Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Volume 3 of 3. Blackmore Richard Doddridge

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СКАЧАТЬ over her. There was hardly any crime which that girl would hesitate at, when excited. What a lamentable state of morality! She might be made to choke Amy Rosedew, her rival in Bobʼs affection. But no, that would never do. Too much crime in one family. How would society look upon them? And it would make the house unpleasant to live in. There was a simpler way of quenching Eoa – deny at once her legitimacy. The chances were ten to one against her having been born in wedlock – such a loose, wild man as her father was. And even if she had been, why, the chances were ten to one against her being able to prove it. Whereas it would be very easy to get a few Hindoos, or Coolies, or whatever they were, to state their opinion about her mother.

      Well, supposing all this nicely managed, what next? Why, let poor Sir Cradock live out his time, as he would be in her hands entirely, and would grow more and more incapable; and when it pleased God to release him, why then, “thou and Ziba divide the land,” and for the sake of her dear little Flore, she would take good care that the Kettledrums did not get too much.

      This programme was a far bolder one than that with which Mrs. Corklemore had first arrived at the Hall. But she was getting on so well, that of course her views and desires expanded. All she meant at first was to gain influence over her host, and irrevocably estrange him from his surviving son, by delicate insinuations upon the subject of fratricide; at the same time to make Eoa do something beyond forgiveness, and then to confide the reward of virtue to obituary gratitude.

      Could anything be more innocent, perhaps we should say more laudable? What man of us has not the privilege of knowing a dozen Christian mothers, who would do things of nobler enterprise for the sake of their little darlings?

      But now, upon the broader gauge which the lady had selected, there were two things to be done, ere ever the train got to the switches. One was, to scatter right and left, behind and before, and up and down, wonder, hesitancy, expectation, interrogation, commiseration, and every other sort of whisper, confidential, suggestive, cumulative, as to poor Sir Cradockʼs condition. The other thing was to find out the effect in the main of his marriage–settlement. And this was by far the more difficult.

      Already Mrs. Corklemore had done a little business, without leaving a tongue–print behind her, in the distributory process; and if Mr. Rosedew could just have been brought, after that rude dismissal, to say that he had indeed observed sad eccentricity, growing strangeness, on the part of his ancient friend, why then he would be committed to a line of most telling evidence, and the parish half bound to approval.

      But Johnʼs high sense of honour, and low dislike of Georgie, had saved him from the neat, and neatly–baited, trap.

      That morning Mr. Rosedewʼs path was beset with beauty, though his daughter failed to meet him; inasmuch as she very naturally awaited him on the parish road. When he had left the chase, and was fetching a compass by the river, along a quiet footway, elbowed like an old oak–branch, overlapped with scraggy hawthorns, paved on either side with good intention of primroses, there, just in a nested bend where the bank overhangs the stream, and you would like to lie flat and flip in a trout fly about the end of April, over the water came lightly bounding, and on a mossy bank alighted, young Eoa Nowell.

      “To and fro, thatʼs the way I go; donʼt you see, Uncle John, I must; only the water is so narrow. It scarcely keeps me in practice.”

      “Then your standard, my dear, must be very high. I should have thought twice about that jump, in my very best days!”

      “You indeed!” said Eoa, with the most complacent contempt; eyeing the parsonʼs thick–set figure and anterior development.

      “Nevertheless,” replied John, with a laugh, “it is but seven and forty years since I won first prize at Sherborne, both for the long leap and the high leap; and proud enough I was, Eoa, of sixteen feet four inches. But I should have had no chance, thatʼs certain, if you had entered for the stakes.”

      “But how could I be there, Uncle John, donʼt you see, thirty years before I was born?”

      “My dear, I am quite prepared to admit the validity of your excuse. Tyrio cothurno! child, what have you got on?”

      “Oh, I found them in an old cupboard, with tops, and whips, and whistles; and I made Mother Biddy take them in at the ancle, because I do hate needles so. And I wear them, not on account of the dirt, but because people in this country are so nasty and particular; and now they canʼt say a word against me. Thatʼs one comfort, at any rate.”

      She wore a smart pair of poor Claytonʼs vamplets, and a dark morning–frock drawn tightly in, with a little of the skirt tucked up, and a black felt hat with an ostrich feather, and her masses of hair rolled closely. As the bright colour shone in her cheeks, and the heartlight outsparkled the sun in her eyes, John Rosedew thought that he had never seen such a wildly beautiful, and yet perfectly innocent, creature.

      “Well, I donʼt know,” he answered, very gravely, “about your gaiters proving a Palladium against calumny. But one thing is certain, Eoa, your face will, to all who look at you. But why donʼt you ride, my dear child, if you must have such rapid exercise?”

      “Because they wonʼt let me get up the proper way on a horse. Me to sit cramped up between two horns, as if a horse was a cow! Me, who can stand on the back of a horse going at full gallop! But it doesnʼt matter now much. Nobody seems to like me for it.”

      She spoke in so wistful and sad a tone, and cast down her eyes so bashfully, that the old man, who loved her heartily, longed to know what the matter was.

      “Nobody likes you, Eoa! Why, everybody likes you. You are stealing everybodyʼs heart. My Amy would be quite jealous, only she likes you so much herself.”

      “I am sure, I have more cause to be jealous of her. Some people like me, I know, very much; but not the people I want to do it.”

      “Oh, then you donʼt want us to do it. What harm have we done, Eoa?”

      “You donʼt understand me at all, Uncle John. And perhaps you donʼt want to do it. And yet I did think that you ought to know, as the clergyman of the parish. But I never seem to have right ideas of anything in this country!”

      “Tell me, my dear,” said Mr. Rosedew, taking her hand, and speaking softly, for he saw two great tears stealing out from the dark shadow of her lashes, and rolling down the cheeks that had been so bright but a minute ago; “tell me, as if you were my own daughter, what vexes your pure heart so. Very likely I can help you, and I will promise to tell no one.”

      “Oh no, Uncle John, you never can help me. Nobody in the world can help me. But do you think that you ought to know?”

      “That depends upon the subject, my dear. Not if it is a family–secret, or otherwise out of my province. But if it is anything with which I have to deal, or which I understand – ”

      “Oh yes, oh yes! Because you manage, you manage all – all the banns of matrimony.”

      This last word was whispered with such a sob of despairing tantalization, that John, although he was very sorry, could scarcely keep from laughing.

      “You need not laugh, Uncle John. You wouldnʼt if you were in my place, or could at all understand the facts of it. And as for its being a family–secret, ever so many people know it, and I donʼt care two pice who knows it now.”

      “Then let me know it, my child. Perhaps an old man can advise you.”

      The child of the East looked up at him, with a mist of softness moving through the brilliance of her eyes, and spake these unromantic words: —

      “It СКАЧАТЬ