Books: My Young Alcides
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Charlotte M. Yonge >> My Young Alcides
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"Her nephews," I heard him mutter to himgelf; "yes, her nephews.
No one has any right to object, and she can but judge for herself--
there's no harm done."
I shall always believe, however, that he set on my friends to
remonstrate, for letters began coming in, in all the senses of the
imperative mood, commanding and entreating me to leave Arghouse.
There was one such as only Lord Erymanth could write. He was an old
man, and never could make short work of anything. They say that his
chief political value was to be set on when anyone was wanted to
speak against time. I know he was very dreadful at all the platforms
in the county; but he was very good and conscientious, and everyone
looked up to him as a sort of father of the country.
But oh! that letter! Such a battery of heavy arguments against my
unprecedented step in taking up my residence with these unfortunate
young men, who, though they had not themselves openly transgressed
the law of the land, yet were the offspring of unhallowed unions with
the children of a felon. I cannot go through it all, but it hinted
that besides their origin, there was some terrible stain on Harold,
and that society could not admit them; so that if I persisted in
casting in my lot with them, I should share the ban. Indeed, he
would have thought my own good sense and love of decorum would have
taught me that the abode of two such youths would be no fit place for
the daughter of such respected parents, and there was a good deal
more that I could not understand about interceding with his sister,
and her overlooking my offence in consideration of my inexperience
and impulsiveness.
On my first impulse I wrote to thank my old friend, but to say I
could see no harm in an aunt's being with her nephews, and that I was
sure he had only to know them to lay aside all doubts of their being
thorough gentlemen and associates for anybody. My little niece
required my care, and I should stay and give it to her till some
other arrangement was made. If Lady Diana were displeased with me,
I was very sorry, but I could see no reason for it.
When I looked over the old Earl's letter, before closing mine, some
expressions wound out of the mist that made me uncomfortable,
especially when I recollected that though it was a week since their
arrival, no one had attempted to call but Mr. Crosse, the vicar of
Mycening, a very "good man in the pulpit," as the servants said, and
active in the parish, but underbred and no companion.
Our neighbourhood was what is called very clannish. There were two
families, the Horsmans and the Stympsons, who seemed to make up all
the society. The sons either had the good livings, or had retired
from their professions into cottages round and about, and the first
question after any party was, how many of each. The outsiders, not
decidedly of inferior rank, were almost driven into making a little
clique--if so it might be called--of their own, and hanging together
the more closely. Lord Erymanth of course predominated; but he was
a widower of many years' standing, and his heir lived in a distant
county. His sister, Lady Diana, had been married to an Irish Mr.
Tracy, who had been murdered after a few years by his tenants, upon
which she had come with her three children to live at Arked House.
I never could guess how she came to marry an Irish landlord, and I
always thought she must have exasperated his people. She was viewed
as the perfection of a Lady Bountiful and pattern of excellence; but,
I confess, that I always thought of her when I heard of the devout
and honourable women who were stirred up against St. Paul. She was
a person who was admired more than she was liked, and who was greatly
praised and honoured, but somehow did not proportionably endear
herself on closer acquaintance, doing a great deal of good, but all
to large masses rather than individuals. However, all the
neighbourhood had a pride in her, and it was a distinction to be
considered a fit companion for Diana and Viola Tracy. I never cared
for Di, who was her mother over again, and used to set us to rights
with all her might; but she had married early, a very rich man--and
Viola and I had always been exceedingly fond of one another, so that
I could not bear to be cut off from her, however I might be disposed
to defy her mother.
The upshot of my perplexities was that I set off to Mycening to lay
them before Miss Woolmer, another of the few belonging to neither
clan, to know what all this meant, as well as to be interested in my
nephews.
Mycening is one of the prettiest country towns I know, at least it
was twenty years ago. There is a very wide street, unpaved, but with
a broad smooth gravelled way, slightly sloping down towards the
little clean stone-edged gutters that border the carriage road along
the centre, which is planted on each side with limes cut into arches.
The houses are of all sorts, some old timbered gable-ended ones with
projecting upper stories, like our own, others of the handsome old
Queen Anne type with big sash windows, and others quite modern. Some
have their gardens in front, some stand flush with the road, and the
better sort are mixed with the shops and cottages.
