LIFE IN NEW FOREST.

Mataura Ensign, Volume 6, Issue 309, 30 November 1883, Page 5

LIFE IN NEW FOREST.

■ \ Chapter XXIX. — Continued. J • No, sir, mj «^n?g*y is more tenacious than that of with. "B^, Colonel CJajji^lS sir, upon ithat fatal mormtig^i^.re&onstrated iwith by_^the {Two — ab, yes, the two executor^ of: the. wiim-uporiC his ■ rashness in .riding. for,th, ,tp. face; those to... say; those incarnate '4^vils; : sir. : *\ Are you fools -enough;" he, replied, "to think thdf fay fellbvis ! would hurt mcl Give me a tiding rda!d^ with platers, for I shall' : . thrash them j before I let'them coma backi". .ijNow isn't .every- word of jth v true- ?' ' ;' Vf<>a, »\> ost every word of it/ replie ' Hnfu.s now growing excited. „ ■' Well, fcir, hie took his favorite half-br!ed-^for he understood'eross-breeding toorou'jhly — and be- rode out at the • eifle-g . te, where the ih.eap of sand i was y /f'poming back/ he cried to the English sentry, " Coming ba,ck in half an hoar, with air niy scstops atfon£ with' ,me. Keep the. poppers ; ready*" And .w ith that he spured t his brown and \t\ ac£ ; intire ; tincl no ; man ' sa W aUve thereafter, exb'ept the fellows ,Who Bhot hiin.j Haw !' „, . i :; ' Xes^ said. Rufiis Hutton, « One nian^aw hinii alive, after they shot him ii| the thrdait j and one man saved his ■'Jife; and he is the man before lyou.' 1 What you, Dr., jHuttou ! What you ! Oh, how grateful we ought to be "to you? '* ■".' . '.^..u. „■./...-. I « Thank ■yoii.; Well T^on't' quite ■ie L yoii;* - l Rufiis rbplied ; most drily. • Then be/cprreotedyhimseli: 'You Know I only did my duty. ! [ .'.And his r son T }/ inquired.. Georgie, itimi^ly l&vrfi ,' i»,it^ synqpA^i.but thegreatest presence, of mind... She : had stood with her hands clasped, and6very emotion the impossible of B«lfish'neiss) oil her I'weefc botiht^fifatice^ aridnoTf^he- was so she bbuTd"neve¥ tell you. 'His poor illegitimate son, Dr Hutton 1 Will lie i oring the poor child home with him ? How 1 glad we shall\be to receive fim !' i < The. child 'h»:brings r w»fch him is JEao, dear natural odd Eao, his legitimate daughter..- ..,.-• : 'Then you know her, Dr Hutton; you could depose to her identity ?' A j yery odd question J but some women hare almost the gift of prophecy. $ '0.-yes! I -should rather think so. I have known her since she was ten years old-' - 'And now they are coming home. How" ' pleasant ! How sweet to re° ceive them, as it were from the dead ! By the overland route, I suppose and with a lac of rupees.' ! • No,' said the badgered Rufus, i ou are wrong in both conjectures. They come round the Cape, by the clipper-ship Aliwal ; and with very few jrupeed. Colonel Nowell has alway; been extravagant, a wonderfully fine■heai ted man, but a hand that could ''never hold anything — except, indeed, |a friend's.' ! By a moisture in Rue Hutton's eye, •George^saw. that her interests would 'fare ill with him, if brought into competition with those of Colonel 1 Lowell. Meanwhile Polly was raving I j wild, and, it took two grooms to hold !|her, and the wite froth dribbling down : ! her curb was to Rufus Hiittbn l as the 'foam of the sea to a sailor. He| did ■love a tearing gallop, only not through 'the thick of the forest. • Good-bye, good-bye, I shall see you isoon, Thank you, I will take a cheIroot. But I only smoke my own. Good-bye. I am so much obliged to iydu, You have been so very kind. ;Mxb Hutton will be miserable until .you come over to us. Good-bye; once more, good-bye.' Rufus Hutton, you see, was a man of the world, and could be false 'on occasion.' John Posedew could never have made that speech, on the back of detected falsehood. Away went Polly, like a gale of wind ; and Rufus (who was no rogue by nature, only by the force of circumstances, and then could never keep to it), he going along twenty , miles an hour, set his teeth to the breeze, which camo down the fun.