CHAPTER V.
Sir George Aimwell and his companions found but little sport in the field, and it was not unpleasant to Colonel Crop to hear that it was now high time to leave the birds and to adjourn to dinner. This was a relief also to the baronet himself; for though he was a keen sportsman he never suffered the amusements of the field to interfere with the duties of the dinner table. Colonel Crop was aware of this laudable peculiarity in the manners of Sir George of Neverden, and therefore enjoyed a day’s sport with him far more than he would have done with another.
Those of our readers who know the worthy baronet need not be informed of the superior style of his culinary arrangements. It was very well for him that his table had this attraction, for it is very certain it had no other. His own conversation was by no means the most brilliant. Lady Aimwell might indeed be capable of conversing, but the guests of Sir George never heard her voice, excepting so far as it was absolutely necessary that some words must be uttered by the lady who presides at the head of a table.
Speaking of the intellectual accomplishments of the magistrate of Neverden, we may not be considered as making a needless digression if we narrate an anecdote, or rather expression, a critical expression, of the worthy baronet. Mr Peter Kipperson, the wise and knowing agriculturist of Smatterton, one day dined at the table of Sir George of Neverden hall. Now Peter was a very literary man, who thought there was nothing worth living for but science and literature; and having somewhere read that it was impossible to take shelter in a shower of rain with such a man as Burke, without discovering him to be a man of genius, Peter was desirous of continually showing off, and was instant in season and out of season. Therefore when sitting at the table of the worthy baronet, he assailed the magistrate with various scientific subjects, but all to no purpose; there was no response from his worthy host. Endeavouring to adapt himself to the moderate talents and circumscribed reading of the baronet, he next started the subject of novels and novel reading, taking care to insinuate that, though Sir George might not read the trash of circulating libraries, he might be acquainted with some of our best novels. To this at last the baronet replied—
“Oh, yes; I remember many years ago reading a novel called Tom Jones, written by a Bow-street officer. I recollect something about it—it was very low stuff—I forget the particulars, but it was written in the manner of servants.”
Hereupon Mr Peter Kipperson set it down as an indisputable fact that baronets and magistrates were the most ignorant creatures on the face of the earth, and he congratulated himself that neither he nor Sir Isaac Newton were baronets.
Our readers may therefore very well imagine that if we pass over in silence the dinner at Neverden hall, where sat Sir George and Lady Aimwell, and Colonel Crop, and my Lord Spoonbill, we are not transgressing the truth of history. Soon after the cloth was removed, Lady Aimwell made herself invisible, and Sir George made himself what he called comfortable.
“Now, my good friends,” said he, “you know my way. Pray take care of yourselves. Pass the bottle. There—now—well—you know—I—sometimes—it is very rude—you—I know you will—excuse”—
Saying, or muttering as above, the guardian of laws and game sank to sleep in his easy chair, and left Lord Spoonbill and Colonel Crop to amuse each other. They were however very bad company, for one had no good in his head, and the other had nothing at all there.
Lord Spoonbill smiled at the baronet in his easy chair, and Colonel Crop smiled also. Colonel Crop looked at his lordship most imploringly, as if to beg that he would say something to which yes or no might be replied; but the heir of Smatterton was more deeply engaged in his own thoughts. Colonel Crop filled his glass and emptied it, and cracked nuts, and picked his teeth, and took snuff, and yawned, and looked at the pictures, and looked at his own fingers, and put them into the finger glass, and took them out and wiped them. Lord Spoonbill filled his glass, and did not empty it, and did not look at the pictures, and he took out his watch and put it into his pocket without looking at it. Of many events it is said, that they are no sooner said than done. But all these movements took up a much longer time in doing than they have in the reporting. It was a great relief to the colonel that Lord Spoonbill looked at his watch, for that enabled the man-of-war to say, “What time is it?”
Lord Spoonbill answered by guess, and the colonel was not very particular. When about half an hour more had elapsed, the heir of Smatterton rang to order his horse, and he said to the colonel, “Crop, I shall leave you to play at backgammon with Sir George. Make my apologies. I have some matters to attend to at the castle.”
