Chapter III: Part 3

The garden used to be one of her favourite resorts. Here she would wander up and down before Markworth came, speaking to herself, as if she were carrying on a conversation with someone else. Here she had flowers of which she was passionately fond, treating them as if they were living things, and crying over them should a leaf be broken off, or a branch blown down. Old George used to take especial pains over "Missy's" garden, and she always used to go out and watch him at work, and be continually inciting him to dig up the earth around her plants. When Markworth began his care, however, Susan changed a great deal in her habits. She at first gave up the garden, and only would go to the organ-room; but when he brought a flute out and used to play an air of which she was especially fond, in and about her favourite haunts in the shrubbery, she got to come out again, ceased her imaginary dialogues, and grew more expressive and brighter. Insane people always seem affected by wind instruments.

Markworth took care, however, never to play the flute when the dowager was about the premises, as she "hated that odious tooting thing even worse than the jackass that played it"--she said.

Miss Kingscott used to accompany Susan, and consequently the three were very much together, for Tom was nearly always out now by himself, as he could not get Markworth to accompany him to the Pringles; and when he was at home he used to flirt with the governess under his mother's very nose, and leave Susan even more in Markworth's hands.

The devil, they say, is never so black as he is painted, and, perhaps, Markworth was not altogether so selfish or so wicked in his motives as one might suppose. He was really interested, deeply so, in the peculiar case of Susan Hartshorne; and having read a great deal on insanity and its cure, he had certain theories of his own on the subject which made him glad of the opportunity for reducing them to practice. If he had not known that the poor girl was the heiress to twenty thousand pounds, and had not circumstances so strangely placed Clara Joyce--he could not think of her even by her new name--in the house to assist him, he would never have dreamt of his plot, nor have attempted to carry it out after he saw the subject, or rather object, of it; and yet, perhaps, he would still have tried to put her in the way of recovering her reason without a thought of recompense. As it was, he was now working with a double object, and the success which he met with startled him, while it emboldened him to persevere in his design.

In a short time there was such a perceptible change in Susan that anyone not in the habit of seeing her frequently would have noticed it at once; and soon she was altogether different from what she had been. Her eyes began to have some expression in them; how different they looked from their former dull appearance; and she would now look anyone in the face instead of hanging down her head as she formerly did. Dr Jolly was one of the first to perceive the alteration, and complimented Miss Kingscott on the change one day.

"Bless my soul, ma'am! why, nobody would recognise her again. It's positively wonderful. By Gad! madam, you deserve a medal for it. I would not have believed such a change could have taken place unless I had seen it myself."

Whereupon Miss Kingscott half declined the credit of the cure, but in such a way as to make the doctor repeat his compliments.

"Bless my soul, ma'am! it's no use telling me that, I know better. It's wonderful, and you deserve every credit--yes, ma'am, by Gad! ma'am, you do. Good-bye, Miss Kingscott; I shall call soon again to see your patient, for she is yours now, you know, ma'am. Go-o-od-morning."

And the doctor took himself off, with an elaborate farewell adieu. He would have kissed his hand, it is believed, only that the old dowager was standing looking out at the window, and might have called him an old fool as likely as not.

Volume 1, Chapter VIII.

DAMON AND PYTHIAS.

He is not a very romantic Damon is Doctor Jolly, nor is he at the present time to be seen under favourable circumstances, or in the most picturesque of situations.

The fact is, Dr Jolly has got an attack of the gout, "his old friend," as he calls that hereditary and choleric disease; and here he is, seated in his snug parlour--he knew how to live well and be comfortable did the doctor--with his feet in a pail of cold water, like Patience on a monument smiling at grief; (one can't help quoting the "noble bard.") He was pursuing a rather violent method for reducing the inflammation in his pedal extremities in order that he might be able to go out and pay his usual pharmaceutical round of visits, and he was writhing and swearing inwardly, most probably, and often aloud, from the pain of the gout and remedy combined.

"Bless my soul! Deb!" he exclaimed, as irascibly as his natural good temper would allow, to his sister Deborah, our Pythias, who was in the room along with him. "Bless my soul! Whew I what a twinge. Confound the gout, Deborah!"

"Confound it with all my heart, Richard, if it will do you any good," she replied, calmly, drawing the thread through the heel of a stocking which she was darning; "but you know, Richard, it's your own fault. You _will_ drink that port wine, and you must take the consequences."

"Bosh, Deb; don't preach. Why, I only drank two glasses yesterday at lunch, and--"

"How about the bottle after dinner?"

"Well, you know, Pringle was here, and hospitality you know, Deb, hospitality you know--"

"Hospitality won't preserve your health, Richard."

"True Deb, quite true; but I couldn't help it, and the gout's getting better now, the pain's nearly gone. Whew! there's another twinge. Confound the gout, I say!"

Damon was a stout, florid, jolly-looking--there is no other word so expressive--man of forty-five or thereabouts; Pythias--some apology is due for her sex in carrying out the classical metaphor, although when you know her better you will acknowledge the propriety of the allusion-- was some five years the elder, as she could look back with complacency or otherwise on her fiftieth birthday. She was tall and ungainly, and her face was so set and deficient of mobility that it looked as if it were carved out of mahogany, to which wood indeed its colour bore some resemblance. She evidently took after her male parent more than her mother, and her brother was right when he called her a "chip of the old block."

