CHAPTER V.
A VISIT TO HAZELDEN.
THEY all looked toward the Malory seat on taking their places in theirown; but that retreat was deserted now, and remained so, as Tom Sedleyat very brief intervals ascertained, throughout the afternoon service;after which, with a secret sense of disappointment, honest Sedleyescorted the Etherage "girls" up the steep road that leads through thewooded glen of Hazelden to the hospitable house of old Vane Etherage.
Everyone in that part of the world knows that generous, pompous, andboisterous old gentleman. You could no more visit Cardyllian withoutseeing Vane Etherage, than you could visit Naples without seeingVesuvius. He is a fine portly bust, but little more. In his waking hourshe lives alternately in his Bath chair and in the great leathern easychair in his study. He manages to shuffle very slowly, leaning upon hisservant on one side, and propped on his crutch at the other, across thehall of the Cardyllian Club, which boasts about six-and-thirty members,besides visitors, and into the billiard-room, where he takes possessionof the chair by the fire, and enjoys the agreeable conversation ofCaptain Shrapnell, hears all about the new arrivals, who they are, whatscrews are loose, and where, and generally all the gossip and scandal ofthe little commonwealth of Cardyllian.
Vane Etherage had served in the navy, and, I believe, reached the rankof captain. In Cardyllian he was humorously styled "the Admiral," whenpeople spoke _of_ him, not _to_ him; for old Etherage was fiery andconsequential, and a practical joke which commenced in a note from animaginary secretary, announcing that "The Badger Hunt" would meet atHazelden House on a certain day, and inducing hospitable preparations,for the entertainment of those nebulous sportsmen, was like to have hada sanguinary ending. It was well remembered that when young Sniggers ofSligh Farm apologised on that occasion, old Etherage had arranged withCaptain Shrapnell, who was to have been his second, that the Admiral wasto fight in his Bath chair--an evidence of resource and resolution whichwas not lost upon his numerous friends.
"How do you do, Sedley? Very glad to see you, Tom--very glad indeed,sir. You'll come to-morrow and dine; you must, indeed--and next day. Youknow our Welsh mutton--you do--you know it well; it's better here thanin any other place in the world--in the whole world, sir--the Hazeldenmutton, and, egad, you'll come here--you shall, sir--and dine here withus to-morrow; mind, you shall."
The Admiral wore a fez, from beneath which his gray hair bushed outrather wildly, and he was smoking through an enormous pipe as Tom Sedleyentered his study, accompanied by the ladies.
"He says he's to go away to-morrow," said Miss Charity, with anupbraiding look at Sedley.
"Pooh--nonsense--not _he_--not _you_, Tom--not a bit, sir. We won't letyou. Girls, we won't _allow_ him to go. Eh?--No--no--you dine hereto-morrow, _and_ next day."
"You're very kind, sir; but I promised, if I am still in Cardyllianto-morrow, to run over to Ware, and dine with Verney."
"_What_ Verney?"
"Cleve Verney."
"D---- him."
"Oh, papa!" exclaimed Miss Charity, grimly.
"Boh!--I _hate_ him--I hate _all_ the Verneys," bawled old VaneEtherage, as if hating were a duty and a generosity.
"Oh--no, papa--you _know_ you don't--that would be _extremely wicked_,"said Miss Charity, with that severe superiority with which she governedthe Admiral.
"Begad, you're always telling me I'm wicked--and we know where the_wicked_ go--that's catechism, I believe--so I'd like to know where'sthe difference between that and d--ing a fellow?" exclaimed the portlybust, and blew off his wrath with a testy laugh.
"I think we had better put off our bonnets and coats?--The language isbecoming rather strong--and the tobacco," said Miss Charity, with drydignity, to her sister, leaving the study as she did so.
"I thought it might be that _Kiffyn_ Verney--the unclefellow--Honourable Kiffyn Verney--_dis_-honourable, _I_ call him--thatold dog, sir, he's no better than a cheat--and I'd be glad of anopportunity to tell him so to his face, sir--you have no _idea_, sir,how he has behaved to me!"
"He has the character of being a very honourable, sir--I'm sorry youthink so differently," said honest Tom Sedley, who always stood up forhis friends, and their kindred--"and Cleve, I've known from mychildhood, and I assure you, sir, a franker or more generous fellow Idon't suppose there is on earth."
"I know nothing about the jackanape, except that he's nephew of hisroguish uncle," said the florid old gentleman with the short high noseand double chin. "He wants to take up Llanderis, and he _shan't have_it. He's under covenant to renew the lease, and the devil of it is, thatbetween me and Wynne Williams we have put the lease astray--and I can'tfind it--nor _he_ either--but it will turn up--I don't care two-penceabout it--but no one shall humbug me--I won't be gammoned, sir, by allthe Verneys in England. _Stuff_--sir!"
Then the conversation took a happier turn. The weather was sometimes alittle squally with the Admiral--but not often--genial andboisterous--on the whole sunny and tolerably serene--and though hesometimes threatened high and swore at his servants, they knew it didnot mean a great deal, and liked him.
People who lived all the year round in Cardyllian, which from Novemberto May, every year, is a solitude, fall into those odd ways and littleself-indulgences which gradually metamorphose men of the world intohumorists and grotesques. Given a sparse population, and difficultintercommunication, which in effect constitute solitude, and you havethe conditions of barbarism. Thus it was that Vane Etherage had grownuncouth to a degree that excited the amazement of old contemporaries whohappened, from time to time, to look in upon his invalided retirement atCardyllian.
The ladies and Tom Sedley, in the drawing-room, talked very merrily attea, while old Vane Etherage, in his study, with the door between therooms wide open, amused himself with a nautical volume and histerrestrial globe.
