Read Ebook: Harry Coverdale's Courtship and All That Came of It by Smedley Frank E Frank Edward

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Ebook has 1614 lines and 192070 words, and 33 pages

"Now, Mr. Styles, I'm at your service," remarked Coverdale, addressing his antagonist politely.

"So you mean fighting do you?" inquired Styles, half incredulously.

"I mean to try and give you the thrashing with which you have threatened me," was the reply.

"And if you do, I'll promise never to shoot another rabbit without your permission; but if I'm best man, blest if I don't smash 'em when and where I likes," was the rejoinder.

"That has terminated the case for the defendant, I expect," observed Hazlehurst, sententiously, as, breathless and with bleeding knuckles, his friend seated himself on his extended knee--"he had had nearly enough before, and he has got rather too much now. You hit him an awful crack!"

"It was his own fault," returned Coverdale. "I did not want to hurt the man if he would have fought quietly, and like a civilised Christian, instead of a raging lunatic;--but he's only stunned--see he's reviving already. Confound the fellow, his head is as hard as a cannon-ball, to which fact my knuckles bear witness." So saying, Coverdale rose, and resuming his coat and waistcoat, approached his fallen foe, who, with his head leaning against Markum's shoulder, was staring vacantly at the sky.

"He's as unconscionable as a hinfant, Mr. Coverdale, sir: you've been and knocked his hintellects slap out of him, which only sarves him right, and is what all poachers 'andsomely desarves," remarked the gamekeeper cheerfully.

"I know what will be the medicine to cure him," exclaimed Hazlehurst, producing a pocket-flask, and applying it to the lips of the vanquished Styles. At first the patient seemed inclined to resist; but as soon as he tasted the flavour of the contents of the pocket-pistol, he raised his hand, and pushing aside Hazlehurst'a fingers, drained it to the bottom.

"Gently, my friend," remonstrated the young barrister, "that's Kinahan's best whisky--fortunately I supplied the vacuum created at luncheon with spring water. Ah, I thought as much, that's the true elixir vitae," he continued, as Styles, relinquishing the flask, sat up and began to stare wildly about him.

"Say no more about it, my good friend," returned Coverdale, heartily shaking his proffered hand, "we did not understand each other before, but we do now, and shall get on capitally for the future I don't doubt."

"I shan't disturb your rabbits again, sir," continued the penitent Styles, entirely subdued by Coverdale's hearty manner, "and if the creeturs should do any damage to the crops, why I know a gentleman like you will bear it in mind on the rent-day."

"Certainly," was the eager reply; "my object now is to get up the game, and no tenant who assists me in this will find me a hard landlord."

And so, after an amicable colloquy, they parted the best friends imaginable; Styles observing, as he turned to go, "I did not think there was a man living who could have sewn me up in ten minutes like that; but you are unaccountable quick with your fists, to be sure, Mustur Coverdale."

"Pray Harry, is this to be considered a specimen of your 'quiet manner' with your tenantry?" inquired Hazlehurst dryly, as he bestrode the broad back of his shooting pony.

"And the worst of it is the fellow's right--what a bore life is--confound everything!--" As he gave utterance to this sweeping anathema, Harry Coverdale lifted a shaggy Scotch terrier by the ears out of an easy chair wherein it was reposing, and flinging himself on the seat thus made vacant, waited disconsolately till Hazlehurst should have finished a letter, which, with unwontedly grave brow he was perusing.

Having continued his occupation till his friend's small stock of patience was becoming well-nigh exhausted, Hazlehurst closed the epistle, muttering to himself--"Well! they know best, I suppose--but I don't admire the scheme, all the same--" then, turning towards his companion, he continued aloud--"I beg your pardon, my dear fellow! but the governor's letter contains a budget of family politics, which is, of course, more or less interesting to me, especially as, in the event of certain contingencies, he talks of increasing my allowance, but you're looking sentimental--what's the matter?"

"Oh! nothing," was the reply, "only that fellow Markum has been boring about the rabbits; he says we've worked them quite enough, and that the foxes will be pitching into the pheasants if they can't get plenty of rabbits to eat, and that so much shooting will make the birds wild before the 1st.--I know it all as well as he does--there ought not to be another gun fired on the property till the 1st of September, but then what is a fellow to do with himself? I might go to Paris--but I've been there and done it all--besides I hate their dissipation, it bores me to death; London is empty, and if it wasn't, it's worse than Paris--more smoke and less fun. I'd start to America, and do Niagara, and all the other picturesque dodges, only, if the wind were to turn restive, or anything go wrong in the boiler-bursting line, I might be delayed and miss the first day of partridge shooting, so it would not do to risk it."

