CHAPTER IV.
The party at the rectory was not kept up to such a late hour as to prevent Lord Spoonbill and Colonel Crop from riding over to Neverden the next morning to take a day’s shooting with Sir George Aimwell, whom we shall have great pleasure in introducing to our readers.
Sir George Aimwell, of Neverden Hall, Bart. was descended from a long line of illustrious ancestry, and was a wholesale poulterer, and one of the great unpaid. Not that we mean by this expression to insinuate that the retail poulterers did not pay him for what they had: we merely mean to say, that the preserve-worshipping, spring-gun-setting, poacher-committing baronet administered justice for nothing; and, with reverence be it spoken, that was quite as much as it was worth. Perhaps we may do our country a piece of service that shall immortalize us, if we suggest by the way a great improvement on the present system of justice-mongering. Let not Mr Hume imagine that we are going to recommend that the country justices of the peace should be paid for their valuable time and invaluable labours. A far better plan would be, that they should pay for their places, and that the magistracy should be given to the highest bidder. For surely it is worth something to have authority, to be able to accommodate or annoy a neighbour, to commit a poacher, and to keep a whole village in awe. It is worth something also to be called “your worship.” This however is a digression. Not that we apologize for it, but rather take to ourselves praise for communicating so much valuable information in so pleasant a style.
To proceed then with our description of Sir George Aimwell. The worthy baronet was a most active magistrate, peculiarly acute in matters of summary conviction; and thinking it a great pity that any rogue should escape, or that any accused, but honest man, should lose an opportunity of clearing his character by means of a jury of his fellow countrymen, he never failed to commit all that were brought before him. There was also modesty in this; for he thereby insinuated that he would not take upon himself to make a decision in these cases, but would leave the determination to the judges of assize and the wisdom of a jury. Sir George professed Whig politics; these were hereditary in his family, but by no means constitutional in him as an individual. Therefore he passed for a very moderate Whig; for one who would not clog the wheels of government. In short, he was no more a Whig than a game preserver ought to be; and that, as our readers know, is not much. He took especial pains to keep the parish clear of vagrants and paupers; and by his great activity he kept down the poor-rates to a very moderate sum. The excessive zeal and satisfaction with which he exercised the magisterial functions led us to the recommendation which we have given above. Sir George, though a professed Whig, was not very partial to the education of the lower orders, and he always expressed himself well pleased when he met with a country booby who could neither read nor write. For this reason Nick Muggins, the post-boy, was a great favourite with him. Our worthy baronet could not see the use of reading, and he thought it a great piece of affectation for country gentlemen to have libraries. His own books, for he had a few, were huddled together in a light closet, where he kept his guns and sporting tackle. There was a Lady Aimwell, wife to Sir George; but this lady was a piece of still life, of whom the neighbours knew nothing, and for whom her husband cared nothing.
Colonel Crop was quite at home with Sir George Aimwell, and so he could be with any one who kept a good table. Shooting was not any great pleasure to the colonel, but as he could not sleep all day long, and as the dinner hour did not hurry itself to accommodate him, he was content to walk about the fields with a gun, and say alternately yes or no to the various wise remarks made by Lord Spoonbill or Sir George Aimwell. Let no one despise Colonel Crop for this most useful of all social qualities, a decided and settled acquiescence in all that his feeders may please to assert. The colonel belonged to a profession the glory of which is to obey orders. If therefore he carried this spirit into all his intercourse with those whom he considered his superiors, it is neither to be wondered at nor to be blamed. We do not wish to speak disrespectfully of the army; it is very useful in war and very ornamental in peace.
The morning’s sport was not good, and therefore the worthy baronet was sulky and ill-humoured, and kicked his dogs; and he made use of such language as is very unfashionable to print. Colonel Crop re-echoed the unprintable exclamations of the great unpaid, but Lord Spoonbill did not seem to heed the sport, or more properly speaking the want of sport. It is very provoking to be in a passion with anything that thwarts our humour, and it is still more provoking to find another, who ought to be in a passion with the same object, regard the matter with total indifference and unconcern. Thus provoked was the worthy and exemplary magistrate Sir George Aimwell. His red face grew redder, and his magisterial looks became more majestic; at length, with a due degree of deference to one of noble rank, he began to utter something like reproach or expostulation to Lord Spoonbill.
“Upon my word, Spoonbill, this may be very good sport for you, but it is not so for me. I never saw the birds so shy or the dogs so stupid. But you seem to be very easy about the matter.” Then turning to the colonel, he continued: “I suppose his lordship is thinking of old Greendale’s pretty niece.”—At this speech the baronet laughed, and so did the colonel. Who could help laughing at it?
Lord Spoonbill smiled, and only replied in an affected drawl, “By all that is good, Sir George, you must think me a great simpleton to be caught by a pretty face. The fact is, I am not much of a sportsman, you know. I could enjoy a battue very well, but this hunting about for a few stray birds is poor work.”