Damon was genial and hearty; Pythias cold and formal, as befitted an austere virgin of her years; but both possessed the same kind heart, and you would rarely find such a good-natured pair, who were so fond of each other, and so considerate and charitable in every sense of the word, to those around them.

Doctor Jolly was emphatically one of the jolliest country-practitioners in the country, and had one of the best practices, and was better liked than any other disciple of Aesculapius in the county. For miles round the farmers and well-to-do, as well as poorer people, knew his pleasant weather-beaten face and hearty voice. He "was so sociable and pleasant-like," as the country folk would say; and his well-known portly form--he rode about sixteen stone--and cheery "How de-do!" used to be eagerly welcomed when he came riding round on his thorough-bred heavy-weight hunter, with his two favourite little black and tan terriers, "Huz, and Buz his brother," scudding at its heels.

He and his sister had lived together at Bigton for many years past. The doctor had succeeded his father, and he his father, as far back as lay within the memory of "the oldest inhabitant"--the practice with its connection having been kept in the family for nearly a century.

Bigton is a very quiet rising little watering place, situated some five or six miles from The Poplars and Hartwood village, at the mouth of the river, wherein Tom Hartshorne was catching his perch under the eyes of Miss Lizzie. Bigton is by no means an ostentatious sort of place: it lacks self-assertion, and is content to occupy a back seat, as it were, in the assembly of "Fashionable Resorts," when, if it would but only put itself forward it might be bidden to "come up higher."

It is really a pleasant little place, and has all the requirements to make it an agreeable retreat for the hot summer months, when one longs for the seaside with that intense ardour which only a Londoner knows. Bigton has a pier--a shabby little pier it must be confessed--a sort of esplanade, which is as long as that of its Brobdignagian rival, where George's Pavilion, that hideous monstrosity, used once to attract admirers--an excellent beach of fine grey sand, and a splendid common, all covered with gorse and furze, whereon juveniles can play "the criquette," as Monsieur Jeune France calls our national game. Beyond that, it has a splendid country around for jaunts and pic-nics; and, as for antiquities, why, is it not within a decent drive of one of the most historic old castles in the kingdom, a castle which has its ancient old keep still in preservation, and which was one of the few Royalist strongholds that held out successfully against the Puritan general and his myrmidon Roundheads?

Yet, with all these advantages, Bigton has not yet become a favourite with the multitude who annually adjourn to the seaside, and this neglect is not by any means complained of by the quiet few who wish to avoid the racket of a fashionable watering place, and come down here in order to have a quiet enjoyable holiday. The fact is, Bigton reckons for its standing more upon the support of its residents than on stray birds of passage; and, of these, it has a larger proportion perhaps than some of its better known and more highly cracked-up rivals. It has nice trim rows of terraces facing the sea, and plenty of comfortable detached houses which are generally let to people who stay for mouths, and even a year or two, instead of hiring for merely a six week's occupation. Bigton is therefore busy all the year round, instead of having a season of three months, and being a necropolis for the rest of the year: indeed, the annual visitors who come down in summer do not alter the look of the place much: it is too respectable a town to bother itself about casual tourists or London holiday-makers. In the summer the landholders and great people of the surrounding country come from their inland homes, and take lodgings for the bathing: so Bigton is very exclusive and keeps entirely to its own set.

Among not only the residents--returning to our story--but also the regular visitors, Doctor Jolly was a general favourite, and the doctor supreme of the locality; and he was as good a surgeon and physician as he was a favourite. He was not the man to nurse a hypochondriacal patient by giving him various bottles of medicine containing coloured water, or pills "as before," consisting of harmless dough. No, he would tell them to get out and take plenty of exercise and mayhap dip in the sea, and above all to get good food and plenty of it. No gruel and arrowroot from him. "All damned slops and dishwater," he would say; but a mutton chop three times a day, and a glass or two of really good port wine. "Stop, I'll send you over some of my own, and you may bet your boots that that's prime stuff," he would offer with a knowing wink of his eye, riding off to escape a denial.

He was a jolly, good-natured man, and such a really good minister to the ills of human nature, that he had it all his own way at Bigton, and almost throughout the entire county. His practice was so large, that he had to ride miles every day to do justice to his patients; and yet he would hire no assistant, except a mild, gentlemanly pupil, whom he kept to do the home business in his surgery.

"Catch me!" he would say, "having a fellow to cut me out with all the pretty girls and old ladies! No, sir, as long as I can cross a horse, no other sawbones shall rule here but myself. I'm hanged if they shall, sir?"

One or two other medical men had tried rashly to set up to him in opposition at Bigton; but never getting anyone who was ill to patronise them, they had to give up at length in disgust. One, indeed, still hung on, as he had bought a house and could not sell it; but he had to take to the coal trade to support his family. Not that Doctor Jolly grudged him a living, for no matter what he said, he would cheerfully have lent his brother practitioner a helping hand; but then no one would let anyone else visit them in Bigton but our Damon, so the poor-- Othello's-occupation's-gone-M.D. had to buy and sell chaldrons of the best Wallsend and Seaborne, and fed his family in that way.

