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

“Oh, Aunt Eudoxia, how dare you talk to my papa like that, my own daddy, and me to hear you? And just now you flew into a pet because you fancied Johanna heard him call you ‘Doxy’. I am astonished at it, Aunt Doxy; and it is not true, not a word of it. Come with me, father, dearest, and we wonʼt say a word to her all the afternoon”.

Even young Amy saw that her father was hit very hard. There was so much truth in the accusation, so much spiteful truth – among thy beauties, nuda veritas, a smooth skin is not one – that poor John felt as if Aristophanes were sewn up henceforth in a pig–sack. He slunk away quietly to his room, and tried to suck some roots Hebraic, whence he got no satisfaction. He never could have become a great theological scholar. After all, a man must do what God has shaped his mind for. So in a week John Rosedew got back to his native element; but sister Doxyʼs rough thrust made the dresser for many a month like the bottom of a pincushion, when the pins are long, and the bran has leaked out at the corner.

Now Miss Eudoxia Rosedew was always very sorry when she had indulged too much in the pleasure of hurting others. It was not in her nature to harm any living creature; but she could not understand that hurt is the feminine of harm – the feminine frequentative, if I may suggest that anomaly. She had a warm, impulsive heart, and sided almost always with the weaker party. Convinced profoundly, as she was, of her brotherʼs great ability, she believed, whenever a question arose, that the strength was all on his side, and so she went “dead against him”. One thing, and the most material one, she entirely overlooked, as a sister is apt to do: to wit, the breadth and modesty of her brotherʼs nature. One thing, I say, for the two are one, so closely are they united.

It is a goodly sight to see John Rosedew and his sister upon their way to church. She supporting the family dignity, with a maid behind her to carry the books – that it may please thee to defend us with a real footman! – just touching Johnʼs arm with the tips of her glove, because he rolls so shockingly, and even his Sunday coat may be greasy; then, if a little girl comes by, “Lady Eudoxia” – as the village, half in joke, and half in earnest, has already dubbed her – Lady Eudoxia never looks at her (they are so self–important now, even those brats of children!), but she knows by instinct whether that little girl has curtseyed. If she has, it is nicely acknowledged; but if she has not, what a chill runs down the ladyʼs rigid spine!

“John, did you see that”?

“See what, Doxy? – Three sugar–plums, my little dear, and a few of our cough–lozenges. I heard you cough last Sunday; and you may suck them in the sermon time, because they donʼt smell of peppermint, and they are quite as nice as liquorice. How is your mammy, my darling”?

“Well, John – well, Mr. Rosedew! – If you have no more sense of propriety – and so near the house of God – ”

And Miss Eudoxia walks on in front, while the girl who failed to curtsey has thrust one brown hand long ago into the parsonʼs ample palm, and with the other is stoking that voracious engine whose vernacular name is “mouth”. Amy, of course, is at the school, where this little girl ought by rights to have been, only for her cough, which would come on so dreadfully when the words were hard to spell; and, when they meet Amy by the gate (the double gate of the churchyard – both sides only opened for funerals), how smooth, and rich, and calm she looks – calm, yet with a heart of triumph, as her own class clusters round her, and wonʼt even glimpse at the boys – not even the very smallest boy – one of whom has the cheek to whistle, and pretends that he meant the “Old Hundredth”.

But, in spite of all this Eudoxian grandeur, there was not a poor man in Nowelhurst – no, nor even a woman – who did not feel, in earnest heart, faith and good–will towards her. For the worldly nonsense was cast aside when she stood in the presence of trouble, and her native kindness and vigour shone forth, till the face of grief was brightened. Then she forgot her titled grandmother – so often quoted and such a bore, the Countess of Driddledrum and Dromore – and glowed and melted, as all must do who are made of good carbon and water. So let her walk into the village church with the pride which she is proud of, her tall and comely figure shown through the scarf of lavender crape, her dark silk dress on the burial flags, wiping dust from the memory of John Stiles and his dear wife Susan. And oh, Johanna, thou goodly fat cook–maid, dishing up prayer–books, and Guides to the Altar, and thy gloves on the top ostentatiously – gloves whose fingers are to thine as vermicelli to sausages: Johanna, spoil not our procession by loitering under the hollow oak to wink at thy sweetheart, Jem Pottles. Neither do thou, oh hollow oak, look down upon us, and tell of the tree only one generation before thee. Under thy branches, the Arab himself had better not talk of lineage. Some acorn spat forth, half–crunched and bedribbled, by the deer or the swine of the forest, and in danger perhaps of being chewed afterwards by the ancestors of royalty – our family–trees are young fungus to thee, and our roots of nobility pignuts.