“A battue, forsooth!” exclaimed the amiable baronet:—“I believe those villains the poachers have scarcely left a single bird in the Cop-wood.”
The worthy magistrate was going on, but his indignation at the shocking violation of those most excellent laws which the wisdom of our ancestors has formed, and the folly of their descendants has tolerated, so entirely overcame his feelings, that in the violence of his anger he incurred the penalty of five shillings; but his companions did not inform against him. In a word, he swore most bitterly and tremendously. Our readers must not blame him too hastily for this transgression. Let them consider that he was a magistrate, and of course very zealous for the due observance of the laws. Swearing is certainly wrong; but that is a mere trifle compared to poaching: the uttering of a single profane oath being, in the eye of our most excellent laws, precisely one-twentieth part of the crime of an unqualified person having in his possession a dead partridge.
When the baronet had relieved his bursting heart, and vented his swelling indignation in the mode above named, and when Colonel Crop had sympathetically joined him in the execration of the transgressors of our most excellent and equal laws which regard the arrangement of game, then did Sir George proceed:
“Could you believe it, Spoonbill?—You know the pains I have taken with that wood—I say, could you believe it, after all the expense I have been at about it—after having six men sitting up night after night to watch it, that in one afternoon, and that in broad daylight, it should be almost cleared by those infernal villains?”
Here the baronet became angry again, and no wonder; it was beyond all endurance. Not only did he as a magistrate feel grieved at the violation of the laws, but as a gentleman and a man he was pained at the loss of those birds which he seemed born to shoot. The birds were gone and the poachers were gone; the first he could not shoot, and the last he could not commit. And what is the use of living in the country, if there are no birds to be shot and no poachers to be sent to gaol?
Pitying the sorrows of the magistrate, Colonel Crop replied, “Too bad, ’pon my honor.”
But Lord Spoonbill having recently quitted the university, in which he had been taught to investigate and seek out the connection of cause and effect, enquired:—
“But how could the rascals do all this without being detected, if you had men to keep the wood by night and day?”
“I will tell you,” said the baronet, whose violence seemed a little abated by the kind sympathy of his friends: “it was entirely owing to a rascally gamekeeper of mine, who, no longer ago than last Sunday week, instead of attending to his duty, must needs go sneaking to church. I saw the fellow there myself. He absolutely had the impudence to come into church when he knew I was there. I dismissed him however at a short notice. I was determined to have no church-going gamekeepers.”
“That going to church was abominable,” said the colonel.
“But I thought you had always guns in your plantations, Sir George?” said Lord Spoonbill.
“So I have,” replied the magistrate; “but unfortunately the guns had been discharged in the morning on some boys and girls who had gone to look for nuts; and as one of the boys was nearly killed, the under keeper took it into his fool’s head that he would not charge the guns again; so I gave him his discharge.”
“You have been very unfortunate in your servants, Sir George.” So spake the colonel, who was more than usually eloquent and voluble; and Sir George was especially delighted with him, for he seemed to enter so fully into all the magistrate’s feelings upon the subject of game and poaching.
It is astonishing that, notwithstanding all the pains which the legislature has taken upon the subject of the game laws, which are so essential to national prosperity and the Protestant succession, still there is a possibility that gentlemen may be deprived of their sport by the intervention of a poacher. The laws are too lenient by half; and till it is made felony without benefit of clergy to be suspected of poaching, we shall never be free from this dreadful calamity. Our legislators have done a great deal, certainly; but they ought to take up the subject with as much zeal as if the cause were their own.
Now while Colonel Crop was sympathising with Sir George Aimwell on his great and serious calamity, Lord Spoonbill was gradually withdrawing himself from his companions, and moving towards the side of the field which lay nearest to the road, and looking with great earnestness in the direction of the village of Neverden. It was not long before his eye caught the object for which he had been looking. There came clumsily cantering towards him a quadruped, the appearance of which would have puzzled Buffon, and on its back there sat a biped as unclassable as the beast on which he rode. The two were usually called Nick Muggins and his pony. Lord Spoonbill took great pains to see Nick by accident.
“Have you any letters for the castle, Muggins?” said the heir of Smatterton.
“Isser,” replied Muggins, and forthwith he produced two letters, one of which was addressed to the Right Honorable the Earl of Smatterton, and the other to the Right Honorable Lord Spoonbill.
“I will take charge of them,” said his lordship.
To which proposal Nick Muggins made no objection. His lordship then, just by way of condescendingly noticing the humble post-boy, said—
“There now, I have saved you the trouble of riding any farther, unless you have any letters for the parsonage?”
“Here is one, sir, for the young lady as lives at Parson Grindle’s.”
Muggins looked rather significantly at Lord Spoonbill when he thus spoke, and his lordship replied—
“You may give that to me, and I will take care of it.”
