“Aha!” cried the Grower, with a knowing wink, “that is her little game, is it now? That is why she has aches and pains, and such a very sad want of tone, and failure of power in her leaders! Leave it to me, lad—that you may—I’ll soon put a stop to that. A pill-grinder at Applewood farm indeed! But I did not know you was jealous!”
“Jealous! No, no, sir; I scorn the action. But when there are two, you know, why, it makes it not half so nice for one, you know.”
Squire Lovejoy, however, soon discovered that he had been a little too confident in pledging himself to keep the maltster’s rival off the premises. For Mrs. Lovejoy, being a very resolute woman in a little way, at once began to ache all over, and so effectually to groan, that instead of having the doctor once a-week, she was obliged to have him at least three times. And it was not very long before the young physician’s advice was sought for a still more interesting patient.
For the daughter and prime delight of the house, the bright sweet-tempered Mabel, instead of freshening with the spring, and budding with new roses, began to get pale, and thin, and listless, and to want continually to go to church, and not to care about her dinner. Her eagerness for divine service, however, could only be gratified on Sundays: for the practice of reading the prayers to the pillars twelve times a-week was not yet in vogue. The novelty, therefore, of Mabel’s desire made the symptom all the more alarming; and her father perceived that so strange a case called peremptorily for medical advice. But she, for a long time, did nothing but quote against himself his own opinion of the professors of the healing art; while she stoutly denied the existence on her part of any kind of malady. And so, for a while, she escaped the doctor.
Meanwhile she was fighting very bravely with deep anxiety and long suspense. And the struggle was the more forlorn, and wearisome, and low-hearted, because she must battle it out in silence, with none to sympathize and (worse than that) with everybody condemning her mutely for the conflict. Her father had a true and hearty liking for young Lorraine, preferring him greatly—so far as mere feeling went—to the maltster. But his views for his daughter were different, and he thought it high time that her folly should pass. Her mother, on the other hand, would have rejoiced to see her the wife of Hilary; but had long made up her mind that he would never return alive from Spain, and that Mabel might lose the best years of her life in waiting for a doomed soldier. Gregory Lovejoy alone was likely to side with his sister, for the sake of Lorraine, the friend whom he admired so much; and Gregory had transmitted to her sweet little messages and loving words, till the date of the capture of Badajos. But this one consoler and loyal friend was far away from her all this time, having steadfastly eaten his way to the Bar, and received his lofty vocation. Thereupon Lovejoy paid five guineas for his wig, and a guinea for the box thereof, gave a frugal but pleasant “call party,” and being no way ashamed of his native county, or his father’s place therein, sturdily shouldered the ungrateful duties of “junior,” on the home-circuit. Of course he did not expect a brief, until his round was trodden well; but he never failed to be in court; and his pleasant temper and obliging ways soon began to win him friends. His mother was delighted with all this; but the franklin grumbled heavily at the bags he had to fill with money, to be scattered, as he verily believed, among the senior lawyers.
Now the summer assizes were held at Maidstone about the beginning of July; and Gregory had sent word from London, by John Shorne, that he must be there, and would spend one night at home, if his father would send a horse for him, by the time when his duties were over. His duties of the day consisted mainly in catering for the bar-mess, and attending diligently thereto; and now he saw the wisdom of the rule which makes a due course of feeding essential to the legal aspirant. A hundred examinations would never have qualified him for the bar-mess: whereas a long series of Temple dinners had taught him most thoroughly what to avoid.
The Grower was filled with vast delight at the idea of marching into court, and saying to all the best people of the town, “Pray allow me to pass, sir. My son is here somewhere, I believe. A fresh-coloured barrister, if you please, ma’am, with curly hair below his wig. Ah yes, there he is! But his lordship is whispering to him, I see; I must not interrupt them.” And therefore, although his time might be worth a crown an hour, ere his son’s fetched a penny, he strove in vain against the temptation to go over and look at Gregory. Before breakfast he fidgeted over his fields and was up for being down upon every one—just to let them know that this sort of talent is hereditary. His workmen winked at one another and said (as soon as he was gone by) that he must have got out the wrong side of the bed, or else the old lady had been rating of him.
He (in the greatness of his thoughts) strode on, and from time to time worked his lips and cast sharp glances at every gate-post, in the glow of imaginary speech. He could not feel that his son on the whole was a cleverer fellow than himself had been; and he played the traitor to knife and spade by hankering after gown and wig. “If my father,” he said, “had only given me the chance I am giving Gregory, what might I be now? One of these same barons as terrify us with their javelins and gallows, and sit down with white tippits on. Or if my manners wasn’t good enough for that, who could ever keep me from standing up, and defying all the villains for to put me down so long as I spoke justice? And yet that might happen to be altogether wrong. I’m a great mind not to go over at all. My father was an honest man before me.”
In this state of mind he sat down to breakfast, bright with reflections of Gregory’s glory, yet dashed irregularly with doubts of the honesty of its origin, till, in quite his old manner, he made up his mind to keep his own council about the thing and ride over to the county town, leaving Applewood none the wiser. For John Shorne had orders the night before to keep his message quiet, which an old market-hand could be trusted to do; and as for the ladies, the Grower was sure that they knew much less and cared much less about the assizes than about the washing-day. So he went to his stables about nine o’clock, with enough of his Sunday raiment on to look well but awake no excitement, and taking a good horse, he trotted away with no other token behind him except that he might not be home at dinner-time, but might bring a stranger to supper perhaps; and they ought to have something roasted.
“Pride,” as a general rule, of course, “goeth before a fall;” but the father’s pride in the present instance was so kindly and simple, that Nature waived her favourite law, and stopped fortune from upsetting him. Although when he entered the court he did not find his son in confidential chat with the Lord Chief Justice, nor even in grave deliberation with a grand solicitor, but getting the worst of a conflict with an exorbitant fishmonger; and though the townspeople were not scared as much as they should have been by the wisdom of Gregory’s collected front, neither did the latter look a quarter so wise as his father; yet a turn of luck put all things right, and even did substantial good. For the Grower at sight of his son was not to be stopped by any doorkeeper, but pushed his way into the circle of forensic dignity, and there saluted Gregory with a kiss on the band of his horsehair, and patted him loudly on the back, and challenging with a quick proud glance the opinions of the bar and bench, exclaimed in a good round Kentish tone—