Part 26 (2/2)
”I will not affect to think that to be bad,” said he to himself, ”which in my heart of hearts does not seem to be bad.” And thus he resolved that he might live without contamination among hunting squires. And then, being a man only too p.r.o.ne by nature to do as others did around him, he found by degrees that that could hardly be wrong for him which he admitted to be right for others.
But still his conscience upbraided him, and he declared to himself more than once that after this year he would hunt no more. And then his own f.a.n.n.y would look at him on his return home on those days in a manner that cut him to the heart. She would say nothing to him. She never inquired in a sneering tone, and with angry eyes, whether he had enjoyed his day's sport; but when he spoke of it, she could not answer him with enthusiasm; and in other matters which concerned him she was always enthusiastic.
After a while, too, he made matters worse, for about the end of March he did another very foolish thing. He almost consented to buy an expensive horse from Sowerby--an animal which he by no means wanted, and which, if once possessed, would certainly lead him into further trouble. A gentleman, when he has a good horse in his stable, does not like to leave him there eating his head off. If he be a gig-horse, the owner of him will be keen to drive a gig; if a hunter, the happy possessor will wish to be with a pack of hounds.
”Mark,” said Sowerby to him one day, when they were out together, ”this brute of mine is so fresh, I can hardly ride him; you are young and strong; change with me for an hour or so.” And then they did change, and the horse on which Robarts found himself mounted went away with him beautifully.
”He's a splendid animal,” said Mark, when they again met.
”Yes, for a man of your weight. He's thrown away upon me;--too much of a horse for my purposes. I don't get along now quite as well as I used to do. He is a nice sort of hunter; just rising six, you know.”
How it came to pa.s.s that the price of the splendid animal was mentioned between them, I need not describe with exactness. But it did come to pa.s.s that Mr. Sowerby told the parson that the horse should be his for 130.
”And I really wish you'd take him,” said Sowerby. ”It would be the means of partially relieving my mind of a great weight.”
Mark looked up into his friend's face with an air of surprise, for he did not at the moment understand how this should be the case.
”I am afraid, you know, that you will have to put your hand into your pocket sooner or later about that accursed bill--” Mark shrank as the profane word struck his ears--”and I should be glad to think that you had got something in hand in the way of value.”
”Do you mean that I shall have to pay the whole sum of 500?”
”Oh! dear, no; nothing of the kind. But something I dare say you will have to pay: if you like to take Dandy for a hundred and thirty, you can be prepared for that amount when Tozer comes to you. The horse is dog cheap, and you will have a long day for your money.”
Mark at first declared, in a quiet, determined tone, that he did not want the horse; but it afterwards appeared to him that if it were so fated that he must pay a portion of Mr. Sowerby's debts, he might as well repay himself to any extent within his power. It would be as well perhaps that he should take the horse and sell him. It did not occur to him that by so doing he would put it in Mr. Sowerby's power to say that some valuable consideration had pa.s.sed between them with reference to this bill, and that he would be aiding that gentleman in preparing an inextricable confusion of money-matters between them.
Mr. Sowerby well knew the value of this. It would enable him to make a plausible story, as he had done in that other case of Lord Lufton.
”Are you going to have Dandy?” Sowerby said to him again.
”I can't say that I will just at present,” said the parson. ”What should I want of him now the season's over?”
”Exactly, my dear fellow; and what do I want of him now the season's over? If it were the beginning of October instead of the end of March, Dandy would be up at two hundred and thirty instead of one: in six months' time that horse will be worth anything you like to ask for him. Look at his bone.”
The vicar did look at his bones, examining the brute in a very knowing and unclerical manner. He lifted the animal's four feet, one after another, handling the frogs, and measuring with his eye the proportion of the parts; he pa.s.sed his hand up and down the legs, spanning the bones of the lower joint; he peered into his eyes, took into consideration the width of his chest, the dip of his back, the form of his ribs, the curve of his haunches, and his capabilities for breathing when pressed by work. And then he stood away a little, eyeing him from the side, and taking in a general idea of the form and make of the whole. ”He seems to stand over a little, I think,”
said the parson.
”It's the lie of the ground. Move him about, Bob. There now, let him stand there.”
”He's not perfect,” said Mark. ”I don't quite like his heels; but no doubt he's a nicish cut of a horse.”
”I rather think he is. If he were perfect, as you say, he would not be going into your stables for a hundred and thirty. Do you ever remember to have seen a perfect horse?”
”Your mare Mrs. Gamp was as nearly perfect as possible.”
”Even Mrs. Gamp had her faults. In the first place she was a bad feeder. But one certainly doesn't often come across anything much better than Mrs. Gamp.” And thus the matter was talked over between them with much stable conversation, all of which tended to make Sowerby more and more oblivious of his friend's sacred profession, and perhaps to make the vicar himself too frequently oblivious of it also. But no: he was not oblivious of it. He was even mindful of it; but mindful of it in such a manner that his thoughts on the subject were nowadays always painful.
There is a parish called Hogglestock lying away quite in the northern extremity of the eastern division of the county--lying also on the borders of the western division. I almost fear that it will become necessary, before this history be completed, to provide a map of Ba.r.s.ets.h.i.+re for the due explanation of all these localities. Framley is also in the northern portion of the county, but just to the south of the grand trunk line of railway from which the branch to Barchester strikes off at a point some thirty miles nearer to London.
The station for Framley Court is Silverbridge, which is, however, in the western division of the county. Hogglestock is to the north of the railway, the line of which, however, runs through a portion of the parish, and it adjoins Framley, though the churches are as much as seven miles apart. Ba.r.s.ets.h.i.+re, taken altogether, is a pleasant green tree-becrowded county, with large bosky hedges, pretty damp deep lanes, and roads with broad gra.s.s margins running along them.
Such is the general nature of the county; but just up in its northern extremity this nature alters. There it is bleak and ugly, with low artificial hedges and without wood; not uncultivated, as it is all portioned out into new-looking large fields, bearing turnips and wheat and mangel, all in due course of agricultural rotation; but it has none of the special beauties of English cultivation. There is not a gentleman's house in the parish of Hogglestock besides that of the clergyman; and this, though it is certainly the house of a gentleman, can hardly be said to be fit to be so. It is ugly, and straight, and small. There is a garden attached to the house, half in front of it and half behind; but this garden, like the rest of the parish, is by no means ornamental, though sufficiently useful. It produces cabbages, but no trees: potatoes of, I believe, an excellent description, but hardly any flowers, and nothing worthy of the name of a shrub. Indeed the whole parish of Hogglestock should have been in the adjoining county, which is by no means so attractive as Ba.r.s.ets.h.i.+re;--a fact well known to those few of my readers who are well acquainted with their own country.
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