Part 10 (1/2)
Nothing especially worthy of mention happened on that evening, nor on the next day, nor for many days. I hunted a little, and shot a great deal more, and spent many hours in the library. The weather improved in the first week of December; it was rather warmer, and the scent lay very well. I gave myself up to the pleasant country life, and enjoyed the society of my host, without much thought of the present or care for the future. Hermione had grown, since I had seen her, from a grave and rather silent girl of seventeen to a somewhat less reserved young woman of twenty, always beautiful, but apparently not much changed. Her mother had taken her out in London during the previous season, and there was occasionally some talk about London and society, in which the young girl did not appear to take very much interest. With this exception the people and things at Carvel Place were the same as I had always known them. I was treated as one of the household, and was allowed to go my own ways without question or interference. Of course, I had to answer many questions about my wanderings and my doings in the last years, but I am used to that and do not mind it.
All this sounds as though I were going to give you some quiet chronicle of English country life, as if I were about to begin a report of household doings: how Mrs. Carvel and Hermione went to church on Sunday; how the Rev. Trumpington Soulsby used to stroll back with them across the park on fine days, and how he and Miss Dabstreak raved over the joyousness of a certain majolica plate; how the curate gently reproved, yet half indulged, Chrysophrasia's erratic religionism; how Mrs. Carvel distributed blankets to the old men and red cloaks to the old women; how the deerhound followed Hermione like Mary's little lamb, and how the worthy keeper, James Grubb, did not quite catch the wicked William Saltmarsh in the act of setting a beautiful new bra.s.s wire snare at a particular spot in the quickset hedge between the park and the twelve-acre field, but was confident he would catch him the next time he tried it, how Moses Skingle, the s.e.xton, fell out with Mr. Speller, the superannuated village schoolmaster, because the juvenile Spellers would not refrain from the preparation of luscious mud pies upon the newly made grave of the late Peter Sullins, farmer, whose promising heir had not yet recovered sufficiently from the dissipation attending the funeral to erect a monument to his uncle; and so on and so forth, cackling through a volume or two of village chronicle, ”and so home to bed.”
I do not care a straw for the ducks in the horse-pond, nor for the naughty boy who throws stones at them, robs bird's-nests, and sets snares for hares under the wire fence of Carvel Park. I blush to say I have done most things of that kind myself, in one part of the world or in another, and they no longer have any sort of interest for me. No, my dear friend, the world is not yet turned into a farm-yard; there are other things to tell of besides the mud pies of the Speller children and the marks of little Billy Saltmarsh's hob-nailed shoes in the gra.s.s where he set the snare. The Turks say that a fool has three points in common with an a.s.s,--he eats, he drinks, and he brays at other a.s.ses. I must fain eat and drink; let me at least refrain from braying.
It is not every one who cares for the beauty of nature as reflected in a horse-pond, or for the conversations of a cla.s.s of people who have not more than seven or eight hundred words in their language, and with whom every word does not by any means correspond with an idea; we cannot all be farmer's lads, nor, if we were, could each of us find a Wordsworth to describe feelings we should certainly not possess.
I had been nearly a month at Carvel Place, and Christmas was approaching. We sat one afternoon in the drawing-room, drinking tea.
John Carvel was turning over the leaves of a rare book he had just received, before transferring it to its place in the library. His heavy brows were contracted, and his large, clean hands touched the pages lovingly. Mrs. Carvel was installed in her favorite upright chair near an enormous student-lamp that had a pink shade, and her fingers were busy with some sort of needle-work. She, too, was silent, and her gentle face was bent over her hand. I can remember exactly how she always looks when she is working, and how her soft brown hair, that is just turning a little gray at the temples, waves above her forehead. Chrysophrasia Dabstreak lay languidly extended upon a couch, her thin hands clasped together in a studied att.i.tude. She was bemoaning the evils of civilization, and no one was listening to her, for Hermione and I were engaged in putting a new silver collar round the neck of Fang; the great hound sat up patiently between us, yawning prodigiously from time to time, for the operation was tedious, and the patent lock of the collar would not fasten.
