Various
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 70, No. 433, November 1851
CHAPTER V
Towards the evening of the following day, Randal Leslie walked slowly from a village in the main road, (about two miles from Rood Hall,) at which he had got out of the coach. He passed through meads and corn-fields, and by the skirts of woods which had formerly belonged to his ancestors, but had been long since alienated. He was alone amidst the haunts of his boyhood, the scenes in which he had first invoked the grand Spirit of Knowledge, to bid the Celestial Still One minister to the commands of an earthly and turbulent ambition. He paused often in his path, especially when the undulations of the ground gave a glimpse of the grey church tower, or the gloomy firs that rose above the desolate wastes of Rood.
"Here," thought Randal, with a softening eye – "here, how often, comparing the fertility of the lands passed away from the inheritance of my fathers, with the forlorn wilds that are left to their mouldering hall – here, how often have I said to myself – 'I will rebuild the fortunes of my house.' And straightway Toil lost its aspect of drudge, and grew kingly, and books became as living armies to serve my thought. Again – again – O thou haughty Past, brace and strengthen me in the battle with the Future." His pale lips writhed as he soliloquised, for his conscience spoke to him while he thus addressed his will, and its voice was heard more audibly in the quiet of the rural landscape, than amidst the turmoil and din of that armed and sleepless camp which we call a city.
Doubtless, though Ambition have objects more vast and beneficent than the restoration of a name, —that in itself is high and chivalrous, and appeals to a strong interest in the human heart. But all emotions, and all ends, of a nobler character, had seemed to filter themselves free from every golden grain in passing through the mechanism of Randal's intellect, and came forth at last into egotism clear and unalloyed. Nevertheless, it is a strange truth that, to a man of cultivated mind, however perverted and vicious, there are vouchsafed gleams of brighter sentiments, irregular perceptions of moral beauty, denied to the brutal unreasoning wickedness of uneducated villany – which perhaps ultimately serve as his punishment – according to the old thought of the satirist, that there is no greater curse than to perceive virtue, yet adopt vice. And as the solitary schemer walked slowly on, and his childhood – innocent at least of deed – came distinct before him through the halo of bygone dreams – dreams far purer than those from which he now rose each morning to the active world of Man – a profound melancholy crept over him, and suddenly he exclaimed aloud, "Then I aspired to be renowned and great —now, how is it that, so advanced in my career, all that seemed lofty in the means has vanished from me, and the only means that I contemplate are those which my childhood would have called poor and vile? Ah! is it that I then read but books, and now my knowledge has passed onward, and men contaminate more than books? But," he continued, in a lower voice, as if arguing with himself, "if power is only so to be won – and of what use is knowledge if it be not power – does not success in life justify all things? And who prizes the wise man if he fails?" He continued his way, but still the soft tranquillity around rebuked him, and still his reason was dissatisfied, as well as his conscience. There are times when Nature, like a bath of youth, seems to restore to the jaded soul its freshness – times from which some men have emerged, as if reborn. The crises of life are very silent. Suddenly the scene opened on Randal Leslie's eyes. The bare desert common – the dilapidated church – the old house, partially seen in the dank dreary hollow, into which it seemed to Randal to have sunken deeper and lowlier than when he saw it last. And on the common were some young men playing at hockey. That old-fashioned game, now very uncommon in England, except at schools, was still preserved in the primitive vicinity of Rood by the young yeomen and farmers. Randal stood by the style and looked on, for among the players he recognised his brother Oliver. Presently the ball was struck towards Oliver, and the group instantly gathered round that young gentleman, and snatched him from Randal's eye; but the elder brother heard a displeasing din, a derisive laughter. Oliver had shrunk from the danger of the thick-clubbed sticks that plied around him, and received some stroke across the legs, for his voice rose whining, and was drowned by shouts of, "Go to your mammy. That's Noll Leslie – all over. Butter shins."
Randal's sallow face became scarlet. "The jest of boors – a Leslie!" he muttered, and ground his teeth. He sprang over the stile, and walked erect and haughtily across the ground. The players cried out indignantly. Randal raised his hat, and they recognised him, and stopped the game. For him at least a certain respect was felt. Oliver turned round quickly, and ran up to him. Randal caught his arm firmly, and, without saying a word to the rest, drew him away towards the house. Oliver cast a regretful, lingering look behind him, rubbed his shins, and then stole a timid glance towards Randal's severe and moody countenance.