Dr Jolly's house was one of the best and nicest kept mansions in Bigton, for the doctor loved to live well, as he could afford it; and his sister Deborah was one of the most valuable housewives that could be cited. It was a long, low, old-fashioned house, with a splendid garden and paddock adjoining, for the doctor's horses, of which he kept three-- he used to follow the harriers in the time of the old squire, Roger Hartshorne--but he was getting too heavy for that now, besides having too much to do. Now he was devoted to poultry and pet deer, pet hares, pet dogs, pet animals of all kinds, even cats, and had all his out-houses, yards, and paddocks filled with his various adopted nurslings.

It was a wonder, considering his disposition, that he had remained a bachelor so long; but then he had his sister Deborah to take care of him, and as he would say, "Bless my soul, man, what more do I want?" His old friends who had known him for years would hint at a disappointment in early life; but I don't think care sat heavily on the doctor's brow, as it does on some of us, for he lived well, and enjoyed life as he found it, and did not seem inclined to give up his present life for all the unknown sea of troubles into which matrimony might plunge him. Perhaps he saw too much and too many of the gentler sex to hazard a selection, but the probable reason was that he was too comfortable as he was. He and his sister pulled along capitally as Damon and Pythias, as they had in fact done all their lives; both were freely outspoken to each other; and if Deborah had the pre-eminence within, the doctor was master out of doors.

The doctor relished good cheer, and gave capital dinner parties, as he was the most hospitable man in the county. He had had one the evening before, and hence his slight attack of the gout; its invariable consequence this morning. He said he had inherited the aristocratic infliction from his sire, along with a good digestion and his practice; but perhaps Pythias, or Deborah, was not far wrong in ascribing it to his love of good living and partiality for port. The gout made him swear a little, but he did not really mean anything by it: if all our oaths were as harmless as his, the recording angel who watches over that special failing of human nature would have a sinecure.

"Confound the gout, Deb!" he exclaimed, as that sharp twinge caught him in his left foot, and made him writhe with ill-concealed agony. "Confound the gout! I'll drink no more of that infernal port! that is," he added, shortly afterwards, as the pain subsided, "not beyond a glass or two at lunch; and perhaps a bottle after dinner, eh, Deb? Ho! ho! ho!" And he laughed his jolly cheery laugh, as he took his feet out of the tub of water, in which they had been hitherto reposing; and, drawing on his boots with difficulty, prepared himself for setting out on his morning round of visits.

"Better now, Richard?" enquired Pythias, as he stood up fully caparisoned in the matter of his lower extremities.

"Yes, Deb, all right now; the plaguey thing has gone away for the present, and won't trouble me again till next time. My `off stepper' is somewhat sore still, but it'll be as sound as sixpence by the time I get back."

"Are you going far, Richard?"

"Well, I think I'll pay a call at the dowager's, and all about Hartwood; and as I shan't be back in time for lunch, I'll drop in and feed at Pringle's--uncommon pretty little girl his sister is. Bless my soul! Deb, she's enough to make one think of marrying, although I suspect that sly dog Tom Hartshorne's after her--we old fellows have got no chance."

"Take care, Richard. She would probably jump to have you. I know what girls are! But how is that poor girl Susan Hartshorne getting on?"

"Really, Deb, do you know I think she has been looking much brighter lately. I have observed this within the last week or so--there is a decided change for the better. She has lost nearly all that frightened look she used to have; and I would not be surprised if she eventually recovered her mind. It's a sad pity, Deb, bless my soul! a sad pity! She was a nice child--confound that old woman! and she's now such an interesting-looking girl--a sad pity that old hag frightened her senses away."

"What do you think is the reason of this change in her?" asked Deborah.

"Well, I can hardly tell, Deb; you see, Tom has been down, and there's that friend of his, too--don't like him--and she has seen more company than usual--all these things may have something to do with it; but I think that the improvement is all due to that new governess, Miss Kingscott--by Jove! she is a fine girl if you like, a--"

"Take care, Richard, take care!" she said, as Doctor Jolly went out of the room, after poking about vainly in every direction for his gloves.

He mounted his horse which the groom held at the door, and as he rode away, he murmured to himself, "Dooced fine girl! I wouldn't be surprised if the artful jade caught me after all!" And off he cantered down the street, bowing affably, and waving his hand with a cordial "How-de-do!" to everyone he met, for he knew everybody, on his way to Hartwood.

Volume 1, Chapter IX.

AN OLD CAMPAIGNER.

The London season had ended: so Lady Inskip, having packed up her baggage waggons, gathered her _impedimenta_ around her, and mustered her forces, consisting of her two grown-up daughters, her only son, a young imp of twelve summers; her maid, a knowing abigail; and lastly, though by no means least, herself--put her regiment in marching order; and sallied down with metaphorical bands playing and colours flying to the quiet little watering place of Bigton, to prosecute a sort of son-in-law-hunting war during the summer solstice.

For be it known, Lady Inskip was a campaigner--one, too, who had fought many a fray on many a field, from the era of her first battle when she had, with an equally adept old mother for an ally, striven for a husband and a title, and an establishment in life, and had won the three combined in the person of her departed spouse, the late Sir John O'Gaunt Inskip, Bart.--down to her last little skirmish in Mayfair, where she had attempted to float off her two remaining daughters--her eldest she had gotten rid of handsomely some time before. She had then and there been routed disastrously, before she could draw up her forces for a regular pitched battle; but it was not her fault, or from lack of perseverance or want of judgment on her part, as she had been unable to fix upon any special young or old gentleman--it did not matter which-- whom she deemed or doomed as eligible for her matrimonial projects.

