Laurence shook hands with Mitford and departed.
Yes, there was not much doubt about it: Sir Charles was tolerably well "on" in that quarter. An old poacher makes the best gamekeeper, because he knows the tricks and dodges of his old profession; and there was not one single move of Sir Charles Mitford's during the entire conversation which Laurence Alsager did not recognize as having been used by himself in bygone days. He knew the value of every look, knew the meaning of each inflexion of the voice; and appreciated to its full the motive-power which had induced the baronet suddenly to long for the country house at Redmoor, and to become disgusted with the dreariness of London. Determined to sit him out too, wasn't he? Lord! how often he, Laurence, had determinedly sat out bores for the sake of getting ten words, one hand-clasp, from Laura after they were gone! Yes, Mitford was getting on, certainly; making the running more quickly even than Dollamore had prophesied. Dollamore! ah, that reminded him: Dollamore was to be asked down to Redmoor. That, and the manner in which Mrs. Hammond had spoken of him and his visit, had decided Laurence in accepting Mitford's invitation. There could not be anything between them which--no; Dollamore could never have made a confidante of Laura and imparted to her--O no! Laura had not too much conscience in any case where her own passion or even her own whim was concerned; but she would shrink from meddling in an affair of that kind. And as for Lord Dollamore, he was essentially a man of petits soins, the exercise of which always laid those who practised them open to misunderstanding. He had a habit of hinting and insinuating also, which was unpleasant, but not very noxious. As people said, his bark was probably worse than his bite, and--
And at all events Laurence was very glad that he had accepted the invitation, and that he would be there to watch in person over anything that might happen.
[CHAPTER XI.]
DOWN AT REDMOOR.
Just on the highest ridge of the great waste of Redmoor, which is interspersed with dangerous peat-bogs and morasses, and extends about ten miles every way, with scarcely a fence or a tree, stands Redmoor House, from time immemorial--which means from the reign of Edward III.--the home of the Mitford family. Stands high and dry, and looking warm and snug and comfortable, with its red-brick face and its quaint gables and queer little mullioned windows. It is a house the sight of which would put spirit into a man chilled and numbed with looking over the great morass, and would give some vestige of credibility to the fact, that the sluggiest little stream born in the middle of the moor, and winding round through the gardens of the house, from its desolate birthplace flows down--as can be traced from the windows--through a land of plenty, of park and meadow, of orchard and cornfield, by the old cathedral-city, to the southern shore.
A grand old house, with a big dining-hall like St. George's Chapel at Windsor on a small scale, without the stalls, but with the knightly banners, and the old oak, and the stained glass, and the solemn air of antiquity; with a picture-gallery full of ancestors, beginning with Sir Gerard, temp. Henry VIII., painted by Holbein, a jolly red-bearded swashbuckler, not unlike his royal master, and ending with the late lamented Sir Percy, painted by Lawrence, with a curly head of hair, a fur collar to his coat, a smile of surprising sweetness, and altogether not unlike his royal master. There were drawing-rooms in blue and amber; a charming bow-windowed room hung with tapestry, and commanding a splendid view over the cultivated landscape, which, in the housekeeper's tradition, had been a boudoir for Sir Percy's lady, who died within three years of her marriage; a grand old library, the bookcases in black oak, and nearly all the books in Russia leather, save those bought under the auspices of the late baronet,--Hansard's Debates, and a legal and magisterial set of volumes all bound in calf and red-lettered at the back. There is a grand terrace in front of the house, and all kinds of gardens stretch round it: Dutch gardens, formal, quaint, and solemn, with a touch of old-world stiffness like the Mynheers; Italian gardens, bright and sunny and gaudy, very glittering and effective, but not very satisfactory after all, like the Signori; English gardens, with ample space of glorious close-shaved lawn, and such wealth of roses as to keep the whole air heavy with their fragrance. Great prolific kitchen-gardens at the back, and stables and coach-houses which might be better; but the late baronet cared for nothing but his quarter-sessions and his yacht; and so long as he had a pair of horses to jolt with him to join the judge's procession at assize-times, troubled himself not one jot how the internal economy of the stables was ordered.
