"My Novel" — Complete

The strangest thing in the world is the different way in which whist affects the temper. It is no test of temper, as some pretend,—not at all! The best-tempered people in the world grow snappish at whist; and I have seen the most testy and peevish in the ordinary affairs of life bear their losses with the stoicism of Epictetus. This was notably manifested in the contrast between the present adversaries of the Hall and the Rectory. The squire, who was esteemed as choleric a gentleman as most in the county, was the best-humoured fellow you could imagine when you set him down to whist opposite the sunny face of his wife. You never heard one of those incorrigible blunderers scold each other; on the contrary, they only laughed when they threw away the game, with four by honours in their hands. The utmost that was ever said was a “Well, Harry, that was the oddest trump of yours. Ho, ho, ho!” or a “Bless me, Hazeldean—why, they made three tricks in clubs, and you had the ace in your hand all the time! Ha, ha, ha!”

Upon which occasions Captain Barnabas, with great goodhumour, always echoed both the squire’s Ho, ho, ho! and Mrs. Hazeldean’s Ha, ha, ha!

Not so the parson. He had so keen and sportsmanlike an interest in the game, that even his adversaries’ mistakes ruffled him. And you would hear him, with elevated voice and agitated gestures, laying down the law, quoting Hoyle, appealing to all the powers of memory and common-sense against the very delinquencies by which he was enriched,—a waste of eloquence that always heightened the hilarity of Mr. and Mrs. Hazeldean. While these four were thus engaged, Mrs. Dale, who had come with her husband despite her headache, sat on the sofa beside Miss Jemima, or rather beside Miss Jemima’s Flimsey, which had already secured the centre of the sofa, and snarled at the very idea of being disturbed. And Master Frank—at a table by himself—was employed sometimes in looking at his pumps and sometimes at Gilray’s Caricatures, which his mother had provided for his intellectual requirements. Mrs. Dale, in her heart, liked Miss Jemima better than Mrs. Hazeldean, of whom she was rather in awe, notwithstanding they had been little girls together, and occasionally still called each other Harry and Carry. But those tender diminutives belonged to the “Dear” genus, and were rarely employed by the ladies, except at times when, had they been little girls still, and the governess out of the way, they would have slapped and pinched each other. Mrs. Dale was still a very pretty woman, as Mrs. Hazeldean was still a very fine woman. Mrs. Dale painted in water-colours, and sang, and made card-racks and penholders, and was called an “elegant, accomplished woman;” Mrs. Hazeldean cast up the squire’s accounts, wrote the best part of his letters, kept a large establishment in excellent order, and was called “a clever, sensible woman.” Mrs. Dale had headaches and nerves; Mrs. Hazeldean had neither nerves nor headaches. Mrs. Dale said, “Harry had no real harm in her, but was certainly very masculine;” Mrs. Hazeldean said, “Carry would be a good creature but for her airs and graces.” Mrs. Dale said Mrs. Hazeldean was “just made to be a country squire’s lady;” Mrs. Hazeldean said, “Mrs. Dale was the last person in the world who ought to have been a parson’s wife.” Carry, when she spoke of Harry to a third person, said, “Dear Mrs. Hazeldean;” Harry, when she referred incidentally to Carry, said, “Poor Mrs. Dale.” And now the reader knows why Mrs. Hazeldean called Mrs. Dale “poor,”—at least as well as I do. For, after all, the word belonged to that class in the female vocabulary which may be called “obscure significants,” resembling the Konx Ompax, which hath so puzzled the inquirers into the Eleusinian Mysteries: the application is rather to be illustrated than the meaning to be exactly explained.

“That’s really a sweet little dog of yours, Jemima,” said Mrs. Dale, who was embroidering the word CAROLINE on the border of a cambric pocket handkerchief; but edging a little farther off, as she added, “he’ll not bite, will he?”

“Dear me, no!” said Miss Jemima; “but” (she added in a confidential whisper) “don’t say he,—‘t is a lady dog!”

“Oh,” said Mrs. Dale, edging off still farther, as if that confession of the creature’s sex did not serve to allay her apprehensions,—“oh, then, you carry your aversion to the gentlemen even to lap-dogs,—that is being consistent indeed, Jemima!”

MISS JEMIMA.—“I had a gentleman dog once,—a pug!—pugs are getting very scarce now. I thought he was so fond of me—he snapped at every one else; the battles I fought for him! Well, will you believe—I had been staying with my friend Miss Smilecox at Cheltenham. Knowing that William is so hasty, and his boots are so thick, I trembled to think what a kick might do. So, on coming here I left Bluff—that was his name—with Miss Smilecox.” (A pause.)

