Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Volume 1 of 3

Clayton flung half–a–crown upon the table, and went down the stairs with a heavy tramp, knocking over a dish with the college arms on, wherein Corker was bringing the fowl and the tongue. Corker got all the benefit of the hospitable doings, and made a tidy dinner out of it, for Cradock could eat no breakfast. It was the first time bitter words had passed between the brothers since the little ferments of childhood, which are nothing more than sweetword the moment they settle down. And he doubted himself; he doubted whether he had not been selfish about it.

It was the third day of the examination, and when he appeared at ten oʼclock among the forty competitors, he was vexed anew to see that Clayton had removed to a table at the other end of the room, so as not to be even near him. The piece of Greek prose which he wrote that morning dissatisfied him entirely; and then again he rejoiced at the thought that Viley need not be afraid of him. He had never believed in his chance of success, and went in for the scholarship to please others and learn the nature of the examination. Next year he might have a fairer prospect; this year – as all the University knew – Brown, of Balliol, was sure of it.

Nevertheless, by the afternoon he was in good spirits again, and found a mixed paper which suited him as if Uncle John had set it. One of the examiners had been, some twenty years ago, a pupil of John Rosedew, and this, of course, was a great advantage to any successor alumnus; though neither of them knew the other. It is pleasant to see how the old ideas germinate and assimilate, as the olive and the baobab do, after the fires of many summers.

Clayton, a placable youth (even when he was quite in the wrong, as in the present instance), came to Craddyʼs rooms that evening, begged him not to apologise for his expressions of the morning, and compared notes with him upon the doings of the day.

“Bless you, Crad”, he cried, after a glass of first–rate brown sherry – not the vile molassied stuff, thick as the sack of Falstaff, but the genuine thing, with the light and shade of brown olives in the sunset, and not to be procured, of course, from any Oxonian wine–dealer; – “oh, Crad, if we could only wallop that Brown, of Balliol, between us, I should not care much which it was. He has booked it for such a certainty, and does look so cocky about it. Did you see the style he walked off, before hall, arm in arm with a Master of Arts, and spouting his own iambics”?

“First–rate ones, I dare say, Viley. Have a pipe, old fellow. After all, it doesnʼt matter much. Folk who have never been in them think a deal the most of these things. The wine–merchant laughs at beeswing; and so, I suppose, it is with all trades”. Cradock was not by any means prone to the discourse sententious; and the present lapse was due, no doubt, to the reaction ensuing upon his later scene with Viley, wherein each had promised heartily to hold fast by the brotherhood.

On the following Saturday morning, John Rosedewʼs face flushed puce–colour as he opened his letters at breakfast–time. “Hurrah! Amy, darling; hurrah, my child! Terque quaterque, et novies evoe! Eat all the breakfast, melimel; I wonʼt tell you till I come back”.

“Oh, wonʼt you, indeed”? cried Amy, with her back against the door and her arms in mock grimness folded. “I rather think you will, papa; unless you have made up your mind to choke me. And you are half way towards it already”.

John saw that peculiar swell of her throat which had frightened him so often – her dear mother had died of bronchitis, and he knew nothing of medical subjects – and so he allayed her excitement at once, gave her over to Miss Eudoxia, who was late in her bedroom as usual, and then set off at his utmost speed to tell his old friend, Sir Cradock. And a fine turn of speed he still could show, though the whiskers under his college–cap (stuck on anyhow in the hurry) were as white as the breast of a martin quivering under the eaves. Since he lost his wife he had never cared to walk fast, subsiding into three miles an hour, as thoughtful and placid men will do, when they begin to thumb their waistcoats. But now through the waking life of “the Chase”, where the brown fern–stalks bent over the Ammon horn of the lifting frond, and the fescue grass was beading rough with dew already, here and among the rabbit–holes, nimbly dodging the undermine, ran as hard as a boy of twelve, the man of threescore, John Rosedew. Without stopping to knock as usual, he burst in upon Sir Cradock, now sitting all alone at his simple, old–fashioned breakfast. Classical and theological training are not locomotive, as we all know to our cost; and the rector stood gasping ever so long, with both hands pressed to his side.

“Why, John; quick, quick! You frighten me. Is your house on fire”?

“Old fellow – old fellow; such news! Shake hands – ever since the charta forestæ; shake hands again. Oh, I feel rather sick; pray excuse me; ἄνω κάτα στρέφεται”.

“What is it, John? Do be quick. I must send for Mrs. OʼGaghan and the stomach–pump”. Biddy was now the licensed doctoress of the household, and did little harm with her simples, if she failed of doing good.

“Times there? Open it; look, University news! Crad and Clayton”.