”I was just going to say it was time the letters came,” said Mrs.
Carvel, as the door opened and a servant entered with the post-bag. The master of the house unlocked the leathern case, and distributed the contents. We each received our share, and without ceremony opened our letters. There was a short silence while we were all reading.
”Macaulay has got his leave,” said Mrs. Carvel, joyfully. ”Is not that delightful! And he is going to bring--wait a minute--I cannot make out the name--let me get nearer to the light, dear--John, look here, is it not Paul Patoff? Look, dear!”
John looked. ”It is certainly Paul Patoff,” he said quietly. ”I told Macaulay to bring him.”
”Gracious!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Hermione.
”How extremely interesting!” said Miss Chrysophrasia. ”I adore Russians!
They have such a joyous savor of the wild, free steppes!”
”You have exactly described the Russian of the steppes, Miss Dabstreak,”
I remarked. ”His savor is so wild that it is perceptible at a great distance. But Patoff is not at all a bad fellow. I met him in Teheran last year. He had a trick of beating his servants which excited the wildest admiration among the Persians. The Shah decorated him before he left.”
”Do you know him?” asked John Carvel quickly, as he caught my last words.
”Yes. I was just telling Miss Dabstreak that I met Paul Patoff last year. He was at the Russian legation in Teheran.” John showed do surprise, and relapsed into silence.
”He and Macaulay are both in Paris,” said Mrs. Carvel, ”and I suppose Macaulay has made up his mind that we must know his cousin.”
”Is not Professor Cutter coming, too, mamma?” asked Hermione. ”I heard papa say so the other day.”
”Oh, dear, yes!” exclaimed Chrysophrasia, wearily. ”Professor Cutter is coming, with his nasty science, and his lenses, and his mathematics. Of course he will wear those vivid green spectacles morning, noon, and night,--such a dreadfully offensive color.”
”Yes,” said John, gazing down at his neat shoes, as he stood rubbing his broad hands slowly together before the fire, ”Cutter is coming, too.
What a queer party we shall be at Christmas.”
And when Christmas came, we were a very queer party indeed.
At the prospect of seeing united, under an English roof, an English family, consisting of a great manufacturer,--at the same time a thorough-going country gentleman of old descent,--his wife, his beautiful daughter, and his aesthetic sister-in-law, having with them as guests the son of the master of the house, being a young English diplomatist; an English professor, who had given up his professors.h.i.+p to devote himself to the study of diseases of the mind; a Russian secretary of the emba.s.sy, who had seen the world, and was thirty years old; and, lastly, your humble slave of the pen, being an American,--at the prospect of such a heterogeneous a.s.sembly of men and women, you will suppose, my dear lady, that I am about to embark upon the cerulean waters of a potentially platonic republic, humbly steering my craft by the charts of a recent voyager, who, after making a n.o.ble but ineffectual attempt to discover the Isles of the Blessed, appears to have stumbled into the drawing-rooms of the d.a.m.ned.
I am not going to do anything of the kind. My story is written for the sole purpose of amusing you, and as a form of diversion for your leisure moments I would select neither the Wordsworthian pastoral, nor the platonic doctrine of Ideas. Mary Carvel would give her vote for the Dalesman, and Chrysophrasia for Plato, but I have not consulted them; and if I do not consult you, it is because I think I understand your tastes. You will, moreover, readily understand that in telling this tale I sometimes speak of things I did not actually see, because I know the people concerned very well, and some of them told me at the time, and have told me since, what they felt and thought about the things they did and saw done. For myself, I am the man you have long known, Paul Griggs, the American; a man of many acquaintances and of few friends, who has seen the world, and is forty-three years of age, ugly and tough, not so poor as I have been, not so good as I might be, melancholic by temperament, and a little sour by force of circ.u.mstances.
VII.
It chanced, one evening, that I was walking alone through the park. I had been on foot to the village to send a telegram, which I had not cared to trust to a servant. The weather had suddenly cleared, and there had been a sharp frost in the morning; towards midday it had thawed a little, but by the time it was dark everything was frozen hard again.