She was not daunted, however: not she! She was too old and experienced a campaigner for that, and had regularly changed her front mapped out her _carte du pays_, and planned out an entirely new disposition of her forces before coming down to Bigton. She contemplated a bold stroke, somewhat like Napoleon's procedure at Austerlitz, or, better still, his invasion of Egypt; and had determined to follow the tactics of other experienced commanders, and "carry the war into Africa."

It was not a very colossal adversary against whom she schemed and plotted, and collected such munitions of war--it was only Tom Hartshorne--poor Tom, whom she had met in London, and who seemed inclined for a mild flirtation with her pensive Laura, and lively, not to say "larky," Carry--especially at the last Woolwich Artillery ball, when his attentions had been "really quite marked!" That unfortunate young officer having sauntered through a quadrille with Laura, and told the exuberant Carry, after a waltz, that she was "a stunner to go." He certainly, however, criminated himself to some extent, by calling the next day at their house in town, and playing pretty to, and chaffing both girls.

Mr Thomas Hartshorne she had found out--strange what wonderful perspicacity and knowledge of the means, standing, and expectations of wooers and would-be sons-in-law, mothers with marriageable daughters have!--was in a very good position, and was the presumptive heir to the present proprietress of The Poplars.

She had made up her mind, therefore, to secure him at all hazards for one of her "dear, darling, girls." He was, consequently, the object of her present visit to Bigton. Tom was the game marked down _in esse_, although goodness knows, with the hopeful ground of a watering place to work upon, and its heterogeneous crowds of visitors, and its romantic opportunities, who and how many, without agitating Mormonism, might not be the victims _in posse_!

Lady Inskip was the widow of a Scotch baronet, who had married her for her good looks rather than her fortune--unlike the generality of his countrymen--for a very limited trousseau was all she brought him; and even now, some twenty years after her marriage, she was still what Doctor Jolly would, and did, call "a fine figure of a woman, sir, by Gad!"

Her two daughters were very nice, presentable girls; Laura a sort of languid beauty, and Carry "gushing," and a trifle inclined to be fast. The boy, Mortimer, was an obstinate, headstrong, young cub, just of that age when boys are peculiarly obnoxious and always in the way and disagreeable. He was, naturally enough, the spoilt pet of his mother, and for a young baronet had all the graces and follies of the position which he would be required to fill. But we need not go on to particularise all the points of Lady Inskip's _menage_.

Suffice it to say, that she came down to Bigton very shortly after Tom had left town. You may wager a trifle, if you are inclined to woo Fortune in that way, that she was previously acquainted with his destination before she moved her Lares and Penates; and now that she was here, you may depend that she would leave no stone unturned to secure her object.

She took a pleasant little cottage on the Esplanade, about half a mile or so from the town, for a year, and had it fitted up elegantly and decorated so as to make it a perfect bijou of a place. If you watch a spider, you will always observe what a magnificent web he spins before he hunts about or lays in wait for his prey; see what a gorgeous centre-piece he has to his prismatic castle! Depend upon it that the spider is certain that his parlour is well-furnished before he invites the fly to "walk in," as is detailed in the lines of the harrowing ballad sacred to childhood.

Well, Lady Inskip had a nice little house, nicely furnished, with a nice little garden all mignionette and passion flowers, and a nice little croquet lawn, where nice little games of flirtation could be played by suitable nice young gentlemen with her nice dear darling girls. In fact it was all "nice"--that adjective so dear to the heart of the gentler sex, and so lavishly used by them--and so the old campaigner having entrenched herself within these fortifications, continuing our military descriptive, prepared to battle for and on behalf her of two daughters Laura and Caroline, as aforesaid.

She had not been in the place two days, before she knew "all about everybody." How Captain Curry Cucumber, who lived at the big red brick house, "just as you passed the common, you know," was an old returned East India officer (and who was seventy years old if he was a day), was immensely rich, and had come home with a lakh of rupees to marry and settle down. He had an "awful temper in course," as his landlady said, and swore dreadful at his "pore black man," but then he had a sweet yellow face, and his widow would be left very comfortably off. Then she learnt too of our old friend the doctor, how he was a gay young bachelor; and of course she found out all about Mrs Hartshorne, and her place and her ways and her oddities. She learnt also of the Revd. Herbert Pringle, and his little church at Hartwood: and as he was a relative of the great Sir Boanerges Todhunter, and was a young man with a good living, and probably had property of his own, she made up her mind to patronise him, especially as he was the protege of the dowager.

Accordingly she and her tender daughters and the young Sir Mortimer attended divine service at Hartwood the first Sunday of her stay at Bigton, and she was so wonderfully pleased with the performances of the ritualistic rector--he was "so like that dear Aminadab, at St. Barnabas'," that she made up her mind to go there always in future, and not to patronise the Reverend Jabez, of Bigton.

She met Tom after church. She was "delighted to see him," and made him promise to call next day and bring the Reverend Herbert Pringle, on his mentioning that he was a great friend and a nice fellow. The dowager having bundled out of church immediately the service was over, Lady Inskip had then had no opportunity to make her acquaintance, although she assured Tom she was "longing to know her," but as she was an old lady, she, Lady Inskip, said she would do herself the honour of paying a visit at The Poplars very shortly.

