Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон - My Novel — Complete

“Like or unlike,” said the squire, “it has been a gross insult to young Leslie, and looks all the worse because I and Audley are not just the best friends in the world. I can’t think what it is,” continued Mr. Hazeldean, musingly; “but it seems that there must be always some association of fighting connected with that prim half-brother of mine. There was I, son of his own mother,—who might have been shot through the lungs, only the ball lodged in the shoulder! and now his wife’s kinsman—my kinsman, too—grandmother a Hazeldean,—a hard-reading, sober lad, as I am given to understand, can’t set his foot into the quietest parish in the three kingdoms, but what the mildest boy that ever was seen makes a rush at him like a mad bull. It is FATALITY!” cried the squire, solemnly.

“Ancient legend records similar instances of fatality in certain houses,” observed Riccabocca. “There was the House of Pelops, and Polynices and Eteocles, the sons of OEdipus.”

“Pshaw!” said the parson; “but what’s to be done?”

“Done?” said the squire; “why, reparation must be made to young Leslie. And though I wished to spare Lenny, the young ruffian, a public disgrace—for your sake, Parson Dale, and Mrs. Fairfield’s—yet a good caning in private—”

“Stop, sir!” said Riccabocca, mildly, “and hear me.” The Italian then, with much feeling and considerable tact, pleaded the cause of his poor protege, and explained how Lenny’s error arose only from mistaken zeal for the squire’s service, and in the execution of the orders received from Mr. Stirn.

“That alters the matter,” said the squire, softened; “and all that is necessary now will be for him to make a proper apology to my kinsman.”

“Yes, that is just,” rejoined the parson; “but I still don’t learn how he got out of the stocks.”

Riccabocca then resumed his tale; and, after confessing his own principal share in Lenny’s escape, drew a moving picture of the boy’s shame and honest mortification. “Let us march against Philip!” cried the Athenians when they heard Demosthenes—

“Let us go at once and comfort the child!” cried the parson, before Riccabocca could finish.

With that benevolent intention all three quickened their pace, and soon arrived at the widow’s cottage. But Lenny had caught sight of their approach through the window; and not doubting that, in spite of Riccabocca’s intercession, the parson was come to upbraid and the squire to re-imprison, he darted out by the back way, got amongst the woods, and lay there perdu all the evening. Nay, it was not till after dark that his mother—who sat wringing her hands in the little kitchen, and trying in vain to listen to the parson and Mrs. Dale, who (after sending in search of the fugitive) had kindly come to console the mother—heard a timid knock at the door and a nervous fumble at the latch. She started up, opened the door, and Lenny sprang to her bosom, and there buried his face, sobbing aloud.

“No harm, my boy,” said the parson, tenderly; “you have nothing to fear,—all is explained and forgiven.”

Lenny looked up, and the veins on his forehead were much swollen. “Sir,” said he, sturdily, “I don’t want to be forgiven,—I ain’t done no wrong. And—I’ve been disgraced—and I won’t go to school, never no more.”

“Hush, Carry!” said the parson to his wife, who with the usual liveliness of her little temper, was about to expostulate. “Good-night, Mrs. Fairfield. I shall come and talk to you to-morrow, Lenny; by that time you will think better of it.”

The parson then conducted his wife home, and went up to the Hall to report Lenny’s safe return; for the squire was very uneasy about him, and had even in person shared the search. As soon as he heard Lenny was safe—“Well,” said the squire, “let him go the first thing in the morning to Rood Hall, to ask Master Leslie’s pardon, and all will be right and smooth again.”

“A young villain!” cried Frank, with his cheeks the colour of scarlet; “to strike a gentleman and an Etonian, who had just been to call on me! But I wonder Randal let him off so well,—any other boy in the sixth form would have killed him!”

“Frank,” said the parson, sternly, “if we all had our deserts, what should be done to him who not only lets the sun go down on his own wrath, but strives with uncharitable breath to fan the dying embers of another’s?”

The clergyman here turned away from Frank, who bit his lip, and seemed abashed, while even his mother said not a word in his exculpation; for when the parson did reprove in that stern tone, the majesty of the Hall stood awed before the rebuke of the Church. Catching Riccabocca’s inquisitive eye, Mr. Dale drew aside the philosopher, and whispered to him his fears that it would be a very hard matter to induce Lenny to beg Randal Leslie’s pardon, and that the proud stomach of the pattern-boy would not digest the stocks with as much ease as a long regimen of philosophy had enabled the sage to do. This conference Miss Jemima soon interrupted by a direct appeal to the doctor respecting the number of years (even without any previous and more violent incident) that the world could possibly withstand its own wear and tear.

“Ma’am,” said the doctor, reluctantly summoned away to look at a passage in some prophetic periodical upon that interesting subject,—“ma’am, it is very hard that you should make one remember the end of the world, since, in conversing with you, one’s natural temptation is to forget its existence.”

Miss Jemima’s cheeks were suffused with a deeper scarlet than Frank’s had been a few minutes before. Certainly that deceitful, heartless compliment justified all her contempt for the male sex; and yet—such is human blindness—it went far to redeem all mankind in her credulous and too confiding soul.

“He is about to propose,” sighed Miss Jemima.

“Giacomo,” said Riccabocca, as he drew on his nightcap, and stepped majestically into the four-posted bed, “I think we shall get that boy for the garden now!”

Thus each spurred his hobby, or drove her car, round the Hazeldean whirligig.

Whatever, may be the ultimate success of Miss Jemima Hazeldean’s designs upon Dr. Riccabocca, the Machiavellian sagacity with which the Italian had counted upon securing the services of Lenny Fairfield was speedily and triumphantly established by the result. No voice of the parson’s, charmed he ever so wisely, could persuade the peasant-boy to go and ask pardon of the young gentleman, to whom, because he had done as he was bid, he owed an agonizing defeat and a shameful incarceration; and, to Mrs. Dale’s vexation, the widow took the boy’s part. She was deeply offended at the unjust disgrace Lenny had undergone in being put in the stocks; she shared his pride, and openly approved his spirit. Nor was it without great difficulty that Lenny could be induced to resume his lessons at school,—nay, even to set foot beyond the precincts of his mother’s holding. The point of the school at last he yielded, though sullenly; and the parson thought it better to temporize as to the more unpalatable demand. Unluckily, Lenny’s apprehensions of the mockery that awaited him in the merciless world of his village were realized. Though Stirn at first kept his own counsel the tinker blabbed the whole affair. And after the search instituted for Lenny on the fatal night, all attempt to hush up what had passed would have been impossible. So then Stirn told his story, as the tinker had told his own; both tales were very unfavourable to Leonard Fairfield. The pattern-boy had broken the Sabbath, fought with his betters, and been well mauled into the bargain; the village lad had sided with Stirn and the authorities in spying out the misdemeanours of his equals therefore Leonard Fairfield, in both capacities of degraded pattern-boy and baffled spy, could expect no mercy,—he was ridiculed in the one, and hated in the other.