Springhaven by Richard Doddridge Blackmore (young adult books to read .txt) 📖

of houze, and have a half-pint of small ale." He put his hat on his head and went to do it.

Notwithstanding all this and much more, when the great day came for the Grand Review, very few people saw more of the King, or entered more kindly into all his thoughts--or rather the thoughts that they made him think--than Zebedee Tugwell and his wife Kezia. The place being so near home, and the smoke of their own chimneys and masts of their smack as good as in sight--if you knew where to look--it was natural for them to regard the King as a stranger requiring to be taught about their place. This sense of proprietary right is strong in dogs and birds and cows and rabbits, and everything that acts by nature's laws. When a dog sits in front of his kennel, fast chained, every stranger dog that comes in at the gate confesses that the premises are his, and all the treasures they contain; and if he hunts about--which he is like enough to do, unless full of self-respect and fresh victuals--for any bones invested in the earth to ripen, by the vested owner, he does it with a low tail and many pricks of conscience, perhaps hoping in his heart that he may discover nothing to tempt him into breach of self-respect. But now men are ordered, in this matter, to be of lower principle than their dogs.

King George the third, who hated pomp and show, and had in his blood the old German sense of patriarchal kingship, would have enjoyed a good talk with Zebedee and his wife Kezia, if he had met them on the downs alone; but, alas, he was surrounded with great people, and obliged to restrict himself to the upper order, with whom he had less sympathy. Zebedee, perceiving this, made all allowance for him, and bought a new Sunday hat the very next day, for fear of wearing out the one he had taken off to His Majesty, when His Majesty looked at him, and Her Majesty as well, and they manifestly said to one another, what a very fine subject they had found. Such was loyalty--aye, and royalty--in those times that we despise.

But larger events demand our heed. There were forty thousand gallant fellows, from the age of fifteen upwards, doing their best to look like soldiers, and some almost succeeding. True it is that their legs and arms were not all of one pattern, nor their hats put on their heads alike--any more than the heads on their shoulders were--neither did they swing together, as they would have done to a good swathe of grass; but for all that, and making due allowance for the necessity they were under of staring incessantly at the King, any man who understood them would have praised them wonderfully. And they went about in such wide formation, and occupied so much of their native land, that the best-drilled regiment Napoleon possessed would have looked quite small among them.

"They understand furze," said a fine young officer of the staff, who had ridden up to Admiral Darling's carriage and saluted three ladies who kept watch there. "I doubt whether many of the Regular forces would have got through that brake half so well; certainly not without double gaiters. If the French ever land, we must endeavour to draw them into furzy ground, and then set the Volunteers at them. No Frenchman can do much with prickles in his legs."

Lady Scudamore smiled, for she was thinking of her son, who would have jumped over any furze-bush there--and the fir-trees too, according to her conviction; Dolly also showed her very beautiful teeth; but Faith looked at him gratefully.

"It is very kind of you, Lord Dashville, to say the best of us that you can find to say. But I fear that you are laughing to yourself. You know how well they mean; but you think they cannot do much."

"No, that is not what I think at all. So far as I can judge, which is not much, I believe that they would be of the greatest service, if the Country should unfortunately need them. Man for man, they are as brave as trained troops, and many of them can shoot better. I don't mean to say that they are fit to meet a French army in the open; but for acting on their flanks, or rear, or in a wooded country--However, I have no right to venture an opinion, having never seen active service."

Miss Darling looked at him with some surprise, and much approval of his modesty. So strongly did most of the young officers who came to her father's house lay down the law, and criticise even Napoleon's tactics.

"How beautiful Springhaven must be looking now!" he said, after Dolly had offered her opinion, which she seldom long withheld. "The cottages must be quite covered with roses, whenever they are not too near the sea; and the trees at their best, full of leaves and blossoms, by the side of the brook that feeds them. All the rest of the coast is so hard and barren, and covered with chalk instead of grass, and the shore so straight and staring. But I have never been there at this time of year. How much you must enjoy it! Surely we ought to be able to see it, from this high ground somewhere."

"Yes, if you will ride to that shattered tree," said Faith, "you will have a very fine view of all the valley. You can see round the corner of Foxhill there, which shuts out most of it just here. I think you have met our Captain Stubbard."

"Ah, I must not go now; I may be wanted at any moment"--Lord Dashville had very fine taste, but it was not the inanimate beauties of Springhaven that he cared a dash for--"and I fear that I could never see the roses there. I think there is nothing in all nature to compare with a rose--except one thing."