She was _so_ glad to see Mr Markworth, too, "quite an unexpected pleasure to see him down here," when she was really mortally afraid of that worthy, who she could readily perceive, with a woman's mental keenness of vision, had taken her measure and thoroughly understood her plans and tactics. Altogether Lady Inskip was delighted with everything, as, fortunately for her peace of mind, she had not seen the pretty Lizzie Pringle, and was unaware of Tom's present infatuation about that young lady, which anyone "with half an eye," except those personally concerned, would have at once recognised.

She drove back to Bigton, in a very pleasant frame of mind, at peace with her daughters, herself and everything around her; and her smart little equipage--a park phaeton and pair of ponies--caused much excitement amongst the rustics along the road.

Master Tom, not being averse to renewing his flirtation with Miss Carry and her sister, notwithstanding his being enthralled by Lizzie, determined to pay a call at the Inskip's little cottage, on the Bigton esplanade, a morning or two after, and proposed to Markworth that he should accompany himself and Pringle.

"No, thanks," replied that gentleman, "none of my lady schemer for me! Look out for her, Tom! She's an awful old pythoness, and would wheedle the devil himself into marrying one of her plain daughters. Why, she nearly caught Harrowby `of yours' the other day, and I believe she came down here after you."

"Never fear, Markworth," answered Tom, as he went off to call on Pringle, in order to get him to go, and also perhaps to have a glimpse of Lizzie, to act as a sort of charm against witchery from the Inskip girls. "Never fear, my boy! I saw her game in London, and shan't be caught. But they are jolly girls, that little Carry is up to chaff no end; and they will make this place gayer by coming down. There'll be nothing but pic-nics and croquet presently, if I know them aright," and he walked off to get his horse, which George was grooming to make it look respectable.

Pringle was a very dapper little man. A perfect little exquisite, and no one was so particular as to the parting of his hair, the curl of his whiskers, and the general "nattiness" of his turn out, as himself. He had seen the fair Laura and Caroline in church, and their presence had lent a perceptible tone to the pronunciation of his "awe-men," and the delivery of his sermon. He saw they were well dressed, but when he learnt that Tom knew them, and beyond that, that they were the daughters of a baronet, and their mother a "lady in her own right," he was most anxious to make their acquaintance. Lizzie told him laughingly not to lose his heart over the belles, and suggested that he would be quite irresistible when she saw him so particular about the various points of his toilet this morning; but he thought it no laughing matter, I can assure you. He had all the elaborate priggishness of a young man fresh from college, and was more bent on making an impression than on pleasing. To tell the truth he had mixed very little in the world, and the feeling of being a man and occupying a responsible position was quite a novel one to him.

He was ready long before the hour Tom had fixed for calling for him on his way to Bigton, and was walking up and down the verandah in front of the parsonage, waiting impatiently, and flicking the flies off his pony, which stood ready saddled for the start.

"By Jove!" he said (he had not been able to break himself of that expression, more suited to the laity, which he had picked up at Oxford), "I wish he would come: we shall be too late!" and at that moment Tom rode in at the gate. After passing a little time speaking to Lizzie, who told him, too, not to "lose his heart," to which little shot Tom replied in a low voice--they had become intimate now, you see--that he had lost his already, which caused Miss Violet Eyes to blush, of course from sorrow; they at length rode off, and the promised visit was made to Lady Inskip, at Laburnum Cottage.

Poor Pringle was dreadfully embarrassed during the time he was under the eyes of the three ladies, and the "young imp" Mortimer caused him to lose what little self-possession he had, by making some observation on the parting of his back hair, asking him what was the perfume on his "rag," alluding to his pocket-handkerchief, and finally by playfully pulling away his chair as he was going to sit down. He blushed all the time of his stay, although Lady Inskip was very affable to him, and the girls expressed the most intense admiration for his little church and all its belongings. The only easy moment he had when he could speak clearly was when "the darling girls," as their mother called them, came out on the lawn to admire his dapple pony, and called it "a little duck:" then Pringle had longed in his inmost heart to be that pony, for he was enraptured with the langour and beauty of Laura. Carry frightened him with her chaffy tongue, and by the way she went on with Tom, who seemed quite "at home," as he generally made himself at most places.

The young men left after a lengthy stay, and the ladies very naturally, canvassed them on their departure.

"What a nice fellow--regularly jolly fellow Tom Hartshorne is!" said Miss Caroline, "but the parson's a spoon!"

"My dear Carry!" interposed Lady Inskip, "I do really wish you would not talk in those horrid slang terms! It is quite shocking! Mr Hartshorne is a very nice gentleman, of course, and I think Mr Pringle the same thing. He's very quiet naturally; you cannot expect a clergyman, Caroline, to be as gay and `jolly,' as you call it, as a young officer. I'm surprised at you, miss."

"He preaches delightfully!" observed the beauty languidly, "and I think him very nice; he was only bashful!"

"I suppose at the sight of you, Laura?" said the pert Miss Carry. "But he has one good point about him, and that is his pony. I wonder if it is up to my weight?" a very natural enquiry, as she probably weighed considerably heavier than the owner of the animal, and was what an outspoken individual would have termed "a bouncer."