* nel of his cigar as down a steam (him* ney, stuck his calves into Polly's sides, and felt himself a happy man, going at a rocket's speed, to a home of happiness. All of us who have a home (and unless we leave our heai i, ' there, whenever we go away, we have iib horne J at all), all of us who have a hole in this shifting sandy world— the sand as of an hour glass— but whence we have spun such a rope as the devil can neither make nor bi?eak— .l mean to say, ye, all .who , love, without any hems and haws and rubbish, those who are only our future tense (from the present by adding 'bo') — all of us who are lucky enough, I believe we may say good enough, to want no temporal augment from the prefix of; society, only to cling upon the tree te; the second aorist of our children, wherein, the root of the man lurks, the grand indefinite ,so anomalous ; all these fellows, and think, hopng myself to be one pf them, m 111 be j glad to hear that Buf us fiutton had, a rjolly ride. : ' ; < Rosa waited at the gate j . why do mare's ; slioes linger?,; Rpaa tan An, and ran out agaid, an^ jW^as^re that she, heard som^thinac pejting down the M ll ™ uc h too " last, foi. v her sake ! but , w^,° .^l* him when he knew Ke'was comihg^-bbme Jft fc last? Then Rosa snapped poor Jonah's head off, for being itoo. thick to'ihekV it, ■ikMe^jfe, »/ : .senate was keld at , K^ttlearp*- H vll,;Mr ; s iu a6rkle. more herself -taking -tE6 7 C urul c chair After a glimpse pf natural Hie; and,thi love of man : and woman, we want no ; loyo of n>oney ; so --we, left: our laps, (like t^e Roman^ny { o^V;and shake but war with the whole of thera. r Fools who think that liife needs gilding—life, whose flowing bloddcontaina every metal' but gsld" arid 'silver — because they clogand'poison it ! - Blessed is he who earns his money, and spends it, ajj oa » Saturdft/. U* looks for-

ward to it throughout the week ; and the beacon of life ishbpe, even as God i? its pole-star. ? :' CkApfßß;- XXX. 'Me' Garnet's house, well'aWay tor the wejat, was embraced t ,niore Ct closely and lovingly by -the gnarle^ arms of the Forest than ; the ' Hail,' or ; even the Rectory. Just in the' SCoop ot a suony valley, ) high enough to despise the water, and -low- enough to defy the wind, there was nothing; to concern it . much, but the sighing ; of the branches. Over the ; brown thatch hung two oak treei, whispering leaves of history, offerrngthe' acorn. cup upon the parlor hearth, chafing, their, rheumatic knucklesagainst the. ,stone. ; of the chimneys, wondering when the gr^at storm should cOme that would give them an inside vieVr of i*. For though the cottage lay so. snugly, scarcely lifting .its thatched eyebrows at the draught which eto,le up the valley, nevertheless, thoie' gukrdian oaks had wrestled a i bout or,< two with the tempests. In 'ttye 1 cyclone; on. the morning of November 1 ,29 th, 1836/ and again on tie,". 7th 1 : January t 1842, they had gripped the ground, and set hard -t^eir knees,, and groaned at the thought' of ; salt water; Since then the wind had been less of a lunatic (although there, had been some ruffianly \jork i > '854), and they hoped there, was «» good time conrig, and so spread their branches further and fuither, and thought less of the price of timber. Tj'here , . was only one wind that frightened them much, and that was. •ttao points north of west, the very direction, whence if they fell crash ithey must coroe on the cottage. For they stood above it, the root-head sortie ten feet above the Hack floor of the basement, and the branches towering, high enough for a wood-pigeon *not to be nervous there. \. Now we only get heavy pressure of squalls from the west-north- wesc after a thorough-going tempest which has begun in the southward, and means io box half the compass. So the two great oaks were regarded by their brethren' tip tq the hill as jolly fellows happy dogs, born with a silver spoon in their mouths, good for another thousand years, although they might be five hundred old, unless, indeed — and here all the trees shuddered — there came such another hurricane as in 1703. But which of us knows his own brother's condition? Those two oaks stood, and each knew ir, upon a steep bank, where no room wa3 for casting out stay-roots to east-south-east. Bull Garnet hated those two trees, with terror added to hatred. Even if they never crushed him, which depended much on the weather, they would come iv at his bedroom window when the moon was high. Wandering shapes of wavering shadow, with the flickering light between them, walking slowly as a ghost goes, and then very likely a rustle and tap, a shivering, a shuddering ; it made the ground-floor of his heart shake in the nightmare hours. Never before had he feared them so much, one quarter so much, as this ■ October ; and. during- the— &H---fls4~ waning moon after Clayton