«My Novel» – Volume 03

Here there was a sob from some of the women, and nothing was seen of Mrs. Dale but the white handkerchief. The squire himself paused, and brushed away a tear with the back of his hand. Then he resumed, with a sudden change of voice that was electrical,—

"For we none of us prize a blessing till we have lost it! Now, friends and neighbours, a little time ago, it seemed as if some ill-will had crept into the village,—ill-will between you and me, neighbours!—why, that is not like Hazeldean!"

The audience hung their heads! You never saw people look so thoroughly ashamed of themselves. The squire proceeded,—

"I don't say it was all your fault; perhaps it was mine."

"Noa, noa, noa," burst forth in a general chorus.

"Nay, friends," continued the squire, humbly, and in one of those illustrative aphorisms which, if less subtle than Riccabocca's, were more within reach of the popular comprehension,—"nay, we are all human, and every man has his hobby; sometimes he breaks in the hobby, and sometimes the hobby, if it is very hard in the mouth, breaks in him. One man's hobby has an ill habit of always stopping at the public house! [Laughter.] Another man's hobby refuses to stir a peg beyond the door where some buxom lass patted its neck the week before,—a hobby I rode pretty often when I went courting my good wife here! [Much laughter and applause.] Others have a lazy hobby that there's no getting on; others, a runaway hobby that there's no stopping: but to cut the matter short, my favourite hobby, as you well know, is always trotted out to any place on my property which seems to want the eye and hand of the master. I hate," cried the squire, warming, "to see things neglected and decayed, and going to the dogs! This land we live in is a good mother to us, and we can't do too much for her. It is very true, neighbours, that I owe her a good many acres, and ought to speak well of her; but what then? I live amongst you, and what I take from the rent with one hand, I divide amongst you with the other. [Low but assenting murmurs.] Now the more I improve my property, the more mouths it feeds. My great-grandfather kept a Field-book in which were entered not only the names of all the farmers and the quantity of land they held, but the average number of the labourers each employed. My grandfather and father followed his example: I have done the same. I find, neighbours, that our rents have doubled since my great-grandfather began to make the book. Ay,—but there are more than four times the number of labourers employed on the estate, and at much better wages too! Well, my men, that says a great deal in favour of improving property, and not letting it go to the dogs. [Applause.] And therefore, neighbours, you will kindly excuse my bobby: it carries grist to your mill. [Reiterated applause.] Well, but you will say, 'What's the squire driving at?' Why this, my friends: There was only one worn-out, dilapidated, tumble-down thing in the parish of Hazeldean, and it became an eyesore to me; so I saddled my hobby, and rode at it. Oh, ho! you know what I mean now! Yes, but, neighbours, you need not have taken it so to heart. That was a scurvy trick of some of you to hang me in effigy, as they call it."

"It warn't you," cried a voice in the crowd, "it war Nick Stirn."

The squire recognized the voice of the tinker; but though he now guessed at the ringleader, on that day of general amnesty he had the prudence and magnanimity not to say, "Stand forth, Sprott: thou art the man." Yet his gallant English spirit would not suffer him to come off at the expense of his servant.

"If it was Nick Stirn you meant," said he, gravely, "more shame for you. It showed some pluck to hang the master; but to hang the poor servant, who only thought to do his duty, careless of what ill-will it brought upon him, was a shabby trick,—so little like the lads of Hazeldean, that I suspect the man who taught it to them was never born in the parish. But let bygones be bygones. One thing is clear,—you don't take kindly to my new pair of stocks! The stocks has been a stumbling-block and a grievance, and there's no denying that we went on very pleasantly without it. I may also say that, in spite of it, we have been coming together again lately. And I can't tell you what good it did me to see your children playing again on the green, and your honest faces, in spite of the stocks, and those diabolical tracts you've been reading lately, lighted up at the thought that something pleasant was going on at the Hall. Do you know, neighbours, you put me in mind of an old story which, besides applying to the parish, all who are married, and all who intend to marry, will do well to recollect. A worthy couple, named John and Joan, had lived happily together many a long year, till one unlucky day they bought a new bolster. Joan said the bolster was too hard, and John that it was too soft. So, of course, they quarrelled. After sulking all day, they agreed to put the bolster between them at night." (Roars of laughter amongst the men; the women did not know which way to look, except, indeed, Mrs. Hazeldean, who, though she was more than usually rosy, maintained her innocent genial smile, as much as to say, "There is no harm in the squire's jests.") The orator resumed, "After they had thus lain apart for a little time, very silent and sullen, John sneezed. 'God bless you!' says Joan, over the bolster. 'Did you say God bless me?' cries John, 'then here goes the bolster!'"

Prolonged laughter and tumultuous applause.

"Friends and neighbours," said the squire, when silence was restored, and lifting the horn of ale, "I have the pleasure to inform you that I have. ordered the stocks to be taken down, and made into a bench for the chimney-nook of our old friend Gaffer Solomons yonder. But mind me, lads, if ever you make the parish regret the loss of the stocks, and the overseers come to me with long faces, and say, 'The stocks must be rebuilded,' why—" Here from all the youth of the village rose so deprecating a clamour, that the squire would have been the most burgling orator in the world, if he said a word further on the subject. He elevated the horn over his head—"Why, that's my old Hazeldean again! Health and long life to you all!"

The tinker had sneaked out of the assembly, and did not show his face in the village for the next six months. And as to those poisonous tracts, in spite of their salubrious labels, "The Poor Man's Friend," or "The Rights of Labour," you could no more have found one of them lurking in the drawers of the kitchen dressers in Hazeldean than you would have found the deadly nightshade on the flower-stands in the drawing-room of the Hall. As for the revolutionary beerhouse, there was no need to apply to the magistrates to shut it up,—it shut itself up before the week was out.

O young head of the great House of Hapsburg, what a Hazeldean you might have made of Hungary! What a "Moriamur pro rege nostro!" would have rung in your infant reign,—if you had made such a speech as the squire's!