"I'm glad he's coming again; we shall have some croquet," continued the elder sister. "Yes, my dears," said the mother. "We must make him at home; he's a very nice young man." She had already looked upon the Oxonian as "eligible," and was bent on making him a captive of her bow and spear.

"Well, for my part, I think him a donkey, and do not care whether he comes or not."

"Caroline! Caroline! Is this the return you make me for all I have done for you, and planned and schemed on my bended knees! ungrateful girl!" said Lady Inskip plaintively, as if she was going to cry.

"Oh, don't go on, ma, any more. We know all that! Laura can have the white-choker if she likes: I will cultivate Tom."

"Bless you my child!" said the mother, "you are rash and impetuous, but you have a good heart."

Volume 1, Chapter X.

A CALL AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

Doctor Jolly trotted along the road from Bigton to Hartwood, with Huz and Buz his brother, cantering at his horse's heels, and making short predatory excursions every now and then into neighbouring gardens and farmyards on the way, to the apoplectic scaring and bewilderment of sundry unhappy fowls and ducks. In about half an hour, as he always rode at a sharp pace, he had reached The Poplars to make his weekly visit.

"How-de-do!" he shouted to Tom, when he was half a mile off, seeing him at the gate; and presently the stout doctor was dismounting from his quadruped with extreme difficulty, owing to the still painful gout, and limping up the steps of the dowager's mansion.

"So you are here again, are you?" observed that lady with her customary acrimony, from the open window of the dining-room, which faced the entrance gate. "Why, you're always running here, now; you'd better come and live here at once; it would, at all events, save your gouty legs some exertion."

"Bless my soul! Mrs Hartshorne, why you are looking as blooming as a daisy. I wish I could wear like you, madam; why you must be sixty, if you are a day!"

"I'll outlast you at all events, Mister Jolly," said the old lady, as our friend the doctor, who hated being called "Mister" instead of by his medical title, walked into the house.

"And how's Susan?" he asked, as he entered the room.

"There she is with her governess, and you can see for yourself," snappishly returned the dowager, walking out, and leaving the doctor with Miss Kingscott and her charge.

Susan looked greatly improved, and timidly offered her hand as he went up to her in his hearty way.

"And how are we to-day?" he said kindly.

She, to his great astonishment, not only looked him in the face, but answered him, which she had seldom or ever done before.

"Very well, I thank you," she said, quietly.

It was not much, certainly; not more, perhaps, than a well-trained parrot might have said, but, then, it was a decided improvement to her former apathy. She immediately afterwards, however, left the room, as she heard Markworth playing on the organ up-stairs; and Miss Kingscott and the doctor were alone.

"By Gad, madam!" exclaimed the doctor, as soon as she had gone--he did not mean to give Miss Kingscott "brevet rank," but he always addressed every woman, young or old, as "Madam."

"By Gad, madam! it's positively wonderful. What an improvement; couldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it! But where has she gone to now--who's that thrumming the old organ?"

"That must be Mr Markworth, I believe," she answered, "and you must compliment him on Susan's improvement: she's always with him, and he seems quite devoted to her. It is really quite charming to see them together."

Who would have dreamt of their joint conspiracy from the way she spoke?

"Really?" enquired our Aesculapius. "To tell you the truth, madam, I don't like that fellow at all. I'm never deceived in a face; and, if I do not make a mistake, madam, that man is a scoundrel as certain as God made little apples."

I do not know why it was, but the doctor always seemed desirous of connecting the name of the deity with miniature specimens of the forbidden fruit whenever he wanted to qualify a strong assertion.

"Dear me, doctor!" interposed the lady, "your language is very strong."

"Not a bit of it, madam; not a bit more than he deserves. By Gad, madam! he must have some object to gain; he would not take all that trouble for nothing. I know human nature, madam, and he is either going to marry the old lady, or something else. Ho! ho! ho! what a fine pair they would make!"

And the doctor sniggered over his own joke, and laughed so contagiously that Miss Kingscott could not but follow suit.

The doctor presently, however, returned to business. He had been thinking of this young lady all the way over from Bigton. He had asserted to himself over and over again that she was "a dooced fine girl," as if some one else had been disputing the point with him; and now that he was in her presence she not only looked finer and more beautiful than ever, but he had one of the best opportunities for speaking to her alone he had ever had before, or could have wished for.

She looked very refined and ladylike as she stood there in the shaded dining-room, clad in a light morning dress. Her regular features and pale complexion gave an air of dignified beauty to her face which her height and figure well carried out. Altogether she was very charming, and looked so loveable on the present occasion, in appearance, that she would have captivated a man even less in love than the doctor, and led him on to the inevitable "pop!"

Aesculapius was a long time beating about the bush. Although he was generally free and easy in his speech, the doctor was now tongue-tied when he most wanted to speak, and his already ruddy face was more "peonified" than ever--if I may be allowed to coin that word--while his heart thumped against his ribs "like a pestle against the sides of a pill mortar," as he expressed it professionally.

"Ha! hum! a fine morning, madam--a fine morning! Don't you think so?"

Miss Kingscott assented, of course. She saw his embarrassment, and wished to lead him on to an _eclaircissement_; but she could scarcely refrain herself from smiling at the ludicrous endeavours of the doctor to hide his nervousness, which was unmistakeably increasing.

