■mn'- li WiaWfMtMMMMNatawM UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT LOS ANGELES SQUIRE SILCHESTER'S WHIM. SQUIRE SILCHESTER'S WHIM. MORTIMER COLLINS. VOL. I. LONDON: Henry S. King & Co., 65, CORNHILL, & 12, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1873- . I c * « « • « * * « c a • C • C (^// ^/;^///j Reserved.) J TO FREDERICK LOCKER, POET, AND FRIEND OF POETS. 15710(> CONTENTS OF VOL. I. «*> N \ f PAGB CHAPTER I. THE SQUIRE AND HIS WIFE . . . . . . I CHAPTER n. ^ WHITE PAPER 24 CHAPTER in. OLYMPUS -30 ^ CHAPTER IV. «0 MUSICAL WILLIE 44 ^ CHAPTER V. SILCHESTER . . . . . . . * . 63 CHAPTER VI. SILVIA SILVICULTRIX ...... 76 ^ CHAPTER VII. SILVESTER . . 87 CHAPTER VIII. AN EVENT AT MOUNT ST. NICHOLAS . . .101 CHAPTER IX. LOUISA .119 CHAPTER X. IN LOVE 134 Vlll CONTENTS OF VOL. I. PAGE CHAPTER XI. WALTER NUGENT . 1 45 CHAPTER Xn. WHAT HE SAID TO SILVIA 158 CHAPTER XHI. SILVIA SOLILOQUIZETH AND DREAMETH . . . 170 CHAPTER XIV. THE RIVALS . . 180 CHAPTER XV. A DISAPPOINTMENT . . . . . . . 191 " CHAPTER XVI. FATHER AND DAUGHTER . . . .-.203 ■* CHAPTER XVII. TRAGEDY OR COMEDY? . . . . . . 2IO CHAPTER XVIII. ISLAND AND VILLAGE ...... 220 CHAPTER XIX. THE PICNIC AT SEAMEW ISLAND . . . .231 CHAPTER XX. THE STORIES TOLD OVER LACHRIMAE CHRISTI . . 24I CHAPTER XXI. THE PARLOUR BOARDER . . ' . . . -251 SQUIRE SILCHESTER'S WHIM, CHAPTER I. THE SQUIRE AND HIS WIFE. " Behold a character antique, Who loved his wife, and liked his Greek." O QUIRE SILCHESTER. John Sllchester ^^ of Silchester, in Devon, the best Greek scholar and master of hounds that the county had known for a century^ or more. A tall broad man of five-and-thirty, when we first see him, with a clear keen eye and firm arched mouth, with wrists and legs and shoulders such as you seldom see out of Devon. Heritor of a princely estate, with a noble old Tudor mansion VOL. I. I Vlll CONTENTS OF VOL. I. PAGE CHAPTER XL WALTER NUGENT . 145 CHAPTER Xn. WHAT HE SAID TO SILVIA 15S CHAPTER XHI. SILVIA SOLILOQUIZETH AND DREAMETH . . . 170 CHAPTER XIV. THE RIVALS . . . . . . . . 180 CHAPTER XV. A DISAPPOINTMENT . I9I ' CHAPTER XVI. ' FATHER AND DAUGHTER . . . . ■ . 203 "* CHAPTER XVII. TRAGEDY OR COMEDY? . . . . . . 2IO CHAPTER XVIII. ISLAND AND VILLAGE . . . . . . 2 20 CHAPTER XIX. THE PICNIC AT SEAMEW ISLAND . . . • 23I CHAPTER XX. THE STORIES TOLD OVER LACHRIMAE CHRISTI . . 24I CHAPTER XXI. THE PARLOUR BOARDER . . . . . -251 SQUIRE SILCHESTER'S WHIM, CHAPTER I. THE SQUIRE AND HIS WIFE. " Behold a character antique, Who loved his wife, and liked his Greek." O QUIRE SILCHESTER. John Sllchester *^-^ of Sllchester, in Devon, the best Greek scholar and master of hounds that the county had known for a century or more. A tall broad man of five-and-thirty, when we first see him, with a clear keen eye and firm arched mouth, with wrists and legs and shoulders such as you seldom see out of Devon. Heritor of a princely estate, with a noble old Tudor mansion VOL. I. I 2 SQUIRE SILCHESTEr's WHIM. thereon, set in such fashion that across lawn, lake, and deer park, and woodland you saw a splash of silver sea. Up and down his book-room walked John Silchester. He was fidgety. Why ? Because Joan Silchester, his wife of a year, born Joan Audley of Audley, was about to give him a son or a daughter. Which ? To Squire Silchester this was a question of some moment, seeing that the Silchester estates (a little kingdom in themselves) were entailed on heirs male, and that the next heir was a tremendous scamp. So, although like all poetic fathers he fancied he should like a daughter — a feminine reflex of himself, a baby image of his wife — his material desires were in favour of the coming of a man-child. If a man heartily loves his wife, he imagines that his daughter will reproduce that wife in her babyhood, and the wife who loves her husband thinks the same as to her son. The antici- pation is often a great blunder ; but that does THE SQUIRE AND HIS WIFE. 3 not matter. We must take this world as it is — as indeed we help to make it ; for Humanity is a junior partner in the firm of Creation. If men are disappointed, it is usually their own fault. Either their expectations are impossible, or they do not go the right way to obtain their fulfilment. Squire Silchester paced up and down, well aware that he would be much in the way if he approached too near the sacre.d chamber, and meditated on the possible future of the Sil- chester race. He is a man of curious ideas. This indeed is a family inheritance, his ances- tors having always had a quaint cantankerous temper. There is an intellectual and social Toryism, likely to exist if even political Toryism is washed away by the fast-rising flood of new opinions, all different and all absurd. There is a belief which, though possibly ill-founded, is altogether indestructible in the human race — that it is well to be not only a man, but also a gentleman. This creed of the minority held 4 SQUIRE SILCHESTER S WHIM. Squire Sllchester, and It smote him strongly now that he expected a young squire to educate For he saw, only too clearly, what harm was being done by the many young gentlemen of the age who were trying to correct the errors of all past ages. The Squire did not want a boy who would begin in his teens to reform the world. The Silchesters had from time im- memorial been lords of their own village, and lovers of their own folk. As usually occurs in a county family of long descent, there had been Tories among them and Whigs also ; and In the picture gallery were portraits of twin brothers, of whom one had fought by the side of Falk- land, and the other by that of Hampden. But whatsoever the political opinions of the Sil- chesters, they were all loyal to their home and their village — all glad to return from the arena of vain strife to their ancestral corner of Devon. Our Squire's life had been singularly un- eventful. He had stayed at home and hunted the countr}^ for the last twelve years, since his THE SQUIRE AND HIS WIFE. 5 father's death — following In this regard his father's example. The old gentleman was close on eighty when he died, and his only child was only twenty-three. This happened in curious fashion. John Silchester the elder had in his hot youth met with a Miss Barbara Res'tormel, a Cornish lady of birth and beauty, but twice his age — for he was about eighteen. He fell madly in love with her — " This is the way that boys begin " — and she very wisely declined to have anything to say to him. He, in a furious rage, swore he would slay the man who dared to marry her : she rendered this threat ineffective by choosing, to the amazement of two counties, a learned pious short-sighted curate, as much older than her- self as she was older than the Squire. The Rev. David Dallas was a first-class mathema- tician, and a theologian so erudite that his vicar often remonstrated with him on the difiicult character of his explanations of Scrip- 6 SQUIRE SILCHESTEr's WHIM. ture ; but he was the last man you would expect to win a splendid woman in her prime —though these last men often do it. He was tall and thin and sallow ; he stooped ; he coughed ; he was absurdly absent ; he could not remember a name, or a face, or the day of the month, or the day of the week. But Bar- bara Restormel, a superb and vigorous woman, saw in this man something which she saw not iin the young peers and squires who threw themselves at her pretty (if rather ample) feet ; and she married him three years after she had refused Squire Silchester of Silchester ; and the Squire, whose bark was far worse than his bite, took the generous revenge of present- ing him to the family living of Silchester — eight hundred a year, and a glebe of about five hundred acres. Here the rector lived comfortably and pleasantly, dining full oft with the man who had menaced him with death, drinking his port and using his library. Here the rectoress THE SQUIRE AND HIS WIFE. 7 was also prosperous and happy, the very soul of the village, the unfailing guide and friend of all who needed guidance and friendship. She had not married her parson for nothing. His awkward form concealed a noble nature, strangely capable of influencing others with wh'ich it came in contact. He influenced Squire Silchester, a man reported invincibly obstinate. He tamed the unkempt rebellious school- children, with whom the schoolmaster had done no good, though he decimated the Squire's birch 'plantations. He kept in genial awe the frequenters of wild solitary taverns, where poaching and smuggling were the most trivial amusements ever designed. He was a mag- netic man. Such men are of immense use, when they go aright. The Rev. David Dallas seldpm went very far wrong. About two years after marriage, Mrs. Dallas had a daughter, who was also named Barbara. The Squire was intensely fond of this infant iota. Tacitly he had vowed to himself that 8 SQUIRE SILCHESTER's WHIM. never would he marry; but he felt a half- paternal love for this child of a dream-wife, and he lavished on her luxuries which made the rector and Mrs. Dallas remonstrate. Remon- strance was vain. For little Barbara nothing was too good. She had a pony at five — a sturdy little Exmoor, with a loin like the seat of an arm-chair. It clearly gave the Squire such pleasure to be kind to her, that her father and mother gave up their objections, and he was allowed to do much as he liked. Barbara Dallas grew into a lovely girl. Like her mother in form, though slenderer, she was converse in character. Barbara the elder was daring — daring enough to marry a poor and elderly curate because she loved him. Barbara the younger was shy, timid, afraid indeed of all men except her father and the Squire. The Squire, to say truth, was her playmate, though old enough to be her father ; he taught her to ride to hounds ; he got her a light gun with which to shoot pheasants ; he THE SQUIRE AND HIS WIFE. 9 Introduced her to old-fangled literature in his quaint old library ; he taught and teazed and petted her as if she had been a favourite daughter. The rector had been about twenty years married, when a severe disease of the chest, doubtless latent before, so weakened him that he was ordered to go abroad. He and his wife and daughter started for Madeira. The Squire would gladly have gone too, but the lord of a great estate and the master of hounds is not always his own lord and master. He would hardly have allowed these claims to operate, had he known that he should never again see the rector or his wife, and that he should not meet Barbara for almost ten years. Yet this was the result. An elder brother of Mrs. Dallas's, the head of the Restormel family, had been living in various parts of the Continent for half a century. Accident brought them together. He was kind ; he wanted amusement ; he thought his niece a lovely lO SQUIRE SILCHESTER's WHIM. child, approaching the end of her teens ; he made them deviate from their appointed tack, and took them to many other places. The rector by this time was growing too weak to have a voice in the matter; his wife was easily persuaded by her brother that his plans were the best — that movement and distraction were more likely to do the rector good than monotonous residence in a single Island ; and our timid Barbara, if she had thought there was any mistake, would scarce have dared say so. Hence the rector went from city to city, the choicest in Europe, luxuriously travelling, faring luxuriously; and he quite enjoyed the time ; and in his eighth decade it was a delight to him to see cities and waters known to