Read Ebook: Under the Mendips: A Tale by Marshall Emma

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 2033 lines and 86450 words, and 41 pages

"The child ought never to have put his legs across it, Joyce; and I lifted him on, and told him not to be a coward. Ah!" said the squire, suddenly starting to his feet. "I cannot speak of it; I dare not."

He began an abrupt descent the way that they had come. Nip and Pip, who had been sleeping with their noses on their paws, and one eye open, raced off, while Duke drew himself into a standing position, and walked demurely down the steep bit of turf, with the brush of his tail waving from side to side as he went.

Joyce did not follow immediately. Her bright face was clouded with the sympathy she felt for her father. It all came back to her: the group before the Manor, the child of eight years old, saying, "I am afraid of riding Rioter, father." Then the father's answer, "Afraid! Don't be a coward, Piers; you have a good seat enough for such a little chap. Here, let me put you on." The boy's white, set face, as he grasped the reins; and Rioter was off like lightning. "His brothers rode long before they were his age," the squire had said; "it won't do to tie him to his mother's apron strings, because he happens to be the youngest." Then the sound of returning horse's feet, and Rioter rushed up the side drive to the stables riderless. Another minute and old Thomas appeared with a lifeless burden in his arms, which the squire took from him, with a groan of remorse, as he turned into the house with him and said to his wife, "I have killed the boy."

But Piers was not killed. His injuries were life-long, but his life was spared.

Whether it was from an instinctive feeling, that his father considered himself the cause of his lameness and generally invalided condition, or whether the latent buoyancy of his nature asserted itself above all the privations which the accident had brought upon him, or whether both of these causes were at work within him, certain it is that Piers was the most cheerful and most uncomplaining member of the squire's household, and never allowed any one to pity him, or to treat him as an object of compassion. Joyce was right when she said that no one was happier than Piers. Every bird and insect had a charm for him, and were his friends and companions. Books of natural history were rare; but Bewick's Birds sufficed for Piers' needs. The "Natural History of Selborne" and old Isaak Walton's "Angler" were also amongst the boy's scanty library, and keen perception and acute observation supplied the place of extraneous help; and Piers was content.

The cloud soon cleared from Joyce's face as a well-known whistle was heard from the copse, and Joyce answered it with a clear note of welcome:

"Here, Piers."

Then the quick, even thud of crutches, and Piers came in sight.

In a moment Joyce was springing down the grassy hill-side, and, with a hardly perceptible touch on her brother's shoulder, she joined him as he came up.

"I say, Joyce, if you go to Wells to-day with father, will you take this little sparrow-hawk to old Plume's to be stuffed? Here, rummage in my pocket, left-hand side--there he is! He is a perfect specimen, and a pretty rare one. The stable-boy found him lying on his back under the dove-cot. Perhaps he got the worst of it in a fight. Anyhow, he is dead, and I have a nice nook for him in my big case."

"Sparrow-hawks don't sing very sweetly; they chirrup and whistle," Piers interrupted.

"Ah, well, he thought he sang sweetly, and so did his mother; so it came to the same thing. Poor little sweet." And Joyce held the little lifeless bird against her rounded chin and pressed her lips upon it.

Suddenly Piers said:

"What is wrong about Melville; there's something fresh, for I heard my mother talking about it before I was up."

"He says he won't come here and take care of the farm. He wants to travel."

"Well, I don't blame him for that," said Piers.

"Well," said Piers, tapping his crutch upon the ground, "I think mother does fidget and worry too much in the house and about the place; but it is her way, and no one could alter it."

Piers shrugged his shoulders.

"Well, we must go back to breakfast," he said; "I am hungry, and it must be nearly eight o'clock."

The brother and sister walked slowly towards the house, and as they crossed the lawn, from which the sun had kissed away all the dewdrops, a bell over the stables rang, and a little alert figure appeared in the porch.

"Joyce, Joyce! What are you dawdling for? It is past eight o'clock. Getting your feet drenched with the dew, I'll warrant. No, don't bring any dead birds here, Piers; I won't have it. The house is just like a pigsty with all your rubbish. Take it round to the back kitchen. I have a pretty hard morning's work before me, and you must lend a hand, Joyce, I can tell you."

"Father said I was to go with him to Wells, mother, and do your shopping."

"Well, that won't be till eleven o'clock. There's time enough first to help me to give out the stores and get the linen aired for the boys' room and the spare bedroom, and you forget, I suppose, that your brothers are coming home for the holidays on Friday, and this is Wednesday. I shall be all behindhand, if I don't look out. I wish Melville's fine gentleman visitor farther!"

Mrs. Falconer was the daughter of a large farmer in a neighbouring county, and the squire had married her in haste, though he had never repented at leisure.

She was thoroughly loyal-hearted and true as a wife and mother; brusque and blunt, holding all fine things and fine people in supreme contempt. And yet, according to the perversity of women-kind, she spoiled and indulged the son whose love of fine things seemed likely to be his bane, and brought perpetual trouble upon his good and honourable father.

To make bread and cakes, to skim milk, churn butter, at a pinch, and make all the sweet, cooling drinks for the summer, and elderberry wine for the winter, were domestic duties in which Mrs. Falconer gloried. She would put on a large apron and a pair of dusting-gloves every morning and go the round of the parlours, and rub the old mahogany chair-backs and bureau with vigour, sprinkle the tea-leaves on stated days, and follow one of her stout maid-servants, as they swept the carpets on their knees, with dustpan and brush, and remove every suspicion of "fluff" from every corner or crevice where it might be supposed to accumulate.

