Part 5 (1/2)
”Rum, wasn't it?” he soliloquised, ”meeting Clara here; but it is a decided pull in my favour. The thing is regularly _en train_ now, and must come off soon. The girl is pa.s.sable enough, and at all events I don't care. I must risk Tom's anger; but I don't suppose he will mind it much--he's soft, and I can manage him as I like. There's only the old lady, and I hardly know how to wheedle her yet, she's so downright and plain spoken. By Jove! of all the characters I ever met she's one!”
In the midst of his meditations a loud authoritative rap came to the door.
”Your light?” said a thin, sharp voice, which he instantly recognised as Mrs Hartshorne's.
He opened the door, and nearly burst out laughing at the odd figure which presented itself. It was the dowager, clothed in a long white garment, and with an immense frilled night-cap on her head, and two or three candlesticks in one hand, and a huge bunch of keys in the other.
”What are you staring like a stuck pig at? Give me your candlestick!
All the lights in my house go out at half-past ten o'clock every night.
That's my rule, and I won't break it for anyone, I don't care who! Give me your light.”
Markworth handed the candlestick to the old lady, who presently retreated down the pa.s.sage with her arms outstretched, looking like the Witch of Endor.
”No chance of a cigar here,” he said to himself, as he closed the door once more, and jumped into bed. ”She would smell it at once; I'd back her nose against a pointer's any day. She's a rum un; of all the characters, by Jove! I ever met, she is one!”
And he turned in his bed and slept the sleep of the just, in which the wicked equally share.
Volume 1, Chapter VI.
CONCERNING CERTAIN YOUNG PERSONS.
It came to pa.s.s on the following Sunday, two days after their arrival, that Tom and his friend went to church along with the dowager, as befitted respectable people, and a family of state in the county. Not to the parish church, where the Rev. Jabez Heavieman preached his ponderous sermons, and warned his congregation of their approaching perdition, and the d.a.m.nation of their souls, in his cus omary evangelical style. Oh, no! but to the altogether-of-a-different-sort-of-a-doctrine little edifice in Hartwood village, which specially belonged to the Suss.e.x Dowager. Indeed she regarded not only the church as her own peculiar property, but also its officiating clergyman, clerk, school children, nay, even the very future hopes of salvation of the wors.h.i.+ppers who frequented it.
Hartwood Church was as unpretending a building as to its style as The Poplars.
It was a small ungainly-looking, low-roofed structure, oblong with a stone cross at one end, and a short square tower at the other. It was built of rough stone, and had apparently been constructed with a deficient supply of mortar; and a small abutment, which it had on one side for the requirements of the porch and vestry-room, had more the semblance of a shed attached to a farmhouse than anything else. It was an old church, too, probably much older than the one belonging to the parish; and its little churchyard, encircled by rude wooden palings, contained some monuments and tombstones, which were grey with age and as rough as when they were first hewn from the quarry, telling how ”John Giles, aetat 95,” and ”Richard Chawbacon, aetat 104,” both of whom departed this life Anno Domini 16 hundred and something, were there entombed. All the Hartshorne family, too, from Geoffrey Hartshorne, who founded the race and belonged to the Roundhead party in the days of Cromwell, down to the last old squire, there rested their bones in peace. One peculiarity of the churchyard, however, consisted in the great age to which its inhabitants had attained before shaking off this mortal coil. Ninety years was a comparatively early time for any of the former citizens of Hartwood to dream of sleeping with his fathers; and although you occasionally came across an inscription sacred to the memory of a young man of seventy or thereabouts, the majority of the departed were mostly centenarians.
The interior of the church was very different to what you might have expected from the outside view. The dowager, to do her justice, was not mean in all things; and, although she would screw her tenants down and pinch her household, she could occasionally--very occasionally it must be confessed--be not only liberal but grand in her views, that is when it suited her book. She had had the church newly fitted up some short time before, when her High Church fever and devotion to Ritualism had first begun; and all its columns and crossbeams and rough rafters, which could be seen within, were newly varnished and resplendent in their graining. The chancel, too, was a wonder of blue and gold, and she had also presented a novel reading-desk or _lectern_, consisting of a bra.s.s eagle with outstretched wings, which stood in the centre of the aisle, and presented quite a grand appearance.
The pews were not what one generally calls pews at all: they were a series of high-backed benches, armed at each end, and placed in rows down the middle of the aisle facing the pulpit and chancel, those at the side being arranged at right angles, so that the lateral pews faced each other; this position must be borne in mind, as it accounts for a trifling circ.u.mstance which led to the origin of the present chapter.
Slowly and majestically Mrs Hartshorne marched into the church, and slowly and majestically Tom marched after her, carrying her large prayer-book and Bible of the size originally distributed by the Religious Tract Society--a service generally performed by the henchman ”Jarge,” as he p.r.o.nounced his own name--while Markworth brought up the rear of the procession.