him in dreams — to compare with his classic vision the neoteric reality of Rome and Athens. People said it shortened his life. " It lengthened his life," said Polwhele Restormel. " He lived more in those last few years than he had ever lived before." THE SQUIRE AND HIS WIFE. I I A series of accidents, which would be tedious in description, prevented Barbara Dallas from again meeting Squire Silchester for nearly ten years. By this time she was an orphan. ' Her mother had died at Nice. Her uncle, Polwhele Restormel, had died a few months later in the crescent-city of Bath, leaving her all his per- sonal property. She had communicated with some of her Cornish friends, and had received . hearty west-country invitations. She would go first to Truro, where cousins innumerable desired to welcome and console her. The Quicksilver mail had come up to the front entrance of the York House. The im- patient leaders shook their hoofs in curious contrast with the heavy turtles that lay a few yards beneath in the open area, ready to be made into soup. Down the wide staircase of the famous old hotel, waiters with waxlights in advance, and a gentlemanly groom of the chambers in respectful attendance at her side, came lovely Barbara Dallas — a fine woman. I 2 SQUIRE SILCHESTER S WHIM. though blackened by the deepest funereal crape. At the foot of the staircase, nervous in her solitariness, she tripped. The groom of the chambers was not quick enough. A stalwart man who was crossing the vestibule from the coffee- room promptly caught her, saying cheerily, "Not hurt, I hope?" There was something so familiar in his voice that she looked straight at him without her customary fear. "Why, Barbara!" exclaimed Squire Sil- chester, amazing the demure groom of the chambers by instantly kissing her. "Where have you been these fifty years ? " It was in this way that Squire Silchester met again the daughter of his lost love — the little girl whom he had petted as a daughter. The result of the meeting was that he married her ; and the result of the marriage was our friend John Silchester, whom I have left all this time in doubt whether the new-comer into THE SQUIRE AND HIS WIFE. 1 3 the race of Silchester would be a son or a daughter. It was a daughter. The sequent disappoint- ment is expressible only by asterisks. 'However, within a year a son arrived, and John Silchester was happy. He had chris- tened his little daughter Silvia. He christened his son, rather an obstreperous brat, since he gave the parson a black eye as he held him over the font, Silvester. He was an odd being, as I shall proceed to show. But first a word concerning the lady of the manor, by no means an inconsiderable per- sonage. As Miss Audley, heiress of Audley, she had been the belle of the county. John Silchester, a resolute young gentleman, had seen her in a box at the theatre in " Ex'ter town," and had at once made up his mind. He was not at all devoid of promptitude. He found her the very next day in Audley Park 14 SQUIRE SILCHESTER S WHIM. taking her morning walk, introduced himself, and asked her to marry him. She consented ! Why ? Why should a Devonshire girl like this take a man at his word ? The answer is easy. She saw he was a man. She saw he was loving and brave and guileless and good. She saw in him what he saw in her. They married — and never had a moment's regret. They understood each other from the very first. It was a marriage of completion. The lady had just the qualities which the Squire had not. She kept house notably. Those were times when down in the country service was an inheritance ; the young house- maid was mayhap the housekeeper's niece, the young stable-boy the coachman's nephew ; and those elder servants felt themselves respon- sible for their relations, and kept them in order by sharp discipline. Now the Audleys of Audley were old-fashioned and old-fangled THE SQUIRE AND HIS WIFE. 1 5 folk." Their domestic affairs were well man- aged. They made their own butter and cheese and cream and cider, brewed their own ale, and kept it till it was strong and clear ; distilled their own essences of rose, rosemary, lavender. Wherefore Joan Audley came to SilcTiester with full knowledge of all that a gentlewoman ought to know, and with certainty that she would teach her servants things to them unknown. By no means let it be supposed that she was merely a good housewife. True, she knew not a word of French, and was incapable of playing the "Battle of Prague" on the piano. But in the school kept by Madam Tucker in the Cathedral Close, — an ancient lady who (with aid of younger folk) had brought up three Devon generations, and who was in the habit of keeping recalcitrant girls in order by a tap with her old ivory fan upon their shoulder, — Joan Audley had learnt English well. She did not write themes ; she did read Shakespeare 1 6 SQUIRE SILCHESTEr's WHIM, and Swift. She worked a sampler ; she learnt her catechism ; she was taught logic and geometry. Madam Tucker was of that old- fashioned style of schoolmistress which curiously united simplicity with subtlety. She would make a girl of sixteen wear a pinafore, and stand her in a corner if she gave herself airs and graces, yet would carry her Into Shak- speare's magic realm, and show her the clue to Milton's music, and teach her how to detect the error of a syllogism, and make her find out for herself the curious law which holds as to the intersecting diagonals of a regular pen- tagon. She made her pupils do two things — odey and think. " Learn those two words thoroughly," she would say, " and you will be good women. You must obey me. You must think for yourselves. You will be wives and mothers by-and-by ; then you will have to obey your husbands, and at the same time to make your children and servants obey you. You will be placed in various conditions which THE SQUIRE AND HIS WIFE. 1 7 neither you nor I can foresee ; then you will find the value of being able to think for your- selves." Thus the old lady was wont to lecture over the breakfast table now and then. I suppose half the wives of the Devonshire squires for about three generations learnt to obey and think from Madam Tucker in her famous school in the Close of Walter Branscombe's Cathedral. They all turned out well, those girls of hers. She would have none but ladies. She treated them with the utmost kindness, yet punished them when requisite with the utmost severity. She held herself, and with justice, the equal of the most patrician of her pupils' mothers. Such was Mrs. Silchester's schoolmistress. This sort of teaching has gone very much out of fashion, and I can only hope that the modern school boards may introduce some- thing more satisfactory and scientific. Still •there are a good many people who have felt ^ VOL. I. 2 - 1 8 SQUIRE SILCHESTER's WHIM. grateful for such an education as Madam Tucker's, and have wished they could find something similar for their own children, even m these days of ladies' colleges and aristocratic seminaries. That old Exeter dame taught nothing she did not know, and made her pupils learn. When Silvia and Silvester Silchester were out of the nurse's hands, their mother thought it time they should learn their alphabet. She opened the subject to the Squire. "Alphabet!" he exclaimed. '* My dear Joan, they shall learn nothing of the kind. It would be absurd to teach children what is really a nonentity. How many alphabets are there ? how many letters in each ? how many sounds without a letter to represent them?" Mrs. Silchester, though one of Madam Tucker's prize pupils, was taken thoroughly aback by this eloquent outburst of her husband. He, standing with his back to the great wood THE SQUIRE AND HIS WIFE. 1 9 fire in the hall, waxed more voluble as he waxed warmer. " Alphabets, my darling Joan, are the ruin of realms and religions. I object to printing," — a strong statement from the owner of the choicest library in Devon — " but printing was inevitable when that scoundrel Cadmus in- vented an alphabet." Mrs. Silchester was not unused to the Squire's volubility. She had a vague idea that Madam Tucker had introduced her to Cadmus, but not, she thought, as a scoundrel. However, she was far too wise a woman to interrupt her husband in the full flush of his oratory. On he went, like a rivulet after rain. ** Aristophanes taught the Athenians that true gentlemen ought not to be able to read or write. Imagination and memory are what men want. Learn your Homer and your Solon. Get poetry and law into your brain ; the one will teach you the pleasure and peril of life, the other its method and management." 20 SQUIRE SILCHESTER S WHIM. "But really, John," says Mrs. Silchester, ** would you like our son and daughter not to know reading and writing? " " Yes," he replied, with an emphasis that deserves small capitals. " My dear girl, you talk of teaching them their alphabet. Do you know your alphabet ? " " I ought to," she answered. "What alphabet do you know? " "Why, the English, you goose," said Joan, pulling his whiskers. They had left the hall, and were sitting side by side on one of those dear old parlour window-seats that held out in Devon longer than in any other county. Is there a parlour all through England now ? Or have the [with]drawing-rooms exterminated them ? Parlour ! How I like the word ! A room for chat, talk, gossip. A room without stiffness. A room for afternoon. It had no antimacassars; and the big mastiff lounged in to see who -called ; and there might be a volume of Swift THE SQUIRE AND HIS WIFE. 21 or Fielding on the window-seat. Where are they gone, those rooms ? Where are the pretty demure damsels gone — our aunts or our aunts' aunts — who sat and flirted in them? " Well, you know," quoth John Silchester, gravely, " English has no alphabet. English has 'a rude a d c, 1 admit, just as Etruscan had a rude / m «, whence the word de7neut. But here am I with a girl and a boy to educate — and I am told that the proper way to begin is to teach them a heteroepic abracadabra." " I wish you could manage without such long words, dear," said Joan. " I am very sorry, my darling, but indigna- tion drives me to use strong language." " My dear Jack," says Mrs. Silchester, '* it isn't your strong language I don't like, it's your long language." The Squire laughed. " Never mind, my pet," he said. " I'll try to behave better. You want these two little rascals to learn the alphabet because you and 22 SQUIRE SILCHESTER's WHIM. I learnt it, and it has not done us much injur}^ But aren't most people better without it? You teach a scoundrel to sign his name, and he forges a cheque. You teach a fool the art of writing, and he produces an epic poem, or a new way of squaring the circle. No : I have made up my mind about the education of- my son and daughter. Two things will I never teach them : two things they must learn of their own free will when capable of teaching themselves : one is the alphabet, and the other the multiplication table." " Well," said Joan, " I suppose I must submit, as I vowed to obey, and I don't much admire the multiplication table, because I always thought that seven times nine was ninety-one ; but I should like to know why you are angr}^ about the alphabet." " Alphabet ! My dear child, we haven't got an alphabet. Our vowels and consonants are a set of maniacs fit for Colney Hatch, Look at other nations. We have twenty-six charac- THE SQUIRE AND HIS WIFE. 23 ters, several of which are double letters, several of which have several sounds. In Syrlac there are more than two hundred characters. In Sanscrit there are more than three hundred. We don't want so many, but we want more — and less — than we have. A has half a dozen sounds. X\?