What arguments were used to induce this breach of trust in the guardian of the Smatterton post-bag, is not stated, nor known, but conjectured. Muggins, when he had given the letter to his lordship, looked rather hesitatingly, and as if he wished to speak; his lordship interpreted his looks, and said, “Well, what are you waiting for?”
To this interrogation Muggins replied with a cunning simper, “Why, please, sir, my lord, on case of any questions being axed, perhaps your lordship, sir, will just-like get a poor boy off, you know, my lord.”
“Bah!” replied his lordship, “leave that to me.” And thereupon those arguments were used which had been of such great and decided efficacy in previous cases of the same nature. The undescribable rider of the undescribable beast then turned about and went homewards, and the heir of Smatterton soon rejoined his sporting companions.
Lord Spoonbill was now in possession of two letters more than did of right belong to him; and though he had taken great pains to become possessed of at least one of them, and though he was glad that he could prevent the information which they contained from reaching the destined point, still he was not altogether comfortable. Once or twice he determined that the letter designed for the parsonage of Smatterton should reach its destination, and then he as often changed his mind again. It may seem strange, and perhaps be thought not true, that an hereditary legislator should descend to such meanness as to intercept a letter. It is indeed strange, and but for its strangeness it would not be here recorded. But Lord Spoonbill was one of those decided characters that do not let trifles deter them from pursuing their schemes. He was rather proud of the dexterity and address with which he pursued any object on which he had fixed his mind, and he mistook, as many other prigs do, obstinacy for firmness. He had fully made up his mind to a certain end, and he was not choice as to the means. Yet he was a man of honor, a man of the nicest honor, a man of the most sensitive and susceptible honor. If any one had been capable of calling him mean, if any one so bold as to have expressed the slightest idea that his lordship was a contemptible fellow, with what indignation would he have heard and repelled the suspicion. His notions of honor must have been very curious and quite unique. We wish it were in our power to present to our readers an analysis of those views which Lord Spoonbill took of the principles of honor. We are not equal to a task so truly philosophical: we can only say that his lordship did descend to the meanness of intercepting a letter, and did call and think himself a man of honor. If any of our readers think that this is very paradoxical and altogether improbable, we congratulate them on their ignorance.
We cannot help at this part of our narrative shifting the scene for a little moment, just enough to shew our readers the effect produced in another quarter by the conduct of the above-named man of honor. From the sportsmen at Neverden we turn to the rectory of Smatterton and its inhabitants. Dr Greendale was in his study as usual, not kept away by any weariness of the preceding evening. Mrs Greendale felt more acutely the trouble of company departed than of company coming, and Mrs Greendale was not selfish in her sorrows, but communicated them to all about her. Penelope Primrose felt the full weight of her aunt’s troubles; and as the good lady of the rectory had been rather disappointed the preceding evening she was not in one of her best humours. Patiently as possible did Penelope bear with those ill humours, for her mind was buoyed up with hopes of pleasing intelligence from abroad. The hour arrived which usually brought the postman, but no postman arrived. It was possible the clocks at Smatterton were too fast. The hour was gone by, a full hour was past. It was not probable that the Smatterton clocks were an hour too fast. There was a little hope that Mr Darnley might be at Smatterton in the course of the morning; but the morning passed away and Mr Darnley did not come. But a messenger came from the rectory of Neverden with enquiries after Dr and Mrs Greendale. Penelope asked very particularly after the rector of Neverden and Mrs Darnley, and hoped that they arrived safely home, and that they had taken no cold, and—and—just as a matter of curiosity, had they heard from their son lately? The answer was, that a letter from Mr Robert Darnley had arrived the very hour before the messenger set out. Penelope turned pale, and then blushed most intemperately, because she felt how pale she looked; and then she thought—“Now I know he has forgotten me.” Immediately after however she thought again, and then it occurred to her that, as Robert Darnley was remarkable for his great filial affection, it was possible that he might have had no time to write by that conveyance more than one letter. But she still could not help thinking that he might have sent her one small letter: if it had been but short, it might have been a memorial of his thoughts still dwelling upon her. She felt hurt, but would not be angry; and hoped, very earnestly hoped, that she was not cherishing a foolish and fond passion for one who had relinquished all fondness for her. It was very strange and altogether unaccountable. It was so very much unlike the usual frankness and openness of mind for which Robert Darnley was so remarkable. These were painful thoughts, and the more painful because so very perplexing. It is somewhat wearying to exert the mind very diligently and perseveringly, even in solving problems and guessing riddles which are mere abstractions; but when, in addition to the perplexity, there is personal and deep interest and moral feeling, then the agitation and weariness of the mind is at the highest.
Penelope found her accustomed resource in trouble, and her consolation under life’s perplexities, in the kind and paternal attention of her uncle. She spent the greatest part of the afternoon of that day in Dr Greendale’s study, and listened with great pleasure to the fatherly exhortations of that most excellent man; and, as she was afterwards heard to observe, she thought that he spoke more like an angel than a man. She treasured up in her heart the hope that the morrow would bring tidings from the beloved one.