KING PEPIN AND SWEET CLIVE.
Upon arriving at the middle of the Close the Dean stopped. He had been walking briskly, his chin from very custom a little tilted, but his eyes beaming with condescension and general good-will, while an indulgent smile playing about the lower part of his face relieved for the time its ma.s.sive character. His walking-stick was swinging to and fro in a loose grasp, his feet trod the pavement of the precincts with the step of an owner, he felt the warmth of the sun, the balminess of the spring air dimly, and somewhere at the back of his mind he was conscious of a vacant bishopric, and of his being the husband of one wife. In fine, he presented the appearance of a contented, placid, unruffled dignitary, until he reached the middle of the Close.
But there, alas! the ferule of his stick came to the ground with a mighty thud; the sweetness and light faded from his eyes as they rested upon Mr. Swainson"s plot; the condescension and good-will became conspicuous only by their absence. The Dean was undisguisedly angry; he disliked opposition as much as lesser men, and met with it more rarely. For Bicester is old-fashioned, and loves the Church and State, but especially the former, and looks up to princ.i.p.alities and powers, and even now execrates the memory of a recreant Bicestrian, otherwise reputable, on account of a terrible mistake he made. It was at a public dinner. "I remember," said this misguided man, "going in my young days to the old and beautiful cathedral of this city. (Great applause.) I was only a child then, and my head hardly reached above the top of the seat, but I remember I thought the Dean the greatest of living men. (Whirlwinds of applause.) Well (smiling) perhaps I don"t think quite that now." (Dead silence.) And so dull at bottom may even a man be whose name is not unknown in half the capitals of Europe, that this degenerate fellow never could guess why the friends of his youth from that moment turned their backs upon him.
Such is the faith of Bicester, but even in Bicester there are heretics. To say that the Dean rarely met with opposition, is to say that he rarely met with Mr. Swainson, and that he seldom saw Mr.
Swainson"s plot. As a rule, when he crossed the Close he averted his eyes by a happy impulse of custom, for he did not like Mr. Swainson, and as for the latter"s plot, it was _anathema maranatha_ to him. The Dean was tall, Mr. Swainson was taller; the Dean was stubborn, Mr.
Swainson was obstinate; so there arose between them the antagonism that is born of similarity. On the other hand the Dean was stout and Mr. Swainson a scarecrow; the Dean was comely and clerical, but not over-rich, Mr. Swainson was pallid, lantern-jawed, wealthy, and a lawyer, and hence the dislike born of difference. Moreover, years ago Mr. Swainson had been Mayor of Bicester, when there was a little dispute between the Chapter and the Bishop, and he showed so much energy upon the one side as to earn the nickname of the "Mayor of the Palace." Finally Mr. Swainson delighted in opposition as a cat in milk, and cared to have a good reason for his antagonism no more than puss in the dairy about a sixty years" t.i.tle to the cream-pan.
But a sixty years" t.i.tle to his plot was the very thing which Mr.
Swainson did claim to have. Exactly opposite his house--his father"s and grandfather"s house, too--in which, said his enemies, they had lived and grown fat upon cathedral patronage, lay this debatable land.
His front windows commanded it, and on such a morning as this he loved to stand upon his doorstep and gaze at it with the air of a dog watching the spot where his bone is buried. But if Mr. Swainson was right, that was just what was not buried there; there were no bones there. True, the smoothly shorn surface of the little patch was divided from the green turf around the cathedral only by a slight iron railing, but, said Mr. Swainson, ponderously seizing upon his opponent"s weapon and using it with telling effect, it was of another sort altogether: of a very different nature indeed. It had never been consecrated, and close as it was to the sacred pile, being in fact separated from it on two sides but by a yard of sunk fence, it did not belong to it, it was not of it, quoth he; it was private property, the property of Erasmus John Swainson, and the appanage of his substantial red-brick house just across the Close.
And no one could refute him, though several tried their best, to his huge delight. It cannot now be exactly computed by how many years the discovery of his rights prolonged his life--not certainly by some. His liver demanded activity, namely, a quarrel, and what a coil this was!
If he had been given the choice of opponents, he would probably have preferred the Dean and Chapter, they were so substantial, wealthy, and all but formidable. And such a thorn in the side of those comfortable personages as these rights of his were like to be he could hardly have imagined in his most sanguine dreams, or hoped for in his happiest moments.