MRS. DALE (looking up languidly).—“Well, my love?”

MISS JEMIMA.—“Will you believe it, I say, when I returned to Cheltenham, only three months afterwards, Miss Smilecox had seduced his affections from me, and the ungrateful creature did not even know me again? A pug, too—yet people say pugs are faithful! I am sure they ought to be, nasty things! I have never had a gentleman dog since,—they are all alike, believe me, heartless, selfish creatures.”

MRS. DALE.—“Pugs? I dare say they are!”

MISS JEMIMA (with spirit).-“MEN!—I told you it was a gentleman dog!”

MRS. DALE (apologetically).—“True, my love, but the whole thing was so mixed up!”

MISS JEMIMA.—“You saw that cold-blooded case of Breach of Promise of Marriage in the papers,—an old wretch, too, of sixty-four. No age makes them a bit better. And when one thinks that the end of all flesh is approaching, and that—”

MRS. DALE (quickly, for she prefers Miss Jemima’s other hobby to that black one upon which she is preparing to precede the bier of the universe).—“Yes, my love, we’ll avoid that subject, if you please. Mr. Dale has his own opinions, and it becomes me, you know, as a parson’s wife” (said smilingly: Mrs. Dale has as pretty a dimple as any of Miss Jemima’s, and makes more of that one than Miss Jemima of three), “to agree with him,—that is, in theology.”

MISS JEMIMA (earnestly).—“But the thing is so clear, if you will but look into—”

MRS. DALE (putting her hand on Miss Jemima’s lips playfully).—“Not a word more. Pray, what do you think of the squire’s tenant at the Casino, Signor Riccabocca? An interesting creature, is he not?”

MISS JEMIMA.—“Interesting! not to me. Interesting? Why is he interesting?”

Mrs. Dale is silent, and turns her handkerchief in her pretty little white hands, appearing to contemplate the R in Caroline.

MISS JEMIMA (half pettishly, half coaxingly).—“Why is he interesting? I scarcely ever looked at him; they say he smokes, and never eats. Ugly, too!”

MRS. DALE.—“Ugly,—no. A fine bead,—very like Dante’s; but what is beauty?”

MISS JEMIMA.—“Very true: what is it indeed? Yes, as you say, I think there is something interesting about him; he looks melancholy, but that may be because he is poor.”

MRS. DALE.—“It is astonishing how little one feels poverty when one loves. Charles and I were very poor once,—before the squire—” Mrs. Dale paused, looked towards the squire, and murmured a blessing, the warmth of which brought tears into her eyes. “Yes,” she added, after a pause, “we were very poor, but we were happy even then,—more thanks to Charles than to me;” and tears from a new source again dimmed those quick, lively eyes, as the little woman gazed fondly on her husband, whose brows were knit into a black frown over a bad hand.

MISS JEMIMA.—“It is only those horrid men who think of money as a source of happiness. I should be the last person to esteem a gentleman less because he was poor.”

MRS. DALE.—“I wonder the squire does not ask Signor Riccabocca here more often. Such an acquisition we find him!”

The squire’s voice from the card-table.—“Whom ought I to ask more often, Mrs. Dale?”

Parson’s voice, impatiently.—“Come, come, come, squire: play to my queen of diamonds,—do!”

SQUIRE.—“There, I trump it! pick up the trick, Mrs. H.”

PARSON.—“Stop! Stop! trump my diamond?”

THE CAPTAIN (solemnly).—“‘Trick turned; play on, Squire.”

SQUIRE.—“The king of diamonds.”

MRS. HAZELDEAN.—“Lord! Hazeldean, why, that’s the most barefaced revoke,—ha, ha, ha! trump the queen of diamonds and play out the king! well, I never! ha, ha, ha!”

CAPTAIN BARNABAS (in tenor).—“Ha, ha, ha!”

SQUIRE.—“Ho, ho, ho! bless my soul! ho, ho, ho!”

CAPTAIN BARNABAS (in bass).—“Ho, ho, ho!”

Parson’s voice raised, but drowned by the laughter of his adversaries and the firm, clear tone of Captain Barnabas.—“Three to our score!—game!”

SQUIRE (wiping his eyes).—“No help for it; Harry, deal for me. Whom ought I to ask, Mrs. Dale?” (Waxing angry.) “First time I ever heard the hospitality of Hazeldean called in question!”

MRS. DALE.—“My dear sir, I beg a thousand pardons, but listeners—you know the proverb.”