>ks. I \s ae, the former vowel being broad and soft, as in the word half.''' " Well," said Joan Silchester, " that reminds me that I am your better-half. If that's the case, I shall be mistress now, and shut you up about alphabets, which is very dull talk, and make you come out into the garden." And into the garden they went. It was very nice. The Squire, with all his scholastic caprices, could enjoy his sweet-lipped fair- bosomed wife, with her freaks and fancies and flowers. CHAPTER II. WHITE PAPER. " Tous les grands hommes ont leurs antipathies : Jacques II. ne pouvait supporter I'dclat d'une epde, Roger Bacon tombait en defaillance a la vue d'une pomme ; moi, le papier blanc m'inspire une melancolie profonde." ^^/"ITH this grajtd /iom?ne FratK^ais I would agree. A sheet of white paper, even though I have only to place on it a note to a good friend or a generous publisher, makes me melancholy at first sight. O that writing had never been invented ! Imagine my melan- colie prof onde when the sheet of unstained paper before me is the first of about a thousand that I shall have to spoil in presenting you, dear reader, with a three volume novel. Am I digressing? Very likely, in the eyes- WHITE PAPER. 25 of the critics. Have I a right to digress ? Those purblind critics answer, No. Now your ordinary critic always refers to high literary authorities — though it generally turns out he has never read them. I make three statements here, which I mean to prove by authority and logic : I. I have a right to digress. II. Critics have no right to interfere. III. I am not digressing. There was once published in this city of London a work of enormous genius, dedicated " To His Royal Highness Prince Posterity." H.R.H. is here, but I regret to say that he prefers a great deal of effeminate and feminine trash to the work of England's first prose - writer. The seventh section of that famous story A Tale 0/ a Tub is entitled A Digression in Praise of Digressions, and thus doth Swift end it : " The necessity of this digression will easily excuse the length ; and I have chosen for it as proper a place as I could readily find. If the 26 SQUIRE SILCHESTEr's WHIM. judicious reader can assign a better, I do here empower him to remove it into any other corner he pleases." I give like power to any judicious reader of this chapter — should I be lucky enough to hook so big a ..fish, — at the same time warning him (or her) that to skip this chapter will be a terrible mistake. It contains the clue to the whole story. Having proved on the highest authority that an author has right to digress, I proceed to show that the interference of a critic is sheer trespass. It may not be generally known to the ingenious gentlemen who tell us every week what to read and what not to read that there was once a romance written by a descend- ant of the Counts of Hapsburg, concerning which the famous historian Gibbon (him you know, of course,) declares that it " will outlive the palace of the Escurial, and the imperial eagle of Austria." If the English language last— and it will be the fault of fools if it last WHITE PAPER. 27 not — Gibbon is right. Well, the great writer to whom he refers will prove my case. Thus he addresses his reader : " We warn thee not too hastily to condemn any of the incidents of this our history, as impertinent and foreign to our main design, because thou dost not immedi- ately conceive in what manner such incident may conduce to that design. This work may indeed be considered as a great creation of our own ; and for a little reptile of a critic to pre- sume to find fault with any of its parts, without knowing the manner in which the whole is con- nected, and before he comes to the final catas- trophe, is a most presumptuous absurdity." So critics are designated by the writer whom Scott and Thackeray declared the greatest English novelist, little reptiles I Very hard on the critics ! Farther on, the great story-teller digresses again to laugh at critics — many of whom, even in his days, were briefless barristers. I will quote only a few of his words, but they are to the 28 SQUIRE SILCHESTER's WHIM. point : for he described common English folk, and made no pretence to be elegantly pathetic and unnaturally sentimental. He objects to critics who, " without assigning any particular faults, condemn the whole in general defama- tory terms, such as vile, dull, damned stuff, &c., and particularly by the use of the mono- syllable LOW." Low ! There you have it. Thus, whereas, according to the title of the best farce ever writ by a schoolmaster, there is high life below stairs, is there not also low life above stairs ? — a farce that now and then verges on tragedy. Having Swift and Fielding as authorities on the first two counts of my indictment, I need take slight trouble on the third ; yet it is the most momentous of the three. I am not digressing. I keep close to my thesis. The keynote of my story is — Never put pen to paper. The unwisdom hereof is shown when a man of genius writes a book. If there were no writing, no printing, men would listen for a WHITE PAPER, 29 poet's lightest words, would use their memories to retain them, would keep them in their brains instead of on their shelves. Better also for the poet. It is so much easier to write bad rhyme and rhythm than to utter bad rhyme and rhythm. It is so much easier to say a thing twice over in your own study than before an audience who drink in your rhapsody. Besides, your audience helps you : if you have any brains (which, as a modern poet, one may doubt,) they will make you improvise and ejaculate. I have passed from white paper to the agora. They are not materially unconnected. The cacoethes scribendi is akin to the Itpcndi. But were there less scribbling, I think there would be stricter speaking. Men get charged with leading articles ; and there results what Cole- ridge used to call (in days when such aperients were weaker) an oral diarrhoea. If a man or woman either could not or would not read, he ■or she would be forced to think. CHAPTER III. ^ OLYMPUS. H ixh dp (is dirova dvijSri yXavKunris 'Adrjvri OSXv/MTTovd', o9i vines : Hark, hark, says WiUie ; Come Hsten each one who to music incHnes, And I'll sing a short song o' some four hundred lines ; Wi' my dactyl and spondee, My Latin and Greek List ! says musical Willie." Song of the Morayshire Society. SQUIRE SILCHESTER liked to know everybody in the Silchester village and vicinage, whether dependent on him or other- wise. Few strangers came thither ; but at the little fishing hamlet of Mount St. Nicholas there were visitors now and then, who got into stuffy little cottages how they could. There MUSICAL WILLIE, 45 was a legend in the place that a lady from London took the ground-floor, two rooms, of old Bill Rendell's cottage — unaware that there was indeed no floor at all, but native mud, which Bill had deftly carpeted. Under the bed in the sleeping-room was a nice little pool, which Bill's pet Muscovy ducks were used to haunt, when he and his wife were sleeping there. He forgot to turn them out when his lodger came, and at midnight she was awakened by strange sounds under the bed, and rushed out into the street in airy attire, screaming that she had heard ghostly sounds. The spectral utterances were' of course Quack ! quack ! Mount St. Nicholas is so called because high above the fishing village, on a green hill that can be seen miles away, there stands an old church with a high square tower, dedicated to St. Nicholas. The church and hamlet are just beyond the limits of Silchester manor, and belong to an old family with great estates far 46 SQUIRE silchester's whim. away in Northumberland, who seldom visit this despised property. Yet the founder of the house lies in St. Nicholas Church, an illegible bronze above him ; and the old gray dwelling which his descendants used to inhabit, built of granite, with all sorts of ancient anomalies, stands midway down the slope, about as far below the church as above the top of the steep village street. That street is a pitched path six feet wide, with a rivulet running down it when the springs rise on St. Nicholas Mount ; and descends to the sea so steeply that to walk down the roof of a house were not much safer. Timid people can cling to the pales of the cottage gardens, which are however rather rickety. The Manor House at Mount St. Nicholas, as it was magniloquently called, was generally to let. Once an enterprising speculator had furnished it second-hand, and tried to attract visitors by advertising in the Times the beauty and salubrity of the situation, and the perfect MUSICAL WILLIE. 47 accommodation ; but he did not take much by it. It stood empty for a long time; then, about five years after the Squire's marriage, it was taken by a Scottish gentleman, who bore the name of William Nairn, and who settled down permanently, with no companions save his fnan-servant, Donald, and a colley dog of remarkable sagacity. Mr. Nairn was a ruddy broad-shouldered man of five feet eight, with a merry twinkle in his eye, and a pleasant half- cynical half-Epicurean expression of mouth. His servant Donald was a gaunt Highlander of six feet four, who wore the kilt. A little Devonshire maid who came to the Manor House with cream on the day after the arrival, ran away when Donald opened the door, dropping her pitcher. She came crying to her mother, declaring that she had seen a she-giant, that wanted to eat her up. The relations between the fishing folk and their new neighbours soon became friendly. Mr. Nairn was a middle-aged bachelor, kind- 48 SQUIRE silchester's whim. hearted and open-handed ; he liked to play the flute and the fiddle ; he liked to make a homely song, music and all, and sing it among uncritical friends over a bowl of whisky punch ; he liked to turn into English doggrel a morsel of Moschus or an ode of Horace. What brought him to Mount St. Nicholas puzzled the simple fishing folk ; puzzled even more Squire Silchester and Dr. Sterne, w^hen they came to know him, which was not long. As to Donald, his tall henchman, he loved his master thoroughly, but despised him for being a Lowlander, and for playing the flute and fiddle. He, Donald, played the bagpipes ; had played that dread wind instrument behind the chair of a great chief of the Campbells, when a hundred gentlemen dined from gold plate by the blaze of pine-torches. He was wont to walk up and down the sands on a moon- light night, and play tune upon tune for hours together — enough to frighten all the fish of the sea : still — MUSICAL WILLIE. 