"But your father and mother?" urged Coverdale.

"Are more anxious than I am on the subject. Read that, you unbelieving Jew!" So saying, Hazlehurst turned down a portion of his letter, and handed it to Coverdale; it ran thus--"Mind you bring your friend with you; independently of our desire to become acquainted with one who has shown you such unvarying kindness, Mr. Coverdale is just the person to make up the party."

"Yes, they're very kind," began Coverdale, returning the letter, "very kind, but--"

"But what, man," rejoined Hazlehurst quickly, "we want you to come to us; you have not only no other engagement, but actually don't know what to do with yourself, and yet you hesitate. However, to come to the point at once, I ask you plainly, and expect a plain answer--where's the hitch?"

"Well done, most learned counsel, that is the way to browbeat a witness, and no mistake," replied Coverdale, laughing at his friend's vehemence; "however, I won't provoke any farther display of your forensic talents by attempting to prevaricate. The fact is, I know you've a bevy of sisters, she cousins, and what not, very charming girls, I dare say; but you see I'm not fit for women's society, and that's the truth of it--I've chosen my line--I know what suits me best--and I dare say I shall live and die a bachelor, as the old Admiral did before me. I know what women are, and what they expect of one; if a fellow happens to be a little bit rough and ready, they call him a bear, and vow he's got no soul; 'gad, that's what the Turks say of them, by-the-bye!--Poetical justice; eh?"

"My dear boy, you'll excuse my saying so, but you really are talking great nonsense," interrupted Hazlehurst; "You're a thorough gentleman in mind, manners, and appearance, if I know the meaning of the term, and neither my sisters, nor my cousin , have such bad taste as to prefer a finical fop to a fine manly fellow like yourself--no, they're more likely to fall into the other extreme."

"And that would be the worst of the two by long odds," exclaimed Harry aghast; "only fancy me with a wife in the shooting-season--bothering me to stay at home with her, or to drive her out in a four-wheeled arm-chair with a pair of little hopping rats of ponies, that the best whip in the three kingdoms could not screw above six miles an hour out of, if he were to flog their hides off; or, worse still, to take me boxed up in a close carriage to call upon somebody's grandmother, and I breaking my heart all the time to be blazing away at the partridges. I know what it is--I was staying down in Leicestershire, before I went abroad, with poor Phil Anderton, as stanch a sportsman, and as thoroughly good a fellow, as ever drew trigger, before he married Lady Mirvinia Bluebas. Well, they hadn't been coupled six months before she'd got him so tight in hand that he daren't smoke a cigar without a special licence. The first season, she let him shoot Wednesdays and Fridays, and hunt Thursdays and Saturdays. The next year she made him sell off his guns, dogs, and horses, and carried him over to the Continent. What was the result?--why, the poor fellow became so bored and miserable, that he took to gambling, lost every farthing he had in the world at roulette, and--didn't blow his brains out; so my lady has the pleasure of keeping him, and living herself, upon five hundred a-year pin-money."

"Verdict, served her right"--observed Hazlehurst judicially; "but you forget, my dear boy, that Anderton, though a good fellow enough in his way, was made of such yielding materials, that anybody could do what they liked with him--rather soft here," he continued, tapping his forehead; "now you have got sterner stuff in you, and if a woman were to try it on with you in that style, it strikes me she'd find her master."

"I have heard of such a thing as moral force," suggested Hazlehurst ironically.

"That's one's only chance," returned Coverdale, "though it is one that, to speak seriously and sensibly, I've tolerably strong faith in. A fellow must be wanting in manliness of character, if he cannot contrive to manage a woman by moral force, as you call it; there's a quiet way of doing that as well as everything else, only it's such a confoundedly slow process."

"No making 'em to come to the point, eh?" rejoined Hazlehurst; "Well, I have my own ideas about it; how they would work, remains to be proved; but as you've such splendid theories on the subject, don't pretend you're unfitted for woman's society. Why, man, you're equal to a whole seminary of young ladies--your 'quiet manner' would prove as irresistible with them as it did with the redoubtable Mr. Styles."

"And how do you stand affected towards the proposed alliance?" inquired Coverdale, lifting the Skye terrier into his lap by the nape of its neck, and then curling it up like a fried whiting.

"Not over favourably," returned Hazlehurst, "which, by the way, is very disinterested of me; for if the affair comes off, and the Governor buys his farm back again--which of course is what he is looking to--he promises to settle the residue of the aunt's legacy upon me, by which I should be some ?200 a-year the better; but it would not be a match to please me. I'm very fond of Alice; she is a dear good girl as ever lived, and I don't admire the cotton spinner: in the first place, he's nearly, or quite forty, while she was nineteen last term; in the second place, he's a slow coach, good-natured enough, and all that, but nothing in him."

