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International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, by Various

V >> Various >> International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1,




"What does that prove?" quoth the Squire sharply, and looking the Parson
full in the face.

"Prove!" repeated Mr. Dale--with a smile of benign, yet too conscious
superiority--"What does experience prove?"

"That your forefathers were great blockheads, and that their descendant
is not a whit the wiser."

"Squire," replied the Parson, "although that is a melancholy conclusion,
yet if you mean it to apply universally, and not to the family of the
Dales in particular, it is not one which my candor as a reasoner, and my
Humility as a mortal, will permit me to challenge."

"I defy you," said Mr. Hazledean triumphantly. "But to stick to the
subject, which it is monstrous hard to do when one talks with a parson, I
only just ask you to look yonder, and tell me on your conscience--I don't
even say as a parson, but as a parishioner--whether you ever saw a more
disreputable spectacle?"

While he spoke, the Squire, leaning heavily on the Parson's left
shoulder, extended his cane in a line parallel with the right of that
disputatious ecclesiastic, so that he might guide the organ of sight to
the object he had thus flatteringly described.

"I confess," said the Parson, "that, regarded by the eye of the senses,
it is a thing that in its best day had small pretensions to beauty, and
is not elevated into the Picturesque even by neglect and decay. But, my
friend, regarded by the eye of the inner man--of the rural philosopher
and parochial legislator--I say it is by neglect and decay that it is
rendered a very pleasing feature in what I may call 'the moral topography
of a parish.'"

The Squire looked at the Parson as if be could have beaten him; and
indeed, regarding the object in dispute not only with the eye of the
outer man, but the eye of law and order, the eye of a country gentleman
and a justice of the peace, the spectacle _was_ scandalously
disreputable. It was moss-grown; it was worm-eaten; it was broken right
in the middle; through its four socketless eyes, neighbored by the
nettle, peered the thistle:--the thistle!--a forest of thistles!--and, to
complete the degradation of the whole, those thistles had attracted the
donkey of an itinerant tinker; and the irreverent animal was in the very
act of taking his luncheon out of the eyes and jaws of--THE PARISH
STOCKS.

The Squire looked as if he could have beaten the Parson; but as he was
not without some slight command of temper, and a substitute was luckily
at hand, he gulped down, his resentment and made a rush--at the donkey!

Now the donkey was hampered by a rope to its fore feet, to the which was
attached a billet of wood called technically "a clog," so that it had no
fair chance of escape from the assault its sacrilegious luncheon had
justly provoked. But, the ass turned round with unusual nimbleness at the
first stroke of the cane, the Squire caught his foot in the rope, and
went head over heels among the thistles. The donkey gravely bent down,
and thrice smelt or sniffed its prostrate foe; then, having convinced
itself that it had nothing farther to apprehend for the present, and very
willing to make the best of the reprieve, according to the poetical
admonition, "Gather your rosebuds while you may," it cropped a thistle in
full bloom, close to the ear of the Squire; so close indeed, that the
Parson thought the ear was gone; and with the more probability, inasmuch
as the Squire, feeling the warm breath of the creature, bellowed out with
all the force of lungs accustomed to give a view-hallo!

"Bless me, is it gone?" said the Parson, thrusting his person between the
ass and the Squire.

"Zounds and the devil!" cried the Squire, rubbing himself as be rose to
his feet.

"Hush!" said the Parson gently. "What a horrible oath!"

"Horrible oath! If you had my nankeens on," said the Squire, still rubbing
himself, "and had fallen into a thicket of thistles with a donkey's teeth
within an inch of your ear!"

"It is not gone--then?" interrupted the Parson.

"No--that is, I think not," interrupted the Squire dubiously; and he
clapped his hand to the organ in question. "No, it is not gone."

"Thank heaven!" said the good clergyman kindly.

"Hum," growled the Squire, who was now once more engaged in rubbing
himself. "Thank heaven indeed, when I am as full of thorns as a
porcupine! I should just like to know what use thistles are in the
world."

"For donkeys to eat, if you will let them, Squire," answered the Parson.

"Ugh, you beast!" cried Mr. Hazeldean, all his wrath reawakened,
whether by the reference to the donkey species, or his inability to
reply to the Parson, or perhaps by some sudden prick too sharp for
humanity--especially humanity in nankeens--to endure without kicking;
"Ugh, you beast!" he exclaimed, shaking his cane at the donkey, who, at
the interposition of the Parson, had respectfully recoiled a few paces,
and now stood switching his thin tail, and trying vainly to lift one of
its fore legs--for the flies teased it.

