Part 29 (1/2)
This a.s.surance, coinciding with Mr. Dale's convictions as to Riccabocca's scruples on the point of honour, tended much to compose the good man; and if he did not, as my reader of the gentler s.e.x would expect from him, feel alarm lest Miss Jemima's affections should have been irretrievably engaged, and her happiness thus put in jeopardy by the squire's refusal, it was not that the parson wanted tenderness of heart, but experience in womankind; and he believed, very erroneously, that Miss Jemima Hazeldean was not one upon whom a disappointment of that kind would produce a lasting impression. Therefore Mr. Dale, after a pause of consideration, said kindly,--
”Well, don't vex yourself,--and I was to blame quite as much as you.
But, indeed, I should have thought it easier for the squire to have transplanted one of his tall cedars into his kitchen-garden than for you to inveigle Dr. Riccabocca into matrimonial intentions. But a man who could voluntarily put himself into the parish stocks for the sake of experiment must be capable of anything! However, I think it better that I, rather than yourself, should speak to the squire, and I will go at once.”
CHAPTER XXIV.
The parson put on the shovel-hat, which--conjoined with other details in his dress peculiarly clerical, and already, even then, beginning to be out of fas.h.i.+on with Churchmen--had served to fix upon him emphatically the dignified but antiquated style and cognomen of ”Parson;” and took his way towards the Home Farm, at which he expected to find the squire.
But he had scarcely entered upon the village green when he beheld Mr.
Hazeldean, leaning both hands on his stick, and gazing intently upon the parish stocks. Now, sorry am I to say that, ever since the Hegira of Lenny and his mother, the Anti-Stockian and Revolutionary spirit in Hazeldean, which the memorable homily of our parson had a while averted or suspended, had broken forth afresh. For though while Lenny was present to be mowed and jeered at, there had been no pity for him, yet no sooner was he removed from the scene of trial than a universal compa.s.sion for the barbarous usage he had received produced what is called ”the reaction of public opinion.” Not that those who had mowed and jeered repented them of their mockery, or considered themselves in the slightest degree the cause of his expatriation. No; they, with the rest of the villagers, laid all the blame upon the stocks. It was not to be expected that a lad of such exemplary character could be thrust into that place of ignominy, and not be sensible to the affront. And who, in the whole village, was safe, if such goings-on and puttings-in were to be tolerated in silence, and at the expense of the very best and quietest lad the village had ever known? Thus, a few days after the widow's departure, the stocks was again the object of midnight desecration: it was bedaubed and bescratched, it was hacked and hewed, it was scrawled over with pithy lamentations for Lenny, and laconic execrations on tyrants. Night after night new inscriptions appeared, testifying the sarcastic wit and the vindictive sentiment of the parish.
And perhaps the stocks was only spared from axe and bonfire by the convenience it afforded to the malice of the disaffected: it became the Pasquin of Hazeldean.
As disaffection naturally produces a correspondent vigour in authority, so affairs had been lately administered with greater severity than had been hitherto wont in the easy rule of the squire and his predecessors.
Suspected persons were naturally marked out by Mr. Stirn, and reported to his employer, who, too proud or too pained to charge them openly with ingrat.i.tude, at first only pa.s.sed them by in his walks with a silent and stiff inclination of his head; and afterwards, gradually yielding to the baleful influence of Stirn, the squire grumbled forth ”that he did not see why he should be always putting himself out of his way to show kindness to those who made such a return. There ought to be a difference between the good and the bad.” Encouraged by this admission, Stirn had conducted himself towards the suspected parties, and their whole kith and kin, with the iron-handed justice that belonged to his character.
