betray his own side, and that there was something in those Tory women which told on him, and might be too much. They were both married, at all events; at least Mrs. Cawthorne was, and Lady Hertha was old enough to be his mother. And then, what a thing it was not to have had that lad's sister too ; and he looked with an odd feeling he did not analyse at the bright dark face opposite him, now none the less handsome for a wistful sort of look, expressive of regard. Their eyes met, and Hugh spoke in a rather coaxing way, not unwelcome to the other's humour.
" You're not unhappy about anything, are you, Highcliffe ?"
" Why shouldn't I be, my lad ? I'm of age. Votivei66
HUGH HERON, Cir. Ch.
made it pleasant enough for me, at all events, and given me a capital ten days—the best for many a day."
" Well," said Hugh shyly, " I'm young and all that, but people seem sometimes to talk about things to me ; they say I've just sense enough to hear and hold my tongue."
"Well, you're a better, confidant than Midas's reeds anyhow, being a roseait qui pense. I'm sure one ought to be jolly with you ; and after such a day and such a dinner, and ladies and all that, one can only bless your name. But everybody isn't as well off as you; or as well treated as I am."
" You know we don't have great feeds often," said Hugh, " and I'm not quite easy about having everything and doing nothing."
" You do your work, or you seem to be learning it. You're a sort of governing person, and if you feel responsible and uneasy, why so much the better. Now I've only my uneasy brains to govern. I am myself, and must judge for myself—that was rubbed into us at Roughborough."
" It's a short creed," quoth Hugh; " we feel to want a little more up here."
"Just so, and I don't want to torment you before your time, or at all; I've known fellows in Oxford take pleasure in unsettling lads' minds, and think they were like Socrates whenever they succeeded in that.CONVERSA TIONS.
167
Something very like what you Christians call ' offending the little ones,' I think. And I don't think you can help me either, Heron ; it's hard to understand things—and you and yours are exceptional, altogether."
" I don't know," said Hugh, " but did you ever," he said hesitatingly, " think of saying anything to the Missis ? I mean, she's not learned, you know, but you can't think how she does understand."
" Subtle - paced counsel in distress — revered Isabel/' mused the other. " It might be, some day. If I can't believe enough, I'm pretty sure some of you can ; and your word's as good as mine for aught I see. Perhaps it really is the Devil that keeps on telling me you don't serve God for naught. You country swells who behave yourselves are like happy people in a novel, except for not being stupid. I want to know what's to be done for ugly creatures who live in crowds and read the penny papers."
" We pay to all sorts of things ; and one's sorry enough."
" I know, I know. But you see what touches me is this: that happiness and goodness should have so much to do with health and fine air, and exercise and income, and good blood, and inherited style and form —which I know you or your ancestors might havei68
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
forfeited, but which the people never can have—at least seems not in our time."
" Isn't that the Necessarian argument, from statistics to laws of nature, and from that to moral fatalism, and pessimism, and all that ?"
" Yes, as far as it goes ; though I don't think it makes much difference as to the individual. So many men may take to drinking in ten years; and there may be so many murders ; but for all that, you, or I, or Snooks can decidfe not to have t'other half-pint, and not to stick a knife into our neighbour."
" You know our property's all tied up and entailed," said Hugh. " I can't turn Otterscope into a phalanstery, like the man in 'Aurora Leigh.'"
" Pooh, it's best in your hands, I say again and again. So would all of us if they were here. The fact is, if all did as you do, it would make a difference; and I must say deliberately, your Catechism-Christianity seems to answer, and might be good for me."
" Then—are you really not a Christian ? " said Hugh anxiously.
" Quien sabe ?—how should I know, Heron ? I've been baptized; I never wanted to undo that. Has He, Christ whom we call our Lord in some sense I can't ascertain, has He rejected me and dropped me altogether because I can't ascertain ? because ICON VERS A TIONS.
169
can't see Him or find Him ? No, I'm not a Christian, I suppose, or a very bad one. Sometimes I think I'd better swallow everything and say no more; but that's like going to Rome. And if I did, I should be just as uncomfortable about you as you are, most likely, about me. Fancy being compelled to anathematize Lady Hertha and Mrs. Cawthorne ! "
" I don't quite understand about swallowing it all. I was brought up in the Apostles' Creed, and I think it has swallowed me—I mean it seems to command me. Wouldn't that do for you, without any anathemas ? You know we really don't curse anybody in the English Church."
" You used to, and your formulas and your dogmatists do. You're all like the Shepherd in ' Pickwick '—all religious people are—you hope people's hearts will be softened, but rather think they're booked for somethin' unpleasant."
" But, 'Clifife, I don't think, in fact, we go farther than you yourself. We cannot say we see how bad people are to be—squared, you know; and you're unhappy because you don't see it either."
" Well, what's the use of a Church that can't give one decisive comfort about a thing like that?"
" I think I once said something like that to Hawke, and he said: ' My boy, be thankful you170
HUGH HERON, Ch. Cir.
belong to a Church which can be silent on things unspeakable.' "
" Oracular, but not ill said ; still, it's only a saying."
" Well, our Creed includes the Forgiveness of Sins and the Life Everlasting—there's nothing formulated about the other thing."
" Why, the Athanasian Creed's full of it."
" The Athanasian Creed's not in the Catechism : and Hawke says the damnatory clauses in that are not articles of faith."
" I didn't know what a young Jesuit you were."
"Nor I either; but, you know, the Litany prays for mercy on all men, without any exception at all. In such a matter we can't be logical."
" There's something human about that; but that's not the way to talk to a bishop. Modern clergy won't say that, or won't get on if they do; it's kept your uncle out of everything. You're all afraid of the contradictions of your own creed, and the only thing that holds me to you is that the scientific people are still worse. They won't so much as allow one a soul to be d-d."
" When I hear them talk about the Bible, I know what it is to be a Puritan," said Hugh.
"Yes, the Intellects handle it in a critical spirit, just like other books—when the theory and practice of Culture is that all books exist only to be picked toCON VERS A TIONS.
171
pieces. You wouldn't mind a year or two of Cromwell, my young malignant, nor I either."
" I don't know ; we'd awful fines to pay ; but one of our girls married a handsome Ironside Major-'General, and none of us were scragged. But don't you talk to Maulger about all this ?"
"He's mediaeval, like you—nothing to do with the present ecclesiastical system, and he will insist on being a part of it. He professes its rjdos, and isn't of it. What do you suppose the regular clerical ring think of him ? He never netted a hundred a year of Church money in his life, and he's given his life and money too. He's a sort of good Friar Tuck, that's the fact."
" He never seems to mind," said Hugh. " He writes and does duty, and visits people who want him ; and two horses are plenty for him, and his big boy and little boy, they'll have enough if they're like him. They'll always have all the fun up here."
" No, he don't say much, but I think he thinks sometimes. He did once mention that he'd heard his sermons objected to because there was said to be thought in them, and ' they didn't suit a congregation.' He had never been asked in his life to preach anywhere or for any purpose, except to save some other man a sermon."
" I suppose he never was quite what they call safe," said Hugh.172
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" I never could say anything to him about promotion or getting on ; he's not a man to cross-examine. But I wish I'd known him always, or when I was a—a good bit younger."
" Why ? He only got a second, and you wouldn't have--"
" Well, there's sense in cubs ; perhaps I do go too much by the schools. But, Hugh, how can anybody back up the Uncle? He's a good deal in Church, and we Intellects don't think much of him for that; he's always running after poor old people, and that ought to be done by committee, it seems. His writing is in his own line, which is respectable, and nobody cares about it; only he makes one laugh with his infernal epigrams—and stops his own promotion ; even Atticus chuckled, and said Hawke would never get anything. Then once a week he's hunting, and scandalizing all the serious world. He's what he is."
" Why, you don't think there's any humbug in him, do you ?"
" Not a bit; but I can't follow him, or give up to him now. I can't leave my colours, Hugh, nor break with Culture and the Intellects, and all that. I'm of the old democratic creed, of raising the people to do for themselves; and he and his good-nature, and service of the poor, and all that, are condescending after all. He's hail-fellow, I know, and sincerely too ;CON VERS A TIONS.
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but he's the rankest aristocrat in England from hair to nails ; and he only makes people say and think there's nothing like gentlemen, and they can't do without them."
" Well, can they ?" said Hugh. " Cromwell could hardly-"
" You can't be done without in your part of the world, that's clear. As I said, or thought, I wish I'd been bred on your side; but that wasn't so, and you mustn't push me any farther now, my boy—not now. I can't even speak to Lady Hertha; but I've seen her and the rest, and it does me good, and makes me understand things better."
" Well, it's good of you to talk to me so, you're so much older, and the Oxford crack of the period."
" Pooh, you'll be rich, and I must live by my wits. You're all very good, and your friends the Squirearchs are pleasant and sensible, and don't seem to think me a prig."
" My wigs, Highcliffe, who ever did ?"
" I thought they would, I declare. I can't help talking about books; but they all seem to read too. It's all very nice and new, but I ' hae nae lands,' as Edie Ochiltree said. I wonder how much I envy you all. You let me alone for a bit, and let's go to bed. I've finished a whole Regalia, and couldn't do another without a pressing call for steward. Good-night."174
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They were settled in Oxford again next week. Hugh found himself employed in the University Boat, rather to Dayrell's vexation, though he said nothing against it. He began to hate athletics altogether, and made his complaint to a select party in Common-Room, as usual.
" It's a pity we're getting so sharply divided in Oxford now," he said; "just as Arnold says, into Barbarians and Philistines—those who come here for pay, and those who come for nothing—or very little. I had the two lots before me this morning—Lanercost and Roundell and Heron and all the barbarians looking handsome and puzzled, and some of them rather inane ; and Broadbeans and little Spadger on the other side all sharp and eager, and thinking what tips they could get out of it for the schools. Nobody cares for learning, or for any subject—the unlearned are all for fun and the learned for money."
" I don't know which will be the greatest nuisance in the long run," said Combermere; "but the unlearned are the noisiest."
"Well, I don't know that," growled old Maulger from the chimney corner; " the others make a tolerable row in the press. Every lad now who isn't provided for, in return for making use of his education, drops off to town and begins to call for a commission on the lot of us."CON-VERS A TIONS.
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" They seem to think they are all to be Heads at once. When a junior fellow finds he's one of several, and can't have a whole college his own way, he's off to h'"s splenetic articles in no time."
"That's why intellect is alienated from religion, because intellect doesn't find it pay. Canonries ain't thrown open to competition of small boys."
" Come now, we shouldn't have been here without endowments,you know," said Dayrell, "only we had the competition to ourselves. The fact is, it's much fairer in these days ; only it brings up such rough diamonds."
" That's what I said about it's dividing Oxford in two. The eclat of open competition for so much tin has made it a place to bring schoolboys' knowledge to for profit, and not to gain a master's knowledge in for knowledge' sake."
" Well, but masters were always the exception : you can't say the old state of things was really better. A first was worth so much then, and we all knew it."
" It was much easier to manage, and less worrying. Besides, then there was an honour about learning : men cared for it as much as they did for its rewards— now it's only a race. It wasn't competition all day long and every day—and good undergraduates were so much cheaper."
"Well," said old Hawke, "I think I do miss a certain breed of men who did respectably good work, as176
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
commoners mostly, and without being paid. Dayrell's right enough as to foundations. There can't be the least doubt things are fairer now. Why, boys used to go to be born in the right diocese for scholarships, and hunted endowments from their mothers' what's-its-name. I don't think our young friends the competitioners are at all meaner cusses than lads who took oaths of poverty when they weren't poor, or did nothing but amuse themselves as Fellows. I say, I'm making a speech—somebody else originate a remark."
" Oh do go on, on our side now, Vicar ; you've said all for the others," quoth Latchford. " Quite true so far—now knock it all down, and leave us in the ruins."
"Well, I think there used to be a larger proportion of comparatively rich men, who went through a moderate course of reading, and got thirds and seconds ; and there were a stronger lot of tufts and gentlemen - commoners, who generally won when they did come out, for pure honour, or ambition, if you like to make the worst of it. And above all they didn't think they were to live on their classes for the rest of their lives."
" You see, we've not only offered everything to be tried for, but advertised the place as an arena for all the crammed lads in England. That sets intellect more than ever against Christianity, because they don't see why all Church money should not be dis-CON VERSA TIONS.
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tributed on the same principle. Why not have the Mandarin system all square and uniform ? "
" By-the-bye," said Combermere, " I should think the plucked Mandarins in a Chinese examination came down pretty hard on the priesthood of Fo Fo— or is his name Fi Fi, as De Quincey says ? They must pitch into them—in their rice or silk newspapers."
" I think we can get some of those squireens to read Law and History," said Dayrell. " Atticus was talking about it the other night. Their governors ought to put some pressure on them ; why, they're half against us. It seems as if a man never really expected or wished his son to be much less idle than he was himself. They don't think the work any use unless it brings in money, and provides for the brat."
" There is room for a little more information/' said Combermere ; " but they hit on good things now and then. That insane young Seagrave told me he always thought the Institutes of Menu were a gastronomic treatise—quite serious, 'pon my honour."
"Wellj I'm a sort of heavy father," said Hawke pensively; "and that little lad of mine's just come up. I'm afraid, when I think of him, I want him to have pretty nearly everything for nothing. You fellows don't understand parental cupidity. First and fellowship, of course—I had the latter before him—should like him to ride to hounds, and know everybody,, and
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row in the boat: want him to keep up with the intellectuals without getting unsettled ; altogether, I've no more sense than anybody else."
" They're getting up a row outside, about the wild way some of those lads talk—here's the Tomtom with a long article about an Atheist Propaganda."
" Panic seems to alternate between that and bad drainage," interrupted Combermere. " I should say both reports really originated in the less popular Colleges of the sister university."
Maulger laughed, but took the thread up after his fashion.
"Yes, they're right—it is like typhoid—something in the air, that walks in darkness. Oxford is in the English atmosphere, I suppose ? Do all the lads come here such well-taught Christians, as to be heresy-proof everywhere else except here ? Are there no hard questions to be asked ? or aren't they to be asked in the very metropolis of question and answer ? And hasn't every lad in England to learn the Christian faith himself for himself from the beginning, and isn't he born a heathen and barbarian, and originally sinful babby? It's all true. The thing's always at work—just now it seems to pass over us like a wave of cold or a breathing of fever."
" That doesn't account for it; but I suppose there's always been a knot of men here who readCONFERS A TIONS.
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their Lucretius to purpose : perhaps it's true what Cloudesley said, that we are all to pass under an Eclipse of Faith."
' There's gloom enough already, to judge by young men's writing," said Latchford; " they all seem so much sadder, and so little wiser: and really the women are worse if anything."
" Wonder what life is like in a Ladies' College: what do they call their Heads and Deans, I wonder ? "
" Pendragons, I suppose — that would do anyhow."
" Bless you, there's a revolt of Islam going. on, and all the weaker vessels are against us," said Combermere.
" They may be weaker, but they seem to be forming a regular opposition—at least, I'm an outsider, but I'm pretty sure. Hawke, you know so many ladies at home; aren't they considered awkwarder to handle than they used to was ?"
" Well, you know what some of them are like by their own painting—regular enfranchised petticoat-roughs, all nails and screams."
" I only read of them in the papers—but do tell us about them."
" I don't know any; and taken as a lot, they can't be so bad as that. But what can you expect from young women, when the language and conduct and
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manners of three men out of four are so like insult ? The tone of society to marriageable girls is that of, let's say, a cultured cabman. They are in fact spoken of and thought of as saleable animals."
" Goodness gracious, Hawke—don't go on ; we're not in Society."
" No, but you see they haven't been, and are not, well treated; and the opposition—the modest ones, I mean—have pretty well given up being a sex at all. Some of the nicest of them won't marry us, or have anything to say to us. They want to be a competitive interest—a sort of hostile industrial army to push us out of the market. What do you say, Dayrell ?— you're young and know what they say."
"Well, I was beginning to think that of some very nice damsels I met at home last summer. They were clever and pretty, and good girls I do believe. But they seemed to hold together, and simply not to care for us; they had their own machinery and interests and politics ; in fact, their notion about a man was to beat him if they could; if not in this generation, then in the next—though I don't know how they expected the next generation to come about. They wanted to out-talk you, out-write you, out-paint you, undersell you, ride over you, shut you up walking, vivisect you, all for the common good of womankind : by no means to marry or care for you. LatchfordCON VERS A TIONS.
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made a horsey remark about one of the cleverest of them that I thought rather good."
"What did I say, Dayrell?"
" I believe you put a bit of straw between your teeth on purpose. I can't say it as you said it, but the purport was that you wanted somethin' good-'arted and 'ansom' to go along with you in double 'arness; and it was no use my mother's bringing out a lot of flyers that only thought of running against you, and beating you."
" Well, quite right/' said the Censor, producing a clean pocket-handkerchief? which consisted almost entirely of one remarkable hole. "Look at that—I should expect that sort of thing to be looked after."
" My dear Censor, from my experience they can't mend those things. Any jury of matrons would give that up, and tell you to buy a new lot."
" Ah, that's the way; one expects too much and gets nothing. Good-night, I've a man coming to me with some Plato."CHAPTER X.
a sermon and a scholar.
Hugh's performance in the summer races elevated him next year to the dazzling but anxious eminence of an University oar. He was presented to and approved by the Captain or Skipper of the then Boat Club, a Highlander, supposed Chief of Clan Chattan,. and obviously descended from the original wild cat; at least if it was a red one. He was the terror and delight of the St. Alfred's Dons, who said he was the noisiest and least mischievous of his race. " It's all very well sending him off," said Ridley the Dean, on hearing the Chief stood suspected of going to a fight; " but he'll get through well enough ; and where'll you get another like him ?" He was, in fact, sufficiently like one of his ancestors to be thoroughly interesting —immense strength and activity of course; curiously thin ; with fine yellow hair ; long, regular, and rather pensive features ; and about the brightest and wildest gray eyes that ever opened. He had long melancholyA SERMON AND A SCHOLAR. 183
fits, during which he continually played the fiddle, as from his earliest youth ; and, as yet, it had preserved him from killing or eating anybody. He had really arrived at the higher stages of the second course of violinism—when one no longer can't play at all but plays badly, and had hopes of further progress. Of course he indulged his innate love of the chase; but he was the steadiest and most determined stroke-oar of many years. A crew gathered fire from him, and his finish sometimes seemed to run through a half-beaten lot, and shove them in winners they didn't know how. He liked Hugh (who mentally identified him with Folker the Fiddler), and made him feel the responsibilities of his position.
It had the effect of making him a more thorough and absolute Oxford man than before; because it gave him a representative's share in undergraduate politics. He felt more like Heron of Ch. Ch. than Heron of Otterscope, at least while he was within sound of Tom. He contented himself with one day's hunting a week, choosing Thame, or Bradwell Grove, or the best attainable meets. He began to read with a certain keenness ; partly because his mother wished It, partly because he had brought some school-knowledge with him and did not see the use of wasting it, partly because he liked to be friends with the reading set; and, as he said, regularly belong to the184
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
old place. He was almost free from that repugnance to learning anything, or to the acquisition of ideas by any means or on any account, which is often felt at his age. There was little of the cub in him ; and his mother's teaching had given him a special regard for anything like a poor scholar. And hence, as he told Lady Hertha, he had formed an acquaintance with Broad-beans, Ireland and Hertford Scholar and Essayist, after a talk with Roundell and Chipchase. It had occupied them on a long Sunday walk after University Sermon in the Cathedral, a rite not often described, but more frequent in those days than at present.
" Let's do a sermon, Heron," said Chipchase, as a string of out-college men began to cross Peckwater, towards the end of an extensive breakfast in that festive quadrangle. " Your pipe's out, and ten minutes to spare—daresay you don't want much beer after breakfast; bad for training, you know, and fishy proceeding on the whole for Sundays."
Hugh was nothing loath to move, and if he had been, he would probably have obeyed the invitation of the College Skipper. Roundell came off too, having undertaken, on tutorial intercession, always to break up a Sunday breakfast whenever he could. There was a general move, and the relics of a Homeric feast were left to scout and bedmaker.
Getting a reel into a bottle is a puzzle, and so it isA SERMON AND A SCHOLAR. 185
to accommodate the University of Oxford in Ch. Ch. Cathedral, when there is a preacher of large calibre. Our friends got into the choir, luckily where they could hear; but for a large number the problem of admission remained like that very celebrated one, why an acute-angled alligator resembles a convex cockatoo—without any satisfactory answer. But they were not troubled by it; and, as they took their places, the first verse of Handel's 104th Psalm rolled up in sudden strength, massive, uplifting, gravely rapturous, from organ and choir, and four hundred strong modulated voices in unison. I do not know that the multitudinous is overpowering, as a matter of course ; at least it requires harmony to make it so. But the Oxford hymn before University Sermon has always seemed to me to possess a wonderful effect, from its ease, simplicity, and the number of men's voices which join correctly in it. They agree so far, anyhow. A good many of them might differ a good deal concerning other devotional acts ; but the spell of mystic sound commands them for a time; and perhaps they feel to hold together, by a symbolic thread of concord, for a few minutes. It struck Hugh a good deal. He had already adopted the hard style as becoming his natural form. His speech had become brief, his brown locks were cropped close, and his dress and bearing bordered on the Plunger's. Nevertheless he had fine nerves ofi86
HUGH HERON, Cn. Cn.
his own, and the mighty strain rolled in upon him like a deep of sound calling to a deep of emotion. It is not often that English ceremonial attempts the commanding style of impression, by main force or multitude; the appeal is generally made to thought, to difficult truth, and the recondite experience and feeling of the individual; but now and then there is a fortuitous display of the latent power, and then it is often overpowering.
The sermon was a memorable one, for the " golden mouth" of the aged preacher was silent soon after for months of illness and distress; and, though his slight indomitable frame revived its vigour, and the life, which then seemed so fragile, came back unbated, his words were remembered, as spoken in contemplated decay. All the proved vigour of forty years was there; but severity strove no more with tenderness, and friends and enemies knew that the preacher's love for them was no mere common form. Warning and suggested terror had had their time, and now all was comfort and hope and well-assured charge, without a touch of satire or provocation, or challenge to the irritable intellect below him ; the mouth of gold had no bitter aerugo, but spoke of intellect as the great gift, yet a gift involving a responsibility. He whose long life and toil might have given him claim beyond others to*A SERMON AND A SCHOLAR. 187
authority with younger men, had no such claim to make; only he did what he alone could do, for he looked round on the crowd of undergraduates, and spoke to them as his sons, with a fulness of feeling that was authority. For it made every rough lad there present understand, that one of the most historical persons he had ever seen claimed him, cared for him, and bade him repent and be clean, and hold fast by the Faith.
There was hardly a sound or a sigh for an hour ; only the breathless silence of an English audience when they do want to hear. Sometimes their attention is more trying to a preacher than temporary carelessness ; it is so fixed and devouring. The grave faces show their natural Puritanism, and whether intelligently or not, they look for some good thing, with a suggestion of its being the worse for him who disappoints them. " The hungry flock look up and are not fed only they do not look very like sheep at such a time ; nor probably did they in Milton's day.
The English Doctor (we name him neither angelic, subtle, nor seraphic, but after his race) said enough, at all events, to send off our friends in a state of enthusiasm very like that of Clovis—they would have done battle for him. They stood back awhile under the white pendants of the groined quire, watching the little procession out of the western doors. Fori88
HUGH HERON, Cii. CH.
the smallest of cathedrals, Christ Church is not the least impressive, from its sturdy strength of early English architecture, the interlacing arches, and the good effect of brilliant windows in white stone walls, which call on attention as illuminations do on a page, and are unchallenged by too bright colour of solid objects. The crew soon met for their Sunday walk, mostly in the gorgeous ties and waistcoats generally affected on the day of rest, by gentlemen who are clad in Flushing and flannel all the rest of the week.
" Ever hear him before, young fellow ? "
" No, nor any like him."
" Repeated the spot-stroke a mimber of times," said Bill Buchanan the billiard-player, in pensive metaphor.
" What did you think yourself, Chipchase ? " said Hugh, who didn't quite know if the discipline of the eight-oar extended into the province of theology, as it certainly overshadowed that of morals.
" Gorgeous throughout, as far as I heard or understood ; it's so grand, too, his being so unconscious like; rather different from Bangdrum, who told Common-room he preached as a dying man to dying men; and Latchford ' hoped they were only sleeping.'"
" What an old Serpiant it is. But the Doctor says some ugly things sometimes; he didn't to-day ; butA SERMON AND A SCHOLAR. 189
sometimes he says things about—going wrong, as if they were dragged out of him."
" Well, I don't see how he's to help saying them. It was rather good a Sunday or two ago, how Hawke turned on the press about clergy making capital of divine punishment; he asked straight if anybody there really thought any parson would not give his life to be able to say there was no such thing ?"
" Perhaps he would risk something; to do him justice, he combines the mystic and the drastic in about equal parts. You've nearly done for your uncle, once or twice, haven't you, Heron ? I've heard he's full of grouse-shot; and he seems very fond of you still."
Then they began talking about rich and poor, and calling Hugh Elizabeth Fry, because he wanted to go into active benevolence. Roundell saw there was something the matterwith theyoung one; and counter-irritation has always been the Oxford remedy for all complaints of the mind. The great burden of the world, the fathomless sense of what is wrong and Avhat is suffered, and the tremendous irregularities of life, came the more heavily on Hugh's thoughts because he himself had everything he wanted; and the older and tougher man commented on the subject in his own way.
" I can't help having enough—nor you either," he said. " We don't do much mischief that I see—two190
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
horses ain't much; why can't you take it easy ? Pay, I'll pay up to anything you like, I do to lots of things ; but what's the use of worrying about it ?"
" I don't know. I can't bear to see fellows look as if they hated one as I come up the High from hunting."
" Hate you ; why, you fool, half of them know you, and they're quite the other way, rather proud of you—it'll only make you more cocky though."
" Oh, I don't mean our own familiar cads ; but there's such a population now, all between this and the Friars' end of Oxford; and they don't get quite enough to eat, and they seem to spoil my fun without getting any themselves ; and all one's giving, it's only like pitching a halfpenny over from the other side."
" Why, 'Cliffe and you are only poor scholars after all; you ain't here to give money or spend money, and it's a part of my duty, or was till lately. I came up as a gentleman-commoner, you know; and my function used to be to pay double for everything that you might have it cheaper, and spend Lord knows what that extravagance mightn't be expected of anybody else. That's changed now, and I'm quite mildly overcharged ; but I think you would be easier in your mind if you returned your exhibition for some man who wants it. You'd no business to get it."
" Race is to the strong," said Chipchase, " or to theA SERMON AND A SCHOLAR.
well-coached. They can only look to the best papers now, and I don't know what fellows do who can't pay for grinding."
" They didn't do their charity that way in the Middle Ages," said Hugh, who was in the then usual .stage of anti-Renaissance enthusiasm.
" Well, they couldn't go by papers when nobody could write. But great men got the lion's share, and took the lead much more than now. Dayrell said, he thought the great thing about mediaeval education was, that men gave up everything for learning, instead of wanting to get everything by it; and that they would not have done that, if learning and religion had not been thought inseparable things then."
" You know, my dear small boy," said Roundell, furtively singeing a lock of Hugh's hair with the red end of a permitted cigarette," there isn't much justice, or whatever you call it, allowed in this wale, nor never wasn't; and if we're to enjoy that luxury, it must be by doing it more than having it. But suppose it was just, which it isn't, that every poor fellow who liked reading better than hard work should have a scholarship up here ; what good would an ugly rush of literary dustmen do up here, more than we do ? "
" Why, they'd teach other dustmen."
" To lead dust, or to do what ? This place wasn't made to put dustmen into our places for the sake of192
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
the change ; it is to get the fittest men into the literary life. What's the sense of filling the country with third classes, who want to live on their thirds ? " " I don't know; but a poor man ought to have as good a start as a rich one, here if anywhere."
" Quite true of a certain number, and I think they had better have kept on the old system here so far ; they really do in some cases. But there ought to be a lot of college or university scholarships, as there are at Aberdeen, I'm told, in the hands of sworn Dons ; to be given to all poor lads who can pass a certain matriculation standard. The servitors here used to be chosen like that ; then they quarrelled with the name, and there were a lot of disagreeables, I'm afraid. But it's better now ; at all events, it answers with men like old Beans. Do you know him ? " "No, he's two years older ; I should like to." "Well, tell Dayrell you'd like him to have your exhibition, and work it out in coaching you ; he'd be glad enough, and would shove you on no end—you can't do without fancying you're reading."
So Hugh soon after made the best acquaintance he could make—that of a good lad of considerable talents, and sense enough for success. Then, as in after-days, Broadbeans enjoyed his share of popular comment. They called him a slave of ecclesiasticism, sleek orthodox dogmatist, and allA SERMON AND A SCHOLAR.
the rest of it ; and he took it all like a glutton ; in fact he seldom heard or read it. At this time he was a plain-faced and strong-built Yorkshire lad, son of a yeoman farmer, brought up in a remodelled grammar-school, under an energetic master, who drove him as hard as he would go. His genius or talent had the. advantage of being well smothered at first. Few can dispense with this, perhaps, or few do as well without it. For one Macaulay, bred under absolute moral rule, with full scope allowed to a mind in which Thought cast out Passion from his babyhood, we have nearly all the rest of the modern population of these islands ; whose development cannot proceed without brawling self-assertion. The sharper a lad is, the more he expects to have things his own way. He is so perfectly certain of what he wants, and therefore of how matters ought to go by nature; the Ego settles matters, and its commandment is just and good, of course. But there are shocks of the rudest, and the Non-Ego impresses itself unmistakably, in the form of senior boys and ushers, and possible swishings. These if your genius can take with good heart, he makes a great step ; and grows on from obeying unreason, perhaps to making it reasonable by counsel and force. But he may fall into cowardice or meanness, or hysterics of rage and hatred ; and then evil is prepared for him, and assuredly for others
o194
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in proportion to his calibre. Shelley was bullied at school, by a set of stupid louts, who, in all probability, raised themselves in later years to that moderate standard of morality and religion which their time required. He became an atheist; they may have ripened into churchwardens. I wonder if any of them ever regretted his humble share in first raising the devil in the author of " Queen Mab" ? Or rather, judging by similar cases within my own observation, I do not believe one of them ever thought of it.
Cependant, as the French say, Broadbeans got to the head of his forms, and stuck there, and read everything he could get hold of, and got helped on as hard-working lads generally do; and managed to remember that others had helped him. Also he learnt enough grammar and composition to gain him at eighteen one of his chief desires, an exhibition at Christ Church, with fair prospect of the dignity of senior student in due time. And so he walked under Tom Gate for the first time, a young man rather solid than rough-looking, with country-made clothes, face, and person, and a certain amount of Yorkshire speech; but neither awkward, shy,' nor forward, and old-fashioned in the right sense. As soon as he got his books unpacked he began to read them ; as soon as he knew his tutor by sight, he began to take him bits of Latin and copies of verses. So he was sent in for Hertford and Ireland ;A SERMON AND A SCHOLAR.
and, to use the language of Ch. Ch., excited with unwonted victory, he "collared" one scholarship and " frightened " the other, on which he still had designs. He had a good deal of humour in the Northern way, and though rather canny, often did kind things because he thought he ought, and that it would be better so; and he never expected any thanks. Nobody invited him into mischief, and he wouldn't go by himself; he was an efficient volunteer, and the Earl of Lanercost, who knew his people at home, now and then lent him a horse to ride; otherwise his great interest and diversion was the second boat, wherein he ground away at No. 3—without, however, acquiring the higher graces of rowing form. In Oxford he was nearly as happy as a man could be, being, in fact, exactly the sort of person so sanguinely expected and " contemplated " by statutes and founders, as a scholar in want of money. He was a prize boy and something more—that is to say, he cared as much for his work as for the emoluments of his work. There are such men still; and though they must fight in the ring of competition at first, it is a great object to get them out of it as soon as you can. No doubt Oxford has gained by competition, but it has its drawbacks in success ; and failure is a grievous thing to the weeds of our great racing-stable. The money-standard of acquirement must lower the spirit of winners, and may break down the losers.
o 2196
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Many seem to flag as soon as they get money. Lads are too young for the excitement of continual struggle for fellowships; especially when you consider that they have been in training ever since they first wore round jackets. That is the reason so many fall into Hellenism, pretty furniture, and magazine-writing as soon as they have got something to idle on. Overtrained and overpaid, they have no work left in them. I am sorry to have so many horsey comparisons in this book ; but our education certainly is pursuing the system of yearling races to a dangerous extent, and producing a number of rather useless animals. They get on newspapers, if vicious; which is like running in hansoms ; or if still sweet-tempered, the best thing they can do is to carry a lady.
But that was only beginning in Hugh's day. Broadbeans was in fact one of the Northern army of hard-headed lads who were promised us when the new system began ; and who, to do our innovators justice, did and do come in tolerable numbers. Hugh himself had always heard of learning as Norval had of battles, as a sort of violent necessity of life ; and had a notion of making friends with, or quite sitting at the feet of, some embryo Dr. Johnson whom he expected to find walking about Quad in clouted shoon, according to Carlyle. So he was delighted to meet Beans at Lanercost's, where the exhibitioner drank as much asA SERMON AND A SCHOLAR. 197
he thought did him good. And it did him no harm in the eyes of host or companions, for it made him talk about Craven, and his father's farm, and horses, and draining, and the country-side; and Bagot, who was a Southerner, was delighted to hear him about home. As he said afterwards : " It was such a thing to meet one of your regular born Firsts who wasn't an inhospitable Corkasian, and condescended to say something one wanted to hear."
Then the' Hertford Scholar, at Chipchase's suggestion, gave a small and early symposium to the boats' crews, in his attics. The hours were both small and early, as Hugh observed, before they went to bed ; but it was the last thing in the term, and after Collections. How many oysters they ate will probably never be known ; and there were pipes and gin-twist, and similar things. Lanercost said he had never heard all the birds talk conversation to such an extent; couldn't have thought of RoundelFs quoting poetry, and Heron seemed to know Tennyson by heart; really it was very nice you know, quite a relief after so much horses ; seemed quite natural to go on about books at Beany's. Said he'd read nearly all his library, only think ; and really, one side of his room was all books ; wished he, Lanercost, could take up some interesting line of reading besides his Moderation books. He was advised to198
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
begin with all Smith's Dictionaries, and after exhausting them, to proceed to the " Etymologicon Magnum."
It is rather an anacreonism now, as Mrs. Malaprop says (or did she say aneurism ?),—but in those days all the lads, except a few faithful ones of the port-wine persuasion, were strong Tennysonians. All fame is vanity ; that is to say it won't do everything. But the Laureate might even now be well contented with the share he has had in the hearts and minds of so many who never can forget him, and of whose souls he really is a part, perhaps for ever. To have used such power entirely for good, over such a wide reign, is surely enough for a life, though probably the thought or certainty of such influence comes too late for enjoyment. Still, to have given birth and shape to so many ideas best worth having amongst his contemporaries, may seem a better thing than a Mohu-rrum of popular admiration. It may require consolation to have to pass life under powerful achromatic observation from the Isle of Wight in general, and to be hunted by a continued succession of excursion trains. To the generation now waning, his work had the inestimable value of showing English lads the Romance of their own lives; all of us felt we were or had spirits after all, and that things true and beautiful, and passionate without dis-A SERMON AND A SCHOLAR. 199
honour, were good for the spirit. We were not altogether equal to Wordsworth ; but to find some one who was young, who knew England as a squire's son knows it, and who wrote music so sweet and searching, was then a revelation to young Oxford. All the lads laughed at themselves, and it certainly was enough to drive one frantic to hear Broadbeans induced to quote " Locksley Hall" from end to end, in perfect content, with his feet on the fender, and armed with a long clay pipe: he said he owed it to himself {ow pronounced as in cow) never to smoke anything more aristocratic. Lanercost had inherited no small sense of fun from the haughty dame who bore him; and his subsequent imitations of the " dreery " moorland deserved the appreciation they met. But it was as yet unknown pleasure and encouragement to Hugh, who loved verse like Taillefer, to find that so many of the other fellows cared for it too.
All has changed now. Science and nature are great; and no mental pursuit is interesting, unless it is in the analytic way. Poetry must be like chemistry or anatomy; the public want to see each other's insides, inner springs of character, spiritual autopsy, and what not. Have we not worked long enough at dissecting passion and motive to find that our operations are rather offensive, and don't prove much ? Then we delight in calling iEschylus Aischulos, and200
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Psyche Sukey, and the pedantic discords of Neo-Hellenism "to our mouths grow sleek;" and there is Our Lady of Pain, all sweet music and nebulous naughtiness : between these poetic supports we old ones have come to the ground of prose. All the more reason for remembering how we used to read the Laureate in our own days ; drinking a delight which is still fresh enough to enable us to believe in some such expression as Immortal Rhyme.
For men of the right sort there are great advantages in the modern Lernfreiheit of Oxford. A lad of any promise and diligence can generally attend lectures with any favourite teacher in the University; and so may colleges join forces now, that tutors with special tastes may be employed almost entirely in their particular faculty; so that professorial lectures, and whatever high teaching there is, often gets faithfully " rubbed in "—in Common-room parlance. And as professors and crack lecturers now ask questions and set papers, they are able to weed out unprofitable followers. Highcliffe's notions of teaching as a process were reactionary; he wanted to drive certain facts and views into his pupils, and suspected that could not be done simply by talking at them in herds. He was full of ancient Greece himself: for the present he conscientiously believed that such a life as that of Athens had never been led before or since, and thatA SERMON AND A SCHOLAR. 201
if it was not practicable in this country at present, it ought to be. All other histories or parts of history-he read with something of the mind of a statesman, or at least of a man of the current age : on Greece he was an idealist, voluble and brilliant enough to out-talk all his pupils at least, and at the same time to teach them something, and enable them, if they would, to learn a good deal more. Indeed, his very republicanism found a certain favour or tolerance, even with the old and orthodox ; because it was so distant in time, so thoroughly Athenian and original—not adapted from the American or the French. He was passionate on Pericles; but had no particular appreciation of Robespierre. He avowed that he was not up, even in General Washington ; and he had been heard to sum up Charles Fox as " a fine slack-jawed country gentleman, with a genial turn for all the vices."
He, of course, saw much of Heron and Chipchase, who were his pupils for the time, and he often liked to come and sit with them over the final pipe or pipes of peace, after dining with Dayrell or Hawke ; to whom he clung, he said, as the last parsons he was on real terms with. He came in once, after noisy collision with the chairs and tables in Hugh's dark outer room, and found the two young ones in the small study, in a cloud of smoke and argument. He202
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
lighted a cheroot, and told them to go ahead easy or " paddle on all," or words to that effect. They were comparing their own athletics with the Greek, assisted, of course, by Smith's Dictionary; and Chip-chase was overpowering Hugh, who was inclined to assert the prowess of modern oarsmen and horsemen. The dialogue had come to a climax, thus :—
Chipchase. Why, do you think you could have stood up to Diagoras of Rhodes for five minutes ?
Hugh. Don't know, but I can to Frank Roundell; and I'd back him to put Diagoras on the fire—or at least, any man in Oxford.
Highclijfe. None of your bounce, young man. Look at the Theseus.
Hugh. I've drawn him; and I don't believe you've even done that. He must have been an appalling slogger. No man alive could stand before that loose shoulder and arm—must have slung it in awful; but, pooh, you know they weren't all like that. He's an ideal.
Highclijfe. No, I suppose Theseus was like you and Roundell in one thing—he had the best of everything, and the people got what they could.
Chipchase. I was talking about Diagoras, and he was a real Rhodian. You don't think any modern fellow can do what they used to at Olympia-, Highcliffe ?A SERMON AND A SCHOLAR. 203
Highcliffe. No, perhaps not—I don't think they were trained to the same point—not to fight round after round for an hour. I suspect that the first two or three cracks with the cestus settled it all. Look at Dares and Entellus, or the men in the Iliad—they don't come up often.
Hugh. Well, I think our way tries pluck much harder. It's very bad with the gloves, when one's all knocked about, and knows what a mess one is in by the look of the other man—coming up wishing it was over, and only wanting to be a little the best.
Highcliffe. Well, they got it sooner over: they couldn't have had a succession of bloody-nosed individuals punching each other for hours before Olympian Zeus.
Chipchase. How did they fight off the ties, I wonder ?
Highcliffe. I don't know; there's great difficulty about what they really did in all their matches. I can't tell what it means that Phayllus jumped sixty feet—perhaps it was some kind of hop, step, and jump. At all events, one knows by the statues they were much finer fellows than any of you.
Chipchase. British Lions certainly ain't carvers, as ./Esop says.
Hugh. I don't know. Have you seen theHUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
model of Gully's fist at " The Randolph " ? How do you think Diagoras would have looked after one or two from that quarter ?
Highclijfe. It's a great mauling club of a hand,, but Spring was a better man, Corinthian Tom—and he was fine-handed, just like a Greek; and Pearse must have been best of all—I daresay up to third-rate form at the Isthmus. Yes, I know, Heron, you're descended from Odin or some other cannibal deity; but he wasn't equal to Theseus, and you're much further departed from his wholesome natural ways, than Athens was from her ancestor.