CHAPTER X

The scenery of the New Forest is of infinite variety; but the wooded parts may be ranged, perhaps, in a free, loose–branching order (as befits the subject), into some three divisions, which cross and interlace each other, as the trees themselves do.

First, and most lovely, the glades and reaches of gentle park and meadow, where the beech–tree invades not seriously, or, at any rate, not with discipline, but straggles about like a tall centurion amused by ancient Britons. Here are the openings winged with fern, and ruffling to the west wind; and the crimped oval leaves of the alder rustle over the backs of the bathing cows. In and out we glance, or gaze, through the groined arcade of trees, where the sun goes wandering softly, as if with his hand before his eyes. Of such kind is the Queenʼs Bower Wood, beside the Boldre Water.

Of the second type, most grand and solemn, is the tall beech–forest, darkening the brow of some lonely hill, and draping the bosomed valleys. Such is Mark Ash Wood, four miles to the west of Lyndhurst. Overhead, is the vast cool canopy; underfoot, the soft brown carpet, woven by a thousand autumns. No puny underwood foils the gaze, no coppice–whispers circulate; on high there moves one long, unbroken, and mysterious murmur, and all below grey twilight broods in a lake of silent shadow. Through this the ancient columns rising, smooth, dove–coloured, or glimpsed with moss, others fluted, crannied, bulging, hulked at the reevings of some great limb; others twisted spirally and tortuously rooting; a thousand giants receding, clustering, opening lattice–peeps between them, standing forth to stop the view, or glancing some busy slant of light – in the massive depth of gloom they seem almost to glide.

The third and most rudely sylvan form is that of the enclosures, where the intolerant beech is absent, and the oak, the spruce, and the Spanish chestnut protect the hazel, the fern and bramble, the dog–rose and the honeysuckle.

In a bowering, gleaming, twinkling valley, such as I have first described, we saw Miss Amy Rosedew admiring her own perfections; and now, some three months afterwards, a certain young lady, not wholly unlike her, is roaming in a deep enclosure, thick with oaks and underwood. It lies about a furlong from the western lodge of Nowelhurst, and stretches away towards the sunset, far from the eye of house or hut. Even the lonely peatman, who camps (or camped, while so allowed) beneath the open sky, wherever the waste yields labour freely, and no prescription bars him – even he finds nothing here to draw his sauntering footstep. The gorse prefers more open places, the nuts are few and hard to reach, the fuel–turf is not worth cutting, and the fuel–wood he dare not hew. In short, there is nothing there to tempt him. As for shade, and solitude, and the crystal rill, he gets a deal too much of that sort of thing already.

By the side of that crystal rill, and where the trees hung thickest, in the grey gloom of that Michaelmas evening, walked the aforesaid maiden, and (what we had not bargained for) a gentle youth beside her. The light between the lapping boughs and leaves – whose summer whisper grew hoarse in autumnʼs rustle – the clouded light fell charily, but showed the figures comely, as either could wish of the other.

The maidenʼs face was turned away, but one hand lay in her loverʼs; with the other she was drawing close the loose folds of her mantle – her flushing cheek was glad of shade, and the grass thought her feet were trembling.

His eager, glistening, wavering eyes told of hope with fear behind it; and all his life was waiting for a word or look. But for the moment neither came. She trembled more and more before him, and withdrew a little, as the silver–weed at her feet withdrew from the runnelʼs passion. She thought he would yet say more – she longed for him to say more; oh that her heart would be quiet!

But never another word he said, till she turned to him, sadly and proudly, with her soft eyes full of tears.

“Mr. Nowell, you are very eloquent; but you do not know what love is”.

She lifted her left hand towards her heart, but was too proud to put it there, and dropped it, hiding the movement.

“I not know what love is! And I have been saying things I should have laughed at any fellow for saying, though I am fit to cry while I say them. Oh, how cold–blooded you are; for I cannot make you feel them”!

He looked at her so ardently, that her sweet gaze fell like a violet in the May sun.

“No, Mr. Clayton Nowell, I am not cold–blooded; but, at least, my blood is pure, though not in the eyes of the world so high and refined as your own”.