Miss Woolmer lived in a tiny low one, close to the road, where, from
her upstairs floor, she saw all that came and went, and, intellectual
woman as she certainly was, she thoroughly enjoyed watching her
neighbours, as by judiciously-arranged looking-glasses, she could do
all up and down the street. I believe she had been a pretty woman,
though on a small scale, and now she had bright eyes, and a very
sweet bright look, though in complexion she had faded into the worn
pallor that belongs to permanent ill health. She dressed nicely, and
if she had been well, might, at her age, scarcely above forty, have
been as much a young lady as Philippa Horsman; but I fancy the great
crush of her life had taken away her girlhood and left her no spring
of constitution to resist illness, so that she had sunk into a
regular crippled invalid before I could remember, though her mind was
full of activity.
"You are come to tell me about them, my dear," was her greeting.
"I've seen them. No, I don't mean that they have been to see me.
You'll bring them some day, won't you? I'm sure Ambrose's boy would
come to see a sick woman. I watched one of them yesterday pick up
old Molly's oranges for her in the street, when her basket got upset
by a cart, and he then paid her for them, and gave them among the
children round. It did my heart good, I'd not seen such a sight
since the boys were sent away."
"Harold would do anything kind," I said, "or to see an old friend of
his father. The worst of it is that there seem to be so few who wish
to see him, or can even forgive me for staying with him."
I showed her Lord Erymanth's letter, and told her of the others,
asking her what it meant. "Oh, as to Lady Diana," she said, "there
is no doubt about that. She was greatly offended at your having sent
away her carriage and not having taken her advice, and she goes about
saying she is disappointed in you."
For my mother's sake, and my little Viola, and Auld Lang Syne
besides, I was much hurt, and defended myself in a tone of pique
which made Miss Woolmer smile and say she was far from blaming me,
but that she thought I ought to count the cost of my remaining at
Arghouse. And then she told me that the whole county was up in arms
against the new comers, not only from old association of their name
with revolutionary notions, but because the old Miss Stympsons, of
Lake Side, who had connections in New South Wales, had set it abroad
that the poor boys were ruffians, companions of the double-dyed
villain Prometesky, and that Harold in especial was a marked man, who
had caused the death of his own wife in a frenzy of intoxication.
At this I fairly laughed. Harold, at his age, who never touched
liquor, and had lived a sort of hermit life in the Bush, to be
saddled with a wife only to have destroyed her! The story
contradicted itself by its own absurdity; and those two Miss
Stympsons were well-known scandal-mongers. Miss Woolmer never
believed a story of theirs without sifting, but she had been in a
manner commissioned to let me know that society was determined not to
accept Eustace and Harold Alison, and was irate at my doing so.
Mothers declared that they should be very sorry to give poor Lucy
Alison up, but that they could not have their children brought into
contact with young men little better than convicts, and whom they
would, besides, call my cousins, instead of my nephews. "I began to
suspect it," I said, "when nobody left cards but Mr. Lawless and
Peter Parsons."
"And that is the society they are to be left to?"
"But I shall not leave them," I cried. "Why should I, to please Miss
Stympson and Lord Erymanth? I shall stand by my own brothers' sons
against all the world."
"And if they be worthy, Lucy, your doing so is the best chance of
their weathering the storm. See! is not that one of them? The
grand-looking giant one, who moves like a king of men. He is
Ambrose's son, is he not? What a pity he is not the squire!"
Harold was, in effect, issuing from the toy-shop, carrying an immense
kite on his arm, like a shield, while Dora frisked round in
admiration, and a train of humbler admirers flocked in the rear.
I hurried down into the street to tell Harold of my old friend's wish
to see them, and he followed me at once, with that manner which was
not courtesy, because, without being polished, it was so much more.
Dora was much displeased, being ardent on the kite's tail, and
followed with sullen looks, while Harold had to stoop low to get into
the room, and brushed the low ceiling with his curly hair as he stood
upright, Miss Woolmer gazing up to the very top of him. I think she
was rather disappointed that he had not taken more after his father;
and she told him that he was like his uncle Lewthwayte, looking
keenly to see whether he shrunk from the comparison to a man who had
died a felon's death; but he merely answered, "So I have been told."