49 . " The herring loves the merry moonhght, The mackerel loves the wind, But the oyster loves the dredger's song, For he comes of a gentle kind." If Donald's bagpipes had repeated the miracle of Arion, and brought the fish to the shore to listen, they would surely have been frightened back into deep water by his giant stride, and the mighty movement of his arm, and the flying kilt which " Streamed like a meteor on the troubled air." When the Squire heard of a stranger at the Manor House, he and the Doctor walked over. They were shown by Donald into a quaint room, littered with unarranged books, for which the Highlander had begun to fix shelves. Mr. Nairn rose from a writing-table, niched into a window, which window looked over leagues of sea. Dr. Sterne's quick eye discovered that a large folio open on the table was in the Greek tongue, and much resembled Sophocles. It was clear at a glance that the Scotchman, VOL. I. 4 50 SQUIRE SILCHESTER S WHIM. whatever his history, and however eccentric he might be, was a gentleman. An invitation to dinner was given and ac- cepted. It was not long before the Squire and the Doctor and the new-comer were friends — Mr. Nairn won Mrs. Silchester's heart by his kindness to her girl and boy, with whom he delighted to romp. One day, early in their acquaintance, little Silvester said, " I won't call you Mister Nairn any longer. It's ugly. If you haven't got another prettier name, I shall make a name for you.'' " They called me Willie when I was a boy," he said. " Then you shall be Willie now that Tm a boy. Silvia, you're to call him Willie. I shall make everybody call you Willie. You are much more like Willie than like Mister Nairn." This young tyrant so dominated the house- hold, that very soon those who did not address Nairn as Willie, always called him by that name when speaking of him ; and one day Mrs. MUSICAL WILLIE. 5 I Silchester called him so in his presence, and blushed, and apologized for having caught from her boy the contagion of rudeness. *' It is the highest compliment you can pay me, madam," he said. There was some lapse of time before the epithet 7nusical was prefixed to his name. Pre- cocious young Silvester said to him one day, *' I shall come over and rummage your old castle. I believe you're an ogre, and keep an enchanted princess there, turned into a cat. I'm a magician, you know. I'll turn you into a mouse for her to eat, and then I'll disenchant her — and marry her if she suits me. There are not many girls that would suit me.^'' '* Chatterbox ! " said his mother. '* Let him come to-morrow, Mrs. Silchester," said Willie, " I will bring him back safely." The boy went. He was about nine years old. He prowled over the old house with delight. ** Books! books! books!" he exclaimed. 52 SQUIRE SILCHESTER S WHIM. '* What use are books ? Papa says they do harm, and I always beHeve papa. He has lots of books, like you, and sometimes reads them, but he says I am not to read them, and I'm sure I don't want. Haven't you anything pleasanter than these things?" he said, con- temptuously, tossing in the air a lovely Elzevir, bound in tree-calf. Thus provoked, Willie took from its case a superb flute, and played upon It The Flowers of the Forest. The boy was delighted. " Ah," he cried, " that's music. I don't call the piano music ; it's a box of strings. Papa teaches me what music means, and I can almost understand the harmonic chords. Hard words, aren't they? Papa says wind instru- ments are meant to mock the music of our voices and birds' voices, and that instruments with strings mock the wind In the trees and on the sea. Your flute Is very sweet, but I like the thrush better." " Odd boy ! " thought Willie, and took from MUSICAL AVILLIE. 53 Its hiding-place his most cherished Stradivarius, and played a wild fantastic mixture of melo- dies. "Just like the wind in our old wood," said Sylvester, " when it blows high from the sea. The oak roars, the elm groans, the ash shrieks, the' beech shudders, the birch weeps, the poplar hisses, the holly crackles, the fir writhes, — that's violin music." "How do you learn those things ? " asked Willie. " From papa. He takes me to the wood in the wind, and gives me a lesson. I like a thick wood on a dark night. It feels like going into another world." The result of this little adventure was that both flute and fiddle soon found their way to Silchester ; and in due time Musical Willie gave his friends enjoyment twice or thrice a week. Joan Silchester sang to his violin ac- companiment ; the Doctor sometimes sang, for he had a good tenor voice, but his ear was 54 SQUIRE SILCHESTER S WHIM. untrustworthy. It was some months before they found out that Musical Willie could sing. Then it was accident. Mrs. Silchester, turning over some music, came on a rough scrap of music and words which have got between the sheets. She mischievously handed it to Willie, saying, " I am sure you can sing this." Musical Willie looked round at his friends with a sly smile that seemed to say, "Well, ye've caught me," and then cast his eye over the paper. "Ah," he said, "Mrs. Silchester, I had forgotten the existence of this, for I made the words and jotted the notes twenty year syne, to laugh at myself for loving a girl who couldn't love me. It's to the tune oi Antony Rowley.'" " I hope you will sing it, now we have found you out," said Mrs. Silchester. "After twenty years, these troubles fade." " Olim haec meminisse juvabit," murmured the Squire. MUSICAL WILLIE. 55 Willie, after a brief pause, began. The poet would a-wooing go — Heigh-ho ! says WiUie ; Whether the Muses hke it or no, And whether the lass be willing or no, She willy-nilly sweeter than metre : Heigh-ho ! says Musical Willie, He put himself into the shiniest hat — ■ ' Heigh-ho ! says Willie. \ The laughing servant-maid smelt a rat As he walked away so spicy as that, With his Willie, silly, fairer and rarer : Heigh-ho ! says Musical Willie. Sly at him glanced the lovely lass — Heigh-ho ! says Willie. And said, " Do look at yourself in the glass, For every beau in the town you surpass ! " Ah, Willie, your filly rambles and gambols. Heigh-ho ! sings Musical Willie. He took up his hat, and he went away — Heigh-ho ! says Willie. ' Neither lips nor eyes invited his stay, And he sat on his hat the very next day. With his willy nilly, wooing's undoing : Heigh-ho ! says Musical Willie. Plague upon girls that are given to flirt ! Heigh-ho ! says Willie ; That to tempt a man on are always alert : Pretty or witty, I view them as dirt. With their willy-nilly, shilly and shally : Heigh-ho ! says Musical Willie, 56 SQUIRE silchester's whim. "It is not everybody," said Squire Silchester, " who could throw off his annoyance with such humour. I think you have decidedly improved the metre of ' Froggy would a-wooing go,' a song which I believe contains political allusions, though I am unable to trace them. Antony Rowley was Charles II. probably." "Are young ladies never to flirt?" asked Joan Silchester. " I think," said Dr. Sterne, " there are three modes of flirtation, — the scientific, the irregular, the Platonic. Do you agree with me, Mrs. Silchester?" " Yes, " she said, after slight deliberation. " Well, won't you give us a lecture on them? Only a lady can do it." " If I must, I will be briefer than most lec- turers. Irregular flirtation may be dismissed at once ; it is merely the beginning of actual love-making." " An oak-sapling and a cucumber-plant come out of the ground about the same size," said MUSICAL WILLIE. 57 the Squire. "The sooner irregular flirtation turns to real sweethearting-, the better." "Scientific flirtation," continued the lady- lecturer, " I take to be that relation between a sensible boy and girl of marriageable years who have not any idea of marrying each other, but who want to try the experiment of courting outside the verge of love-making. This is very nice, if kept within due bounds : it teaches the boy politeness, and makes the girl think. He learns the sensitive delicate nature of woman- hood ; she learns the thoughful vigorous nature of manhood. But there is a deal of danger in the matter ; they may make a mistake, and fancy they have fallen in love, being entirely unfit for each other." " There's danger in most varieties of flirta- tion, Joan," said the Squire. " How about the Platonic?" " I think," she said, " it often occurs between a married wom^an of strong intellect and a young man, or between a man of wide nature 58 SQUIRE SILCHESTEr's WHIM. , and advanced years, and a young woman. It is very much the relation between tutor and pupil. " Which did not answer in the case of Abelard and Heloi'se," said the Squire. "No," said Sterne. "But I hold Mrs. Sil- chesters views that a married woman, mature without meagreness, and intelligent without pedantry, may teach a boy ten years her junior lessons of life that no one else can teach him." "And how about the other side of the question ? " " I am still of Mrs. Silchester's opinion. There are girls unmarried, and unlikely to marry, who throw themselves into all manner of eccentricities because they have no one to teach them how to use their brains. If they know a man of strong intellect and wide cul- ture, with leisure enough to talk to them or write to them half an hour in a month, it fur- nishes the tonic stimulus that keeps them healthy. Well, they have the Platonic affection MUSICAL WILLIE, 59 for their teacher — the affection which you and I, Squire, have for, Plato." " A new construction," said Willie. " It is a pity we cannot find employment," said Mrs. Silchester, " for the girls who are left without husbands. I divide those who have quite" passed the boundary of Marriageland into two classes — old maids and maiden ladies. The distinction is not mine. I had it from a lady of this shire who belongs to neither class." "It is well put," quoth Willie. "You see the old maid. She is selfish, stingy, fussy, gossipy, fond of no company but her cat. The notion old is always connected with her, though many very old women look young : the notion maid is connected with her rather in the sense of service than in that of virginity." " Why, Willie, you grow eloquent," said the Squire. '* Go on to your maiden lady." "She," said Willie, "has perchance lost in war or wreck or by disease the only man she 6(J SQUIRE SILCHESTEr's WHIM. could have married. She remembers him always : the grief of the first memory has turned to a happier recollection, and, as the years pass, strengthens the anticipation of meet- ing him again. Meanwhile, according to her state of life, she does what is wise and right. She feels no humiliation in being alone, while her sisters are grandmothers and her nieces mothers. She knows that though most mar- riages are m.ade on earth, there are marriages w^hich will be made in heaven." "Faith, Willie," said the Squire, "you are in your best humour to-night, eloquent and poetical. My wife is parson and you're clerk. You will have to tip us a stave before we let you go back to your old castle." jMusical Willie complied, and burst out into a few stanzas to the famous old tune of A Hundred Years Hence. Right well to be married Is woman's best lot ; Her fortune is arid When wooers come not. MUSICAL WILLIE. 6 I Yet still may she gladden Her kith and her kin If her heart does not sadden For what she can't win. Send old maids to Hades On any pretence ; We'll love maiden ladies _ A hundred years hence. The Queen Aphrodite 4 Was married, you know ; Alas, she was flighty, And rather so-so ! But Athena sedately Her lesson-books read, Having risen quite stately From Zeus-patei''s head. Of old maids one afraid is, They scandal dispense, But we'll love maiden ladies A hundred years hence. If an old maid you visit, .She offers you tea Which her grocer explicit Describes as bohea. Should she venture to injure Her scruples with wine, 'Twill be made of the ginger Or cowslip divine. A stingy old maid is Afraid of her pence : Not so maiden ladies A hundred years hence. 