"Poor thing!" said the Parson pityingly. "See, it has a raw place on the
shoulder, and the flies have found out the sore."

"I am devilish glad to hear it," said the Squire vindictively.

"Fie, fie!"

"It is very well to say 'Fie, fie.' It was not you who fell among the
thistles. What's the man about now, I wonder?"

The Parson had walked toward a chestnut tree that stood on the village
green--he broke off a bough--returned to the donkey, whisked off the
flies, and then tenderly placed the broad leaves over the sore, as a
protection from the swarms. The donkey turned round its head, and looked
at him with mild wonder.

"I would bet a shilling," said the Parson, softly, "that this is the
first act of kindness thou hast met with this many a day. And slight
enough it is, Heaven knows."

With that the Parson put his hand into his pocket, and drew out an apple.
It was a fine large rose-cheeked apple: one of the last winter's store,
from the celebrated tree in the parsonage garden, and he was taking it as
a present to a little boy in the village who had notably distinguished
himself in the Sunday-school. "Nay, in common justice, Lenny Fairfield
should have the preference," muttered the Parson. The ass pricked up one
of his ears, and advanced its head timidly. "But Lenny Fairfield would be
as much pleased with twopence: and what could twopence do to thee?" The
ass's nose now touched the apple. "Take it in the flame of charity,"
quoth the Parson, "Justice is accustomed to be served last:" And the ass
took the apple. "How had you the heart?" said the Parson, pointing to the
Squire's cane.

The ass stopped munching, and looked askant at the Squire.

"Pooh! eat on; he'll not beat thee now!"

"No," said the Squire apologetically. "But, after all, he is not an ass
of the parish; he is a vagrant, and he ought to be pounded. But the pound
is in as bad a state as the stocks, thanks to your new-fashioned
doctrines."

"New-fashioned!" cried the Parson almost indignantly, for he had a great
disdain of new fashions. "They are as old as Christianity; nay, as old as
Paradise, which you will observe is derived from a Greek, or rather a
Persian word, and means something more than a 'garden,' corresponding
(pursued the Parson rather pedantically) with the Latin _vivarium_--viz.
grove or park full of innocent dumb creatures. Depend on it, donkeys were
allowed to eat thistles there."

"Very possibly," said the Squire drily. "But Hazeldean, though a very
pretty village, is not Paradise. The stocks shall be mended to-morrow
day, and the pound too--and the next donkey found trespassing shall go
into it, as sure as my name is Hazeldean."

"Then," said the Parson gravely, "I can only hope that the next parish
may not follow your example; or that you and I may never be caught
straying!"

* * * * *



CHAPTER III.


Parson Dale and Squire Hazeldean parted company; the latter to inspect
his sheep, the former to visit some of his parishioners, including Lenny
Fairfield, whom the donkey had defrauded of his apple.

Lenny Fairfield was sure to be in the way, for his mother rented a few
acres of grass land from the Squire, and it was now hay-time. And
Leonard, commonly called Lenny, was an only son, and his mother a widow.
The cottage stood apart, and somewhat remote, in one of the many nooks of
the long green village lane. And a thoroughly English cottage it
was--three centuries old at least; with walls of rubble let into oak
frames, and duly whitewashed every summer, a thatched roof, small panes
of glass, and an old doorway raised from the ground by two steps. There
was about this little dwelling all the homely rustic elegance which
peasant life admits of: a honeysuckle was trained over the door; a few
flower-pots were placed on the window-sills; the small plot of ground in
front of the house was kept with great neatness, and even taste; some
large rough stones on either side the little path having been formed into
a sort of rock-work, with creepers that were now in flower; and the
potatoe ground was screened from the eye by sweet peas and lupine. Simple
elegance all this, it is true; but how well it speaks for peasant and
landlord, when you see that the peasant is fond of his home, and has some
spare time and heart to bestow upon mere embellishment. Such a peasant is
sure to be a bad customer to the ale-house, and a safe neighbor to the
Squire's preserves. All honor and praise to him, except a small tax upon
both, which is due to the landlord!

Such sights were as pleasant to the Parson as the most beautiful
landscapes of Italy can be to the dilettante. He paused a moment at the
wicket to look around him, and distended his nostrils voluptuously to
inhale the smell of the sweet peas, mixed with that of the new-mown hay
in the fields behind, which a slight breeze bore to him. He then moved
on, carefully scraped his shoes, clean and well polished as they
were--for Mr. Dale was rather a beau in his own clerical way--on the
scraper without the door, and lifted the latch.