Nowell's | death, he got very little sleep for them. By, day he. worked harder than ever, J did more than three men ought to. do, 'was everywhere on the estates, but ; never swore at any one — though the j men soratched their ears for the want of it — labor d hard, and early, and late, if so he might come home at night (only not in the dark) thoroughly weary. H's energy was amazing. No . man anywhere felling wood — Mr Garnet's especial luxury — no man hedging and ditching, or friUring, or stubbing up fern and brambles, but had better look out what he had in his bag, or ' the governor would be there and no mistake.' A workman could scarcely stand and look round, and wonder how his sick wife was or why he had got to work < so ha -d, could scarcely slap himself on the breast, or wet his hard hands for a hotter grip, but there was, Bull 1 Garnet before him, with sad, fierce, dogged eyes, worse than his strongest • oaths had been. Erer/body said ib was (and every* . body behoved it ; for the gossip had ■ spread fronj tbg Household in 'spite of the maiden's fear of him) the ,gauge of i it was, beyond all doubt, the illness of' his daughter. Pearl Garnet, that very j eccentric girl, as JEtufus Hutton concluded, who had .startled poor Polly so dreadfully, was prostrate now with a nervous fefeyj #J$ wo'uld.:not see even the doctor. Our Amy, who pleaded 1 hard to' see 'her, '''because she vras sure; Bhe could do her good, received a stein sharp negative,' and would have gone away offended, only she was so sorry for. her. Not that any fervid frfen4* ship, such as young ladies exult in for almogfc a fortnight incessant, not that any rapturous J.oye eifoiusivo of all maukind had ever arisen between them for they had nothing whatever in common, save beauty and tenacity, which girls do not love in each other ; only that she was always sorry for any one deep in trouble. And believing that Pearl had loved Clayton Nowell, and was grieving for him J bitterly,, how could Amy hejp . contrasting that misery with her own happiness, f jor Amy was nice and happy no wj in spite of Cradoqk's departure,and the trouble he had departed in. He loved her almost half as much, she believed, as she loved him , and was not that enough for anybody? His troubles wojjld flow by in time ; who on earth could doubt it, unless %tjjey (Joubte.4 Qodl He was gone to make his way ?n the world and her only fear was lest he should make it too grand' for Amy to share in, She liked the school children so, and the pony, and to run out now and then to the r kitchen, and dip, a bib, of. cr^t in the. dripping pan a£d: : Jt^d/&-''^il' : -i^>: l> :de«r father's pipe, and spread a thin handkerchief over his head. Would all these pleasures be out of her spheres, when Oradock came, with all London crowning him the.greatest and best man of: the »jje? Zmnoceat jfcay, »OT«r faai*,

• Nemo, nisi ob homicidiiini,repente fuif clarhsimus.' Mr Garnet would have felled those oaks, in spite of Sir Cradock ? s most positive orders, if there had nob been another who could not command, but could' plead' for them. Es'ery morning as the steward came out, frowned and shook his fist at them; the lieing whom he loved most on carth — far beyond himself, his daughter, and the memory of their mother all multiplied into each other, — -that boy Bob came up to him, and said, ' Father, don't for my sake.' We have not heard much of Bob Garnet ; we have scarcely shaped him feebly ; by no means was he a negative 1 character, yet described most briefly by negatives. In every m.iin point, except two, be was his father's cardinal 6p|)o Up. Those two were generosity (which includes 'he love of truth, and, at least among Christian, the sense of Christianity) and persevering energy. Even those two were displayed in ways different, but the staple was very similar. Bob Garnet was a naturalist. Gentle almost as any girl, and more so than his sister, he took small, pleasures in the ways of men, intense delight in those of every other creature. Bob ihved all things God had raaide, even as Awry did. All b ; a- day, and all his ;lite," he would have spent, if he had ,the chance, among the ferns and mosses, the desrnidise of the forest pools, the aun-due and the fungi, the bufi-tips and red under-wings, privet hawks and emperors. He knew all the children df the spring and handmaids of the summer, all of autumn's