Lord Spoonbill then took his departure from Neverden hall. It was a fine moonlight night, and the road from Neverden to Smatterton was peculiarly well calculated for the enjoyment of a moonlight ride. The domain of Neverden was for the most part on low and level ground; and the road from the hall towards Smatterton lay partly by the side of the park, over the low fence of which a person on horseback might have a most beautiful view of plantation scenery, and a distant glimpse of lofty and swelling hills, dark with abundant foliage, but softened by indistinctness and remoteness. The ground then gradually rose, and on the left hand might be seen at no great distance a broad and gracefully undulating river, far indeed from the sea, but bearing on its bosom the sails of commerce and the barks of pleasure. And there ran rippling by the side of the road a little prattling infant streamlet, bounding along its bright pebbly channel as in haste to reach the calmer and more majestic expanse of waters. On the right hand a dense and dark plantation of firs skirted an abruptly rising ground, at the end of which the road brought the traveller by a sudden turn to an immediate and full view of the massive and whitened towers of Smatterton castle. The castle rose, as some writers would say, but stood, we think, is the most proper, majestically towering above all surrounding objects, and enjoying from its lofty turrets a view of four counties; what these counties were we will not say,—we dislike personalities.
Now as Lord Spoonbill rode along under the bright light of the moon, undisturbed by any earthly sound but the tinkling of the sheep-bell, or the barking of some cottage curs, he did seem to himself to enjoy the beauty of the scenery and the pleasant balm of the autumnal air. And as a feeling of scenic beauty penetrated his soul, there entered also with that a thought of moral beauty, and he felt that his mind did not harmonize with the repose and beauty which surrounded him. The feeling was not strong enough to be called remorse, it was not serious enough to border upon repentance. He felt conscious that he had acted with meanness, that he had been guilty of a piece of cruelty. He had used a most contemptible and debasing artifice to produce alienation between too worthy and excellent young persons, loving and beloved, confiding and hoping amidst their doubts and difficulties. These feelings were unpleasant, and he endeavoured to soothe himself by sophistry. After all, what injury had he done to Robert Darnley? It would be a pity that so fine a woman as Penelope Primrose should be sacrificed to such a dull, plodding, common-place man as the younger Darnley. Common-place men are not worthy of the notice of men of fashion, nor deserving of the ordinary privileges of humanity. His lordship had some recollection of Mr Darnley as being a very poor creature, and he thought that it was not probable that he should have gained any great degree of improvement by commercial pursuits and habits of business; for, as everybody knows, these things tend very much to degrade and to cramp the mind; while on the other hand those pursuits in which his lordship had been engaged had quite the contrary effect. It must be very ennobling to the mind to be engaged in gambling, horse-racing, lounging, bird-shooting, fox-hunting, and seduction; and any woman of sense and spirit must infinitely prefer a protector of this description, to a common-place man who knows nothing of the world. As to Penelope then, his lordship very naturally concluded that he was designing her an essential service. Poor, simple, artless creature, she knew nothing of society, all her days had been passed in a sequestered village; and as Robert Darnley was almost the only person she was acquainted with, at all likely to make her an offer, she fancied that she must of necessity be in love with him. Lord Spoonbill had not according to his own account been much of a reader, but he had read the Sorrows of Werter, and he had read many other compositions of that nature; and he invariably found that the lovers of the betrothed and the married were men of genius, fine feeling, elegant manners, and every species of sentimentality; and he observed that they were induced to the very laudable practice of seducing the affections of young women from their husbands or lovers, by a mere principle of compassion. It was a pity that so much sense and sensibility should be so ill met, and then how kind and considerate for some high-minded young gentleman, like my Lord Spoonbill, to save them from the stupidity of a common-place husband, and consign them to infamy and a broken heart. Nothing of course can be a greater manifestation and proof of sensibility and fine feeling, than seducing engaged affections, and, if Lord Spoonbill had written his own history, we should have heard of as much sympathy being expressed for him as there has been for Werter and such like coxcombs; but as we do not suffer his lordship to speak for himself, our readers must be content to contemplate his character in all the baldness of truth.
While thoughts as above described were occupying the mind of his lordship, he drew nearer to the domain of Smatterton, and as the view of the castle and village opened upon him, he saw more lights in the cottages than usual at that time in the evening, and he heard at a little distance sounds of more than ordinary movements. And presently there came galloping towards him a servant from the castle. Thinking that it was a messenger sent for himself, he stopped the man to ask what was the matter. The man drew up his horse just for a moment, and in hurried accents replied that Dr Greendale had been taken seriously ill, and that the Earl had given orders to ride over to M—— to fetch his lordship’s own physician. Waiting for no further interrogations the messenger rode off as fast as before.