"So," said Miss Agnes, "you admired the Malory young lady--Margaret, ourmaid says, she is called--very much to-day?"
"I did, by Jove. Didn't you?" said Tom, well pleased to return to thesubject.
"Yes," said Agnes, looking down at her spoon--"Yes, I admired her; thatis, her features are very regular; she's what I call extremely handsome;but there are prettier girls."
"_Here_ do you mean?"
"Yes--here."
"And who are they?"
"Well, I don't say here _now_; but I do think those Miss Dartmores, forinstance, who were here last year, and who used to wear those bluedresses, were decidedly prettier. The heroine of Malory, whom you havefallen in love with, seems to me to want animation."
"Why, she couldn't show a great deal of animation over the Litany," saidTom.
"I did not see her then; I happened to be praying myself during theLitany," said Miss Agnes, recollecting herself.
"It's more than _I_ was," said Tom.
"You ought not to talk that way, Mr. Sedley. It isn't _nice_. I wonderyou can," said Miss Charity.
"I would not say it, of course, to strangers," said Tom. "But then, I'mso intimate here--and it's really true, that is, I mean, it was to-day."
"I wonder what you go to church for," said Miss Charity.
"Well, of course, you know, it's to pray; but I look at the bonnets alittle, also; every fellow does. By Jove, if they'd only say truth, I'mcertain the clergymen peep--I often saw them. There's that littlefellow, the Rev. Richard Pritchard, the curate, you know--I'd swear I'veseen that fellow watching you, Agnes, through the chink in thereading-desk door, while the sermon was going on; and I venture to sayhe did not hear a word of it."
"You ought to tell the rector, if you really saw that," said MissCharity, severely.
"Pray do no such thing," entreated Agnes; "a pleasant situation for me!"
"Certainly, if Mr. Pritchard behaves himself as you describe," said MissCharity; "but I've been for hours shut up in the same room withhim--sometimes here, and sometimes at the school--about the children,and the widows' fund, and the parish charities, and I never observed theslightest levity; but you are joking, I'm sure.
"
"I'm _not_, upon my honour. I don't say it's the least harm. I don't seehow he can help it; I know if _I_ were up in the air--in a reading-desk,with a good chink in the door, where I thought no one could see me, andold Doctor Splayfoot preaching his pet sermon over my head--_wouldn't_ Ipeep?--that's all."
"Well, I really think, if he makes a habit of it, I _ought_ to speak toDoctor Splayfoot. I think it's my _duty_," said Miss Charity, sitting upvery stiffly, as she did when she spoke of duty; and when once thenotion of a special duty got into her head, her inflexibility, as TomSedley and her sister Agnes knew, was terrifying.
"For mercy's sake, my dear Charry, do think of _me_! If you tell DoctorSplayfoot he'll be certain to tell it all to Wynne Williams and DoctorLyster, and Price Apjohn, and every creature in Cardyllian will knoweverything about it, and a great deal more, before two hours; and oncefor all, if that ridiculous story is set afloat, into the church doorI'll never set my foot again."
Miss Agnes' pretty face had flushed crimson, and her lip quivered withdistress.
"How _can_ you be such a fool, Aggie! I'll only say it was at _ourseat_--and no one can possibly tell which it was at--you or me; and I'llcertainly tell Dr. Splayfoot that Mr. Sedley saw it."
"And I'll tell the Doctor," said Sedley, who enjoyed the debateimmensely, "that I neither saw nor said any such thing."
"I don't think, Thomas Sedley, you'd do anything so excessively wicked!"exclaimed Miss Charity, a little fiercely.
"Try me," said Tom, with an exulting little laugh.
"Every _gentleman_ tells the truth," thrust she.
"Except where it makes mischief," parried Tom, with doubtful moralityand another mischievous laugh.
"Well, I suppose I had better say nothing of _Christianity_. But what_you_ do is your own affair! _my_ duty I'll perform. I shall think itover; and I shan't be ruffled by any folly intended to annoy me." MissCharity's thin brown cheeks had flushed to a sort of madder crimson.Excepting these flashes of irritability, I can't charge her with manyhuman weaknesses. "I'll not say _who_ he looked at--I've promised that;but unless I change my present opinion, Dr. Splayfoot shall hear thewhole thing to-morrow. I think in a clergyman any such conduct in churchis _unpardonable_. The effect on other people is positively ruinous._You_, for instance, would not have talked about such things in thelight you do, if you had not been encouraged in it, by seeing aclergyman conducting himself so."
"Mind, you've _promised_ poor little Agnes, you'll not bring her intothe business, no matter what _I_ do," said Sedley.
"I have, certainly."
"Well, I'll stay in Cardyllian to-morrow, and I'll see DoctorSplayfoot." Sedley was buttoning his coat and pulling on his gloves,with a wicked smile on his good-humoured face. "And I'll tell him thatyou think the curate ogles you through a hole in the reading-desk. That_you_ like _him_, and _he's_ very much gone about _you_; and that you wishthe affair brought to a point; and that you're going to appeal tohim--Doctor Splayfoot--to use his authority either to affect _that_, orto stop the ogling. I will, upon my honour!"
"And I shall speak to papa to prevent it," said Miss Charity, who wasfierce and literal.
"And that will bring about a duel, and he'll be shot in his Bath chair,and I shall be hanged"--old Vane Etherage, with his spectacles on, wasplodding away serenely at the little table by the fire, over his _NavalChronicle_--"and Pritchard will be deprived of his curacy, and you'll gomad, and Agnes will drown herself like Ophelia, and a nice littletragedy you'll have brought about. Good night; I'll not disturb him"--heglanced toward the unconscious Admiral--"I'll see you both to-morrow,after I've spoken to the Rector." He kissed his hand, and was gone.