Caught in a Trap Part 5

"Rum, wasn't it?" he soliloquised, "meeting Clara here; but it is a decided pull in my favour. The thing is regularly _en train_ now, and must come off soon. The girl is pa.s.sable enough, and at all events I don't care. I must risk Tom's anger; but I don't suppose he will mind it much--he's soft, and I can manage him as I like. There's only the old lady, and I hardly know how to wheedle her yet, she's so downright and plain spoken. By Jove! of all the characters I ever met she's one!"

In the midst of his meditations a loud authoritative rap came to the door.

"Your light?" said a thin, sharp voice, which he instantly recognised as Mrs Hartshorne's.

He opened the door, and nearly burst out laughing at the odd figure which presented itself. It was the dowager, clothed in a long white garment, and with an immense frilled night-cap on her head, and two or three candlesticks in one hand, and a huge bunch of keys in the other.

"What are you staring like a stuck pig at? Give me your candlestick!

All the lights in my house go out at half-past ten o'clock every night.

That's my rule, and I won't break it for anyone, I don't care who! Give me your light."

Markworth handed the candlestick to the old lady, who presently retreated down the pa.s.sage with her arms outstretched, looking like the Witch of Endor.

"No chance of a cigar here," he said to himself, as he closed the door once more, and jumped into bed. "She would smell it at once; I'd back her nose against a pointer's any day. She's a rum un; of all the characters, by Jove! I ever met, she is one!"

And he turned in his bed and slept the sleep of the just, in which the wicked equally share.

Volume 1, Chapter VI.

CONCERNING CERTAIN YOUNG PERSONS.

It came to pa.s.s on the following Sunday, two days after their arrival, that Tom and his friend went to church along with the dowager, as befitted respectable people, and a family of state in the county. Not to the parish church, where the Rev. Jabez Heavieman preached his ponderous sermons, and warned his congregation of their approaching perdition, and the d.a.m.nation of their souls, in his cus omary evangelical style. Oh, no! but to the altogether-of-a-different-sort-of-a-doctrine little edifice in Hartwood village, which specially belonged to the Suss.e.x Dowager. Indeed she regarded not only the church as her own peculiar property, but also its officiating clergyman, clerk, school children, nay, even the very future hopes of salvation of the worshippers who frequented it.

Hartwood Church was as unpretending a building as to its style as The Poplars.

It was a small ungainly-looking, low-roofed structure, oblong with a stone cross at one end, and a short square tower at the other. It was built of rough stone, and had apparently been constructed with a deficient supply of mortar; and a small abutment, which it had on one side for the requirements of the porch and vestry-room, had more the semblance of a shed attached to a farmhouse than anything else. It was an old church, too, probably much older than the one belonging to the parish; and its little churchyard, encircled by rude wooden palings, contained some monuments and tombstones, which were grey with age and as rough as when they were first hewn from the quarry, telling how "John Giles, aetat 95," and "Richard Chawbacon, aetat 104," both of whom departed this life Anno Domini 16 hundred and something, were there entombed. All the Hartshorne family, too, from Geoffrey Hartshorne, who founded the race and belonged to the Roundhead party in the days of Cromwell, down to the last old squire, there rested their bones in peace. One peculiarity of the churchyard, however, consisted in the great age to which its inhabitants had attained before shaking off this mortal coil. Ninety years was a comparatively early time for any of the former citizens of Hartwood to dream of sleeping with his fathers; and although you occasionally came across an inscription sacred to the memory of a young man of seventy or thereabouts, the majority of the departed were mostly centenarians.

The interior of the church was very different to what you might have expected from the outside view. The dowager, to do her justice, was not mean in all things; and, although she would screw her tenants down and pinch her household, she could occasionally--very occasionally it must be confessed--be not only liberal but grand in her views, that is when it suited her book. She had had the church newly fitted up some short time before, when her High Church fever and devotion to Ritualism had first begun; and all its columns and crossbeams and rough rafters, which could be seen within, were newly varnished and resplendent in their graining. The chancel, too, was a wonder of blue and gold, and she had also presented a novel reading-desk or _lectern_, consisting of a bra.s.s eagle with outstretched wings, which stood in the centre of the aisle, and presented quite a grand appearance.