“What has that got to do with it? My own – own – own – ” He was in a great hurry to embrace her, because she looked at him tenderly, to palliate the toss of her head.

“Wait, if you please. Throughout all your rhapsody” (here she smiled so that none could be angry) “you have not said a single word to show whether – that is – I mean to say whether – ”

She burst into tears, turned from him, and clung to the dead arm of the old oak.

“Whether what”? asked Clayton, sharply, in spite of her deep distress; for he began to doubt if he truly were loved, and to tire of the highstrung suspense. “Whether I have got money enough to support us both respectably? Isnʼt that the proper word for it? And because I am the younger son”?

He frowned very hard at the bark of the oak, and crushed the grey touchwood under his foot, though his hand was still seeking for hers. Then she turned full upon him suddenly, too proud to dissemble her tears.

“Oh, Clayton, Clayton Nowell, can you think me so mean as that? Though my father would cast me off, perhaps, in his gratitude to Sir Cradock, do you think I would care for all the world, so long as I only had you? What I meant was only that you never said if you meant me to be – to be – your wife”. Her long lashes fell on her glistening cheeks, like the willow–leaves over the Avon.

“Why, what – well, that beats cockfighting! – why, what else did you suppose I meant, you darling of all born darlings”?

“I am sure I donʼt know, Clayton. Only I beg your pardon”.

He gave her no time to beg it twice, with those wistful eyes upon him, but made her earn it thoroughly, with her round arms on his neck, and other proceedings wherewithal we have no right to meddle.

“Yes, you may call me now your own” – ever so many interruptions – “your own; yours only, for ever”.

“And you would rather have me than my elder brother”?

“Sooner than a thousand elder brothers, all as grave as Methusalem”.

Clayton was so delighted hereat, that he really longed to squeeze her, although it is a thing which young ladies now–a–days never think of allowing. Let them hope that he did not do it. The probabilities are in their favour.

“Oh, Clayton, how can I be such a simpleton? What would my father say to me”?

“What do I care, my gem, my jewel, my warm delicious pearl? For three long months I have been dying to kiss you; and now I wonʼt be cheated so. Surely you are not afraid of me, my beautiful wild rose”?

Her gardening hat had fallen off, her eyes were bright with tears, and the glow upon her cheeks had faded to a pellucid gleam. So have I seen the rich red Aurora weep itself, in a pulse–throb, to a pearly and waxen pink.

“No, Clayton, I am not afraid of you. I know that you are a gentleman”.

“Well”, thought Clayton, “she must be a witch, or the cleverest girl in the universe, as well as the most beautiful. She knows the way to manage me, as if we had been married fifty years”.

He looked so disconcerted at the implied rebuke, that she could have found it in her sweet heart to give him fifty kisses; but, with all her warmth of passion, she was a pure and sensitive maiden, full of self–respect. Though abashed for the moment, and bowing her head to the sunrise of young affection, she possessed a fine and very sensible will and way of her own. She was just the wife for Clayton Nowell – a hot, impulsive, wayward youth; proud to be praised by every one, more than proud of deserving it. With such a wife, he would ripen and stiffen into a fine, full character; with a weak and volatile spouse, he would swing to and fro to his ruin. His goodness as yet was in the material; only a soft, firm hand could fashion it.

So she kept him at his distance; except every now and then, when her warm, loving nature looked forth from her eyes, for fear of hurting his feelings. Hand in hand they walked along, as if they still were children, and held much counsel, as they went, about the difficulties between them. But happen what would, they made up their minds about one thing; and for them henceforth both plural and singular were entirely merged in the dual. That sentence is priggish and pedantic, but I think young lovers can solve it; if not, let them put their heads together, and unriddle it in labiates.

Nothing ever, ever, ever, in the world of fact, or in the reach of imagination, should hold apart that faithful pair, whose all in all was to each the other. This they settled with much satisfaction, before discussing anything else.

“Except, of course, you know, darling”, said the more thoughtful maiden, “if either of us should die”.

Clayton shuddered at the idea, for it was a dark place of the wood, and the rustle of the ivy–leaves seemed to whisper “die”. Then he insisted upon his amends for such a nasty suggestion; and she, with the tender thought moving her heart, could not refuse strict justice.

“And so you say, love, I must stay at Oxford until I take my degree. What a long time it does seem! Doesnʼt it”?

“Never mind, dearest, how long it is, if we are true to one another”.

“Oh, that of course thereʼs no doubt about. And you think I must tell my father”?