"Yes, madam, it's a fine day; but hot, madam. Don't you think so?"

"Certainly, doctor, I think it is warm," answered the lady, confirmatively.

And, indeed, any one looking into his face could not but agree with the remark.

"Warm, madam, is no term for it, it is confoundedly hot! But I beg your pardon, madam, were you ever in love?" he blurted out abruptly, after a great effort, bolting into his subject, as it were.

"Good gracious me, doctor?" said Miss Kingscott, with a charmingly acted surprise, and blushing embarrassment. "What a strange question for you to ask!"

"Not at all, madam--not at all. I said the weather was hot. Don't you see, madam? and it is hot. I asked you about love--and love is hot. There's my proposition, you see the connection between the two?"

And the doctor's face glowed with perspiration.

"I do not follow your argument," said the governess, calmly. "You seem to arrive very rapidly at your deductions; but what has the result to do with me?" she asked, with ingenuous innocence.

"A good deal, madam--a good deal. How fearfully warm it is! You see, madam, before you an old man."

"Not so very old, doctor, I'm sure," she interrupted, looking bewitchingly into his perspiring countenance.

"Well, well," he continued, in a gratified tone, "perhaps not exactly an old man; but I'm not a young one. Still, if it wasn't for the confounded gout, I daresay I should be as young and skittish as the best of them."

"Oh! I'm so sorry for that horrid gout--and I do pity you so when I see you in pain," condoled Miss Kingscott, thinking of the doctor being "skittish," as if she had heard of an elephant dancing a hornpipe.

"Are you really--do you really?" he asked eagerly, a flush of joy overspreading his already flushed and perspiring face. "Well, I tell you what, madam, I'm in love."

And the doctor heaved a portentous and languishing sigh, which quivered through his colossal frame which shook like a mould of jelly.

"Are you really, doctor? I am sure I hope the young lady is nice, for your sake; and I hope she will make you a good wife," she replied, ignoring the doctor's nervousness until she got him to the point.

"You are very kind, madam, very kind; but you are always kind--you can't help it, for it is in your nature. Infernally hot, is it not, madam?"

"Very warm," said the lady, encouragingly.

"Bless my soul! madam, so it is. But, madam, Miss Kingscott that is--"

"Well?" she encouraged him, her eyes sparkling with ill-concealed fun at the doctor's predicament.

"You sly little creature! Why, you are laughing at me all the time!"

"Oh! dear no; but who's the young lady, doctor? You have not told me her name yet, and I'm dying to know."

"You wicked little baggage! you know all the time."

"How can I? when you have not yet told me."

"By Gad! women are the most provoking creatures under the sun."

"Not _all_, doctor," she pleaded, demurely, tapping the carpet impatiently with her foot.

"Well, perhaps not all; but dooced near it. I am an old fool! Here am I bungling about and can't say what I mean!"

"Can I help you, doctor?"

"I wish you would, and tell me what to say to you, young baggage!"

"Do be calm, doctor. Suppose I'm the old lady now, and that you were talking to me--I am not so very young you know, either."

And she looked so demurely grave and elderly, that Aesculapius was charmed anew.

"Well, I must say it. It's better to have it out, like a bad tooth; there's no good in keeping it in my head. I'm an old fool I know, madam; but I am really in earnest now, and I want you to listen seriously to me for a moment. The fact is, madam, Miss Kingscott that is--how fearfully warm it is!"

At that moment, just when he was trembling on the verge of his disclosure, the shrill tones of Mrs Hartshorne's voice was heard without.

"George! George!" she cried to the faithful servitor (she pronounced his name indeed _Jodge_! _Jodge_! speaking in her usual rapid manner, with quick utterance). "Who's that at the gate? Don't you let anybody in, man!"

And our friends inside could hear her feet scrunching the gravel as she walked towards the gate in order to see who it was; so they went to the window also to look on, and the interesting conversation I have just detailed, was abruptly broken off at the indefinite point it had reached.

"Plaise, marm," replied the rustic voice of George, "it's a leddy, marm, and she says as how she's coomed to say un."

"I don't know any ladies, and don't want to know any, either; I wonder who is the flaunting creature? Get back to your work, you grinning baboon! I'll speak to the woman myself."

At the gate, seated in her pony carriage, and accompanied by her two daughters, all dressed out and equipped in their state-costume for the payment of calls, was Lady Inskip. She looked astounded--for she had heard every word of the dialogue between the dowager and her henchman; and not only she had heard it, but her daughters also; and the grinning page, covered with sugar-loaf buttons, who sat perched on a mushroom sort of seat that sprang out as a sort of excrescence from behind the equipage. The old campaigner was surprised and astounded: but she tried to appear cool and collected as befitted her dignity: the languid Laura was as apathetic as ever; and the fast Carry seemed inclined to follow the Buttons example and laugh aloud.

The dowager, in another moment, was on the scene of operations, and addressed the campaigner who sat in her pony carriage, with her forces drawn up in _echelon_ behind the gate.

"Who are you, woman; and what do you want?"

"My name is Lady Inskip," answered the veteran, with bridling dignity. "I presume I have the honour of addressing Mistress Hartshorne?"

"I don't know you--that's my name; what do you want, woman? My time is valuable, and I can't stop cackling with you all day."