SQUIRE (growling like a bear).—“I hear nothing but proverbs ever since we had that Mounseer among us. Please to speak plainly, ma’am.”

Mrs. DALE (sliding into a little temper at being thus roughly accosted).—“It was of Mounseer, as you call him, that I spoke, Mr. Hazeldean.”

SQUIRE.—“What! Rickeybockey?”

MRS. DALE (attempting the pure Italian accentuation).—“Signor Riccabocca.”

PARSON (slapping his cards on the table in despair).—“Are we playing at whist, or are we not?”

The squire, who is fourth player, drops the king to Captain Higginbotham’s lead of the ace of hearts. Now the captain has left queen, knave, and two other hearts, four trumps to the queen, and nothing to win a trick with in the two other suits. This hand is therefore precisely one of those in which, especially after the fall of that king of hearts in the adversary’s hand, it becomes a matter of reasonable doubt whether to lead trumps or not. The captain hesitates, and not liking to play out his good hearts with the certainty of their being trumped by the squire, nor, on the other hand, liking to open the other suits, in which he has not a card that can assist his partner, resolves, as becomes a military man in such dilemma, to make a bold push and lead out trumps in the chance of finding his partner strong and so bringing in his long suit.

SQUIRE (taking advantage of the much meditating pause made by the captain).—“Mrs. Dale, it is not my fault. I have asked Rickeybockey,—time out of mind. But I suppose I am not fine enough for those foreign chaps. He’ll not come,—that’s all I know.”

PARSON (aghast at seeing the captain play out trumps, of which he, Mr. Dale, has only two, wherewith he expects to ruff the suit of spades, of which he has only one, the cards all falling in suits, while he has not a single other chance of a trick in his hand).—“Really, Squire, we had better give up playing if you put out my partner in this extraordinary way,—jabber, jabber, jabber!”

SQUIRE.—“Well, we must be good children, Harry. What!—trumps, Barney? Thank ye for that!” And the squire might well be grateful, for the unfortunate adversary has led up to ace king knave, with two other trumps. Squire takes the parson’s ten with his knave, and plays out ace king; then, having cleared all the trumps except the captain’s queen and his own remaining two, leads off tierce major in that very suit of spades of which the parson has only one,—and the captain, indeed, but two,—forces out the captain’s queen, and wins the game in a canter.

PARSON (with a look at the captain which might have become the awful brows of Jove, when about to thunder).—“That, I suppose, is the new-fashioned London play! In my time the rule was, ‘First save the game, then try to win it.’”

CAPTAIN.—“Could not save it, sir.”

PARSON (exploding)—“Not save it!—two ruffs in my own hand,—two tricks certain till you took them out! Monstrous! The rashest trump.”—Seizes the cards, spreads them on the table, lip quivering, hands trembling, tries to show how five tricks could have been gained,—N.B. It is short whist which Captain Barnabas had introduced at the Hall,—can’t make out more than four; Captain smiles triumphantly; Parson in a passion, and not at all convinced, mixes all the cards together again, and falling back in his chair, groans, with tears in his voice.—“The cruellest trump! the most wanton cruelty!”

The Hazeldeans in chorus.—“Ho, ho, ho! Ha, ha, ha!” The captain, who does not laugh this time, and whose turn it is to deal, shuffles the cards for the conquering game of the rubber with as much caution and prolixity as Fabius might have employed in posting his men. The squire gets up to stretch his legs, and, the insinuation against his hospitality recurring to his thoughts, calls out to his wife, “Write to Rickeybockey to-morrow yourself, Harry, and ask him to come and spend two or three days here. There, Mrs. Dale, you hear me?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Dale, putting her hands to her ears in implied rebuke at the loudness of the squire’s tone. “My dear sir, do remember that I’m a sad nervous creature.”

“Beg pardon,” muttered Mr. Hazeldean, turning to his son, who having got tired of the caricatures, had fished out for himself the great folio County History, which was the only book in the library that the squire much valued, and which he usually kept under lock and key, in his study, together with the field-books and steward’s accounts, but which he had reluctantly taken into the drawing-room that day, in order to oblige Captain Higginbotham. For the Higginbothams—an old Saxon family, as the name evidently denotes—had once possessed lands in that very county; and the captain, during his visits to Hazeldean Hall, was regularly in the habit of asking to look into the County History, for the purpose of refreshing his eyes, and renovating his sense of ancestral dignity, with the following paragraph therein:

To the left of the village of Dunder, and pleasantly situated in a hollow, lies Botham Hall, the residence of the ancient family of Higginbotham, as it is now commonly called. Yet it appears by the county rolls, and sundry old deeds, that the family formerly styled itself Higges, till the Manor House lying in Botham, they gradually assumed the appellation of Higges-in-Botham, and in process of time, yielding to the corruptions of the vulgar, Higginbotham.”