The pews were not what one generally calls pews at all: they were a series of high-backed benches, armed at each end, and placed in rows down the middle of the aisle facing the pulpit and chancel, those at the side being arranged at right angles, so that the lateral pews faced each other; this position must be borne in mind, as it accounts for a trifling circ.u.mstance which led to the origin of the present chapter.

Slowly and majestically Mrs Hartshorne marched into the church, and slowly and majestically Tom marched after her, carrying her large prayer-book and Bible of the size originally distributed by the Religious Tract Society--a service generally performed by the henchman "Jarge," as he p.r.o.nounced his own name--while Markworth brought up the rear of the procession.

The dowager's pew was immediately opposite the pulpit, and, of course, facing the side pews on the other side behind the reading-desk, the front one of which was devoted to the use of the inc.u.mbent for the time being and his family, in case he had any.

Up the aisle in its onward and solemn progress the procession pa.s.sed, and the dowager was soon ensconced in the extreme upper corner of the pew, with her devotional exercises arranged before her on the _prie-Dieu_, and her hands folded on her lap, now deprived of their customary woollen envelopes, as prim as you please. "Primness was no name for it, sir," as Markworth said afterwards to Tom; "her position was--yes, sir, statuesque, by Jove!" The guest sat bodkin between the two, while Tom occupied the corner--by the place where the door should have been if there had been one--from which point he could command a portion of the clerical pew, otherwise obscured from general observation, at least on this side of the house, by the reading-desk.

Tom, I am sorry to say, was not particularly devout in church. He would keep his eyes straying from his book, and yet his attention did not wander over the whole edifice, for he looked straight in front of him, and none but a very curious observer could have detected his lack of devotional zeal. His mother did not notice it, for she was apparently plunged heart and soul into the liturgy, although really making up her mind as to the feasibility of raising Farmer Grigg's rent upon having seen the daughters of that unfortunate worthy, who were esteemed the belles of the village, come into church with new bonnets and actually silk dresses! "when I can not afford them, the brazen hussies." As for Markworth he was wondering what a rum lot the Chawbacons were, and how funny they all looked clean washed and sc.r.a.ped, and with their elaborately-braided white smock-frocks on over their black trowsers, looking as if they had donned surplices, or, as he hit upon a better ill.u.s.tration, as if they had put on their night-shirts--I beg pardon, _robes de chambre_--and come out by mistake instead of going to bed. So Tom had it all his own way.

Tom was observant, but it was nothing so very noticeable that attracted his attention. It was only a bonnet! only a little coquettish arrangement of ribbons and lace, and very little crown to it, if any,-- only one of those tiny specimens of Madame Charles or Leroux, handiwork which you can see any day in Leicester Square, and which though apparently so trifling are worth far more than their weight in gold--as poor Paterfamilias knew to his cost. It is a dainty, demure little article enough, but nothing in it is there to warrant this wrapt attention on Tom's part.

Can he be considering how two ribbons can be held together in that artful mode by a mere straw? is he a disciple of the millinery art? No, that would not make the gallant young officer gaze so entrancingly, and cause the ruddy flush of excitement to colour his budding cheek! Master Tom is not so simple as that, although he may be a most ingenuous youth.

The bonnet has a wearer who will keep her eyes bent down as earnestly as Tom persists in raising his from his book, and fixing them over the way, except now and then an occasional blushing little look across, and then once more down deep into the service again. It is a pretty little bonnet and has a pretty little owner, as Tom thinks. He "considers it a shame," but he cannot help letting his enquiring optics travel over the way. Young rogue! how he enjoys seeing the colour which his too-earnest gaze calls up--the pink signal of maidenly reserve, pleasure, coyness, consciousness.