Hugh. I didn't know cannibalism was natural.
Highclijfe. Quite as much so as usury and rent; you see we don't eat each other fair, but you great houses, and we literary classes, make a steady chronic living off the people that pays for all.
Chipchase. Well, Highcliffe, the Greeks lent out their minae at no end of interest.
Hugh. And didn't they make their slaves do all the work at trade and manufactures and that ?
Highclijfe. Well, if they did, they knew how to spend their money—it didn't all go in guzzling and collecting rubbish—and they had something grand! and beautiful for it, for slaves to see and enjoy with their masters. A slave might bathe in the ^Egean, and walk up to the Parthenon.A SERMON AND A SCHOLAR.
Hugh. Well, all Oxford comes to the races, and ought to come to church;—and he stopped suddenly, thinking he had said something rude, and that Highclifife might think he thought of him ; but the great coach only said: " You always go, I know, Heron. Now, mind what I say—never give up or leave off, until you have good reason, that you dare tell all the world of; and that may never be. Some of us think Greeks were better off than we, because they believed their own Gods; and some think they did well without Gods any, or Lords any. But while you have a faith of your own, and a worship, why, you can front the eternities, says Carlyle: only remember your own happiness, and don't let me or any one talk you out of it.—You're quite established as Three in the University, I hear. Now, go to bed—send him off, Chipchase; and just see me out of Tom Gate."CHAPTER XI.
the cambridge match.
It is Hugh's third spring in Oxford, and he is in the University boat, taking the final row before the crew goes to Putney. It is a fine afternoon at the end of March—at least, fine to look at; for the sun burns the skin off one side of your face and the east wind gives you neuralgia on the other. The (not very) broad stream is in its banks complaining, and still yellow with rain, fallen three days back, in a temporary interval of south wind. All down to Iffley there are knots of men in flannels and pea-jackets, waiting for the best University crew they have had for years. The excitement is great, for this is a match on which the mildest or most intellectual undergraduate feels as eager as the regular bookmakers, and even more so ; for a single event, where swindling is impossible, gives the latter but few facilities and little interest. There are formidable accounts from Cambridge, but Oxford is in a career of victory. The bank on a fineTHE CAMBRIDGE MATCH.	207
afternoon or evening is the best of all places to see young Oxford, and this was perhaps its most important day of the year. An eager crowd is waiting for the crew at Iffley Lock ; and Cambridge has her anxious representatives, who take note that the men still look rather fleshy, but that ten days over the actual course are sure to fine them down. They steal past the Lasher, without stopping at the Tree; but the stroke-oar glances at the watch at his feet, and the coxswain gives a sharp whistle. Four more strokes a minute, and the boat glides on like oil, the sharp bows quickening as with life, and devouring the watery way. The runners have enough to do by the first gate ; there is no cheering ; and only one voice of power says a word,—a voice which can at need exhort the erring oarsman in the middle of Corney Reach from the Surrey tow-path. "Well rowed, Three," it says, as the boat rushes at the Gut Corner, steered as it were without steering, and looking like a pair-oar; travelling in silence, but heralded by the loud steady scrunch of all eight oars together at the rate of thirty-eight strokes a minute.
" Row every inch now, well forrad all, don't slide too soon." The time is nearly perfect, and the men feel as if they could not get at their work; the craft does not seem to shoot, but travels evenly, without hanging the fraction of a second; there is no roll or208
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
sway to either side, but each man slashes at the beginning of his stroke, and dwells greedily on the strain to the end of his slide; the runners are dropping off fast, and the two attendant horsemen break into a gallop. She darts across, and flashes by Saunders's bridge, and slides fast over the Cherwell stream. Now in with her ; there is a slight additional spurt, all still even as a set of teeth in their work. Oars ! and they glide up to the University barge, each of the crew waited for by satellites of his own set or College. Dayrell and Hawke are in attendance on their own lads, and the latter congratulates them on being " all pretty fit, and no passengers anywhere."
Lanercost was to entertain the crew at supper, and he came up with a little air of shyness, well becoming the handsomest of light-weight peers, to ask the two older men to join the party. He had great brown eyes wide apart, broad forehead and fine muzzle, with slight strong limbs, like one of his own thoroughbreds. Dayrell was glad enough to go; there was charm about the boy, and he seemed to surround one quite naturally with his own atmosphere of life in castle and forest,
"light in the mazy Moving, imbibing the rosy, and pointing a gun at the horny."
And the chief delight and distinction of his life atTHE CAMBRIDGE MATCH.
present was to be bow-oar of the Ch. Ch. boat, with a prospect of rising to the head of the river.
" Ashley's coming in to play to us with the Chief," whispered Chipchase to the elders at the end of supper. " Music's rather nice ; fellows are quiet, and don't fret about their training and the anticipations. We quite look for the fiddle, just as if we were all in the forecastle together; " and presently the door opened, and a slight delicate-looking lad entered. After brief and shy greetings, and shaking hands with the crew, as if with big strange dogs warranted good-tempered, he sat down to Lanercost's piano, said that it wanted playing, and ran rapid fingers over the keys, which seemed to own their master joyously. Hubert Ashley was one of those rare and uncomfortable beings, an English musical genius. I should think it was worse here than anywhere else, and worse than anything else, except wanting to paint. In Italy and the South you belong to the people, you work and take your place; and it is rather too high than too low. In Germany you have training faithful and severe, you can live on a little, a great many people understand you, and you may enjoy a l<zta paupertas. There is not perhaps the spontaneous gladness of Italian inspiration, but your soul is your own, and may come out in music like
Schumann's, if that is its appointed way. But in
p2IO
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England—well, perhaps you are best poor among the poor, for music is their blessing, bad or good ; and it is more open to them, like the Kingdom of Heaven, of which it is part and symbol. As to a musician among the Upper Ten—you know how David got on in Gath. They thought he was mad, and he did not discourage their estimate. All their children have continued in that persuasion about the minstrel ever since—unless they can make money of him. The Phoenician Philistines of other days, as we well know, resembled our own; because they ran to the ends of the then known earth in energetic pursuit of tin ; and their descendants, here in the Tin Islands, are ready to gamble in big playhouses and overgrown fiddlers. But they don't care for the minstrel; they will hear him without attention, and ask him to evenings without regard. Money is not to them representative of the arts, and of higher money's worth; but the arts are representative of money. They speculate in pictures, but their real pleasure is in the prospective Christie, not in Reynolds or Turner.
For a born artist, Ashley had been fortunate in life so far. He was an orphan with a small property of his own ; and had been sent to Eton, where Clan-Chattan had taken a great fancy to him, much to his own moral advantage, and the wonderment of his friends. Ashley followed him to Oxford at a year's interval.THE CAMBRIDGE MATCH.
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Both were very fond of music for opposite reasons— the Chief, like Saul or Achilles, because it quieted his wild heart; Ashley, because it gave him strength to face the world—which he found it hard to do. Under his big friend's tuition or coercion, he had learnt enough of the country accomplishments to pass muster; he would even dance, if, as he said, his partner would be warranted quiet; and he had a fair prospect of his degree. But all his soul went into music, and he so far drew the Chief after him, that the former had acquired some real skill as an executant; going through hard and systematic practice, though his soul despised reading music, and he cared for nothing but melody. So when they played together, it was always some potpourri of their own, like the overture to a pantomime, full of airs, so dovetailed together by Ashley, as to alternate between the plaintive and the vehement, to the Chief's capricious taste. On this occasion they began with what he called a harmonised pibroch, founded, he averred, on the old Cameron call to the wolves and ravens, " Come to me, and I will give you flesh." It had wild alternations of battle and lament, and Hugh's heart rather beat as he watched little Ashley's changing face and flying hands, and felt the passion of the Highlander, all whose soul was in his fingers. The gray fire filled his eyes as he
p 2212
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rang out his sharp notes of menace; and died back as long notes of utter sorrow streamed from those weeping strings. They drooped into the dirge of the unreturning Skyemen, until the Chief had had enough of it, and swept Ashley abruptly into the " Cock of the North"—who was made to crow lustily in advance of his marching clan, till the little one would have no more, and requested to be brought round with hot claret. The out-college men went off at eleven. Lanercost cast a longing ,Jook towards Peckwater, but saw few lights, yielded, as he said rather mournfully, to his better angel, and went to bed to sleep the sleep of nineteen. Hugh retired, to dream that Catamount's tail had come off, and that Miss Rokeby was riding over him into the Blanketon Road, followed by Bagot, the now Marchioness of Wharfedale, and the whole University crew on a crocodile; while the Chief kept continually inviting the wolves and ravens to banquet on his flesh.
Another crisp spring morning, with north wind instead of east, and bracing rather than biting. It is at Putney on the day of the Match. The downy willow-buds are out unblighted on the Chiswick osiers, and there is a suspicion of fresh grass, and a dusting of minute green points, beneath and upon the trees at Barnes. Highcliffe and Lancelot, the " fatal"THE CAMBRIDGE MATCH.
coxswain of other days, leave Putney together at a round trot, through the crowd of all denominations which is gathering for the "Aquatic Derby" of the year. Whether that is a good name or not, it is melancholy to reflect on the singular popularity of the University boat-race—not for the sake of Cambridge, or Oxford, or rowing, but because it is the one sole square event without flaw—where all is unquestionably fair. " I never bets on any race but this, sir," said an excellent omnibus cad of our acquaintance ; " there's none of them juggles in it." So far the ancient Universities sustain a morality of gambling; and the sporting Astraea lingers by Cam and Isis with one foot on ground, before finally " taking off" for her long flight heavenward. Meanwhile our pedestrians are crossing Barnes Common; and there a grave and reverend person joins them, of no very advanced age, and considerable muscular power.
" Hullo, Provost, you're here of course—seems -only last year you rowed in 'Egan's pair-oar.' " *
"Well, I don't feel much the worse," said the veteran ; " only rather the heavier.—I say, it's all right this time, don't you think ? Cambridge row rather short, though they're so well together."
* A title of honour relating to the mechanical exactness of the time, in the Oxford crew trained by Mr. Egan in 1849.214
HUGH HERON, Ch. Ch.
"Mebbe loike," quoth Lancelot. "Plucky little crew, but five miles is five, and weight and length must tell in the last two. But anything may happen with these new boats—a bad slide may do for a whole crew."
They plunged into a great crowd at the end of the narrow passage at Barnes, and got separated—and when Highcliffe emerged on the tow-path, he found himself like a babe in the wood, or a dog in a fair, without any friends. There was no seeing the river; all London, or a trifle of three hundred thousand Londoners and others, had turned out in a deep column five miles long from Putney to Mortlake. So he accepted the offer of an old man in an old boat, very like Charon, in everything but the certainty of getting to the other side, which is supposed to have attended the ministry of that eminent person. In this instance they were successful, and landed on the great osier-bed and wet field below the railway bridge. 'Cliffe thought of the probable state of the clammy soil at high water, and rather wished himself back again, as he turned up his gray Bedford cords ; noticing the great depth close to the bank, and anticipating the swell of all the steamers on the top of the tide. He had not time to be uncomfortable on the subject, for all at once it rose, that indescribable murmur of vain shouting in the distance, and multitudinous madness of the people; the voice ofTHE CAMBRIDGE MATCH.
215
unavailing excitement from—say half a million of throats together. It is near and far at once, it is inarticulate and indescribable; but its effect on one's nerves is unquestionable, and it now breezed up hoarsely in the distance, as a cloud of steam was seen coming rapidly up the river from Putney.
While 'Cliffe had been moving down the bank, he noticed a pretty Thames gig, containing an old gentleman and a young lady, and fastened by her painter (the boat's, not the lady's, she was not painted) to a willow-stump close to the water. A younger man had just jumped on shore, and the Oxonian thought for a moment, as he moved down the bank, that he traced some unrecognised likeness in one or other face. But the race engrossed everybody. How often it has been described, and how well; and how little there is in seeing it pass! Two flapping flying objects at a distance like herons, only rather less awkward ; a sound which fills the air like a great gale, in which one joins oneself, for no reason, and addressing nobody; dark or light blue oars just visible; eager search for any point which both must pass to see which gets by first. They were in the crisis of crossing Corney Reach above Chiswick Ait, where the race is settled twice out of three times. Oxford leads—by all mythology—a length and a half at present, but it's hammer and tongs, and still dubious ; and2l6
HUGH HERON, CH. Cii.
up they come flying. Cambridge is very dangerous, that hard little crew hasn't fallen asunder the least; the Chief is rowing a quicker stroke than his wont for the Dark-blue, who are all dogged and dead together, a living machine.
" Anybody's yet," says Highcliffe between his teeth. The boats pass him at fifty yards off. Cambridge has come up full a length in the crossing over to the Middlesex shore and they flash by, dead locked ; he can see gaunt Hugh, and big Roundell at four, all steady and straight-backed behind the Fell Fiddler. Can they be beaten ? By the powers, it seems not this time, for they are drawing away again, a foot or two—and Barnes Bridge engulfs both crews, and the roar, fume, and strepitus of twenty steamer-loads of insanity rushes after them.
"Well, all right I hope," said 'Cliffe to himself; "but what a tremendous wave all those tea-kettles are making ;" and suddenly it rushed on his nervously quick apprehension, " How about that girl in the light gig! "—and as instantly he fled away up the river-side again, as fast as the great curling crest of foam which rushed along the hollow bank beside him.
He was just in time to take effective part in one of those deadly little episodes, which will interpose in the best-regulated boat-races, or other human conjunctures—always without warning. Perhaps it is inTHE CAMBRIDGE MATCH.
217
mercy to the sufferers that the terrors of death seem to rush at them with such sudden speed ; but here and there an instant of grace is given to the ready-hand and reckless heart Woe to him who fails in that moment; for the dread regret of falling short, where life depended on success, must haunt the sad memory of the weak all their life long. God forgive us, if it is worse than the remorse of actual crime.
Highcliffe was strong and not without daring—at least he dreaded shame, especially in its inner un-revealable forms, much more than he valued his neck; and, better still, he was familiar to indifference, like most old University men, with river and boat accidents ; besides, he had a few moments to collect himself before he got opposite the fragile craft. The pair on board were gazing after the race, and had not the faintest idea of their danger. Their bark was struck heavily, uplifted and half filled before they could look round. She might not have upset, but that being fastened rather short by the head, she could not rise to or play with the heavy breakers, which for the time were as high as those of a Channel sea. The girl sprung up in terror, like the Lady of De Quincey's Dream-fugue; the old gentleman seized her in his arms, probably to make the best of the chances by sitting on the floor of the gig ; but, even as he embraced her,2 l8
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
the next "send " of the little boat threw them over into ten feet of tormented water. They sunk and rose and sunk again, close to the shore, as the heave of that wave subsided—they vanished under people's feet, and were drowning, as it seemed, within reach of hand; when Highcliffe flounced down in a sitting position on the very edge of the osier-bed above them, and stretched his long legs down into the water, which rose again in a volume above his waist, happily without lifting him. It subsided, and there was a moment of general stupefaction, which his voice first interrupted.
" She's got my foot—here they are both," he said quietly; "hold on, my dear." And he bent forward almost double, and grasped the young lady under the arm, as her head emerged from the waters, like Arethusa's ; except in respect of the placidity which Virgil attributes to that nymph. Next moment he was seized from behind, and dragged back high and dry by a dozen eager hands, in company with his two new acquaintances—one still clinging to him (to his extreme contentment, after the first glance), the other, who still held her waist, quite insensible. She sobbed hysterically for a few moments, but recovered her senses with much promptitude.
" Oh, you've saved both our lives," were her first words ; but Highcliffe, rather shaken and worried byTHE CAMBRIDGE MATCH.	219
the crowd (of course there was a rush at the new excitement, which nearly drove him and the sufferers into the river), only said something about her death of cold, and insisted on wrapping her in his long great-coat, which was only very wet as to its skirts. Their younger companion had a plaid, which v/as applied to the use of the elder, who had now collected breath and senses.
" Well, thank God for all things, rheumatics included. What am I to say to you ? You've saved us, it seems. We must send you your coat again— to Hatchetts' ? What, Mr. Highcliffe of St. Homo-novus's, Oxford ? Why, you must be my nephew's tutor—Tom Chipchase—well, my dear sir-"
" But do let's get you both across the railway-bridge to an inn, and then I can go or send for fresh things," said the other, shy and practical. " Here's a police-galley to take charge of the boat. I can call on you to-morrow, if you like."
" Hampton Housej Chiswick, then, any time before two."
By this time they had joined the stream across Barnes Bridge ; and Highcliffe was glad to escape from the congratulations of a large mixed acquaintance, all new-made, and mostly inclined either to ask him to drink, or to give them something to drink. He had been able to take a fair look at the young lady, and220
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
thought her rather beautiful in a dreamy way, and like somebody, he knew not who. He had hardly thought of love, except for that inner anticipating resolution to have it genuine if he had it at all, which minds of the higher tone of English practical sentiment often retain in their very depths. But saving a fair damsel from drowning, hearing her tell you so, and seeing her look piquante to the verge of eccentricity, wrapped up in your own upper Benjamin by your own unskilful hands—this is a conjuncture of circumstances which makes even a single look rather productive of ideas. These are generally found to be exceedingly nice, and they form themselves, without much mental effort, into those trains of thought which are generally called day-dreams. 'Cliffe enjoyed such things immensely, and thought he might always indulge in them if he laughed enough at himself—which is not quite safe. And, as he strode back to Putney, he went on communing with himself as to who she was so like.
" Chipchase's uncle's in charge of her, and a young man—(Why," said he to himself, " I don't seem to like that young man ; rather a muff to fasten up the gig so ; ought to have saved them himself; quite a boy though, younger than she is ; not a bad lad, I daresay)—not her brother, hadn't any of that look— very pretty, I must say, what you call ' interesting,' too—so like a woman. How quick she gatheredTHE CAMBRIDGE MATCH.
up her senses and skirts, when she came to—just one glance at her dress, and shook herself together as neat as Virginia—which Virginia, by-the-way ?— Appius's or Paul's ? Either 'd do ;—good thing she wasn't drowned, like her. Well dressed—that gray hat never came off—quite killing she looked, in my coat—is it a face I've seen in Gainsborough, or Sir Joshua, or anywhere in the world ? Brown hair with gold lights—nobody but Legros could put them on right. Have I seen her in a picture, now ? Well, at all events, there's to-morrow before two—train to Hammersmith, of course, cab's too much. I am rather a heathen about it somehow; ought to have thought before what a chance it seemed, my coming across the river at all—perhaps the only man on the bank who had seen such a thing under a bank before. That couldn't be mere chance, now—I was sent across to save those two—curious, I can't feel very happy or excited, only as if I had had a great escape myself. What should I have done if I'd failed or missed her, or rather if she had missed me ? Her life,, and the endless misery of mine—well out of an awkward thing." And he turned into the first open church on the Chelsea Road, and there further considered the event of the morning.
He dined late at his club—one of the smaller literary retreats—and was pleased as he sat in the222
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smoking-room afterwards, at Roundell's entering with news that the University dinner of the two crews and friends had been happily got over, without any row, "without even sulks," he said. He looked odd and excited, but declared he was perfectly sober. Heron was coming here directly, he'd left word to show him up to them ; and Roundell laughed, and stared at his friend with eyes of considerable pleasure and regard, looking roused and expectant, so that HighclifFe, who wouldn't begin about himself, said " Well ?" interrogatively. Then, getting no answer, he asked the No. 4 to tell him all about the race, as he felt it in the boat. Roundell drew a long breath, and seemed to reflect; he was too full of it to start at once; but at last he began, in a way which showed how much great excitement can get out of a man.
"Well, it was more like Heaven, so to speak, you know, than anything I ever knew before. It was all dead calm, and the water was bright as well as the air, and one seemed to be floating between heaven and earth ; for the boat was perfectly even and steady on her keel, and she fled and glided away like a dream, like an oiled dream; and one hadn't any sight or sense of resting upon anything, so it was just like flying and soaring away in the air; and one saw Cambridge all the journey, almost to the bow oar ; and of course I knew if I could see their bow-THE CAMBRIDGE MATCH.	223
man we were winning; and yet one dared not look out of the boat, and they hung on very well; and we had just a sense of flying victory, no more, don't you understand ? And there was a great deep murmur, quite a roar, all round, which seemed to come up like a cloud from everywhere, and carry us along with it ; and all the time there was that rhythmical harmonious swing, and the jolly sharp rattle of all the eight oars like one, quite a single sound ; and that incessant eagerness to get a good slash at every stroke, and the craft gliding away so under your hands, that you never seemed to get your strength on; and Cambridge shot and fleeted at us like a white streak, so delightful to see—at least till they came at us deadly hard in Corney Reach—then we became serious, and got dogged, and began to think about just pulling it off if we could, and wished it was over. Then we held them and left them a little again, and every stroke brought us home ; and at last 'Oars !'— all that was beautiful, quite perfect But all the way, I shall always remember that great black wall of twenty steamers, one just even with the other, stretching right across the quiet river and swallowing it all up with swell and foam, and fouling all the air with smoke and steam, and deafening everything with yells and screeches. I declare the most curious thing of all was the sense of continual swift flight224
HUGH HERON, Cir. Ch.
from all that, and that it never could catch us while we stuck to our work. I wish one could go on at that for ever, and never be pumped out. But please,. Highcliffe, didn't you have an adventure and save somebody" ? Stop, I hear Heron coming up."
Door opens, and enter Hugh, looking decidedly flushed.
"He was sober when I left him, 'Cliffe ; I believe it's only his feelin's," said Roundell, looking half scared, as if he thought there would be a scene. But Hugh only sat down by the tutor and took both his hands, and said: "I say, 'Cliffe, don't you know you've saved my sister ? and my mother says, can you come to us to-morrow, or shall she come and see you ? You mustn't fail her, for she says you're her son now, like me."CHAPTER XII.
the wyngate ball.
Grace Rokeby was a good specimen of a class of persons who are not very often drawn to the life in these days. I find few accounts of the lives of English country girls of a certain degree. Perhaps they are rather uneventful; perhaps story-tellers are in dread of the shade of Thackeray; perhaps they really believe the great novelist knew the squirearchy ; perhaps they never heard of Eugenie de Guerin, or knew anybody like her on this side the Channel. Mr. Trollope, at all events, seems acquainted with the sort of person, and Grace was not unlike one of his heroines. So imagine a young woman of twenty or twenty-one, rosy as described above; with great dark-gray eyes and black-brown hair, well-bred, well-fed, well-dressed, well-conditioned, well-regulated, well-exercised, with manners neither self-possessed nor shy; without self-consciousness, from habitually thinking of other people; independent
q226
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because she was not afraid of anybody; conciliating from inner wish to please; the sort of peaceful person who prefers even battle to quarrel. Think of her as fairly grounded in most accomplishments, competent, besides, to almost any duty that came near, and as willing as Mr. Barkis. She could cook and she could doctor and tie up chilblains, and nurse old women, and order dinner. Also she could ride very well to hounds, and had a strong turn in her of the peculiar quality which Persians call " fire in the saddle;" which, as we have seen, occasionally led to consequences. She had been brought up in a great country household, and had helped her mother, and almost taken her place at her death; the tough old servants delighted in her because she stuck at nothing. When the Duchess of. Holderness turned up unexpectedly and found her alone at Shoreswood, she did the honours with eager pleasure and ease ; so that her Grace made a note of her as fit for anybody ; and when her groom broke his collar-bone she not only visited him, but insisted on feeding and bedding-down her own horse, and handled a pitchfork very well. She ministered to her cocks, and hens, and cow. She had read, as good girls do, with an appreciation rather beyond her understanding; but had happily enough of the former quality to read things over and over again ; and she knew several books of theTHE WYNGATE BALL.
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modern-old-fashion to alarming readiness of quotation. When you know all Tennyson and Miss Rossetti, and a great deal of Mrs. Browning, you know some poetry; and probably something about poetry as a subject; and if you have read Carlyle and Ruskin with real attention for about five years on end, you ought not to be deficient in ideas. Also if you are the obedient daughter of a father who swears by Macaulay, you will assimilate another style and set of notions, and understand that your literary idols are not everybody's, and that different persons not only have different ideas, but very often the same ideas in different shape. Grace was very fond of Erckmann-Chatrian, and of all kinds of German stories and poetry, particularly Schiller, and Uhland's ballads. Of course she devoured Miss Yonge ; but most novels either bored or overexcited her; however, she read and re-read "Romola," and a course of mediaeval history out of Scott and Bulwer. She had seen Florence and Venice once, as English people see them, who are not dull or ignorant—that is to say, they seemed to her cities of the soul, and centres of a sort of better land, where history is conceivably true, and life easily beautiful, where poetry is possible, and Imagination can breathe for awhile. She professed to be very matter-of-fact,
as most sensible people have to do in the present
Q 2228
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generation; but then she had learnt to think that spiritual things are facts, which makes a great difference.
Her father delighted in her almost as much as in Major Rokeby, her brother, whom he called the delight of his eyes. Since Lady Rokeby's death, some years ago, a certain melancholy had crept over the old squire, who inherited some of the Yorkshire Puritan blood and traditions. His children had done what they could to mitigate it, but it was connected with broken nerves and failing life ; and Miles Rokeby was rather a silent fellow, as hard as a tenpenny nail, and wonderfully like one of Cromwell's Major-Generals, who took the work upon him, while Grace did attendance and conversation. They were old-fashioned in their Church notions, rather Low than High; and their rector was happily a gentleman, even Lancelot himself—an old Fellow of Trinity, who had learnt and seen a good many things, at Cambridge and in Northern parochials, which are not included in the theological studies of our modern seminarists, and are found useful in the strife of men. He understood, among other matters, that peculiarity of the County of Yorkshire of which the Abbot of Ebor wrote so plaintively to the Malleus Monachorum : " There be such a company of wilful gentlemen within Yorkshire as there is not in all England besides." I don't knowTHE WYNGATE BALL.
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how to apply that most felicitous expression to the Rokebys in proper form. They all wanted to do right and be right, and were amenable enough; but never could be divested of a way of their own, in thought, duty, and everything. No doubt the quality of wilfulness is very easily overstrained ; but we could not get on without it. To impress one's own individuality, and leave one's own mark for awhile on something, to have free play for one's own character—what a passion that is still, in the old part of the old County! It is not vulgar lust of rule, or overbearing, or overreaching—it is vigour of constitution and perceptions, wanting to see all round and to grow all round. It is the nature of people who live where there is room to live ; in a country of hill and moorland, with marked natural features of its own, and a severe climate, which the strong resist and the weak sink under; where there is a chance for individuality, and men and women are not ground and trampled into shapeless uniformity by the herding of modern life. Otanes the Satrap, father-in-law of the late lamented King Cambyses of Persia, and subsequently of Darius, his anointed successor, is recorded in the third book of Herodotus as having enjoyed a good deal of this taste for possessing his Aryan soul in peace. He, too, was for free space, rather than dominion: for personal23°
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
liberty, secured by obedience to immemorial laws of the Mede.
Shoreswood was more of a show house than Otterscope or Red Scaurs, being farther down its dale, nearer the low country; and also a good deal known for its pictures, which had been collected with unusually good fortune or choice by one of the late Rokebys. As you crossed the winding and rushing Gore by a quaint, massy, stone bridge, which often wanted all the strength of its many piers, you left a gray old village on your right— shepherds, a few weavers, a fishing inn, a large grazing farm and its labourers' cottages, a smithy,, two or three shops which all sold everything, and a. little old storm-worn church, on which time and the elements seemed to have done their level worst without result. Then you came to an outer lodge, and drove through two miles of covers to the house; which had a large park on the other side, but was not quite near enough to its moors. It was a weather-beaten place—rain is rain in those parts—and belonged to two different dates : the first as far back as the Commonwealth ; the second, eighteenth-century Yorkshire. That is to say, the original part was timber filled up with hard rubble and stonework to a great thickness, and therein were Sir Ralph's, rooms, particularly the far-famed oak study, curiouslyTHE WYNGATE BALL.
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illustrated by oil-paintings on every panel and cornice and drawer, of every worthy of the West and Northwest Riding for three generations. Wentworth, Lascelles, Cavendish, Stanhope, Yorke, Lister, De Grey, Cholmondeley, Fox and Fawkes, Winn and Wilberforce—a whole company of wilful gentlemen, mostly on horseback in pink and leather, careered for ever all over the room till it was a perfect phantasmagoria of portraits, of yearly increasing interest. The Roundhead relics were unique, too—the seal of the Major-Generals' commission; two swords, and the regulation Ironside cuirass of the great Oliver himself —in short, the old rooms rivalled the glories of the great landscape collection, which many thought the second in the country, and of one of the best Velasquez' in England. The larger and more public rooms on the ground-floor formed three sides of a shallow oblong square, and had the stables for a fourth; conveniently near, but on lower ground, well planted and shrubberied off. The view was over the park with its wild old thorns and doddered oaks, and far away down the Gore, almost to where barren moorlands met barren sea in the strife of ages, at its narrow embouchure ; by the not unherringed and highly picturesque town of Sniffwick. It was as pleasant a morning of May, after long and bitter east-winds, as a gentleman could wish to ride out232
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on—and Charley Cawthorne had brought Hugh over to see the pictures and stay a night or so with old Sir Ralph, who was rather lonely in the absence of his son and daughter. Lady Hertha had probably ascertained that the young lady, at least, had gone off on a succession of Southward visits, to culminate at length in a short London season. Grace had been to Court, and so on, at eighteen, and was considered a decided success ; not only in the first flight of beauty, but with fresh manners and unconsciously grand style. But she had never enjoyed (as they call it) a town " exposition" from April to July; and usually disappeared after three weeks. Any Southerner who cared for her might come after her, said her father, but he'd rather she'd have somebody near. The impression about her was that she wasn't regularly on view, but had been already disposed of by private contract, and this was so far the case, that Sir Ralph expected her to fall in with his views about marrying her second cousin, now heir scarcely questionable to Malham Priors. He had gone to India as a younger brother, had civil appointments, and, it seemed, was not coming back just yet. He wrote from time to time—sometimes to his uncle at Malham, sometimes to old Rokeby—letters full of bears, boars, tigers, and buffalo, with some soldiering and administration—but certainly not in any special toneTHE WYNGATE BALL.
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of devotion or proprietorship about Grace. He sent her a pair of shawls, and a set of gold ornaments, which she never wore. She curled her lips about them, and said she was payee, pas vendue ; but as she had never in her life seemed to contemplate the idea of not fulfilling every wish of her father's as soon as he (not to say she) had ascertained it, it was very natural in him to regulate his views about her accordingly.
Hugh and Charley trotted up the avenues in high spirits. They had come over twenty miles or so rather fast, and had been trying their horses' powers at some on-and-off banks and ditches. It was a full burst of spring, at last, after many failures. The birch and alder showed bark like live eelskin, and swung living tassels over the road, sweet with last night's soft rain. The birds "made a row," as Charles observed, " as if they'd just found a fox," and he quoted the huntsman's complaint about " them stinking wiolets and primroses." They could hear the river by fits, and one small stream after another tinkled down to it till all the air was filled with pleasant sound of waters. Squirrels chattered at them, or raced along the boughs above; great was the scuttling of rabbits and hares ; their horses knew they were getting near home, and were as fresh as if they had just come out. In the stables at Otterscope234
HUGH HERON,\ Ch. CH.
and Red Scaurs they did not say much about stud-books or pedigrees. "A good horse and a good mare," was all the stud-grooms deigned to say. Neither Hugh nor Charles, nor their fathers before them, would ever sell a horse to go foreign, or a good mare at all. There was the honesty of great pride in all their dealings. No price was ever abated, and no horse was ever let out of the stables, till the buyer knew why he was sold, and all about him.
" I wonder which is Grace's room/' was Hugh's rather ominous speculation as they rode round to the stables and looked up to the front of the house, all alive with darting and blue-glancing swallows. He had never said anything about her to his mother or anyone else; and had he been asked then and there why he remembered her, he would have been able to give no reason except that he had not quite forgotten. He was almost surprised that all the Shadwell Grove day should come back to him at once, and with such odd fresh pleasure. He enjoyed a notion of being in love, in a sort of anticipatory way. He had heard it was very disagreeable, and took a man down, and made him absent and a bore. Was he getting a bore, now, to Charles, or in Oxford, or anywhere ? He knew he was rather dreamy, sometimes. Well, nobody seemed at all disgusted. He was sure it was that side room on the first-floor, withTHE WYNGATE BALL.
the flowers—top of a harp inside—May said she could sing very well, and she knew what was what. How people asked Mrs. Cawthorne, and told Mrs. Cawthorne, about everything! "I do believe old Maulger goes and consults her sometimes—at least I'm sure I saw him pull her ear, and she boxed his, both very gently. People seem to be fond of each other without being in love ; possible at that age—his, of course, not hers." And Charles's spurs and his clinked across the wide low stone hall, hung and lined with armour, furs, and antlers, to Sir Ralph's historical sanctum; and there sat the old squire; looking rather like Sir Robert Redgauntlet, but under strong anodyne influence, for opposite him, evidently in his daughter's place, established on a long, low, comfortable chair, knitting, and looking at home, as only a woman can look, sat May Cawthorne.
Perhaps it was her figure; but she always sat in a chair better than other women. She was never stiff, never fidgeted, never lounged or sprawled or stretched, seemed always at rest and animated, at once all life and peace. You looked down on her dark pupils, faint blush, and purple hair, sometimes in a net, sometimes in a hard crown, sometimes with an arrow behind, sometimes with an audacious little cap, and never with a hair out of place. Her236
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
long high-bred neck always had the same play, you could see the turn of her form in the well-cut dress, and the point of a little foot in a shoe with a silver buckle, or an impertinently laced thick boot; you could just see which, and never never any more. I believe the designing woman always sat accordingly as she happened to be dressed. Sometimes it was high fringed sleeves and hair Marie Stuart, a little drawn back, and quilted petticoat; and then she sat up in a much higher chair, and rather leant forward. Sometimes as now, she was all black velvet, jacket and skirt, with a sealskin trimming, and leaned a little back, all long rich folds. She always looked as if she had come there out of a band-box by accident. She liked Hugh, and resembled him in some sort, in her pensive-speculative spirit ; but he dreamed like a boy of the right sort, about love and great deeds yet undone, and she like a woman grown, of duties of all sizes as they came, and of the Beyond. To her, all her world was like a great household, everybody had a claim on her. She was already rather anxious because Grace and he were to meet at the impending ball: but had agreed with Lady Hertha that it must happen some day. Accord-ingly, she soon began at him, after Sir Ralph had shaken hands kindly with him ; for he liked Hugh's manhood and boyhood alike, and was pleased becauseTHE WYNGATE BALL.
the young one stood before him to answer his first questions, and wore a little air of deference, which the old knight had scarcely expected from a crack Oxford man.
"Well, Hugh, you see I'm here chaperoning Fan ; we rather mean her at Wyngate "—this was the coming ball.
" Yes, I don't know who's to bring against her," said Hugh, rather pensively and not unmarked ; but May's vivisecting hand was too delicate to follow a tone, or touch a soft place twice, unless words invited her, and she only inquired demurely after the health of Hugh's friend Roundell, since the University Race. " Oh, he's quite fit, and he's meant too—I mean I think he really is very fond of Fan—you know Frank Roundell, Sir Ralph ? "
" Oh yes; he's bigger than you are, I think, and he's told me all about your race—repeatedly—but ar think he does it best droonk," said the old man, dropping into West-Riding to accentuate his remark.
" Well, it was a clinker all the way ; and Fan was ever so near drowned in looking on, only my tutor pulled her out."
" That accident brought Roundell to book at once," said Charles.
" It's singular, now, a tutor being of any use—it.238
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
never happ'd in mar time—but this is t' age of t' oonexpected."
" Oh! but Highcliffe is a great trump, and quite one of us; it was a great mercy he was there; none of those Cockneys knew what to do, or understood the danger. He said they pushed and hallooed as if they didn't know it was real, at first; and then when they saw what it had been, they were strongly affected too late."
" Eh, that's the way of the best of us;—but he was a lucky fellow—rather too old for her though, I suppose—happen he'll be strongly affected too late too ; like me, Mistress Cawthorne/'
May laughed, and said Highcliffe hadn't had time to be very bad. It gave Hugh a weary kind of satisfaction. Meeting Grace, for the first time, at this ball was nothing, of course, and he knew nothing of her, and there never had been anything; and yet he wished it was all over, and she married and settled ; and felt as if he would be freer then, and go abroad —somewhere after big game. Sir Ralph did not like servants in the room at luncheon, and submitted to be waited upon a little by his guest with some pleasure, and a remark that Christ Church men seemed to have gone back a good deal, and dropped into the Chaucer's style of young squire, and it was a rare good thing for old ones like him. Then they went round the pictures till dark, and dined, and hadTHE WYNGATE BALL.	239
coffee, and Fan and May sung to Sir Ralph, and went off to raise their toilette to extra ball power; and Hugh put on a new blue jacket of the York Light Horse, with blank gold rowels to his spurs, and the neatest conceivable overalls, as like the Tenth as possible. He looked in the glass ; not with his usual dreamy content, but with a faint pang, and a half-formed notion that he might have a chance with a good many he didn't care for just now. "After all" (as he met Fan all white and silver) " there wasn't anything much beyond our own sort"—and the carriage came round, with lamps blazing about among the trees; and they had a seven-mile drive toWyngate Hall, which we need only describe as a swell place, with a ballroom and conservatory big enough to hold the county, and actually containing a large proportion of its more privileged members. The first quadrille was just beginning. Fan was seized on by Roundell on the staircase, and Hugh asked May to come and face them ; and she swam about, rather preoccupied with him, and noticing that, though he was gay and attentive enough, his eyes, like Yseult's of Ireland, " across the dancers and the lights, flew ever to the door." She fancied he grew worse on hearing Sir Roper Welsh say, in passing, that the clothes were coming off Miss Rokeby in the anteroom, and that they'd brought her out fit to run for ten men's240
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lives. At last Hugh gave May the wrong hand, and she told him he was rather distrait.
" So I am ; but the room's getting quite full, and I don't think I've seen her yet, and I keep wondering where she is."
"She? Grace?"
" I don't know her well enough to call her Grace ; but I mean Miss Rokeby; there's no harm in looking, now is there, May—Mrs. Cawthorne ? " he said. " I should hardly know her out of her habit."
" Well, May for choice; and you heard Sir Roper about her form and condition. I know she's here. I declare, there she is, though ; just come in with the Wharfedales ; take me to them presently. Lady W. wants to see you, and you can't cut Grace—they both know about you."
The young great lady indulged in a good long look at Hugh, which was not so much a fashionable stare, as a plain intimation of wish to know him again. " I've heard a great deal of you, Mr. Heron, and so has Miss Rokeby here. Grace, it is quite time you should meet Mr. Heron,—at least you can't be kept from it any longer. Dear old May;—she has been behaving ever so nicely; and is so well regulated, she may almost do alone—Belle without any Dragon."
"Are you engaged all night, Miss Rokeby?" said Hugh.THE WYNGATE BALL.
" I'm just settling my card. I can give you the next waltz but one, Mr. Heron—and—yes, there's one before supper—or let me off that, and take your chance in the cotillon. Do you know I should like some very hot tea before anything else ? I was chilly in the carriage/' And Hugh led her off, with a rather embarrassed statement about not exactly knowing if he had a right to say they had met before.
" Met—why I rode right against you, didn't I ? or no, it was somebody else, but you were close by. 'So roughly we met, and so quickly we parted.' Confess—you didn't know me just now."
" How could I ?—you were gone in a moment, and I was in such a panic—are you sure about me ? We might both be wrong, you know."
" Speak for yourself. I don't think that's the way to begin, accusing me of inaccuracy, and reminding one of one's natural frailties. No ; I did try to remember you, as you deserved ; and I got on pretty well while I was black and blue, but impressions can't last for ever."
"That's not my experience so far," said Hugh mournfully; "but then I haven't lived forever yet, and can't speak with confidence. But our first meeting was very hasty, and we were all frightened to death—and your hat-"
RHUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
" How can you remember it ? Do you know I lost myself altogether till four o'clock, and the sight of that crushed old thing on the dressing-table was the first thing to make me understand something had happened. And I lay a minute or two afraid to move, and find something broken. It was so nice to stretch and feel all quite sound."
" I'm afraid you've often been at it before; but I do hope you'll never have such a crumpler again."
" Not before so many people at all events— another small lump of sugar;—but tell me, didn't something happen to you that day too ?"
"All because you had scared me so, and I rode about with my mouth open, and a loose rein."
" Gentlemen have no business with nerves. We are bad enough, I'm sure. Oh dear, here's Lord Ellerby coming to take me for the ' Mabel'—how pretty it is ! The next valse but one's yours. No. 5 —yes, Lord Ellerby; I'm very sorry, but I wanted my tea, and I haven't seen Mr. Heron for years— since he picked me up half dead—not that I saw him then."
" You are forgiven, Miss Rokeby—this time only, and with difficulty," said Lord Ellerby, a tall, dry, straw-coloured Cambridge man, with a sort of Amontillado flavour about his few words. " How do, Heron ? Bloodshed next time; please remember,THE WYNGATE BALL.