“What, Frank! my County History!” cried the squire. “Mrs. H., he has got my County History!”

“Well, Hazeldean, it is time he should know something about the county.”

“Ay, and history too,” said Mrs. Dale, malevolently, for the little temper was by no means blown over.

FRANK.—“I’ll not hurt it, I assure you, sir. But I’m very much interested just at present.”

THE CAPTAIN (putting down the cards to cut).—“You’ve got hold of that passage about Botham Hall, page 706, eh?”

FRANK.—“No; I was trying to make out how far it is to Mr. Leslie’s place, Rood Hall. Do you know, Mother?”

MRS. HAZELDEAN.—“I can’t say I do. The Leslies don’t mix with the county; and Rood lies very much out of the way.”

FRANK.—“Why don’t they mix with the county?”

MRS. HAZELDEAN.—“I believe they are poor, and therefore I suppose they are proud; they are an old family.”

PARSON (thrumming on the table with great impatience).—“Old fiddle-dee!—talking of old families when the cards have been shuffled this half-hour!”

CAPTAIN BARNABAS.—“Will you cut for your partner, ma’am?”

SQUIRE (who has been listening to Frank’s inquiries with a musing air).—“Why do you want to know the distance to Rood Hall?”

FRANK (rather hesitatingly).—“Because Randal Leslie is there for the holidays, sir.”

PARSON.—“Your wife has cut for you, Mr. Hazeldean. I don’t think it was quite fair; and my partner has turned up a deuce,—deuce of hearts. Please to come and play, if you mean to play.”

The squire returns to the table, and in a few minutes the game is decided by a dexterous finesse of the captain against the Hazeldeans. The clock strikes ten; the servants enter with a tray; the squire counts up his own and his wife’s losings; and the captain and parson divide sixteen shillings between them.

SQUIRE.—“There, Parson, I hope you’ll be in a better humour. You win enough out of us to set up a coach-and-four.”

“Tut!” muttered the parson; “at the end of the year, I’m not a penny the richer for it all.”

And, indeed, monstrous as that assertion seemed, it was perfectly true, for the parson portioned out his gains into three divisions. One-third he gave to Mrs. Dale, for her own special pocket-money; what became of the second third he never owned even to his better half,—but certain it was, that every time the parson won seven-and-sixpence, half-a-crown, which nobody could account for, found its way to the poor-box; while the remaining third, the parson, it is true, openly and avowedly retained; but I have no manner of doubt that, at the year’s end, it got to the poor quite as safely as if it had been put into the box.

The party had now gathered round the tray, and were helping themselves to wine and water, or wine without water,—except Frank, who still remained poring over the map in the County History, with his head leaning on his hands, and his fingers plunged in his hair.

“Frank,” said Mrs. Hazeldean, “I never saw you so studious before.”

Frank started up and coloured, as if ashamed of being accused of too much study in anything.

SQUIRE (with a little embarrassment in his voice).—“Pray, Frank, what do you know of Randal Leslie?”

“Why, sir, he is at Eton.”

“What sort of a boy is he?” asked Mrs. Hazeldean.

Frank hesitated, as if reflecting, and then answered, “They say he is the cleverest boy in the school. But then he saps.”

“In other words,” said Mr. Dale, with proper parsonic gravity, “he understands that he was sent to school to learn his lessons, and he learns them. You call that sapping? call it doing his duty. But pray, who and what is this Randal Leslie, that you look so discomposed, Squire?”

“Who and what is he?” repeated the squire, in a low growl. “Why, you know Mr. Audley Egerton married Miss Leslie, the great heiress; and this boy is a relation of hers. I may say,” added the squire, “that he is a near relation of mine, for his grandmother was a Hazeldean; but all I know about the Leslies is, that Mr. Egerton, as I am told, having no children of his own, took up young Randal (when his wife died, poor woman), pays for his schooling, and has, I suppose, adopted the boy as his heir. Quite welcome. Frank and I want nothing from Mr. Audley Egerton, thank Heaven!”

“I can well believe in your brother’s generosity to his wife’s kindred,” said the parson, sturdily, “for I am sure Mr. Egerton is a man of strong feeling.”

“What the deuce do you know about Mr. Egerton? I don’t suppose you could ever have even spoken to him.”