The dowager's pew was immediately opposite the pulpit, and, of course, facing the side pews on the other side behind the reading-desk, the front one of which was devoted to the use of the inc.u.mbent for the time being and his family, in case he had any.
Up the aisle in its onward and solemn progress the procession pa.s.sed, and the dowager was soon ensconced in the extreme upper corner of the pew, with her devotional exercises arranged before her on the _prie-Dieu_, and her hands folded on her lap, now deprived of their customary woollen envelopes, as prim as you please. ”Primness was no name for it, sir,” as Markworth said afterwards to Tom; ”her position was--yes, sir, statuesque, by Jove!” The guest sat bodkin between the two, while Tom occupied the corner--by the place where the door should have been if there had been one--from which point he could command a portion of the clerical pew, otherwise obscured from general observation, at least on this side of the house, by the reading-desk.
Tom, I am sorry to say, was not particularly devout in church. He would keep his eyes straying from his book, and yet his attention did not wander over the whole edifice, for he looked straight in front of him, and none but a very curious observer could have detected his lack of devotional zeal. His mother did not notice it, for she was apparently plunged heart and soul into the liturgy, although really making up her mind as to the feasibility of raising Farmer Grigg's rent upon having seen the daughters of that unfortunate worthy, who were esteemed the belles of the village, come into church with new bonnets and actually silk dresses! ”when I can not afford them, the brazen hussies.” As for Markworth he was wondering what a rum lot the Chawbacons were, and how funny they all looked clean washed and sc.r.a.ped, and with their elaborately-braided white smock-frocks on over their black trowsers, looking as if they had donned surplices, or, as he hit upon a better ill.u.s.tration, as if they had put on their night-s.h.i.+rts--I beg pardon, _robes de chambre_--and come out by mistake instead of going to bed. So Tom had it all his own way.
Tom was observant, but it was nothing so very noticeable that attracted his attention. It was only a bonnet! only a little coquettish arrangement of ribbons and lace, and very little crown to it, if any,-- only one of those tiny specimens of Madame Charles or Leroux, handiwork which you can see any day in Leicester Square, and which though apparently so trifling are worth far more than their weight in gold--as poor Paterfamilias knew to his cost. It is a dainty, demure little article enough, but nothing in it is there to warrant this wrapt attention on Tom's part.
Can he be considering how two ribbons can be held together in that artful mode by a mere straw? is he a disciple of the millinery art? No, that would not make the gallant young officer gaze so entrancingly, and cause the ruddy flush of excitement to colour his budding cheek! Master Tom is not so simple as that, although he may be a most ingenuous youth.
The bonnet has a wearer who will keep her eyes bent down as earnestly as Tom persists in raising his from his book, and fixing them over the way, except now and then an occasional blus.h.i.+ng little look across, and then once more down deep into the service again. It is a pretty little bonnet and has a pretty little owner, as Tom thinks. He ”considers it a shame,” but he cannot help letting his enquiring optics travel over the way. Young rogue! how he enjoys seeing the colour which his too-earnest gaze calls up--the pink signal of maidenly reserve, pleasure, coyness, consciousness.
There is no blame attached to Tom, those heavenly violet eyes have done it all. He could not help it even if he would. Tom is hopelessly in love--love at first sight--with pretty Lizzie Pringle, Mrs Hartshorne's young inc.u.mbent's sister. He is thoroughly in for it, as much as if he had known her for months or years.
It is all very well for you, Monsieur Cynic, or you, Madame Artless, to say that there is no such thing as ”love at first sight.” Of course it is foolish, but it is not impossible; Cupid, my dear sir or madam, is a most erratic as well as _erotic_ young gentleman, and plays some strange pranks sometimes. A glance from a pair of bright eyes will some times, one glance, effect a wonderful metamorphosis in even the sternest misogynists, create a revolution, ruin an empire. Look at history, Monsieur Cynic, and answer me if you dare. Nay, my dear sir, it is not impossible, not even improbable. A single word, one look between sympathetic souls, often establishes that cordial affinity which years of intercourse, and dictionaries of words, and oceans of sighs will not create between others who have not met their mental kindred. Philosophy cannot argue against Cupidon; he laughs Plato and his plat.i.tudes to scorn. _Dixi_! I have spoken. Tom has fallen in love, and it was a clear case of love at first sight, with Lizzie Pringle just the girl he was ordained--in a non-clerical sense--to fall in love with.
She was as nice a little thing as you could conceive--slim, pet.i.te, with dark brown hair nearly black, such heavenly violet eyes with liquid depths, and the most ravis.h.i.+ng little rosebud of a mouth and piquante little nose possible for any one but a fairy to possess; she was so winning, innocent, pretty a specimen of G.o.d's gift to man, that the fact is Master Tom would have deserved being called an _eingebornen knarren_, adopting the German text for fool, if he had _not_ fallen a victim immediately to her violet eyes. And then she was dressed so bewitchingly--not in gaudy contrasts, or in the extreme of the _mode_, but so neatly and in such a ladylike manner that she must have attracted even wiser heads than his.