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in case I don't. Now, only do come, Grace, and don't let us lose any more."
Hugh saw Grace glide away with him, and then fly off delightfully in swift movement and sweet sound ; found some damsel he knew enacting wallflower, and carried her off best pace in pursuit ; handed her breathless to her chaperone; undery/ent remarks about his uniform from some plunger friends; and steadfastly kept Grace in sight till it was time to claim her again. It struck him that she rather beat Fan after all. Fan was Fan ; but this—and yet—he caught them standing by each other and chatting for a moment, as Grace stopped panting, and his sister came fresh out of the crowd with her mighty one. She was all glittering silk and cloudy tulle, so that she looked like a white dewy daughter of the morning. She had a collar and bracelets of fine pearls, and her golden-brown hair had the gloss of spun silk. She was fresh, and happy, and unconscious, and fled away with him—perhaps rather serrfe by his great arm—looking the Fleur-de-Lys personified. Hugh followed them with his eyes, and dropped back under the music-gallery, where some of the upper servants were looking on.
" Eigh, she is the lily," said the old keeper ; " but look, yon's Miss Rokeby—there's none like the red red rose."
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Hugh caught the instinct of the old man's admiration, not with pleasure exactly, but with a grave feeling that he might well look on her while he could-She was in glossy cream-white, with a stripe of gold lace, and the palest crimson; with a wreath and bouquet of Florence roses, and heavyish Indian gold ornaments. " She has put on some of his presents," thought poor Hugh ; " rather married-looking, perhaps ;"—but then Grace looked round—he thought it might be for him ; perhaps he wasn't far wrong—as she laid one hand on Ellerby's shoulder and took up her long tail over the other arm, before they sped off again. Her black-brown hair was gathered in smooth masses, which flashed to every light, on both sides of dark-flushed cheeks, and full-arched lips, like all the pomegranates of Lebanon ; her eyebrows and portentous lashes were updrawn like port-holes, and the eyes below shot black fire of youth and delight, and the very spirit of the Ball. Throat and shoulders, and noble stature and mould, willowy strength and lightness, all poised for a moment and no more— and she went away again—making her partner catch rhythm and time exactly, taking him twice round, and then demurely requesting to be conducted to Lady Wharfedale-—on whom Hugh soon found himself in attendance. She made him sit by her for a moment.THE WYNGATE BALL.
" Should you mind going, perhaps, as far as Damascus about a little matter for me, Mr. Heron ?" said she casually.
" Anywhere, and at once; but might I have this next dance with Miss Rokeby ?"
" Well, better not perhaps ; but I never had the heart to do a sensible thing—at least, not to make other people do them—here she is—you are not to go to Damascus now, but to keep in readiness ; and learn a little Arabic ; and not to let it prevent your getting a first. By-the-bye, that is the first thing I want you to do. Grace, don't you hope Mr. Heron will refed and distinguish himself as much as he can ? most young men are so very empty. What's that they're playing ? —' Sweethearts' ?' Why, you're not going to dance this time together? — you creatures. Grace, I declare I'd leave the room if I didn't know you could go off home instead of coming back with me. Ah dear me, what a scrape we may be getting into !" she said mentally, looking after them; " but one dance can't matter, and they must have met some time."
Grace and Hugh dwelt on their dance to the bitter end ; both were capital goers, with some gifts of ear and sense of rhythmical motion which kept them in time. She first rested her hand on his shoulder, with its bouquet of little Florence roses,246
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
white pinks, and sweet verbena in it, so that the flower-scent was always in their faces, and they seemed to fly on with fresh perfume, winged with rapturous music : they hardly spoke, but swept on and on as if they floated on an inward delight and the thrill of fluttering strings. It came to an end, like everything else, and she said she declared dancing was almost as nice as hunting. It appeared she had allowed herself a rest for the next dance; and he got her an ice, and they talked about their horses, and Charles Cawthorne's painting, and his atelier, and how he had grown to be a regular maitre d'ecole, and helped poor students—and of May and all her doings, how they said at Rothercliffe she could return a member if she liked; and the University boat-race, and Fan's accident, and Fan was getting so grave and elderly in her ways, and always kept on the road if one went out riding; and was always in the kitchen or the laundry, or doing sums, and what a rector's wife she would have been if she'd only taken to Mr. Highcliffe; and it might not be so bad to wait for a year, and have some fun before they began to keep house regularly at Balderstone— with anybody but Fan the double household might not answer—and would it be a whole year before Charles took his degree ? Grace was afraid he ought to be reading at that moment His only books wereTHE WYNGATE BALL.
what ? and what was all they taught him ? Upon her word she thought it seemed to be quite the case. But he might improve if he went back to school soon and worked very hard. Not tease ? she never got anybody to tease in a general way. Papa wouldn't have it, you know, and Miles never seemed to see things, and only pinched one's ears as if one was a Daxhund. She oughtn't to begin so soon ? Why it only showed how they were getting on. Was he tired with that long ride from Otter-scope, or did she seem dull after his studies, and all they taught him ?—she wasn't sure he ever read anything. Did he know anything of Miss Rossetti's ? He rather thought he did. He had better say a piece of her directly. Hugh leaned back on an ottoman, rather behind her ear, and began about the too-long-waiting Princess. It was irrelevant and very charming; and he was excited, and his heart was idly stirred, so that he slid on, from stanza to stanza, half surprised at his own memory, and caring more for the lovely verse, as the fringed eyes before him changed from careless brightness into sweet remembrance of its rhythm and words ; and then into amused recognition of his own merits. Upon Grace's word it was very nice to hear anybody who knew verse Jike that, and could say it as he did. No, he needn't go on ; it was so hard on the poor Princess. She ought24B
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
to have had a papa and two horses at least. And have read Ruskin and done landscape. Well, she wouldn't have lain down and died if she'd been able to copy Turner. Lying down was very easy, but she didn't see her way to dying ; it didn't come on as a matter of course as soon as one was in the horizontal position. Not the first time or two. What a feeble remark, as she heard they said in Oxford. Did she expect Hugh to be eloquent on the subject of her decease ? Well, he might have to defend her when she was gone; people might say she had sat a long time chatting the most intense and hideous nonsense to him when she might have been—Saying it to somebody else ? No, she should have tried to rise to the level of anybody else's intellect. There now, he had made her quite uncivil. Not a bit; he liked it ever so. How very impertinent of him; he ought to care very much. He only wished she'd go on always so. No, it was his turn. And then another partner bore her off, and Hugh was commanded to take the Honourable Clara Ellerby in to supper; and he attended to her with all his might and not much of his mind, as his manner was. She was a plump, dark-eyed little girl, with black Josephine curls on a rather square forehead, which, with her eyes and firm-arched red lips, gave her considerable quickness of expression. She had some natural humour and vivacity, had read all Miss Yonge'sTHE WYNGATE BALL.
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novels and one or two of Ouida's, and was rather, by way of combining the information thus obtained, like Chinese metaphysics. Hugh was rather silent, but he got her into a comfortable place, and procured her the wing of a chicken—rejecting legs—also a glass of champagne. " Thy need is greater than mine," he said, after Sir Philip Sidney, "but I'm very thirsty too."
"Do go away and have something; but if you will dance so hard and talk so fast to Miss Rokeby, of course I can't expect you to say anything to me. You've done your duty, you know."
" Not yet to you ; but I'm always bothered in a crowd. I'm sure if I was a horse I should kick."
" What would you do in a long gown, with people on your tail ? "
" I suppose that acts like a kicking-strap. But you haven't suffered, have you ?"
" No, except that I'm short, and they always make my things long, to give me height, they say, and it doesn't answer."
" Short and-"
" Nonsense."
" 'Tisn't."
" 'Tis."
" 'Tisn't."
" 'Tis. You oughtn't to behave so to me."250
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" Well, I suppose I'm wrong, but I'm only a young Hoxford gent, you know."
"Well, but Fred said you were so nice, and such good company."
"Give me another chance—you've no tongue—to eat, I mean ;" and Hugh made a dart at the necessary comestible, and also obtained a deep pull at a passing claret-cup, so that the young lady earnestly hoped he was better now.
" Yes, I've been thirsty ever since the University Race—they trained us too hard."
" You do look rather strong and brawny; but you're good to me so far."
" I assure you a child might play with me at this moment."
"A child ! I'd have you to know I'm eighteen at least"
" How can you ? But do you know you will be rather dangerous in conversation in a year or two ?"
" So they all say; but unless one really is in a long interesting talk, one is quite apt to snap—and you're rather that way too—but where have you been the last three weeks, and where are you staying ?"
" Rode over from Otterscope this morning with Charley Cawthorne, to Shoreswood."
" Will he do any sketches there ? Such a beautiful old place."THE WYNGATE BALL.
25i
" I think May and he stay a week; but I must go back to Oxford to-morrow—somehow I feel to belong there now."
"Ah, it must be nice being a man, and reading and rowing, and hearing and talking about everything."
" I don't know, we all say what the newspapers say—except our horse and dog talks, or about the boats, and University shop, you know. Here's some jelly with grapes in it—capital to waltz upon—they always let us have jelly before a race."
" What luxurious creatures ! We don't have it at home, unless there's a party."
" Don't you now ? I don't think my mother does, or Mrs. Cawthorne—they say they can't have nice things every day—it's very good of you all—of course I don't mean to be luxurious, but one eats everything right away as it comes—try the least little more champagne—' Es tont, es ruft das Saiten-klang! Hark, are you ready ? we're to have the next dance together." And he led his willing partner back to a thinner hall, and they went off together, to one of those English song-tunes of a hundred years ago, which a learned age may despise and ignore, and call jingles, as much as it likes; but will never, never reproduce. " Has she then failed in her truth, the beautiful maid I adore ?" Little Clara just252
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touched the first soft cry of the plaintive notes, with the voice of a bird before the dawn, as she flitted away, borne on Hugh's right arm, with her raven head against his shoulder. They had their dance, and he took her back to old Lady Ellerby, who shook her fan at them, and told Clara Fred wouldn't have it, her going on so with Mr. Heron ; and poor Hugh was introduced to Frederick Reresby, Esq., a tall, hard-looking, good-natured young man, who told Clara here he was, and had caught her at it—and Lady Ellerby again poked Hugh on the cheek with her priceless old Watteau fan, and said she was too old to waltz with him ; and he said she was the only person in the world who could say so, he was sure—and she made room for him, and talked about his mother, and Fan's match. Somehow he felt rather out of it all, and Oxford seemed more to him, and yet he wished he had done with it.
But the night waxed late, and the cotillon was impending; it was a brilliant scene of playing colour, flushed cheeks, and eyes at their brightest, as Lady Constance Lister, of Wharfedale, sat down for one minute, accepted her second or third suitor, rose, with a sharp sudden flourish, and waltzed away with him into the crowd. Then came Fan, almost the bride; and Roundell bore her away, and one or two more; and at last Grace sat down with the hand-mirror,THE WYNGATE BALL.
2S3
and Hugh thought her bosom heaved a little ; and her long double eyelashes and eyes were like fringes of cloud and sparks of lightning. Ellerby passed behind her, and was let pass; and two more men; and Hugh took his turn—she put the glass down and rose, and their eyes just met. The silver cornets gave a sharp fanfare, and, as they stepped on the open floor, and he put his arm round her, viola, violin, and all the rest, played, as soft and regular as strings could thrill or flute could breathe, that air from the " Carnival de Venise," which, best of all music, expresses the aroma of young love, as yet passionless and painless—the simple delight of two who as yet only find each other most fair. Perhaps it was that momentary sweetness that made a pause; but they had gone half round the hall by themselves before pair after pair came flying after them all at once—and the Wharfedales cut in like Darby and Joan; and Charles Cawthorne seized May in his arms as if he'd never done it before; and everybody found a partner; and the music broke out fortissimo —and how long that waltz went on never was quite ascertained ; but it took an unconscionable time.
The chronicler has little to tell about breakfast next day. It is better to merge it in luncheon ; and254
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
a tolerably large party met at that meal in the Shoreswood dining-room about two o'clock ; among whom " we observed" Lady Wharfedale. She had brought Grace back to her friends, with careful stipulation that there should be no questions asked, if returned in safety. She talked over the ball in various points of view, and at last asked a question which seemed to have struck others.
" Who was that pretty creature with the Shores-wood servants, who seemed to look a good deal at you, May ? Did you notice such a person ? "
" Well, I remember her, I think ; but I shan't commit myself till I've heard some other guess," said May quietly. " My maid told me she thought she had seen that clever dressmaker before. She complained of neuralgia or something when I saw her, and had her face bandaged ; but the interest of my new gown after Holbein seemed to bring her round. It was odd too," said May, " but I saw some of her hair, and it made me think of your's, Fan."
"Why, of course," said Hugh; "but it's no use talking to Fan, she wasn't at home then."
" So you remember too ?"
"Mystery is not manners," said Fan, executing point-lace sententiously. " I ought to be let into it now, May."
" Well, it's the person Maulger found in the snow,THE WYNGATE BALL.
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that's all—quite young and fresh, and the accomplished milliner; but she's been here at Wyngate a fortnight. Of course she'll carry away some news about you and Frank."
" She had heard some inaccurate news about Fan before," said Charles Cawthorne.
" I wish the servants wouldn't talk about one so," quoth Fan. " One's quite afraid to eat one's dinner, or have any fun, or—anything-"
" You want something to keep you straight, my dear," said Lady Wharfedale, " till you're married ; but there's nothing very unusual, that I see, in a dressmaker going about Craven, if she's ever so nice in style and manners. Why didn't you tell me before ? I was rather in love with her."
" None of us know any harm of her, I'm sure."
"Well," said May, "it's odd—but my maid remembered that she seemed curious about Grace, and about her engagement to Colonel Ingelram."
" Didn't you say she asked about him before ?" said Lady Wharfedale.
They told the story of Maulger's snow-scene, and she listened rather gravely at first, as it seemed; but soon went off into talk about gowns, which ended in her securing the services of the slightly mysterious lady they had discussed. She was perfectly simple and quiet when investigated—gave her name at once256
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
as Alice Normanton, of High Street, Hopton, and said she had a little business there, but liked travelling about and managing ladies' wardrobes very-much. It was such an advantage, not only to see dresses, but to see them worn in public, she said ; and, in short, she exchanged and bought old things sometimes. At all events, she agreed to visit Ravensgill Towers for part of the summer.
The party broke up next day, and Hugh went back to Oxford. Grace rather wondered, at the time, why Lady Wharfedale and May should both have kissed her so very tenderly, almost sadly, at parting. It was something to have two such people so fond of her, and she was quite happy. There was no harm done, or thought of; but, for all that, she and Hugh had felt the heave of a coming gale, and the forecast of a passionate future. She forgot him with all her might, and with considerable success; she knew that if English young ladies expect men to be in love with them, in the present age, they are like England herself, when she expects everybody to do his duty—that is to say, liable to disenchantment. But she had another anxiety, in which, to do her justice, she forgot herself very promptly. Her father's gout was a good deal worse, and he looked oldened and worn; nor is there anything like hard duty to check meditation on agreeable partners.THE WYNGATE BALL.	257
A man's third summer term used to be in our time quite the ripe summer of his youth, if he hadn't been plucked. Hugh had not suffered such a reverse; but he was a classman in the next Degree Schools; with a heavy weight of work, at least for a fox-hunting intellect, to bear. He had read all his books, it was true, and had a fair knowledge of the text of his quantum of Plato and Aristotle; that had been Broadbeans's care, and Highcliffe had declared his history "good, simply." But he could not write Latin or Greek, prose or verse, and critical scholarship he hated. So that he had few backers even with his own tutors. Now and then, there was no denying it, he said or wrote original things ; but that was more likely to make him pass for an idle genius with the examiners; and two out of the four were hard-bitten, laborious men, risen not without much sheer labour, and very unlikely to show indulgence to the frailties of athletes or aristocrats. Poor Hugh had an unmistakable odour of both these classes about him, and, however good he might be in science and history, there was fear of his losing first-class honours in the rest of his subjects.
sCHAPTER XIII.
race and class.
Arthur Highcliffe sat uncomfortably at his window, over St. Homonovus's Lane, with a cold egg and a half-eaten chop by his side, looking into the paved street below. He had got on considerably in the world of literature, and had lately taken possession of the historical work of a large Review. Accordingly he had just finished a rather merciless critique, by dint of sitting up half the night. With his hard constitution he cared little enough for sleep ; but he had made a considerable effort, and was in a state of reaction; and he felt bilious, from having lost his temper over his victim. He had got up after about five hours in bed, trusting to a cold tub and a short walk for bodily stimulus. Ch. Ch. Meadow had been delightful, but he hadn't, as he said, felt to take it in pleasantly; and the reason lay on the table before him, in the result of last night's labour. HeRACE AND CLASS.
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began to look it over before breakfast—which you should never do. It was on Cloudesley's last volume. Highcliffe hated him and all his works, and had expressed himself as men are too apt to do, when their enemy writes a book which isn't a bad one.
" Hip and thigh. I've done it this time, anyhow," quoth he to himself as he read. Then, it struck him, one or two sentences were too angry; wasn't it better without them ?—very savage altogether; oughtn't he to be more contemptuous ? Mrs. Cawthorne hated bitter articles, and wouldn't read them—well, come, he didn't want her to read this. He wasn't an angel, nor Cloudesley either, and if that individual was wrong, he'd a right to say so in his own language, if he signed his name. To be sure, signing one's name is mere outrecuidance when you've cut a man to pieces. Now there's no fighting, was it dignified or philosophical to hate Cloudesley as he supposed he did ? Pooh, it was all fair war. Both the houses of Heron and Cawthorne met their political enemies, and hit their hardest—to be sure they did it on hustings, or viva voce for the most part. Perhaps that was why, after all, they weren't bad friends when they had had it out. But it was fair ; Cloudesley had his review to fight in, and could take his own part well enough ; still those savage bits were—pooh, he couldn't give them up, they tickled him. But some
s 2HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
saying of May's or Lady Hertha's, about feminine malice being quite confined to gentlemen in reviews, came back to him ; and he rather wished they were with him to regulate his invectives.
And that other long slight creature, with that unspeakable interest about her—eyes, hair, figure, what was it, from head to foot ? So Frank Roundell was to have her, of course. She was to be his sister Fan, Lady Hertha had said—he had never had one, and at the time the words were sweetness itself; and the thought still made him blush, that both of them had kissed him. He believed he'd been in a fever ever since. Had he really saved that girl ?—if it had been a year before, might he have thought of her, had a hope of her ?—what a strange pang of delight, and longing, and utter loss, as if the joy of half a lifetime and the regrets of the other half had all passed over him together, like a sad sweet atmosphere. By-the-bye, how much Heron was changing—quite a man—and there was no living without him now. It wasn't only that he talked about Fan—" does it on purpose, young varmint knows what I like—but he's graver himself now, ever since vacation ; too distrait for reading as he ought to, just before the schools. In love too, I wonder ? Fancy that gold-spooned lad caring for anything but himself —does admire people, anyhow—including me ? No,RACE AND CLASS.
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knows me at home now." And he leaned his elbow on the window-sill and looked idly over his mignonette into St. Homonovus's Lane.
It was a hot sweet morning, late in an early-May. Soft airs, suggestive of " whitening hedgerows, and uncrumpling fern, and bluebells trembling by the forest-ways, and scents of hay new-mown," come over from the meadow. Three cads were leaning against St. Kappa Kakista's wall, one with a terrier, interested in a bag of rats. A hansom swung round the corner, with hideous concussion on those round stones, which Oxford has long been wont to compare to her favourite refection of devilled kidneys. Two jackdaws came down before the President's door at St. Kappa's, and fought several well-contested rounds, till the terrier got through the gate, when they flew up into the Ch. Ch. ivy, and the well-trained animal sat up on his hind-legs at them, apparently requesting them to come down again to him. A tray of some kind of refreshment came round the corner and was let into Canterbury Gate, and Dr. Dagon's head, very like that of a sixth-century Byzantine Saint in a mosaic, protruded a moment from his lattice high in St. Homonovus's. He was lamenting the vices of the University in a pamphlet, and Ch. Ch. breakfasts were one of his strong points. Several dogs accompanied the good262
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
things, of course, but were categorically refused admission inside Canterbury. A long powerful young chestnut colt was led round the corner of Bull Lane, in a twisted snaffle and martingale, and began to pace up and down in the sun. Two or three men, intent on breakfast, dived under the arch into St. Homonovus's ; then a clothes' cleaner, with an armful of white trousers and blue ties ; also scouts several and boys many. At last Hugh Heron came out of Ch. Ch. gate, in a suit of Fannich Forest check, a stalking-hat of the same, knickerbockers, and the best-fitted leather leggings ever made by man. He skipped through the hole in the wicket, and the colt pulled at his bridle, and whinnied, and walked up to him, putting down his nose and pretending to make a little snatch at him—plainly saying, " You've kept me ten minutes—now get up and come away"—the hot morning made little difference to their fresh youth. Three years in Oxford had made Hugh a young man very mighty for his age and weight. He was still as gaunt as a greyhound, but his thighs were fuller, though hollowed like a regular horseman's. His chest seemed deeper and broader, and it was clear he would hardly see the light side of twelve stone again. He was darker red and swarthier white;, but a rather worn look about the eyes, and a little unconscious air of absence, told the tale of a certain.RACE AND CLASS.
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amount of reading ; and his forehead looked fair, and showed a line or two. He took in the front of St. Homonovus's at a glance, and swung into his saddle with a thump, which made his mercurial young one plunge violently. Highcliffe envied that quick supple effortless self-incorporation with the horse, as one always envies a thorough horseman well mounted. He began to answer Hugh's good-morning with a lecture.
" Well, you're about the loungingest Classman I ever did see ; and your hat's enough to get you rusticated, or would have been in better days."
" Let not ambition mock my useful tile," quoted Hugh, tossed up and down by the colt's goings on. He reared, jumped right into the air, landed trembling, was patted on the neck, and told to do it again, with which he complied. Hugh looked up to his mentor and asked if he considered that sort of thing a listless, or prostrate, or abject condition of body or mind ?
" I don't want you to break your confounded neck. Leave that to the laws of your country, all in good time. You're in the Schools in a fortnight, and Broadbeans and I have done all we can for you, and you don't seem to care about it more than that colt."
" I'll be back in sixty-six minutes, and never leave work till 4.3" (the odd minutes he knew would264
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irritate his tutor a little more). " Quiet, Clinker, old man. Symonds has got some hurdles and things for him to practise;" and he let the colt have three or four bounds forward, and steadied him to a trot up the lane, which was luckily clear of obstacles.
"Treats his coach like his horses, all between cheek and coaxing," said Highcliffe to himself. " That's one of our curled darlings, or curled dragoons—but there's no disregarding those womenfolk of his—maid, wife, and widow, I believe they'd settle Europe. Let's have a look at his last papers. H'm, h'm; 'Beans marks his history, A 1; philosophy much the same, fair at least—shocking bad bit of Latin. This won't do—what a nuisance it is, these lads' brains can't hold three things at a time, as a baby can't hold three oranges. False concord, by Jove!—and here I'm correcting bad grammar like an usher—they'd make me do anything. Fancy a quiet life with one of them—might be nice, but one would lose oneself; no independence—want her into everything, articles and all. Curious, too; Hugh's all unsettled in his way—thinking of that galloping beauty of his, I suppose—are we both by way of being—in love, or what is it ? "
It was not altogether that with either, perhaps, though both may have been mildly affected. Both began to feel old. The generations of Oxford menRACE AND CLASS.
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flit past—of men, so called as a distinction from the changeless authorities (it is written that men may-come and men may go, but Dons go on for ever). Even Hugh felt how many of his set had departed, and 'Cliffe, after ten or twelve years' residence, said he walked about Oxford with the feelings of the gentleman in the stilly night.
New studies, too, were producing new students. Earnest and flabby young men in spectacles came up, professing biology and nothing else; and of course they experienced severe troubles in Little-go. They were good fellows enough, knowing their work and sticking to it; they fainted under the smells themselves had made in the museum laboratories ; they were dragged forth swooning from demonstrations, and restored by aspersion, under the powerful and ever-ready jet of HaO, which the benevolence of Professor Avon provided for his weaker disciples ; now and then they blew themselves and friends up with new discoveries ; and they looked forward to vacations of unlimited vivisection in Rome and Paris. When they get possession of the medical profession, I hope we may all die of regular, well-understood old complaints, possessing no features of interest—for we shall certainly get taken the rough way round in the cause of Science, if we venture on novel symptoms in our Dread Progress. Considerable advantages266
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
in those days will attach to being hanged, as then one will only be cut up dead, and not alive. The ways of ascetics are sometimes drastic as to their sick ; but they only let their brother sink—which is nothing to the departure under scientific experiment which may be reserved for some of us. Then there were new young gentlemen in the French style, who talked of Hellenism and adopted Walt Whitman, whose views, they said, would go with any form of creed. Hugh observed he thought they would go better without any, and couldn't quite adopt them ; he wondered what made all the most effeminate men in Oxford go on about Greek gymnastic and manly beauty. He belonged to all manner of clubs, and commanded in the college boat-club ; but rather complained of having to manage a crew when he wanted to read. However, back he came within the hour, with rein on neck of the now quiet colt, whose red-chestnut hide was now literally purple in the shades and scarlet in the lights, between sweat and grooming. He stepped with an air of dainty fatigue, like an over-waltzed coquette, and went off with his groom, while his master ran up to Highcliffe's ; where a sharp admonition awaited him.
" I say, Hugh, here's a regular false concord in your Latin. Are you going off your head, or what ?RACE AND CLASS.
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Your only point used to be knowing what you did know, and look here. You never can be safe with the life you lead. I know you're moral and a pattern of the domestic virtues, but will that prevent your dropping into a third, if you're so careless ?"
"Oh, I say!" said Hugh, finding he had put Cupido feminine, or libido masculine (or vice versa, or whichever is the wrongest way), or had committed some other solecism bad enough to condemn him eternally to academical perdition. " I didn't mean that."
" Mean it—no, but it'll do for you ; just like all the best lads I've ever had out of that House of yours —I'll call it House now you're a college by Act of Parliament. You're all spoilt with money, and luxury, and fun ; you don't over-eat and drink yourselves now, but you're distracted ; you never read to put your whole life into it, and that's what you must do, if you're to win here under the new high-pressure. You're hard and sharp enough, if you weren't always thinking about that colt. If your heart was in your work, you'd be careful and absorbed in it, and not all etourdi about your genders. I tell you, Heron, I'm afraid for you now."
" Well, I thought Broadbeans was satisfied—pretty well."
" Here's his note : ' Dear H.,—He's much as I268
HUGH HERON, Ch. Cm.
thought always—good enough for a First and bad enough to be gulfed.—Yours, B.' "
" Well," said Hugh quietly, " I'll do a short bit every day."
" Yes, but what waste of work and good brains and attention just at the wrong time ; and you're the only man I've got in the school who's a chance of a First; and here I've almost ratted, between Lady Hertha and Mrs. Cawthorne, who'd come over a republican saint—all through you—and now you'll be beaten by a lot of competition-wallahs, and make me still more disgusted with my own side. Are you nobody, that every cocktail is to pass you on the road to honour ? or isn't it honour enough to be named one of the half-dozen best men of your time ? "
Hugh said nothing, but gathered up his papers and went back to work till three o'clock dinner, with no interlude but a biscuit and a glass of sherry. Then he read again till it was time to go down to the river, for the last race but one. He was No. 6 in the Ch. Ch. boat now, and could not be spared at the crisis they were in. The rest of the crew knew how things were, and had everything ready for him. His soft easy humour had changed, under bodily training and mental cramming, into a rather sharp word of command, or silent enforcement of discipline. Consequently he had very good and staying supporters. He lookedRACE AND CLASS.
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at oars, thwarts, slides, stretchers, and rowlocks, and saw every man comfortable in his place, hardly-speaking ; then he got into his own, with this address to his rather light crew :
" Now, small boys, we've got to do it this time-Brown can't stand any more bustling, and his heart will break, if we grind well at him to-night. Let's have no saving for Saunders's bridge, but go it all the way. Cracker from end to end ! "
The long victorious crew of St. Childe's of Hale were now at the head of the river, and Ch. Ch. second, both of the highest stamp of College boats. Most of the men in each had appeared in public, either at Henley or in Town ; and it was known that Brown of St. Hale's, though one of the best men in Oxford for a short distance, had increasingly severe palpitation of the heart; so that in order to choke him, the Ch. Ch. boat had "ground" previously at St. Hale for six nights in succession; always gaining, thrice overlapping, never making their bump. They dropped down to stations once more, to have it out again; the crews were dogged and sulky with each other, and hardly spoke in passing, except that Hugh and Bob Netherside, the rival stroke, whose indomitable pluck and mechanical steadiness of form had saved his crew so often—mutually greeted each other as Old Cock and Young Shaver.270
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I hardly suppose anybody will have got thus far into this book, who has not in his time known what it is to wait for the last gun. It makes your heart beat, whether you are going to row or not, and however often you may have rowed. This was a still evening, and there was no difficulty in getting the boats out straight, in the last minute but one—but the last sixty seconds are worse than the same time ■of hard rowing.
The Ch. Ch. coxswain took his lines up short, on the starboard side in particular.
" Start by Blackall's word," he said, " then eyes in the boat."
Blackall was an old oar on the bank, counting the seconds and watching for the smoke from the touch-hole of the starting-gun, which he could just see. Forty seconds, forty-five. " Touch her, bow and two," says the coxswain, and they lift the long boat into gliding movement; she slowly draws out her length of rope—fifty—fifty-five. "Get forward all"—fifty-nine —"Off!"—the rest must be in rather local language.
With the first smoke, and before the bang of the starting-gun, St. Hale's and Ch. Ch. shot off together, with an equally good start, and comparative disregard of the other crews. There was no sparing, both "went" vigorously for the start; and Ch. Ch. did not begin to gain for four hundred yards or so, when bothRACE AND CLASS.
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had settled to even hammer and tongs. St. Hale's was steered rather too close to the Berkshire shore, below the Gut, which error involves a strong use of the rudder, and consequent delay, at or before the upper corner; besides which the two sides of the boat have to row against each other in rounding the latter. Running up, almost without the rudder, Ch. Ch. had gained almost a length at the corner, and came round in better time. Hammer and tongs ; there is an increasing row on the bank; but St. Hale's pull together again as true as a set of teeth. Netherside sits up and slashes away even and undaunted, and no man behind him flinches. The length between the boats is maintained all up the Oxfordshire shore, but it diminishes foot by foot at the cross-over. Ch. Ch. is rowing a slower stroke too ; and at Saunders's Bridge there is one mournful toot of a barbarous horn, and they quicken, even and steady, and begin to close fast. The other crew wish they were home, and stick to it as they may. Netherside dare not quicken any more—he can't take the whole boat on his arms. Ch. Ch. is coming up outside, but his coxswain rightly runs for the Cherwell stream, and the craft flies under their iron hands. There is six feet between them yet; but every stroke tells now, for Brown of St. Hale's lips are blue and his face sharp, and the pace is too much for272
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
him. What a lift the Ch. Ch. men give! they lap their rivals for the first time, three lengths from home. The shouts on the bank madden into hoarse yells and screams, and Ch. Ch. runs right over the hostile stern on the very post. For No. 6. has doubled- up forwards in a dead faint; and the boat would have turned over with him, if it had not been for the weight of the victorious bows on the other side.
There was a silence, almost a stillness, till the flags were lowered, and the Secretary had laid his hand on the top flag. Then a cheer went up, by which belated cricketers on the Cowley road knew there was a bump. Hugh was halfway to his rooms before it had subsided. All he said was, "Well, we've been and done it;" all Netherside said was, " Well, this is a go;" but the general excitement about the headship of the river lasted all that term and the next.
Doctors seem to differ as to how much has been gained by the various Oxford changes since the old days of two examinations. I think myself it was a great pity to spoil such idleness as was then enjoyed ; but at all events a good deal more work has been got out of the passmen ; and a number of happy wretches who wouldn't work have been got out of the place.RACE AND CLASS.
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or kept out of it. And I am not prepared to deny-that that was desirable. Idleness has been manfully interfered with, and I fear it was full time. Those who try to do themselves credit are now taken round wider circles of cram; they must not be caught in conspicuous ignorance of their texts, and they look over countless books about books; so that they really know more than their predecessors did at the time of
final examination, though they have hardly preserved
*
the strict tradition of what " knowing " a book really means. But they have what they and their fathers have asked for, the regular sophistic training. They learn to write and to speak and to get on, and to despise all learning except the rhetorical love of getting on. Our Hellenism is nearly perfect, as far as education goes. Athens never produced a larger crop of that eminently useful creature, the athlete ; nor since the days of her Sophists was it ever taught more faithfully that man is the measure of all things, and the—let us say refined and cultured—appetites are the measure of man.
Hugh was going into the Schools, for the first day's class-work in Liter a Humaniores, and, like most men under the circumstances, felt very strange and unhappy. He had a quiet breakfast at Dayrell's, with two other Ch. Ch. men who were going in for what they could get, and looked up to him as a
T274
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possible First, if any such thing could come out of Tom Gate or Canterbury. It struck him as rather odd and unnatural, in walking up Homonovus Lane, that everything should be going on just as usual. Breakfast-tins, dogs, and walking-sticks for sale ; new trousers, cads, hansoms—nothing in the shop-windows which seemed to bear on his anxious condition. Ford, the horse-breaker, met him, looked at him with his hard fearless face, and took off his hat, instead of touching it, as usual, in return to Hugh's nod and " Good morning." The white tie impressed him, it seemed ; at all events he said nothing. There was a group of pale men, also white-tied, by St. Mary's, and a crowd in Schools' quadrangle. Some pressed close to the door of the Writing School, some seemed "loath to depart" from the conversation of their friends, and chatted eagerly in the open. There were five minutes to spare, and Hugh revolved Dayrell's last advice: " Don't lose time; look through the paper, and the first thing you see you can do, do it at once. One idea always leads to another. Nothing like a good re-echoing memory." So he opened his Logic paper, ran his eye down it, and found he knew Question 7, and wrote it out. As he went, he lit on a good beginning for No. 6; then he saw his way to 2 and 1. And, in short, he wrote his sheet of foolscap full of sense, and had it torn out of his still scribivorousRACE AND CLASS.
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fingers by the collecting examiner. Then he went home to lunch, with his intellect, as he complained, all up in kinks like a bad salmon-line, and drank a quantity of ale ; and subsequently wrote a bad piece of Latin. Highcliffe would see the copy, and glared at him, and said nothing. But the Science paper next day was well suited to mother-wit, good knowledge of text-books, and the acute casuistry of natural honour; and Hugh, so to speak, floored it. He wouldn't try to write Greek prose, but rode out instead ; and the rest of his time in the schools he spent in hard work at history and translations—both of which he did well enough—with some English verse after Pindar and Aristophanes in the Taste paper, which did him no harm. He was a little hipped at the end, and could hardly face the gloomy Highcliffe, but met him on the Sunday, walking with Nightrick, the senior examiner. His tutor kicked his shins, and said to his companion, in choice Oxfordshire, " Pity this 'n's a swell, Nightrick, us might have made suthin' on 'im !" to which the other, a hard Devonshire man, answered casually, " Ain't done with mun yet."
Then came viva voce, and Hugh thought what a number of men came to see him floored—out-college fellows too, whom he didn't know. They seemed to ask him contemptuously easy questions from his books—at least he answered everything—and once
t 22j6
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
Nightrick said to the Rev. Calippus Forceps, who was worrying him through Thucyd. VI., and rather enjoying the accuracy of his own memory for that intricate bit of history—" He knows all that, you know." Then he took Hugh's Plato up himself, always stopping when his victim answered fluently, and saying, " Yes, quite right; very well. But let's try something else." In short, he ran all through three or four dialogues, and found much that Hugh did not know, but also a good deal that he did. At last he glanced at the other weary-eyed examiners, and said, " Well, Mr. Heron, you've done one side of your mind justice, at all events. That will do." And Hugh withdrew, as usual, to meet Mayflower by St. Mary's, and have a gallop on Bullingdon.
Heron, as the student of English literature will be at no loss in observing, begins with an H, and that letter is pretty far down the first half of the alphabet. But as classmen are generally taken all through it, according to their initials, without division, several days were left on Hugh's hands between his viva voce examination and the issue of the Class list which was to determine, or rather declare, his fate. He sent his testamur to town, however, where Lady Hertha and May Cawthorne had taken a house between them for the season, in Onslow Square. They also shared a brougham—a rather quiet, retouched old vehicle,RACE AND CLASS.
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which had travelled in its time; but the horses were bad to beat, and not too easy to match: a pair of fifteen-two browns, young Otterscope hunters; learning good manners in London Society, it is to be hoped ; you couldn't tell one from the other. The two ladies, with Fan, and May's small boy and girl, were encamped in the house for the season, living a good deal on their own produce, animal and vegetable. Yorkshire mutton, rabbits and pigeons, with all things green and nice, from spring onions (which the ladies sometimes consumed, in confidence, when they weren't going out) to early peas and strawberries, poured in steadily from Otterscope and the Scaurs. There was to be an expedition to Oxford, for Commemoration ; but meanwhile Hugh would not come up to Town. He said he would neither discharge any duty nor endure any pleasure for at least three weeks after Degree ; and sent a note to the Censor, requesting to be allowed to take to his bed, " till further notice." However, after sleeping the clock round twice, he said he thought it was idler and better, on the whole, to get up ; because when one's asleep one doesn't know one's got nothing to do.
On the class-list day he rode over to the Hey-throp kennels in the morning, with Roundell. He had hardly seen Oxfordshire in summer before, and found it much prettier than in the grays and278
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browns of the hunting season. He was much interested in growing crops, and fences all thick with roses, where he had crashed through briar and thorn. Oxfordshire never looks like English country-near Oxford. The friends had a great luncheon, and talked of home and grouse; and Roundell went on about Fan, and Hugh, who was very fond of her for a brother, still wondered at his finding so much to say on the subject, and led the talk to Shoreswood when he could. Ingelram was by way of coming home that autumn, to take possession of Malham Priors —and of Grace, Hugh couldn't help thinking. " It's rather a pity," he thought—" if I'm not in love with her, I fancy I could be, and I do think old Sir Ralph fancied me too. I wish I hadn't picked her up ; we might as well both have broken our necks—suppose it wouldn't have suited the parents though. Leave your father and mother and take to your wife—all right when one's got one—but don't see the way to killing myself because I can't get one just yet. (If she be not fair for me,' but then—what eyes she had when she got up with the hand-mirror—didn't she look rather fair for me ? fair—' as the first that fell of womankind ' "—and Hugh dreamed on in a succession of quotations incident to that well-worn monosyllable " fair," till Mayflower picked up a stone, and he had to jump down. He forgot all about his Class tillRACE AND CLASS.
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Tom Gate, when Broadbeans came up, and told him he had got a Second.
"Are you disappointed, B. ?" he said, looking at his coach's grave watchful face.
" For the time, sairly," said the other, at once, in his Doric. " Ye must mak' sure for Law and History, there no Latin writin' there. They'll be glad enough at home ; and, ^wzfound it, ye were as near as a graze/'
" Well, but what does Highclifife say ? I'm rather afraid of him," said Hugh. "He'll be sorry, you know—I'd rather he was angry, or said anything, than that"
" Well, ar just saw him, and said I'd tell ye about History; an' ar fired oop at that, and said ar'd forgive ye clean if ye won there. We're all for your taking a rest now—an' put on your gown—an' go an' see Rome, and Florence, and Venice, an' take books with ye. O lad, what luck ye have, with all that's good, and brains eno', and all the best folks in the world beggin' ye to get the best of it. I don't say ye mightn't do better if ye would; but it's good to be so cared for, whether ye win or lose."
Hugh did not in fact care much about the thing himself; but he was rather struck by 'Beans's apostrophe. He understood—and it is often rather from shyness than dulness, or mere selfishness, that28o
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
young people fail to understand—that others really-loved him—and the beauty of that lot, while one has it, easily affected him. He wanted, in his heart, to kiss old 'Beans ; but it couldn't be done under Tom Gate on Mayflower, or indeed dismounted, or anywhere else at all. So he said, "What a dear—old —trump—he was," in a husky voice; which did quite as well.
There was a Bump supper that night, which was, to say the least of it, distinctly audible. But Dayrell and Combermere went, and stayed a good while—and hardly anybody got drunk, and there was no row afterwards ; so all was well that ended well: and so ended Term.
" Well, mamma, there's no harm don^, you know ; I've never spoken to her except once," said Hugh resignedly. u But I wish young ladies engaged from the cradle could be ticketed Sold, when they're pretty —to prevent mistakes."
"Would you ride over their bodies when they come to grief, then ? " asked Fan.
" No, but one could pick them up without— burning one's fingers. "
" You're a dear good boy," said his mother; "but how can I help it, or help you ? Sir Ralph has set his mind on it, and thinks it's a matter of honour ;J?ACE AND CLASS.