62 SQUIRE SILCHESTER's WHIM. The cream from their dairy's As white as the snow ; In their thin china ware is True orange pekoe ; And who ever grumbled When glass of quaint shape Holds Sercial that's tumbled Three times round the Cape ? A dreary old maid is A nuisance immense ; But we'll love maiden ladies A hundred years hence. The old maid talks slander, And picks people's brains, And loves to meander Through filthiest lanes. Our dear maiden lady Flies far from such strife To where Shakespeare makes shady The forest of life. Send old maids to Hades On any pretence ; We'll love maiden ladies A hundred years hence. This was the last song that night. CHAPTER V. SILCHESTER, " As one who, long in populous city pent, Where houses thick and sewers annoy the air, Forth issuing on a summer's morn, to breathe Among the pleasant villages and farms Adjoined, from each thing met conceives delight ; The smell of grain, or tedded grass, or kine, Or dairy, each rural sight, each rural sound/' QILCHESTER is a village of curious charac- ter. In the days when first it was granted to Ranulf de Silchester {vide Domesday Book), it was moor and morass for the most part. The lords of the manor through many generations thought more of fighting than of improving their lands ; but they evidently settled into quiet at an early date, since the Squire's house 64 SQUIRE silchester's whim. bears signs of having been built toward the end of Henry VII. 's or beginning of Henry VIII. 's reign. It seems clear, from ancient documents carefully preserved, that the earlier Silchesters were an adventurous race. They went to the Crusades. They followed their kings to France. They were with Elizabeth's predatory captains, and made many raids upon the Spanish Main. And when wild adventure of this kind came to an end, they seem to have found occupation in England that drew them away from home. They mixed with Eliza- bethan poets, with wits of the Caroline time. It was not till the accession of the House of Brunswick that they left the Court and London. Hence it happened that the manor of Sil- chester was gradually impropriated in its out- lying parts. All sorts of squatters took hold upon it, holding their bits of land by all sorts of tenures. Far in the green depths of the outstretched moorland you might come upon profitable farmlets and pleasant cottages with SILCHESTER. 65 orchard ground, held by the yearly service of presenting a fat capon or a bushel of wheat. These very services were forgotten. Probably the Squire might in many cases have redeemed the ancestral grants ; but he had elbow-room, and preferred honest neighbours to increase of incofne. These small encampments on the out- skirts of his manor injured him not a whit, and did infinite good to the people dwelling there. The Squire knew them all, and befriended them all ; and there was not a man for miles round who would not have lost a day's work to do anything for John Silchester. The village of Silchester is one long strag- gling street, with a vast number of outlying suburbs. As you enter it from the upper end, the most conspicuous objects are a dissenting chapel and an immense walnut tree. Just at the corner by that mighty tree, one of the largest in the land, a narrow lane swerves to the right, where the earliest white violets are found in spring. This lane is called The Butts, VOL. I. 5 66 SQUIRE silchester's whim. a reminiscence of old days of archery; but modern sentiment has rechristened it Nightin- gale Lane. It is the favourite resort of your Devonshire Tityrus and Amaryllis. The street winds. On the left, the Oak Tavern, kept by old Harry Withers, whose white head and brown gaiters are institutions in Silchester. The man who gets drunk at the Oak will never drink there again. Withers farms under the Squire, and brews his own ale, and stands no nonsense. The next house, hidden among trees and surrounded by a high wall, is what in these days would be called a ladies' seminary — kept by Madame Simonet, a very decided Englishwoman, who is thus called from having married a Frenchman. She bears the repute of being a rigid disciplinarian. Just opposite, from a cottage overgrown with honeysuckle, there issues a wondrous shrill- ness of bird-music. If you enter that cottage, you will find two rooms full of bird-cages, fifty in each, perhaps : a true academy of music ; for SILCHESTER. 67 one cage in each room contains a nighting-ale, and the others canaries, which that nightingale has to educate ; and when the two nightingales are in full song, with a hundred canaries fol- lowing them, the jargoning deafens all Sil- chester. Burrows, the owner of this ornithic cottage, drives the coach from Silchester to Exeter : a born lover of birds, he can gain answers from them at any time as he drives along in the twilight. Now, also on the right, is Sherwood, attorney- at-law and gentleman by act of Parliament. Sherwood is a gentleman on other grounds ; he is also a humorist ; and, having quite enough to live upon, he has a mania for re- conciling litigants. He is unpopular among the lawyers of the neighbourhood. The Squire likes him well enough to invite him to dinner now and then. The fact is that Sherwood, though a thoroughly good fellow, has a slightly boisterous humour. Next door is Zeal the wine merchant, a 68 SQUIRE silchester's whim. jolly old boy, whose idea of luncheon is Stilton and port wine. Further down on the left is Michael the bookseller, of whom there is nothing to be said except that he knows nothing- about books. Then we turn the corner into the market-place — for Silchester actually has a market-place ; and we see on a signboard the Silchester Arms ; and we see the church and rectory and parish schools just across the rivulet which runs at the bottom of the town. The church is rather old ; the rector is rather young. His name is Arundel Saint Osyth. He is very High Church, and holds daily services, and wears the most amazing costumes. The Squire and he were at Oxford together, but there were several years between them, and in a town and gown row Saint Osyth knocked down a fellow who was just going to settle the Squire from behind. The result was a friend- ship which in due time made Saint Osyth rector of Silchester. The Squire does not wholly SILCHESTER. 69 coincide with Mr. Saint Osyth's propositions and practices ; for the rector wants to make himself father confessor to all the young ladies in the neighbourhood. He has ideas of the sacerdotal function which are too strong for Mr. Silchester. Doubtless marriage will make him wiser. It is a fine old church, with a keen sky- pointing spire, that looks down upon Silchester market-place. That market-place is one among hundreds, all alike. An irregular trapezoidal space, where on Wednesdays cattle and sheep are penned, while farmers' traps and carriers' carts occupies the rest of the arena. There is the principal inn, down at the corner of the churchyard stile ; and three other houses of entertainment; and a pastrycook's shop, where music is sold for the benefit of the tradesmen's daughters; and a little corner where the briskest and most talkative of bar- bers will be happy, while shaving you or cutting your hair, to tell you all the news of 70 SQUIRE SILCHESTER S WHIM. Silchester ; and a chemist's shop of the ordi- nary village type, whose master would be per- plexed if you asked him for hydrate of chloral, or ilicine, or magnesium ; and a branch bank from Exeter ; and the post-office, kept by a muddle-headed old woman, who also keeps a dame school, and who never can under- stand how many stamps go for a shil- ling. Such is the main street or avenue of Sil- chester. Its outer fringe of surburban life is more difficult to describe. All wayfarers through England must have met with such places, which require rather the pencil than the pen to describe them. Here a cottage in a quiet dell, with a streamlet surrounding it, and no way to the garden gate except by stepping- stones. Again, a pleasant little homestead with orchard all round it, and a suggestive cider- press reminding those who read the eighteenth century verse of Mr. John Philips's directions to the lover of the apple's wine : — SILCHESTER. 7 1 " Prepare Materials for thy mill, a sturdy post Cylindric, to support the grinder's weight Excessive, and a flexile sallow entrenched, Rounding, capacious of the juicy hoard." Elsewhere the quaintest old structures of granite, roofed with thatch — standing in all imaginable positions, but mostly having enjoyable views of moorland and sea. And suddenly, as you turn the angle of a beech coppice, you come upon the Doctor's house — his den, he usually calls it. There are four rooms, all on one floor — parlour, bedroom, elaboratory, kitchen. The Doctor's sole servant is a boy, who sleeps in a loft over the stable where the Doctor's nag, Asklepios, is made comfortable. Jim grooms Asklepios, and makes his master's breakfast ; and an old woman who dwells thereby comes in for other purposes ; but the house requires no cookery, for the Doctor always dines with the Squire. They are intimate in the highest sense. John Silchester, resolved that his people's health should not be ruined through ignorance, was 72 SQUIRE SILCHESTER S WHIM. w fortunate as to find a man with real medical capacity who would take charge of his village, for work suited Dr. Sterne, who was only too anxious to retire into the country and complete the Life of Arbuthnot. What happened there- after was that the Doctor, settling down into his snug though humble cottage, became almost a member of the Squire's household. He might have lived at Silchester, had he liked, but he naturally preferred independence. He was so much there, that when colic attacked a man or multiplication a woman they generally sent first to the Squire's. John Silchester always maintained that the State ought to provide for the physical health of the poor as well as their moral health. By the side of the established Church he would have had an established Doctorate. As this could not be done, he supplied its place, in his own parish, by engaging a man of the highest medical capacity to attend on his own house- hold and on the people around him. Dr. SI'LCHESTER. 73 Sterne is precisely the man for the position. He is a humorist — first quality both of parson and doctor — not to mention lawyer. He likes the country and the country folk. He is also, what few doctors are, a chemist, and knows In what way the elementary principles act upon each" other. He has in his elaboratary salacine, asparagine, vauqueline, dig-Italine, even the diaboline which blows an hydraulic press to atoms. The saying of Raphel in Balzac's master- work — " Faute de pouvoir inventer des choses, il parait que vous en etes reduits a inventer des noms" — applies not to Dr. Sterne. He is chemist and electrician ; traces the elements through all their windings ; can make a battery in a lady's thimble. Being both chemist and humorist, two faculties which ought to coalesce in every man who dares call himself doctor, Sterne worked well. He had his cures for both mental and physical maladies. He looked after the young girls in Silchester parish, and gave them severe lectures if they 74 SQUIRE SILCHESTER S WHIM. precociously flirted. Perfectly fearless, and knowing that prevention is better than cure, he did his best to teach the village lout temper- ance in all things. He was the Squire's adju- tant. Concerning Silchester, there is probably nothing more to be said, except that it is a lovely village. But all villages are lovely. Man preposterously tries to achieve the hideous; but God covers his monstrosities with lichen and ivy, and makes the rain wash them and the sun embrown them ; and so they gradually become what it is the fashion to call picturesque. This probably means — fit to make a picture of. It is the most conceited epithet in our language, for it patronizes the Creator. What in the world would an archaeologist say if the most important thing about Silchester were forgotten ? It has an immemorial wishing well. Clear water comes up into a granite basin, beneath a granite arch, Norman, or per- haps Saxon. It is the loveliest corner in the SILCHESTER. 