Faith had a lovely moss-rose in her hat--a rose just peeping through its lattice at mankind, before it should open and blush at them--and she knew what it was that he admired more than the sweetest rose that ever gemmed itself with dew. Lord Dashville had loved her, as she was frightened to remember, for more than a year, because he could not help it, being a young man of great common-sense, as well as fine taste, and some knowledge of the world. "He knows to which side his bread will be buttered," Mr. Swipes had remarked, as a keen observer. "If 'a can only get Miss Faith, his bread 'll be buttered to both sides for life--his self to one side, and her to do the tother. The same as I told Mother Cloam--a man that knoweth his duty to head gardeners, as his noble lordship doth, the same know the differ atwixt Miss Faith--as fine a young 'ooman as ever looked into a pink--and that blow-away froth of a thing, Miss Dolly."

This fine young woman, to use the words of Mr. Swipes, coloured softly, at his noble lordship's gaze, to the tint of the rose-bud in her hat; and then spoke coldly to countervail her blush.

"There is evidently something to be done directly. All the people are moving towards the middle of the down. We must not be so selfish as to keep you here, Lord Dashville."

"Why, don't you see what it is?" exclaimed Miss Dolly, hotly resenting the part of second fiddle; "they are going to have the grand march-past. These affairs always conclude with that. And we are in the worst part of the whole down for seeing it. Lord Dashville will tell us where we ought to go."

"You had better not attempt to move now," he answered, smiling as he always smiled at Dolly, as if she were a charming but impatient child; "you might cause some confusion, and perhaps see nothing. And now I must discharge my commission, which I am quite ashamed of having left so long. His Majesty hopes, when the march-past is over, to receive a march-up of fair ladies. He has a most wonderful memory, as you know, and his nature is the kindest of the kind. As soon as he heard that Lady Scudamore was here, and Admiral Darling's daughters with her, he said: 'Bring them all to me, every one of them; young Scudamore has done good work, good work. And I want to congratulate his mother about him. And Darling's daughters, I must see them. Why, we owe the security of the coast to him.' And so, if you please, ladies, be quite ready, and allow me the honour of conducting you."

With a low bow, he set off about his business, leaving the ladies in a state of sweet disturbance. Blyth Scudamore's mother wept a little, for ancient troubles and present pleasure. Lord Dashville could not repeat before her all that the blunt old King had said: "Monstrous ill-treated woman, shameful, left without a penny, after all her poor husband did for me and the children! Not my fault a bit--fault of the Whigs--always stingy--said he made away with himself--bad example--don't believe a word of it; very cheerful man. Blown by now, at any rate--must see what can be done for her--obliged to go for governess--disgrace to the Crown!"

Faith, with her quiet self-respect, and the largeness learned from sorrow, was almost capable of not weeping that she had left at home her apple-green Poland mantlet and jockey bonnet of lilac satin checked with maroon. But Dolly had no such weight of by-gone sorrow to balance her present woe, and the things she had left at home were infinitely brighter than that dowdy Faith's.

"Is there time to drive back? Is there time to drive home? The King knows father, and he will be astonished to see a pair of frumps, and he won't understand one bit about the dust, or the sun that takes the colour out. He will think we have got all our best things on. Oh, Lady Scudamore, how could you do it? You told us to put on quite plain things, because of the dust, and the sun, and all that; and it might come to rain, you said--as if it was likely, when the King was on the hill! And with all your experience of the King and Queen, that you told us about last evening, you must have known that they would send for us. Gregory, how long would it take you to go home, at full gallop, allow us half an hour in the house, and be back here again, when all these people are gone by?"

"Well, miss, there be a steepish bit of road, and a many ockard cornders; I should say 'a might do it in two hours and a half, with a fresh pair of nags put in while you ladies be a-cleaning of yourselves, miss. Leastways, if Hadmiral not object."

"Hadmiral, as you call him, would have nothing to do with it"--Dolly was always free-spoken with the servants, which made her very popular with some of them--"he has heavier duty than he can discharge. But two hours and a half is hopeless; we must even go as we are."

Coachman Gregory smiled in his sleeve. He knew that the Admiral had that day a duty far beyond his powers--to bring up his Sea-Fencibles to see the King--upon which they had insisted--and then to fetch them all back again, and send them on board of their several craft in a state of strict sobriety. And Gregory meant to bear a hand, and lift it pretty frequently towards the most loyal part