Part 38 (1/2)
The old campaigner sold out at Laburnum Cottage in another week or two, and came with the young imp Mortimer, her Persian cats, and green parrot, and all her mult.i.tudinous belongings, settling down like a swarm of locusts on the devoted parsonage. Gone thenceforth were all its tranquil joys.
After a time the Lucca-oil-like-suavity which had formerly distinguished Lady Inskip in Pringle's mind, disappeared. She appeared now as the concentrated essence of verjuice or tartaric acid, and ruled the whole house with a rod of iron, becoming in truth the master of all. Poor Lizzie's life was made a burden to her; and she was treated as if she were a presumptuous intruder in her brother's house. The old campaigner wrung her little heart with continual allusions to the ”Young Squire,”
and said how glad she ”would have been to get him, miss!” making bitter comments on the way she said Lizzie had angled for Tom, and how he had gone off now and left her. ”Served her right, too,” she ought not to be ”pining and whining and breaking her heart after a man who never cared for her!” When, you may be sure, our little friend answered and stuck up for her rights, whereupon the campaigner would go and complain to the supposed head of the family, and declare that she could not stop in the house with ”that virago of a girl,” and Pringle had to timidly urge that he would not keep Lady Inskip against her will for the world. Then the campaigner would commence with a stern philippic on ingrat.i.tude, and wind up by bursting into tears and wis.h.i.+ng she had never been born to observe that particular day. Here Laura would interfere, Herbert Pringle beg the pardon of his mamma-in-law, and all would be soothed over for a time, and the campaigner would establish a fresh gap in the trenches she was engineering for universal sovereignty.
Pringle suffered in more ways than one. He had to walk now through the parish in discharging his parochial duties, for he could no more ”prance about,” as Mrs Hartshorne called it, on his dapple grey pony. The campaigner had impounded that valuable little animal, and no more was it bestridden by the well shaped, albeit diminutive legs of the inc.u.mbent.
The Macchiaevelli in petticoats said that ”her daughter” must have a carriage to go about in, considering she could no longer afford to keep one of her own, which otherwise she would have been happy for Laura to have made free use of. The campaigner had sold her equipage when she cleared out from Laburnum Cottage along with other sundry theatrical ”effects” which she had kept up for the sales of entrapping suitors for her daughters' hands, and now they were both off her hands she melted down her appurtenances into the handier form of a banker's balance. ”No one knew what might come,” as she said to herself, sagely reflective.
She accordingly made Pringle buy a neat basket carriage, and build an enlargement to the parsonage stable for its accommodation. To this vehicle, dapple grey was thenceforth attached, and the campaigner used to drive out in it every afternoon, occasionally but seldom, accompanied by her daughter, and the small boy with the eruption of b.u.t.tons on him, whom she had retained in her own service when she migrated to the house of her son-in-law. ”It was so respectable to have a page,” as she said.
Lizzie she never invited to drive with her, not that she would for a moment have consented to the penance of a _tete-a-tete_ with the campaigner, whom she disliked as much almost as the other did her, although she tried to bear with her for her brother's sake, whom she pitied. Lizzie in fact saw clearly that poor Herbert was sadly hen-pecked, not by his wife, for she was two apathetic, but by his mother-in-law.
Instead of the paradise of bliss which he had hoped to enter, by allying himself with Lady Inskip's eldest daughter, the young inc.u.mbent found himself in a very miserable position; and I am inclined to think that he somewhat regretted his hasty step. He loved Laura as much as it was in his nature to do so, and so did she him; but both were very young--he just a boy from College, one might say; and they had yet much to learn of that mutual forbearance principle, and earnest trust and love, without which too many find marriage the ”lottery” they declare it.
What chance of happiness they had depended upon their being to themselves, without the odious presence of the campaigner; but she had established herself as a fixture, and was not going to stir herself in a hurry; and as Laura as yet took her part, princ.i.p.ally because Herbert Pringle had his sister on his side, the pecktive state continued, unhappily for all parties.
No more did the ritualistic young divine devote much attention to his sermons; and the Ciceronian phraseology, which purely distinguished those works of composition, disappeared. He had no heart in his work-- for the campaigner was always ”nagging” at him at home, and no longer praised his eloquence as she had done at first.
No more did he chant in melodious strains the Psalms to his elaborately embroidered and besmocked congregation of farmers, but read them over hurriedly, in order to get rid of them. Even his ritualistic tendencies began to be toned down: the lectern was seldom made use of, and the white surplices were dispensed with for the boys of the choir.
Pringle was pecked with a vengeance, and its effect was shown, not only in his outward ways, but in his adornment--he became careless about his dress, and not half so particular as he had been for appearances before he became a Benedict. Bottom was very much translated, indeed. Pringle was pecked!
Lizzie saw all that was going on, and sympathised with her brother. The old campaigner she detested, and only the desire not to increase her brother's miseries by having home broils, made her keep her hostility subdued; she even tried to coax the artful Macchiaevelli for him, all to no effect, as also her endeavours to awaken the languid Laura to a sense of the responsibility owing to her husband.