Then she asked for his mother, and he briefly replied that she was
well and in New Zealand. There was an attempt at noticing Dora, to
which she responded like the wild opossum that she was, and her
fidgeting carried the day. Harold only made answer to one or two
more observations, and then could not but take leave, promising on
the entreaty of the old lady, to come and see her again. I outstayed
them, being curious to hear her opinion.
"A superb being," she said, with a long breath; "there's the easy
strength of a Greek demi-god in every tread."
"He seems to me more like Thor in Nifelheim," I said, "being, no
doubt, half a Viking to begin with."
"They are all the same, as people tell us now," she said, smiling.
"Any way, he looks as if he was a waif from the heroic age. But, my
dear, did not I hear him call you Lucy?"
"They generally do."
"I would not let them. Cling to your auntship; it explains your
being with them. A grand creature! I feel like the people who had
had a visit from the gods of old."
"And you understand how impossible it would be to run away," I said.
She smiled, but added, "Lucy, my dear, that looked very like a
wedding-ring!"
I could not think it possible. Why, he was scarcely five-and-twenty!
And yet the suggestion haunted me, whenever my eyes fell on his
countenance in repose, and noted the habitual sadness of expression
which certainly did not match with the fine open face that seemed
fitted to express the joy of strength. It came on me too when, at
the lodge, a child who had been left alone too long and had fallen
into an unmitigated agony of screaming, Harry had actually, instead
of fleeing from the sound, gone in, taken the screamer in his arms,
and so hushed and pacified it, that on the mother's return she found
it at perfect rest.
"One would think the gentleman was a father himself, ma'am," she had
said to me; and thereupon Harold had coloured, and turned hastily
aside, so that the woman fancied she had offended him and apologised,
so that he had been forced to look back again and say, "Never mind,"
and "No harm done," with a half laugh, which, as it now struck me,
had a ring of pain in it, and was not merely the laugh of a shy young
man under an impossible imputation. True, I knew he was not a
religious man, but to believe actual ill of him seemed to me
impossible.
He had set himself to survey the Arghouse estate, so as to see how
those dying wishes of his father could best be carried out, and he
was making himself thoroughly acquainted with every man, woman,
child, and building, to the intense jealousy of Bullock, who had been
agent all through my mother's time, and had it all his own way. He
could not think why "Mr. Harold" should be always hovering about the
farms and cottages, sometimes using his own ready colonial hand to
repair deficiencies, and sometimes his purse, and making the people
take fancies into their heads that were never there before, and which
would make Mr. Alison lose hundreds a year if they were attended to.
And as Mr. Alison always did attend to his cousin, and gave orders
accordingly, the much-aggrieved Bullock had no choice but in delaying
their execution and demonstrating their impracticability, whereas, of
course, Harold did not believe in impossibilities.
It was quite true, as he had once said, that though he could not
bring about improvements as readily as if he had been landlord, yet
he could get at the people much better, and learn their own point of
view of what was good for them. They were beginning to idolise him;
for, indeed, there was a fascination about him which no one could
resist. I sometimes wondered what it was, considering that he was so
slow of speech, and had so little sunshine of mirth about him.
I never did enforce my title of Aunt, in spite of Miss Woolmer's
advice. It sounded too ridiculous, and would have hindered the
sisterly feeling that held us together.
Eustace was restless and vexed at not being called upon, and anxious
to show himself on any occasion, and I was almost equally anxious to
keep him back, out of reach of mortification. Both he and Harold
went to London on business, leaving Dora with me. The charge was
less severe than I expected. My first attempts at teaching her had
been frustrated by her scorn of me, and by Harold's baffling
indulgence; but one day, when they had been visiting one of the
farms, the children had been made to exhibit their acquirements,
which were quite sufficient to manifest Dora's ignorance. Eustace
had long declared that if she would not learn of me she must either
have a governess or go to school, and I knew she was fit for neither.
Harold, I believe, now enforced the threat, and when he went away,
left her a black silk necktie to be hemmed for him, and a toy book
with flaming illustrations, with an assurance that on her reading it
to him on his return, depended his giving her a toy steam-engine.
Dora knew that Harold kept his word, even with her. I think she had
a great mind to get no one's assistance but the kitchenmaid's, but
this friendship was abruptly terminated by Dora's arraying the
kangaroo in Sarah's best bonnet and cloak, and launching it upon a
stolen interview between her and her sweetheart. The screams brought
all the house together, and, as the hero was an undesirable party who
had been forbidden the house, Sarah viewed it as treachery on Miss
Dora's part, and sulked enough to alienate her.
Dora could make out more to herself in a book than she could read
aloud, and one day I saw her spelling over the table of degrees of
marriage in a great folio Prayer-Book, which she had taken down in
quest of pictures. Some time later in the day, she said, "Lucy, are
you Harry's father's sister?" and when I said yes, she added, with a
look of discovery, "A man cannot marry his father's sister."
It was no time to protest against the marriage of first cousins. I
was glad enough that from that time the strange child laid aside her
jealousy of me; and that thenceforth her resistance was simply the
repugnance of a wild creature to be taught and tamed. Ultimately she
let me into the recesses of that passionate heart, and, as I think,
loved me better than anybody else, except Harold; but even so, at an
infinite distance from that which seemed the chief part of her whole
being.
CHAPTER II. THE LION OF NEME HEATH.
The work was done. The sixteen pages of large-type story book were
stumbled through; and there was a triumphant exhibition when the
cousins came home--Eustace delighted; Harold, half-stifled by London,
insisting on walking home from the station to stretch his legs, and
going all the way round over Kalydon Moor for a whiff of air!
If we had not had a few moors and heaths where he could breathe,
I don't know whether he could have stayed in England; and as for
London, the din, the dinginess, the squalor of houses and people,
sat like a weight on his heart.
"They told me a great deal had been done for England. It is just
nothing," he said, and hardly anything else that whole evening; while
Eustace, accoutred point-device by a London tailor, poured forth
volumes of what he had seen and done. Mr. Prosser made up a dinner
party for them, and had taken them to an evening party or two--at
least, Eustace; for after the first Harold had declined, and had
spent his time in wandering about London by gas-light, and standing
on the bridges, or trying how far it was on each side to green
fields, and how much misery lay between.
Eustace had evidently been made much of, and had enjoyed himself
greatly. It grieved me that his first entrance into society should
be under no better auspices than those of the family solicitor; but
he did not yet perceive this, and was much elated. "I flatter myself
it was rather a success," was the phrase he had brought home, apropos
to everything he had worn or done, from his tie to his shoe-buckles.
He told me the price of everything, all the discussions with his
tradesmen, and all the gazes fixed on him, with such simplicity that
I could not help caring, and there sat Harold in his corner,
apparently asleep, but his eye now and then showing that he was
thinking deeply.
"Lucy," he said, as we bade one another good-night, "is nothing being
done?"
"About what?" I asked.
"For all that wretchedness."
"Oh yes, there are all sorts of attempts," and I told him of model
cottages, ragged schools, and the like, and promised to find him the
accounts; but he gave one of his low growls, as if this were but a
mockery of the direful need.
He had got his statement of Prometesky's case properly drawn up, and
had sent up a copy, but in vain; and had again been told that some
influential person must push it to give it any chance. Mr. Prosser's
acquaintance lay in no such line; or, at least, were most unlikely to
promote the pardon of an old incendiary.
"What will you do?" I asked. "Must you give it up?"
"Never! I will make a way at last."
Meantime, he was necessary to Eustace in accomplishing all the
details of taking possession. Horses were wanted by both, used to
riding as they had always been, and there was an old-fashioned fair
on Neme Heath, just beyond Mycening, rather famous for its good show
of horses, where there was a chance of finding even so rare an
article as a hunter up to Harold's weight, also a pony for Dora.
An excellent show of wild beasts was also there. Harold had been on
the heath when it was being arranged in the earliest morning hours,
and had fraternised with the keepers, and came home loquacious far
more than usual on the wonders he had seen. I remember that, instead
of being disappointed in the size of the lions and tigers, he dwelt
with special admiration on their supple and terrible strength of
spine and paw.