Wondering, smiling, placidly anxious, Sir Cradock tore open the paper, and found, after turning a great many corners, the University news. Then he read out with a trembling voice, after glancing over it silently:

“The Ireland scholarship has been awarded to Cradock Nowell, of Merton College. Proxime accessit Clayton Nowell, scholar of Corpus Christi. Unless we are misinformed, these gentlemen are twin–brothers”.

“Grintie, grintie, grunt,
Oos be arl tew blunt;
Naw oose Hampshire hogs,
But to zhow the way in bogs”.

So John Rosedew quoted in the fulness of his glory from an old New Forest rhyme. Johnʼs delight transcended everything, because he had never expected it. He had taken his own degree ere ever the Ireland was heard of; but three pupils of his had won it while he was still in residence. Of that he had not thought much. But now to win it by proxy in his extreme old age, as he began to consider it, and from all the crack public schoolmen, and with his own pet alumni, whom no one else had taught anything – such an Ossa upon Pelion, such an Olympus on Ossa – no wonder that the snow of his whiskers shook and the dew trembled under his eyelids.

Sir Cradock, on the other hand, had never a word to say, but turned his head like one who waits for a storm of dust to go by.

“Why, Cradock, old friend, what on earth is the matter? You donʼt seem at all delighted”.

“Yes, I am, of course, John; as delighted as I ought to be. But I wish it had been Viley; he wants it so much more, and he is so like his mother”.

“So is Crad; every bit as much; an enlarged and grander portrait. Canʼt you see the difference between a large heart and a mere good one? Will no one ever appreciate my noble and simple Craddy”?

John Rosedew spoke warmly, and was sorry before the breath from his lips was cold. Not that he had no right to say it, but because he felt that he had done far more harm than good.

CHAPTER VIII

Honours flash in the summer sun, as green corn does in the morning; then they gleam mature and mellow at the time of reaping; they are bagged, perhaps by a womanʼs arm, with a cut “below the knees”; set on their butt for a man to sit under while eating his bread and cheese; then they wither, and are tossed into chaff by a contumelious steam–engine with a leathern strap inflexible.

Cradockʼs “Ireland” has gone by, and another has succeeded it, and this has fallen, as most things fall, to the sap of perseverance, steel–tipped with hard self–confidence – this Ireland has fallen to the lot of Brown Balliolensis. Clayton would not go in for it; his pride, or rather vanity, would not allow him to do so. Was he going to take Cradockʼs leavings, and be a year behind him, when he was only two minutes younger? However, he went in for the Hertford, and, what was a great deal more, he got it; for Cradock would not stand; and, even if he had, perhaps the result would have been the same. Viley had made up his mind to win it, and worked very hard indeed; and so won it very easily. Cradock could usually beat him in Greek, but not so often in Latin. And Clayton wrote the prettiest, most tripping, coquettish, neat–ankled hendecasyllables that ever whisked roguishly round a corner, wondering where Catullus was.

Ah! light–hearted poet, sensitively sensuous, yet withal deep–hearted, with a vein of golden philosophy, and a pensive tenderness, now–a–days we overlook thee. Horace is more fashionable, more suited to a flippant age, because he has no passion.

Early on a sunripe evening in the month of June, “when the sun was shifting the shadows of the hills, and doffed the jaded oxenʼs yoke, distributing the love time from his waning chariot”, a forest dell, soft, clear, and calm, was listening to its thrushes. And more than at the throstleʼs flute, or flageolet of the blackbird, oaks and chestnuts pricked their ears at the voice of a gliding maiden. Where the young fern was pluming itself, arching, lifting, ruffling in filigree, light perspective, and depth of Gothic tracery, freaked by the nip of fairy fingers, tremulous as a coral grove in a crystal under–current, the shyer fronds still nestling home, uncertain of the world as yet, and coiled like catherine–wheels of green; where the cranesbill pushed like Zedekiah, and the succory reared its sky–blue windmill (open for business till 8 P.M.); where the violet now was rolled up in the seed–pod, like a stylite millipede, and the great bindweed, in its crenate horn, piped and fluted spirally, had forgotten the noonday flaunt: here, and over the nibbled sward, where the crisp dew was not risen yet, here came wandering the lightest foot that ever passed, but shook not, the moss–bed of the glow–worm. Under the rigorous oaks (so corded, seamed, and wenned with humps of grey), the stately, sleek, mouse–coloured beech, the dappled, moss–beridden ash, and the birch–tree peeling silverly, beneath the murmuring congress of the sunproof leaves; and again in the open breaks and alleys, where light and shade went see–saw; by and through and under all, feeling for and with every one, glanced, and gleamed, and glistened, and listened the loveliest being where all was love, the pet in the nest of nature.

Of all the beauty in that sweet dell, where the foot of man came scarcely once in a year; of all the largesse of earth and heaven; of all the grace which is Natureʼs gratitude to her heavenly Father: there was not one, from the lily–bell to the wild rose and the heather–sprig, fit for a man to put in his bosom, and look at Amy Rosedew.