The campaigner ruled the roast in spite of all; and showed not the slightest desire to conceal her dislike for Lizzie. She tormented her constantly with spiteful allusions to the past, and Lizzie would not have minded so much what she said about herself, but she would abuse Tom, and that she could not stand. Besides, she encouraged the horrid imp Mortimer to spoil all poor Lizzie's garden, and disarrange her pet conservatory, and even to break up a little artful contrivance for holding plants, which Tom had specially given her. It is true Pringle made up a row on that subject, and threatening to chastise the boy, somewhat checking his horticultural tendencies to the detriment of Lizzie in future. Still, the place was made very unhappy to her, and Lizzie would have been miserable and wished herself dead and out of the way if some consolation had not turned up suddenly for her in a most unexpected manner.
Thenceforth she bore the campaigner's taunts with stolid and aggravating silence, making that lady wish time and again that Lizzie were ”her child,” and she ”would soon teach her manners.” Notwithstanding that poor Pringle was so sadly pecked, and the parsonage lost its Eden-like character since the invasion of the serpent, there was balm yet in Gilead for Lizzie.
What had happened? Whence came Lizzie's consolation?
You would never suspect.
Volume 3, Chapter X.
CAUGHT AT LAST.
”Even the worst laws are so necessary for our guidance, that without them, men would devour one another,” remarks Epicurus--in order to exemplify the frailty of human nature, according to Plutarch, the moralist. Putting the point of cannibalism aside, and thus obviating a trip to the Feejee Islands, or New Zealand, for example, it cannot be disputed that the dictum of the Epicurean philosopher is based on a fundamental truth, which is fairly exhibited in every-day life.
Granting, however, that laws are necessary for human progress, the philosophical enquirer is still as much at fault as ever, for he becomes, as it were, like Hamlet, plunged into a sea of troubles, which no opposition will limit, the moment he begins his search into the mysteries of jurisprudence. The progress of the blind G.o.ddess with the sinister and dexter scale has been by no means commensurate with the advancement of civilisation, for the name of laws is legion; and between good laws and bad laws, and what may be termed legal laws and moral laws, there are as wide differences and as great discrepancies as exist among the several offenders and offences against the same.
A law may be a good law, and a necessary law, and yet be a bad law, speaking according to law; while a bad and unjust law, merely regarded as a piece of law-making, becomes good when weighed in the same forensic balance. This seems paradoxical, but can be verified readily in overlooking the legal code. Law, itself, is wise, and good, and necessary; but, ”too many cooks spoil the broth,” so our original Magna Charta of Liberty has become a hotch-potch pie of precedents, thanks to the many law-makers we have had, who lead the blind G.o.ddess into the gutter, and so transform Themis that no one would know her again in her original guise. There are so many cities of refuge provided for criminals within the statutes of the justice book, so many loopholes for chicanery and fraud to sneak through, that no criminal need trouble himself for fear of consequences at committing any offence in the decalogue or calendar, short of murder--even that often becomes justified under the appellative ”homicide” in the minds, and under the verdict of ”a free and enlightened jury!”--save the mark.
The various turnings and windings of our great national bulwark--the Law--are many and wonderful.
A man who commits a greater offence can only be, perhaps, indicted under a lesser plea, and the small criminal again is treated proportionately more severely than the man who deals in crime wholesale. Some reforms have, indeed, been made already, but more are still needed. Perhaps one of the greatest agitated of late has been the abolishment of imprisonment for debt, one of the most iniquitous statutes we have been cursed with. The debtor had been held on a par with the thief and the murderer, and has often been condemned to a greater term of imprisonment than the criminal who commits a burglary or takes human life. However, this will soon be numbered amongst the other mistakes of the past, like the old Fleet prison.
Following out the a.n.a.logy, it seems strange that Markworth, who had been deemed guilty of graver offences under the eye of the law should only be caught at last through a _ca ca_, _ex parte_ Solomonson, the Jew money lender.
He had puzzled Mrs Hartshorne's lawyers in proving the abduction; he would have gained a large fortune by his scheming, but through the little mistake of a date; he had evaded the French police, and escaped the arrest of a murderer; and here he was imprisoned at last, in a sponging-house, only on a question of debt--a matter of pounds, s.h.i.+llings, and pence. Oh, the anachronisms of the law! But enough has been already said in these pages of its Penelopean web of trickery and evasion.
To return to our hero, perhaps the best example of terror which could be mentioned, is that of seeing a drove of wild animals on the prairies of the far west, flying from a bush fire. The herds of buffalo, deer, and even bears and panthers, are then seized with a maddening influence of fright and flight combined, and rush pell mell in front of the blazing torrent of fire which spreads behind them. They do not care where they go, and will encroach even upon the haunts of men, of whom they are generally afraid, the panther running by the side of the bison, which does not now mind the proximity of its enemy, all flying in their wild scare for safety, with heaving flanks and panting breath.
It was under the influence of such a fright that Markworth fled from the heights of Ingouville, when he escaped from Clara Kingscott's clutches: he could fancy that he still heard Susan's wild shriek ringing in his ears.