It was great fun stating his claim, flouting it in their faces, displaying it through the city, brandishing it in season and out of season; but when it came to making a hole in the smooth turf hitherto so sacred, and setting up an unsightly post, and affixing to it a board with "Trespa.s.sers will be prosecuted. E. J. Swainson," the fun became furious. So did the Dean, so did the Chapter, so did every sidesman and verger. Bicester was torn in pieces by the contending parties, but Mr. Swainson was firm. The only concession that could be wrung from him was the removal of the obnoxious board. Instead of it he placed a neat iron railing round his property, enclosing just thirty feet by fifteen. Such was the _status in quo_ on this morning, and with it the Dean had for some time been obliged to rest content.
And yet, sooth to say, the greatest pleasure of the very reverend gentleman"s life was gone with this accession to the roundness and fulness of Mr. Swainson"s. No more with the thorough satisfaction of hitherto could he conduct the American traveller through the ancient crypt, or dilate upon the beauty of the quaint gargoyles to the Marquis of Bicester"s visitors. No; indeed that railed-in spot was a plague-spot to him, ever itching, an eyesore even when invisible, a thing to be evaded and dodged and given the slip, as a Dean who is a Dean should scorn to evade anything mortal. He winced at the mere thought that the inquisitive sight-seer might touch upon it might, probe the matter with questions. He hurried him past it with averted finger and voluble tongue, nor recovered his air of kindly condescension, or polished ease (as the case might be), until he was safe within his own hall. Only in moments of forgetfulness could the Dean now walk in his own Close of Bicester with the easy grace of old times.
But on this particular morning the sunshine was so pleasant, the wind so balmy, that he walked halfway across the Close as if the river of Lethe flowed fathoms deep over Mr. Swainson"s plot; then it chanced that his eyes in a heedless moment rested upon it; and he saw that a man was at work in the tiny enclosure, and he paused. The Dean knew Mr. Swainson by this time, and did not trust him. What was this? By the man"s side lay a small heap of grayish-white things, and he was holding a short-handled mallet, and was using it deftly to drive one of the grayish-white things into the ground. From him the Dean"s eyes travelled to a couple of parti-colored sticks, one at each end of the plot. What was this? A horror so terrible that the Dean stood still, and that remarkable change came over him which we have described.
Great men rise to the occasion. It was only a moment he thus stood and looked. Then he turned and walked rapidly back to a house he had just pa.s.sed. A tall thin man was standing upon the steps, with the ghost of a smile upon his face. For a moment the Dean could only stammer. It was such a dreadful outrage.
"Is that," he said at last, "is that there, sir, being done by your authority?" With a shaking finger he pointed to Mr. Swainson"s plot.
The tall man in a leisurely manner settled a pair of eyegla.s.ses upon his nose and looked in the direction indicated. "Ah, I see what you mean," he said at last with delicious coolness. "Certainly, Mr. Dean, certainly!"
"Are you aware, sir, what it is?" gasped the clergyman; "it is sacrilege!"
"Pooh, nothing of the kind, I a.s.sure you, my dear sir. It"s croquet!"
The tone was one of explanation, and there was such an air of frankness, of putting an end to an unfounded error, that the veins upon the Dean"s temples swelled and his face grew, if possible, redder than before.
"I won"t stay to bandy words with you----"
"Bandy!" cried the tall man, intensely amused. "Ha, ha, ha! you thought it was hocky! Bandy! Oh, no, you play it with hoops and a mallet. Drive the b.a.l.l.s through--so!"
And to the intense delight of the Close people, nine-tenths of whom were at their windows, Mr. Swainson executed an ungainly kind of gambade upon the steps. "Disgusting," the Dean called it afterwards, when talking to sympathetic ears. Now he merely put it away from him with a wave of the hand.
"I will not discuss it now, Mr. Swainson. If your own feelings of decency and of what is right and proper do not forbid this--this ribald profanity--I can call it nothing else, sir--I have but one word to add. The Chapter shall prevent it."
"The Chapter!" replied the other in a tone of singular contempt, which changed to savageness as he continued, "You are well read in history, Mr. Dean, they tell me. Doubtless you remember what happened when the puissant king Canute bade the tide come no further. I am the tide, and you and the Chapter sit in the chair of Canute."