There is no blame attached to Tom, those heavenly violet eyes have done it all. He could not help it even if he would. Tom is hopelessly in love--love at first sight--with pretty Lizzie Pringle, Mrs Hartshorne's young inc.u.mbent's sister. He is thoroughly in for it, as much as if he had known her for months or years.

It is all very well for you, Monsieur Cynic, or you, Madame Artless, to say that there is no such thing as "love at first sight." Of course it is foolish, but it is not impossible; Cupid, my dear sir or madam, is a most erratic as well as _erotic_ young gentleman, and plays some strange pranks sometimes. A glance from a pair of bright eyes will some times, one glance, effect a wonderful metamorphosis in even the sternest misogynists, create a revolution, ruin an empire. Look at history, Monsieur Cynic, and answer me if you dare. Nay, my dear sir, it is not impossible, not even improbable. A single word, one look between sympathetic souls, often establishes that cordial affinity which years of intercourse, and dictionaries of words, and oceans of sighs will not create between others who have not met their mental kindred. Philosophy cannot argue against Cupidon; he laughs Plato and his plat.i.tudes to scorn. _Dixi_! I have spoken. Tom has fallen in love, and it was a clear case of love at first sight, with Lizzie Pringle just the girl he was ordained--in a non-clerical sense--to fall in love with.

She was as nice a little thing as you could conceive--slim, pet.i.te, with dark brown hair nearly black, such heavenly violet eyes with liquid depths, and the most ravishing little rosebud of a mouth and piquante little nose possible for any one but a fairy to possess; she was so winning, innocent, pretty a specimen of G.o.d's gift to man, that the fact is Master Tom would have deserved being called an _eingebornen knarren_, adopting the German text for fool, if he had _not_ fallen a victim immediately to her violet eyes. And then she was dressed so bewitchingly--not in gaudy contrasts, or in the extreme of the _mode_, but so neatly and in such a ladylike manner that she must have attracted even wiser heads than his.

Of course she saw him looking at her--of course she did! "What a rude staring fellow he is to be sure!" she said to herself mentally, and resolved not to look that way again but to fix her attention sternly on the Thirty-nine Articles; still she would have just one peep more.--"There he is again, the great rude creature! What nice blue eyes he has, and such a little love of a moustache! and what on earth can he find to look at so persistently over here?" And down would go the long dark lashes again, and a little conscious blush would rise, and even the tender little ears and supple white neck would be encrimsoned. "It must be Mister Tom," she determined, "that dark ugly man that went in with Mistress Hartshorne could not be him; but he is a very naughty fellow to be staring at a young lady like that." Yet she would go on to excuse him to herself. "Perhaps he does not know any better, poor fellow; he's very young" (she was just seventeen mind you), "and when I know him I will tell him what I think of his rudeness." And then she would wonder to herself whether she ever would know him, and it sent a pang to her little heart when she thought she might not, and then Master Tom would catch her eye, and the tell-tale blush would hang out its pink flag again, and there would be a little flush of happiness, and so _da capo_.

Just picture to yourself, Corydon, your little flirtation or _grande pa.s.sion_ with Phyllis, and you can easily fill up all the blanks and imagine the rest.

The Reverend Herbert Pringle, B.A., Oxon, who now filled the living at Hartwood, was a very young man; but a very great man in his own estimation, and in that of some others also, as to family, talents, and ritualistic attainments in the church. He was the cousin, twice removed, of Sir Boanerges Todhunter the great anti-taxpayer and member of the Opposition, belonged to the extensive High Church party at Oxford, had gained some celebrity at the Union Debating Club; and here he was now the regular inc.u.mbent (for a term of only five years be it known, for the Suss.e.x Dowager liked always to have a hold on her tenants in the matter of leases, and stretched her authority to the livings she had in her gift) of a respectable church in a good county, where he could do as he pleased--at an age when the majority of his compeers would be struggling along perhaps in their first curacies.

