Richard Blackmore - Dariel - A Romance of Surrey

My mind (which was larger then than now, for nothing loses more by wear and tear) was relieved, much more than it would be now by even some valid pronouncement.

"Tom Erricker, you are a brick," I said; "and I don't mind showing you the place. There is plenty of time before dinner yet. Only you must give me your word of honour – not a syllable about it to any one."

"Hands up. That's what we say in our corps," – for he was a member of the "Devil's Own," and a very zealous one, for such a lazy fellow, – "but I could not walk so far without a gun."

This difficulty did not last long; for I ran to the door, and asked my sister to lend her pony Amabel to my friend Tom for an hour or two. Grace was the most obliging girl that was ever too good to be married, and although she felt some kind disdain, as it seemed to me sometimes, for Tom, her pony was heartily at his service, if he would promise not to whip her. Tom came out of our little hole, when this stipulation reached his ears, and he put on his hat for the pleasure and glory of taking it off again to my sister. Among his many tendernesses, the sweetest and biggest of all perhaps was one with our Grace at the end of it. But he knew, as we know such things by instinct, that she never would come in to share it; and though he fetched many a sigh, they were shallow, because hope had never been beneath them.

Off we set in the summer afternoon, for the month was come to June already, with everything going on as if we were nothing. Because I have not said much about it, – as behoves an average young Englishman, – if anybody reads this, he may think that nothing to dwell upon had come home to me, by reason of what I had seen that day when the millers made light of my samples. But this I can declare, and would have done so long ago except for some sense that it was my affair alone, the whole world had been quite a different thing to me, ever since I set eyes upon – well, there is but one to any man worth anything; and does he ever get her?

Tom Erricker was the last fellow in the world to whom one could offer any fine gush of feeling; because he was sadly sentimental sometimes, when his veins of thought were varicose, and when something nasty had happened to himself; but when his spirits were up, you would think there had never been a tear shed in the world, except by some brat who knew not how to cut his teeth. He was now in great exaltation at having fetched me, as he thought, to his level; for I had always regarded his light flirtations with a pleasant turn of humour, and he could not see the difference between himself and me. So I rode Old Joseph, who was a good tall horse; and he on little Amabel looked up at me, with no more reverence than Sancho Panza showed to the immortal knight, who ever failed to elevate him.

"Give me an open country, not your slash and scratch-pins." There was nothing Tom loved more than talking as if he had followed hounds from his infancy, instead of growing up under a dish-cover; but romancing on such subjects would not go down with me.

"Surely you might have brought us by a better road than this, George. I have had my bad times, I don't mind them in a burst; but I'm blessed if I like being scratched to pieces, with nothing whatever to show for it."

"To talk about, you mean, Tom. Well, here we get out into as pretty a bit of firland as can be found even in Surrey; and that may challenge all England to equal it. But I never go in for the picturesque."

"To be sure, not. The ladies do it ever so much better. To own the land, or at any rate the shooting, is the chief thing for us to care about. And the shooting is worth twice as much as the crops, in the present condition of the market. Never mind, George, I won't talk about that, for I know it is a very sore subject. Do you mean to say that all this belonged to you, not more than fifty years ago?"

"Out of the frying-pan into the fire, as regards the subject," I answered with a smile, for I knew that he never meant to vex me. "But I am sorry that we cannot give you leave even to poke about here with your gun, and pot blackbirds and magpies. There go two magpies! You don't often get so near them."

"Two for a wedding – don't they say? A good omen for you, George. But where the deuce does your nymph hang out? Aha! good hit of mine! A nymph means a bride, doesn't she, in Greek?"

"Shut up!" I said, for this talk was very paltry, and perhaps Tom Erricker's appearance was not quite up to the mark of a romantic moment. My chief desire was to gaze across the valley, down the further side of which, about a mile away, I could trace pretty clearly by its fringe of bushes the windings of the brook which I had crossed that day on my return from Guildford. It seemed to be ages ago, whereas it was only four weeks; but I had thought about it enough to make a very broad space of time. And here was Tom chaffing, and eager to make fun, with his red plaid trousers forced up to his knees by his jerking about in the saddle, and his loftiest air of acquaintance with the world, and his largest smiles of superiority to women. For the moment I longed to deposit him in an ant-hill.

"Well, what can I see? Or what am I to look for?" He spoke as if he had paid me for a view and I was bound to make it worth the money. Whereas, though I did ask his opinion at a distance, it was the last thing I should think of now; and in plain truth, what business had he here at all, and spying about through a shilling eyeglass? But it was not for me to take things as he did. Let him long to enter into them.

"All right," I said. "We will come another day. This may or it may not be the place. Look at your poor legs. They are fat enough; but what a sight for a lady! What a fool you were, not to take my straps!"

"Bless the fellow! Well, you are hard hit, or you would not carry on in this style." Tom turned his eyeglass upon me in a manner which might have provoked me, if I had been capable of thinking twice about him now. "In a blue study, George? Everything looks blue, even the mist in the valley. Has she got blue eyes? Ah! there is nothing like them."

"Blue eyes have no depth. What do you know about eyes?" I spoke with some warmth, as was natural. And then, just to show him how calmly I took his childish and shallow observation, I proceeded as if he had never spoken.

"You see that long mass of black ivy to the right, cutting a sort of jag, or perhaps it is a great curve out of the flat steep line of the meadow?"

"Yes, to be sure I do. Nothing could be plainer. A jag which is a curve at the same time; and a flat meadow which is also steep!"

"Never mind the meadow. You are not so stupid that you can't see the wall, and the ivy on it. Now, Tom Erricker, what do you suppose that to be?"

"How can I tell, about two miles away? Let us go on, and make it out, old chap."

"Not another step. I am not at all sure that I ought to have brought you so far as this. However, you can hold your tongue, I know; and you are upon your honour about all this. Well, that is the wall of an old monastery, more than five hundred years old, I believe, and connected with that ancient chapel on the hills. Naturally, it is all in ruins now, and there has been an attempt to set a mill up in its place."

"The best thing to be done with it," Tom replied, for his nature was not reverent. "But a mill should have paid, if it had any water. Free trade has not had time to destroy the pounders yet, although it has killed the producers. But I don't want to hear about monks and mills. The lovely nuns are more to my taste."

"What nuns could there be in a monastery, Tom? You are even more abroad than usual. But though I have not been near the place, since the time I told you of, and we have nothing to do with that valley now, I have put a few quiet questions here and there, and I find that the old place has been sold to a foreign gentleman, whose name our fine fellows cannot pronounce."