It is told of a certain good manʼs child, whose lineage still is cherished, that when she was asked by her father (half–bantering, half in earnest) to tell him the reason why everybody loved her so, she cast down her eyes with a puzzled air, then opened them wide, as a child does to the sunrise of some great truth – “Father, perhaps it is because I love everybody so”. Lucan has it in a neater form: “amorem quæris amando”. And that was Amy Rosedewʼs secret, by herself undreamed of – lovely, because she could not help loving all our God has made. And of all the fair things He has made, and pronounced to be very good, since sunshine first began to gleam, to glow, and to fade away, what home has beauty found so bright, so rich in varied elegance, so playfully receptive of the light shed through creation – the light of the Makerʼs smile – as a young maiden, pure of heart, natural, true, and trusting?

She came to the brink of a forest pool, and looked at herself in the water. Not that she thought more than she could help of the outward thing called “Amy”, but that she wondered how her old favourites, Cradock and Clayton Nowell, would esteem her face and style of dress now she was turned seventeen. Most likely they had seen ever so many girls, both at Oxford and in London, compared with whom poor Amy was but a rustic Phidyle, just fit to pick sticks in the New Forest.

The crystal mirror gave her back even the shade on her own sweet face, which fell from the cloud of that simple thought; for she stood where the westering sunshine failed to touch the water, but flushed with rich relief of gold the purity of her figure. Every sapling, dappled hazel, sloughing birch, or glabrous maple, glistened with the plumes of light, and every leaf was twinkling. The columns of the larger trees stood like metal cylinders, whereon the level gleam rules a streak, and glints away round the rounding. Elbows, arms, and old embracings, backed with a body–ground of green, laced with sunsetʼs golden bodkin, ever shifting every eyelet, – branch, and bough, and trunk, and leaves, ruffling and twisting, or staunch and grand, they seemed but a colonnade and arch, for the sun to peep through at the maiden, and tell of her on the calm waters.

Floating, fleeting, shimmering there, in a frame of stately summer flags, vivid upon the crystal shade, and twinkling every now and then to the plash of a distant moorhen, or the dip of a swallowʼs wing, lay her graceful image, wondering in soft reply to her play of wonder. She took off her light chip hat, and laughed; lo! the courteous picture did the same. She offered, with a mincing air, her little frail of wood–strawberries; and the shadowy Amy put them back with the prettiest grace ever dreamed of. Then she cast the sparkling night of her tresses down the white shoulders and over her breast; and the other Amy was looking at her through a ripple of cloudiness, with the lissom waist retiring. She smoothed her hair like a scarf around her, withdrew her chin on the curving neck, and bowed the shapely forehead, well pleased to see thus the foreshortening undone, and the pure, bright oval shown as in a glass. Then, frightened almost at the lustrous depth of her large grey eyes, deep–fringed with black, she thought of things all beyond herself, and woke, from Natureʼs innocent joy in her own brief luck of beauty, to the bashful consciousness, the down of a maidenʼs dreamings. Bridling next at her mirrored face, with a sudden sense of humour, all the time she watched the red lips, and the glimmer of pearls between them, “Amy”, she cried, “now, after this, donʼt come to me for a character, unless you want one, you pretty dear, for conceit and self–admiration”.

So saying, she tossed her light head at herself, and looked round through her flickering cloudlets. What did she see? What made the dark water flame upon the instant with a richer glow than sunset? The delicate cheeks, the fair forehead and neck, even the pearly slope of the shoulders, were flooded with deepest carmine. Her pride fell flat, as the cistus stamen at a touch droops away on the petal. Then she shrank back into a flowering broom, and cowered among the spikelets, and dared not move to wipe away the tears she was so mad with. Oh! the wretched abasement earned by a sweet little bit of vanity!

How she hated herself, and the light, and the water, her senseless habit of thinking aloud, above all, her despicable fancy that she was growing – what nonsense! – such a pretty girl! Thenceforth and for ever, she felt quite sure, she never could look in a glass again, unless it were just for a moment, to put her hair to rights, when she got home.

“To think of my hair all down my neck, and the way I had turned in the gathers”! – the poor little thing had been making experiments how she would look in a low–necked dress – “Oh! that was the worst thing of all. I might have laughed at it but for that. And now I am sure I can never even peep at his face again. Whatever will he think of me, and what would my papa say”?

After crying until she began to laugh, she resolved to go straight home, and confess all her crime to Aunt Eudoxia, John Rosedewʼs maiden sister, who had come to live with him when he lost his wife, three dreary years agone. So Amy rolled up her long hair anyhow, without a bit of pride in it, shrank away and examined herself, to be sure that all was right, and, after one peep, came bravely forth, trying to look as much as possible like her good Aunt Doxy; then she walked at her stateliest, with the basket of strawberries, picked for papa, in one hand, and the other tightly clasped upon the bounding of her heart. But her eyes were glancing right or left, like a fawnʼs when a lion has roared; and even the youngest trees saw quite well that, however rigid with Miss Eudoxia the gliding form might be, it was poised for a dart and a hide behind them at every crossing shadow.