Will it be believed that at this moment one of the first and promptest thoughts that occurred to Lord Spoonbill was the idea, that should this illness terminate fatally, the event might facilitate his designs upon Penelope? Yet so it was. This was his first and strongest feeling. He had forgotten all the fatherly kindness of that good man. He was insensible to any impression from the numberless acts and words of friendship received from the pious and holy rector. Dr Greendale had been for many years an intimate friend of the family at the castle. The Earl, though a haughty man and of very strong aristocratic feelings, had never regarded the worthy rector with any other feeling than friendship and respect; and the Countess, though not insensible to the charms and fascinations of fashionable life, yet delighted in the moral repose and the sober beauties of the pastor’s character. The Earl and Countess did not condescend to visit at the rectory, but the doors of the castle were most cheerfully open for the doctor, and there was sincerity in their language, when the noble inhabitants of the mansion declared that a more welcome guest never crossed their threshold. There must have been something good and pre-eminently good in the character of a man who could thus as it were command the moral homage of minds in the highest walks of society. The doctor was not a man of fortune or of family. His respectability was altogether personal and individual. This good man had taken very especial notice of the heir of Smatterton, and had endeavoured, according to the best of his ability, to impress upon the mind of the young lord those principles which, in after-life, might become a blessing to him; and when he could not but observe with all his natural disposition to candor and charity, that there were bad principles at work within, he endeavoured to hope for the best, and in his pastoral admonitions to the youth he did not assume the sternness of the censor, but adopted the gentle insinuating language of a friend to a friend. He was grieved, indeed, when he saw that Lord Spoonbill was likely to become a frivolous character, but he was spared the bitter mortification of knowing that he was decidedly profligate.
Miserably degraded must have been the mind of Lord Spoonbill when intelligence of the good man’s illness reached him, that he could think only, or chiefly, of the vicious benefit likely to accrue from the fatal termination of that illness. There was indeed another thought in his lordship’s mind. He could not but notice the hurry in which the messenger seemed to be, and he was also struck with the obvious sensation which the illness of the rector had created in the village. And this thought was more powerfully impressed as he rode past a few cottages near the park-gate. He there heard the comments and commendations of the humblest of the humble, and the poorest of the poor. He heard the aged tremulously uttering their lamentations; these lamentations were perhaps rather selfish, but still they were such as did honour to him for whom they were expressed, if not to those by whom they were used. Then his lordship thought within himself of the power and efficacy of moral worth; and he himself began to be almost sorry; but his more degrading and vicious thoughts had the ascendancy; and he was fully resolved not to be moved or melted by the sorrows of ignorant rustics.
He rode up to the castle, and having dismounted he proceeded immediately to the magnificent saloon, in which the Earl was so fond of sitting even when alone. As Lord Spoonbill entered the apartment, the Earl raised his eyes from a book which he was reading, and said, “You are soon returned, Spoonbill; did you find Sir George’s company not very inviting? Or, have you left Crop to enjoy the sole benefit of the worthy baronet’s wit and humour?”
“I left the baronet taking his nap after dinner, and desired Crop to stay and amuse him with his backgammon when he should wake. My visits at Neverden, you know, are never long.”
The Earl was about to resume his book, when Lord Spoonbill added, “But pray, sir, what is this account I hear from one of your people about Dr Greendale? I hope the old gentleman is not seriously ill.”
By this interrogation the Earl seemed to be roused to a recollection of what might otherwise have passed away from his mind. Laying down his book, he said:
“Oh!—ay—right: I am very sorry to tell you that the poor man is very ill. That is, so I understand—I sent immediately for my physician, and I also said that, if it were necessary, I myself would go down to the rectory and see the good man. He will be a very great loss to the village. The poor people are very much attached to him, and I believe he is very conscientiously attentive to his duties. We must do all we can for him.”
“Certainly, we must. I am sure I should be extremely sorry to lose him. What is the nature of his complaint? I was at the rectory last night, and he seemed perfectly well.”
“They tell me,” replied the Earl, “that it is a fit of apoplexy, and that the poor man is in a state of total insensibility. I would certainly go down and see him, late as it is, if I thought it would do him any good. I shall hear what my physician says.”
“If you will give me leave, sir, I will walk down to the rectory, and bring you word how the doctor is. That will save you the necessity of going out so late.”
“Very good, very good, do so, I am anxious to hear some more particular account.”
Lord Spoonbill then departed for the rectory. And, when having heard what was the nature of the rector’s illness, he had reason to apprehend that the hand of death was upon him, the young lord was more deeply moved. He really did make anxious haste to the parsonage. It is a great pity that he did not pay more attention to these frequent admonitions which he received as it were from his better genius, and by which he was reminded that good principles were not altogether foreign to his nature; but he resisted them—he felt “a dread of shame among the spirits beneath.”