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and Colonel Ingelram's coming home—what can they do ? It vexes me that he seems to take it rather
coolly. He may be a very good officer, but-"
" Yes, that doesn't mend matters to me. But I wonder what Grace thinks ? "
" She'd do anything her father wished, I think, if he was well, and now he's poorly she's sure to ; but I wonder if he's said anything to her, or how things really are. He never said a word to me about it, or to May."
" Well," said Hugh, " I must do something this Long, and I've put off all plans. What have you settled, mamma ? There never was such a son to do anything you really like, from pitch-and-toss to manslaughter."
"Well, you're very good, I'm sure, but neither are in my list just now. There's some reading till August—then our Twelfth party—then you're going to stalk deer with Lanercost. How fond that dear little man is of you. Dear boy, try and fill up time as full as he will hold. When he won't give you what you want, insist on something else—or somebody else. No, I don't say that, you've not committed yourself
I know; but still-" And Lady Hertha resumed
her knitting at the slender ankle of a fine black and yellow stocking for home consumption.
Hugh had, as he supposed, got out of his two282
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
disappointments easily enough. He had Highcliffe to stay with him a little in town, and, without saying anything, they were no small comfort to each other. He had never been given to jesting at scars; and RoundelFs raptures gave him a notion that 'Cliffe might have seen much in his sister; he felt by himself, how much may be done in a few minutes of time, as the clock counts it.
There had only been a few days' intimacy, but it had been close, and Lady Hertha had said something of Fan's being his sister. The shock of that escape had been felt as she felt most grave matters, in her thoughtful analytic way; and she had faced the idea of what Highcliffe had saved her. The accident had brought Roundell's feelings to a crisis and an explanation at once; he had broken down, and told his tale in a way which could not be mistaken or gainsaid ; and all ought to have been merry as the prospective marriage-bell. But Lady Hertha was one of the quickest and most romantic of women; and she felt that 'Cliffe might under other circumstances have claimed anything of her; and that a year ago all might have been changed. He had never said or looked anything. He had the manners of Bayard in such an affair, because he had exactly the same heart of knighthood. To him the adventure, itself alone, was enough to makeRACE AND CLASS.
him Fan's knight for life; and she herself, all flutter and happiness, had been and continued about as tender to him as she well could be—standing in immeasurable awe of his genius, and seeming to look to him as a superior being who always made much of her. She was safe enough accordingly; but Lady Hertha felt, all the same, as if she had two sons slightly grazed in the battle of life; and she prepared to doctor them both to the best of her powers. She was greatly encouraged by Roundell's manners to the Don, which were now deferential as well as familiar. 'Cliffe had no horse, and had thought of buying one ; but now, when he came to Onslow Square in the summer, a great well-regulated thoroughbred, fit for a king, was brought to the door one morning; with a request from Frank that he would have him, from a man who owed him a great deal more. There was a little hesitation about accepting from two to three hundred pounds' worth all in a moment; but Fan made a little sotto voce speech (which it is supposed Hugh put her up to) about a present from her and her grateful barbarian ; and she kissed 'Cliffe, and he her, and they both laughed, and perhaps cried. At all events he got up at once, and entered on a friendship with the horse, that endured for many a day of flood and field.CHAPTER XIV.
A NORTHERN MEETING.
" WEEL, thank ye, sir, good-bye, and good sport t'ye," said the guard of the Killin and Loch Lomond coach, as he handed down Hugh's luggage at Crianlarich Inn. " Twa portmantys an' bag, pair of goons and a rifle, rod-case an' yer coats—they'll coover a gentleman, ony way."
It was at the high watershed between Argyleshire and Perthshire ; a group of stone bothies roofed with " divot" and rushes; with one slated inn; a sort of ill-sheltered nest in the secret folds of great mountains, " where Maeander's springs are born," or rather where the Falloch begins to gather its southward runnels for Loch Lomond, while the upper feeders of Loch Tay take the other direction, from the skirts of Ben More. It is the desolate meeting of three most beautiful routes, one westward to Fort William byA NORTHERN MEETING.
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Glencoe, another to Perth by Loch Tay, and the third to Glasgow by Loch Lomond. The heather is burnt and kept down, and the bright greens and yellows of grass or bracken prevail on the high hill-slopes. There are rowans and alders, and the gray sweet-gale scents the air in the wet mossy places, and here and there still grow, or struggle for life, great flat-headed pines, sprung from the scattered remnants of the Caledonian Forest of old days. The Falloch seems to collect its waters all at once in a rather pretty fall, into a fathomless pit of granite of the true Highland type ; and thenceforth its steep banks are fringed with ashes and deep heather among the cliffs, and such a succession of bathing-places are hidden in its channels, as never were described, except in the Bothie of Tobar-na-vuolich. It must have been near Crianlarich at the watershed that Montrose struck westward, " through snowdrift to drive the prey," to break down from Strath Tay on Argyleshire ; with the pipes of Clan Chattan calling the ravens to their feast before him, and the lands of Cameron and Macdonell to shelter him and his prey westward— till the raging sons of Diarmid were gathered round him, only to meet the worse slaughter of Inver-lochy.
Hugh jumped off the coach in high spirits. He had had three weeks' hard grouse-shooting on his286
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
own and some Perthshire moors ; and had enjoyed that rather severe exercise. He had not only shot rather well, but been wakeful and agreeable in hall. He had found his second-class considered quite a literary distinction in the provinces, and left a pleasant odour behind him. He meant to see a little of the west coast, on his way to Lanercost's Ross-shire forest. The Glencoe coach was a few minutes late, and he dived into the rough little inn, and came out again with his mouth full of oatcake and butter. He had never been in the West Highlands before, but had read the " Legend of Montrose " as it ought to be read; that is to say a great many times over. He had read too much to have that impatient ignorance of the past, which connects nothing whatever with the Highlands but grouse, and makes most tenants of shootings feel so entirely like poulterers, during their brief dwelling on the moor. So he was sitting on his portmanteau, and consulting his map in a most tourist-like manner, when the Glencoe coach appeared crawling up the last slopes of Glenfalloch. It was some time before the outside passengers were recognisable. They were not many; and an oldish American pilgrim, with whom he had vigorously fraternised, was the only westward passenger beside him.
" Plenty of room, anyhow," said Hugh ; and thenA NORTHERN MEETING.	287
he stood like Cymon, the " fool of nature "—or any-other fool—
With stupid eyes And gaping mouth that testified surprise.
It was Iphigenia, that was all. Charles Cawthorne had undertaken the charge of Grace Rokeby as far as Tomnahurich Castle (or some such place) in Inverness-shire, and then to go to Lady Wharfedale in the far west, beyond Glengarry. It had been a sudden invitation ; and after this fashion it pleased the Pigs (or other whimsical influences on human circumstances) that the painter should acquit himself of his duty of taking care of her. May had said nothing to him, except a little surmise and misgiving of her own; and, indeed, there was nothing to be said. Besides, he did not recognise his friend till the coach stopped, and then his first feeling was one of overpowering satisfaction. Nobody could help it, and everybody took things just as they came.
"Why, Hugh, that you ?"
"Wouldn't wonder."
"You know Miss Rokeby?" Hugh lifted his stalking-hat, and gave Grace both hands to jump off the roller-bolt, on which she stood with her feet together like an ibex ready for a spring. The grasp of the little gauntlets and strong fingers seemed imprinted on his phalanges for many a day. Grace288
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did not look shy, or feel anyhow, except rather additionally pleased. She had just the faintest notion she wanted to see a little more of Mr. Heron, once or twice for half-an-hour, perhaps ; she would be able quite to make him out in that time, she thought—and he was a little different from her Yorkshire friends, more in the literary way, which was interesting. But she was really thinking about her great box, because it had two new gowns in it, and only felt at her ease when they were once more under way at twelve miles an hour in the direction of Tyndrum.
" This is all Scott's country—as much so as the Tweed," said the American, who had been introduced to his new fellow-travellers.
"Ah, the ' Legend of Montrose/ " said Charles. " I don't know why, one always remembers Dalgetty in it, so much more than anybody else."
"Why've you never made a picture of him?" asked Grace quickly.
"Well, it's not easy to find an old Scottish face to suit him—ugly and well-bred."
" Gracious, I never thought of Dalgetty in that last light"
" Oh, you can't leave that out," said Hugh ; " nor out of any of Scott's non-Cameronian characters— except, perhaps, Dumbiedikes, by-the-way. But he'sA NORTHERN MEETING.	289
like Ludovic with the Scar, to be laughed at, but never to be despised."
" You see his honour is rather battered, like his armour," said the American, Mr. Cornell of Boston ; " but it's absolute as far as it goes. How he sticks to his loyalty till the end of the campaign."
" I can't bear him—at least he is very racy—but Allan Macaulay one can take to."
" Yes; the second-sight and vengeance, and the dirk and all that," said Charles ; " but he's only a conventional savage compared with the Captain. And then Dalgetty wouldn't have stuck his camarado —about a young woman."
"Ah, we're always disposed of so peacefully now !" said Grace plaintively ; " but the result seems to be nearly the same, as far as any chance we have of helping ourselves."
" Should you like to be fought for ?" asked Hugh.
" Yes ; if nobody was killed or much hurt, and the victor was thoroughly agreeable."
" Oh, what an idea ! Charley, do let's "—shouted Hugh above the wheels—" Have a tournament, you know. There was one at Lord Eglintoun's forty years ago, and there's one in ' The Princess.' It could come off at Hawkstone, or Otterscope, or at Prince's, or anywhere."
" It wouldn't look well if the knights had to be
u290
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separated by the police ; and if you were being fought for they'd make it rather serious."
"We should hope to make it an international match," said Cornell; " and that it would be followed by other international matches. What fine black firs, and what heather blossom ! Is this Inveruran ?"
" Inveruran and dinner ! " said- Hugh, dropping off the coach and preparing to receive Grace. He sat by her and ministered to her wants very duteously through the usual rough repast. Hotch-potch and broiled trout of the best; mutton none of the best; red-deer shoulder of the worst; and some extraordinary confection of rice, jam, and cream, pronounced not half-bad. Hugh would have been attentive to any woman, and Grace was accustomed to that sort of thing from most men ; but that dinner was not like another to him. As he afterwards said, it was all Grace, before, during, and after meat. He ate everything as in a dream ; he lay wait to help her on the coach again, got up by her side like a giant refreshed to tell her all about the Black Mount and Glencoe. She opened her great eyes with fun and pleasure at his being so nice. Charles and the Bostonian got on art as soon as they were on the road again, and had done abusing inn-dinners in general. They agreed that landscape was the only thing that lasted as a source of inspiration. CornellA NORTHERN MEETING.
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thought, however, that there really was something genuine in Baldwyn's and Ponto's classical subjects ; but he wondered, he said, why they didn't read Herodotus.
" I've spelt through him in my time, Mr. Cawthorne, and the real events of Greek history seem to me a deal more stirring than the myths, and just as dramatic. You seem to be all choked with classics, and not to care much more about them than we do—not even about your own. Why, I've never seen much illustration of the ' Legend of Montrose ' or the ' Fair Maid of Perth;' and the only historical painting one sees is always interiors, with doublets, and buff coats, and still life—clothes and bric-a-brac."
" People don't believe history a bit, and won't buy pictures that remind them of their own ignorance. Art in England never can mean anything but fine clothes and bric-a-brac; nobody wants anything else," growled Charles.
" It's a great thing to get one or two good men in command of the market too ; they might form a school."
"I don't know," said Charles dubiously; "it seems to me that fellows are too eager to compete and crib from each other ; we can only get up a succession of fashions and vogues. Nobody seems to be scholar
u 2292
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enough, or to care enough about it. To catch the fashion, if you can't set it—that's about all. I think the evil's complicated with laziness in reading, and scandalous writing, and all that sort of tiling. But I get on somehow, between landscape and figures."
" You're well known on our side, and always were ; but we'll have to walk up this hill, I reckon."
" King's House is on the other side, with a great desolate view; and just between this and that we shall see some red-deer, most likely. Grace dear, will you come with us ?"
They soon left the heavy coach behind, as it struggled up the steep, and went on in advance till they reached the height above King's House, which commands all the clear sweep of Rannoch Moor, even to the spurs of Schehallion—league on league of gray, and purple, and melancholy gold. To their left the whole landscape rose in great slopes to the higher summits of the Black Mount; with the peaks of Buchael-Etive and the Glencoe hills just visible to westward, and here and there a fading cloud, or a lingering patch of last year's snow. And all along northward, between the moor and sky, there wandered a long aimless procession of parallel mist-wreaths, bending forward like weary gigantic pilgrims of the air; gray, boding brothers in funereal march, they knew not whence or whither; 'only that they trod theA NORTHERN MEETING.
ominous way of the coming storm. Below, a mile away, they could see the blue smoke and white walls of King's House Inn, beside its thick clump of weather-beaten pines. Once, now many years ago, it was the pleasant little diversorium of walking tours; now, like other Highland inns, its office is to discommodate or anticommodate to the utmost, any unwary traveller who tries to sojourn in the neighbourhood of the Black Mount. It is sentimental and absurd, of course, to regret the days when Highland chiefs held their own land ; but at all events they were hospitable, and let one tramp over their country and put up at their tenants' without let or suspicion. Now it is all let to stockbrokers, and ironmasters, and general dealers: they require solitude, and in the Highland desert no man meets a friend. It can only be passed by caravans of tourists, on payment of heavy blackmail at big hotels. You pass the Scotch Alps, like Caesar, on the top of the diligence, and see what you can of Glencoe at twelve miles an hour; in no small peril of massacre, by upset and contusion.
Hugh walked on, chatting with Grace, and was delighted to be able to show her a herd of deer near the road, though their being so low down portended bad weather. She said she didn't care much for rain, but the north-east sleety storms in Yorkshire were almost too much for her in spring. What could294
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Kingsley have meant by delighting in the brave north-easter ? Hugh thought he didn't know what it is really like. How could he, in Devon, where it's only a nice bracing change from south and west ? He was sure there must be some mistake. He never could felicitate himself on one of those regular stingers, full of ice-points running into one's eyes, and smiting one on both cheeks and ears at once. Then he wasn't quite above all bodily weakness. Grace was so glad, it was so nice when one's friends didn't always crow over one. Did Mr. Cawthorne crow much, Hugh wondered, when he travelled en garqon ? he understood May didn't allow it at home. He begged pardon, his mother and everybody called Mrs. Cawthorne May, and she let him do it too. Oh, Grace had heard her speak of him always as Hugh, and she seemed to think a great deal of him. And they got on the coach again, and sped, too fast for either safety or the picturesque, through the grandest pass in the three kingdoms, all glooming with broken cloud and sullen crimson sunset, low in the west over Loch Leven and the far peaks of Ardgour. Ballachulish Ferry, and another coach, and the darkening drive through fresh scents of seaweed and honeyed heather, with the high corries of Appin on the left, across the lovely lake, and on theA NORTHERN MEETING.	295
other hand, the trackless hills to the foot of Ben Nevis —to " Loch Treig of hinds "—and the Parallel Roads of Glenroy, and the heart of Lochaber. Then Locheil, and the first drops of rain, and Hugh's delight when Grace's pretty roquelaure felt rather chilly, and she couldn't get at her other wraps at once, and he could fold her in his stalking-cloak and hood; wherein Charles and he said and swore she looked like all Highland romance, from Annot Lyle to Elspat of the Tree (she was just as like one as the other). Finally they got down at the Banavie Hotel, and saw the last of the dim summit of Ben Nevis, with its white snow-cross, as the dim rain-clouds settled round his shoulders. Charles ordered supper for four, and they talked far into the night, long after Grace had sunk into dreamless sleep, not thinking much of the day's work, but very tired and strangely pleased with its new sights. Yes, Mr. Heron was different from Oxford men, or London men, or Yorkshire men, or anybody she knew ; not exactly formed—rather odd and simple; not awkward or dull, certainly—must know a good deal for a hunting man. Had been nice and attentive; how could she have looked in that rough hood ? Everybody had been kind; she was very thankful and happy. And the rain came sighing and drifting across the window : and she passed away296
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
on the soft sound into the land of sleep, " and gave false Death her hand, to dreamful wastes where footless fancies play "—till Charles knocked at her door at six next morning, recommending warm things and waterproofs through the keyhole.CHAPTER XV.
A SOLDIER TIRED.
I AM quite scared at the preponderance of the chase in this volume, and I really do mean to try with as little more of it as possible. Let us therefore escape to the mountains, in den heitern Regionen, where all adventure, if adventure one must have, will be purely pedestrian. Our drop-scene rises on Felsenbauer's Hotel at Seestadt, in Upper Austria. It is a big rough stone house, with a projecting Swiss roof, covered with gray, mossy shingle; stone balconies, to match below, and a range of stone arches under all, as massy as the vaults of Istakhar. All the south walls are covered with vines, and a nice garden occupies the few square yards of flat between the huge limestone cliffs and the bottomless lake. By way of al fresco coffee-room, there is a long wooden shed, built on a raft and moored in the water, like Noah's ark stranded, and without its full complement298
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
of beasts ; for the rougher class of tourists seldom get as far as the upper waters of the Traun, where it flows through the Hammer-See on its way to Father Danube. You may further imagine about three hundred houses, alike with unimportant differences, clinging to the wall of marble-hard limestone, which rises at an incredible angle for about fifteen hundred feet above.
Sitting in the coffee-ark at breakfast about 7 A.M. (one can't lie in bed after six, for everybody else gets up, and their boots murder sleep), one looks round a crescent curve of aqua-marine bay, deepening into bottle-green, and with a curious purple in the shades, almost pink-purple. Picturesque little boat-houses, all of rough pine, warm brown or bright yellow, and reflected in long inverted columns of glancing ripple, stand close to the water's edge in every fantastic shape and perspective you can think of. The place is a little land-locked Venice, as far as water-carriage goes; for nothing on wheels is ever seen there except an occasional barrow; and I think the only one I ever saw was an alien, introduced by strange labourers ; who were mending the rock-paths, and, I fear, preparing the way for a char-road. All communication, if you don't walk, is by means of boats shaped like large pig-troughs. They are always propelled by old ladies, who look as if they had beenA SOLDIER TIRED.
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preserved all these last years, like dried flowers, by-being squeezed in books ; they are so very brown and so very flat. They row standing, and use flat paddles like shovels, so that their action reminds you of digging potatoes backwards. At least that was Highcliffe's comparison, made to a favourite pupil at early breakfast, with his mouth full of bread and honey. It was one of his long-vacation parties; he daily discoursed Ethics, Logic, Physics, and Metaphysics (it is a celebrated question which of the terms ought to come first in order) to four gray-clad Oxonians. They were preparing for the labours of the day, on the best bread, butter, coffee, and honey in the world, with a due or undue number of eggs " full gecocked "—so their order ran till the maids got to understand it. The nicer sex did all the attendance at Felsenbauer's. He was too much of the old German gentleman to like to have a lot of cosmopolitan little housefiends of male waiters, with pale faces, and incongruous suits of black, and dingy expanses of hebdomadal shirt-front. One clear-looking middle-aged woman, who seemed capable of anything except fatigue, mistake, rest, or impatience, transacted all the waiting and minor business; commanding various mighty daughters of the plough, who always brought what you wanted in time. The landlord was Burgomaster, and owned half the place; he used to slope about in.300
HUGH HERON,, Ch. CH.
a straw hat, and tell everybody about guides, travelling, the weather and the crops, forests, lake, saltworks, and Vienna news two days old. His son did all the bills with an air of conviction ; and there were several Miss Felsenbauers, who carried cooking and linen to a high pitch of perfection. They were worth looking at, because they gave one an idea of what the best ancient German style of unknown country ladyhood must have been, since Diirer's time and before. They made you think of his engravings. There was a sixteenth-century shrine of SS. Barbara and Catherine, in the hard-by old church of St. Christopher, and it had figures of the two virgins ; painted, gilded, and pink-and-white; but not without merit. The young ladies had the merit without the paint. I never saw long Diireresque fair necks, and wide strong shoulders, running to fine waist and tall tapering limbs as of northern nymphhood, repeated to the same extent in a single family. Somebody asked 'Cliffe if " such a house was not detrimental to reading and dangerous to celibacy ?" and all he said was, "there was such a lot of them, and in a multitude there was safety."
The Oxford contingent led the usual life of a reading-party that does read. They had a swim in the lake about six, to the astonishment of the natives, who never bathe themselves till the world is wellA SOLDIER TIRED.
301
aired ; then they ate breakfast under a plum-tree, as men of that time of life do eat. Weeds and work prevailed till one or two; when they had bread and honeycomb cheese, and went sloping up the hill, returning to a second bathe, and a great dinner of braten and schinken, and erdapfeln and mehlspeisen. They talked bold, bad German, and were on the whole rather popular, though they went off unsociably to read of evenings, and did not join in the harmless piano and mild flirtations of a mountain hotel close to Steyermark. Some of their observations seem to be recorded in the following letter, from Chipchase to Roundell:
" SQUIRE,—You will have heard how we got here from Ashley, who is as entirely in clover as such a tuneful party may be supposed to be, in this lot of old musicians who in Germany do dwell. He does his work; but plies the unmanly pianner to an unseemly extent, instead of coming up the hill with us of afternoons ; still he does popularity for us, and all the women seem after him, as savage as the Thracian ladies after Orpheus ; but there are so many it does not matter. There is a mysterious sort of young lady who would be formidable if one saw more of her, but she is always with the Miss Felsenbauers, and if one wanted, one could not get her out of the herd.302
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
The only party who seems to have any chance is also mysterious ; that's to say, everybody knows who he is, Colonel Robert Ingelram; but one can't imagine what keeps him here week after week, on the way home from India. Is not somebody of that sort supposed to be the proprietor of a flame of Hugh Heron's ? Not my business, you know, but I wonder. But the young lady is indisputably a stinger; and may be said to be a fille bien gardee, as she is protected, not only by a dragon (aunt, I believe), and by all the girls in the house, but also by two of the biggest dogs that ever were stupid and useless. She is practising for some great operatic engagement in England, Covent Garden or somewhere, and you may suppose she is as musical as everybody else, including the dogs, who accompany the piano with their voices very pleasingly, especially in their upper register of notes—at least everybody seems to like it, and we don't grumble. We are all rather badly smitten, I think, and she talks English for practice to each of us, all round; which makes the ' Cunnel' laugh, and the Miss Felsenbauers screech all the evening.
" I try to do a little sketching in colour, as Cawthorne advised ; but when it is not thunder and lightning it is cold rain and mist; and when not that it is sultry heat, and wonderful coppery clouds, full of more thunder—incessant change. And then theA SOLDIER TIRED.
flies! Talk of Scotch midges, why the gray clegs here are as big as wrens. I really do believe, upon my sacred word of honour, now, that it's quite possible I killed Beelzebub the god of flies, drawing on the alp the day before yesterday. I must have thinned out his imps for him anyhow, and made a deal of promotion in the army of Abaddon. He was the biggest, busiest, curiousest, and thirstiest fly (after my blood) that ever I came across; and when I squashed him he crackled up like a mixed biscuit, and made a slop like a glass of claret. I wonder if he really was the devil; rather odd his being ■cut off that way; and misunderstood to the last, too, as 'Cliffe said. He will be much missed in Town, where I suppose you are still; and you can write me a line and say if you really think I have been and •done him.
" Now this is private. One's manners change here, because the natives have odd ways, and one finds oneself drop in with them all at once. You remember what Dayrell and Charles Lamb told us about paying attention to poor old people—gallantry to female Eld he calls it. Well, Grantham and I were stumping up the hill as usual—you understand this is a place where you have to get up five hundred feet, through pine-woods, before you get a view—and halfway up, by a water-trough, we found two such old3°4
HUGH HERON, Ch. Ch.
women as you won't find out of these parts, with heavy loads of stone on their backs. Their countenances were like what they call Bath chaps; but they were nice old things, and G. and I were moved to give them ten kreutzers each. And I declare they kissed our hands. Now neither of us were going to stand that, and you see we had to kiss the old things on their Bath chaps, which we did it like good ones; and, after a momentary astonishment, they seemed so very much pleased that I can't get it out of my mind that they took G. and myself for two of the younger male saints, particularly as we cut away up hill after the salutation, very quick round a corner, and so vanished. Tell Heron to write a line, as to whether he's coming here or not; I think Highcliffe's wishing for him, or anxious about his work. His democracy is changed, and he goes on now about the grand impartial discipline of the feudal ages, and how a good knight was not only a mate for kings, but for kings' daughters, and so on. I don't think he'd have answered in those days himself; he'd always have been standing up for the serfs and villeins. He couldn't draw Jews' teeth, you know, though he might have loosened one or two of Front de Bceufs.
" Ever yours,
" Chip."A SOLDIER TIRED.
When Chipchase had finished this letter, about 10 P.M., he naturally thought he would have one more pipe and a conclusive marz-bier that hot night, in the great verandah towards the lake. So he got hold of his long glass of lively liquid, and stepped through the high speise-saal windows into the chequered moonlight, just where a vast plum-tree grew up above the verandah, and shadowed his egress. He only noticed two Miss Felsenbauers, and observed with effect that it was a schdnes Aussicht; further quoting " Leonora " to the effect that der Mond scheint hell. It was unquestionably the case; there was one of those rich moonlights on, that one always associates with Venice or Florence, when everything is greenish; or purple, as deep as death ; or else pale ruddy gold— at least, correctly speaking, when natural colour is richly changed, and in no sense turned to black and white. There were some boats floating and glancing about, and somebody gave a long soft jodel from the most distant, going off into the end of a Tyrolese song.
" They don't keep nightingales here," he meditated; " overrated little birds. Wonder why people talk about them ; sing and go on when they ought to be in bed with the others ; just like all the lot here. Romans ate them—sensible people—always knew what to do." And then he stopped, for such a voice began to sing
x306
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
"Carnival de Venise" from another boat just coming in to the garden-steps, that he was all ear in a moment, and fancied the words were Italianised English. In two or three minutes the boat ran in, and three figures passed under the shade of the great walnut which overhung the hotel boat-house, and came forth into the garden moonlight. The Colonel, the dragon, and the Lady of the Lake—a title which the Fraulein Fanny von Herstein had accepted, with smiles, from the Oxford party. They had been taking coffee at the little villa on the other side, over the silent way.
The three came slowly up the verandah-steps, and Chipchase had time to meditate on the unquestionable truth of his just-written account of the young lady. She had a kind of round plaited head-screen, or hat without any crown, in her hand ; a heavy mass of dark hair streamed down to her waist behind; she was all in white, with two or three pink ribbons ; her clear, aquiline face was rather flushed with rowing—she always would row; her eyes were immense, black, liquid, and dreamy; she had full, arched, smiling lips ; she was tall and lithe, with all the roundness of health and youth; and she seemed quite unconscious of herself or anybody—except, perhaps, her male companion, with whom she had been studying his native language with some earnestness, as it seemed. ChipchaseA SOLDIER TIRED.
bowed as they passed, with a little air of attention, which foreigners rather like in English people, in whom they say it is a rarity. Her companion looked a soldier all over, but rather worn for his age, which did not seem to be much over thirty ; and with something of the look of a man who has seen strange sights and hard adventure early in life. It was not exactly severe, or reckless, or sad ; but as if he who wore it had been born under a stormy star. At present he seemed devoted to his companion, who seemed nothing loath to improve the shining hour either.
"Well, Colonel Ingelram, schlafen sie wohl, you have been very kind ; and I have learned, oh so many English words, and so useful. Jolly, and awful, and several, and no end, and rather, and allright. All-r-r-right; let us go to sleep, Katchen. I am quite—shoot up—is not zat allright, Co-lo-nel ?"
" Good-night," he said, taking her hand for all answer, and seeming in no hurry to let it go. They looked a tolerably untamed pair, as her gaze of Tyrol met his look of England, delighted and nothing daunted. The girls vanished, and the men were left to their pipes.
" Where did you go to-day, Chipchase ? "
" Up towards the Dachstein, to the last lake; that little turquoise-coloured place. Found so
X 23o8
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
many strawberries we didn't go on ; but I made a sketch."
" If you're going to the top on Monday, as you said, I should like to come with you. I'll have a man, and something to eat and drink. Shan't be in the way, I hope."
The younger man eagerly accepted, and supposed the Dachstein wasn't much after the Himalaya.
" Oh, it's big enough and steep enough, and plenty of snow. I don't see much difference for practical purposes. Powers ! how pleasant this is after the Runn of Cutch. Know the place ? Flat desert, eight days across. Came in six once by camel-dawk, and had a fever. I used to be somewhere about master in those parts. Could have anything I liked, except a gentleman or lady to speak to. Perhaps it's made me rather too rough."
" Not that any of us can see, I'm sure; but it's no wonder if you like this fresh green place after the Runn. You'll come and see us in Oxford, I hope, when you're home in autumn."
" Home, you call it! Well, I've come into a place I hardly care to remember; perhaps I shall have to stay there when once I get there, so there's no hurry, at least not till grouse-time. I've ordered all letters to Vienna, not to be sent on—not used to be bored with a post every day."A SOLDIER TIRED.
3°9
" I think I was at a drive on your moors last year, with your uncle and Sir Ralph Rokeby, and never saw so many birds—five of us got seventy brace once over us, but I think we left you plenty."
"Ah, it's better to have a lot, no doubt. Very nice for those old fellows—they say Rokeby's going after the poor uncle, by-the-way. I wonder what his daughter's grown to," he said carelessly. " She was a pretty little girl when I got her out of Peniston Dam." Chipchase looked for further information, but the other went off to complain of Yorkshire grouse as inaccessible over dogs. " When I hear of fellows going out at ten and getting two hundred brace apiece, and heating three or four guns red-hot, and bruising their shoulders to jelly, and all the ladies making heroes of them a-nights for that sort of thing—why, I think I'd as soon dig potatoes, or make hay, or rub down my horses—or drink."
" You should have a Scotch moor then, with a bit of forest. Everybody is keen about the deer now."
" I daresay—but they tell me English sport nowadays runs so much to mere eating and drinking. Several men complained of that, who came out to Cashmere three years back."
" How did they do when they got to Cashmere ?"
" Oh, worked pretty hard. One got nipped byHUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
an old bear, what broke his ribs; but he drove his knife in through the eye very neat, and spoilt the brute just in time. There's nice roe-shooting here; I had several days at Griindl/'
"I should have thought you preferred the dangerous game."
" Not a bit. I've had some ; but a little real risk goes a long way, you know—and one gets into it in other ways. Ever feel a ball-wound ?—and the worst I've had wasn't in action either. Ah, it's very nice here," and Ingelram looked as if he wanted to say something that did not come. He had a story to tell, and felt a natural inclination to confidence with a younger man than himself, who unaffectedly looked up to him, and was shy, and pithy, and a gentleman.
Chipchase was silent; he had a good gift of listening, for his years, with much of that odd mixture of sentiment and contempt for sentiment which is the mental habit of well-bred English lads of all classes. His instincts told him to expect something about the Signorina ; so he agreed as to the satisfactory nature of the place, and wondered if any of the Miss Felsenbauers could be got to come up as far as one of the high sem^r-huts on the Dachstein. But Ingelram said perhaps there wouldn't be room, and it was such a bore to see women untidy in theA SOLDIER TIRED.
311
morning, on an expedition before the start; and so went to bed with his tale untold, if he had one.
Their trip came off; it was like all comfortable affairs of the kind, where there's no dangerous neviy or ice-glazed rock, or continuously-falling stones. It was an eighteen-hour business, but they made two days of it, for the sake of sketching and their ease. The early departure was no doubt gratifying to all the fatigued people who had stayed at Seestadt for a long night and morning's rest; and who started to convulsive life at 3 A.M., with the clang of nailed heels all about the wooden hotel. All was breakfast, hasty and nasty, milk and kirschwasser, knapsacks, haversacks, Voslauer bottles, and leaving the knives and forks behind (everybody always remembers the victuals themselves). They passed along by the unspeakable silence and bewildering mirror of the lake, were in the steep pine-woods by dawn, admired the emerald-green and white of the Schwartzbach, rolling its unslum-berous sheet of foam below in a long mist-wreath of its own. Then they set their faces to a zigzag path up a schlucht, in one of the steepest limestone cliffs in the Styrian Alps ; which is saying something. They got out in about three hours, on the wide flowery shoulders of the gray Dachstein ; among the highest growth of Alpine-roses, purest of crimson and brightest of green; with lingering deep-blue gentianelles, and312
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
here and there a streak of fading snow, and soldanelles yet growing through its edges, and the far glittering bergs of the great Eisfeld, as if close at hand—a sort of scene where you seem to see the limpid purity of upper air and to breathe the delicate hues of earthly colour; where all the finer pleasures of sight and nerve mingle with all the essence of sylvan feeling. They took it in in their way, and breakfasted repeatedly, and sketched and smoked all over the lower glacier. And the ice and snow-blink took the skin off their faces, and they dined on cold veal and Ruster, and watched the sea of snow-peaks, all tossing, as it seems, in a contradiction of calm unspeakable, under the glow of sunset. Golden, and pink, and crimson and azure, and Tyrian purple and sparkling white, the bulwarks of the Austrian land were like the ramparts of Ecbatana in their sevenfold circle; till the hues died into pale evening Alpengluth, and then—not into night, for it is not night on the high snow—but until the light seemed to come from the snow only, and the large few stars.
" Nothing like this in Yorkshire, Chipchase," said Ingelram.
" No, but don't crab the old county, Cunnel."
" I don't know; I've lived with plenty of room, you know, and it seems to be so cramped. One's shut out of this place and that; and everywhereA SOLDIER TIRED.
3i3
belongs to everybody; and you can't gallop round a field or fire off a drachm of powder without leave or paying, and you see nothing but roughs that hate you and just half show it. I'm afraid Cashmere's better ; —or why can't one live always up here now ?"
"Because one can't live entirely on cheese, I suppose."
" No, but one would do very well with a place— like Ludwig's Hohle now, or Maximilian's Lust, or any of those places—and go to Vienna for the winter."
" You wouldn't have it all to yourself, I suppose ?"
"Well, I couldn't in Yorkshire either. I'm to be married and settled as soon as I get there, I suppose. There's no liberty—one's either alone or tied up to something. It's a very nice young woman, I believe; but it's—what's that in Scott ?—fetters and warder for the Graeme—hate it in fact."
" Is it—the young lady you got out of Peniston Dam ?" asked Chipchase.
" Yes, if it must be ; they say she's—anything you please ; but one's hands are tied, you see—or they think so."
" Distressing consequences of a momentary rashness on your part," said the younger man. " High-cliffe's always thinking of that young lady he saved at the University Match, so we all fancy: at least3*4
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
he tells us how all that's worth having was always to be had in the middle ages."
" Was she middle-aged ? " interrupted Ingelram.
" No, but she was Miss Heron, of Otterscope, Hugh Heron's sister, and I believe she's a great beauty, and engaged, or nearly so ; he thinks he might have been her knight."
" Heron "—Ingelram pondered—" they're neighbours too—Craven way; this sort of thing's everybody's business. I'd better have gone straight home, instead of coming here following the roe with Zorndorff; but it's something to have fallen in with friends. I wish you'd advise me, Chipchase."
" How can I ?—you're so much older—and I don't know."
" You know what people would think in our parts—people one cares for. One don't care for public opinion t'other side of the Runn of Cutch ; but I shouldn't like to begin in the North-west Riding, with Roundells, and Rokebys, and Herons, and Hawkes, and all the battalion, thinking me a cur."
" Is that likely ?" said the younger man, with an amused expression, which seemed to tickle and gratify the self-respect of the speaker.
" Now of course you won't say any more about this," he went on—"but what should you say it was?"
" Is it anything about Miss von Herstein ? "A SOLDIER TIRED.
3i5
" Hum : there or thereabouts. It's occurred to me lately, what would they all say if I took her home ? "
" Nobody could say anything except Sir Ralph Rokeby and his daughter, and they wouldn't say much—but . . . how can I tell how far you're ..."
"I don't know myself—I'm not free, and I used to delight in the little girl; and both the old uncle and Sir Ralph always backed it to come off; and it just suited the properties and all that. Then I went out with the 43rd—there had been a scrape at home—and I volunteered. Well, it would have
been great fun—but for-; at all events I've been
knocking about for twelve years, and not thought much of marrying; at least, not of being married, till this news came that I was to have Malham Priors. I've written, and sent shawls and things, and there's always been a kind of engagement—and now when I'm really going home, it gets very serious. Then on the way, I thought I'd come home through the mountains here—saw them from Vienna—and met the 12th Jagers, and some men I used to know—and between there and here I met the Signorina; and she is—some—now isn't she, young man ?"
" Ay is she," said Chipchase, assuming philosophy if he had it not. " But I beg your pardon—have you heard much from Miss Rokeby ? "
"Well, not often. Her father generally spoke for316
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
her; but she wrote me pretty letters about home-matters, and once when I was hurt; and thanks for shawls, and so on. We seemed to belong to each other—she must expect me. I hope she hasn't put off anyone else," said Ingelram, in the most straightforward and simple way in the world. " They've kept her for me more or less, I'm sure."
Chipchase was discreet beyond his years, at least about other people's affairs, as we frequently are; early in life one's temptation is rather to betray one's own than alien secrets. So strong though vague a remembrance of Hugh Heron and his adventures now came over him, that he nearly risked a speculation on the state of Miss Rokeby's affections—but it was no business of his—and he only asked the Colonel if he had an understanding with Miss Fanny von Herstein ?
"No—yes—we've both gone on, and had a great deal of fun ; and she knows I can't do without her."
"And can't you ? " said the other innocently. " I think it must have come to taking her or leaving her. But, you see, you can't have two at once."
" Well, what on earth had I better do ? "
Chipchase gathered himself up.
" If you've really grave doubts about your old engagement, you'd better tell Sir Ralph Rokeby there's a screw loose. The only thing people couldA SOLDIER TIRED.
3*7
really blame you for would be shying the row, such as it is, and letting the young lady stay on bound to you, when in fact you don't want her."
" It'll be an infernal letter to write Sir Ralph ; he doesn't say much, but he's always expected the match—and he's the sort of man who has always had things his own way, till it doesn't agree with him to be thwarted."
"Well, better now than later, and this wouldn't be so bad—I mean much worse might happen than this. The young lady—Miss Rokeby—she isn't—do you think she's waiting like the princess ?"
" What princess ?"
" Christina Rossetti's — that couldn't wait any longer and died ?"
"No—she takes a deal of killing, I hear. Some fellow picked her up for dead two years back with Lord Crashingdon's hounds—and she was on horseback again within the week. I don't care for hard ones—I wish she'd been little and fragile."
" Why, the Signorina's tall and grand."
" Pooh, you don't understand—that's Italian form. They have to be big. Now in England one may pick up a fairy, if that's any good. I needn't hurry home, if I do write this, though ; and Vienna's handy for anywhere. About the place to live in, I shouldHUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
say, till November—then run down to Brindisi, and Athens—or Cairo's really best—live on the hill, or in the desert when one likes."
"Why, you don't want any more desert yet, do you ?"
" No; but somehow I don't care to be out of reach of it. There was a party once who was—who wasn't very wise—and all her ideal was to live in an Arab tent with me—she didn't have it so, poor thing. I don't think she'd any idea of the noise, or the heat and cold, or the camels, or the fleas. But it's real freedom."
"Well, one might make as free up in Craven anywhere between Malham and Ingleborough."
Ingelram gave a curious start and snort, and looked hard at his friend for a moment; but Chipchase had spoken at random, and only went on with something about liberty and loneliness being nearly the same thing. So they betook themselves to making coffee and preparing for their night's rest, two in a haybarn ; as the shadow of the world crept up the long hillsides, and the peaks stood out as golden or crimson islands of light, glittering in detail on masses of purple gloom.
"You and I are together, Chipchase," said the Colonel. " I've heard say I sometimes talk in my sleep ; but it isn't much more sensible than when I'mA SOLDIER TIRED.
3i9
awake, they say—not worth noticing. You don't mind the chance, do you ?"
" Not a bit, Cunnel. You go on and commune ■with yourself your own way. I shan't speak unless I'm spoken to; and I shall have to be waked first."
But when he was in his lair of stumpy hay, with two rough sheets and a plaid, he found he had reckoned without his host—a host, in fact, of active and virulent fleas. They couldn't do much with him about his drawers and thin stockings, but commenced regular siege operations about his throat, occupied his whiskers in force, got in at his chest, and galloped about across his pectoral muscles. They were provoking, as mountain fleas are; they were so very gamesome. Take it how you will, they don't bite in proportion to their number and activity. They are like the Laird of Macfarlane's geese, and like their play better than their meat. But they do have such fun all over one, and they tickle to that extent that they vitiate one's slumbers if they can't quite keep one awake. In this instance their victim got a drowsy idea, which took the form of a story he. ever after told, until he got credit for believing it—that he was being treated as a fortress, and attacked by escalade, or something of that sort. It was quite clear that he was occupied by fleas of his own, he said, for he felt them collaring the storming parties, and throwing320
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
them over the edge of him; and the way they jumped and butted at each other was a caution. Nevertheless, he went off into a succession of naps, longer or shorter; and it was not till he could see clear in the cold gray of morning that he woke from one of them, with the sense of articulate words. Strange words they seemed to be, and they were repeated, with something of a well-remembered Yorkshire accent.