The Dean, it must be confessed, was a little taken aback by this terrible defiance. He was amazed. The two glared at one another, and the clergyman was the first to give way; baffled and disconcerted, yet still swelling with rage, he strode towards the deanery. His antagonist followed him with his eyes, then looked more airily than ever at his plot and the progress being made there, considered the weather with his chin at the deca.n.a.l angle, and with a flirt of his long coat-tails went into the house, a happy man and the owner of a vastly improved appet.i.te.
But the Dean had more to go through yet. At the door of his garden he ran in his haste against some one coming out. Ordinarily, great man as he was, he was also a gentleman. But this was too much. That, when the father had insulted him, the son should almost prostrate him on his own threshold, was intolerable--at any rate at a moment when he was smarting with the sense of unacknowledged defeat.
"Good-morning, Mr. Dean," said the young fellow, raising his hat with an evident desire to please that was the very antipodes of his sire"s manner--only the Dean was in no mood to discriminate--"I have just been having a very pleasant game of croquet."
It is greatly to be regretted, but here a short hiatus in the narrative occurs. The minor canons, than whom no men are more wanting in reverence, say that the Dean"s answer consisted of two words, one of them very pithy, very full of meaning, but in the mouth of a Dean, however choleric, impossible--perfectly impossible. Accounting this as a gloss, and the original reading not being forthcoming, we are driven to conjecture that the Dean"s answer expressed mild disapprobation of the game of croquet. Certain it is that young Swainson, surprised doubtless at so novel and original a sentiment, only said,
"I beg your pardon."
"Hem! I mean to say that I do not approve of this. I will come to the point. I must ask you to discontinue your visits at my house." The young man stared as if he thought the excited divine had gone mad; the Deanery was almost a home to him. "Your father," the Dean went on more coherently, "has taken a step so unseemly, so--so indecent, has used language so insulting to me, sir, that I cannot, at any rate at present, receive you here."
Young Swainson was a gentleman, and moreover, for a very good reason hereinafter appearing, the Dean failed to anger him. He raised his hat as respectfully as before, bowed slightly in token of acquiescence, and went on his way sorrowfully.
He had a singularly pleasant smile, this young gentleman, though this was not the time for displaying it. Mrs. Dean had once p.r.o.nounced him a pippin grafted on a crab-stock, and thereafter in certain circles he was known as King Pepin. He was tall and straight and open-eyed, with faults enough, but of a generous youthful kind, easily overlooked and more easily forgiven. Doubtless Mr. Swainson would have had his son more practical, cool-headed, and precise; but the shoot did not grow in the same way as the parent tree. Old Swainson would not have been happy without an enemy, nor young Swainson as happy with one; and if, as the former often said, the latter"s worst enemy was himself, he was likely to have a tolerably prosperous life.
In a s.p.a.ce of time inconceivably small the doings of the grim old lawyer and the Dean"s remonstrance were all over Bicester. Nay, fast as the stone had rolled, it had gathered moss. It was gravely a.s.serted by people who rapidly grew to be eyewitnesses, that Mr. Swainson had danced a hornpipe in the middle of his plot, snapping his fingers at the Dean the while the latter prodded him as well as he could over the railings with his umbrella; and that only the arrival of Mr.
Swainson"s son put an end to this disgraceful exhibition.
Neither side wasted time. The Dean, the Canon in residence, and the Praecentor, an active young fellow, consulted their legal adviser, and talked largely of ejectment, t.i.tle, and seisin. Mr. Swainson, having nine points of the law in his favor, and as well acquainted with the tenth as his opponents" legal adviser, devoted himself to the lighter pursuit of the mallet and hoop. In a state of felicity undreamt of before, he played, or affected to play, croquet, his right hand against his left, the former giving the latter two hoops and a cage.
He played with a cage and a bell; it was more cheerful, not to say noisy.
Of course all Bicester found occasion to pa.s.s through the Close and see this great sight, while every window in the precincts was raised, that the denizens thereof might hear the tap, tap of the sacrilegious mallet. The Cathedral lawyer, urged to take some step, and well knowing the strength of the enemy"s position, was fairly nonplussed.
But while he pondered, with a certain grim amus.e.m.e.nt, over Mr.
Swainson"s crotchet, which did not present itself to his legal mind in so dreadful a light as it did to the mind clerical, some unknown person took action, and made it war to the knife.