75 world, woodland all round, and a mountain ash overhanging the well. So rapidly rises the water as to realize Coleridge's exquisite lines — " Nor ever cease Yon tiny cone of sand its soundless dance, Which at the bottom, like a fairy's page, f As merry and no taller, dances still." ' And of course there is a legend. A maiden of the Silchesters, a thousand (more or less) years ago, met beside this fountain a man faint with travel. He was too weak to reach the water, so as to quench his thirst. She not only aided him in his trouble, but brought him up to the house, and gave him food and wine. As he left, he said — " Whoso wishes a true wish after drinking the water of that well, shall have what he wishes." And it is recorded that as he passed down the great avenue his stature expanded, and he looked like unto Joseph of Arimathea. CHAPTER VI. SILVIA SILVICULTRIX. " Who is Silvia ? What is she That all our swains commend her?" THE two children of the house of Silchester grew towards puberty in a way unusual. They learnt much which children never learn ; they knew nothing of what other children are obliged to learn. The catechisms of Pinnock the intolerable, the use of the globes, the ele- ments of Euclid, the questions of Richmal Mangnall, were unknown to them. Fortunate children, they learnt nothing but what their father and mother taught them by word of mouth. That being the case, it is pretty SILVIA SILVICULTRIX. 77 certain that their childish memories were not loaded with latitudes and longitudes and dates. Some years ago an old half-pay colonel, whose son (now himself a colonel) had been plucked in the examination for a direct commission, met the Commander-in-Chief on the steps of a cliib, and said, " Your Royal Highness, do you know where Louisville is ? " *'Not I," said the Duke. "Then it's a damned shame," said the old soldier, " that my boy should be plucked for not knowing what your Royal Highness doesn't know." The young gentleman got his commission, and has since proved that he can fight, and make his men fight. It seems absurd to load children's memories with facts and dates which can rarely be of use to them. The Squire, when he acted as school- master to the children, taught them geography on the principle that Silchester was the centre 78 SQUIRE silchester's whim. of the world — of the universe. Every living creature is to itself more important than all the rest of the world, and the place in which it dwells is the centre of the world ; and this im- perishable selfishness should be utilized and cultivated, so that it should be changed into general beneficence. The man who does best for himself does best for others. The aphorism may be reversed. Unfortunately, people will go abroad to perform charity, when the truest charity would be to do justice at home — to themselves first, and then to their kindred and dependents. Squire Silchester confined his charity within the limits of his own demesne, though doubt- less he would have come down with his thousand if Exeter Cathedral had to be rebuilt. He did not encourage the professional vagrant, who traverses all roads of England, utterly care- less of the parish constable, and who thinks that he has a right to enter the most private part of your garden, and to use bad language SILVIA SILVICULTRIX. 79 if you give him no money. So many people give money to this kind of scoundrel, simply to get rid of him, that he lives excellent well. and ought to be represented in Parliament, The theory is that the House of Commons represents the nation : if so, why has the tramp no I'epresentative ? He is a definite entity in England. He can hardly live, against foreign competition. The Italian organ-grinders and the German bands are sweeping the old- fashioned English beggar off the road. These aliens pervagate the country, and are all the more annoying because the strongest language you can use to them does not in any degree affect them. They are musical missionaries. It is clearly the function of Germany to be the leading state of Europe in one way or another. Silvia Silchester grew up a charming child, notwithstanding ner father's odd notions of education. She never opened a book. She learnt many things which many girls never learn. She learnt from her father, who made 80 SQUIRE SILCHESTEr's WHIM. every lesson a work of art. The Squire, when he came to put his theories into practice, and to teach his children TJi'm zjoce, found it rather hard work. He had to go back to the elements of things, which he had digested and forgotten long ago, and to reproduce them in a poetic and rememberable form. It was a fine mental exercise. The a 6 c of knowledge had to be brought back again in a new shape. The Squire did it uncommonly well, and found that in doing it he learnt more than he had learnt at school. He found, what few people know, that the first principles of knowledge are more difficult than those which succeed them. It puzzled him considerably to show his son and daughter that the three angles of any triangle must always be equal to two right angles. The demonstration was done on the sea-sand with a stick, — like most of the old Greek geometry. When Silvia Silchester passed from babyhood to girlhood — when she reached her teens, and SILVIA SILVICULTRIX. 8 1 had vague vision of that mystical future which haunts all she creatures — she was really worth looking- at. To speak unpoetically, she was a big girl. There was a good deal of her — and it is hard to have too much of a good thing. She was a mere hoyden in those days ; could climK a tree as well as her brother ; had not faded into that delicate young- ladyhood which makes one feel that the pretty little person is too brittle to touch. There's a time when the girl is a romp, a tomboy : well for her if she has open country around her, and kind play- fellows. Silvia lacked neither. She became Sikdcidtrix. You might have deemed her a wood-nymph, a hamadryad. It was a quiet neighbourhood, whither came few strangers ; and the child was well known by everybody ; and so there was no surprise at her being seen at the top of the highest oak in her father's woods. She thought those great trees friendly, and talked to them, and listened to their sayings. Trees talk. Children know their VOL. I. ,6 82 SQUIRE SILCHESTER's WHIM. language better than the grown folk who understand the jargon of the Stock Exchange. Little Silvia gradually began to think. She and her brother knocked about together, of course ; but boys go farther afield now and then, and leave their sisters to their own devices. There were times when Silvester went off for a day's shooting or fishing; then, if Papa was in the library, and Mamma in the still-room, little Silvia was lonely. She used to go out into the woods, with Lion as attend- ant, and think. Her thoughts had no novelty. Every girl has gone through the same process; has tried to find out why she was brought into the world ; has wondered what it was she longed for, and could not get. Silvia was differently situate from all other girls, seeing that for her the art of printing had no existence. Her typography was Nature's handiwork — fern and primrose, moss and anemone. She knew the meaning of these. The beauty of the world around her was reflected in her clear SILVIA SILVICULTRIX. 83 eye ; the music of the woods found echo in her merry voice. The tall folios and massive quartos in the Squire's library were not in- viting in comparison with God's own print. She preferred the fir woods — tall spires of foliage above a carpet of moss. Little Silvia got on excellent well with her brother ; but, being a year of time older than he, she was several years older in development. When she was fourteen, let us say, she thought herself quite a young lady, whereas Silvester was still a boy, with no notions of being " stuck up," and with a tendency to eat bread and cheese with a clasp knife. Brother and sister part company just at this point. The girl is quick ; the boy is slow. The girl has fancies, dreams, visions, — all vague and intangible, but full of a strange enticement. The boy plods quietly along; eats and drinks, and does his lessons ; thinks his sister rather cracked than otherwise. She, in fact, enters the world earlier than he does ; she puts on her butterfly 84 SQUIRE silchester's whim. plumage when he is tramping along through the Latin lanes of Propria qucB maribiis; she often appears in the ballroom,, a vision of beauty, just when he is mildly requested by a mastigophorous head master to take down his pantaloons. But the sexual reflex is reversed in time : the boy becomes a master, and the girl a slave. There are doubtless reasons, psychological and physiological, for these odd contrasts, but nobody seems to have discovered what they are. Silvia Silchester had not many friends of her own sex, since the village did not supply any of the class with whom she could associate. Hence she was somewhat lonely except when in her brother's company. It may be questioned whether a girl thus educated is not more for- tunate in her isolation than if she associated with many others. Silvia lived alone. She thought for herself. She enjoyed the sea-surf and wood-whirl. She became familiar with Nature, her true mother, and learnt something SILVIA SILVICULTRIX. 85 of the mysteries which lie around us always and everywhere. Go into a wood at midday or at midnight : be still, and listen : you will find that there are others there whom you cannot see, and that if the fairies do not show them- selves, it is because they do not like you. Silvia loved the woods and streams. Silvia saw fairies. Silvia knew the voice of the naiad in the brook. Silvia had seen dryads, once or twice. So Silvia was not at all annoyed when on that June day, when the silvan screen was perfect delight, she found herself face to face with a handsome boy who might have been Ganymede. The boy blushed — Silvia did not. They looked into one another's eyes. The boy could not have told the colour of Silvia's five minutes after. " I hope you will forgive me," he said. " Can you tell me the way to Silchester? " " I will show you the way," she replied. " I live at Silchester. Will you come with me ? " 86 SQUIRE silchester's whim. Boy and girl walked together. He was a good-looking young fellow, Silvia thought, but rather shorter than she fancied. What could he want at Silchester? This question was soon answered when he reached the house. He was the housekeeper's nephew. Silvia made up her pretty little mind never again to be too courteous to strangers. At the same time, she held that if she had made a mistake, it was on the right side. Politeness is a power. CHAPTER VII. « SILVESTER. " Silvestrem tenui musam meditaris avena." SILVESTER SILCHESTER turned out a poet; a doom deplorable, but not sur- prising, all things considered. His . father taught him all that he knew in rhythmical form : no wonder the boy imagined rhythm the natural mould of thought. Probably the Squire might have modified his process of education, had he known what would be its result. He knew well enough the fate of poets ; that some blindness has seized, and some madness, and all poverty. It never 88 SQUIRE silchester's avhiai. crossed his mind that his son would turn poet, and attempt to amaze the world. Silvester had no such notion in his head till he reached the period of hobbydehoyhood. Then he began to ask himself many questions, prompted by his introduction to the marvellous land of romance which was thrown open to English intellects by the Elizabethan dramxa. Then it suddenly occurred to him that there was a great brain behind Hamlet, Othello, Rosalind, Portia, Romeo and Juliet ; that these were not real characters, though to him and the general world they were more real than the present occupant of the throne or first minister ; and that one Shakespeare, of whom no man knows much, created these folk, and gave them immortality. So he thought this : "Why should not some one else also create? I am no Shakespeare, but I have some slight idea of men and women. Why should I not describe men and women as Shakespeare did, though with far less power?" SILVESTER. 