Your virtuoso looks with artistical delight on the figure of some nymph
painted on an Etruscan vase, engaged in pouring out the juice of the
grape from her classic urn. And the Parson felt as harmless, if not as
elegant a pleasure in contemplating Widow Fairfield brimming high a
glittering can, which she designed for the refreshment of the thirsty
hay-makers.

Mrs. Fairfield was a middle-aged tidy woman, with that alert precision of
movement which seems to come from an active orderly mind; and as she now
turned her head briskly at the sound of the Parson's footsteps, she
showed a countenance prepossessing, though not handsome,--a countenance
from which a pleasant hearty smile, breaking forth at that moment,
effaced some lines that, in repose, spoke "of sorrows, but of sorrows
past;" and her cheek, paler than is common to the complexions even of the
fair sex, when born and bred amidst a rural population, might have
favored the guess that the earlier part of her life had been spent in the
languid air and "within doors" occupation of a town.

"Never mind me," said the Parson, as Mrs. Fairfield dropped her quick
courtesy, and smoothed her apron; "if you are going into the hayfield, I
will go with you; I have something to say to Lenny--an excellent boy."

_Widow._--"Well, sir, and you are kind to say it--but so he is."

_Parson._-"He reads uncommonly well, he writes tolerably; he is the best
lad in the whole school at his catechism and in the Bible lessons; and I
assure you, when I see his face at church, looking up so attentively, I
fancy that I shall read my sermon all the better for such a listener!"

_Widow_, wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron.--"Deed, sir, when
my poor Mark died, I never thought I could have lived on as I have done.
But that boy is so kind and good, that when I look at him sitting there
in dear Mark's chair, and remember how Mark loved him, and all he used to
say to me about him, I feel somehow or other as if my goodman smiled on
me, and would rather I was not with him yet, till the lad had grown up,
and did not want me any more."

_Parson_, looking away, and after a pause.--"You never hear anything of
the old folks at Lansmere?"

"'Deed, sir, sin' poor Mark died, they han't noticed me, nor the boy;
but," added the widow, with all a peasant's pride, "it isn't that I wants
their money; only it's hard to feel strange like to one's own father and
mother!"

_Parson._--"You must excuse them. Your father, Mr. Avenel, was never
quite the same man after that sad event,--but you are weeping, my friend,
pardon me:--your mother is a little proud; but so are you, though in
another way."

_Widow._--"I proud! Lord love ye, sir, I have not a bit of pride in me!
and that's the reason they always looked down on me."

_Parson._--"Your parents must be well off; and I shall apply to them in a
year or two in behalf of Lenny, for they promised me to provide for him
when he grew up, as they ought."

_Widow_, with flashing eyes.--"I am sure, sir, I hope you will do no such
thing; for I would not have Lenny beholden to them as has never given him
a kind word sin' he was born!"

The Parson smiled gravely and shook his head at poor Mrs. Fairfield's
hasty confutation of her own self-acquittal from the charge of pride; but
he saw that it was not the time or moment for effectual peace-making in
the most irritable of all rancors, viz., that nourished against one's
nearest relations. He therefore dropped the subject, and said,--"Well,
time enough to think of Lenny's future prospects; meanwhile we are
forgetting the haymakers. Come."

The widow opened the back door, which led across a little apple orchard
into the fields.

_Parson._--"You have a pleasant place here; and I see that my friend
Lenny should be in no want of apples. I had brought him one, but I have
given it away on the road."

_Widow._--"Oh, sir, it is not the deed--it is the will; as I felt when
the Squire, God bless him! took two pounds off the rent the year he-that
is, Mark--died."

_Parson._--"If Lenny continues to be such a help to you, it will not be
long before the Squire may put the two pounds on again."

"Yes, sir," said the widow simply; "I hope he will."

"Silly woman!" muttered the Parson. "That's not exactly what the
schoolmistress would have said. You don't read nor write, Mrs. Fairfield;
yet you express yourself with great propriety."

"You know Mark was a schollard, sir, like my poor, poor, sister; and
though I was a sad stupid girl afore I married, I tried to take after him
when we came together."

* * * * *



CHAPTER IV.

They were now in the hayfield, and a boy of about sixteen, but, like most
country lads, to appearance much younger than he was, looked up from his
rake, with lively blue eyes, beaming forth under a profusion of brown
curly hair.