"Who did it?" Bicester asked loudly when it awoke one morning, to find Mr. Swainson in a state of mind which seemed imperatively to call for a padded room and a strait waistcoat. During the night some one had thrown down the iron railing, taken up and broken his hoops, crushed his bell, and snapped his pegs; all this in the neatest possible manner, and with no damage to the turf. War to the knife indeed! Mr.
Swainson, like the famous Widdrington, would have fought upon his stumps on such a provocation.
He expressed his opinion very hotly that this was the work of "that arrogant priest," and he should smart for it. A clergyman in this kind of context becomes a priest. This is common knowledge.
The Dean said, if hints were to go for anything, that it was a more or less direct interposition of Providence.
Young Swainson said nothing.
The vergers followed his example, but smiled a good deal.
The Dean"s lawyer said it was a very foolish act, whoever did it.
Mrs. Dean said she should like to give the man who did it five shillings. Perhaps her inclination mastered her.
The Dean"s daughter sighed.
And Bicester said everything except what young Swainson said.
I have not mentioned the Dean"s daughter before. It is the popular belief that she was christened Sweet Clive Buxton, and if people are mistaken in this, and the name "Sweet" does not appear upon the highly favored register, what of that? It is but one proof the more of the utter and tremendous want of foresight of G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers.
They send the future lounger in St. James"s into the world handicapped with the name of Joseph or Zachary, and dub the country curate Tom or Jerry. No matter; Clive Buxton, whatever her name, could be nothing but sweet. She was not tall nor yet short; she was just as tall and just as short as she should have been, with a well-rounded figure and grave carriage of the head. Her hair was wavy and brown, and sometimes it strayed over a white brow, on which a frown was so great a stranger that its right of entry was barred by the Statute of Limitations.
There were a few freckles, etherealized dimples, about her well-shaped nose. But these charms grew upon one gradually; at first her suitors were only conscious of her great gray wide-open eyes, so kind and frank and trustful, and so wise withal, that they filled every young man upon whom she turned them with a certainty of her purity and goodness and lovableness, and sent him away with a frantic desire to make her his wife without loss of time. With all this, she overflowed with fun and happiness--except when she sighed--and she was just nineteen. Such was Sweet Clive Buxton then. If her picture were painted to-day, there would be this difference: she is older and more beautiful.
To return to our plot. Bicester watched with bated breath to see what Mr. Swainson would do. No culprit was forthcoming, and it seemed as if the day was going against him. He made no sign; only the broken hoops, the cage and battered bell, so lately the instruments and insignia of triumph, were cleared away and, at the ex-mayor"s strenuous request, taken in charge by the police. Even the iron railing was removed. The excitement in the Close rose high. Once more the Cathedral vicinage was undefined by lay appropriation, but the Dean knew Mr. Swainson too well to rejoice. The ground was cleared, it is true, but only, as he well foresaw, that it might be used for some mysterious operations, of which the end and aim only--his own annoyance--were clear to him, and not the means. What would Mr. Swainson do?
The strange unnatural calm lasted several days. The Cathedral dignitaries moved about in fear and trembling. At length one night the dwellers in the Close were aroused by a peculiar hammering. It was frequent, deep, and ominous, and came from the direction of Mr.
Swainson"s plot. To the nervous it seemed as the knocking of nails into an untimely coffin; to the guilty--and this was very near the Cathedral--like the noise of a rising scaffold; to the brave and those with clear consciences, such as Clive Buxton, it more nearly resembled the knocking a h.o.a.rding together. And indeed that was the very thing it was, and around Mr. Swainson"s plot.
But what a h.o.a.rding! When the light of day discovered it to people"s eyes, the Dean"s fearful antic.i.p.ations seemed slight to him, as the boy"s vision who has dreamed he is about to be flogged in jail, and awakes to find his father standing over him with a strap. It was so unsightly, so gaunt, so unpainted, so terrible; the very stones of the Cathedral seemed to blush a deeper red at discovering it, and the oldest houses to turn a darker purple. Had the Dean possessed the hundred tongues of Fame (which in Bicester possessed many more) and the five hundred fingers of Briareus he could not hope to prevent the Marquis"s visitors asking questions about _that_, or to divert the attention of the least curious American. He recognized the truth at a glance, and formed his plan. Many generals have formed it before; it was--retreat. He sent out his butler to borrow a continental Bradshaw from the club, and shut himself up in his study. The truly great mind is never overwhelmed.