89 What perplexed our young poet at first was his absolute ig-norance of the art of writing. He made magnificent verses (in his own judgment) as he wandered over the moorland or sailed across the sea ; but when he tried to recall them they were gone as completely as the Sibyl's first ^ix books, or the ten lost tribes of Israel. Still, as he tested his memory, its power increased, and he soon carried about with him a boyish poem, made in tetrastichs, which had grown in his brain day after day. His father had taught him the metre from Gray's "Long Story." " The lady of this legend old, Which in our book-room we have by us, Was, if the actual truth be told. Pretty and pleasant, pert and pious. On Sunday she to church would go. On other days to picnics jaunted ; She wanted something ; did not know What in the world it was she wanted. She was a wicked little witch (Whom long ago one might by law burn) ; Her eyes were bright, her voice was rich, Her bosom carved, her tresses auburn. go SQUIRE silchester's whim. Now on a certain Christmas time, At Silchester was mighty revel, And mummers came with idiot rhyme, And love and punch both played the devil. Entered a mask with mighty beard And trident ; while the fiddles kept tune : Right through the dancing crowd he steer'd, Keeping his character of Neptune. He to the lady bent his knee, ' And first she blush'd, and then grew paler, For no one in the room but she Knew Neptune was a common sailor. It is, of course, extremely sad That girls such fancies are entrapped in ; But this I know, this sailor lad Married my aunt, and died post-captain. He fought his foe, he loved his lass, Construed avio, amas, amavi, And with a seventy-four could pass Right through old Bonyparty's navy." This I think was Silvester's first attempt at rhyme; and when he recited it to his father, he obtained a certain amount of kindness. It was kindness not wholly severed from censure. "Verse of that kind, my dear boy," said John Silchester, " does you credit, for at your SILVESTER. 9 1 age there are few boys who know the difference between verse and prose. You have fluency and ease; don't allow that faculty of rhyming to deafen your ear to the exquisite music which English metres contain; — English, in the hands of a great poet, is capable of music as various as any language of which I have knowledge. I should like you to be a poet, Silvester, but I don't want you to be a poetaster. Milton defines true poetry as ' simple, sensuous, pas- sionate.' Keep those conditions in your mind. They are the keys to the supreme art." " I wish you would explain that, father," said the boy. Father and son had wandered together into a quaint old orchard, where that famous apple, the Devonshire red-streak, had grown from time immemorial. They were ancient trees, bowed earthward by age ; but they still bore ample fruit, and were game to the last. What is thoroughbred endures — whether a horse or a tree, a man or a woman. 92 SQUIRE SILCHESTEr's WHIM. " The most perfect simplicity, Silvester, is the characteristic of the highest poetry. You have, as Coleridge said, the best words in the best order. Never should any sentence be inverted or any word used, for the sake of rhyme or rhythm. The sentences of a great poem should be as easy as those of a familiar letter. Catullus runs as clear as Pliny." " But it is difficult, father," said the boy. " All things worth doing are difficult, and difficulties were made to be overcome. You amuse yourself with difficult rhymes. You are quite right — it will give you command of lan- guage. But a great poet in a great poem will only use rhymes of that character with a definite purpose. Rhyme should have its reason. Rhythm is more important than rhyme, and rhythm requires much study. Chaucer and Shakspeare are its masters. Milton was a pedant in rhythm, for want of ear. Byron, on the other hand, with true rhythmical capacity, sinned from sheer ignorance. He had no lite- SILVESTER. 93 rature. In CJdldc Harold he always bisects his Alexandrines, and never uses the musical pause at the seventh syllable." '* Well, father," said the youngster, who was lying on the grass, and munching a green apple that looked like a spheroid of colic, " I think I almost understand about poetry being simple. What do the other two words mean — sensuous and passionate ?" "Poetry," replied John Silchester to his son, " should appeal to the senses. It should deal with what men see, hear, taste, smell, touch. There is poetry in a daffodil or a glass of wine; there is none in a geometric problem or a syllo- gism. Pure science deals with skeletons : its points have no parts or magnitude; its ropes are inflexibly rigid. Poetry deals with things as they are — with the world as God made it — with flesh and blood, and flower and fruit, and love and hate, and good and evil. Hence must it deal with those things that reach us through the senses." 94 SQUIRE silchester's whim. " I like poetry better than science," said the young rascal In the grass, munching another apple. " But what does the word passionate mean, father ? " " What children like you who write verses cannot by any means understand. We have many passions, of which love is chief; and I doubt not that you will in time know the meaning of that word ; but as yet you have got no farther than to admire that young person behind Dyer's counter who serves you with rhubarb tarts, and is old enough to be your mother." Silvester blushed. Miss Applegate had now and then flirted with the handsome boy, the Squire's son. She was a buxom florid wench, more like Phebe than Rosalind. She meant no harm : it was only the pleasure of talking to a pleasant young gentleman across the counter. " You may make your poetry simple and sensuous," continued the Squire, "and that is all you can do as yet. Passionate you SILVESTER. 95 cannot make it, until you are a man instead of a boy. Of course you may imitate the thoughts of others, but that is sheer waste of time. You may create a sham Juliet, but you will be dressing a doll, — and you are too old to dress dolls. Think in verse as much as you like, but think your own thoughts, and deal with what you see and hear." Such was the advice which John Silchester gave his son when he first took to verse. Silvester pondered over it many days. The lesson was a hard one for a poetic boy, apt to iTiistake fine words for eloquence, apt to reflect the thoughts of others, and imagine them his own. Even men of practised brain find it hard to determine whether an idea is home-born, or has passed through the crucible of memory. The metaphor of a "scolding hinge" occurs in the works of two living poets : did one unconsciously rob the other, or did both borrow from some earlier source ? When writers of the highest art make these mistakes, no wonder 96 SQUIRE silchester's whim. they are made by the heedless boy when he first rambles through the enchanted gardens ot Poesy. In that haunted region he picks asphodel, and thinks it a new flower ; he meets a naiad by the rivulet, unknowing that Hylas did the same when the most famous of frigates was steered , " Phasidos ad fluctus et fines Aeetaeos." All things are new to him, all things strange : how should he guess that the ideas brought to his mind have passed through the boyish brains of innumerable others ? When Silchester had thought over his father's lecture for some days, he talked to Silvia about it. It was a fair spring holiday. Winter had been early defeated by his im- mortal adversary. The larches were a mist of green. The thrush was singing all day long. Brother and sister were going to make a long day of it, down in that wild portion of the demesne v/here the little river is wide enough SILVESTER. 97 for a boat. They were a picture. The girl, short-frocked as yet, though almost beyond the age at which young ladies begin to conceal their ankles, might remind a spectator of the Greek's description — irapdevo^ 6vpeal(f)oiTO^, eprjfxah- (7uvTpo(f)o^ vKr). As she wore green serge, she looked forest-born. The boy, in jacket of the same stuff, with the old-fashioned white collar over his shoulders, and breeches of useful cord, was as lithe and agile as a greyhound. Silvia, it has been said, was a big girl ; but Silvester could lift her over a gate, or across a brook, without an effort. He could jump his own height. He could swarm up a branchless beech-trunk, smooth almost as an Athenian column. He could run and swim and skate to perfection. There was not a weak point in him yet, thanks to his fine constitution and wise training. They got into a boat, and he rowed his sister into the odd little land-locked estuary, a Lilliput reflex of Dartmouth harbour. Rest- - VOL. I. 7 98 SQUIRE silchester's whim. ing on your oars in this pellucid basin among- small hills, you may hear the sea just beyond, but cannot perceive the outlet to it. There the two young people held their confabulation, Silvester having explained to his sister as well as he could his father's lecture. She, fretting the water with her long brown fingers, splashed it in her brother's face, and said, " Pshaw, Silvester, you a poet!" Girls laugh at the ambition of boys, and boys at the vanity of girls ; and it does both good to be laughed at. Yet who would care for a boy without ambition — or a girl without vanity ? " I mean to be a poet, Miss Silvia," said he, *' and to make verse that shall last. Chaucer's is my vein, I think. You are a pert young minx, though you presume so much on having come into the world a little earlier than I. The only difference is that I brought later news from the last world." " O dear ! what dreadful nonsense the boy SILVESTER. 