" Ay, you said you'd haunt meh, and you're there -r and I don't fear ye."
And as he looked towards Ingelram's corner he saw with a great shock of the heart that the Colonel rose on his elbow, fast asleep, with set teeth and bent brows, and an expression which, if rather startling, admirably suited the white puggaree which he wore in Arab fashion about his head and neck. This was partly unrolled, and set forth his sinewy throat and shoulders, betraying the red mark of a great scar about the left collar-bone. His eyes were glazed and fixed; one gaunt and mighty hand was lifted for a moment and cast out forward; and then it sunk quietly. And still he looked defiance right before him, uprising undaunted in judgment, as it seemed, before some adversary of his perturbed spirit. The really awful thing was, that he seemed to wait in his vision for the answer or counterword of his accuser, and to reply to an unheard voice from the unseen.A SOLDIER TIRED.
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There was a moment's pause, and he spoke again in protest.
"I had not done it!" and he waited for his answer in the spirit world, till the listener shivered, really-thinking something was going to turn up—or somebody. The dreamer opened his mouth once more, but this time with a moan most unlike his waking voice of pride.
" I never found her-"
And so he settled quietly on his back once more, and woke an hour after quite composed, though perhaps a little dreamy and taciturn—so thought his young companion.
"Well, Herr Kipkeze, and you have been to ze very top of ze Dachstein," said Fanny von Hern-stein, sitting by herself at the piano, in the smaller salle, her foot just commanding the pedal, and her slight strong hands straying and resting on the keys and bidding them occasionally discourse, low and clear, in support of her observations. Her long hair was in heavy bands, still fresh from the lake; her cheeks were rounder and brighter than usual; she was rather coquettishly got up in pink and white, and he had stood five minutes at the door, hearing her soft sotto voce performance from the " Barbiere," true in every note and change and phase of ex-
Y322
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
pression. He thought what a royal voice it was, and how delightful it had been sometimes to hear it at the "elf Uhr's Messe," floating out above the lake ; seeming to rise like an eagle, circle beyond circle, and zone beyond zone, when she rose in her might to edify the village congregation. It struck him she had a good deal to give his friend after all, and that she might not like to give up her art, and all its southern splendours, even for Malham Priors and its grouse moors.
" I've brought you some edelweiss," he said, between English and German ; " and I've made you a sketch on the glacier; it's what they call a moulin in Savoy."
" Really you are—so nice. I suppose zat is English ; or are you jolly when you behave so very well ?"
" I might be nicer after a bathe, I think," said Chipchase, rather shyly, as he caught sight of Ingelram approaching in the garden. He had bathed, and got himself up, as it seemed, carelessly, but with a certain style, and looked more military than usual. One of his agreeable qualities was unconscious approximation to people whose company he enjoyed ; and with the Oxford party he seemed to grow young, and careless, and confidential, and not to mind rough jokes or sharp sayings, now and then. But now, asA SOLDIER TIRED.
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Chipchase quoted to himself, "forth he came a-Colonelling," and with an air something like high emprise. So, when he lounged quietly into the room, Chipchase went off to the lake, therein to cool the fever of two days' tramping, and a night of hay-bags and parasites.
Between the Signorina's tolerable English, the Colonel's capital French, and the joint straightforwardness of Tyrol and England, there was pretty fair prospect of mutual understanding. No pair could have been better matched for that purpose. They were not Bohemians, or reckless, either of society or good manners, and held a fair enough code of honour. Both had seen a good deal of a world of their own; each thought the other interesting, and even charming; they might have gone on flirting in safety for ever; and the Signorina had intended to do so as long as possible. But she now saw, with all the quickness of a student of manner and physiognomy, not only that the Colonel had passed into the stage of conscious love for her, or lovership of her, but that he meant to proceed to tell her so; and further, she thought there was a new look of care about him, as if he was entering determinedly on a difficult thing. Of her own course she was certain ; she meant to hold by her art. She liked him exceedingly, but was independent of
y 2324
HUGH HERON, Ch. Cm.
him in its strength, and saw instinctively all the difficulties of the situation. She did not care much for money, as a singer fast rising towards preeminence ; because she made it and enjoyed the making. And she heard him ask her to be his wife. He spoke, and she listened, with tenderness, yet with a certain determination; and it struck her that his manner, though both courtly and devoted, and almost passionate, still had that sense of anticipated troubles to be fought and conquered. They had the security of perfect honesty on her side, and something not far from it on his. When he had finished—and he said his say, if anything, too manfully—she did exactly the most disturbing thing she could do. That is to say, she hid her face a moment, then caught his hands in hers, and kissed them in the sweet old fashion of her mountains. It brought him on his knees before her in an instant, shocked, and kissing her hands in turn, and protesting, in utter astonishment, at such a condescension.
" Mon Dieu ! how can you ? You are my love, and I should kiss your feet."
She made him sit by her on the sofa, but her gesture and whole expression kept him in perfect order. He held her hand, but that was all, and then she spoke.A SOLDIER TIRED.
325
"You are very kind to me," she said, "but you could not take me home wis you."
He said he would rather like to know who was to prevent it.
" Zere are many things; but, indeed, this is the first, Herr Colonel; you have done much, and you have seen many ladies ; and I must ask you tell me is zere no one else, no ozer love ?" She looked straight and keen at him with a frank appeal for truth, which he could not have resisted had he been capable of direct falsehood, which he was not. He said there was no engagement that really bound him, only a promise between families.
" Yes, but zere must be a young lady—and I am a girl, too—and I know it must be for her— schrecklich—I could not bear it. And why do you love me so much—so soon—it is not yet four weeks ?"
"Why, I've heard of its being all settled in one. I think I was in love with you in a day or an hour. I quite came, and saw, and was conquered." And Ingelram's look of submission, and the willing abasement of his face and voice of command became him well, to say the least; and perhaps it was as much for his sake as for any calculation of her own that she hesitated a few moments. She was touched, and flattered, and excited, and felt tenderly enough326
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
towards him. But he was wrong in speaking to her, at least till he was free to offer himself; and when she thought of all descriptions she had ever heard of English life, they seemed to offer her nothing like her own line of effort and ecstatic triumph. She had worked hard in her time and had tasted success; and that fiery flavour may be stronger than Love's, for a time and a season. It rose before her how little he knew what a triumph at La Scala or S. Carlo really is ; what it is to prevail with a race who not only know a great deal about music but are musicians. Yet she liked him well enough to be much inclined to cry, and she spoke with floating eyes and a sustained clearness of voice, not without a slight catch in it; with some agitation of the corners of her pretty mouth, and an unconscious clenching of hands, into tender feminine fists with the thumbs inside.
" I am a girl, as she," she said; " and that is not all. I could not give up my art—I live therefor. You would not bear theatres, and managers, and you could hardly let me sing, and without I should die. You cannot think what it is, zat break-out, cet epanche-ment de coeur, when I am all song and out of myself, and am only a voice; and when ze house drinks in and all rises round me, and people cry all delighted, and ze great orchestra is like a cloud zat bears me up always, and gives force, power, power, always.A SOLDIER TIRED.
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You are good to me, but I cannot live your life in England ; and you should offer me all yourself quite free. Colonel Ingelram, you are gentleman above all, do not speak more to me now, and let all zis be as if you had not spoken. You cannot be all mine now, and—do not make me say I cannot be for you ! " And something in the word " cannot," or the sound of her own voice, touched her, and she had fair excuse for taking refuge in her handkerchief.
Ingelram still held her hand, which he had taken possession of at first, and kissed it two or three times without provoking much remonstrance. He did not understand her feelings about her art, which he had always considered matter of polite endurance at best; but it piqued and excited him to see that she spoke in good earnest. " Fate, I suppose!" he said to himself. " If I'd gone racing home to be married to the Rokeby, fifty to one I should have found some long lad in my place, and just been in time to be thrown over affectionately, and evermore considered
as a friend. There never was but one who-" But,
whoever he thought of, he had to say something, and he spoke to the point.
" Let it be as you say, Beauty. It shall be as if I had not spoken ; and you have not told me to leave you for ever."
" I said not that. But you must not stay here328
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
now, or I must go. And I promise not anything, how can I ? I also go to England this winter; you will soon know what you must do. Yes, you may kiss my hand, it is our manner."
" Well," thought Ingelram, smoking a cigar in his room after the battle, " that letter needn't be written just yet. I'd better go home and see how the land lies. By-the-way, Snowie must have answered my letter about a bit of forest. Muhummad ! "
His servant, a strong Egyptian Arab, very dark, but with stiff-curled hair which disclaimed the negro ; in a brown "Nizam" dress of jacket, scarf, girdle, and knickerbockers,' with a fez and yellow kefiyeh, looked in, all teeth and eyes.
"Vienna, bookra," was all the master said, nor needed there more; the Saracen's head vanished, and a portmanteau was heard to bump on the floor.
"One don't stop for dreams," said Ingelram to himself, " but that's the second time that poor devil's turned up in my House of Sleep, if that's the right name. And I've never seen her—is she alive, and where is she ? Will it be so after I'm gone, I wonder ? Well, I was spared doing the worst, to her or him. Let's hope we may all be forgiven what we did do— bad enough. Perhaps it's that place in my collar-bone makes me dream of that time—twinge of neuralgiaA SOLDIER TIRED.
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I think. What on earth made him—do that— without coming to see if I was done ? Madness was it, or D. T. and jealousy together ? He took his own life anyhow, and the shine out of two others. And then about Grace. Why couldn't she keep out of Peniston Dam ? Sweet word that last; let's say it again." And so he did, with apparent relief.
He found many letters at Vienna, adorned with international postmarks in all coloured inks. But one in particular affected him, strongly enough to influence his own and others' fates not a little; and it must wait for another chapter. He was sorry to have left the Oxford men so hurriedly—he had meant to know more of Highcliffe, being rather attracted by his mingled learning and manhood, and liking him none the worse because he seemed to look on him as a kind of haughty Praetorian. There was a grandeur and purity in the coach's notion and words about women and their ways, which Ingelram only in part agreed with; but he thought they came well from the pundit nevertheless.CHAPTER XVI.
beside the deer.
"Well, old man, your man's got your baggage here all right, I hope; and how did you come to turn up exactly where we wanted you ? " said the Earl of Lanercost, in a forest suit of the colour of dead grass, as Hugh came round a corner of the coast-road. It was near Torradale, in Ross-shire, opposite the wild north end of Skye, and looking far away to the Butt of the Lews, which was visible as a distinct shade of delicate purple on the sea-horizon.
Hugh said he had run over from Portree in a herring-boat, to see the coast of Skye and get a few birds to stuff; with a jolly rough lot from Wick, who, he thought, would have thrown him overboard—didn't though—and bowled away right up the Minch. Might have got lots of herons, if they hadn't belonged to the family. "Domestic affections interfere greatly with one's comfort/' said he pensively. " We've been and poached one of your stags, who was swimmingBESIDE THE DEER.
33*
for some isle of his own ; netted him and tied his legs, and put his head in a bag, and he's in the stable at Ardcrochan now, uncommon savage. I gave them a pound to save his venison. Won't you send a gillie to see what's to be done with him ?"
" Oh, cart him up to the brae, and turn him going. Evan, do you hear what Mr. Heron says ? Eirich! see he's not hurt, and start him into Coileach-dubh cover. He shall have a day or two to rest, and then it's his look-out."
" Space and law the stag we lend, Ere hound we slip or bow we bend,"
quoted Frank Roundell, who stood by Ross the forester; and which was the biggest or the " best" man of the two was never discussed. It really would not do, for though the two were " well acquent" and good friends, they always walked at each other quite enough as it was.
" You don't want a very heavy day now, I think ? We're going to drive these woods along Loch Rattachan. There are some roe, and you can keep one of the upper passes ; and there might be a hart in yon pots and thickets in the old wood. Knock over everything; we only drive this once in a season. You see the wind's west, right off the sea, and so we go along in-shore to our passes, high on the hill; and332
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
then the men move on and drive the woods right up to us. Ah, you've got a single express, besides your shot-gun—capital thing ; but take the gun in hand for the bolting shots at roe-deer—they'll let the stag break before they do, if there is one. Stand dead still—movement's what they see. Now go on with Duncan, and he'll place you."
Hugh started at a brisk pace with his guide, a young Highlander, prematurely lean and weatherworn, who seemed to glide up-hill, with as little effort as a deer, and as soundless a step. He was silent for half a mile, and then looked round with an air of approval at seeing himself closely "waited on" by his charge.
" We're near-hand to it now," he said, as he brought Hugh close round the foot of a high knoll ridged with heather. " Eigh, 'am glad there's na grouse got up—thae auld cocks are aye in the way o' stalking—mallaicht orst, yon's one gone off chucklin' there." Then, addressing Hugh with his best manner and in a yet lower tone : " Ye'll best keep joost hereby, sir, between this and yonder knowes, and dinna go up higher, or ye'll be again' the sky-line from below. Sit close and look along the wood-side, he'll likely come out above yon crag wi' the three birches ; dinna move too soon or move any, till ye put your gun up to shoot. If it's a staig, he's sure to break to the hill;BESIDE THE DEER.
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and if he doesn't come right at ye, the rifle '11 fell him anywhere for a hundred yards of open. An' we'll be all in the wood, so dinna ye fire back—there's nane can shoot you, ye see, sae be good to us. There's na hurry ; but look well out, for the red deer aye come out before the roe. Sir Frank's yonside the craig."
He vanished round the knoll, and left Hugh in about as fair a post of vantage as a man could wish for. He was a hunter, heart and soul; and from that and other things of late had learnt, in the West Highlands, to take keener delight in the secret scenes that hunter and shepherd only know. Few others ever see them, those " lown " places, and canny passes of roe deer, and shelters of hart and hind in stony corries; where there is deep rich heather among the boulders, and many " shealings " of short sweet grass ; or lower down, where the lichened granite is deep clad in bilberries, below green shining slopes of serpentining brooks, or quiet cliffs on steep brae-faces. You lie down on gold and crimson, and " Kings have no such couch as thine," for colour and honeyed scents ; and westward you look over the far Tyrian of the great Atlantic, 7rpo? o'Lvoira novrov—wine-dark is it, or bright as wine ?—probably both. I believe somewhere in the classics the word purpurens is assigned to snow ; and Horace certainly applies it to Venus's swans ; so there must have been a certain334
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
vagueness in the ancient mind about quality of colour. Anyhow, Hugh sat him down by a large gray stone, " express " rifle in hand, and looked down the side-glen, or glade, to seaward.
" It was a dreamy autumn noon, the winds were lown and low," and a pleasant misty sunshine dwelt comfortably on his hard young wearied body; still rather wet with sea-water, and now beginning to be conscious of weeks of tramping, and some days, at least, of deep excitement. How he had lived for the last few months—since that ball; he thought it was then he began to be so keen ! What was the matter with him ? He felt a vague penitence and misgiving. He had done no special harm that he knew of; but all his life and habits had been so formed for him, and he so well looked after, that he not unreasonably underrated himself as a good boy who had never been tempted. And now he meant no harm that he knew of; and why wasn't he like himself at all, but a sort of odd possessed Nympholept ? what was this new fire that made him restless and half reckless ? " The fox had a wound, and he didn't know where ! " and here he was in that condition of vulpine discomfort. Here he was expecting a shot, for the first time, at a real wild stag, and couldn't half attend to the situation ; at least, not till the great silence of the speechless hills fell on him, and made him watchBESIDE THE DEER.
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every shaken leaf, and hear, or think he heard, the dim undertone of ages from gray furrows of the far-off sea.
Little puffs of wind came through the heather in a kind of stage whisper, with a lingering scent of honey, or now and then a sea-freshness of their own. How jolly it was ! These were the happy hunting-grounds, he supposed. He recalled to mind the Old Trapper's celebrated imagination of Paradise, as " a large grass vale, divided by light stake-and-bound fences, with moderate ditches on the landing-side ; watered by large meandering salmon streams, without any stake-nets, and extending to the feet of umbrageous mountains, crested with snow, on which fed vast and innumerable ' royals.'" Perhaps that was rather profane, or Red-Indian at best; and he dreamed on to old Richard of Hampole's very different expectations, which he had read in Milman's "History of Latin Christianity,"
There is lyf without any deth,*
and so on ; but all the same his practical ear caught a distant whistle far in cover. A minute or so, and a soft " tickle " nearer its edge, as of a falling leaf, and a moving somewhat — somewhat large — red—" Oh by-"
By what, Hugh never mentioned; partly because
* Vol. ix. p. 27, 1867 ; ch. xiv. ii.336
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
he avoided expletives on principle, partly because a big hart came out between Roundell and the craig, tossed his horns—turned with contempt from a barrel of B-shot at twenty yards—some corns of which rattled in Hugh's neighbourhood ; and came almost at him. He seemed an awful size ; but he never saw Hugh; who was as still as death till he pitched up his " express " at fifty yards, and laid it well before the shoulder of the doomed beast as he rose to the hill. There was an odd kind of smack from the bullet, and the hart reared wildly up, and sprang, as it were backwards into the air, with a bound like him of Hartleap Well; came over with a general crash, and then sunk over on his side so quietly, in perfect rest. Hugh didn't know what next, but prudently lay close and took up his smooth barrels. Two shots in the wood, a flashing red object below the craig ; Roundell fires a good shot, and a buck turns over—two more roe seen scampering away far beneath—a long silence —a hare out of reach—the whistle and tapping of the beaters; a minute or two more and up comes Duncan, tugged along by a young deerhound.
" Ye hae felled him, sir ? Where did he come out ? "
" Yonder, above the craig, where you said."
" Rin to him an' bleed him while I lay on the young dog."BESIDE THE DEER.
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And before Hugh had quite remembered from Scrope where to apply his skian-dubh, the hound came rushing up on the hot scent, his face all changed from vague eagerness to fierce chase, and laid hold of the dead hart's throat with a sharp worry.
" Well dune, sir, but give me the knife, or drive it into his breast deep."
Hugh did it, and a great torrent of blood followed ; it was sanguinary, but it was his first stag, and he felt free of all the Highlands.
They drove two or three more small woods blank, except for some hares and black game, and finished by a long beat in line across the moor to the sanctuary woods near the lodge, which added some grouse to their small but interesting bag. It was further variegated by Lanercost's successfully stalking a heron on the edge of one of those small strange " lochans " or meres of the West Coast; which seem, at their great height (when you are on their level and look seaward), only separated by a low line of stones and heather from the offing of ocean beyond; or, if that is all, from the horizon and the infinite sunset. Hugh was rather tired, and embittered his existence, if he did not spoil his dinner, by missing two easy shots at grouse. It was pleasant to count out the bag on the grass-plat of the wild storm-beaten little
z338	HUGH HE J? OA, Ch. CH.
lodge, by the last red sea-light of a low sunset over Skye.
" Eight long points, beams as thick as my wrist, a yard from brow to crocket," said Lanercost, contemplating the dead stag ; " you're in luck, Master Hugh ; we'd better send you out again while it lasts, and with this wind. Are you fit to stalk to-morrow ?"
"Only let's have dinner and bed. I didn't have a square meal yesterday, or sleep at all."
" Well, there's no dressing, though some of us like clean shirts. Dinner in twenty minutes; jackets and kilts ; grouse soup and grilled sea-trout. You won't have any, I know, but the rest of us are going to eat a heron, skinned and roasted, you know, just like hare, capital long slice out of his breast. Your room's up in the roof, but it's big enough."
Hugh found a bath and change of raiment in his attic, and came down in time for the promised grouse-soup. Oh friend, did you ever have a good long day on Ross-shire moors, and the dinner peculiar to those parts afterwards ? Did you ever go to sleep " repeatually " with venison on your fork, and were you as regularly reawakened by a major-domo in tweed, grinning but respectful, with a little more champagne ? And did you each time have it, and go in at the red deer again like a man, and as you ought to do ? And did you ever, being in extreme fatigue, drink steadily till youBESIDE THE DEER.
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got a late second wind, and were ready for coffee, and tobacco, and whist at tuppence ? All this our friend did as he did most things, faithfully unto death ; but he played so abominably in his first rubber that they sent him to bed; and there he never stirred till Duncan came up at 5.30 and addressed him at length :
" Mr. Heron, sir, it iss my lord said you are to go to the hill the morn, an' it is fife hours an' more, an' there is great harts come in over ta march from Glenskianach; an' we have fife six miles to drife to our cast."
It was high water, and Hugh went into the Atlantic, under the wild-eyed dawn at its coldest. He had been an early riser of late, though nothing could keep him awake at night; for he couldn't help beginning about Grace as soon as he woke. Hot coffee and eggs ; then rifle and cartridges; glass, compass, and skian-dubh ; hard eggs, biscuit, meat lozenges, warm cloak and hood; and they got into the roughest of dogcarts, and drove off by the first full daylight. All was still and dewy in the early autumn; and they drove along a good enough road (at first) into the hill—through scattered birch woods, with a great flat-headed pine here and there. Grouse crowed and chuckled, and here and there a roe shot away like a dream, or a hawk rose channering out of
z 234°
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
the cloven rocks above ; or it was dead stillness but for their wheels ; now and then they splashed and rolled across a brown runnel; presently great ruts grew up all grassy, and the road became a wheel-track— then they clambered up a long slope, so steep that they had to lean forward over the splash-board. Finally, and with a long series of heavy lurches they made the middenstead of Evan Morrison, the forester —and there they stuck.
"Eh, ye're in good time, sir; an' ye felled yon big one yesterday; an' the day we'll get a royal. Ye'll tak' the machine to Inch-na-Cardach, for Glendula-chan, Sandy; an' the dry things—we'll be finishin' thereby. Noo, sir, we'll gang forrat."
There is a family likeness among all old gillies and foresters ; and Evan was typical. He was six feet two, as lean as a greyhound, and as quick on his feet as a rabbit, in spite of forty years on the hill.
His russet weeds were brown as heath That clothes the upland fell;
And the hair of his head was fiery red As the purple heather-bell.
At least, that's not the tint: but I suppose Leyden was not such a colourist as Scott. Evan had risen by great merit, from " laddie " to " laad ;" then been promoted to the condition of full gillie; then to under-keeper; then forester; and no furtherBESIDE THE DEER.
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rise in life seemed to him desirable. He was much more the Wordsworthian mountaineer than Wordsworth, I fear, might have fancied; a great naturalist and bird-stuffer; knowing in herbs and the like; a deadly fisherman and good in a boat, and cunning as a carpenter, and even smith. He read the Bible and the Pilgrim's Progress, Walter Scott and Burns, and The Field supplied him with such current information as he wanted. Charley Cawthorne had taught him, during three wet seasons at Tombuie, to illustrate his game-books in a way which won the admiration of West Ross-shire. He now led Hugh off at a lively and dwelling pace for about an hour and half up-hill. They crossed two strong burns arm-in-arm, .and he seemed pleased to find that Hugh stuck to him against the steep, and stood firm among the smooth stones of the brook. Duncan followed with an old hound, and few words were wasted till they reached the braes and knowes which formed the lower shoulders of a dim square tower of gneiss, called Ben-y-breac, or the Spotted Hill; not, as Lanercost would have it, from any particular variegation of surface, but because everybody always " spotted" it from out at sea. It was one of the landmarks of a great tract of forest ground—of late unduly extended —which has always spread over great part of Ross-shire and Sutherland. At the foot of the higher342
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
peak, the three crept under a craig, and unslung their glasses to study the long table-land before and below them, and the opposite barrier of Sroin Muick. Great care is necessary in approaching deer in broken ground and long heather; partly on account of eddying gusts of wind, which carry your scent you don't know where; and partly to avoid stumbling on deer, and giving, perhaps, a general alarm. In this instance the wind was fair, i.e. right against the stalkers ; but still it whirled about the knowes in an uncanny manner, as likely as not to reach the senses of some old sentinel hind, like Meg Merrilies; too old for anything but scout-duty and mischief.
Evan's telescope moved quickly from "glac" to* " stripie," and about all the green spots of sweet grass and shelter in the corries between them and the opposite slopes of Sroin Muick, or the Boar's Snout, on the other side of the westward glen to the sea. It was some of their best ground, but much of it was as yet out of sight, and this " first spy " was chiefly precautionary. There was a long gazing silence.
" Naething but hinds an' such stuff," said Evan. " They're feedin' forrat, an' we'll give them time. Mr. Heron, ye mustn't care to be so very near for your shot this time ; it's better have him quiet, at a hundred and twenty yards or so; but if ye have to take him running, fire well forrat, an' don't drop your muzzle."BESIDE THE DEER.
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In about half an hour the Stuff, so called, had passed on round the lower shoulder of the great hill, and the party ascended some distance higher in one of the sharply-cut ravines of its many winter torrents. Then they crept forward, well masked by the rocks, into another, and this time all glasses were unslung, and long and anxious were the studies through them. Hugh had just assured himself, to his delight, that he really saw deer in their natural state, himself for himself, and through his own glass without being directed, when the forester touched him, and spoke in a hoarse whisper. It was more agitating to Hugh than if he had bawled into his ear; but better adapted to the chase.
" Only two small heads in yon near lot," he said, " an' what's worse, there's more above them ; but look down the line of yon burn, sir—there's a little green where it nears the bog-ground—and carry your eye a little forrat among the black channels, an' tell me, do ye see a gray stone with a gran* purple tuft of heather on top, and look below that, an' tell me, can ye see aught ?"
Hugh took the large " prospect" with the " power " on, and after some fumbling to get his exact focus, asked what were yon sticks, like a withered branch in the burn ?"
" Eh, ye have the eye for'm—he's yonder, rolling344
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
and sinkin' himself in th' moss. He'll be in na hurry, but how we'll get in on him I canna just say ; it may be doon this burn, she runs up towards him ; but who's to say what's between us ? There's a' the ground to spy."
So first they marked a big stone just above where he lay, and then another in a line with it below ; then they allowed themselves fifteen minutes to crawl to the point where the steep banks of the burn in which they lay turned off, on a more even level, among the deep heather of the table-land of the hill shoulder, and left Duncan to watch the horns till then. Before they had inspected all the lower ground he came down to report "all right;" and at that momenta blue hare—under special commission from the Evil One, as they always are—thought proper to come out of a hole on the scree above them, and to sit up contemplating them. They were " locked in "—could not move back or forward—till Duncan, who was a little apart, put his head up decidedly for an instant and then subsided, when the timid nuisance popped back again.
They moved on as a sharp scud of rain began to fall, luckily without mist. It worked into their hooded necks ; and made the moss and heather inject rather more water into their breasts as they crawled. How one's back does ache in a long prostration of theBESIDE THE DEER.
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kind; how one's knees smart, and how one's buttons come off, and how the little stumps of heather prod into the soft side of one's thumbs ! They had to make a long detour, and come back lower down, so as to come in behind the stag, or on his quarter, unseen of his watchful harem ; and they wound and sucked about in the black channels till Hugh had no more notion where he was than the babe unborn, whose position he began temporarily to envy. At last they stopped, in what seemed to be the head-pool of a small branch of the burn, below a mound of heather.
" Noo tak' your breath an' your rifle," quoth Evan. " We're about a hundred and twenty yards, an' I daurna go nearer for thae hinds forenenst. Sit ye here in the heather. Can ye get yer rifle up canny ? —no yet—see, yon's the craig. He ought to give ye his side as he rises, and we'll try and pit him up vary quiet, but that's the best we can do. Yon's his horns, left side the gray stone. Be a man now—some gentlemen kill awkward shots the best."
Hugh sat well up in the heather and crossed his legs, and rested his left elbow inside his knee, that hand grasping the barrel of his rifle. He was half dead with crawling, drenching, and excitement, and effectually screwed up to the mark. The forester dropped a stone with a splash into the burn. Up rose346
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
a dun mass like a bullock, at a long hundred yards, and he caught both sights for one steady moment on its centre. Crack !—a faint " tchack," and he's gone.
" Load again quick and come on—ye5re ready ? Keep low down now—low—rin, Duncan, get to him wi' Marmion. Mind ye don't loose him though, till ye're past the scent o' the large lot. Eigh then, look to yon hinds an' two more good heads, they havena seen us yet."
It was wonderful how many deer seemed to come in sight at once, but they did not scamper off in panic. The shot had brought them all up, but they wanted to know more before they went right away. Groups formed and broke up, crossing and recrossing in steady retreat; and Duncan kept back the hound. " Creep up here, sir," said Evan, on the top of a knoll, after a sharp run. " We'll let the herd get on, an' he'll be comin' up in sight if he caan."
" Did I hit him then ?" interjected Hugh.
" Haird, in the middle of him ; and yon small bullet hits fell. Eh mon, there he jump'd out of thae hags that minute. Come forrat now, he can win down hill awhile yet."
Downwards they ran best pace, and Duncan, once clear of the herd, made a cast with Marmion, who presently gave a loud challenge, and rushed away full speed. Down a steep rift—Hugh bolted the lock of his rifle, luckily in time to save accidentsBESIDE THE DEER.
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in a pretty heavy tumble in his wild career; but they got a view of the hound at the main burn, and saw him cross it without a check and take up the scent on the farther side. Then as he faced the hill on the other side he slackened and made a turn and a short cast, gave another loud clear bay, and bore away to his right, avoiding the steep.
" Eh, all right, he canna take the brae ; cum on, sir, we'll see him soon again—give Duncan the goon —ye gang wi' rare lang strides, but it's a long run— eigh, look yonder."
He pointed to a broad red splash, like a cupful of blood, on one of the scaurs near the burn. A minute after they heard the bay loud and clear through its roaring. They crossed and panted along its side—turned over a rib of the hill—slackened to a walk and quickened again as they saw the hound dive into the broken ground by a small steep tributary, and once again his deep voice broke out in a yell, and went on calling to them. All reeling and gasping, Hugh pegged on with Duncan along the small burn, till they came to one of the deep dens in its narrow course. Evan was in front, and an awful row was going on in the little pool below. The stag had set his back to a rock, and Marmion couldn't get in at his throat, but was satisfied to keep him there and give notice. He was weak and reeling, but knew well his more dangerous enemies were behind, and even as Hugh348
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
held the rifle on him above, rather afraid of killing the dog-, he made a rush forward, Marmion just dodging the sweep of his horns, and tried to rise to the steep bank and scramble out; in which position Hugh shot him right through the black streak on his backbone. He collapsed backwards quite gone, and unconscious of the skian-dubh, or of the torrent of his vanished life.
" There's little blood left in him," quoth Evan ; "what a hole yon bullet makes."
He got below the dead stag in the narrow pool, and, as he heaved at his near shoulder, Hugh recovered strength to lift the off, and Duncan put all his force on astern. It was all they could do to drag the great beast out on the heather. The rain had thickened all the time, and before the gralloch was over it changed to piercing hail, and the western trumpets blew as wild a challenge as ever was heard in the Outer Isles.
" It's two hours," said Evan ; " you've earned your lunch, Mr. Heron. We'll leave him here with some divot o'er him, and eat a bit yonder in the long heather below yon rocks above Loch Ruadh. It's high up, but we'll be well sheltered, an' have a good spy from there, av' ever it clears."
They crept up the southern or more sheltered side of the glen, nearly blown off their feet by the furious gusts. Hugh had faced colder wind, but none so violent.BESIDE THE DEER.
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Presently there was an intense sustained blast, which blew Duncan's gray bonnet into mid-air, till it fell forty or fifty yards below. Hugh's eyes followed the squall as it rushed down upon the small lake beneath. What he saw I saw myself in 1856 in the same part of the world ; but I never would have written it here if I had not seen the same thing on record, in " Reminiscences of the Lews." For the whole body of water in the lake rose in one white upward cataract up the steep hillside twenty—thirty—forty feet; it seemed as if the whole loch would empty itself over one thousand feet of ridge ; and then fell roaring back again. It gave one quite a new idea of the Power of the Air.
" Saw ye that ? " said Duncan, returning with his bonnet. " It's no every day like yon, and no everybody that's seen't. I think o' the Red Sea, an' the michty strong West Wind. Ye'll believe what we say by the fire at e'en now, won't ye, Mr. Heron ?"
" I shall always believe you every word, Evan ; but how about lunch ? I feel very whirly inside, and time's getting on."
" Well, it cam' on sudden, an' it may clear—an* we canna see them. Can ye do with hard eggs an* cheese, an' whisky an' water? A spring's near by. Ye should have a broad belt, an' draw it tight and tighter, an' ye'll no be so faint then."35°
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
They ate and drank and smoked their pipes, conversing chiefly about the shot and the run, and the head and fat and haunches and puddings of their quarry. At length the last half-frozen drops came rattling through their sheltered nook, as the wind shifted slightly and dropped ; and the heavy, capricious storm-cloud gathered fold on fold, all blue to leeward in its massy perspectives, and bright on its nearer edges, where the sun caught them once more. A dark veil rose to seaward, and melted, and was not; and the northern hills of Skye and distant peaks of Harris, and the Long Island to the Butt of Lews, appeared upon a restless silver sea, a region very far away and all impalpable. They had all nestled and smoked and steamed together; and the dog had done his humble duty in keeping their feet warm, so they were not chilled, though rather wet; but it was three o'clock, and no deer in sight.
" Are ye very keen for anither shot, sir ?" said Evan thoughtfully. " I canna think yon herd '11 go far—they '11 sure stop in our ground for his Lordship, to-morrow."
" I've got a good one out of them, Evan ; we'll let them be, if you like. Enough's as good as a feast."
"Well," said the forester, much relieved, "ye'll have a good chance o' another hart, if we go rightBESIDE THE DEER.
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to the top o' Cairn Derig More, an' ye'll see all our southern ground. It's a good tramp, but ye're no one of the soft ones, an' it's best for all."
Hugh agreed willingly enough—he was no butcher, and thought enough had been done for honour; and the extraordinary beauty and wildness of Ross-shire scenery under rich changing lights, might well satisfy him. They rounded the shoulder of the Boar's Head, and crossed a long ridge to gain the side of the higher Cairn Derig More; but by the time they reached its highest corrie, long shadows were creeping up from the glens. They came out on desolate slopes of clinking stones and yellow mosses, with the grand effect of height which an isolated peak always gives; and scrambling along a narrow neck, they slowly mounted the last rocks to the Cairn. The pink felspar granite began to shine with a bright red as they mounted, and its hard boulders rocked and scraped, and seemed to murmur quietly, one stone to another, as they felt once more the strong weary tread of hunters. Blue hares, fast whitening like the winter mountains, peeped and vanished here and there ; and the hoarse reviling of a great raven came fitfully up from below. As they reached the highest cairn, the fainter reds of the granite all glowed with powerful crimson, and the shadows in the glens grew blue and misty, and a fire of rejoicing seemed to spring from352
HUGH HERON, Ch. Ch.
peak to peak of the highest hills ; and their very tread seemed to be on red and gold. Loveliest of all, a single ptarmigan, in his winter dress of exceeding white, now rosed with living fire, got up carelessly-close to their feet, and sailed away into the sunset behind the cairn. There was a strong steady evening wind, its fierceness gone ; and the last light dreamed over lakes and seas and isles and capes, far away to the Lews, and the wild shores of the Outer Benbecula.
" Is it worth comin' ?" said Evan quietly, looking with approval at Hugh's dreamy face of delight, which nodded, and said " Rather, Evan," and no more.
They sat down close together by the cairn, and the younger man gazed wide ; as all do who are capable of admiration, when they see a sight which they know will be one of the permanent possessions of their souls. The foresters pointed out islands and peaks all round the compass, till the lovely light was gone,, and gray night gathered chill about them—and Hugh rose with a shiver and a sigh.
" How far is't to t' bothy, Evan ?"
" Fully an hoor; let's gang forrat."
And they began their clattering descent—easy enough for practised limbs, but one which might have tried a stranger's nerve and tread, and would have grieved the heart and shins of one of the many eldersBESIDE THE DEER.
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who feel their feet heavier and less certain than of old. " Oh dear Us," as Christopher North says—we have done what was permitted us in our day, sudavimus et alsimus, after our fashion—it isn't that we are so very bad, but our wind isn't what it was, and we tread heavy, and fall heavier. Could not we really take time, and attend to it, and get into thorough condition, and be as good as ever we (fancied we) were ? Echo of all our juniors answers, with Artemus Ward, " Skacely." It is pre-eminently down-hill, late in the day, that one feels it—however, none of the present three had any cause to reflect on decay, their time not being come ; and with the support of a final hard egg and biscuit, they sped fast down one shingly slope after another till they came to the region of rough heather.
The hunter's moon was rising clear and frosty as they struck the head of the long Glendulachan, in whose upper " narrows " stood their bothy of rest.
All at once Hugh gave a jump. He had never heard a hart roar before; and now it pleased a goodish beast, high on the brae above, to take up his parable in general terms, with an echo that seemed to go all round the mountains and out to sea besides. Like the chief of Clan Alpine, "he was answered from the hill." They saw the gaunt outline of one of the performers on an opposite beallach against the light, with tucked-up haunches, and shaggy, elk-like
2 A354
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
neck outstretched, and royal antlers, like a blasted branch against the level streaks of sunset; and Hugh thought of Herne the Hunter, and Falkenburgh, and all uncanny phantoms of the chase he had ever read of. Then he began to doze as he walked, and hit his toe against a big stone going down-hill, which startled him to convulsive life; and he was getting very tired, and feeling as hollow internally as lovers' vows, when the "star of the glen" seemed to rise suddenly just at hand. It was the glowing kitchen-window of the welcome bothy; and a satellite, in the shape of a boy with a lantern, was ready to guide them over the stones to the door; where Lanercost stood holding forth an imperial quart of Bass's ale in pewter.
" I've brought up some letters for you, young man," he said. " Ladies' hands ; two of them, at least. They can't let you alone."
" Why, one's my mother ; and the other—coronet —why, Gertrude Wharfedale ; how do I come by the honour ? Invitation—meet Cawthorne at Loch Hourn, October ioth ; well—I never--"
" Wanted you to stay here to the end with me ; but better go and see her. By-the-way, I'm to call there on my way home, for a hare-drive. Cawthorne's always drawing there; his wife's very thick with the Countess, and there's—ah yes, to be sure, I see,"BESIDE THE DEER.
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said little Lord Lanercost, chiefly to himself, and wagging his head reflectively. " Stay till then, anyhow, Heron; I can't spare you to anybody else. But now go and get dry riggin', and then dinner."
2 A 2CHAPTER XVII.
CRAIG HOURN.
" Oh here's a boat coming out from Kyle Haken," said Grace to Charles Cawthorne, on the poop-deck of the Clansman. All the main-deck was crowded with odoriferous sheep on the way to Falkirk Tryst. " How they do grind against that violent tide. Oh, I wish I could row like that."
" What a mess it would make of your hands, Grace; and really I want them for St. Cecilia's ; May's are getting too plump."
" I wonder, with all she has to do." " It's good for her; much better than ' some mischief still,' I'm sure."
" Oh, now I see why the colliers' wives call their husbands their—you know—oh, they'll be swamped ! " They were not, however ; and in a minute more her alarm changed its character, and became a strange leaping feeling she could not understand ;CRAIG BOURN.
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for Hugh Heron cast back his stalking-hood, in the stern-sheets of the little boat; left his luggage and a brace of black setters to his man, and swung himself on deck, with two stags' heads and his pet guncase. She saw how he cast quick searching eyes about him—and then hers met his ; and this time fatally. The lips are nothing to the eyes, and the eyes prepared are nothing to the eyes unconscious. We can often hold our tongues ; but only members of the Ancient Hebdomadal Board can boast the power of " purposely divesting their countenances of any kind of expression." Neither of these two knew what they expressed, or how they felt: to both the thought came, unformed and wordless—" Lo, I have waited long—or long enough." Neither had yielded to deliberate hope or intention, thought or plan ; to anything beyond day-dream; but in this instance day-dream became living reality, and two met alive as mutual ideals. So she thought and told him in after days, and he told her. He always remembered her brown hat with half a blackcock's tail, and her gray ulster, and black braids, and eyes ; and she told him how the shepherds and gillies seemed to know him, and he looked as strong and hard as any of them—and, somehow, as tender as the sheep, and not quite so foolish. It was all laid to the Countess of Wharfedale, of course ; and she was quite ready to358
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
take it off May's shoulders. She said she was very happy herself, and meant to go in for the superior department of match-making,—between people who cared for each other. She knew all the Herons, and Rokebys, and Ingelrams. She had about ascertained the present state of things by cross-examining May. " And as to being engaged to a man you haven't seen since you were a baby, my dear, it depends entirely on whether you like him or not, or anybody else more or not" May said very little, facing a dim unpleasant prospect of being held accountable for the whole thing. She could not stop Hugh, and would not; and she could not help him either, if she would. To say anything would be to urge him without guidance. It was enough, and too much, that he knew in his heart that she was all on his side; and as to Charles, he only said, "Laissez-faire." In fact, the Highland affair was coming to a head—as the determining junctures of life do come, like winds or currents—in a way of its own. It was sadly too little expected by Sir Ralph Rokeby; to whom his daughter's engagement was an affair of the house, needing no hurry, but to come in due time of itself. Like many old men and women, he could not understand the growth and changes of his juniors; or master the fact, that boys and girls become men and women in from fifteen to twenty years. To him GraceCRAIG HO URN.