"No soul"--suggested Harry.

"Not enough to animate a kitten, I should imagine," was the reply;--"not that the man's a fool--indeed, in his own line he is said to be clever. He invented some dodge to simplify his machinery, by which he nearly doubled his fortune."

"To come to the point, however," continued Hazlehurst--"I want you to see the man, and try and find out what he's made of."

"I wish you would try and be serious for five minutes," returned Hazlehurst testily; "nothing is more provoking than small attempts at wit, when one wants a man to give his attention sensibly to that which one is saying."

"I stand, or more properly sit, corrected: so continue, most sapient and surly brother!"--was the mocking answer.

Hazlehurst tried to look angry and dignified, but a glance at his friend's handsome, merry, and, withal, slightly impudent face, disarmed his wrath, and muttering--"Confound you for a stupid, provoking, old humbug"--he burst into a fit of laughter. As soon as he had recovered his gravity, he resumed: "As I said before, I want you to come and make your observations on the cotton spinner, and if your opinion agrees with mine, you must back me up in making a serious remonstrance with the Governor. I know the old gentleman well, and am sure he'll think twice as much of what I say when he finds that you, a man of the world and a large landed proprietor look upon the matter in the same light. And now you know my reasons, what do you say?"

"Say! what can I say but that I--ahem!--respect the sacred call of friendship, and am prepared to sacrifice myself upon its altar: that's the correct phraseology, isn't it? I tell you what, though," continued Harry gravely, "I make one condition, without which I don't stir a peg: I'm at your service and that of the cotton spinner, as much as you please; but beyond the requirements of society, I'm not to be expected to concern myself about the women--I'm not to be forced into t?te-a-t?te drives in pony-chaises, or set to turn over music-books at the piano--I know what all that sort of thing leads to well: is it a bargain?"

"Of course it is," returned Hazlehurst eagerly; "come to please me, and I leave you to please yourself when you get there."

"Then, as Sam Weller says, 'You may take down the bill, for I'm let to a single gentleman,'" was Coverdale's reply--and so the affair was settled.

HAZLEHURST Grange was a picturesque old mansion, modernised out of all resemblance to its moated namesake which Tennyson has immortalised, by the addition of gay flower-beds, closely-shaven lawns, judiciously-planted shrubberies, and other appliances of landscape gardening. It was situated about eighteen miles from Coverdale Park, a distance which Harry's trotting mare, who had grown plump and saucy upon rest and good keep, accomplished, to her owner's intense satisfaction, in less than five minutes over the hour and a-half.

"Pretty fair travelling that, eh, Master Arthur," he observed, replacing his watch in his waistcoat pocket, "and what I particularly like about it is, that the mare did it all willingly and of her own accord, took well to collar at starting, and kept it up steadily, and in a business-like manner, till her work was done."

"In fact, behaved as utterly unlike a female throughout the whole affair, as if she had belonged to the nobler sex," returned Hazlehurst, sarcastically.

"Muslin, by all that's flimsy, frivolous, and feminine!" exclaimed Harry, aghast: "I say, Arthur, can't we turn off somewhere?"

"My cousin, Kate Marsden, my sister Alice, and a gent, name unknown," observed Hazlehurst, as his eyes fell upon the trio. "Why, surely it is--no, it can't be--yes it is, Horace D'Almayne."

"Allowing, merely for the sake of argument, that it is the individual you mention, who may he happen to be?" inquired Harry, taking up the whip which had hitherto reposed innocuously between them, and performing rash feats with it over the ears of "My old Aunt Sally"--.

"My dear fellow, you don't mean to say that you never heard of him? Not to know Horace D'Almayne argues yourself unknown; why, man, he is a noted wit, a successful poet, the greatest dandy, and the most incorrigible male flirt about town: knows everybody, has been everywhere, and done everything."

"What is he like across a stiff line of country, and how many brace can he bag to his own gun?" inquired Harry drily.

"Not knowing can't say," was the rejoinder, "but that's not at all in his way; he affects, if it is affectation, the man of sentiment; however, just now he is believed in to the fullest extent, and considered a regular lion."

"A regular tiger, I should have fancied rather," was the cynical reply. "Why, the brute actually wears moustaches."

"He has served in the Austrian army, and sports the mouse-tails on the strength of his military pretensions," was the reply.

After a minute's pause, Coverdale observed, inquiringly, "I suppose we must needs pull up and do the civil by these good people."

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