He had reason to be proud of himself; and really, putting aside a certain priggishness of manner and affectation of style, he was not such a very bad fellow. Take him out of the church, and he would have been a regular jolly fellow, who would have got along capitally in a mess room or in a hunting county, for he was dearly inclined to horseflesh, and had kept his two hunters at Swain's before he had "gone in" for the High Church party of "young Oxford." He was a short, well-built, straw-whiskered man of some eight and twenty, although almost boyish in manner and in face. He had pleased the dowager by the way in which he had officiated as curate during the long illness of the late inc.u.mbent, and she had determined to put him in the vacant pulpit, if only out of opposition, as has been observed before, to the Reverend Jabez Heavieman, whom she cordially detested.

Herbert Pringle had therefore tumbled upon a snug thing. "His lines had fallen in pleasant places," so here he was inducted into the living of Hartwood. His first step was to set up housekeeping, in order to do which he had to bring his favourite little sister Lizzie from school to "keep house" for him, and then he set about making further improvements in his district, for which he had _carte blanche_ from the dowager, who, whenever she heard of some fresh innovation, thought to herself, "I wonder what that old hypocrite"--alluding to the Reverend Jabez--"thinks of that now!"

The restoration of the church was effected at the new inc.u.mbent's especial request; and the bra.s.s lectern was given by the old lady because the young divine had munificently presented a huge painted window, the subject of which was a large cross, erected just over the chancel. Then a new harmonium was got in place of a wretched old "spinet," which had previously done duty for an organ, and a choir was regularly established from amongst the school children that sang the responses in church now every Sunday, its members clad in little dirty white surplices.

He was all in favour of ceremonials, was the Reverend Herbert Pringle; and although he perhaps "meant well" according to his judgment, he was very affected, and "High Church" all through the service--to the intense astonishment of the farmers and poor labourers, who used to wonder at the new style of worship adopted in their old church, and be perplexed with all the bowings and genuflections, and especially with the white-surpliced choir.

To give him his due, however, he did not preach a bad sermon, and had a very effective way of appealing to the pockets of his hearers when any charity required his aid; but he read always in a light, jocular, hurried manner, as if he were under an engagement to get over a certain portion of ground in a fixed time, and he always said, or intoned, "Awe-men" instead of Amen at the end of the prayers.

He had now been in possession of his cure for more than six months, and consequently felt at home in it. His improvements, too, had now been got accustomed to; and although he was thought somewhat queer in his notions by the heavy agriculturists around him, he was pretty well liked on the whole. As for his sister Lizzie, she was idolised by poor and rich around: to tell the truth, it is my opinion that a good deal of her brother's popularity arose from his connection with the young lady with the violet eyes.

Tom's bad behaviour continued all through the service, and his eyes were not still even during the eloquent discourse which the young divine afterwards delivered, on the "Vanity of human wishes"--would that Tom could have applied the text! In going out of the church, he allowed his mother and Markworth to go on in front, and hung back in the rear. He could see that his charmer had not yet stirred from her pew, although nearly all the congregation were out, and he wondered what made her linger.

Fortunately, he was not long kept in suspense. He pa.s.sed our old friend "Jarge" in the porch, and incontinently asked that individual "who was the young lady in the rector's pew?"

"Lor sakes! Measter Tummus, don't you know un? Whoi, thet's the porsun's seestur; that be Missy Pringle, Measter Tummus!"

"Thank you, George," answered our hero; and how overjoyed he felt as he walked along after the others. He knew Pringle well, although he was not aware that he had a sister; and "of course I can easily get introduced," he thought very naturally.

The following Monday, strange to say, Tom begged Markworth to excuse him for some little time, as he had to pay a visit, and he set off alone to the parsonage.