“Yes,” said the parson, colouring up, and looking confused. “I had some conversation with him once;” and observing the squire’s surprise, he added—“when I was curate at Lansmere, and about a painful business connected with the family of one of my parishioners.”

“Oh, one of your parishioners at Lansmere,—one of the constituents Mr. Audley Egerton threw over, after all the pains I had taken to get him his seat. Rather odd you should never have mentioned this before, Mr. Dale!”

“My dear sir,” said the parson, sinking his voice, and in a mild tone of conciliatory expostulation, “you are so irritable whenever Mr. Egerton’s name is mentioned at all.”

“Irritable!” exclaimed the squire, whose wrath had been long simmering, and now fairly boiled over,—“irritable, sir! I should think so: a man for whom I stood godfather at the hustings, Mr. Dale! a man for whose sake I was called a ‘prize ox,’ Mr. Dale! a man for whom I was hissed in a market-place, Mr. Dale! a man for whom I was shot at, in cold blood, by an officer in His Majesty’s service, who lodged a ball in my right shoulder, Mr. Dale! a man who had the ingratitude, after all this, to turn his back on the landed interest,—to deny that there was any agricultural distress in a year which broke three of the best farmers I ever had, Mr. Dale!—a man, sir, who made a speech on the Currency which was complimented by Ricardo, a Jew! Good heavens! a pretty parson you are, to stand up for a fellow complimented by a Jew! Nice ideas you must have of Christianity! Irritable, sir!” now fairly roared the squire, adding to the thunder of his voice the cloud of a brow, which evinced a menacing ferocity that might have done honour to Bussy d’Amboise or Fighting Fitzgerald. “Sir, if that man had not been my own half-brother, I’d have called him out. I have stood my ground before now. I have had a ball in my right shoulder. Sir, I’d have called him out.”

“Mr. Hazeldean! Mr. Hazeldean! I’m shocked at you,” cried the parson; and, putting his lips close to the squire’s ear, he went on in a whisper, “What an example to your son! You’ll have him fighting duels one of these days, and nobody to blame but yourself.”

This warning cooled Mr. Hazeldean; and muttering, “Why the deuce did you set me off?” he fell back into his chair, and began to fan himself with his pocket-handkerchief.

The parson skilfully and remorselessly pursued the advantage he had gained. “And now that you may have it in your power to show civility and kindness to a boy whom Mr. Egerton has taken up, out of respect to his wife’s memory,—a kinsman, you say, of your own, and who has never offended you,—a boy whose diligence in his studies proves him to be an excellent companion to your son-Frank” (here the parson raised his voice), “I suppose you would like to call on young Leslie, as you were studying the county map so attentively.”

“Yes, yes,” answered Frank, rather timidly, “if my father does not object to it. Leslie has been very kind tome, though he is in the sixth form, and, indeed, almost the head of the school.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Hazeldean, “one studious boy has a fellow feeling for another; and though you enjoy your holidays, Frank, I am sure you read hard at school.”

Mrs. Dale opened her eyes very wide, and stared in astonishment.

Mrs. Hazeldean retorted that look, with great animation. “Yes, Carry,” said she, tossing her head, “though you may not think Frank clever, his masters find him so. He got a prize last half. That beautiful book, Frank—hold up your head, my love—what did you get it for?”

FRANK (reluctantly).—“Verses, ma’am.”

MRS. HAZELDEAN (with triumph).—“Verses!—there, Carry, verses!”

FRANK (in a hurried tone).—“Yes, but Leslie wrote them for me.”

MRS. HAZELDEAN (recoiling).—“O Frank! a prize for what another did for you—that was mean.”

FRANK (ingenuously).—“You can’t be more ashamed, Mother, than I was when they gave me the prize.”

MRS. DALE (though previously provoked at being snubbed by Harry, now showing the triumph of generosity over temper).—“I beg your pardon, Frank. Your mother must be as proud of that shame as she was of the prize.”

Mrs. Hazeldean puts her arm round Frank’s neck, smiles beamingly on Mrs. Dale, and converses with her son in a low tone about Randal Leslie. Miss Jemima now approached Carry, and said in an “aside,” “But we are forgetting poor Mr. Riccabocca. Mrs. Hazeldean, though the dearest creature in the world, has such a blunt way of inviting people—don’t you think if you were to say a word to him, Carry?”

MRS. DALE (kindly, as she wraps her shawl round her).—“Suppose you write the note yourself? Meanwhile I shall see him, no doubt.”

PARSON (putting his hand on the squire’s shoulder).—“You forgive my impertinence, my kind friend. We parsons, you know, are apt to take strange liberties, when we honour and love folks as I do.”