While her children were young these household duties which their mother took upon herself, were considered as a matter of course, but with added years came added wisdom, to some of them at least, and Melville, her eldest son, and her great darling and idol, began to show unmistakable signs of annoyance, at his mother's household accomplishments.

He was at home now, and a stormy scene the night before had deepened the lines on the squire's brow; and hard things Melville had said were as sharp swords to his mother's soul. She was not particularly sensitive, it is true; by no means thin-skinned, or laying herself out--as is the fashion of some women of her temperament, to take offence. Still, Melville had succeeded the night before in wounding her in her tenderest place, reminding her that while his father's pedigree could be stretched out to meet the royal blood of the Saxon kings, the race of sturdy yeomen, from which his mother came, had no blue blood in their veins and were sons of the soil.

There is an old saying that "sharper than a serpent's tooth is an ungrateful child;" and Mrs. Falconer was still smarting from the wound given her the evening before, when she began to dispense the excellent breakfast, laid in a large, cool hall at the back of the manor, which was connected, by a square opening in the thick wall, with the kitchen.

The squire, who was generally so jovial and cheery, ate his cold pressed beef and drank his glass of "home-brew" in silence. He professed to be engrossed with a Bath paper several days old, and did not invite conversation.

Piers played with some bread-and-milk his mother set before him: his appetite was never good; but Joyce despatched hot rolls and ham with a great appetite, which I am afraid would shock some of our modern notions nowadays.

Tea and coffee were not the staple beverages at breakfast in those times; but when the heavier part of the meal was over Joyce handed her father a fragrant cup, with some thin toast done to a turn, for which Mrs. Falconer called from the kitchen through the window, communicating with it, and fitted with a sliding shutter, which was promptly closed when the tray had been received from the hands of one of the maids.

"So you are thinking of going into Wells to-day, Arthur?" Mrs. Falconer said when, breakfast drawing to a conclusion, she began to pile the plates together, and put all the scraps on one, for the benefit of Nip and Pip, who had been lying in the window-seat for the past half-hour in a state of suppressed excitement, with their noses on their paws, and their eyes fixed upon that end of the table where their mistress presided.

The noise made by the piling up of the plates was now a decided movement, and Nip and Pip began to wriggle and leap, and finally subside on their hind legs as Joyce called out: "Trust, Nip! trust, Pip!" and then, after what she considered a due time spent in an erect position, the plate was put down before them, and its contents vanished in a twinkling.

"Well, Joyce, will you be ready by eleven o'clock?" Mr. Falconer asked as he left the room.

Joyce was silent, and her mother said:

"Yes, yes, she shall be ready; if she is brisk she can get through all I want." Then Mrs. Falconer began to put all the silver into a wooden bowl, and rubbed it herself with the washleather when it was dried.

She had just finished this part of her daily routine when the door opened and her son Melville came in. His appearance would be ridiculous in the eyes of the dandies of to-day, but in his own, at least, it was as near perfection as possible.

Melville had a pleasant, weak face; he was almost entirely forgetful of the interests or tastes of anyone but himself, and he had never given up his own wishes for the sake of another in his life.

He had a ridiculous idea of his own importance, and a supreme contempt for what he called old-fashioned usage; from the vantage-ground of superior wisdom he looked down on the county gentry of Somersetshire, who, in those days, did not frequent London in the season, or tread hard on the heels of the nobility in all their customs, as is now the case.

The great mercantile wealth which rose into colossal importance, when railway traffic brought the small towns near the large ones, and the large ones near the metropolis, had not begun to overshadow the land; the tide of speculation had not set in; and there was less hastening to be rich and desire to display all that riches could give. It was a time of comparative stagnation, which preceded the great rush, which was to bear on its tide, as the stream of progress and discovery gathered strength, the next generation with relentless power. Of all that lay outside Fair Acres, Mrs. Falconer was almost indifferent, if not ignorant. She liked things as they were, and was averse to change, lest that change should be for the worse. Her tongue, which was a sharp one, had been swift to condemn the establishment of the schools in her neighbourhood, and she resisted all invitations from her husband to make the acquaintance of Mrs. Hannah More. Teaching lads and lasses to read and write was, in the opinion of Mrs. Falconer, a crying evil. They had enough learning if they kept their church once a week, and as to arithmetic, if they could count their own fingers it was enough; and she, for one, would never take a servant who had schooling. "A pack of nonsense," she called it; and she would tell Mrs. Hannah More so if only she had the chance. Mrs. Falconer turned from her occupation at the table, when her son entered.

"Breakfast!" she exclaimed. "No, indeed; breakfast is over and done with. I can't keep the things about half the morning."

The prototype of the fine gentleman seated himself in a chair at the table, and said in a drawling voice, suppressing a yawn:

But Mrs. Falconer pushed Joyce aside:

"No," she said; "your sister has something else to do than wait on you. I'll get your breakfast; and if you have to wait an hour, it will serve you right; lie-a-beds don't generally have sharp appetites."

Mrs. Falconer's face betrayed that she felt the thrust.

"Servant's work must be done for folks too lazy to do it for themselves," she said, as she let the heavy door swing behind her, and repaired to the kitchen to prepare, far too carefully, a breakfast for her son.

Joyce hesitated a moment, and then said:

"It always vexes mother when you are late, Melville. I wish you would get up earlier."

"My dear little sister, I should have vexed mother if I had come down at six. She is out of temper with me, and so is my father, simply because I desire to get a little education, to fit me for my position here, you know, when I come into the place."

"Oh, Melville, you have had every advantage; you ought to know everything. But Aunt Letitia was quite right--the money spent upon you at Oxford was wasted."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet