Books: My Young Alcides

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I elicited from him that he had, in making his way to Erymanth, heard
the barking of a dog, and found that a shepherd and his flock had
taken refuge in a hollow of the moor, which had partly protected them
from the snow, but whence they could not escape. The shepherd, a
drover who did not know the locality, had tried with morning light to
find his way to help, but, spent and exhausted, would soon have
perished, had not Harold been attracted by the dog. After dragging
him to the nearest farm, Harold left the man to be restored by food
and fire, while performing his own commission at the castle, and then
returned to spend the remainder of the daylight hours in helping to
extricate the sheep, and convey them to the farmyard, so that only
five had been lost.

"An excellent, not to say a noble, manner of spending a winter's
day," quoth the earl.

"I am a sheep farmer myself," was the reply.

Lord Erymanth really wanted to draw him out, and began to ask about
Australian stock-farming, but Harold's slowness of speech left
Eustace to reply to everything, and when once the rage of hunger was
appeased, the harangues in a warm room after twenty miles' walk in
the snow, and the carrying some hundreds of sheep one by one in his
arms, produced certain nods and snores which were no favourable
contrast with Eustace's rapt attention.

For, honestly, Eustace thought these speeches the finest things he
had ever heard, and though he seldom presumed to understand them, he
listened earnestly, and even imitated them in a sort of disjointed
way. Now Lord Erymanth, if one could manage to follow him, was
always coherent. His sentences would parse, and went on uniform
principles--namely, the repeating every phrase in finer words, with
all possible qualifications; whereas Eustace never accomplished more
than catching up some sonorous period; but as his manners were at
their best when he was overawed, and nine months in England had so
far improved his taste that he did not once refer to his presentation
at Government House, he made such an excellent impression that Lord
Erymanth announced that he was going to give a ball to introduce his
niece, Miss Tracy, on her seventeenth birthday, in January, and
invited us all thereto.

Eustace's ecstacy was unbounded. He tried to wake Harold to share
it, but only produced some murmurs about half-inch bullets: only when
the "Good-night" came did Harold rouse up, and then, of course, he
was wide awake; and while Eustace was escorting the distinguished
guest to his apartment, we stood over the hall fire, enjoying his
delight, and the prospect of his being righted with the county.

"And you will have your friends again, Lucy," added Harold.

"Yes, I don't suppose Lady Diana will hold out against him. He will
prepare the way."

"And," said Eustace, coming downstairs, "it is absolutely necessary
that you go and be measured for a dress suit, Harry."

"I will certainly never get into this again," he said, with a
thwarted sigh; "it's all I can do to help splitting it down the back.
You must get it off as you got it on."

"Not here!" entreated Eustace, alarmed at his gesture. "Remember the
servant. Oh Harold, if you could but be more the gentleman! Why
cannot you take example by me, instead of overthrowing all the
advantageous impressions that such--such a service has created? I
really think there's nothing he would not do for me. Don't you think
so, Lucy?"

"Could he do anything for Prometesky?" asked Harold.

"He could, more than anyone," I said; "but I don't know if he would."

"I'll see about that."

"Now, Harold," cried Eustace in dismay, "don't spoil everything by
offending him. Just suppose he should not send us the invitation!"

"No great harm done."

Eustace was incoherent in his wrath and horror, and Harold, too much
used to his childish selfishness to feel the annoyance, answered,
"I am not you."

"But if you offend him?"

"Never fear, Eu, I'll take care you don't fare the worse."

And as he lighted his candle he added to poor Eustace's discomfiture
by the shocking utterance under his beard:

"You are welcome to him for me, if you can stand such an old bore."

CHAPTER VI. OGDEN'S BUILDINGS.

When I came downstairs the next morning, I found Lord Erymanth at the
hall window, watching the advance of a great waggon of coal which had
stuck fast in the snow half way up the hill on which the house stood.
Harold, a much more comfortable figure in his natural costume than he
had been when made up by Eustace, was truly putting his shoulder to
the wheel, with a great lever, so that every effort aided the
struggling horses, and brought the whole nearer to its destination.

"A grand exhibition of strength," said his lordship, as the waggon
was at last over its difficulties, and Harold disappeared with it
into the back-yard; "a magnificent physical development. I never
before saw extraordinary height with proportionate size and
strength."

I asked if he had ever seen anyone as tall.

"I have seen one or two men who looked equally tall, but they stooped
and were not well-proportioned, whereas your nephew has a wonderfully
fine natural carriage. What is his measure?" he added, turning to
Eustace.

"Well, really, my lord, I cannot tell; mine is six feet two and five-
sixteenths, and I much prefer it to anything so out of the way as
his, poor fellow."

The danger that he would go on to repeat his tailor's verdict "that
it was distinguished without being excessive," was averted by
Harold's entrance, and Dora interrupted the greetings by the query to
her cousin, how high he really stood; but he could not tell, and when
she unfraternally pressed to know whether it was not nice to be so
much taller than Eustace, he replied, "Not on board ship," and then
he gave the intelligence that it seemed about to thaw.

Lord Erymanth said that if so, he should try to make his way to
Mycening, and he then paid his renewed compliments on the freedom of
the calendar at the Quarter Sessions from the usual proportion of
evils at Mycening. He understood that Mr. Alison was making most
praiseworthy efforts to impede the fatal habits of intoxication that
were only too prevalent.

"I shall close five beer-houses at Christmas," said Eustace. "I look
on it as my duty, as landlord and man of property."

"Quite right. I am glad you see the matter in its right light.
Beer-shops were a well-meaning experiment started some twenty years
ago. I well remember the debate, &c."

Harold tried with all his might to listen, though I saw his chest
heave with many a suppressed yawn, and his hand under his beard,
tweaking it hard; but substance could be sifted out of what Lord
Erymanth said, for he had real experience, and his own parish was in
admirable order.

Where there was no power of expulsion, as he said, there would always
be some degraded beings whose sole amusement was intoxication; but
good dwelling-houses capable of being made cheerful, gardens,
innocent recreations, and instruction had, he could testify from
experience, no small effect in preventing such habits from being
formed in the younger population, backed, as he was sure (good old
man) that he need not tell his young friends, by an active and
efficient clergyman, who would place the motives for good conduct on
the truest and highest footing, without which all reformation would
only be surface work. I was glad Harold should hear this from the
lips of a layman, but I am afraid he shirked it as a bit of prosing,
and went back to the cottages.

"They are in a shameful state," he said.

"They are to be improved," exclaimed Eustace, eagerly. "As I told
Bullock, I am quite determined that mine shall be a model parish. I
am ready to make any sacrifices to do my duty as a landlord, though
Bullock says that no outlay on cottages ever pays, and that the test
of their being habitable is their being let, and that the people are
so ungrateful that they do not deserve to have anything done for
them."

"You are not led away by such selfish arguments?" said Lord Erymanth.

"No, assuredly not," said Eustace, decidedly; "though I do wish
Harold would not disagree so much with Bullock. He is a very civil
man, and much in earnest in promoting my interests."

"That's not all," put in Harold.

"And I can't bear Bullock," I said. "'Our interest' has been always
his cry, whenever the least thing has been proposed for the cottage
people; and I know how much worse he let things get than we ever
supposed."

On which Lord Erymanth spoke out his distinct advice to get rid of
Bullock, telling us how he had been a servant's orphan whom my father
had intended to apprentice, but, being placed with our old bailiff
for a time, had made himself necessary, and ingratiated himself with
my father so as to succeed to the situation; and it had been the
universal belief, ever since my mother's widowhood, that he had taken
advantage of her seclusion and want of knowledge of business to deal
harshly by the tenants, especially the poor, and to feather his own
nest.

It was only what Harold had already found out for himself, but it
disposed of his scruples about old adherents, and it was well for
Eustace to hear it from such oracular lips as might neutralise the
effect of Bullock's flattery, for it had become quite plain to my
opened eyes that he was trying to gain the squire's ear, and was very
jealous of Harold,

I knew, too, that to listen to his advice was the way to Lord
Erymanth's heart, and rejoiced to hear Harold begging for the names
of recent books on drainage, and consulting our friend upon the means
of dealing with a certain small farm in a tiny inclosed valley, on an
outlying part of the property, where the yard and outhouses were in a
permanent state of horrors; but interference was alike resented by
Bullock and the farmer, though the wife and family were piteous
spectacles of ague and rheumatism, and low fever smouldered every
autumn in the hamlet.

Very sound advice was given and accepted with pertinent questions,
such as I thought must convince anyone of Harold's superiority, when
he must needs produce a long blue envelope, and beg Lord Erymanth to
look at it and tell him how to get it presented to the Secretary of
State.

It was graciously received, but no sooner did the name of Stanislas
Prometesky strike the earl's eyes than he exclaimed, "That rascally
old demagogue! The author of all the mischief. It was the greatest
error and weakness not to have had him executed."

"You have not seen my father's statement?"

"Statement, sir! I read statements till I was sick of them,
absolutely disgusted with their reiteration, and what could they say
but that he was a Pole? A Pole!" (the word uttered with infinite
loathing). "As if the very name were not a sufficient conviction of
whatever is seditious and treasonable, only that people are
sentimental about it, forsooth!"

Certainly it was droll to suspect sentiment in the great broad giant,
who indignantly made reply, "The Poles have been infamously treated."

"No more than they deserved," said Lord Erymanth, startled for once
into brevity. "A nation who could never govern themselves decently,
and since they have been broken up, as they richly deserved, though I
do not justify the manner--ever since, I say, have been acting the
incendiary in every country where they have set foot. I would as
soon hear of an infernal machine in the country as a Pole!"

"Poles deserve justice as well as other men," said Harold, perhaps
the more doggedly because Eustace laid a restraining hand on his arm.

"Do you ntean to tell me, sir, that every man has not received
justice at the tribunal of this country?" exclaimed Lord Erymanth.

Perhaps he recollected that he was speaking to the son of a convict,
for there was a moment's pause, into which I launched myself. "Dear
Lord Erymanth," I said, "we all know that my poor brothers did offend
against the laws and were sentenced according to them. They said so
themselves, and that they were mistaken, did they not, Harold?"

Harold bent his head.

"And owing to whom?" demanded Lord Elymanth. "I never thought of
blaming those two poor lads as I did that fellow who led them astray.
I did all I could to save their lives; if they were alive this moment
I would wish nothing better than to bring them home, but as to asking
me to forward a petition in favour of the hoary old rebel that
perverted them, I should think it a crime."

"But," I said, "if you would only read this, you would see that what
they wanted to explain was that the man who turned king's evidence
did not show how Count Prometesky tried to withhold them."

"Count, indeed! Just like all women. All those Poles are Counts!
All Thaddeuses of Warsaw!"

"That's hard," I said. "I only called him Count because it would
have shocked you if I had given him no prefix. Will you not see what
poor Ambrose wanted to say for him?"

"Ah!" said Lord Erymanth, after a pause, in which he had really
glanced over the paper. "Poor boys! It goes to my heart to think
what fine fellows were lost there, but compassion for them cannot
soften me towards the man who practised on their generous,
unsuspecting youth. I am quite aware that Prometesky saved life at
the fire, and his punishment was commuted on that account, contrary
to my judgment, for it is a well-known axiom, that the author of a
riot is responsible for all the outrages committed in it, and it is
undeniable that the whole insurrection was his work. I am quite
aware that the man had amiable, even fascinating qualities, and great
enthusiasm, but here lay the great danger and seduction to young
minds, and though I can perfectly understand the warm sympathy and
generous sentiment that actuates my young friends, and though I much
regret the being obliged to deny the first request of one to whom, I
may say, I owe my life, I must distinctly refuse to take any part in
relieving Count Stanislas Prometesky from the penalty he has
incurred."

Harold's countenance had become very gloomy during this peroration.
He made no attempt at reply, but gathered up his papers, and, gnawing
his fringe of moustache, walked out of the room, while Eustace
provoked me by volunteering explanations that Prometesky was no
friend of his, only of Harold's. His lordship declared himself
satisfied, provided no dangerous opinions had been imbibed, and truly
Eustace might honestly acquit himself of having any opinions at all.

That afternoon he drove Lord Erymanth to Mycening, whence the railway
was now open. Harold could nowhere be found, and kind messages were
left for him, for which he was scarcely grateful when he came in late
in the evening, calling Lord Erymanth intolerably vindictive, to bear
malice for five-and-twenty years.

I could not get him to see that it was entirely judicial indignation,
and desire for the good of the country, not in the least personal
feeling; but Harold had not yet the perception of the legislative
sentiment that actuates men of station in England. His strong
inclination was not to go near the old man or his house again, but
this was no small distress to Eustace, who, in spite of all his
vaunting, dreaded new scenes without a protector, and I set myself to
persuade him that it was due to his cousin not to hide himself, and
avoid society so as to give a colour to evil report.

"It might be best to separate myself from him altogether and go
back." On this, Eustace cried out with horror and dismay, and Harold
answered, "Never fear, old chap; I'm not going yet. Not till I have
seen you in good hands."

"And you'll accept the invitation," said Eustace, taking up one of
the coroneted notes that invited us each for two nights to the
castle.

"Very well."

"And you'll come up to town, and have a proper suit."

"As you please."

Eustace went off to the library to find some crested paper and
envelopes worthy to bear the acceptance, and Harold stood musing. "A
good agent and a good wife would set him on his feet to go alone," he
said.

"Meantime he cannot do without you."

"Not in some ways."

"And even this acquaintance is your achievement, not his."

"Such as it is."

I pointed out that though Lord Erymanth refused to assist Prometesky,
his introduction might lead to those who might do so, while isolation
was a sort of helplessness. To this he agreed, saying, "I must free
him before I go back."

"And do you really want to go back?" said I, fearing he was growing
restless.

His face worked, and he said, "When I feel like a stone round
Eustace's neck."

"Why should you feel so? You are a lever to lift him."

"Am I? The longer I live with you, the more true it seems to me that
I had no business to come into a world with such people in it as you
and Miss Tracy."

Eustace came back, fidgeting to get a pen mended, an operation beyond
him, but patiently performed by the stronger fingers. We said no
more, but I had had a glimpse which made me hope that the pilgrim was
beginning to feel the burthen on his back.

Not that he had much time for thought. He was out all day, looking
after the potteries, where orders were coming in fast, and workmen
increasing, and likewise toiling in the fields at Ogden's farm,
making measurements and experiments on the substrata and the
waterfall, on which to base his plans for drainage according to the
books Lord Erymanth had lent him.

After the second day he came home half-laughing. Farmer Ogden had
warned him off and refused to listen to any explanation, though he
must have known whom he was expelling--yes, like a very village
Hampden, he had thrust the unwelcome surveyor out at his gate with
such a trembling, testy, rheumatic arm, that Harold had felt obliged
to obey it.

Eustace, angered at the treatment of his cousin, volunteered to come
and "tell the ass, Ogden, to mind what he was about," and Harold
added, "If you would come, Lucy, you might help to make his wife
understand."

I came, as I was desired, where I had never been before, for we had
always rested in the belief that the Alfy Valley was a nasty, damp,
unhealthy place, with "something always about," and had contented
ourselves with sending broth to the cottages whenever we heard of any
unusual amount of disease. If we had ever been there!

We rode the two miles, as I do not think Dora and I would ever have
floundered through the mud and torrents that ran down the lanes. It
was just as if the farm had been built in the lower circle, and the
cottages in Malebolge itself, where the poor little Alfy, so pure
when it started from Kalydon Moor, brought down to them all the
leakage of that farmyard. Oh! that yard, I never beheld, imagined,
or made my way through the like, though there was a little causeway
near the boundary wall, where it was possible to creep along on the
stones, rousing up a sleeping pig or a dreamy donkey here and there,
and barked at in volleys by dogs stationed on all the higher islets
in the unsavoury lake. If Dora had not been a colonial child, and if
I could have feared for myself with Harold by my side, I don't think
we should ever have arrived, but Farmer Ogden and his son came out,
and a man and boy or two; and when Eustace was recognised, they made
what way they could for us, and we were landed at last in a
scrupulously clean kitchen with peat fire and a limeash floor, where,
alas! we were not suffered to remain, but were taken into a horrid
little parlour, with a newly-lighted, smoking fire, a big Bible, and
a ploughing-cup. Mrs. Ogden was a dissenter, so we had really no
acquaintance, and, poor thing, had long been unable to go anywhere.
She was a pale trembling creature, most neat and clean, but with the
dreadful sallow complexion given by perpetual ague. She was very
civil, and gave us cake and wine, to the former of which Dora did
ample justice, but oh! the impracticability of those people!

The men had it all out of doors, but when I tried my eloquence on
Mrs. Ogden I found her firmly persuaded not only that her own ill
health and the sickness in the hamlet were "the will of the Lord,"
but in her religious fatalism, that it was absolutely profane to
think that cleansing and drainage would amend them; and she adduced
texts which poor uninstructed I was unable to answer, even while I
knew they were a perversion; and, provoked as I was, I felt that her
meek patience and resignation might be higher virtues than any to
which I had yet attained.

Her husband, who, I should explain, was but one remove above a smock-
frock farmer, took a different line. He had unsavoury proverbs in
which he put deep faith. "Muck was the mother of money," and also
"Muck was the farmer's nosegay." He viewed it as an absolute
effeminacy to object to its odorous savours; and as to the poor
people, "they were an ungrateful lot, and had a great deal too much
done for them," the small farmer's usual creed. Mr. Alison could do
as he liked, of course, but his lease had five years yet to run, and
he would not consent to pay no more rent, not for what he didn't ask
for, nor didn't want, and Mr. Bullock didn't approve of--that he
would not, not if Mr. Alison took the law of him.

His landlord do it at his own expense? That made him look knowing.
He was evidently certain that it was a trick for raising the rent at
the end of the lease, if not before, upon him, whose fathers had been
tenants of Alfy Vale even before the Alisons came to Arghouse; and,
with the rude obstinacy of his race, he was as uncivil to Harold as
he durst in Eustace's presence. "He had no mind to have his fields
cut up just to sell the young gentleman's drain-pipes, as wouldn't go
off at them potteries."

"Well, but all this stuff would be doing much more good upon your
fields than here," Eustace said. "I--I really must insist on this
farmyard being cleansed."

"You'll not find that in the covenant, sir," said the farmer with a
grin.

"But, father," began the son, a more intelligent-looking man, though
with the prevailing sickly tint.

"Hold your tongue, Phil," said Ogden. "It's easy to talk of cleaning
out the yard; I'd like to see the gentleman set about it, or you
either, for that matter."

"Would you?" said Harold. "Then you shall."

Farmer Ogden gaped. "I won't have no strange labourers about the
place."

"No more you shall," said Harold. "If your son and I clean out this
place with our own hands in the course of a couple of days, putting
the manure in any field you may appoint, will you let the drainage
plans be carried out without opposition ?"

"It ain't a bet?" said the farmer; "for my missus's conscience is
against bets."

"No, certainly not."

"Nor a trick?" he said, looking from one to another.

"No. It is to be honest work. I am a farmer, and know what work is,
and have done it too."

Farmer Ogden, to a certain extent, gave in, and we departed. His son
held the gate open for us, with a keen look at Harold, full of wonder
and inquiry.

"You'll stand by me?" said Harold, lingering with him.

"Yes, sir," said Phil Ogden; "but I doubt if we can do it. Father
says it is a week's work for five men, if you could get them to do
it."

"Never fear," said Harold. "We'll save your mother's life yet
against her will, and make you all as healthy as if you'd been born
in New South Wales."

This was Friday, and Phil had an engagement on the Monday, so that
Tuesday was fixed, much to Eustace's displeasure, for he did not like
Harold's condescending to work which labourers would hardly
undertake; and besides, he would make his hands, if not himself,
absolutely unfit for the entertainment on Thursday. On which Harold
asked if there were no such thing as water. Eustace implored him to
give it up and send half-a-dozen unemployed men, but to this he
answered, "I should be ashamed."

And when we went home he rode on into Mycening, to see about his
equipment, he said, setting Eustace despairing, lest he, after all,
meant to avoid the London tailor, and to patronise Mycening; but the
equipment turned out to be a great smock-frock. And something very
different came home with him--namely, a little dainty flower-pot and
pan, with an Etruscan pattern, the very best things that had been
turned out of the pottery, adorned with a design in black and white,
representing a charming little Greek nymph watering her flowers.

"Don't you think, Lucy, Miss Tracy being a shareholder, and it being
her birthday, the chairman might present this?" he inquired.

I agreed heartily, but Eustace, with a twist of his cat's-whisker
moustache, opined that they were scarcely elegant enough for Miss
Tracy; and on the Monday, when he did drag Harold up to the tailor's,
he brought down a fragile little bouquet of porcelain violets, very
Parisian, and in the latest fashion, which he flattered himself was
the newest thing extant, and a much more appropriate offering. The
violets could be made by a pinch below to squirt out perfume!

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