"My Novel" — Complete

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 cornfields, 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 gray 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 soliloquized, 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 indeed—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 end 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 stile and looked on, for among the players he recognized 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 recognized 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 their progenitors 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 forever 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 heart 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 mean while, 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 work-table—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 wagon 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 pales, 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! ‘T is 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 revery.

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 he 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 wagon for coals! And every now and then, as the word “riches” or “money” caught Mr. Leslie’s ears, he shook his head, drew his pipe from his mouth, “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 sat 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 borrowed of a neighbouring farmer who occasionally hunted. Before noon, the garden and ter race 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!”

CHAPTER VII

RANDAL advanced—“I fear, Signor Riccabocca, that I am guilty of some want of ceremony.”

“To dispense with ceremony is the most delicate mode of conferring a compliment,” replied the urbane Italian, as he recovered from his first surprise at Randal’s sudden address, and extended his hand.

Violante bowed her graceful head to the young man’s respectful salutation. “I am on my way to Hazeldean,” resumed Randal, “and, seeing you in the garden, could not resist this intrusion.”

RICCOBOCCA.—“YOU come from London? Stirring times for you English, but I do not ask you the news. No news can affect us.”

RANDAL (softly).—“Perhaps yes.”

RICCABOCCA (startled).—“How?”

VIOLANTE.—“Surely he speaks of Italy, and news from that country affects you still, my father.”

RICCABOCCA.—“Nay, nay, nothing affects me like this country; its east winds might affect a pyramid! Draw your mantle round you, child, and go in; the air has suddenly grown chill.”

Violante smiled on her father, glanced uneasily towards Randal’s grave brow, and went slowly towards the house. Riccabocca, after waiting some moments in silence, as if expecting Randal to speak, said, with affected carelessness,

“So you think that you have news that might affect me? Corpo di Bacco! I am curious to learn what?”

“I may be mistaken—that depends on your answer to one question. Do you know the Count of Peschiera?”

Riccabocca winced, and turned pale. He could not baffle the watchful eye of the questioner.

“Enough,” said Randal; “I see that I am right. Believe in my sincerity. I speak but to warn and to serve you. The count seeks to discover the retreat of a countryman and kinsman of his own.”

“And for what end?” cried Riccabocca, thrown off his guard, and his breast dilated, his crest rose, and his eye flashed; valour and defiance broke from habitual caution and self-control. “But—pooh!” he added, striving to regain his ordinary and half-ironical calm, “it matters not to me. I grant, sir, that I know the Count di Peschiera; but what has Dr. Riccabocca to do with the kinsman of so grand a personage?”

“Dr. Riccabocca—nothing. But—” here Randal put his lip close to the Italian’s ear, and whispered a brief sentence. Then retreating a step, but laying his hand on the exile’s shoulder, he added, “Need I say that your secret is safe with me?”

Riccabocca made no answer. His eyes rested on the ground musingly.

Randal continued, “And I shall esteem it the highest honour you can bestow on me, to be permitted to assist you in forestalling danger.”

RICCABOCCA (slowly).—“Sir, I thank you; you have my secret, and I feel assured it is safe, for I speak to an English gentleman. There may be family reasons why I should avoid the Count di Peschiera; and, indeed, he is safest from shoals who steers clearest of his relations.”

The poor Italian regained his caustic smile as he uttered that wise, villanous Italian maxim.

RANDAL.—“I know little of the Count of Peschiera save from the current talk of the world. He is said to hold the estates of a kinsman who took part in a conspiracy against the Austrian power.”

RICCABOCCA.—“It is true. Let that content him; what more does he desire? You spoke of forestalling danger; what danger? I am on the soil of England, and protected by its laws.”

RANDAL.—“Allow me to inquire if, had the kinsman no child, the Count di Peschiera would be legitimate and natural heir to the estates he holds?”

RICCABOCCA.—“He would—What then?”

RANDAL.—“Does that thought suggest no danger to the child of the kinsman?”

Riccabocca recoiled, and gasped forth, “The child! You do not mean to imply that this man, infamous though he be, can contemplate the crime of an assassin?”

Randal paused perplexed. His ground was delicate. He knew not what causes of resentment the exile entertained against the count. He knew not whether Riccabocca would not assent to an alliance that might restore him to his country,—and he resolved to feel his way with precaution.

“I did not,” said he, smiling gravely, “mean to insinuate so horrible a charge against a man whom I have never seen. He seeks you,—that is all I know. I imagine, from his general character, that in this search he consults his interest. Perhaps all matters might be conciliated by an interview!”

“An interview!” exclaimed Riccabocca; “there is but one way we should meet,—foot to foot, and hand to hand.”

“Is it so? Then you would not listen to the count if he proposed some amicable compromise,—if, for instance, he was a candidate for the hand of your daughter?”

The poor Italian, so wise and so subtle in his talk, was as rash and blind when it came to action as if he had been born in Ireland and nourished on potatoes and Repeal. He bared his whole soul to the merciless eye of Randal.

“My daughter!” he exclaimed. “Sir, your very question is an insult.”

Randal’s way became clear at once. “Forgive me,” he said mildly; “I will tell you frankly all that I know. I am acquainted with the count’s sister. I have some little influence over her. It was she who informed me that the count had come here, bent upon discovering your refuge, and resolved to wed your daughter. This is the danger of which I spoke. And when I asked your permission to aid in forestalling it, I only intended to suggest that it might be wise to find some securer home, and that I, if permitted to know that home, and to visit you, could apprise you from time to time of the count’s plans and movements.”

“Sir, I thank you sincerely,” said Riccabocca, with emotion; “but am I not safe here?”

“I doubt it. Many people have visited the squire in the shooting season, who will have heard of you,—perhaps seen you, and who are likely to meet the count in London. And Frank Hazeldean, too, who knows the count’s sister—”

“True, true” interrupted Riccabocca. “I see, I see. I will consider, I will reflect. Meanwhile you are going to Hazel dean. Do not say a word to the squire. He knows not the secret you have discovered.”

With those words Riccabocca turned slightly away, and Randal took the hint to depart.

“At all times command and rely on me,” said the young traitor, and he regained the pale to which he had fastened his horse.

As he remounted, he cast his eyes towards the place where he had left Riccabocca. The Italian was still standing there. Presently the form of Jackeymo was seen emerging from the shrubs. Riccabocca turned hastily round, recognized his servant, uttered an exclamation loud enough to reach Randal’s ear, and then, catching Jackeymo by the arm, disappeared with him amidst the deep recesses of the garden.

“It will be indeed in my favour,” thought Randal, as he rode on, “if I can get them into the neighbourhood of London,—all occasion there to woo, and if expedient, to win, the heiress.”