“Oh, I can’t understand Mr. Hardingstone,” said she; “I think he’s odd-ish, and quite unlike other people; then he looks through one so. Mrs. Delaval, I think it’s quite rude to stare at people as if you thought they were not telling the truth. But he’s good-looking, too,” added the young lady, reflectively; “only not to be compared with Charlie.”
“Of course not,” rejoined her friend; “but it is fortunate that we are to enjoy the society of this Paladin till he joins his regiment—Lancers, are they not? Well, we must hope, Blanche, to use the language of your favourites of the middle ages, that he may prove a lamb among ladies, as he is doubtless a lion among lancers.”
“Dear Charlie! how he will enjoy his winter. He is so fond of hunting; and he is to have Hyacinth, and Haphazard, and Mayfly to ride for his own—so kind of Uncle Baldwin; but I must be off to put some flowers in his room,” quoth Blanche, skipping along the walk as young ladies will, when unobserved by masculine eyes; “he may arrive at any moment, he’s such an uncertain boy.”
“Zounds! you’ve broke it, you fiddle-headed brute!” exclaimed a choleric voice from the further side of a thick laurel hedge, startling the ladies most unceremoniously, and preparing them for the spectacle of a sturdy black cob trotting rebelliously down the farm road, with a fragment of his bridle dangling from his head, the remaining portion being firmly secured to a gate-post, at which the self-willed animal had been tied up in vain. Another instant brought the owner of the voice and late master of the cob into the presence of Mrs. Delaval and his niece. It was no less a person than General Bounce.
“Uncle Baldwin, Uncle Baldwin,” exclaimed Blanche, who turned him round her finger as she did the rest of the establishment, “where have you been all day? You promised to drive me out—you know you did, you wicked, hard-hearted man.”
“Been, my dear?” replied the General, in a tone of softness contrasting strangely with the flushed and vehement bearing of his outward man; “at that—(no, I will not swear)—at that doubly accursed farm. Would you believe the infernal stupidity of the people—(excuse me, Mrs. Delaval)—men with heads on their shoulders, and hair, and front teeth like other people—and they’ve sent the black bull to Bubbleton without winkers—without winkers, as I live by bread; but I won’t be answerable for the consequences,—no, I won’t make good any damages originating in such carelessness; no, not if there’s law in England or justice under heaven! But, my sweet Blanche,” added the General, in a tone of amiable piano, the more remarkable for the forte of his previous observations, “I’ll go and get ready this instant, my darling; you shan’t be disappointed; I’ll order the pony-carriage forthwith. Holloa! you, sir; only let me catch you—only let me catch you, that’s all; I’ll trounce you as sure as my name’s Bounce!” and the General, without waiting for any further explanation, darted off in pursuit of an idle village boy, whom he espied in the very act, flagrante delicto, of trespassing on a pathway which the lord of the manor had been several years vainly endeavouring to shut up.
General Bounce was such a medley as can only be produced by the action of a tropical sun on a vigorous, sanguine Anglo-Saxon temperament. Specimens are becoming scarcer every day. They are seldom to be met with in our conventional and well-behaved country, though here and there, flitting about a certain club celebrated for its curries, they may be discovered even in the heart of the metropolis. On board transports, men-of-war, mail-steamers, and such-like government conveyances, they are more at home; in former days they were occasionally visible inside our long coaches, where they invariably made a difficulty about the window; but in the colonies they are to be seen in their highest state of cultivation; as a general rule, the hotter the climate, the more perfect the specimen.
Our friend the General was a very phœnix of his kind. In person he was short, stout, square, and active, with black twinkling eyes and a round, clean-shaved face—small-featured and good-humoured-looking, but choleric withal. His naturally florid complexion had been baked into a deep red-brown by his Indian campaigns. If Pythagoras was right in his doctrine concerning the transmigration of souls, the General’s must have previously inhabited the person of a sturdy, snappish black-and-tan terrier. In manner he was alternately marvellously winning and startlingly abrupt, the transition being instantaneous; whilst in character he was decided, energetic, and impracticable, though both rash and obstinate, with an irritable temper and an affectionate heart. He had seen service in India, and by his own account had not only experienced sundry hair-breadth ’scapes bordering on the romantic, but likewise witnessed such strange sights and vagaries as fall to the lot of few, save those whose bodily vision is assisted by that imaginative faculty denominated “the mind’s eye.”
The General was a great disciplinarian, and piqued himself much upon the order in which he kept the females of his establishment, Blanche especially, whose lightest word, by the way, was his law. Indeed, like many old bachelors, he entertained a reverence almost superstitious for the opposite sex, and a few tears shed at the right moment would always bear the delinquent harmless, whatever the misdemeanour for which she was taken to task. The men, indeed, found him more troublesome to deal with, and the newly-arrived were somewhat alarmed at his violent language and impetuous demeanour; but the older servants always “took the bull by the horns” fearlessly and at once, nor in the end did they ever fail to get their own way with a master who, to use their peculiar language, “was easily upset, though he soon came round again.” What made the General an infinitely less disagreeable man in society than he otherwise would have been, was the fact of his having a farm, which farm served him as a safety-valve to carry off all the irritation that could not but accumulate in an easy, uneventful life, destitute of real grievances as of the stirring, active scenes to which he had been accustomed in his earlier days. If a gentleman finds it indispensable to his health that he should be continually in hot water—that he should always have something to grumble at, something to disappoint him, let him take to farming—his own land or another’s, it is immaterial which; but let him “occupy,” as it is called, a certain number of acres—and we will warrant him as much “worry” and “annoyance” as the most “tonic”-craving disposition can desire. Let us accompany our retired warrior to his farm-yard, whither, after an ineffectual chase, he at length followed his black pony, forgetful of Blanche and the drive, on which, in the now shortening daylight, it was already too late to embark.