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was still trotting about in a pinny, with her hair plaited in tails; and as for Ingelram, it seemed as if for all the years he had only been sowing his wild oats as a proper preparation for marrying her. Sir Ralph never thought of the highly uncertain kind of crops produced by that kind of culture, in most parts of the world ; and felt, like other people, as if everybody else must be as fond of his pet plan as he himself. Perhaps it was increasing weakness; but now he seemed to fear his own irritability. He was much more patient in minor matters, and would not even think himself ill; but Lady Heron, and others who knew him, thought with anxious hearts that he held on too strongly to the wish to see Grace at Malham Priors; and that the failure of that hope, if it did fail, might shake him dangerously.
" It's ambition, and greediness, and overreaching, is it ?" he said once, half to himself. " Do I want to take her big house and pin-money with me, where I'm going ? and isn't she good enough for that, or aught else?"
No one liked to enlarge on the importance of her husband's being quite good enough for her.
Anyhow, Hugh strode up to Grace, and took her hand and wouldn't drop it—not for ever so long. It made little pulls to get away from his, and he went on volubly, and made his greeting as long as possible36°
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
on purpose; and it is surmised that the little pulls only occasioned little extra pressures ; until at last they seemed to be almost resigned, and the imprisoned member only got free when he took her to her seat \ and, perhaps, not quite then. They sat together all day. Charley did not take much notice; he was thinking of May, who was to reclaim him that evening at Craig Hourn, the Wharfedales' Western hold. Two years with her had by no means diminished the influence of the sentimental side of
his character-
("Oh Charley," said May innocently, "why didn't you mention that before ? Now don't pinch—personal violence is no reply.")
-of his character (went on Charles with great
calm); nor taken the dash of recklessness out of it either; so he sloped about on the narrow deck, and smoked and talked high art, and even addressed his companions as "you two;" and their hearts beat, though their conversation was strictly general. But they got on, and, what is worse, they went on. Hugh produced some heron's plumes and guillemot's, wings, and recommended the latter for her stalking-hat. They went over her sketch-book, and Hugh's and Charles's. They had a row about knitting,. Hugh being Yorkshireman enough to be skilled in it after the manner of his country, whereas Grace was aCRAIG HO URN.
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proficient in the German style, where you hold the wool in your left hand instead of your right. They quoted poetry like mad, and discussed the rights of women. Hugh prospectively resigned the interests of his country to a female Parliament; but still apprehended serious consequences if anybody should ever let loose a dozen beetles, and the same number of wopses, in the atmosphere or on the floor of that House. And when they got to their landing-place, the little rough pier in wild Loch Hourn, Hugh left his setters to his man, young Jagger, son of old Jagger of Red Scaurs, and never thought of his stags' heads or express rifle; so that everybody thought he had gone off his head. A break and large cart were waiting for them, the former containing two ladies, dark and fair, in gray suits—very masculine Norfolk tunics and skirts—both of whom kissed Grace, and one of them Charles. (" I suppose I did," said May ; " but you've mentioned that ceremony ever so often.")
"We've room for any dressing-cases or guns in here," said Lady Wharfedale to the gentlemen— "hand-bags or anything small in fact, if you don't mind walking uphill a little first. Very grand, you know, just like Glencoe. May and I are rather lazy, and Grace is no great weight to take with us. You're sure you have everything landed ? "36 2
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
They walked up the steep well-made road, like an ascent on the St. Gothard; first running on the talus of a great bygone river of other days, then cut in the rock beside its bed. It wound far above the degenerate torrent, too wild for a salmon-river, which eddied and roared away to Loch Hourn below. They had another river, pretty early and late, with a few really good casts, which gave them a fair share of sport; but the real attraction of the place was in the harder paths of the chase. Deerstalking, and wild autumn shooting-days between grouse and early woodcocks ; sea-otter hunts, and the pursuit of old outlying stags with ideally big heads, were the special tastes of Wharfedale and his nearest friends. To the painter, the place never failed in interest; for the wildest storm or the gloomiest gray of mist only made the gorges and dens of the lower glen more imposing; while snow, or even hail, at once gave the high granite ridges much of the charm of Swiss scenery. It is extraordinary how limited the eye of man is, as to its judgment of scale. One mountain looks as big as another, if it has the associations of height which deep snow always gives. It is not till you have looked up a long Alpine valley, Chamounix perhaps or Zermatt, and seen the square miles of tall pines bear the same proportion to a Swiss mountain as acres of heather to a Highland hillside, that you understand the difference of scale; and then thoughCRAIG HO URN.
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you apprehend it, I doubt if, properly speaking, you see it. They rose out of the gorge at last, and had a more extended view of many hill-tops towards the sea :
Where the great peaks look abroad over Skye to the westernmost
islands,
Visibly whitening at morn to darken at noon in the shining.
Gray clouds were flitting over the face of the sun, and a chilly breath of wind swept up the pass with them, an early breath of autumn. The little black lochan halfway home was partly ruffled and partly still; with solemn reflection cut short by blue ripple, like an old man's dreams by girlish laughter. The men walked by the break chatting admiration, and thinking of dinner and the deer. They got in, as the glen widened to sweeping lines of moorland, varied by great boulders, birches and doddered pines, with here and there the western ash-trees in sheltered spots. A gray wild kitten, not half-grown, crossed the road just before them, on mischief intent. Charles pointed out some deer on a high brae-face, and the sun shone out again, as they made a turn round a large roadside rock, and saw Craig Hourn and its lake a furlong before them.
It was a large rough stone house, built for strength and warmth in a bay of pasture-land, well above the lake, and screened from the east by a large steep swell364
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
of the moor, clad with well-preserved birch wood, and now red-and-gold bracken. There were three sides of a quadrangle, opening down-hill, with stables and kennel a little apart to the west. All beside and below it was garden, terraced all down the hill; gay with every flower that will grow in peat, and every kind of experimental vegetable which the Countess could think of as good for the natives. They laughed at her, and ate her patent cabbages and new-fangled potatoes, and let her stock their kailyards periodically, and couldn't be got to understand the virtues of muck, on which she was wont to discourse with much feeling. But they were rather fond of her ; and there was little deer-poaching, and they left her a fair quantity of trout in the lochs and rivers, and the keepers and watchers had the country with them, and the shepherds did not tread promiscuously in grouse-nests ; nor did the children systematically collect the eggs. And as ministers, schoolmasters, and farmers were entertained like prodigals, and personally flirted with, to the full extent of the great lady's remarkable powers, her reign was a golden one, and Lord Wharfedale was quite an autocrat—even exercising an influence in the matter of heather-burning.
It is delightfully dangerous, no doubt, to dwell with a rather charming damsel in an English country-house. But even then, if you were both transportedCRAIG HO URN.
to a Highland shooting-lodge, you would probably find it much worse—or better. As for Grace and Hugh, they could not help themselves any more, and in fact gave the thing up ; at least when they met, which was not quite so often as may be supposed. I think it isn't the being always together that does the mischief. It is the having your mind a perfect blank, and always being in the happiest tone of digestion and exercise. It is being on the hill four or five days a week, without thought, except about what the dogs are doing, or the deer ; so that you have long spaces of time, during which that last look (at night, when you gave her her candle, or worse still if she got up early and made breakfast, and perhaps looked after you as you took the hill, with one long hand shading her eyes) keeps operating on your affections. Those things work and irritate away at what a man calls his heart, just like the gastric juices on what he calls his stomach ; and they produce an analogous hunger. And for the first three days of his visit Hugh was kept ravenous accordingly, and did not know how keen they were making him. First he had a long day's work, to get as many grouse as possible, for house and sending away ; then a wild wet day's stalking, which would have been blank, but for a nice yell hind he shot right through the head at a hundred yards; to the edification of Hector Macrae, the keeper, who366
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
gave him such a "lounder" on the back, as Hugh was within an ace of returning between the eyes. Then the third day the whole party worked out some of the western woods and moors, and got a beautiful mixed bag—roe, black game, and five couple of cocks, beside hare, grouse, and a few snipe and teal. But the wind changed towards evening, again for storm, and sighed up the seaward glens. They could see far over in Skye, where the hills were glazed with frozen hail. Below them the Atlantic ground-swell rolled up the deep loch, and sucked and swept along, and thundered in heavy culmination on the pink granite coast. Birds got up and were put down ; and there was competition between England and the Gael, the chiefs of Talisker and Clan Chattan being guests, with Charles and Hugh; the latter of whom killed one cock and an owl, and was very jealous of the Highlanders, who knew better where to look for the welcome and long-billed strangers on the moors. The night grew wild,, as they saw the star of the glen, as Gael call the lights of home, shining below them from the last beallach.
" You got two cocks, didn't you, Heron ? " said the Earl, as they turned into the upper lodge woods by a little storm-worn wicket.
" No, only one ; the other was an owl. You won't make me eat him, with his trail, I trust."CRAIG HO URN.
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"As you like; but Miss Rokeby was wishing for an owl-screen, and I had him picked up carefully."
" Oh, capital! how good of you ! " said Hugh ; ecstatically; and his host went on coolly: " You'll have time to offer your spoils to-morrow, by the feel of the night—it will be too rough even for deer— won't mind a day or two's rest, I daresay. You've met Miss Rokeby before, haven't you ?"
" Oh yes ; picked her up once out hunting."
" I remember; didn't you both get hurt ? Some say you were the worst of the two—and I thought her name made you catch your breath a little."
" Per-waps it might," avowed our hero, nothing daunted. " I twisted my thigh, and was laid up for a week."
" I say, it wouldn't be bad to have a little accident now," said his inquisitor. "Let me shove you over the bank on top of Clan Chattan," and he all but suited the action to the word ; but Hugh caught him by the waist like a vice, and wouldn't go. " Let go, you Craven varmint; young fellows have no pluck or enterprise in them now; great mind you shan't take her in to dinner. Let go now. Pax—the cartridges ain't out of our guns." And they all got home, ducked by the rain and the wild spray of the lake, which was all a sheet of foam at its leeward end.
Hugh nevertheless found Grace assigned to him368
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
at dinner ; and, as she demurely observed, it was very nice to have Mrs. Cawthorne on their side of the long oak table. Poor May had said nothing, but her great troubled eyes were terrible sometimes, and once she had observed to Grace, not without a kiss, that, oh dear her, she didn't know what to do. So she was not sorry to sit on the same side with whatever mischief might be going on, and contemplate Charley opposite; who returned the compliment, and told her he felt the righteous self-applause of Jack Horner when he looked at her.
" How very nice eating is," Grace began ; " I did want my dinner so, you can't think."
" So did I; but I want to talk too."
" You may amuse me, of course."
" Don't miss these grouse-gizzard patties."
" I'm afraid you are rather gourmand: I didn't know them even by name."
" Haven't you gone through the Departmental Ladies' Course of Cookery ? "
" No ; ought I ?"
" Yes, of course; and Cawthorne ought to paint you in a brown-holland pinny. Vol-au-vent ?"
" No, thank you ; it's injustice to the grouse."
" Quite right; let's both go in at the haunch ; you're a hunter like the rest of us/'
" As all our fathers were," said Grace ; " but isn'tCRAIG HO URN.
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it cruel after all ? I'm told the vivisectors say they have just as good sport, and are more humane."
" Well, at all events we eat our venison—take some currant jelly—and they don't eat their dissected dogs : should like to make them."
" Don't let's trifle with serious matters like our appetites now," said Wharfedale, pausing from his labours at the haunch. "This fellow had fourteen points, by-the-way. Has Lanercost got many fine heads this season, Heron ?"
" Seven royals, all large ; and there was one great eight-pointer, with very wide horns, and very fat ; I think he was the biggest of all."
" He was your first stag, wasn't he ? " said Grace rather maliciously.
"Yes: I told you in confidence, you know," said Hugh ; and she put out her lip, and attacked her other neighbour about salmon fishing. What a dry season it had been till now; so very wet in England, too, things always went wrong. He had killed a fourteen-pounder to-day, fresh run? Those were his steaks, she supposed. So nice to live on game; quite Indian; she felt like a kind of squaw. He mustn't laugh at her. He was grim old Sir Murdoch Talisker, of the Red Isle, and if you can fancy a.n unforsaken merman
2 B37°
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
made much of by a nymph on yellow-
Where the spent lights quiver and gleam, Where the salt weed sways in the stream, Where the sea-beasts all around Feed in the ooze of their pasture-ground ; Where great whales come sailing by, Sail and sail with unshut eye, Round the world for ever and aye—
that was just what he looked and felt like. Grace said they had taught her to cast in Yorkshire, and' she caught a salmon once that weighed twelve pounds, but she didn't like seeing him gaffed. Didn't she think a good day, and seeing it a dozen times, would make her enjoy that more ?—Not the least. Of course she ate salmon ?—that was quite another thing ; men ought to do all the killing for us. Foxhunting and all ?—Well, she didn't see why one shouldn't ride after hounds. Dangerous for oneself? —Not the least, only very awkward people ever hurt themselves ; did they, Mr. Heron ? Accidents would
happen, and the consequences were--Nonsense, at
least she didn't believe it. Mrs. Cawthorne had been nearly killed once, and was married six months after ? Well, she looked wonderful, you know, considering, and people couldn't help the great calamities of life. There was Lady Wharfedale putting on her gloves— when one begins with one's gloves one can't talk any
being sands-CRAIG HO URN.
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more, because one's going directly. And in fact the ladies departed, and the sad survivors began at the claret as if they wanted a good deal of support under the circumstances. Hugh was accused of back-handing, and came off but lamely, as he would not say anything to incriminate old Talisker, who was the real offender. Then there was a regular horse-and-dog talk, or rather gun-and-dog, as horses are unfrequent and uninteresting in the West Highlands. If this wind held, the Glengarry deer would feed in over the march. At least they'd no wire-fencing this way, or enclosing forests, like the unearthly tailors who had got hold of half Inverness-shire. So said the Captain, and confirmed Talisker's conjecture, that the London gentlemen were a bit short-winded, being pairtly on the Stock Exchange, and pairtly engaged in making something to drink. Who had made the bag to-day ? Clan Chattan best, then Wharfedale ; Cawthorne had been dreamy and lazy, and Hugh hadn't had so much shooting, and had been tired all day. What business had he to be tired at his age ?—Had been shooting five days a week for the last seven weeks, he said. "And drinkin' at night?" asked Talisker. Not a bit, on his honour, only a tumbler, after dinner> and another cold at bed-time. Well, his setters had done well—capital notion the dog had of getting birds between you and him—ranged wide too, for
2 B 2372
HUGH HERON, CH. Cii.
English dogs, but they'd have to gallop harder on these hills—found two or three cocks well—they and the deer would be all now, except a beat for hares next week, and some ptarmigan on Ben Screel. Cawthorne thought of nothing but his painting, and wouldn't tramp—why, he'd been out all day ever since Monday, and left the countess's portrait to finish itself.— Gammon, he could do it at Ravensgill.—Not a bit, you can't do without the real thing before you. The Earl must say he considered Gertrude a real thing enough, no imposition attempted that he knew of. Pooh, of course Charles meant the landscape background—well, he must get it done to-morrow, for all the guns would be wanted on Saturday—'there was the piano, and no end of coffee in the hall.
Hugh was meandering up to Grace when Talisker asked her to sing him a Yorkshire song she had spoken of, and she looked to him and asked if he remembered " Meet meh by t' fowd ?" It was by chance, but their eyes leaped at each other. However, she went at once to the piano, and was pleased that he made room for the old chief at her side. Then she ran her rapid fingers over the keys, and the words of the song through her mind, and they made her tremble horribly. What had she done, to look at
Hugh ? and he just as quick as herself, and so--
what was it ? She went wrong in her prelude, butCRAIG HO URN.
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nobody caught it. There was no escape; to break down would be worst of all. Break down!—scarcely that—and she began with her full low murmur of rich mezzo-soprano ; and all the ballad-singer rose within, and filled her from the arrow in her hair to her white brodequins before she had got through the first verse.
" Meet meh by t' fowd at the milkin' time, When the summer sky is gowd, at the milkin' time ; When the fog is slant wiv dew, An' the clocks go whurring through The wickets and the boughs ov the owmerrin' yew.
Weel ye know the hour of the milkin' time— The girt bell sounds fro't' tower at the milkin' time ; But as gowd soon turns to gray, An' ah cannot hev delay, Dunnot linger be the way at the milkin' time.
Ye'll find a- lass 'att's true at the milkin' time. Shoo thinks of nane but you at the milkin' time : But my fadder's gettin' owd, An' ar's gien a bit to sccwd, When ah' owr lang at the fowd, at the milkin' time.
Happen ye're afeard at the milkin' time ; Mebbe loike ye've heer'd at the milkin' time How the green-folk shak' their feet When t' moon on Hee-side's breet, And it chances so to meet at the milkin' time.
There's yan, an' he knaws weel when it's milkin' time ; He'll face the varra de'il at the milkin' time : He'd not be yan to wait, Tho' a Bargest was at t' gate, If the word—ah'd nobbut say't—at the milkin' time."374
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
Grace sang brilliantly—and perhaps there was something new in her voice, she fancied—at all events, there was eager applause, and old Talisker looked at her with a gray light in his eyes, and said "Beannaicht Dia" in his beard. Hugh made a successful dart after her gloves and fan, and gave them her in silence; but his hand touched hers trembling, and the fan fell, and had to be picked up again. Everybody asked her to go on, but she said she wanted her tea; and May had had hers, and gave her her place. Lady Wharfedale told May her husband had confessed that she had got a new old ballad, very moving indeed; and after a protest against sentiment, as deleterious after coffee, she sang Aytoun's strangely-neglected rendering from the Romaic, about Charon and all his gloomy train.
Some people have full-toned natures which express themselves unconsciously in accent and quality of voice, so that they are, in a sense, better known in singing than in conversation. Perhaps May was one of these; at all events, she had the reputation of taking things very coolly in most junctures of life, and being, not exactly unsympathising, but rather more practical than anything else. But now she was full of her song, and when she came to the end, where the grim ferryman gives his reasons forCRAIG HO URN.
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allowing no halt, by the well-side, to his harried troop of Shades—
"The mothers coming to the spring would know the babes they bore,
The wives would clasp their husbands, nor could I part them more "—
she laid a piteous emphasis on the word "could," which, though entirely unsuited to Charon, had a decided effect on the nerves of her audience.
" Oh May, how can you ?" said Lady Wharfedale, stooping over her shoulder, and mingling their black and gold; " cest navrant." And so it was. Then they had a great talk about poetry and its musical side— whether it wasn't better when you sung to have nonsense to sing, because you could attend to your voice then ; or if sense might not be better, because then you could let your voice alone. They had some illustrations as they went on, of which it is only on record that "A wet sheet and a flowing sea" was produced as the best song and the worst nonsense then accessible to memory; only Clan Chattan and May brought up so many of Scott's ballads that the sense side was prevailing. But Grace felt tired, and strayed away while the others were in full discussion, into a small octagonal boudoir in a side turret. She drew back the window-curtains a moment. It was a little pink376
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
nest, whence she looked out from a soft glow of warmth on the alternate gloom and whiteness of the lake, now rolling dark and pale under the storm on the other side the house—a night when watery moonlight, and darkness that maybe felt, come and go as in flight and contest ; with squalls such as are in use on the west coast. Music had made her pensive, and she sat down in a deep easy-chair by the peat fire of the little sanctum, which was a step or two above the large pink drawing-room, and separated from it by a door and an ample wadded curtain.
Grace sat there a minute or two herself, in some pale carnation-and-cream silk raiment, suitable to her complexion, and very charming altogether. She did not know what changes were come or coming, but felt mastered and possessed by something ; she wished to be home again, and safe in her old life, so much that was new seemed to have come to her at once. Could things be what they had been, and should she ever go back to the old days and ways ? Did she really wish it ? There was a movement of the portiere, and Hugh came in rather shyly, and dropped it behind him ; which made her start all the more.
" Why, what do you come in here for ?"
" Motives of rational curiosity—and Til go if you like," he said ; " but I've thought of such a quotation from Tennyson, now I see you sit here. They're allCRAIG HO URN.
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on to him at the piano—let me say a bit to you now." And Hugh laid a sort of emphasis on the last words, and his eyes looked rather bright.
"Well," said Grace dreamily, not exactly deliberating, but lost for all that; and he sat down on the floor by her, and repeated the first few lines of the " Recollections of the Arabian Nights," and the sweet dream calmed her for awhile. She hardly saw him, only aware of the last six weeks' life, which all seemed crowded into glittering confusion of joy and fear, and apprehension of coming evil, and vague faint self-reproach, and the " How can I help it ?" which makes women half-reckless, men wholly so. He dropped a great deal of it, and began again :
" Then stole I up, and trancedly-Gazed on the Persian girl alone, Serene with argent-lidded eyes Amorous, and lashes like to rays Of darkness, and a brow of pearl Tressed with redolent ebony, In many a dark delicious curl Flowing beneath her rose-hued zone, The sweetest ....
" I mustn't go on," he said, " because then it gets rather complimentary, and I know you don't like being praised."
" Is what you've said to mean me ? It might do for any other dark girl."378
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
Grace thought she said this rather coldly, and it only shows the amount of self-deceit of which some women are capable.
" No, it can't well be anybody else; there is only one sweetest lady of the time, well worthy, and so on— Oh Grace, my darling, there never can be anybody like you. Don't send me away," said Hugh, trembling and bending his brows against her hand, as he pressed it over his eyes and bent his high crest down upon her knee.
It had come, all suddenly, as such things always do. She should have checked him, she might have got out of the way, she oughtn't to have looked at him when she sung, she oughtn't to have let him say any poetry to her; it was so wrong to have let him enteir into her mood till they had only one soul for the time. But he had altogether stolen within her guard, and there he was, kneeling and almost lying at her feet; he her first love, and she his. And all the world on the other side the curtain could not prevent an utter ecstasy coming over her. She leant down, and as he raised his head she put her cheek a moment against his. They drew a deep breath so, and jumped up, and she was in his grasp a moment and no more; but he held her close, just so that she could feel wrapt round and lost in his mighty arms, and against the deep breast and beatingCRAIG HO URN.
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heart. They were mindful of the rest of the party, and she pushed him away, in a creditably short time at least.
" I don't know what we've done," she said. " Do go away now, I can't bear anything more. Oh, do be good to me—or let me go—there's somebody near the curtain."
He let her go, only holding her hand to his lips one silent moment of wild joy.
"Don't come to me any more, dear," she said, trembling with the word, and noticing even then that he grew pale to hear it from her, through all his tanned epidermis—(we believe it to be the best word under the circumstances, as a monosyllable ruins the sentence). He held up the curtain for her, and followed her with his eyes as she strolled away—in a tolerably unconscious manner—to old Talisker, who was sleepily looking at Charles's sketch-book. And he took note that she seemed able to beguile that longing for the smoking-room, which always prevailed over the venerable man about that period of the evening. Others, however, seemed to feel it, and soda-water and a general move ensued. Grace knew Hugh would bring her her candle, he always did; but this time, after the words " Good-night," he said " dearest," in a decided sotto voce. And she trembled again. She had not often felt helpless or nerveless,38o
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
but now his eyes drew her heart away, and gave what they took. She thought he did not look victorious or confident, he only looked at her; and how she seemed in his eyes is hard to say, for they were dim with delight. But she strayed away upstairs, and said " Good-night" to May in the gallery above, so dreamily, that that observant dame was quite sure something had happened. But she said Grace looked so tired, she was more afraid about her candle just then than anything else, and only begged her to go to sleep at once, and not set the house on fire. With this modest request the young lady complied, sinking into wearied rest, half broken by pulses of joy and alarm, and wondering at the dim sense of an anxious future which dawned on her waking.
Hugh was nearly as much upset, but he came down to the smoking-room mazed and silent. He had been wondering for some time, whether, and how hard, his conscience would smite him about his doings since he came on board the Clansman at Kyle Haken ; but now he was in a state of passionate delight, which seemed to blaze up and light both past and future. All seemed so changed : he wondered if anybody noticed anything; but people seemed exactly as usual. He had a certain graciousness of manners, in feeling younger than others, and seldom spoke, in fact, till heCRAIG HO URN.
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was spoken to. Talisker had taken to him, with the pleasure which such old men have in such lads, and soon began at him.
" Eh, ye're come to have a pipe. I thought ye'd not look at us ; and small blame t'ye either, with yon pair of black eyes to look into."
" I don't call them black, Chief," said Hugh, with an internal sense of proprietorship, which he afterwards duly analysed. " They're dark blue or gray— like a Stornoway fisher's."
" Well, ye have studied the soobject, am bound to say; an' we'll not quarrel about colours, or ladies either. Come into the fire; an' will ye go play whust, an' lose your partner's money ? "
" Oh, I hope you'll get a rubber without me—here they all come."
And down came Wharfedale and the rest of his male guests, in such wild garments, between splendour and poverty, as can hardly be seen except in the East—or perhaps at one of the academic fancy balls at Hanwell College.
Men, as I have observed them in country houses, may be divided into those who have got dressing-gowns and those who haven't. Marriage generally makes a man buy that garment. I never could make out on what principle; but circumstances frequently induce the economical hunter to vest his sturdy form382
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
—freed at midnight from the black kerseymere required of dames—in old knickerbockers and jacket of Fannich Forest, or Invereshie or Fraser-green tweed. In such raiment, not uncracked at seams, and in degraded old slippers, the work of golden girls since turned to dust, or to mothers of families, he is wont to slope down back staircases at the mirk hour, clattering amid forgotten dust-pans, and scaring late-ascending kitchen-maids. So fares he to some dark divan of recondite smoking-room ; or, better, to the kitchen-fire, genial in decay; where every point and every shot of the day receives impartial comment; where there is a Meeting of the Waters, strong and aerated—and where buttons of lower garments are but a name. There, humbled but not heart-broken, he confronts the glittering aristocrat and reckless plunger, who are always attired like (let us say) Solomon in all his glory ; in hues and textures duly described in " Maurice Dering " and elsewhere.
They were picturesque enough at Craig Hourn. There was Captain Bagot, brother to the Buffer of that ilk, rejoicing in his quarters, and clad in a sort of triumphal toga picta, which included trousers : there were Sir Jasper Creyke of Creykerne, a magnate of the Cheshire marches, and the best shot of his county ; Clan Chattan, gorgeous in red-and-white kilt and silver sporran, but with an old heather-CRAIG HO URN.
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mixture jacket instead of his velvet jerkin; Charley and Hugh modest in old clothes ; and the Earl in dittoes of great raggedness and an Arab " abba." They were too lazy to go to bed. A rubber was attempted, but Hugh's performance was better known than trusted, and Charles and he settled into a corner by the fire, leaving the others to a doubtless scientific encounter.
" Glad of a rest to-morrow, Hugh ?" said the painter. " I've got to work all day at Lady Wharfedale's portrait. I wish I'd done Grace in colour too."
"How she did look after her song," said Hugh,, wincing and fidgeting with pleasure, like a horse when his ribs are tickled.
And Charley went on : "I hear that fianctof hers has been heard of on the way home " (Hugh winced again quite the other way); " but he seems to be stopping to flirt with some singing woman—so I hear from some letter of Highclifife's. Seems to be a fine fellow, though."
" I wonder if it is a real fixture," said Hugh, as dryly as he could.
"Well, I suppose—I wonder how far you feel interested in it. You and Grace seem to be rather friends."
" Shouldn't wonder."384
HUGH HERON, CH. Cil
" I didn't know you'd get on so when we met on the coach."
"Nor I," said Hugh gravely. "But it can't be helped now."
" Can't be helped ! Why—man—what have you done ?"
" I've only said something."
"When?"
" Half-an-hour ago."
"You young- Give me a light, will you, and
be quiet a minute."
There was a pause, and they both ignited large cheroots, which took some time, as both were of the Big-endian persuasion. (I should so like to have it properly settled and formulated which is the right end of one of those fireworks to light.) Charles got gradually under way, pondering apparently over the flavour exclusively. Then he said, " I suppose you don't mean to stay here long after the hare-drive on Saturday ?"
" No, I'm going to Oxford, and then—abroad, I suppose—to meet Highclifife, and read for the History School."
" Now, will you do that ? it's just the best thing on earth; nothing could do so well now. If you've been too hasty here, going off's just right; but I say —didn't it seem to be well received ?"CRAIG HO URN.
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" Oh, it was all right and more," said Hugh, and the painter saw the love-fire in his eyes, and how they dreamed and swam, and gave up all notion of interference now, if ever he had had any.
Few and short were the words May and he said that night ; she was too tired, and he was afraid of keeping her awake. But the consultations of the next morning began early, and were, as may be supposed, multifarious. First Charles and May in bed —then Charles and May dressing—then Grace and May—rather a short explanation, attended with a good deal of embracing, kissing, and scolding of enjoyable type. Then Grace, May, and Lady Wharfedale, a longer and graver council. Branch talks went on in various directions; but the trunk line was laid down in the saddle-room, between Wharfedale, Charles, and Hugh. The Earl began with one or two questions, whose awkwardness could hardly be denied; but he didn't seem to dislike the business either.
" You see this has come off here under Gertrude's wing," he said ; " she'll have to bear the blame. I don't say there is any, really ; but the outer world may ask, says they, ' How did you come to make up to an engaged young lady, Hugh ?'"
" I can't consider her engaged ; she never spoke of herself as engaged to anybody."
2 c386
HUGH HERON,, Ch. CH.
" But you knew her father settled the whole thing years ago, when she was a child."
" Yes, but she isn't a child now. I mean, it doesn't seem the same thing to disturb a family arrangement of old date, as to make deliberate love to a girl engaged of her own will and waiting for her soldier."
" Well, that's what your enemies might say you've done. I don't really think so, but-"
" I do want to set it right to you, Wharfedale, you've been so kind ; but it's come so sudden. I couldn't help meeting Miss Rokeby—Charles, you can say how it was. On my honour I'd no notion you were in Scotland."
" Nor I, on my honour ; we just got on the same coach at Crianlarich—and I couldn't interfere—what was there to interfere with ? I knew nothing."
" She was in your charge, Charles/' said Wharfedale.
" Well, Hugh knew her already; the Countess introduced them herself at Wyngate ; they seemed to fly at each other at that ball, May thought; and she says they were in for it from the day he picked her up."
" I was, I know," said Hugh, " or I know it now."
" Well," said Wharfedale, " you've all the women with you of course ; it's always the way. There's no doubt my wife's had a hand in it; and she isn'tCRAIG HO URN.
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ashamed of herself; and Mrs. Cawthorne don't seem to be much better than her huzzy;" and he kicked Charles's shins. " I don't think anybody's quite out of it except myself; but I say, Hugh, what an impetuous beggar you are—how came you to be in such a hurry ?"
" It came upon me—she looked so—it was like the first gap in a regular stopper, sure to be the best."
Wharfedale grinned. " I'll forgive you," he said, " if you'll tell Charley and me a little how you did it." And from the roars of laughter which ascended from the saddle-room for the next ten minutes, we suppose Hugh purchased the Earl's pardon somehow.
" But I say, what's to be done ?" said Hugh at last, in academic phrase. " When is this milingtary party coming home, and what's his frame of mind ? It may be awkward if he cuts up rough. Combats and fights."
" He may not be very bad," said. Wharfedale. " He's a fighting fellow enough, and has; seen a good deal; but he may not press things. Gertrude knows something somehow; but I can't well ask her. But he can hardly have lived all 'this time away in India without a good deal to change circumstances, as to an early engagement. Sir Ralph's the thing."
" Is he such an old Buffler ?" said Hugh. " He was always kindness itself to me."
2 c 2388
HUGH HERON, Cii. Cir.
" Sir Ralph has long been an example of all the rural virtues," said Wharfedale, " and always drank very fair. He'll do well enough, I should say, if he don't what he calls go and open his Bible. There are a number of people who do that as he does ; and they always find what they want, and what their friends don't like. The Bible invariably tells them they're to have their way, and everybody else had better give it them, or the Devil will have him. Must be very jolly. I'm not so privileged as they are, I suppose. I always drop on the passages about rich men, and having to shut up, and let people off, and sackcloth and ashes."
" Much the best reading for Peers," said Charley, rather scandalised.
"Well, then, Hugh and Grace, or one of you, must write to him at once. It's my opinion he won't hold out against you both for many weeks or days ; but you must tell him about it, or let her do it first, and ask for leave for you to plead your own cause. Don't have any secret about it. I ask for Gertrude and myself. It isn't fatal, of course, our being compromised in it, but one don't wish it; and you straighten your own stick by telling him fairly now. There's been too much haste, and that may keep you back in the end. But—well, we're tiled ; what a thing love is, you know!" quoth Wharfedale, kicking out his feet again from the carpenter's bench on which he sat.CRAIG HO URN.
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"Nothing but molecular force and a mode of motion," said Hugh, with the proper scientific and lecturous snap-action of his jaws. "You're letting me off easily, and it's very kind indeed. I mustn't thank Lady Wharfedale in form till the time comes ; but she's been the making of me. Sometimes I felt I must have—her, or die; or I thought I could see her well married at once, and go away ; but to meet her so, and see her as she is—I say now—I've done what I said—but who was to help it ?"
" There—go off to your letters. All of us must hold our tongues like oysters. Something's sure to leak out; and Hugh, lad, you must take care with your manner and your eyes; they've told tales already to the women, I expect. No man's a right to say he can't help letting out a secret."
There was plenty of correspondence all that morning, as may be supposed, on a first wet day in sporting quarters, after fine weather. Lady Wharfedale sat to Charles all the morning, transacting domestic business all the time, to his distraction. How they "coursed about" the subject of the last few days' doings is their affair. He worked away at her bright locks in particular, trying all sorts of dodges of transparent reds and yellows on a golden ground ; and forgot everything, with the help of his paint-box. The other men wrote39°
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
letters in the smoking-room and library; and for those who did not, there were stables, kennel, and gun-room ; cartridges to be loaded, game-larder to be inspected, and sending-away to be done. There were deer-skins in all forms of preparation, a pair of otters, a white grouse, and a wild cat to be stuffed ; and that whiled away the morning; and all culminated in a tremendous luncheon. Just before the gong Grace and Hugh were standing together alone for a moment in a bay-window of the library: they were watching a groom off, with a distended letter-bag,, containing, inter alia, home letters from herself to her father, and from him to Lady Hertha. They had scrupulously kept out of each other's way all the morning, and the fact does them credit; but now they met as they had never met before. He looked beseechingly, and took her hand, and she leaned her cheek to him for an instant, and fled away.
There was a grand tramp and drive of the whole party, in all manner of old clothes and strange wraps. They followed the course of the brown torrent, which now raved, wrestled, and crashed down through pit and defile, all foaming to the sea in Loch Hourn. The rain had ceased, or only fell at intervals, with wild inbreaks of dim light; and the mist kept lifting and breaking, and showing grand vistas of troubled land and sea. Burns and torrents were impassable,,CRAIG HOURN.
39i
and the ladies kept the road. Grace felt strangely, and passing strange ; and was further alarmed when she came home, to find a letter from her brother, which had crossed hers, as important letters always do cross each other—and gave a poor account of her father's condition. She was not to hurry, but he was not so well the last two days, seeming almost overwhelmed at something, but Miles could not say what—he would write again. It seemed so odd, but she felt she must take it to Hugh; and Lady Wharfedale left them alone by accident 'in her own sitting-room a few minutes. He was anxious and tender enough to comfort her for the time.
But their one kiss over that letter was the last for many a week; for the next day, while Hugh was assisting, all distrait, at a beat for hares and ptarmigan in the high gray corries, a boy came cluttering up to the house on a pony, from the nearest post-office on the Caledonian Canal, with an ominous red telegram; and soon after Grace came to May with wild eyes and a face sharpened with terror, to beg her for God's sake to help her, for papa had had a fit, and was lying dumb and paralysed, and she not with him. And she had done it all, and killed him.
Neither could bear to stay, and in two hours they were off southward with Lady Wharfedale's horses for Glengarry, and so on to Fort William.392
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
What Hugh felt may be imagined. Wharfedale heard the news first, and told him quietly. He said very little; but looked terribly changed and oldened next morning. Two anxious days he stayed, just to receive May's telegram: "Alive, scarcely conscious, no pain ; seems to know Grace." It was a relief so far, and he went away for Otterscope and Oxford. His host and hostess stipulated for him another year, but felt, with him, that they knew little enough of Avhat that year might bring forth.
He told his tale to Lady Hertha, and she said little, and kissed him and smoothed his hair, as long ago. He had plenty of business at home, and took refuge in it; and it was well for him. Grace could only write him one sad letter, to say she must not write again, nor he to her; and entreating him not to call or ask to see her. It had been too much for papa, what she had done; and they must not meet again. It must all be as if it had never been.
Hugh turned in utter terror to Lady Hertha, and she gave him advice brief and keen, and rarely authoritative. It is at such times that a man finds out what loving confidence and obedience to the mother who bore him is worth ; and his mother sees what manner of man she has borne. They both thought the same. Grace was right ; or all must be as she chose now. Their previous plan required noCRAIG HO URN.
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altering. Hugh must get his books together at Oxford—some had gone on already—and meet Highcliffe at Venice, the first stage of their Eastward journeying. Then they were to read hard, and write home often. And Lady Hertha, quiet and dry-eyed, sent her son off once more, praying for the best.
" Ooray, 'ere's Mr. 'Eron," was the welcome of porters, cads, and college servants, as Hugh landed at Tom Gate ; but One-Arm said, reflectively :
" What a heavy weight he do look, to be sure ; fit to fell a hox, and eat him arterwards. But he'll never be like hisself again, fust time I seen him."CHAPTER XVIII.
sehnsucht.
Hugh was by no means the only man who seemed a good deal impressed by the news of poor Sir Ralph's illness. About the day of his reappearance at Oxford, Colonel Ingelram was sitting in an Arlington Street lodging; with a dim sense of the roar of Piccadilly, and a feeling of subdued disgust at a dark foggy London day. He had naturally gone to Limmer's in the first instance; because it was the place he knew best; but found it imperfectly suited to the quantity of legal and other business he had to get through. So he withdrew to a quieter abode, and there and elsewhere wrestled with solicitors, land-agents, " et qua plurima terrce monstra ferunt," when a man has just come into a large property. He was by no means bad at business, though a little military and impatient; and things were prosperous and well-ordered. Tradesmen found him unapproachable at present. He wentSEHNSUCHT.
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to Poole's and Peat's, Fagg's and Lancaster's, and had speech with a hosier; but his old Indian travelling-gear wis not only repaired, but ominously repacked with a fresh outfit He did not mean to stay long in England, he said, or to go to Malham Priors for more than a week incog. He was kind and careful when he got there, about his new tenants and dependents, and saw everybody, and made good various complaints, particularly from all the smaller people. He was absent, and seemed wonderfully little elated; and rather as if he endured his new prospects than enjoyed them. The household was to go on as before, but he thought he should let Malham for a year or two. He asked much about Sir Ralph's attack, and seemed anxious to know exactly when it had happened.
He could not ask to see Miss Rokeby at such a time, he said; and so did a week's hard business, and went back to London.
The following letter, received a fortnight or three weeks ago at Vienna, was before. him, as he sat in the highly respectable but unlovely street above mentioned :
Agnes to Robert Ingelram.
" I must write to you once more. Time seems to bring all things round, except rest: but they never come to us as we thought. There are such changes396
HUGH HERON, Cir. Ch.
and chances in this long long life ; and I am glad I had the sense to make no vow against calling to you once again, from out of sight. You will hardly find me in the body, I have hid away from you for years, and so done rightly; and you have been good and dear for not hunting me down. I know my soul and spirit go ranging after you, through the hours and days. And now I come to hear things which force me to cry out to you from that dreadful past of ours. I have tried to forget all the delight of it, and to think only of its sin ; and I think—I trust—repentance is really come to me. And if we sinned, we were spared crime—we did escape the worst, if we were punished for it.
" My darling—I write it down, not for fond talking, but because it is true, for this life at all events ; and you are all the world to me while there is any world for us—I may never see you in it, perhaps. But it is comfort now to think that after all that wicked wishing and longing, one has been kept, against one's folly, from the worst end. I think, if strict people are right in saying evil wish and motive are as bad as deed, they should think God has great mercy on those who escape deed.
" He did not get off, poor creature. If he was alive, I would ask him to forgive, as I have, all the wrong we did each other—it would be easy enoughSEHNSUCHT.
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if I had been perfect—but he is gone. I did mean to be an honest wife to him, if I could not love him, and I tried to be patient. But we are not so strong as you, and it is dreadful to be in fear for one's life. Those furies and remorses—that reckless irritable violence, word and hand—and that horrid off-hand carelessness about his own life, ' Ready to leave the world if he didn't like it,' as he said. I wonder how I got through it. But latterly it turned to worse— he kept brooding and seeming to reckon everything into suspicion. And I thought he was waiting like Saul with the javelin always by him, ready to smite me through to the wall when the evil spirit gave him the heart to do it—and that hideous night gave you a notion how he drank. You did well, and I bless you, that you spared him after such an insult; but it was part of all that went before, his killing himself when he thought you were gone. It is all over—and how could it have ended well ? But, oh dear love!—what could I do afterwards, but fly to the ends of the earth and beyond ? You will not find me now—and I turn faint, and my whole heart sinks when I pray not—but only hear a little more.