"You might be a little more polite, madam," said Lady Inskip, with freezing politeness and sarcasm. "I came with my daughters just to pay a customary call of civility, and I expected, at all events, to be treated like a lady, by a lady, whom I expected to meet here; but I now find out I am mistaken."

"Is that all? Then you and your daughters can just take yourselves off, with all your flauntings and finery! I don't want any grand people coming about me! _I_ never go to see anybody, and I don't want anybody to come and see me. Quite a pity, isn't it, after you had bedizened yourself so finely too?"

"Laura!" exclaimed Lady Inskip, ignoring the presence of the dowager, "I think we had better drive home, and leave this vulgar woman to herself. Perhaps," she said, turning to the dowager as she whirled the ponies round, "you will have the civility to give that letter to your son, it contains an invitation to a pic-nic. I suppose we need not hope for the pleasure of your sweet company?"

"I don't want any of your pic-nics, or jakanapes, or your impudence!" said the downright old woman, raising her shrill voice even more piercingly. "I will give the letter to my son. If he cares about running after you, _I_ don't. Go! You said you were going home, and the sooner you go the better, for you don't come in here, my lady!" Then, considering the engagement terminated, she slammed-to the gate menacingly, and turned on her way back to the house, leaving the discomfitted campaigner to retreat at her leisure.

Our friends, the doctor and the governess, had heard the whole of the interview, and much amused they were over it, too, I promise you; but it stopped the coming proposal. Miss Kingscott was rather pleased at this, for she thought there was still some hope of gaining over Master Tom, the young squire, and she did not wish either to finally accept or reject the doctor until she knew which was the best card to play.

He, on his way home, was also pleased that he had not fully committed himself.

"It would never have done for Deb," he considered; "she would never have liked it. At all events, I was just stopped in time, though, and a miss is as good as a mile. But I am a damned old fool! That's a fact."

He kept to his promise with Pythias, did Damon, and drank a bottle of port to himself that day after dinner, shaking his head as he muttered to himself every now and then, while, with half-cocked eye, he held up his glass to the light--

"It's a lucky escape; but I'm a confounded old fool!"

Twice he bethought him of telling Deborah all about it; but she looked so comfortable and composed, as she sat there darning his socks, that he thought it would be a pity to disturb and agitate her. So his dreams, when he retired to rest, were very wild indeed, and he passed altogether a sleepless night.--So much for the doctor's love-making.

Volume 1, Chapter XI.

DES BEAUX YEUX.

No words can paint the mingled rage and mortification that filled the heart of Lady Inskip as she drove away from The Poplars, after her interview with the dowager.

"The Jezabel!" she said, in a voice of anger, "I've never been so scandalously treated in my life. You need not laugh, miss!" she fired out on Carry, who was exploding in fits of laughter at the humorous nature of the rencontre. "You need not laugh, miss; it is no laughing matter to see your mother insulted! But what can you expect from a vulgar boor but abuse? I ought to have known that before I laid myself open to such treatment. I don't think I can ask that young Hartshorne to my house again after this."

"Good gracious! ma," said Carry; "why what has he got to do with it? I'm sure he's a very nice fellow, and he is not accountable for his mother's actions."

"Well," said the old campaigner, mollifying somewhat, as she got further from the scene of her defeat, and allowed her better judgment to prevail; "perhaps he's not to blame, and I am sure I never said so. He can come of course to the pic-nic, now he is invited; but I am sorry I left the note with that old cat, after all. Never mind, it's done now, and there's no use in regretting it. He is a good match; and if you listen to my words, Carry," she leaned over and said confidentially to her daughter, so that Buttons might not overhear, "instead of giggling so foolishly, and play you cards well, you will secure him in spite of that Jezabel, his mother. Not that I am afraid of her, or twenty like her," Lady Inskip said to herself consolingly, now that a distance of road lay between them.

But where was Master Tom all this while?

Well, you must understand that Mr Thomas Hartshorne, of Her Majesty's Plungers, was, and had been all the morning, learning the craft of fly-fishing on the banks of the little stream that ran by the bottom of the parsonage, under the apt tuition of the incumbent's sister. The young reverend himself had long since gone out for his parochial duties, such as enquiring after farmer Giles' rheumatism, and the widow Blake's asthma, intending also to do himself the honour of calling on Lady Inskip on his way home, for Pringle had been much struck by the charming Laura the more he saw of her, and wanted to see more still.

It was most surprising what a violent and indefatigable interest that previously indolent young man Tom had taken in the piscatorial art.

He who had before declared Isaac Walton an old humbug, and who had professed his agreement with the dogmatic old doctor Johnson's assertion, that fishing consisted of "a worm at one end of a rod and a fool at the other," now used to sally out every morning nearly from The Poplars, with his fishing-tackle on his shoulder down to the parsonage, telling Markworth, whom he used to faintly persuade to accompany him, that it was "the best sport in the world, old fellow."

He went to the incumbent's grounds because it was the "finest spot in the county for perch," and Pringle was "a brother angler, and such a jolly good fellow, you know." Those were his only reasons, of course!

Hartwood parsonage was the beau ideal of a snug little country lodge; a long, straggling, one-storied cottage form of house, all ingles and corners and slanting roofs, and covered with roses, jessamine, and clematis.