"You are not angry that I was playing at hockey with our neighbours," said he deprecatingly, observing that Randal would not break the silence.
"No," replied the elder brother; "but, in associating with his inferiors, a gentleman still knows how to maintain his dignity. There is no harm in playing with inferiors, but it is necessary to a gentleman to play so that he is not the laughing-stock of clowns."
Oliver hung his head, and made no answer. They came into the slovenly precincts of the court, and the pigs stared at them from the palings, as they had stared, years before, at Frank Hazeldean.
Mr Leslie senior, in a shabby straw hat, was engaged in feeding the chickens before the threshold, and he performed even that occupation with a maundering lack-a-daisical slothfulness, dropping down the grains almost one by one from his inert dreamy fingers.
Randal's sister, her hair still and for ever hanging about her ears, was seated on a rush-bottom chair, reading a tattered novel; and from the parlour window was heard the querulous voice of Mrs Leslie, in high fidget and complaint.
Somehow or other, as the young heir to all this helpless poverty stood in the courtyard, with his sharp, refined, intelligent features, and his strange elegance of dress and aspect, one better comprehended how, left solely to the egotism of his knowledge and his ambition, in such a family, and without any of the sweet nameless lessons of Home, he had grown up into such close and secret solitude of soul – how the mind had taken so little nutriment from the heart, and how that affection and respect which the warm circle of the hearth usually calls forth had passed with him to the graves of dead fathers, growing, as it were, bloodless and ghoul-like amidst the charnels on which they fed.
"Ha, Randal, boy," said Mr Leslie, looking up lazily, "how d'ye do? Who could have expected you? My dear – my dear," he cried, in a broken voice, and as if in helpless dismay, "here's Randal, and he'll be wanting dinner, or supper, or something." But, in the meanwhile, Randal's sister Juliet had sprung up and thrown her arms round her brother's neck, and he had drawn her aside caressingly, for Randal's strongest human affection was for this sister.
"You are growing very pretty, Juliet," said he, smoothing back her hair; "why do yourself such injustice – why not pay more attention to your appearance, as I have so often begged you to do?"
"I did not expect you, dear Randal; you always come so suddenly, and catch us en dish-a-bill."
"Dish-a-bill!" echoed Randal, with a groan. "Dishabille!– you ought never to be so caught!"
"No one else does so catch us – nobody else ever comes! Heigho," and the young lady sighed very heartily.
"Patience, patience; my day is coming, and then yours, my sister," replied Randal with genuine pity, as he gazed upon what a little care could have trained into so fair a flower, and what now looked so like a weed.
Here Mrs Leslie, in a state of intense excitement – having rushed through the parlour – leaving a fragment of her gown between the yawning brass of the never-mended Brummagem worktable – tore across the hall – whirled out of the door, scattering the chickens to the right and left, and clutched hold of Randal in her motherly embrace. "La, how you do shake my nerves," she cried, after giving him a most hasty and uncomfortable kiss. "And you are hungry too, and nothing in the house but cold mutton! Jenny, Jenny, I say Jenny! Juliet, have you seen Jenny? Where's Jenny? Out with the odd man, I'll be bound."
"I am not hungry, mother," said Randal; "I wish for nothing but tea." Juliet, scrambling up her hair, darted into the house to prepare the tea, and also to "tidy herself." She dearly loved her fine brother, but she was greatly in awe of him.
Randal seated himself on the broken pales. "Take care they don't come down," said Mr Leslie with some anxiety.
"Oh, sir, I am very light; nothing comes down with me."
The pigs stared up, and grunted in amaze at the stranger.
"Mother," said the young man, detaining Mrs Leslie, who wanted to set off in chase of Jenny – "mother, you should not let Oliver associate with those village boors. It is time to think of a profession for him."
"Oh, he eats us out of house and home – such an appetite! But as to a profession – what is he fit for! He will never be a scholar."
Randal nodded a moody assent; for, indeed, Oliver had been sent to Cambridge, and supported there out of Randal's income from his official pay; – and Oliver had been plucked for his Little Go.