"You will do your will about this great match they talk of; and I say, many times, think nothing of me. But I only entreat, think of the young lady, and if you cannot love her, have pity on her, and398
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
that in time. She is not a girl to crush or neglect; perhaps she may have strength enough to do or bear all; but she seems to be so made for better things and happiness. If she is to have all that was my day-dream, do not let her find it all utterly in vain. She is beautiful, I am trying to say more so than I was at my best, but conscientiously I can't think so. Anyhow, I am sure she has high spirit and a good deal of heart. The last has been touched a little by a fine lad they call Hugh Heron, but not so much as yet but that she may be all your own—but oh then be all hers, and think of me only as of one at rest—and spare that boy.
"I am well enough in health, and I think not unhappy, as women are. If I had been in great need, I would have asked you for help, I know you are ready enough; but I have never wanted. I had enough to begin with. Ah dear, do you remember how I used to dress myself, and what people said of my taste ? I have made that keep me well enough, and shall not starve. Once I have been at death's door, by accident in the snow on the high moors, not very far from our old land. They found me nearly gone, at least a tough old tender-hearted clergyman did; and he took me home, quite like a shepherd (only he looked so aquiline and swarthy and sporting), to some great house. I was nearly gone, and I lay half-conscious,SEHNSUCHT.
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till the faces and voices of two women there made me think, a minute or so, that I was dead in peace, and had been taken in la-haut. I must not preach to you, I have written myself quite into good spirits, but I can't face the thought of angering you, at least not any more. You will not hear from me again ; and I cannot speak to others of what has been. But you yourself should tell something of it, to her whom you will marry. If she is like the rest of us, she will forgive freely what is told her frankly; and for me, you need not spare me, and will not do me wrong. Good-bye, my own beloved—it seems so odd and hard that I must begin now, when I am not thirty, to wait for death like a worn-out woman, without another hope or prospect in the world. I have been soon settled—but it is all well.
" Ever your own,
"A."
I do not know how often Colonel Ingelram had read this letter; it was a good deal worn at the edges, and dated some weeks back. It was not, as such documents generally are in novels, blistered with tears, because neither writer nor receiver often indulged in them. But he could not find her, you see; and her written hand was all he could see of her, so he looked long and often at it. He had only400
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
Muhammad with him, and a new London servant, or he might perhaps have learnt how nearly he had been on her traces at Malham. Servants know everything ; and good ones now and then stand by their masters with a will and sharpness which is of avail in awkward matters. The Colonel never thought of this, and did not at once see how to begin on the faint clue the letter gave him. So he only heard that the Wharfedales were soon coming back to Ravensgill for a short stay, and that they would then go to town for a longer period; on some particular business of the Countess's, which was not without relation to the succession of the noble family which had adopted her as its eldest daughter. He heard nothing of the new confidential workwoman she had taken to, who was so odd and distinguished-looking, and was to be with her for the present.
Of course he went into detectives and private enquiry ; and of course a hunt after a lady described as a pretty milliner, involves a good deal of confusion, and frequent pursuit of the wrong vixen. And in his present state of health and nerve, Ingelram found he could not endure hope deferred, with its pain intensified by constant interludes of disappointment. Years of hard Indian frontier work, following on the greatest shock of his chequered life, had oldened him, body and soul. He could not go backSEHNSUCHT.
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rejoicing to the Rag as in his beardless days the world of London was changed. He accepted some shooting invitations, and performed as men do who have been used to shoot always for their dinners, and often for their lives. It pleased him and others, and he found that it saved him much worry and brooding to be away from London and his weary search. But then there was sharp frost after rain and damp, and he got chilled, and began to cough, so that his hostess made him see her pet doctor ; who manfully told him he must not be his patient, or anybody else's, in England that winter. Something was wrong with one lung.
" I'm afraid you won't take much care of yourself wherever you go, Colonel; but it's not so bad to be rash in Madeira as it is here."
" Madeira—I can't live on a big stone; and I'd rather not go where drink is cheap. Why not East again—Egypt, or somewhere within reach ? "
" Well, Cairo's almost at home, and Thebes is charming. A Nile voyage would be just the thing for you ; only you mustn't go on South after large game, and that sort of thing."
" No, but couldn't I live in the desert ? I've never seen Sinai."
" Sinai itself's rather too high—the Convent, I mean; I've heard of bitter frosts in Wady Sheykh. But
2 D402
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
you might have a winter camp in Feiran—beautiful palm-groyes, glorious view of Serbal—only feverish in summer. You shouldn't be quite alone though, but it won't be difficult to find a companion."
" One's enough, isn't he, doctor ?"
" They're like pills—if one won't do, why then take-"
" Ah, that's the worst, I am unsociable. I do hope I love my brother-man—up to the mark, you know ; but really, loving's like driving pigs, ' difficult, when there's so many on 'em.'"
In short the Colonel knew he was not well, and had some of that feeling for the East which desolate people sometimes experience. He looked and asked who was going that way, and not meaning to travel about much. Valetudinarians enough he heard of, but he hadn't come to that. At last Jack Hanbury, a Guardsman, who had a younger brother at Ch. Ch., mentioned that a young fellow from the N. W. Riding, or the Dales, or somewhere, was going to Cairo to read with a coach, and that both were good ones. " Heron's the crack undergraduate of his time, and Highcliffe's no end of a fellow."
" Highcliffe! why I've met him—and Heron—why —'ere tonnerre, fancy my fate coming across that lad's, that way ! When does he start, I wonder ?"
"A letter to Gib. or Malta would reach Highcliffe ;SEHNS UCH T.
and he'd settle it. Say you're ill, and won't interrupt their reading."
The Colonel wrote. He knew not why; the name seemed to be a new light on what was now the object of his life. As to jealousy or spite against Hugh, he had never felt it; but he did not want Grace to go to a cocktail, he thought, or anybody but one of ourselves. He began to reproach himself vigorously about the Signorina; and though he rejoiced in his dismissal, felt nevertheless as if he ought to ask her again. But now he was quite sure what answer he desired, and would receive. She had asked a straightforward question as to the existence of any other love; and now there was no doubt he had one somewhere, as the fox had a wound, he •could not exactly say where. But the search for Agnes flagged, and all the old longing for her which had been a dubious joy, came back to him in pain. He was, in fact, entering on the early stages of what is called breaking one's heart. Women suppose that nobody can do it but themselves, and if one is to judge by the beautiful way in which they sometimes bear, and even thrive under the process, they certainly do it more comfortably than the ruder sex.
It did him good to be afloat once more from Southampton, and the new warmth and colour, after three days' run, revived his spirits. He had left much
2 D 2HUGH HERON, Cii. CH.
longing and sighing behind him ; but still thought rather too much of the telegraph to Suez. The young griffs and competition-wallahs on board stood a little in awe of him ; but though the high spirits were gone which had captivated the' Oxford party, he was pleasant and popular enough, and caught himself dispensing yarns, and wrinkles, and good advice. Gibraltar grand and gray, and a mess dinner. The old red, and the drums and fifes, and the faces— England was England, and soldiering was soldiering; if he never found her, he could fight for her and the rest. Malta—no letters to the purpose, except one from Highcliffe and his pupil, saying they should be sure to meet him at Cairo or Suez, and that Hugh wished particularly to have the honour of his acquaintance. Lady Hertha had been telegraphed to, and had answered by a short letter of caution and affection. She saw how much might depend on it, and mentioned the arrangement to Lady Wharfedale, who was by this time in London. She, too, had accused herself on the score of poor Sir Ralph's seizure. The event of her pet first scheme of match-making seemed to condemn her, though she knew or suspected enough to be free from remorse, in interfering in the Ingelram affair. She was neither managing nor overbearing in disposition, but had so often had to decide things for herself, especially inSEHNSUCHT.
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the hunting-field, that she was apt to choose a course of action like a place in a fence; without the least idea of turning from it, and not knowing exactly what was on the other side. And now things made her anxious, and sometimes unhappy. She was not in a condition to do much, and had, indeed, no means of helping anyone ; but Sir Ralph's illness and Grace's distress weighed heavily on her spirits at times. She wrote continually, and sent every imaginable dainty and contrivance from London for the invalid; but, happily for her, May was in town, for reasons somewhat resembling hers; and the two were inseparable, and clung to each other till their husbands were jealous.
That workwoman was engaged for both the ladies; the three sat together of mornings; and a more pleasing picture can hardly be imagined. Lady Hertha's letter was read in council—that is to say, Agnes sat still and heard it all, without a word. May would not be told expressly who she was, probably because she did not want much information on the subject.
" They won't quarrel, those two," said the great lady ; " and as Colonel Ingelram's so poorly, Hugh and Mr. Highcliffe will look after him. Why, Agnes, you look ill; sit back and rest a little, my dear. There's nothing really the matter with him. You know, May,406
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
Wentworth came up and sounded him, and said one winter of rest and soft air would set him right for the rest of his days. That's the best opinion in England for him. I think that cap's about perfect, dear, and you must have a set too."
" I like the Desert plan ; they'll get letters twice a week, and there's telegraph; and dromedary-post from Suez is pretty quick." And they went on in. various sanguine sentences till Agnes's colour came round. Her mistress kissed her, and told her all was for the best; and her own spirits improved from that day. Indeed, even May had been sometimes rather tearful, and exactly like Burne Jones's " laden autumn,, faint and sweet"—and now she gathered courage for self and friends.
" You're a good old man," said May, " and that's a pretty letter. You don't mean to say you wrote it out of your own head ? and could he have shown it you ? "
" He told me of things she had said or written, and they were very genuine and original. Most passionate people have the gift of expression ; and •she was a wonderful creature then."
" But as to the real story of all those—Eastern atrocities—which he and she did not commit, it seems. —what do you really know of it all ? "SEHNSUCHT.
" Well, I've never felt it my business to reckon it all up, like Mr. Bucket; but this is what I have heard and think. They had seen a deal of each other, those two, before they met at Kurrachee. She had been an old love of his when he was very young—a lancer I think he'd been—in one of the big Northern places. She was highly accomplished and impassioned, and a beauty, and the daughter of an old Lancashire man, between millowner and landowner, who couldn't manage her, and died when she wanted handling a good deal. Ingelram and she were all but married, but his people stopped the match somehow, or staved it off till he went to India. Then, in disgust and on the rebound, she married a rising clever sort of engineer or something, who by the daemonic nature of things got an Indian appointment; and they met again where I said, or at Kirkee, or somewhere on the Bombay side. Well, her husband was a great believer in the forces of his own intellect, and the rights and powers of human energy ; and naturally got rather violent whenever things went wrong; and he was gloomily and jealously in love with her, and no wonder. Well, you can fancy ; brandy pawnee and Bass; jealousy, quarrels, cruelty, remorse, more Bass and brandy P. Finally, whatever Ingelram and she may have done or said—and I believe they did not go beyond indiscretion—the husband and he408
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
rode out one morning and met in the open, with none but their syces to see. I fancy our man would not fire at the other, thinking himself in the wrong; but the civilian knocked him down at the second shot, Ingelram remembered that. Then he went home ; thinking he had been spared drove him frantic ; and being half-drunk and quite mad, he had a fit of delirium tremens, or something, and shot himself with a derringer—he always had one about him. Well, they got Ingelram home alive, and he was very bad for ever so long, and meanwhile she got back to England. She vanished altogether, I fancy into some sisterhood or convent for a year or so, and reappeared as the fair milliner, at Hopton-le-Moors far away. She had great taste, and liked to move about, to dress people at big houses, and do business in finery, it seems. You can't wonder at her being restless. And so she heard everything in various servants5 halls, and appeared at Otterscope that winter; and afterwards she went to Ravensgill, and Lady Wharfedale took her up, and found something out from Lady Hertha. That accounts for her being so decided and reckless about Hugh and Grace. I hope she wasn't badly upset about it then ? "
"She and I comforted each other a little," said May; "but that's no reason why you should make the less of me now."CHAPTER XIX.
wady feiran.
" hark, Hugh; that must be the Muezzin," said Highcliffe, recognising the long melancholy call to the Assr, which came wailing to them across the still waters of Alexandria harbour, soon after they had pushed off from the P. and O. steamer. It was oily-calm; the sky was orange on violet; the water was green and purple crystal; a great golden moon was heaving up slowly in rivalry with the latest afterglow ; "and a star or two beside." It was just towards the end of that hour between lights when the East is enchanted indeed to all new-comers. They had rescued their luggage from a gang of howling Arabs in blue shirts and dirty white turbans, who wanted to send it off direct to Bombay. They sat in cigaretted calm, both feeling tolerably romantic, and impressed with the rich melancholy of deep and glorious colour. The Muezzin's cry is not exactly musical in itself—nothing is so south of the Medi-HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
terranean—but its associations make it felt, and it is one of the most Eastern of sensations to hear it for the first time. It is very odd how few sweet sounds are allowed in the Orient. I remember waters that flowed softly in Wady Feiran and Ghurundel ; and though not so plentiful as the rivers of Damascus, they are more purely desert streams, and their little voice of tinkling rillet is a delight, after the first deep drink. But except that, and the delicate tickle-tickle of rustling palm-leaves, I think all Oriental sounds are disagreeable. All of us begin life with a cry or squeal, of greater or less power; and Arabs seem to carry it consistently out through youth and maturity. And the minor waters of the East are generally garrisoned by powerful frogs, who don't leave off till ever so late in the evening, and give you, better than anything else, an idea of the horrible din of the second plague of Egypt. But for the present our two friends were in a thoroughly sentimental humour, which Hugh no sooner recognised in himself than he was moved to tease Highcliffe as usual. So he began to quote:
" The minarets wave on the plains of Stamboul, And the breeze of the evening breathes freshly and cool, The voice of the musnud is heard from the west, And caftan and calpack have gone to their rest."
" It's so tiresome, you never can leave off cockneyWADY FEIRlN.
411
chaff except when you're talking broad Yorkshire. Let me go on with that first rhyme to cool:
" The Gruff Club observes this unchangeable rule— No member's to talk like an (expletive) fool."
" Now don't be savage. I let you off in the Coliseum, and didn't quote in the Catacombs, and said nothing on the Bridge of Sighs. I must quote :
" Adown the Tigris we are born ;
True Mussulmen are we and sworn."
and then certain associations about the last time he had repeated those lines came over Hugh's hovering fancy ; and made him quiet enough, till they landed at the Custom House, and he had to rise to battle in defence of his gun-cases ; to which, as we have seen, he always clung, whatever became of the rest of his property.
They had been wonderfully happy together, those two, considering that both had the anxieties or regrets of love upon them. Without brooding over Fan, and even while he congratulated himself on escaping from a sudden unconsidered passion with such flying colours, Highcliffe had been struck with the idea of a new unmeasured happiness, seen afar off. There was a deal of human nature about him, and his notions of love and marriage were comparatively old-fashioned. He was not quite satisfied with educational selection, and choice of a wife because she writes in the same412
HUGH HERON, CH. Cil
magazine. That long slip of a country girl; she had been in his arms—it was no fault of hers or of his. She had kissed him on the lips, and a sister could hardly have done it better ; yet he knew it was for gratitude and love of the second order—more for big Frank Roundell's sake than his own. He was content with her and himself; but she was not his, and never would be. He was just pensive about it, very fond of her ; and only not wanting to see her again for a year or so. But contemplative independence and ascetic ambition and all the rest of it had been roughly shaken within him, and Hugh's presence tended to undermine them further. That young man's natural spirits were fast coming round. He attempted a little self-reproach now and then, and did it as well as he could ; but reading, sketching, antiquities, and as much Arabic as he could assimilate, began to relieve his endless longing after Grace. He could not get near her, and life had to be lived where he was. The worst was the thought of bringing self-reproach on her, and he dreaded the notion of some fixed idea possessing her about the cause of her father's illness. And work, or ride, or wander as he might, in body or mind, he always came back to that.
Cairo is not what it was, and has been amply described ; but for all that, there are few other places in the world where you can get upon a hard-mouthedWADY FEIRlN.
4i3
donkey, who will carry you off like a hippogriff (whatever that is), or the terrible Ass in the " Shaving of Shagpat" (and if the reader has not read that work, he had better lose no time about it)—will run away with you, I say, right into the Arabian Nights. The old-fashioned part of the city, and the quieter bazaars, were still perfect in their quaint decay and inoffensive dirt, at the date of our travellers' sojourn ; the winter coolness had just come on ; there were no hot winds, no ophthalmia, no more clouds of dust impregnated with donkey. They rode about, and met marriage processions just like Aladdin's ; and Sheikh Ibrahim, and Hindbad the porter, and Shacabac the barber, and Kerim the water-carrier, and Abou This and Khawajeh That; and they went to the mosques, and Old Cairo, and the howling dervishes ; and up, and into the Pyramids. Highcliffe would not let sightseeing altogether get the better of reading; and besides, he knew its value well enough to the eager eyes of a well-grounded lad, for the first time roaming with a hungry heart. Hugh sometimes grumbled over the evening chibouque or cheroot, and declared that he was a modern ruin ; and that a city all falling to pieces was just the place for such a wreck as he was at present.
" This isn't equal to Rome for one thing," he said. " There are no Catacombs. I should like to turn414
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
antiquary down there. One might come up now and then for a gallop in the Campagna in the season ; and I daresay one could keep a tap of beer, and collect things, and prowl in darkness among dubious inscriptions and retouched pictures; I'd like to be a Fossor, and dig my own grave in the tufa."
" Well, it might do you good; though whether that or anything else could give you a better appetite, I don't know; but don't think of going to earth that way. Let's die in the open."
"Well, but I have done for myself, pretty near. Only think now, if I hadn't been in such a hurry, we might be all right now."
" Perhaps ; but it's very doubtful. Poor Sir Ralph was bad to manage ; and his time was nearly come, I fancy. I don't think myself that Miss Rokeby's letter really did him any harm, but that it was all done before."
" Well, I think he felt the Colonel had thrown his great plan over."
" Doesn't your mother's letter say they found something from him at Shoreswood ? That may have upset the old man, you know."
"Yes, they picked up an envelope—it struck me rather," said Hugh, producing a letter of Lady Hertha's, part of which is here recorded :WADY FEIRAN.
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" Dearest Hugh,—All is good news from you, and I think for you ; except that poor dear Sir Ralph cannot be here long. You will be a man for my sake—among other reasons, I mean; and that is my comfort; and I trust very much to time and long patience to make you happy with her one day. She has done with that bitter self-reproach, which really was not reasonable ; for if anybody was in fault it was you or the Wharfedales : but she has grown so very handy and attentive, and rather silent, just like May, when anything is the matter. She never mentions you first, but now I can speak of you a little. I just mentioned your name once about something, and she gave a start and said nothing, and I didn't so much as hint at your existence for three days. Then I'm afraid I rather bided my time, till I saw her looking over some black and white wings ; and I asked if they came from the Highlands ; and she turned round crying, and kissed me many times— and you can't expect more than that, I should say. That was yesterday, and I have just said something about your being well, and working so hard with Mr. Highcliffe; and she said, ' Oh, it is so nice, their being together.' She is always with her father; and if her letter vexed him, he certainly has forgotten it all, by the way he looks at her.
" I live between home and here; they find me416
HUGH HERON, Ch. Cm.
useful, and May is not fit to help; she saw us through the worst of it, and then Charles took her away to town. You know what a silent grim good fellow Miles Rokeby is; he was of great use, and so he is now. When Grace came back in such a state, saying she had killed papa, and all that, he said nothing, but took her off her feet, and held her close in that bear's hug of his "—(" I wonder what mamma knows about it, now," quoth Hugh)—" till all the hysteria was wept and squeezed out of her—he literally did do it, I declare, and this was all he said : 'Anyhow you can mind him now, G.—he'll like that best'—and his word of command quieted her into a good nurse in ten minutes—as she continues. But to get rid of that leading idea thoroughly, about your affair being the cause, is very important. It will be done in time. Miles talks to me as much as to anybody ; and I can give you the substance of what he has said, I think.
" He knew all about Grace and you, she had told her own tale, and he said it was natural; he knew how you'd get on, when he heard you had met each other ; that as far as he knew you, he liked you down to the ground ; and that most other fellows would have done as you did; and that those who wouldn't were, in his opinion, duffers. He had never wished for the Ingelram marriage; wasn't quite easy about theWADY FEIRlN.
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Colonel. He said Lady Wharfedale knew something-she wanted to keep to herself at present; but had said much to excuse herself to him.
" Then he asked, ' What is there, besides Grace's own distress and terror, to prove that her letter brought on that paralysis ?' And then he said he believed—what we had not known before—that his father had heard from Colonel Ingelram at nearly the same time ; and had-been very low, quite seriously ill, when he himself wrote to Grace at Craig Hourn. When they found Sir Ralph (he had slipped out of his chair on the rug, in the oak-room you remember), there was Ingelram's envelope in the basket under the table—the letter must have been thrown in the fire. Grace's was there open, but in the cover. It may scarcely have been read, and one cannot tell if it would give him pleasure or pain under the circumstances. Perhaps nearly all new things are pain, as one gets old ; until the end come.
" It will not be long for him ; he is more conscious now, but there seems to be no pain, except that he feels cold. His eyes are alive, and he has tried dreadfully to speak several times; he can just move one hand, and likes to touch Grace and me from time to time ; so we are a good deal with him. He received Holy Communion yesterday, and we hung the Michael Angelo Crucifixion-drawing on the wall
2 E4i8
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
before him afterwards. He blessed us with his eyes, and kept us with him, making us hold his hand a long time, and now he always looks at it. It seems curious, that with all his inherited Puritan ways and notions, which perhaps we don't think enough of, he should be so willing to make the natural and right use of a sacred picture. I have seen it before with poor people of the same turn in religion ; it did them good in pain, when it distracted them from anything else. As for his health, we give him champagne, and sometimes a little milk and whisky, but they cannot keep up that great frame long.
"Carry Creyke has been over to me at Otter-scope ; she was very anxious about you, she said; and she begged to be remembered to Mr. Highcliffe. She has read all his works it appeared, and thinks him dreadfully severe in The University Quarterly. I don't think, between ourselves" (Hugh suppressed the next few words), "she would altogether refuse the undertaking of softening his criticism, and not permitting it to be so ferocious. Good-bye, my dearest boy, and take care of yourselves and each other."
"Hang my works—I wish women would let controversy alone; we have to rough each other in essays, but it's nothing to do with them."WADY FEIRlN.
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"They all read everything—and let's hope she never reads anything worse."
" I daresay not; but she must think one's so angry about nothing. Really, Hugh, going over all this mouldering historical ground among such great wrecks of races, one gets ashamed of being spiteful about wrong quotations and doubtful chroniclers."
" You don't mind my saying that you're not like most critics, Highclifife. I never knew a man think so little of himself. It's not like Oxford at all."
" Perhaps we throw off the shop a good deal, both of us. But how entirely Oxford some fellows are, at home or abroad ! ' Ccelum, non animum mutant' with a vengeance. Do you remember that inscription in the book at Tivoli ?"
" Yes—let me see:
" Three Oxford men came here to see These celebrated falls;
Two had not taken their degree, One had not passed his smalls."
"Well, that's quite typical of total inability to divest oneself of High Street and Schools. But here's Muhummad about the tents and things."
A winter and spring between Suez and Wady Feiran, with excursions all round Sinai, and perhaps a push eastward into Midian, seemed to suit our friends
2 £ 2420
HUGH HERON, Cn. Ch.
as well as anything else; so they put it. The Colonel had written to say, he would get through the time till February on the Nile, and join them at one or other of those directions. I suppose it is still true that in many parts of the Desert no man meets a friend; but I am sure, if you have one out there, there is seldom much difficulty in dropping upon him. The most general direction for baggage I ever saw, met my gaze once at Shepherd's Hotel in the
old times—"Major M-, Desert of Sinai," and
it was sufficient for its purpose. The fact is, that the Towara Arabs are singularly reliable in their dealings, and inhabit a country very different from the terrible Dahnas and Nefoods of Eastern Arabia; a consideration which is not always present to the minds of writers on the Exodus. It is only in the central Debbet-er-Ramleh, and then I fancy only from late spring to autumn, that you can be accommodated with a regular sand-storm—I mean with one strong enough to stop you for a few hours : when you can piie your baggage, lie down under its lee, and consent to temporary interment. On the coast, too, I have certainly felt the air pretty gritty, and seen the sun buried through a sandy atmosphere, as often graphically described. But then one did not feel, as farther East, that the Desert wind was really howling for one's life like a beastWADY FEIRAN.
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of prey. The real dangers of Palgrave and Vamb^ry —the shifting bottomless quagmire of dry dust— the trough of the waterless ocean — the endless ridge and valley of unsubstantial Death—the seas of desolation without shore or mark, and wandering fields of barren foam in a greater horror, are not found in the southern wilderness of Sinai. The real terrors of the Desert — I do not mean its hardships only, but the conditions where nothing but the agonies of the early stage of death-thirst can give strength for half-hopeless exertion—are; at all events, spared in the Sinaitic highlands of ascetic beauty.
Hugh's only journal was in letters home, and these seem to be some of his impressions:
" I can't remember anything more strange and pleasant than waking up the first morning at this Convent of Mount Sinai. I suppose it's much the same, as to time and manner, for everybody who is not stone deaf. Early service is about 4 A.M., and just before that time I woke without a notion who, or what, or where I was; only sensible that a row was going on somewhere. It resolved itself into a steady wooden hammering, in about two-four time, with a tendency to quicken; in short, it was the nakus, or board-beating to matins, as drawn and422
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
described in Curzon.* My room-door was open on a gallery, and I could see from where I lay into the white pit or quadrangle of many stories below; and I took it all in with a cup of coffee, which Ali, the boy, produced in the nick of time. The ruinous minaret of the little mosque they keep up here for Mohammedan pilgrims sprouted up close to our gallery; then there were flat roofs, and white walls, and narrow windows, and two or three mighty cypresses, cut in a spiral sort of way, to give the foliage the look of a snake curling round the stem, and so to make a symbol of the Brazen Serpent. More roofs, and windows with picturesque latticework, and all manner of coloured and many-striped things hanging to dry, and some doves wheeling and flashing, white and purple in liquid light of air, and behind all the shoulder of Horeb, pale clear red, with magnificent lines of granite fracture. Then the upper end of it brightened like a star, and the morning began ' in crystal silence creeping down' to our level in the valley. While I'm on to the cypresses and the granite, I must refer you—and her—to ' Modern Painters' that we've all read so. The cypresses here —only there ain't so many of them—bear exactly the same relation to these mountains as the pines of Unterwalden do to Switzerland. The praise of the
" Visits to Monasteries in the Levant," ch. xxiv. p. 332.WADY FEIRlN.
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'sword-building trees' is as true here in its way as it is there ; and their character is the same—stiff and drilled and military ascetic. (The adjective ascetic applies to everybody and everything between Suez and this —in some degree even to 'Cliffe and myself: he sends best love, and says he never was so jolly.) Light and colour, granite and water-springs, air and temperature, are all severely pure together. As for us, poor humans, we're what we are; and that includes being uncommon hungry sometimes. Then as to these utterly waterless rocks, they are provided for in colour and form, according to unchangeable laws of beauty, as the Professor says in his fourth volume. So glad we brought it. There are greenstone dykes everywhere about, breaking through the granite, which, with weathering and all that, opposes a solid* pure green to the carnation or pale crimson of the cliffs; and they have a peculiar beauty of form in their fractures. It is not only the main outlines, which are tremendous in height and abruptness (for slopes of vegetation ain't allowed here), but the detail of every shattered cliff is lovely in itself. It is like the Aiguilles.* ' Nature is here driven to make fracture the law of being; she cannot tuft the rock-edges with moss, or round them with water, or hide them with leaves and roots. Devastation instead of nurture may be the task of all her
* "Modern Painters," Part V., vol. iv. ch. xiv. p. 198.424	HUGH HERON, Cii. CH.
elements; and age after age may only prolong the unrenovated ruin. But the appointments of typical beauty, which have been made over all creatures, shall not, therefore, be abandoned.'
" The nakus was succeeded by a hammering on an iron bar, hung in mid-air, which sounded pleasantly enough ; then there was a little bell, and a few fathers went by into church, and we heard their strong harsh chant begin. They seem to like us to come, and Highcliffe takes to it rather kindly—he says it is historical; but I think there is more behind that he feels. It is quite true, as he says, all this hermit life takes you right back to the second and third centuries, and seeing is believing, and you have a new sense of the truth of history; but one gets so far beyond Rome, as the source or centre of history; one understands how the Early Church was Greek, and one sees how Greece faces the East, and one understands all the great Eastern tradition or handing-down of Christianity. This is rather like a sentence from an essay, which in fact it is ; we do a good bit of i-eading. I've ground at the books we have, till I know them nearly by heart, and have got up fates and acts—I mean, dates and facts;—in a way to avail me in the Schools; and 'differs writing, and all he can pull out of that great memory of his, are very good for me, I'm sure.
" We meet the Colonel in Feiran, in a fortnight;WADY FEIRlN.
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the Nile has quite set him up again ; he wrote in a very friendly way, and by 'C.'s account is a good fellow and true companion. I've potted two ibex, one a good head ; and we got an antelope between us, and some partridges. The local niggers think me a crack shot, and one hears in consequence if there is anything in the way of big or carnivorous game going. They talk of leopard ; but I've never seen anything more than oldish tracks—certainly rather large ones ; and we nobbled a jackal, a rather large and fighting one, who charged; but we contributed two green cartridges, B-shot, at the right distance, and so obtained him peaceably by subscription. Of course we sketch all we can with the help of a Claude mirror, and I hope get right outlines; and I try to match colours; but one can't do everything. I'm sure it is as hard work here as in the worst reading-days in Oxford. As for 'Cliffe, he is haunted everywhere by never less than seven printers' imps invisible, whom he calls his Inkubuses. We got the essence of punch, and tongues and Original Devils all right,and the latterare capital. Nowandthen some beer comes from Suez. To-morrow for Feiran, where we have a depot, in charge of one of Muhummad's myrmidons."
Tur is the great oasis of the Sinai Desert near the sea; but I think all travellers have felt the charm of the more inland isle of palms. Hugh's evening camp426
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
there was worthy of the lines he quoted, by letter to his mother, for he dared not produce them to High-cliffe;—but they almost literally describe an afternoon or evening halt in Feiran the Beautiful. Two scenes remain in my memory (I think it may be in some degree because they are both far out of the way, and partly because I saw both under the richest sunset) ; nevertheless, they remain in my mind as naturally dramatic compositions of beauty, and deliberate arrangements of earthly glory; apart from man and his associations, with no link of human history or inheritance of great deeds and sufferings. I don't set them up against anything else whatever, but they never can be forgotten—or equalled in my thoughts —and one is the said Wady Feiran in the Sinai Desert; the other the small fiord of Raftesund, in the northern Isle of Lofoten, above the Maelstrom. There is just ruin enough in the former to adapt it to Byron's description in the Dream, which Hugh's constant undercurrent of thought about Grace, brought round one evening to his discursive fancy.
And in the last he lay-Reposing from the noontide sultriness, Couched among fallen columns, in the shade Of ruined walls that had survived the names Of those who reared them : by his sleeping side Stood camels grazing, and some goodly steeds
(" Of Jerusalem," interjected Highcliffe)WADY FEIRAN.
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Were fastened near a fountain ; and a man Clad in a flowing garb did watch the while, While many of his tribe slumbered around : And they were canopied by the blue sky, So cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful, That God alone was to be seen in heaven.
Their camp and its background really answered this description sufficiently well, as the ruins of Paran were near enough to supply the sense of some fallen place of the past; and they had ranged far and fast enough of late to have a full sense of the way-worn rest which Byron throws into his description. They had passed through the narrow gates of cloven limestone, which yawn suddenly on Wady Sheykh, having come a sharp dromedary trot nearly all the way from Sinai, making two common marches into one. The wider valley is quite a desert-sea in itself, devoid of the usual broom or retem bushes, and extensive enough to throw its boundary mountains into far middle-distance from its own midst. And in that desolate plain, on ground the winter torrents do not reach, is a little burying-place, the graves of the Towara tribe. "These our fathers died in the wilderness." It is a quiet little field of sleep, for those who lived and died as ascetic strangers and pilgrims indeed, and learnt to desire the desert life and its repose only. They have it at length. Then from that strange place of death within death, the flying trot428
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
of a good dromedary will take you in two hours through the gates into the comparatively fertile valley which inherits the crystal tricklings of Mount Serbal.
The tamarisk groves begin at once, all dropping sweet with honey-dew; then there is thorny acacia, and bristling mimosa, and nebbek, like immense overgrown crab-trees, with sweet little fruit, and thorns which will pull the unwary pilgrim off his camel, if he does not look out; which indeed nearly happened to Hugh. But these have all the freshness of northern foliage, and fill the narrow vale with luxuriance, up and down the rocky knolls, till one thinks of a thick bit of cover in Bolton or Bewerly Woods, or somewhere by Lowdore. And behind it all stand the purple palms, literally purple in shade as well as green in light. They toss and spread gentle hands continually, and whisper always-, and sometimes rustle fast and soft with the sound of summer rain. And at their feet runs the first clear water you have seen for many a day in motion— soaking and trickling on through new sedges and strange marsh-plants, with its own tender sylvan sound. The palms are not cut about, and drilled and ordered as in Egypt, nor stunted stragglers as at Ayoun Mousa and Ghurundel. They are free in their own natural jungle of springing stems, radiatingWADY FETRAN.
429
fronds, and bayonet-like thorns; hairy, knotted, and entwined with lace of their strong fibres; sometimes with spring flowers; sometimes with autumnal sackfuls of glowing fruit, hanging scarlet and gold beneath their crowns like barbaric ear-rings. All this is backed by pale granite mountains—the awful Serbal, the heathen Mount of the King of Earth and Heaven, all crimson, and yellow, and cream-white, with silver veins and furrows of pure snow below his many crests; and he is all bathed every evening in such crimson and golden sunset and afterglow, as is reserved for the Desert and the desolate sea. Here follows a copy of verses, which Highclifife meditated on his camel, in a succession of marches, on "Arab Graves in Rephidim."
Back leaned he in his saddle high,
That swarthy wild man of the11 East, With reckless grace and kindly pride ;
Across the sinewy wayward beast, Who knew his hand and watched his eye,
And cared for him and none beside. His face was like the beaked kings Who look from lofty carven cars, 'Neath winnowing shade of griffin wings, Hewn shallow, where Euphrates' waves Reflect the broad Chaldean stars. So on his loftier camel he Rode master of a few and free, As they were lords of many slaves.43°
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
A little while he bade us stay,
And pointed with a lean brown hand Towards a level space of sand A hundred yards beside the way. There lay the gravestones of his race, Their feet to East, their heads to West, Houses of pilgrims' perfect rest. They studded all the silent place, So blinding bright and all alone
It seemed, that desert isle of sleep-Only that shadows sable deep Lurked implike by each sparkling stone.
It might have been the resting-place Of those who felt the bitter sword Of Joshua and the foredoomed race Of the dread people of the Lord ; When they strove in wrath and need, Hagar's sons and Israel's seed, Desert-worn and famine-grim, In the gates of Rephidim ; Where all day the battle sway'd, Granite walls upon both hands, Rising tiers on tiers ; Till the prophet's hands, upstayed All day long by priestly hands, Bade prevail his toil-worn bands. Till the Egyptian axes hewed Through the tough mimosa wood Of the desert spears.
Ran the dancing rivulet red,
Sighing to its sighing palms Yonder in the Serbal shade,
In soft rushes and clear calms ? Laid they down their Hebrew dead In sweet Feiran's small green mead, There to hold the land they won ?WADY FEIRlN.
43i
Or beyond the rocky portal
Rest they in great honour here, Reckless of the noonday sun,
Of the dint of bow and spear, March, and thirst, and famine mortal,
Sleeping without fear ? They had seen the fire and cloud Down on shuddering Sinai bowed ;
Ever in each awful ear, All through Amalek's yells of onset, Rang the voice exceeding loud.
Therefore no man slacked his hand, And they strove from dawn to sunset;
So the dead or living band In deep graves, or fruitful portion, Rightfully possessed the land.
The hot day wears, the shadows grow, Fall long and lean upon our way ; Lo, my rough camel waxes gay. The voice of streams, the scent of grass, Far onward in the palmy pass, He knows, he feels them miles away. One cut and cry are all the need, The sullen strength wakes into speed ; Out shoots the long lean neck, forth launches
Each foreleg, like a shoulder-blow, And the propelling greyhound-haunches Urge on his mighty trot below : And the beast goes as he can go. His stride is silent as a dream, The dancing mirage reels around, The yellow rocks and glittering ground Fly past me, racing like a stream. The plain is past—scarce ten yards wide Yawns that strange gash in Serbal's side ; The Feiran Gates flash by;432	HUGH HERON, Cn. Cir.
Gray weeds and brown begin to spring, Rough tamarisk and mimosa fling
Wild shade invitingly. Nor does the camel's footfall drown
The soft voice of that little rill, Through moss and marish trickling down
Below the golden hill. Nor yet the palm-leaves rustling, sweet
As the light fall of summer rain ; Oh, tones, that promise we shall meet By our own shepherd streams again !
There is a certain English tomb, Where, if God will, I will be laid. There are sweet waters and deep shade ; And a small weather-beaten church, With lichen'd wall and ivied porch, And all around faint roses bloom. There winter storm and summer rain Fall various, like the tears of men, Some, wild-blown drops of utter pain,
Some, dews of waiting hope and faith ; Seed sown in grief shall flower again, And the dead beauty of that grave
Shall not be held of death. There's many a realm and many a wave Between us now and our own land ; But were I lapped in desert sand, Before the mount, 'twere all the same, Unto the earth, the earth-worn frame, The spirit unto God who gave.
Hugh and his friend had been in Feiran before, and were Arabs enough by this time to feel it as a home. They gave audience about certain minor backshishes—also concerning a kid for next day'sWADY FEIRAA.
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dinner, and some exchanges of tobacco for nebbek apples; and a promised sheep for their escort; and coffee to indiscretion for the neighbouring black tents. Further, one or more hyaenas had been spotted by old Saleh the hunter, and were expected to visit the tents shortly. So the inwards of the kid were conveniently arranged in a big trap, with a chain and block of wood ; and the friends supped luxuriantly on ibex curry, and stewed apricots or mishmish. They cared little enough for tents now, except as screens to keep the night wind from the rude lamps of their late studies. The Arabs never could make out what made the Howadji sit up so long over their kitabs, and neither sleep nor tell tales ; but they made such a clamour themselves all night, that it is no wonder they did not hear subdued conversations about Yorkshire, over the last pipe of peace.
" Ingelram must be back in Cairo by this time," said Hugh, slacking his belt, and arranging his hunting-knife and pistol under his low hammock, close to his sleeping hand.
" Yes ; perhaps he'll bring our letters." " Did you know him, anything like intimately ? " "Well, I don't think he'll know me again, and I've my doubts if Lady Hertha would know you. But he and I were quite intimate for a short acquaintance, a rapid travelling friendship it amounted
2 F434
HUGH. HERON, Ch. CH.
to, I think. One* often rgets on so fast in strange places."
" Or else one quarrels awfully. I suppose you and I have settled into a jogtrot partnership, like marriage, and daren't quarrel."
" I shouldn't like it," said Highcliffe gravely. " Turn me out quick if our friend the Hy. turns up."
It was written that that doubtless well-meaning animal should indeed alarm the camp towards the small hours of the morning. Of course he came the wrong way, and missed the trap. Hugh had forgotten all about him, and lain all night on one side, with his head upon his hand like a child, as he always did, till he half-woke and turned over. Before his senses died off again, he caught the sound of a quick rustle at the edge of the tent on his right. He was too tired to move for so little, but presently became aware of something snuffing about him ; and thought it was one of their Arab dogs. Then some small wares were upset, and the moon shone bright into the tent, and he had a vision of a grim head with a bunch of candles in its mouth, which feature extended from one pointed ear to another, was full of white fangs,, and formed the chief part of what he afterwards specified as "an open but unprepossessing countenance." Nothing daunted, he considered that he couldn't face fangs and claws in a striped shirt and jumpers;.WADY FEIRAN.