For some, habitual donations of milk from the dairy and vegetables from the gardens were surlily suspended; others were informed that their pigs were always trespa.s.sing on the woods in search of acorns, or that they were violating the Game Laws in keeping lurchers. A beer-house, popular in the neighbourhood, but of late resorted to over-much by the grievance-mongers (and no wonder, since they had become the popular party), was threatened with an application to the magistrates for the withdrawal of its license. Sundry old women, whose grandsons were notoriously ill-disposed towards the stocks, were interdicted from gathering dead sticks under the avenues, on pretence that they broke down the live boughs; and, what was more obnoxious to the younger members of the parish than most other retaliatory measures, three chestnut-trees, one walnut, and two cherry-trees, standing at the bottom of the Park, and which had, from time immemorial, been given up to the youth of Hazeldean, were now solemnly placed under the general defence of ”private property.” And the crier had announced that, henceforth, all depredators on the fruit trees in Copse Hollow would be punished with the utmost rigour of the law. Stirn, indeed, recommended much more stringent proceedings than all these indications of a change of policy, which, he averred, would soon bring the parish to its senses,--such as discontinuing many little jobs of unprofitable work that employed the surplus labour of the village. But there the squire, falling into the department and under the benigner influence of his Harry, was as yet not properly hardened. When it came to a question that affected the absolute quant.i.ty of loaves to be consumed by the graceless mouths that fed upon him, the milk of human kindness--with which Providence has so bountifully supplied that cla.s.s of the mammalia called the ”Bucolic,”
and of which our squire had an extra ”yield”--burst forth, and washed away all the indignation of the harsher Adam.
Still your policy of half-measures, which irritates without crus.h.i.+ng its victims, which flaps an exasperated wasp-nest with a silk pocket-handkerchief, instead of blowing it up with a match and train, is rarely successful; and after three or four other and much guiltier victims than Lenny had been incarcerated in the stocks, the parish of Hazeldean was ripe for any enormity. Pestilent Jacobinical tracts, conceived and composed in the sinks of manufacturing towns, found their way into the popular beer-house,--Heaven knows how, though the tinker was suspected of being the disseminator by all but Stirn, who still, in a whisper, accused the Papishers. And, finally, there appeared amongst the other graphic embellishments which the poor stocks had received, the rude gravure of a gentleman in a broad-brimmed hat and top-boots, suspended from a gibbet, with the inscription beneath, ”A warnin to hall tirans--mind your hi!--sighnde Captin sTraw.”
It was upon this significant and emblematic portraiture that the squire was gazing when the parson joined him. ”Well, Parson,” said Mr.
Hazeldean, with a smile which he meant to be pleasant and easy, but which was exceedingly bitter and grim, ”I wish you joy of your flock,--you see they have just hanged me in effigy!”
The parson stared, and though greatly shocked, smothered his emotion; and attempted, with the wisdom of the serpent and the mildness of the dove, to find another original for the effigy.
”It is very bad,” quoth he, ”but not so bad as all that, Squire; that's not the shape of your bat. It is evidently meant for Mr. Stirn.”
”Do you think so?” said the squire, softened. ”Yet the top-boots--Stirn never wears top-boots.”
”No more do you, except in the hunting-field. If you look again, those are not tops, they are leggings,--Stirn wears leggings. Besides, that flourish, which is meant for a nose, is a kind of hook, like Stirn's; whereas your nose--though by no means a snub--rather turns up than not, as the Apollo's does, according to the plaster cast in Riccabocca's parlour.”
”Poor Stirn!” said the squire, in a tone that evinced complacency, not unmingled with compa.s.sion, ”that's what a man gets in this world by being a faithful servant, and doing his duty with zeal for his employer.
But you see things have come to a strange pa.s.s, and the question now is, what course to pursue. The miscreants. .h.i.therto have defied all vigilance, and Stirn recommends the employment of a regular night.w.a.tch, with a lanthorn and bludgeon.”
”That may protect the stocks certainly; but will it keep those detestable tracts out of the beer-house?”
”We shall shut the beer-house up the next sessions.”
”The tracts will break out elsewhere,--the humour's in the blood!”
”I've half a mind to run off to Brighton or Leamingtongood hunting at Leamington--for a year, just to let the rogues see how they can get on without me!”
The squire's lip trembled.
”My dear Mr. Hazeldean,” said the parson, taking his friend's hand, ”I don't want to parade my superior wisdom; but, if you had taken my advice, 'quieta non movere!' Was there ever a parish so peaceable as this, or a country gentleman so beloved as you were, before you undertook the task which has dethroned kings and ruined States,--that of wantonly meddling with antiquity, whether for the purpose of uncalled-for repairs, or the revival of obsolete uses.”