"There is the army," said the elder brother – "a gentleman's calling. How handsome Juliet ought to be – but – I left money for masters – and she pronounces French like a chambermaid."
"Yet she is fond of her book too. She's always reading, and good for nothing else."
"Reading! – those trashy novels!
"So like you – you always come to scold, and make things unpleasant," said Mrs Leslie peevishly. "You are grown too fine for us, and I am sure we suffer affronts enough from others, not to want a little respect from our own children."
"I did not mean to affront you," said Randal sadly. "Pardon me. But who else has done so?"
Then Mrs Leslie went into a minute and most irritating catalogue of all the mortifications and insults she had received; the grievances of a petty provincial family, with much pretension and small power; of all people, indeed, without the disposition to please – without the ability to serve – who exaggerate every offence, and are thankful for no kindness. Farmer Jones had insolently refused to send his waggon twenty miles for coals. Mr Giles, the butcher, requesting the payment of his bill, had stated that the custom at Rood was too small for him to allow credit. Squire Thornhill, who was the present owner of the fairest slice of the old Leslie domains, had taken the liberty to ask permission to shoot over Mr Leslie's land, since Mr Leslie did not preserve. Lady Spratt (new people from the city, who hired a neighbouring country seat) had taken a discharged servant of Mrs Leslie's without applying for the character. The Lord-Lieutenant had given a ball, and had not invited the Leslies. Mr Leslie's tenants had voted against their landlord's wish at the recent election. More than all, Squire Hazeldean and his Harry had called at Rood, and though Mrs Leslie had screamed out to Jenny, "Not at home," she had been seen at the window, and the Squire had actually forced his way in, and caught the whole family "in a state not fit to be seen." That was a trifle, but the Squire had presumed to instruct Mr. Leslie how to manage his property, and Mrs Hazeldean had actually told Juliet to hold up her head and tie up her hair, "as if we were her cottagers!" said Mrs Leslie with the pride of a Montfydget.
All these and various other annoyances, though Randal was too sensible not to perceive their insignificance, still galled and mortified the listening heir of Rood. They showed, at least, even to the well-meant officiousness of the Hazeldeans, the small account in which the fallen family was held. As he sat still on the moss-grown pale, gloomy and taciturn, his mother standing beside him, with her cap awry, Mr Leslie shamblingly sauntered up, and said in a pensive, dolorous whine —
"I wish we had a good sum of money, Randal, boy!"
To do Mr Leslie justice, he seldom gave vent to any wish that savoured of avarice. His mind must be singularly aroused, to wander out of its normal limits of sluggish, dull content.
So Randal looked at him in surprise, and said, "Do you, sir? – why?"
"The manors of Rood and Dulmansberry, and all the lands therein, which my great-grandfather sold away, are to be sold again when Squire Thornhill's eldest son comes of age, to cut off the entail. Sir John Spratt talks of buying them. I should like to have them back again! 'Tis a shame to see the Leslie estates hawked about, and bought by Spratts and people. I wish I had a great – great sum of ready-money."
The poor gentleman extended his helpless fingers as he spoke, and fell into a dejected reverie.
Randal sprang from the paling, a movement which frightened the contemplative pigs, and set them off squalling and scampering. "When does young Thornhill come of age?"
"He was nineteen last August. I know it, because the day lie was born I picked up my fossil of the sea-horse, just by Dulmansberry church, when the joy-bells were ringing. My fossil sea-horse! It Will be an heirloom, Randal – "
"Two years – nearly two years – yet – ah, ah!" said Randal; and his sister now appearing to announce that tea was ready, he threw his arm round her neck and kissed her. Juliet had arranged her hair and trimmed up her dress. She looked very pretty, and she had now the air of a gentlewoman – something of Randal's own refinement in her slender proportions and well-shaped head.
"Be patient, patient still, my dear sister," whispered Randal, "and keep your heart whole for two years longer."