But fortune favours the brave. She won her own little sallyport without the rustle of a blackberry–leaf, and thereupon rushed to a hasty and ostrich–like conclusion. She felt quite sure that, after all, none but the waters and winds could tell the tale of her little coquetry. Beyond all doubt, Cradock Nowell was deep in the richest mental metallurgy, tracing the vein of Greek iambics, as he did before his beard grew; and she never, never would call them “stupid iambics” again.

Cradock, who had seen her, but turned away immediately (as became a gentleman), did not, for the moment, know his little Amy Rosedew. A year and a half had changed her from a stripling, jumping girl to a shy and graceful maiden, dreadfully afraid of sweethearts. She had not been away from Nowelhurst throughout that year and a half, for her father could not get on without her for more than a month at a time, and all that month he fretted. But the twins had spent the last summer in Germany, with a merry reading (or talking) party; and their Christmas and Easter vacations were dragged away in London, through a strange whim of Sir Cradock Nowell; at least, they thought it strange, but there was some reason for it.

Young Cradock Nowell was not such a muff as to be lost in Greek senarii; no trimeter acatalectics of truest balance and purest fall could be half so fair to scan; not “Harmony of the golden hair”, and her nine Pierid daughters round the crystal spring, were worth a glance of the mental eye, when fortune granted bodily vision of our unconscious Amy. But he did not stand there watching mutely, as some youths would have done; for a moment, indeed, he forgot himself in the flush of admiration. The next moment he remembered that he was a gentleman; and he did what a gentleman must have done – whether marquis or labourer: he slipped away through the bushes, feeling as if he had done some injury. Then the maiden, glancing round, caught one startled glimpse, as Nyssia did of the stealthy Gyges, or Diana of Actæon. From that one glimpse she knew him, though he was so like his brother; but he had failed to recognise the Amy of his boyhood.

CHAPTER IX

Miss Eudoxia was now the queen of the little household, and the sceptre she bore was an iron one to all except her niece. John – that easy, good–natured parson, who, coming in from the garden or parish, any summer forenoon, would halt in the long low kitchen, if a nice crabbed question presented itself, take his seat outright upon the corner of the ancient dresser, and then and there discuss some moot point in the classics, or tie and untie over again some fluffy knot historical (which after all is but a pucker in the tatters of a scarecrow); and all the while he would appeal to the fat cook or the other maid – for the house only kept two servants; and all the while Miss Amy, διαφυλάττουσα θέσιν would poke in little pike–points of impudence and ignorance – John, I must confess at last, was threatened so with dishclouts, pepper, and even rolling–pins, that the cook began to forget the name of Plato (which had struck her), and the housemaid could not justly tell what Tibullus says of Pales.

“John, you are so lamentably deficient in moral dignity! And the mutton not put down yet, and the kidney–beans getting ropy! If you must sit there, you might as well begin to slice the cucumber. I dare say youʼd do that even”.

“To be sure, Doxy; so I will. I sharpened my knife this morning”.

“Doxy, indeed! And before the servants! I am sure Johanna must have heard you, though she makes such a rattle in there with the rolling–pin, like a doctorʼs pestle and mortar. She always does when I come out, to pretend she is so busy; and most likely she has been listening for half an hour, and laughing at your flummery. What do I care about Acharnius? – now donʼt tell me any jokes, if you please, brother John; with butter on both your legs, too! Oh, if I could only put you in a passion! I might have some hopes of you then. But I should like to see the woman that could; you have so little self–respect”.

“Eudoxia, that is the very converse of Senecaʼs proposition”.

“Then Seneca didnʼt know how to converse, and I wonʼt be flouted with him. Seneca to me, indeed, or any other heathen! Let me tell you one thing, John Rosedew” – Miss Eudoxia now was wrathful, not nettlesome only, but spinous; perhaps it would be rude to hint that in this latter word may lurk the true etymon of “spinster” – “let me tell you one thing, and perhaps youʼll try to remember it; for, with all your wonderful memory, you never can tell to–morrow what I said to–day”.

“Surely not, dear Doxy, because you talk so much. It is related of that same Seneca that he could repeat – ”

“Fiddlesticks. Now you want to turn off the home–truth you feel to be coming. But you shall have it, John Rosedew, and briefly, it is this: Although you do sit on the dresser, your taste is too eclectic. You are a very learned man, but your learning gilds foul idols. You spend all your time in pagans’ company, while the epistles and gospels have too little style for you”.