Naturally he was "only going to pay a regular call;" it was only proper that he should pay a visit to his friend Pringle, whom he had not seen "since last year, by Jove!" and to congratulate him on his ecclesiastical preferment. That was all! And so Master Tom rode up to the parsonage on one of the old horses, which the dowager had retained in the stables--probably on account of its not being fit for farm-work-- the very next morning after seeing Lizzie.

Pringle was glad to see him, and his sister was introduced to the "young squire," who tried to make himself as agreeable as possible, but was painfully embarra.s.sed during his entire visit; and yet, before he had gone away, Lizzie thought him "such a nice fellow," and she was "oh, what a darling" to him.--The two young things were drinking deep draughts of love which were intoxicating them and drawing them nearer and nearer to each other in a sort of rose-coloured Paradise, which the mere presence of the one conjured up to the other. And then he had to go, and it was pleasant to go, merely to have those taper fingers in his, which pressure sent a thrill of sweet electricity through his frame, while even she trembled and blushed--and then came the pang of parting.

On the morrow, he had to come and see "Pringle's new fishing rod," and show him his own, for it would be so jolly to fish from the lawn at the back of the parsonage, that ran down to the little river which contained such capital perch! and of course he could not help meeting her again, and she wanted to see the "poor little fish that were caught!"

Bless you, my darling, there were other fish caught that morning besides perch! How hackneyed, and yet how novel are the windings and twistings in the fairy land of Love's Young Dream!

It was all over with them.

Volume 1, Chapter VII.

"SOWING THE WIND."

The nominal week, which had been mentioned as the duration of Markworth's stay at The Poplars, pa.s.sed pleasantly enough for Tom at all events. So pleasantly indeed, that he did not keep count of the days as they glided by, for he was continually dropping in at the parsonage "to see Pringle," and was, long before the following Friday arrived, over head and ears in the little pit of love which Lizzie's bright eyes had excavated in his heart. The dowager was still trotting about grinding down her tenants, and laying up riches which she did not know who would gather. Miss Kingscott had made the best use of her opportunities in two short interviews which she had had with the somewhat amorous doctor, and had yet contrived to cast sheep's eyes on the young squire, whom she had hopes of captivating; while Markworth was steadily trying to gain the confidence of the poor half-demented girl, around whom he had already set his snares. All, all the members in fact of our drama, were recklessly engaged in the vineyard of Aeolus, all were with lavish hand sowing to the wind, never dreaming of the crop they should reap.

Susan Hartshorne's strong pa.s.sion for music had early been taken advantage of by Markworth as a means towards the end he had in view.

Music was, strange to say, for such a character, one of his fortes, indeed it was a hobby with him; and he was not only a first-rate player in the mere sense of mechanical dexterity, but was also a thorough musician at heart.

The pathology of the human mind is a wonderful and intricate study, and it is a remarkable fact, with all our spread of knowledge and science, with the vast new fields of thought which are freshly opened every day in the educated world, what trifling advance we have made in the a.n.a.lysis of the mainspring and moving power that sets in motion the train of thought itself! Medical jurisprudence has only of late become a special study, and the psychology of the human mind, one of its most important branches--more than a mere ramification as it is often held-- is at best only a dead letter as yet to those who affect any acquaintance with the subject. Mental insanity is one of those topics, like the physiology of dreams, which embraces a large area for research and investigation; and even the best and latest of the physicians who have made this division of medical knowledge their especial field for enquiry, confess to what a very short distance their knowledge carries them. Hence, until very lately, not only was there no remedial treatment pursued, but arbitrary incarceration, strait-waistcoats, and chains, comprised all medical procedure towards our lunatics. Thank goodness, however, the broad light of science, reason, and common sense, has tended to dispel the black ignorance displayed by our forefathers towards our mental as well as bodily ills. Formerly drastics and phlebotomy, adopted alternately, were supposed to cure every disease and ailment of the human body, but that day is past now; and, so as in surgery and physic, a new path has been opened for the treatment of insanity. It is yet in its infancy; but many species of mania now deemed hopeless will before long, probably, succ.u.mb before judicious and efficacious ministering.