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that it wasn't safe to fire a pistol-shot horizontally, with all the men lying about; and that the rifle lay in easy reach, against one of the large rough stakes which are always substituted for the regular tent-poles in a fixed camp. A railway-whistle hung to his watch-chain, and there were not many matches left in the box under his head. He ignited them all at once, threw them all about before him, blew his whistle like mad, and sprung to his feet and rifle, as what seemed a truly enormous body bounced with a howl past him through the tent-door. All was white moonlight round, and the Dib, as Hugh had half-bethought him, turned from the awakening camp and made straight for the nearest cover. He had not one hundred yards to go, but had not calculated on the shell-rifle and rabbit-slaying eye behind him. Quick and sharp was Hugh's present; the beast was going like a hare, and he raised his weapon the least bit to clear his galloping stern. Crack!—the first barrel seems to drive him far to one side. Crack!—the second rolls him over and over ; but he's up again and scrambles away into the bush. A yell from all the dogs in the Wady—out comes Highcliffe in jersey and deerskins. Hugh thinks of the matches and chances of fire; dashes back into his tent to find a sheet smouldering; throws his heavy grego over it, and tramples himself into his breeches and boots on top. The mono-
2 F 243 6
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
syllable Dib explains all to the aroused Muhammad ; the dogs come yelping up, the moon's brighter than ever; Hugh's belt and deerskin jacket are on—cartridges are never wanting in the right-hand pocket ; old Burak, a much better bred dog than he looks, takes up the scent merrily where the beast rolled over. Highcliffe is out with a heavy shot-gun, and Hugh's "Gone away!" awakens the echoes of Rephidim as if it were Ranksborough Gorse. The dogs brush at once into the thorny brake, which the men skirt for awhile. They push through, heading for the side valley of Aleyat, turn up a small steep watercourse; there is a fresh outburst of yells, screams, and unearthly laughter. The friends come racing up all bleeding and bristling with thorns, like justifiably fretful porcupines, to find the Dib with his back broken, still doing battle with a crowd of enemies. They stalk near him, and two barrels of B at short distance knock the fight finally out of him.
It was full light by the time they got back to camp, and they bathed and got the palm thorns out of their legs and arms. Their simple toilette combined English cords and leggings, with Arab belts, long shirts, and kefiyehs. The morning's exercise was enough for the day, and they had a long arrear of reading to make up, so that they only left home to bring back their rather formidableWAD Y FEIRAN.
437
game, whose thick winter hide was really a trophy. Towards evening they strayed about the ruined Paran, and down the Wady for a turn before dinner, and wandered on to a rising ground which gave them a view of the entrance of Mokatteb *
" Our valley '11 be called the Writer's Valley, or Reading-man's Wady, or something," said 'Cliffe. "Wady Highcliffe or Wady Heron sounds well enough. I say, lend me your glass, there's somebody—a small party—three camels following."
" I hope it's Ingelram—only he'll be so savage, not getting a chance at the hyaena."
" He's done a lot of them in his time : stop, it's hard to get one's focus with these powerful little 'r.oculars—two dromedaries pushing on—I believe that's him." -
" Let's turn home and grill some ham—stunning after a ride, well peppered. There isn't a dozen of Allsopp left though," said Hugh, on hospitable thoughts intent. " I wonder how Dib curry would go?"
"Well, I say, this is like old times," said Ingelram, gurgling in his throat to make his camel kneel down. "Why, Highcliffe—what a thing it is to see a friend in the Desert, with dinner pretty near ready, I smell."
* " The Written Valley "—from its Sinaitic inscriptions.438
HUGH HERON, Ch. Ch.
Here Hugh presented himself, shaking a pan with fried ham in it—handed it back to Ali, and came up with a face all glowing with heat and pleasure, to see the man whose fate had crossed his so long and vaguely.
"And you are Hugh Heron," said the soldier with a certain melancholy in his face and tone, welcome as the young man's look seemed to him. " We've a deal to talk over: I think I can tell you one or two things to your advantage. I wish we'd met a year ago; but now, there's much for you to see. Here's a packet of letters. I've got them according to date, but this last has a black border, and the Shoreswood postmark. And I've heard it's all over."
" Poor dear old boy," said Hugh. " My mother told me he couldn't be long, and hardly seemed to wish it; but come into my tent and change—it's too late and cold to bathe, or else we've made a nice place, sinking an old tub in the beck yonder."
" Running water, too—how jolly ! Now is this Rephidim, Highcliffe ? I've been reading it all up in Stanley, and in the Book of Numbers."
" Well, it's the sort of place the Amalekites would be likely to fight for; and the narrow pass above does strike me as one they would stick at all day, with fresh men on both sides. We'll see to-morrow—but how are you now ?"WADY FEIRlN.
439
" All right, haven't coughed to-day; rather thin, I think, and lost some strength—the Nile business was the saving of me. But I've no good news—or not the news I wanted."
His camels came up by the time dinner was half over, and after it he went to his own tent for awhile. Hugh sat down at length to his letters. His mother still wrote on Grace's part. The latter had received one or two short epistles of his tenderly enough ; but she could only write to him as his own, she said ; and that tone seemed so dreadful to take up after what had been; and now when her father was gone, it seemed to her again as if she was not free from his death. If anything but her letter could have been the shock—Miles seemed to think it was so—it would be such relief to her to know. "But she says she never can love or look at anybody but you, and I have told her I shall tell you so," wrote Lady Hertha. " May has a girl, and the Countess has presented the House of Wharfedale with an heir. I'm sorry to say these absurd matrons are quite unmindful of the mess they've made of the old family arrangements at Shoreswood, and have already engaged the two creatures to be married, if they survive. I only hoped by letter, they would both of them be a good deal whipped first.
" It is time for you to turn homewards, though44°
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
there is no great hurry, except that I long so for you again. Fan and her young man are very happy with each other, but they both keep asking after you both. And I want your dear friend to have a look at C. C. But, as I suppose, you have met Colonel I. by this time, it is time for him to know what I have only just learnt, and I think he should know it through you; that I believe we can help him in a matter that is dear to him. I have lately heard of enquiries of his, and verily believe they may be successful ; that is to say, on some assurances, which relate to his honour and another person's, of whom he is in search. I don't like the thought of bargaining with him, if he is what we all think ; but he should make up his mind about the person he is looking for; and he ought to clear up Grace's mind about herself and her father, if he can. I cannot think he wishes for her ; and she is certainly not for him. He has the character of a man who will do right, if he is not vexed or hurried ; and is certainly not one to like any finesse or concealment. If you can be friends with him, probably all will come right, and do you trust him at the right moment. Perhaps you may settle something that will bring you home."
" Whatever does mamma want me to do?" thought Hugh, after the second reading. " She's written me a letter I might read to him—well, she meant that, IWADY FEIRAN.
441
suppose—he might set all clear for me, but what's this other business of his own? His friend the singer can't be hiding from him, and how can the missis know anything of her ? I say, 'Cliffe, the Cunnel may like some tea, or coffee, and he's sure to want his pipe; shall I go and see if he's squared his own camp by this time ? he'll live with us of course ?"
" Hook it," was all the answer, and the old and young stager soon came back, looking like much older acquaintances than they were. There was a great contrast and likeness between them. Both were young, but one had had a stormy time, the other had lived in peace; both were of the mighty, though the youngster was the most powerful of the two ; both were swarthy and worn, but one had still the freshness of early manhood ; both had an air of command, but Hugh was deferential; both were keen-looking, but Hugh was dreamy ; both were made to combat with their kind, but Hugh looked more likely to let off his antagonists easily. They betook them to large cheroots, and the Colonel began.
" I've really a great deal to say," he said. " Let me be oldest and speak first. Don't move, my dear Highcliffe; I'm sure you know, or you may guess, the whole thing. I was engaged to Miss Rokeby, Mr. Heron. Is it true that you are her accepted lover now ?"442
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
" Yes," said Hugh. " But I hope you'll hear how it came about."
" By all means. Tell me all, from the first, you know. Perhaps I've a right to hear; and, anyhow, it's better so. I've been so long finding you—I feel as if we'd always been friends, with a hitch somewhere—and now I've gone into the business at once."
Hugh gathered himself up, and told his tale, during which the soldier smoked tranquilly and imbibed sparingly. He interrupted once to ask who Lady Wharfedale was, and what made her put her griffe into it.
" I don't know, except that she is very fond of my mother and Mrs. Cawthorne," said Hugh. " But I've something else to tell you that I think she's concerned with."
"Well, then, and at Craig Hourn you had this chance, and couldn't miss it, and so on ?"
"Yes. And then next day but two came the news of her father's last fit; and she thought her letter about herself and me had brought it on. And I've never seen her since," said Hugh, with a patient look, very different from his usual expression of amused content with things in general. He stopped there, for enough was said, and he saw that a crisis was come in the. other's mood. It was not that Ingelram looked savage, or even offended ; his face hadWADY FEIRlN.
443
a grave judicial look, which rather relaxed as he spoke in a tone of abstract thought more than anything else.
"Well, you've told me the truth, and told it clearly," he said at last. " If I was inclined to keep you from your beauty—and a beauty she promised to be, and is—I shouldn't say what I say now. Do you remember the day you or she wrote that letter ?"
" Twenty-first October, I know."
" Well, let me see. It will help you with her if I tell you the poor old Squire had a letter from me to break off the whole thing by the 18th at latest. Whatever blame there is is mine. And that I will write home to Miss Rokeby before I go to bed, and it will be at Suez in three days. I owe her that. I ought to have set her free long before; and as for you, I can't- pitch into you without hurting her, even if I thought it safe for myself."
" Will you really do that, Colonel ?" said Hugh, with a strange pang as he saw the wistful look of pain unspoken, in the face of him who had just promised him the desire of his eyes. " I cant thank you right, but you've done it all for me, and now there's something in my mother's letter here. Are you not looking for somebody ? "
The other nodded with compressed lips and eyes, and Hugh read the passage of his mother's letter. There was a pause which Ingelram broke.444
HUGH HERON, Ch. Cn.
" Well, for once I did the right; and behold, it comes round at once. If this is so, I thank God, and He is with us. Yes, my boy, there's a woman I'd give a good deal to find. I thought she had turned nun, or was dead, till she wrote me a letter months ago ; and when that came I knew I never could be your rival. Show me where she is, and you may call for what you like."
A thought of Maulger Hawke's snow adventure, and the mysterious milliner, and her questions, flashed through Hugh's quick brain. He could not be sure ; but he could not, either, hide anything from the man who had done him right so freely. He asked rather shyly whether she was of the Colonel's own rank or not ?
"Well, yes and no—her father was an old High-Lancashire millowner and landowner, she was highly trained and all that. She appeared last as something like a milliner or lace-seller."
"What, tall and distinguished-looking—and like one of the best of us—with beautiful brown hair like Fan's ?—my sister's, I mean—you don't know her. Did she ever have an escape from being lost in the snow ?" said Hugh, all in a breath and much moved.
"All of it right," said the other, waiting for his answer, like a lion ready to spring.
" Then her present name is Agnes Normanton,WADY FEIRlN.
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and she's living as workwoman, or rather confidante and dame de compagnie with Lady Wharfedale— that's all."
" Why, I've been close to her. Heron, if you've kept back all this from me, you've done a thing that's hard to forgive."
" On my honour, I've only just guessed it—it's all come together in my memory. If anybody's known it, it's Lady Wharfedale ; and she's only just heard of your search—by my mother's letter. Perhaps she—
the other—didn't wish to be--Come, Colonel,
forget and forgive, and let's shake hands now; we've done right well by each other after all. I think it's by her own will she's found—or not without it."
Ingelram put both hands to his forehead, and sat so, with elbows on the rough table, for a long time. Then he spoke once more very quietly : " I wonder if I shall live to get home now ?"
" Why; you don't feel ill, do you ?—none the worse for the long ride ? Why shouldn't we all go straight home to-morrow ?"
" No reason at all—at least none to talk of tonight. Let me go to bed now. I'm all right, but it's come quick on me. There's plenty more for me to tell you, and I must hear all about that snow-scene. Not a bad subject for one of these roasting afternoons. Let me go now. God bless you, my boy. I had a446
HUGH HERON, Ch. Ch.
sort of grudge against you, like a dog in the manger as I was; but now I know you'll do with my old love. And I did care for her, when I was a boy."
He took up a paper lantern, and was shown to his tent by the two Muhammads, who had already been labelled Long and Short 'Hammad, and had fraternised over small cups of particular coffee, such as never gets farther than Egypt from its native Mocha.
" Not a bad night's work, 'Cliffe ?"
" In a reading point of view, do you mean ?"
" Confound reading."
" By all means. But let's turn in at last; no more Dibs to-night or many a day—
" It's hame, and it's hame, and it's hame we fain would be.
I swear there is a dash of romance about you swells sometimes. Good-night, Hugh, and no 'skeeters."CHAPTER XX.
CUP AND LIP.
HOMEWARD bound! The Colonel had his trip to Sinai during the three or four days which the others spent in packing, final sketches, and all the labours of breaking up a standing camp in the wilderness. They could only bring the endless clamours and petitions for backshish and tobacco to an end by walking off at last pne morning in advance of their camels; which had been left unsaddled and unpacked to the last by their Arabs, not so much in the hope of screwing anything more out of the riders, as to enjoy an hour or so's screaming over the division of their spoil. Ingelram was on ahead, Muhammad stayed to see all off, and the Oxford pair lounged on in front with their guns on their shoulders—not so much for the sake of shooting anything, as to obviate the chance of the servants or hangers-on shooting each other, in some clandestine experiment on the breech-loading system. The personal portmanteaux and books all went in448
HUGH HERON, Ch. Cir.
the nets borne by one huge brown camel, of less uneven mind than his fellows. They took their last look at sweet Feiran, and turned northwards round a cliff; " and on the ear the wailing died away."
There was a slight stampede of the caravan soon after starting. As the beasts felt their loads for the first time they indulged the instincts of the drome-darian heart, by almost running over the astonished pedestrians ; but this was atoned for by the pictur-esqueness of the group—a dozen ungainly beasts rattling away together like the start for some Abrahamic Derby, with their owners perched anyhow on bags and saddles, but adhering like luggage-tickets, with wild heads, tossing arms, and swart limbs scarcely hidden by their dingy-white shirts. They overtook the Colonel at lunch at the lower end of Mokatteb ; passed Mughara, with its tablets and turquoise mine, which date from the early dynasties of Egypt, as old as the Pyramids; speculated on endless inscriptions—some very recent (as sundry gallowses, inscribed Highcliffe, and done by Hugh in moments of relaxation), others of any age the reader pleases, for we can't go into controversy here. They passed the wild gorge of the Sword, or Nukb Badera, with the first sight of the sea, reminding them of home, as it always does in a strange land. Then there was a long picturesque winding track down theCUP AND LIP.
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hillsides, with a last high view of the sea of shattered peaks which form the outer buttresses of Sinai to the western sea. There was Naples-yellow and pale crimson, and sometimes desolate purple, and sometimes blinding Avhite gypsum; and the mirage flickered and played over crag and plain ; like wide breezy lakes below, or little gray tarns above.
And flaming downwards over all,
From heat to heat the day decreased ;
And slowly rounded to the east, The one black shadow of the wall
of the one tent they had sent on in advance to the spring by the wild sea-worn plain of Murkhah. A cold night, a big bonfire, a hasty morning dip, and the long hot march by the sea to Ghurundel in Elim, and then the palms again. Hugh fancied Ingelram rather felt the scorching of the chalk and limestone furnace at the lower part of Wady Taiyibeh ; but he ate his luncheon and late dinner rather silently, and seemed to sleep well enough. They passed the grave of Abu Zennet's mare, and threw the usual stones or sand upon her cairn, with the traditional " Eat, thou mare of Abu Zennet." There were two tourist camps in Ghurundel, but no fresh news. The next day they encamped on the bare desert, and the next reached Ayoun Mousa by luncheon-time; and there, considering
2 G45°
HUGH HERON, Ch. Ch.
that the next steamer was eight days off from Alexandria, they settled they would have a turn of rest, and catch the afternoon train on the morrow at Suez, for great Alcairo.
There are few more striking scenes for the beginning or the end of a Desert march than sunset at the Wells of Moses, below Suez, on the Asiatic side of the Red Sea. The endless sweep of bright yellow sand, rising gradually into desert drift, and sinking near low water, till you think you can walk across to Suez, recalls all the questions of the Exodus at once. League after league of melancholy gold, one cannot get rid of the thought that there, or in some northern prolongation of the earlier Gulf, Israel saw Egypt dead upon the sea-shore. They must have lain like leaves for miles. Highcliffe had very little turn for critical scepticism ; it seemed to him like mere nibbling at the great problems of this world and the next; and the greatness and wildness of the scene, and the names of Moslem tradition, and the fact that such a far-away thing should bear so strongly on modern English life, made a note on his mind, as he said, that at least Hebrew history was Hebrew history, as truly recorded as others, and perhaps a good deal more so.
They dined early; Highcliffe had some work to do, but the others sat them down upon the yellowCUP AND LIP.
45i
sand, between the sun and moon upon the shore. It was dead calm, with an advancing tide fast swallowing up the soft slopes of the beach, which rose in successive ridges and furrows so as to vary the depth by a foot or so in places. It crept on, forming or joining to itself many a still salt pool. Looking eastward, these pools reflected the rose-•coloured mountains of the Tih, monotonous but ■many crested, and now flaming with the sun which was rushing down beyond Gebl Attakah. The Mount of Deliverance was another purposely composed picture, as it seemed, all solemn purple, with long banks of barred clouds mustering round the sun; now flushed with inconceivable and nameless tints of ruby and gold ; soon to pass into orange afterglow, and the purple blackness of eastern darkness.
" I'm glad there's only one camp besides our own," said Hugh. " So nice to have it all to ourselves for the last evening."
" Yes, there's just one figure for your foreground, going to bathe that colt, I suppose, and himself too. No sharks about here ?"
" I fancy there are some at Murkhah. We had an alarm there while we were swimming about; it looked like a great black back fin and tail, but when we all got ashore it broke up into a shoal of young porpoises."
"Ah, you should take care. I think you've a
2 G 2452
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
quiet risky way with you, do you know ?—likely to do as well as talk—and that brings fellows into scrapes. Never risk your life for nothing. That colt don't like it much—what a plunge !—he's got him pretty deep."
" There they go, I swear, a regular cropper; he must have trod in a hole—why, they've parted company"—and Hugh laughed a lazy laugh of contemplation, never supposing the rider, a blue-shirted Arab, couldn't swim.
But he sunk and rose, and threw up his hands, and sunk again. They looked at each other, and were on foot and at full speed in a moment—there was less than one hundred yards, and the Arab had not sunk for the third time when they rushed into the water at him. Hugh had cast off his jacket and belt by the way ; he knew the risk well enough, but did not stop to calculate it, nor would many men have done so with Colonel Ingelram at their side. Hugh did not swim, but tried to keep a foot on the ground, and happily was able to seize both the drowning man's hands in a gripe which prevailed even above his struggles ; but the buoyant water was lifting him, when Ingelram got outside, seized the sufferer by the back of the neck with one hand, and tried to swim into shore, pushing and towing the pair home. It was well for them that the Arab was so nearly gone, for his shaven Moslem skull slipped from Ingelram'sCUP AND LIP.
453
fingers, and before they had got ten feet homewards, he managed to grapple his preservers ; in a manner which gave them such a draught of the Red Sea, as has perhaps scarcely been exceeded since the days of Pharaoh. But happily that progress had been made up a steeper slope of shore than usual, and Hugh found rest for the sole of his foot again; they got their breath; and another plunge and scramble brought them well on their legs. The Arab was quite senseless, and they laid him on a stone. The Colonel gasped in a low whisper: " Holler like mad, Heron—I can't, I've hurt my lungs again "—and he coughed fearfully.
" He's coming round," said Hugh, after awakening both Asiatic and African echoes by bawling for Muhammad, and Mousa, and Mustafa, and all his swarthy train. " Get up to the tents, Colonel; whatever you do, don't get chilled. Pick up my belt and put my jacket on as you go, the night's coming rather cool."
"Young devil you are to think of things—ought to be a sodger."
" Ya, Mousa/' roared Hugh again, " hot brandy-pawnee. I'll give the nigger a nip here, and you go up and get rubbed down."
Highcliffe came down with the desired liquid, much lamenting his loss of the fun; but Hugh told454
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
him it must have been much pleasanter saving Fan,, and he couldn't have everything, or marry a male Mussulman. They handed the sufferer over to his friends, several of whom had observed the whole transaction in a speculative way; resigning themselves, in the true Islamite way, so greatly admired by some moderns, to their neighbour's misfortunes.. However, it having been written for him to be pulled out, and drenched with the forbidden liquor, they accepted the fact of his restoration to life; and led or carried him to their tents again. No symptom of recognition was ever manifested to his preservers, by himself or anybody else ; and their attention was soon otherwise engaged.
" Where's Ingelram ?" said Hugh, coming out of his tent in dry clean Arab shirt, fresh kefiyeh and skull-cap, comparatively new knickerbockers, brown stockings, and red slippers. Highcliffe was making tea al fresco, with the last of their preserved milk and lump-sugar. He beckoned his pupil up to him.
"I'm afraid it's hurt him," he said. "He's been coughing an infernal deep sort of croak—didn't you. hear ? he got rid of a lot of Red Sea, and then, I'm afraid, he spat clear red ; that lung of his is hurt again or something. He told me Long Muhammad' knew what to do, and it was nothing, and I might.CUP AND LIP.
455
come in ten minutes. Go you and take him a big cup of tea, not too hot. I doubt he may want cold things before long. Could we get ice at Suez now ?"
Hugh said nothing, but looked scared and troubled, and, according to his wont, took refuge at once in doing something. He went to the other tent with the tea, and returned anxious enough.
" He's rather faint after all the coughing, and can only whisper. Can't we give him some cold brandy-pawnee weak ? Muhammad thinks it's made him worse than he's ever been this winter."
" What a strange tragic turn, to be sure—such a risk when he'd done so well, and all looked hopeful. But he'll do yet with care."
" He is hurt though; he says it's like a deep stab inside his breast."
" Oh indeed." Highcliffe spoke in a deliberate way, which Hugh noted as a sign that he thought it time to take the command. "I'll go to him in a minute, and sit with him till twelve. Then you come on till three—then we start."
" Start!—he can't bear a saddle."
" You and I, I mean, for Suez; then we'll get a boat and come over here for him. We'll get him home to dinner, if he can eat one, at the hotel. He must be there, or at Cairo; and once there it's all plain sailing; and till it gets too hot, this is best."456
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
" Right you are. But I'll sit with him till twelve or so."
It seemed unspeakably odd and painful to Hugh to find the friend he had just done a bold thing with, in careless strength, so pale, and still, and gasping. He held his hand a long time, and after his fashion noticed its fineness, and size, and powerful grasp, and blue veins starting through the tan.
" I can whisper to you—very low—without any harm," said Ingelram. " I knew I shouldn't get home easy. I've had that queer—dream or what-not—once more—and I can't make it out."
" Why—what—can you tell me ? "
"It was about her—we'd done nothing fatal— whatever we might have thought, God forgive us— but her husband shot me—not quite fairly—and then himself—and he said before he'd haunt me, right or wrong, and alive or dead. I don't know—but it seems—in a sense—they let him do it now and then."
Hugh felt a chill run down his backbone. Such words from such a man were so utterly unexpected. But he didn't care, personally, for any haunting or apparition whatever, according to his limited acquaintance with such things. So he pressed the cold hand that lay in his, and began to rub it gently.
" It's been different this time," went on Ingelram,CUP AND LIP.
457
in his hoarse whisper. " It was the night before I got to you—at Murkhah, by this Red Sea. Ghosts live here, they say. I've felt him accuse me, and moan against me, in dreams, you know; and in dreams I've answered him; it was like speaking for one's soul against—what's-his-name. But this time something that was he rose before me, and it did nothing but cry and weep—not at me—that I wouldn't have minded—but it's back was always to me. It seemed to break me down—above a bit. I don't understand it at all. Is that poor beggar crying always, God knows where, with no hope of death ?"
Hugh, as we said, didn't care much for either man or devil, as far as his experience of either went; but the words affected him with some deep aching of heart, which was not sympathy or fear or grief or shock of religious horror, but a little of them all. Without guide, not knowing what he meant, he said the first thing that came to him.
" If he can cry, he can't be lost entirely; and the best thing you can do for him, may be to do all you can for her."
He often felt ashamed afterwards of having spoken in that off-hand way, as words came to him. But their immediate effect was good. The soldier nodded and pressed his hand, and went off, still holding it, into comfortless snoring sleep, which grew easier as458
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
the time passed, till Highcliffe came at twelve; and was hardly broken till the early hour of march was near.
Highcliffe sat outside the tent on the Red Sea shore. The glow of the false dawn was fading, and night seemed to droop again over the deadly sands, and the arid mountains, and the pitiless sea. But then the Morning Star rose slowly, wheeling above the Hill of Deliverance—pale-golden, large, and lonely; Aphrodite of Heaven, the true " Sun of the Sleepless " —and with her came the first hues of the coming day. The oppression of sultry night was gone; and he pinned the canvas screen aside, that the sleeper might rest in the sweet exhaustion of early morning—when so many arise and are gone. Highcliffe thought, with a moment's tremor, of the rising tide; and of those who die before the dawn and pass away with the ebb ;. as faint souls • may perhaps be borne away, with the sweep of Earth's course and axis, and the solemn, motion of sun and moon. There was no such peril yet.
There came a stir in camp, and the camels began to growl and quarrel, and two or three Arabs turned out. The faint camp-fire was blown into new life, and the immortal coffee-pot went on. Hugh lay on a. hammock, still as death, and woke to action with a sigh and a shake. They saw their beasts saddled and loaded ; swallowed hasty coffee and eggs, andCUP AND LIP.
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ancient biscuit; and left Long Muhammad to watch his master's rest.
They got him across to Suez well enough; there was no more blood from his lungs, and the doctors thought well of him. But then came feverish symptoms, and he seemed so weak and passive ; the place was getting too hot, and they moved on to rooms in Cairo, on the Desert level, commended of physicians. There he picked up a little more, and thought he could get on to Malta in a week or so.
" What it can mean, all one's strength and taste for life going at once, just when there's something to live for, I can't see," he said in his low murmur. " But I think it must mean Death. I always thought he'd come quick and sharp, Heron ; but as there's time, let's study the subject. I've read the Bible a good deal for years past, and I believe the Creeds and all that; and latterly I've come to feel one-ought to serve Christ—oneself in person—like a servant, or a soldier, you know. But there's nO word of command, and I don't know my uniform. It's so hard to find what men really think about it, for themselves, if they think at all. You two do think, but you're different ; like each other, I know, but with a difference. Tell me, 'Cliffe, what am I to do, if I must go soon ?"
Highcliffe's head sank down upon his chest, Hugh460
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
looked to him and said nothing; at last the Don spoke, breathing rather hard :
" Heron must tell you what he seems to know, and to know pretty well—somehow. I think his mother and he, and the rest of them, are right ; I'd rather be as they all seem to be. But now, Hugh, speak up for your Master—and mine—you're meant for a casuist; try and give a reason for the hope that's in you. I'm only like Thomas, Ingelram—I don't know that I believe, but I can't leave the believers; and perhaps—He may come to me some Sunday, as of old." And 'Cliffe's voice died away in his now truly Sinaitic beard.
" Tell me something then, Heron," said the Colonel; and the quiet whisper expressed to Hugh's senses, now quickened to Bedouin sharpness by desert air and hard life, as much command as the shout of a king.
" It's hard to talk of oneself in such things," he said, " and I'm quite a boy. I've always accepted the Faith, and thought, as they told me, that baptism made me a part of it, and it of me. We're all members of Him, all three of us. I think He is really my Master. I'm sure but for that thought I should have been—well, a deal worse than I am. If He were not a real Master of mine I shouldn't be here. It was taught me, I know, but it seems toCUP AND LIP.
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hold me now. I shouldn't care for life without— without Him, the Lord, in fact."
" You distinctly believe that He is God your Commander ?" said Ingelram, with the exactness of a Roman prefect, having lictors and lions under him, and thoroughly determined to know the real mind of a Nazarene.
Hugh said afterwards it was just like that; but he answered : " Not always distinctly ;—more or less so. But I hold to it—to Him; sometimes I know He holds me. I think we all want help for our unbelief; nobody seems to get beyond it; but we do get help in secret ways."
"Do you hold with that, Highcliffe ? " said the prefect.
" I hold that he is right, but there are great difficulties in the outer world ; and you and I—perhaps we are not so well kept as he has been."
" Like enough," said the other quietly. " You both say what you think, and it must be so. Shall I see the chaplain here—a little ? You all say I don't go back; but I don't get on, and I think life's burning out rather. Nothing seems able to give me a lift."
" Not this news, and the new prospects ? Look here, can you get to Malta with us by Monday's mail ? and will you let me go home and settle all462
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
I can ? The sea '11 be good for you. May's very hot here. If you want a mental stimulus, it can only come from home, you know."
"Well, ask old McClure if I'm man enough. I've fallen too helpless to make up my mind—but the freshness of the sea—yes, we'll try it, Heron. Tell the Long and Little Muhammads and the doctor."
" Read me about the Prodigal, Highcliffe. Should you mind doing it in your own words off the Greek ? It's nothing to you, I suppose ?"
Highcliffe read.
" Now are we all like that, I wonder ? Heron and you and I ? We're all right before the world, and well off, and all that. I don't feel pulled down low enough, except in body."
" If we were meant for good, we've all got wrong, you see. I don't know ; my life seems a good deal of a failure already ; there's a good deal of evil I can't set right, and I'm not perfect, either. ' Intra peccatur et extra' says Horace, and he knew."
" I will arise and go to my Father, and say that to Him. Well, I think it is so, and I do say it," and he whispered the words to himself. " But how is one to arise and go ? I wonder if I could say that in ■dying: that seems the only time."
" Perhaps it is ; as Lady Hertha always said, life'sCUP AND LIP.
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a long imperfect thing, a mere process, that's only-complete in Death."
" I wonder one doesn't want to die more. I wonder if I ever was quite fit to—I wish I had then."
" Well, fitness seems to have a good deal to do with—penitence and confessing oneself wrong, and miserable—and all, and that takes time, and life, and experience."
" I'm wrong, I know, but not miserable enough."
"Perhaps that's because you've a good deal of work left to do in the world. It doesn't seem to me as if you'd anything more the matter now than a worn-out mind and a great shock of body. You've been anxious and brooding all the way to Philce and back, I suppose ; and then this accident's thrown you back since the dinouementr
" Well, you're a comfort to me, you two. Are you sent to me now ? Were either of you ever sent anywhere, told Go, and did you go? Tell me something of that, one of you, if you can !"
" Tell him about your saving Fan's life, Highcliffe. You hadn't meant to cross the river to where it happened, and you were the one man of ten thousand, most likely, who'd ever seen such an accident before, or knew what to do."
" Why, Hugh, why on earth did you never say that before ? I've often thought of that line of causes464
HUGH HERON, Cm. CM.
and effects, and now for you to hit on it--Let me
tell you all about it, Colonel."
The run to Malta was as much as Ingelram could bear, and Highcliffe stayed with him in Strada Reale lodgings, which had been telegraphed for long since. The garrison chaplain knew him well, and Hugh had sent to beg him to meet them while the steamer stayed for coaling. And there the three received Holy Communion from him, for the first time together. All were very silent. Highcliffe followed every word of the service with his chin on his breast; once they heard him say, under his breath : " Help Thou mine unbelief." Ingelram looked at Hugh when he got up to go on board, with a still patient eye, so unusual, and unlike the high looks of his pride, that Hugh felt a wild pang of new anxiety and eager haste. Sick men's eyes are quick, and perhaps the patient noticed it.
" Don't be too eager and get knocked up," he said, " but come back to me yourself, whatever you do, or whatever they do, or she does. Live or die, I can't do without you now—and you and 'Cliffe will bring me home, if it's only in a puncheon of rum. It's like sinking close to harbour; but that's more comfortable after all, somehow," he murmured.CONCLUSION.
The condition of things in the Dales adjacent to the rivers Gore and Garrow, on the appearance of an heir to the honours of the House of Wharfedale, may perhaps best be described in the words of the late lamented Mr. Nicholas; to wit, that the welkin (whatever stratum of the atmosphere that is) rang with jovial echoes ; that the bells from a hundred steeples went clanging away like mad; and that the beacon-fires was turned on immediate and continual. We need not go into details about the rejoicings; it is enough to say that pedigree shorthorns were roasted, and towns feasted ; that nobody was quarrelsome in his drink, at least on the premises; that Ravensgill Towers narrowly escaped, but did escape, being set on fire ; and that the little Master of Wharfedale kicked and crowed at May Cawthorne's opposition baby (of the opposite sex) in a manner much beyond his years. I believe the two ladies regularly engaged them on the spot; and some say they tucked them up in one cradle.
2 H466
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
The great day was over, and the next day of reaction and partial rest; and people were gone back to town. Lady Hertha was bringing Grace Rokeby over from Shoreswood for a comparatively quiet stay at Ravensgill. Since the Colonel's letter from Feiran they had both been perfectly happy together; and though the damsel was still rather silent and pensive, there was no doubt that she now ate and slept sufficiently, called to horse as of old, and seemed to regain colour and roundness with rather remarkable promptitude. Lady Wharfe-dale had spared her the great days of the feast, but said she could not do without her a moment afterwards. So Hertha and she were standing at the library window, just arrived ; gazing far over the wide park, waving with fresh grass, which all the deer and stock in it could not keep down ; at woods, and waters, and shining moors, and whinstone rocks above ; and the glowing garden, all bathed in the light of late-rejoicing May.
"Who's that just come through the verdurer's, I wonder ?" said Lady Hertha. " Why he's galloping straight for us. Oh look, how he's nipped over that flight of hurdles, in and out of the fold. Why, of course. Give me the glass, quick, Grace ; don't be frightened. We knew he'd landed ; it's--"
Grace clung to her, and hid her face a moment.CONCLUSION.
467
Hugh galloped up the park, got into a ride, and came up to the door, rein on neck, and looking about him with his old face. He gave one glance to his reeking horse, said something about gruel before cleaning, and came in, clanking with the heavy but lenient spurs he sometimes used with a young one. He had got home to Otterscope, and found a horse, and some civilised clothes; but as the day was sunny he had retained a hog-hunter's hat, with a red, yellow, and gold kefiyeh round it; which hung down gorgeously beside his tanned and lean face and neck. He had come back a man in thought and power, with a grave, commanding face; and the impression of his height and strength was not diminished by the loose-limbed swagger of the Bedawy, which he had not unsuccessfully studied. His eyes were soft enough, however, as he took his mother in his arms. Grace had vanished, but it subsequently appeared that she had not gone very far.
" Oh, dear boy, you've only come home to go away again."
" Not for long; but she must come to him, or he'll die. He was strong enough before, and could have spoken for himself to her, but—you've read all the letters—the half-drowning in rescuing that Arab hurt his lungs again, and he's had a little fever since. It's gone; but he is prostrate, you know. I think a great468
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
delight would bring him round. Is she here ? Agnes ? Mrs. Horsforth ? Miss Normanton ?"
"With Gertrude now. You haven't asked after anyone else."
" Grace—is she at Shoreswood ?"
" No ; go into the little drawing-room, while I go up to tell Agnes ; one must not hurry her too much ; you're too like a camel-driver, I declare. Go, it's next door to this."
She listened a moment, and heard a long, low, soft cry, and a little rustling bound. One glance she got through the opened door—they had clasped each other, and hid their faces ; and the house might have fallen over their heads, or been blown up under their feet, without their unfolding their arms, or otherwise noticing the circumstance. If Michael Angelo's Fates, who hung over the fireplace, had come to life, and shorn, or snipped, or sawn through their thread of being deliberately, they would only have clung closer, and been thankful.
Lady Hertha went upstairs, and returned in due time.
" You're to come up to Lady Wharfedale, Hugh," said she, discreetly uttering her command before she entered the room. But they would not let each other go till she stroked down both their heads, and told them to be good children, as of old. Then HughCONCLUSION.
469
went off. His mother held Grace to her, and told her she had got the handsomest man in all the North-country, and was his match.
" They said that of the Cawthornes/' said Grace.
" They were brilliant then,.with the fresh light on them—and you have it now."
Hugh found the Countess in a deep arm-chair with her beautiful handmaid by her side. Both were a little more fragile-looking than their wont—one with joy, the other with sorrow. Gertrude gave him both her hands, with a face between eager welcome and grave anxiety.
" Now tell us all," she said. " But first let me introduce you to Mrs. Horsforth. You must take your real name now, Agnes—I only trust you won't keep it long. There is much for you to hear afterwards. Dear Hugh—I suppose I may call you so "— (Hugh's swart face glowed like iron, and his teeth and eyes shone white like a nigger's)—" tell us both how is Colonel Ingelram ? and what does he really mean and wish ? and what do you want here, in fact?"
" He is rather ill," said Hugh quietly. " He heard all I knew, or what I guessed, about Mrs. Horsforth. He was coming home at once to her—eagerly longing for her, longing to make up all to her, was what he said—or one thing out of many. Then, at AyounHUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
Mousa, opposite Suez, he got this injury in saving that Arab—and me too, I think—we should both have been drowned without him, and it was a near thing as it was."
" But oh, what can I do?" said Agnes; "what could I do ? I could not put myself in his way again —how can he care so for me ? "
" I do think now," said Hugh, in his soft quick tone of suggestion, with a dash of command, "you'll save him if you will come with me to Malta now. He wants fresh life—and you can give it him—and nothing on earth but you can do it, that I know."
" Oh, anywhere—dear Lady Wharfedale, you'll let me go."
" When's next steamer from Marseilles, Hugh ? " said Gertrude.
" Brindisi's quicker, and less sea. Are you a good sailor, Mrs. Horsforth ? "
" Pretty well, but don't talk of that. When can we start ?"
" I beg your pardon, you don't look too strong ; and if you're ill on the way it may spoil all most dreadfully. It'll be awfully hot, you must have a night's rest in London, and again in Paris, and again at Turin. This is Thursday, there's a steamer next Wednesday. Mail to-morrow from Hopton."
She had sunk down on a chair with drooped headCONCLUSION.
471
and clasped hands, and eyes that seemed to range forward over land and sea. But his soft decided voice cheered and commanded her, and she rose mechanically.
" Get your things ready, dear," said Lady Wharfe-dale. " They've everything you want ready to wear at the outfitters' shops. You'll be yourself when you're once en route. Go and see May now, Hugh, and ask her to come and help."
Agnes was ready and neat in all her preparations and Hugh took her off in the morning, though still as one in trance. He was quiet enough himself all the way to London, thinking of Grace, though attentive to his charge's wants and preferences. They slept a night at Lady Hertha's town abode; and Hugh consented, on Agnes's entreaty, to run right through by mail from Paris to Turin.
Valetta lights; a sea all phosphoric brilliance, every darting fish and splashing oar breaking out in pale-blue fire. The Quarantine Harbour ; a crowd of boats, brightly-lit stairs, and a hasty landing. A great beard and massy pair of shoulders hurls at them through the press.
"He's better if anything." Agnes leant hard on Hugh's arm for a moment, and just bent her face forward. They waited to see the luggage in47 2
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
Muhammad's hands, and in ten minutes were in the little court of a stone-balconied house, built, as Eastern houses are, with a projecting angle, and rather in echelon than in line with its neighbours. The chaplain's wife was waiting to receive Agnes— propriety asserting its claims. A nursing sister came downstairs. " He would like to see you," she said quietly—and Agnes entered a large room, with ice and flowers about it, and cooled as far as the sultry night permitted.
She knelt down at his bedside and put her face to his, and so they left them.
'Clifife and Hugh got home, in time for the former's editorial duties, and for the latter to finish his work, and get a first in October.
They took Palermo on their way home, and Naples. At the latter pleasant City of the Mount— and of the plain—they saw the brilliant Mademoiselle von Herstein in " Norma," and assisted at a triumphal procession afterwards, in which all the musical world dragged her home en voiticre to her hotel. She was just engaged to a fast-rising composer, it was said ; and her brilliant interpretation of his music was making both their fortunes. Highclifife sent in his card next day, and she seemed delighted to see him again.CONCLUSION.
473
" Tell ze Colonel I love him always," she said; "but Giorgio is better for me. We sail both be happy—but now I sail never learn speak ze English like ze natives."
" And that's all that," said Charles.
"Ah, dear—not a year ago," said his wife, no longer horizontal, but doing very well at full afternoon tea at Red Scaurs; all beautiful in a gray riding-habit and gold collar. Her old Mariquita was so quiet now, and always had been so safe, that even the strict Lady Susan Cawthorne would let May mount her once more.
" Well, how about getting over to Otterscope next week ? You'll want tremendous big boxes, May, of course."
" You never can talk about me without some allusion to tremendous size. I wish you'd married Clara Ellerby."
" She'd have ornamented my chimney-piece, if you like, but not my chimney-corner. Don't you be evasive, May ; you know you've got three new gowns."
" Yes, and you made me talk about my gownds before, as you will call them."
" Well, of course you ought to be rather swell, to see the two couples turned off. What a set of Crackers you will be."
2 I474
HUGH HERON, Ch. CH.
" I'm only sorry the Ingelrams don't come home yet."
" He wants another year of rest and warmth ; arid then he'll go in at life again."
" But the real fun is," said May, excited, and looking rather mischievous, " Carry Creyke's being Grace's chief bridesmaid, and old 'Clifife Hugh's best man. It's altogether wrong, and compromises those young people."
" Two weddings are enough for one novel in one volume," said her husband.
THE END.
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