He wanted to take Dora at once to the menagerie, but I represented
the inexpedience of their taking her about with them to the horse-
fair afterwards, and made Eustace perceive that it would not do for
Miss Alison; and as Harold backed my authority, she did not look like
thunder for more than ten minutes when she found we were to drive to
Neme Heath, and that she was to go home with me after seeing the
animals. Eustace was uncertain about his dignity, and hesitated
about not caring and not intending, and not liking me to go alone,
but made up his mind that since he had to be at the fair, he would
drive us.
So we had out the barouche, and Eustace held the reins with infinite
elation, while Harold endured the interior to reconcile Dora to it,
and was as much diverted as she was at the humours of the scene,
exclaiming at every stall of gilt gingerbread, every see-saw, and
merry-go-round, that lined the suburbs of Mycening, and I strongly
suspect meditating a private expedition to partake of their delights.
Harold was thoroughly the great child nature meant him for, while
poor Eustace sat aloft enfolded in his dignity, not daring to look
right or left, or utter a word of surprise, lest he should compromise
himself in the eyes of the coachman by his side.
The fair was upon the heath, out to which the new part of the town
was stretching itself, and long streets of white booths extended
themselves in their regular order. We drove on noiselessly over the
much-trodden turf, until we were checked by the backward rush of a
frightened crowd, and breathless voices called out to Eustace, "Stop,
sir; turn, for Heaven's sake. The lion! He's loose!"
Turning was impossible, for the crowd was rushing back on us,
blocking us up; and Eustace dropped the reins, turning round with a
cry of "Harry! Harry! I see him. Take us away!"
Harold sprang on the back seat as the coachman jumped down to run to
the horses' heads. He saw over the people's heads, and after that
glance made one bound out of the carriage. I saw then what I shall
never forget, across the wide open space round which the principal
shows were arranged, and which was now entirely bare of people. On
the other side, between the shafts of a waggon, too low for him to
creep under, lay the great yellow lion, waving the tufted end of his
tail as a cat does, when otherwise still, showing the glassy glare of
his eyes now and then, growling with a horrible display of fangs, and
holding between those huge paws a senseless boy as a sort of hostage.
>From all the lanes between the booths the people were looking in
terror, ready for a rush on the beast's least movement, shrieking
calls to someone to save the boy, fetch a gun, bring the keeper, &c.
That moment, with the great thick carriage-rug on his arm, Harold
darted forward, knocking down a gun which some foolish person had
brought from a shooting-gallery, and shouting, "Don't! It will only
make him kill the boy!" he gathered himself up for a rush; while I
believe we all called to him to stop: I am sure of Eustace's "Harry!
don't! What shall I do?"
Before the words were spoken, Harold had darted to the side of the
terrible creature, and, with a bound, vaulted across its neck as it
lay, dealing it a tremendous blow over the nose with that sledge-
hammer fist, and throwing the rug over its head. Horrible roaring
growls, like snarling thunder, were heard for a second or two, and
one man dashed out of the frightened throng, rifle in hand, just in
time to receive the child, whom Harold flung to him, snatched from
the lion's grasp; and again we saw a wrestling, struggling, heaving
mass, Harry still uppermost, pinning the beast down with his weight
and the mighty strength against which it struggled furiously. Having
got free of the boy, his one ally was again aiming his rifle at the
lion's ear, when two keepers, with nets and an iron bar, came on the
scene, one shouting not to shoot, and the other holding up the bar
and using some word of command, at which the lion cowered and
crouched. The people broke into a loud cheer after their breathless
silence, and it roused the already half-subdued lion. There was
another fierce and desperate struggle, lasting only a moment, and
ended by the report of the rifle.
In fact, the whole passed almost like a flash of lightning from the
moment of our first halt, till the crowd closed in, so that I could
only see one bare yellow head, towering above the hats, and finally
cleaving a way towards us, closely followed by Dermot Tracy, carrying
the rifle and almost beside himself with enthusiasm and excitement.
"Lucy--is it you? What, he is your cousin? I never saw anything
like it! He mastered it alone, quite alone!"
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