The young man was gay and good-humoured over his simple meal, while his family grouped round him. When it was over, Mr Leslie lighted his pipe, and called for his brandy and water. Mrs Leslie began to question about London and Court, and the new King and the new Queen, and Mr Audley Egerton, and hoped Mr Egerton would leave Randal all his money, and that Randal would marry a rich woman, and that the King would make him a prime-minister one of these days; and then she should like to see if Farmer Jones would refuse to send his waggon for coals! And every now and then, as the word "riches" or "money" caught Mr Leslie's ear, he shook his head, drew his pipe from his mouth, and muttered, "A Spratt should not have what belonged to my great-great-grandfather. If I had a good sum of ready-money! – the old family estates!" Oliver and Juliet sate silent, and on their good behaviour; and Randal, indulging his own reveries, dreamily heard the words "money," "Spratt," "great-great-grandfather," "rich wife," "family estates;" and they sounded to him vague and afar off, like whispers from the world of romance and legend – weird prophecies of things to be.
Such was the hearth which warmed the viper that nestled and gnawed at the heart of Randal, poisoning all the aspirations that youth should have rendered pure, ambition lofty, and knowledge beneficent and divine.
CHAPTER VI
When the rest of the household were in deep sleep, Randal stood long at his open window, looking over the dreary, comfortless scene – the moon gleaming from skies half-autumnal, half-wintry, upon squalid decay, through the ragged fissures of the firs; and when he lay down to rest, his sleep was feverish, and troubled by turbulent dreams.
However, he was up early, and with an unwonted colour in his cheeks, which his sister ascribed to the country air. After breakfast, he took his way towards Hazeldean, mounted upon a tolerable horse, which he hired of a neighbouring farmer who occasionally hunted. Before noon, the garden and terrace of the Casino came in sight. He reined in his horse, and by the little fountain at which Leonard had been wont to eat his radishes and con his book, he saw Riccabocca seated under the shade of the red umbrella. And by the Italian's side stood a form that a Greek of old might have deemed the Naiad of the Fount; for in its youthful beauty there was something so full of poetry – something at once so sweet and so stately – that it spoke to the imagination while it charmed the sense.
Randal dismounted, tied his horse to the gate, and, walking down a trellised alley, came suddenly to the spot. His dark shadow fell over the clear mirror of the fountain just as Riccabocca had said, "All here is so secure from evil! – the waves of the fountain are never troubled like those of the river!" and Violante had answered in her soft native tongue, and lifting her dark, spiritual eyes – "But the fountain would be but a lifeless pool, oh my father, if the spray did not mount towards the skies!"
THE MASTER THIEF
A NORSE POPULAR TALE
On a gloomy autumn evening I sat alone with the "proprietor," to whose children I was then tutor, in his country house, about twenty miles from Christiania. Out of doors something was falling which was neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, but a mixture of all three; and inside, in the "proprietor's" parlour, the lights burned so sluggishly, that no other objects were discernible through the haze than a corner cupboard, filled with Chinese nick-nacks, a great mirror in an old-fashioned gilt frame, and a hereditary tankard, the reward of one of the proprietor's ancestors for service rendered to the state. That worthy individual had nestled himself into one corner of the sofa, where he pored over the proof-sheets of his pamphlet, entitled, "A few Patriotic Expressions for the Country's Good; by an Anonymous Writer."
While brooding over this gold mine of his own ideas he gave birth to many sagacious thoughts, which, from time to time, with a twinkle of his grey eyes, he threw out for my edification, as I sat and tried to read in the other corner of the sofa. After a while, warming with his theme, he poured out a host of "patriotic expressions" and opinions, worthy of all respect, but of which nothing save the pamphlet quoted above, or his great Treatise on Tithe, can give an adequate idea. I am ashamed to own that all this wisdom was lost upon me. I knew it all by heart, for I had heard the same story forty times at least before. I am not gifted with a patience of Indian-rubber; but what could I do? Retreat to my own room was impossible, for it had been scoured for Sunday, and was full of reek and damp. So, after some fruitless attempts to bury myself in my book, I was forced to give in, and to suffer myself to be carried along in the troubled stream of the proprietor's eloquence. Of course he dilated on questions of profound national importance, which he furbished up with all sorts of cut-and-dried figures of speech. He was now fairly on his hobby, and rose rapidly to the seventh heaven. He stood up and gesticulated; then he strode up and down, and his grey dressing-gown described streaming circles behind him, as he turned short round, and limped backwards and forwards on his spindle-shanks, – for, like Tyrtæus, the proprietor had a strong halt. The candles flared, flickered, and guttered, as he passed triumphantly by the table on which they stood; and his winged words sung in my ears like humble-bees when the linden-trees are in bloom. Off he went on "Class Legislation" and "Judicial Reform," on "Corn Laws and Free Trade," on "Native Industry and Centralisation," on the "Victorious progress of Ideas," and the "Insufficiency of our Circulating Medium," on "Bureaucracy," and the "Aristocracy of Office," till he bid fair to exhaust all the cracies, archies, and isms that ever existed, from King Solomon to the present time.
Mortal man could hold out no longer, and I was just on the point of bursting out into a roar of laughter in the worthy proprietor's face, when peal after peal of laughter resounded from the kitchen, and came to my rescue. It was Christian the blacksmith who had the word in that quarter of the house, and when he ceased speaking, repeated roars of mirth followed.
"I'll just go out and hear some of the smith's stories," I cried as I ran out, leaving the proprietor behind in the parlour with the dull candles and his drowsy current of thought.
"Children's prate and lying stories," growled the proprietor as I shut the door. "People of intelligence should be ashamed to listen to them; but well-meant patriotic expressions – " The rest was lost upon me.
Light and life and mirth streamed forth in the high and airy hall; on the hearth blazed a pile of logs, which threw a strong light into the furthest nook. In the chimney-corner sat enthroned the proprietor's housekeeper with her spinning-wheel; and though for many years she had had hard struggles with the rheumatism, and barricaded the enemy out with a multitude of undercoats and kirtles, throwing over all, as an outwork, a huge grey woollen wrapper, yet her face shone under her plaited cap like the full moon. At her feet lay the proprietor's children laughing and cracking nuts; while round about sat a circle of maids and workmen's wives, who trode their spinning-wheels with busy feet, or plied the noisy carding-comb. In the entrance the threshers shook off the snow from their feet, and stepping in with icicles in their hair, sat down at the long table, where the cook served up to them their supper – a bowl of milk and a dish of close-pressed porridge. Against the high chimney-piece leant the smith, who smoked tobacco from a short pipe, and whose face, while it showed traces of the smithy, bore an expression of dry humour, which testified that he had been telling a good story, and telling it well.
"Good afternoon, smith," said I; "what story have you been telling which aroused so much laughter?"
"Ha, ha!" shouted the boys, "Christian has been telling us all about the 'Devil and the Smith,' and how the smith got the fiend into a hazel-nut; and now he's going to tell us about the Master Thief, and how he won the Squire's daughter."
"Well, don't let me stop the story, smith," I replied, only too glad to escape for a while from the proprietor with his "Patriotic Expressions," his "Corn Laws and Free Trade," his "Circulating Mediums and Bureaucracies," and to refresh myself with hearing one of these old national tales, told in a simple childish way by one of the people.
So after one or two long-drawn puffs, the Smith began
THE MASTER THIEF
Once upon a time there was a poor cottager who had three sons. He had nothing to leave them when he died, and no money with which to put them to any trade, so that he did not know what to make of them. At last he said he would give them leave to take to anything each liked best, and to go whithersoever they pleased, and he would go with them a bit of the way; and so he did. He went with them till they came to a place where three roads met, and there each of them chose a road, and their father bade them good-bye, and went back home. I have never heard tell what became of the two elder; but as for the youngest, he went both far and long, as you shall hear.
So it fell out one night as he was going through a great wood that such bad weather overtook him. It blew and drizzled so that he could scarce keep his eyes open; and in a trice, before he knew how it was, he got bewildered, and could not find either road or path. But as he went on and on, at last he saw a glimmering of light far far off in the wood. So he thought he would try and get to the light; and after a time he did reach it. There it was in a large house, and the fire was blazing so brightly inside that he could tell the folk had not yet gone to bed; so he went in and saw an old dame bustling about and minding the house.
"Good evening," said the youth.
"Good evening," said the old dame.
"Hutetu! it's such foul weather out of doors to-night," said he.
"So it is," said she.
"Can I get leave to have a bed and shelter here to-night?" asked the youth.
"You'll get no good by sleeping here," said the old dame; "for if the folk come home and find you here, they'll kill both me and you."
"What sort of folk, then, are they who live here?" asked the youth.
"Oh, robbers! And such a bad lot of them too," said the old dame. "They stole me away when I was little, and have kept me as their housekeeper ever since."
"Well, for all that, I think I'll just go to bed," said the youth. "Come what may, I'll not stir out at night in such weather."
"Very well," said the old dame; "but if you stay it will be the worse for you."
With that the youth got into a bed which stood there, but he dared not go to sleep, and very soon after in came the robbers; so the old dame told them how a stranger fellow had come in whom she had not been able to get out of the house again.
"Did you see if he had any money?" said the robbers.
"Such a one as he money!" said the old dame, "the tramper! Why, if he had clothes to his back, it was as much as he had."
Then the robbers began to talk among themselves what they should do with him; if they should kill him outright, or what else they should do. Meantime the youth got up and began to talk to them, and to ask if they did not want a servant, for it might be that he would be glad to enter into their service.
"Oh," said they, "if you have a mind to follow the trade that we follow, you can very well get a place here."
"It's all one to me what trade I follow," said the youth; "for when I left home, father gave me leave to take to any trade I chose."
"Well, have you a mind to steal?" asked the robbers.
"I don't care," said the youth, for he thought it would not take long to learn that trade.
Now there lived a man a little way off who had three oxen. One of these he was to take to the town to sell, and the robbers had heard what he was going to do, so they said to the youth, that if he were good to steal the ox from the man by the way without his knowing it, and without doing him any harm, they would give him leave to be their serving man.
Well! the youth set off, and took with him a pretty shoe, with a silver buckle on it, which lay about the house; and he put the shoe in the road along which the man was going with his ox; and when he had done that, he went into the wood and hid himself under a bush. So when the man came by he saw the shoe at once.
"That's a nice shoe," said he. "If I only had the fellow to it, I'd take it home with me, and perhaps I'd put my old dame into a good humour for once." For you must know that he had an old wife, so cross and snappish that it was not long between each time that she boxed his ears. But then he bethought him that he could do nothing with the odd shoe unless he had the fellow to it; so he went on his way and let the shoe lie on the road.
Then the youth took up the shoe, and made all the haste he could to get before the man by a short cut through the wood, and laid it down before him in the road again. When the man came along with his ox he got quite angry with himself for being so stupid as to leave the fellow to the shoe lying in the road instead of taking it with him; so he tied the ox to the fence, and said to himself, "I may just as well run back and pick up the other, and then I'll have a pair of good shoes for my old dame, and so, perhaps, I'll get a kind word from her for once."
So he set off, and hunted and hunted up and down for the shoe, but no shoe did he find; and at length he had to go back with the one he had. But, meanwhile, the youth had taken the ox and gone off with it; and when the man came and saw that his ox was gone, he began to cry and bewail, for he was afraid that his old dame would kill him outright when she came to know that the ox was lost. But just then it came across his mind that he would go home and take the second ox, and drive it to the town, and not let the old dame know anything about the matter. So he did this, and went home and took the ox without his dame's knowing it, and set off with it to the town. But the robbers knew all about it, and they said to the youth, if he could get this ox too, without the man's knowing it, and without his doing him any harm, he should be as good as any one of them. If that were all, the youth said, he did not think it a very hard thing.
This time he took with him a rope, and hung himself up under the armpits to a tree right in the man's way. So the man came along with his ox, and when he saw such a sight hanging there he began to feel a little queer.
"Well," said he, "whatever heavy thoughts you had who have hanged yourself up there, it can't be helped; you may hang for what I care! I can't breathe life into you again;" and with that he went on his way with his ox. Down slipped the youth from the tree, and ran by a footpath, and got before the man, and hung himself up right in his way again.
"Bless me!" said the man, "were you really so heavy at heart that you hanged yourself up there – or is it only a piece of witchcraft that I see before me? Ay, ay! you may hang for all I care, whether you are a ghost or whatever you are." So he passed on with his ox.
Now the youth did just as he had done twice before; he jumped down from the tree, ran through the wood by a footpath, and hung himself up right in the man's way again. But when the man saw this sight for the third time, he said to himself, —
"Well! this is an ugly business! Is it likely now that they should have been so heavy at heart as to hang themselves, all these three? No! I cannot think that it is anything else than a piece of witchcraft that I see. But now I'll soon know for certain: if the other two are still hanging there, it must be really so; but if they are not, then it can be nothing but witchcraft that I see."