9Q talks ! Go on. I like nonsense on a warm day. I like to be instructed by my younger brother." " You won't be serious. Girls are always giggling. I wanted you to tell me what you think of the three requisites of poetry accord- ing to Milton, — that it should be simple, sen- suous, passionate." " I think you could do all three to perfection. You're a simpleton, you've no sense, and your verses will put everybody in a passion. There, will that do?" " O yes, Miss Silvia, that will do," said Silvester, with a good-humoured laugh. "You can't be serious this morning. You are in love." "I'm not!'''' she exclaimed, with emphasis and indignation. " Yes, you are, — and I know the happy Individual." "Who?" "Yourself" lOO SQUIRE SILCHESTEr's WHIM. Silvia nearly upset the boat in trying to punish her brother with the boathook. He retaliated in verse : — " A little girl escaping from the nursery, And somewhere near her fifteenth anniversary, Despised her dolls, wished to be some one's ' Missus,' And woo'd herself, like our old friend Narcissus. Early at morn, upon her first emergence. Her mirror showed her the most fair of virgents ; At noon she saw a lovely figure shiver. Over the boat's side, on Silchester river ; At night this most conceited little lass Returned to her first love, the looking-glass, Which flattered her, of course, but gave her warning She had been growing stouter since the morning." Silvia's boathook put an end to this mis- chievous rhyme, and Silvester caught a crab. CHAPTER VIII. AN EVENT AT MOUNT ST. NICHOLAS. "And now, all in my own countree, I stood on the firm land." SILVIA and Silvester, growing older, grew also wiser, let us hope : any way, a lustrum passed, and many events occurred, and neither boy nor girl could read or write. They knew many things not generally known by young folk, but they did not know their a b c. All the alphabets of all the ages were utterly despised. The only alphabet they knew was the alphabet of nature. When the girl was twenty and the boy nineteen they had not troubled themselves to open a book. Books, it has been noted, I02 SQUIRE SILCHESTER's WHIM. were not forbidden fruit ; there was free access to an overflowing library; and once or twice the brother and sister had taken counsel together as to whether they should teach themselves to read. Their decision was against it. They were reading the book of the world, whose pages are illuminated differently every hour by the almighty printer. So, although the noble library at Silchester became every day more tempting, and although much fun was made under many circumstances of a young lady and gentleman unable to read or write, they held to their father's opinion ; only Silvester got his father to show him how to form his autograph, in case of any legal document requiring signa- ture, and so learnt nine letters of the English alphabet in the form of Silvester Silchester. It is hard to say whether Silvia or Silvester most perplexed the general folk by their igno- rance of what everybody is supposed to know. AN EVENT AT MOUNT ST. NICHOLAS. IO3 In process of time they made acquaintances who proposed correspondence. At Bath, for example, when Silvia was there for a week or two in the winter with an ancient maiden aunt, she got into several difficulties. Aunt Cornelia was an Inveterate novel reader, and sent her niece to a library In Milsom Street to get some dreadful story of the day. Silvia asked for It. The polite young gentleman behind the counter pointed it out to her. " Excuse me," she said. " Be good enough to take it down for me. I cannot read." Incredulous, he smiled, but did as he was bid. He was however so muddled by her averment that he gave her two volumes, the first and third of one novel, with the second of another sandwiched between them. Aunt Cornelia did not find it out. On another occasion she met a young gentleman of the Captain Absolute type, who fell over head and heels in love with her. He was a Cornish man with Irish blood, on I04 SQUIRE SILCHESTER S WHIM. the mother's side, and his name was Tiger- nach Tregarva. He was about seven feet high, and looked as if he had lately come from Brobdignag. T, T. was a gentleman, though rather a dull one, and he made hot love to our Silvia one night at the Assembly Rooms, when Aunt Cornelia was playing whist. Next morning she got a letter from him, a mad mixture of prose and verse, expressing his belief that she was an angel, and his determination to die that day if he could not be her husband. Silvia called her maid, Dorothy Chalker, to read it to her ; and having heard it read, and laughed over it, made Dorothy reply. Thus ran the maid's answer, verbatim et literatim. "Sir, — My Missus says she isnt a hangle, and thinks you uses opprobriocious language. Likewige if you is such a fule as to dye before my letter reaches you, who is it to be delivered to ? My Miss Sylvia never writes nor reads, which is because she thinks those things befit lawyers and parsons and milliners and such, and she hopes you'll marry a lady of your own sect, and be AN EVENT AT MOUNT ST. NICHOLAS. IO5 happy for -ever more, which comes hopping from your umble servent, " Dorothy Chalker." The brother and sister were both fond of the society of Musical Willie, whom the lapse of years rendered gayer and more musical. There are some men whose happy* destiny it is to laugh through life ; careless fellows, who make fun of their own troubles, realizing the old dramatist's couplet, which I quote, with a difference — " What need of music, comic songs, and sheny, When our own miseries can make us merry 1 " Willie's cheery talk and pleasant songs were peculiarly agreeable to Silvester, himself on the whole more seriously inclined ; and they had many an afternoon together on the sands at Mount St. Nicholas, where the beach is on both sides walled in by tall red cliffs, that seem to shut the outlet of the little village from all the rest of the world. One day they were thus loitering and dis- I06 SQUIRE SILCHESTEr's WHIM. coursing, Willie (who was a Scot, after all) proving ore rotundo that Burns was at least equal to Shakespeare, when they saw a little undecked boat, long and sharp in its build, with a lateen sail such as you see on the Medi- terranean, rapidly approaching the long narrow pier used by the fishermen. "That's a curious craft," said Willie. " Foreign, I suppose," said Silvester. They watched the new arrival with interest. There was only one person on board, a tall black-bearded man, who wore a white shirt and duck trousers, and a broad-brimmed grass hat. He took in the sail, unstepped the mast, tied his boat to the pier, and walked rather slowly to the beech. " A foreign invader," said Willie. " Very like a pirate," quoth Silvester. That boat is an Italian rig, if one may trust the pictures of such things." " I dare say the phaselusyour favourite poet built was just such another." AN EVENT AT MOUNT ST. NICHOLAS. IO7 Meanwhile the new comer was approaching them, and they could see he was a man about forty, built very much on the model of the son of Alkmene, Opaa-vf^e/xvcov, dufidXecov. As he came near they could see a pair of pistols in his leathern belt, and a sharp, long stiletto without a sheath. As Silvester had remarked, he did look slightly piratical. But he raised his hat to them in polite fashion, showing a thick crop of black hair, cut very short, and said, in excellent English, " I beg your pardon, gentlemen, but is this Mount St. Nicholas? " Willie said it was, and asked If he could be of any service to him. " You are very kind," he replied. " I have been away from England almost twenty years, and am come here to look for the only relation I have in the world, so far as I know. His name is Nairn." "Why, it can't be!" exclaimed Musical Willie, in an excited mood. " You're not I08 SQUIRE SILCHESTEr's WHIM. Watty Nugent ! Everybody thought you were dead, years ago. Why in the world did you vanish so suddenly, just as we all thought you were going to make a name in the world ? " "I'll tell all you about it some time or other, uncle. At this present moment I should like something to eat and drink. My provisions got spoilt with salt water in a squall early this morning." "Come along," said Willie. " We'll supply your hunger. The boat will be safe." " I'm not afraid of that," he said. " I've left a tame panther in it that's a great pet of mine, and I don't think anybody will touch it if she shows her teeth. You need not look alarmed : she is chained to the boat, and besides she is as quiet as a spaniel." They climbed the steep hill to the Manor House, where the wanderer was soon hard at work on cold beef and strong ale, both which he seemed to rejoice in. "I cannot understand," said Willie, "why AN EVENT AT MOUNT ST. NICHOLAS. IO9 you left London so suddenly. Do you re- member all about it ? We walked home from some place where we had been supping " " The Cheshire Cheese, wasn't it ? " *' Yes. There were several of us, and we left you at the gateway of Middle Temple Lane. I had to go back to Scotland the next morning. Of course, as you never would write letters, I did not expect to hear from you ; but when I next visited London, you were gone, and had left no trace." *' It was too bad not to tell you, uncle, seeing you were my only near relation ; but I was mad at the moment. You remember — but first let me ask you a question — yet I don't know, I think there's no need." " What is the lad driving at ? " said Willie. " I guess from the general look of your room, uncle, that you're either a bachelor or a widower. Which is it?" "A bachelor, Walter, — one of the jolly bachelors of Moray." no SOUIRE SILCHESTER's WHIM. "Well, uncle, do you remember pretty Jessy Blair of Elgin, the lass with blue eyes and yellow hair, that everybody went mad about?" "I should rather think I did," quoth Willie, for indeed she was the heroine of that sone which went to the tune of Anto?iy Rowley. " What about that light o' love?" *' Why, she made pretence to love me, the little flirt; and when I came away from Elgin she wrote me letters, very nice at first, but colder and colder gradually, and then, the very day you speak of, in answer to a furious letter of mine, I got one from her saying there were better men than I in Elgin." "Just like her," said Willie, laughing. " A born jilt ; — she'd have married the devil, and played tricks on him after." "Well, uncle Willie, you remember that over the whisky punch that night you told me you fancied her, and were going to ask her when you got home. I thought she was safe to have you, and I felt that I could never come AN EVENT AT MOUNT ST. NICHOLAS. I I I near you again afterwards. So off I went, — and have been all over the world since." "And made money, I hope," said Willie, more Scotorum. "Heaps, my dear uncle. There's a chest down in the boat in charge of my panther, Cleopatra, that would astonish a Jew covetous of jewels. Look here." He took from a pouch in his belt a rough diamond about the size of a hen's egg, and a nugget of gold that might weigh a dozen pounds. " A man gave me that nugget in California, because I had nursed him through a fever, and he had more than he could carry away. The diamond I found in Brazil, and had to fight for. A couple of fellows heard I had it, and watched me to a wayside tavern, and attacked me at midnight in my sleep. They didn't count on Cleopatra, who was sleeping under my bed, and who flew upon them furiously. One scoundrel lost half a leg, and the other I had nearly squeezed to a mummy." I I 2 SQUIRE SILCHESTER S WHIM. "You have had some adventures," said Willie. *' Adventures numberless. Why that little boat of mine — the Jessy, I christened her, in honour of you know who, uncle — but she has been more faithful than her godmamma, and has traversed with me a myriad leagues of sea. Didn't I astonish the gondoliers when I ran her into Venice a year ago, and walked up the square of St. Mark with Cleopatra at my heels?" "And how did you get Cleopatra?" asked Willie. " She was given me by a Nubian negro — the tallest and blackest fellow I ever saw. She was a baby then. This man, whose name was Hathor, and who professed to be descended from an ancient Ethiopian god,, had formed a menagerie in a temple attached to one of the pyramids near Gebel-el-Birkel. The people of his tribe fully believed his divine origin, partly because of his colossal stature, and AN EVENT AT MOUNT ST. NICHOLAS. I 1 3 partly by reason of his power over all wild creatures." "You seem to have met with some remark- able people ixer a^viJbova