Leonard Fairfield was indeed a very handsome boy--not so stout nor so
ruddy as one would choose for the ideal of rustic beauty; nor yet so
delicate in limb and keen in expression as are those children of cities,
in whom the mind is cultivated at the expense of the body; but still he
had the health of the country in his cheeks, and was not without the
grace of the city in his compact figure and easy movements. There was in
his physiognomy something interesting from its peculiar character of
innocence and simplicity. You could see that he had been brought up by a
woman, and much apart from familiar contact with other children; and such
intelligence as was yet developed in him, was not ripened by the jokes
and cuffs of his coevals, but fostered by decorous lecturings from his
elders, and good little boy maxims in good little boy books.

_Parson._--"Come hither, Lenny. You know the benefit of school, I see: it
can teach you nothing better than to be a support to your mother."

_Lenny_, looking down sheepishly, and with a heightened glow over his
face.--"Please, sir, that may come one of these days."

_Parson._--"That's right, Lenny. Let me see! why you must be nearly a
man. How old are you?"

Lenny looks up inquiringly at his mother.

_Parson._--"You ought to know, Lenny, speak for yourself. Hold your
tongue, Mrs. Fairfield."

_Lenny_, twirling his hat, and in great perplexity.--"Well, and there is
Flop, neighbor Dutton's old sheep-dog. He be very old now."

_Parson._--"I am not asking Flop's age, but your own."

_Lenny._-"'Deed, sir, I have heard say as how Flop and I were pups
together. That is, I--I--"

For the Parson is laughing, and so is Mrs. Fairfield; and the haymakers
who have stood still to listen, are laughing too. And poor Lenny has
quite lost his head, and looks as if he would like to cry.

_Parson_, patting the curly locks, encouragingly.--"Never mind; it is not
so badly answered after all. And how old is Flop?"

_Lenny._--"Why, he must be fifteen year and more."

_Parson._--"How old, then, are you?"

_Lenny_, looking up with a beam of intelligence.--"Fifteen year and
more!"

Widow sighs and nods her head.

"That's what we call putting two and two together," said the Parson. "Or,
in other words," and here be raised his eyes majestically toward the
haymakers--"in other words--thanks to his love for his book--simple as he
stands here, Lenny Fairfield has shown himself capable of INDUCTIVE
RATIOCINATION."

At those words, delivered _ore rotundo_, the haymakers ceased laughing.
For even in lay matters they held the Parson to be an oracle, and words
so long must have a great deal in them.

Lenny drew tip his head proudly.

"You are very fond of Flop, I suppose?"

"'Deed he is," said the Widow, "and of all poor dumb creatures."

"Very good. Suppose, my lad, that you had a fine apple, and you met a
friend who wanted it more than you; what would you do with it?"

"Please you, sir, I would give him half of it."

The Parson's face fell.--"Not the whole, Lenny?"

Lenny considered.--"If he was a friend, sir, he would not like me to give
him all!"

"Upon my word, Master Leonard, you speak so well, that I must e'en tell
the truth. I brought you an apple, as a prize for good conduct in school.
But I met by the way a poor donkey, and some one beat him for eating a
thistle; so I thought I would make it up by giving him the apple. Ought I
only to have given him the half?"

Lenny's innocent face became all smile; his interest was aroused. "And
did the donkey like the apple?"

"Very much," said the Parson, fumbling in his pocket, but thinking of
Leonard Fairield's years and understanding; and moreover, observing, in
the pride of his heart, that here were many spectators to his deed, he
thought the meditated twopence not sufficient, and he generously produced
a silver sixpence.

"There, my man, that will pay for the half apple which you would have
kept for yourself." The Parson again patted the curly locks, and, after a
hearty word or two with the other haymakers, and a friendly "Good day" to
Mrs. Fairfield, struck into a path that led toward his own glebe.

He had just crossed the stile, when, he heard hasty but timorous feet
behind him. He turned and saw his friend Lenny.

_Lenny_, half crying and holding out the sixpence.--"Indeed, sir, I would
rather not. I would have given all to the Neddy."

_Parson._--"Why, then, my man, you have a still greater right to the
sixpence."

_Lenny._--"No, sir; 'cause you only gave it to make up for the half
apple. And if I had given the whole, as I ought to have done, why, I
should have had no right to the sixpence. Please, sir, don't be offended;
do take it back, will you?"

The Parson hesitated. And the boy thrust the sixpence into his hand, as
the ass had poked his nose there before in quest of the apple.

"I see," said Parson Dale, soliloquizing, "that if one don't give Justice
the first place at the table, all the other Virtues eat up her share."