This is all to be altered now. It was not very bright in Sir Percy's time, and it has been deadly-lively indeed since his death; but the Sleeping Beauty herself was never more astonished by the arrival of the prince than was Mrs. Austin, the old housekeeper at Redmoor, by the advent of a tall hook-nosed gentleman, who announced himself as Captain Bligh, and who brought a letter from Sir Charles Mitford, duly signed and sealed with the family arms, which Mrs. Austin knew so well, ordering implicit obedience to whatever orders the bearer might choose to give. With him came a sleek-looking man with close-cut hair and a white cravat, whom Mrs. Austin at first took for a clergyman, until she discovered, he was the stud-groom. This person inspected the stables, and the remnant of the late Sir Percy's stud, and reported to Captain Bligh that the stables was pigsties, and as for the hanimals, he should think they must be the 'osses as Noah put into the hark.
A fresh régime and fresh work to be done by everybody under it. No more chance for Tummus coachman and Willum helper to just ride harses to ex'cise and dryaive 'em out in trap whenever wanted to go crass to races or market, or give missus and young 'uns a little change. No more chance for Dawniel Todd the Scotch gardener to make his market of all the fruits, flowers, and vegetables, selling them to Mrs. Dean or Miss Archdeacon, or to the officers up in barracks. Not much chance for the head-keeper and his two under-trappers, who really had all their work to do to keep the game down after Sir Percy's death, so strictly had that terror of poachers preserved; though they thought they saw their way to balancing any loss which they might sustain from being unable any longer to supply the poulterers of the county town, in a house full of ardent sportsmen, with innumerable heavy tips after battue-days, and an occasional dog to break or to sell. The old lodge-gates had begun to grow rusty from disuse; but they are constantly on the stretch now, for carts with ladders and scaffolding-poles, and men in light linen blouses daubed with paint, were streaming in and out from morning till night. There is a new roof being put on the stables, and the outhouses are being painted and whitewashed throughout; and the mastiff, who has been bred on the true English principle of "keeping himself to himself," has been driven quite mad at the influx of new faces, and has shown such a convincing set of teeth to the painter's men, that they have declined proceeding with their work until he has been removed. So Tummus coachman and Willum helper have removed his big kennel to the back of the stables; and here Turk lies, with nothing but his black nose visible in the clean straw, until he catches sight of a painter or a tiler pursuing his occupation high up in mid-air, and then with one baleful spring Turk bounds out of his kennel, and unmistakably expresses his fervent wish to have that skilled labourer's life's-blood.
Captain Bligh too sits heavy on the lodge-keeper's soul. For the captain, after a cursory inspection of the vehicles at Redmoor louse, has sent down to Exeter for a dog-cart, and has duly received thence the nearest approach which the Exeterian coachbuilder had on hand. It is not a bad tax-cart, of the kind known as "Whitechapel," has a very big pair of wheels, and behind a long chestnut mare--which the captain found in a loose box in the corner of the yard, and which it seemed Tummus the coachman used to reserve for his special driving-runs remarkably well and light. In this tax-cart Captain Bligh drives to and from the station, where he is occupied watching the disembarkation of furniture coming direct from Gillow's--ottomans for the smoking-rooms, and looking-glasses for my lady's boudoir; to and from the market-town, where the painters and other workpeople are to be hunted up; to and from the barracks, where he has found that hospitality and good-fellowship which are invariable characteristics of the service. From the barracks the Captain is not unfrequently very late in returning, yelling out, "Ga-a-ate!" in the early hours of the morning, and frightening the lodge-keeper from peaceful dreams; and as the painter's men arrive at six, and the railway-van did not leave till eleven, the lodge-keeper begins to feel, on the whole, that life is not all beer and skittles, and rather wishes that the late baronet had never been drownded.