Indeed, the case was perplexing. Charity, like a forward impudent baggage
as she is, always thrusting herself in the way, and taking other people's
apples to make her own little pie, had defrauded Lenny of his due; and
now Susceptibility, who looks like a shy, blush-faced, awkward Virtue in
her teens--but who, nevertheless, is always engaged in picking the
pockets of her sisters, tried to filch from him his lawful recompense.
The case was perplexing; for the Parson held Susceptibility in great
honor, despite her hypocritical tricks, and did not like to give her a
slap in the face, which might frighten her away forever. So Mr. Dale
stood irresolute, glancing from the sixpence to Lenny, and from Lenny to
the sixpence.

"_Buon giorno_--good day to you," said a voice behind, in an accent
slightly but unmistakably foreign, and a strange-looking figure presented
itself at the stile.

Imagine a tall and exceedingly meager man, dressed in a rusty suit of
black--the pantaloons tight at the calf and ancle, and there forming a
loose gaiter over thick shoes buckled high at the instep; an old cloak,
lined with red, was thrown over one shoulder, though the day was sultry;
a quaint, red, outlandish umbrella, with a carved brass handle, was
thrust under one arm, though the sky was cloudless; a profusion of raven
hair, in waving curls that seemed as fine as silk, escaped from the sides
of a straw-hat of prodigious brim; a complexion sallow and swarthy, and
features which, though not without considerable beauty to the eye of the
artist, were not only unlike what we fair, well-fed, neat-faced
Englishmen are wont to consider comely, but exceedingly like what we are
disposed to regard as awful and Satanic--to wit, a long hooked nose,
sunken cheeks, black eyes, whose piercing brilliancy took something
wizard-like and mystical from the large spectacles through which they
shone; a mouth round which played an ironical smile, and in which a
physiognomist would have remarked singular shrewdness and some closeness,
complete the picture: Imagine this figure, grotesque, peregrinate; and to
the eye of a peasant certainly diabolical, then perch it on the stile in
the midst of those green English fields, and in sight of that primitive
English village; there let it sit straddling, its long legs dangling
down, a short German pipe emitting clouds from one corner of those
sardonic lips, its dark eyes glaring through the spectacles full upon the
Parson, yet askant upon Lenny Fairfield. Lenny Fairfield looked
exceedingly frightened.

"Upon my word, Dr. Riccabocca." said Mr. Dale, smiling, "you come in good
time to solve a very nice question in casuistry;" and herewith the Parson
explained the case, and put the question--"Ought Lenny Fairfield to have
the sixpence, or ought he not?"

"_Cospetto_!" said the Doctor. "If the hen would but hold her tongue,
nobody would know that she had laid an egg."

* * * * *


CHAPTER V.


"Granted," said the Parson; "but what follows? The saying is good, but I
don't see the application."

"A thousand pardons!" replied Dr. Riccabocca, with all the urbanity of an
Italian; "but it seems to me, that if you had given the sixpence to the
_fanciullo_--that is, to this good little boy--without telling him the
story about the donkey, you would never have put him and yourself into
this awkward dilemma."

"But, my dear sir," whispered the Parson, mildly, as he inclined his lips
to the Doctors ear, "I should then have lost the opportunity of
inculcating a moral lesson--you understand."

Dr. Riccabocca shrugged his shoulders, restored his pipe to his mouth,
and took a long whiff. It was a whiff eloquent, though cynical--a whiff
peculiar to your philosophical smoker--a whiff that implied the most
absolute but the most placid incredulity as to the effect of the Parson's
moral lesson.

"Still you have not given us your decision," said the Parson, after a
pause.

The Doctor withdrew the pipe. "_Cospetto_!" said he. "He who scrubs the
head of an ass wastes his soap."

"If you scrubbed mine fifty times over with those enigmatical proverbs of
yours," said the Parson testily, "you would not make it any the wiser."

"My good sir," said the Doctor, bowing low from his perch on the stile,
"I never presumed to say that there were more asses than in the story;
but I thought I could not better explain my meaning, which is simply
this--you scrubbed the ass's head, and therefore you must lose the soap.
Let the _fanciullo_ have the sixpence; and a great sum it is, too, for a
little boy, who may spend it all upon pocket-money!"

"There, Lenny--you hear?" said the Parson, stretching out the sixpence.
But Lenny retreated, and cast on the umpire a look of great aversion and
disgust.

"Please, Master Dale," said he, obstinately, "I'd rather not."

"It is a matter of feeling, you see," said the Parson, turning to the
umpire; "and I believe the boy is right."

"If it is a matter of feeling," replied Dr. Riccabocca, "there is no more
to be said on it. When Feeling comes in at the door, Reason has nothing
to do but to jump out of the window."

"Go, my good boy," said the Parson, pocketing the coin; "but stop! Give
me your hand first. _There_--I understand you--good-by!"

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