laden train, and the comforters of winter. The happiest; of mankind ■ ~ja he, whose stores of bliss are endless, whose pure delights can nevev cloy, who sees and feels in every birth ; in every growth, or motion, his own Almighty Father ; and loving Him 1 is ; loved again, as a chid who spreads Ms arms our. Mr Garnet's affection for his boy surpassed the love, of woman. He petted, and patted, and coaxed him, and talked nonsense by the h >ur ; h« was jealous even of Bob's attachment to his sister Pearl ; in short all tin energy (of his goodness, which, like the 'rest of his energies, transcended the force of other, men's, centered and spent itself mainly there. Bat of late Bob had passed all his time with his mother — I mean, of course, with Nature; for his mother in the flesh was dead ev«r so long ago; He had now concluded, with perfect contentment, that his education was finished y and to have therun of the forest at. this unwonted season more than consoled him for the disgrace of his recent excent expulsion from school. Scarcely any one would believe that Bob Garnet, the best and gentlest boy that ever cried over Euripides— not from the pathos of the poet certainly, but from his own — Bob Garnet, who sang to snails to come out, and they felt that he could not beat them, should have been expelled disgracefully from a private school, whose master--must-needs expel his own guineas with every punished pupil. However, so it wen,, and the crime was "characteristic. He would sit at night -|n the lime trees! JT^nse^ lime-trees over-hung the gray stone wall of the play-ground near Southampton ; and some wanton boys had been caught Jip there, holding amoibseans with little nursemaids, and girls of all work, come out to get lung-and-tongue food. Thereupon a stern ukase was issued that the next boy caught up there would be expelled without trial, as the corrupter of that pure flock. ThW other boys laughed, I' am sprry to^ say, when. 'Bob, the natural, ?: as they called him, meaning thereby the ; naturalist^ ; was ■ the first to be discovered there; crawling upon a branch a3 cleverly as a looper caterpilia'r. Even then the capital sentence was commuted that time, for every master knew ! as well as every boy, that Bob could never 'say bo" to anything- of the feminine gender capable of articulating. Sd Bob had to: learn the fourth Georgie by heart, and most of it (with extreme enjoyment) up in that very same tree. For he kept all his caterpillars there, \\ib beetle-traps, his moth nets, even some glorious pupjp, whiqb were due to the end of August; and he nursed a snug little fer.iery, and had sown some misletoe seeds, and a dozen other delicious things, and the lime-hawks wanted to burrow soon j in a word it was Bob's hearth and heart-place, for no other boy cou}d spale it. Bqt just when Bob had got to the beginning of Aristeeus, and the late bees were buzzing around him, although the linden had berried, an officious usher had spied him out — a dirty little fellow, known and despised by all the more respeptable people of Southampton. With hottest indignation, tfyat mean, low beggar, cried out — 'Boy in the tree there ! I see you ! Ypur name this moment, you rascal I' 'Garnet, sir, Bob (Jarnefc. And if you please, sir, X am not a rascal !' 'Oome down, sir this very instant •• or else I'll come up after you.' 'I don't think you can, sir, 1 replied Bob, looking down complacently j for as we shall see by and bye, he was no coward in an emergency. 'If you pleaße sir, no boy in the school can climb this tree except me, sir, since Brown senior, left. .'I can tell you one thing, Garnet; it's tlje last tj. me yai|.'}l ever pliooib it,' .' *oh, then I must collect my things j I am sorry to keep you waiting, sir, But they are such beauties, and I oan't see well to paok them.' Bob packed up his treasures deliberately in his red pocket handkercief, and descended very cleverly, holding it with his teeth, Thene^t morning he h%4 to pack his box, ancj beoame in tlje school a mere legend, His father flew into a violent passion, not with the son, but the sohool* master; however, he was so transported with • joy at • getting his own Bob home again that he soon forgave the cause of it. So the boy got the run of the potato fields, pollard, trees, and iushy pools, and hunted and grubbed and dabbled, and came home sometimes with three handkerchiefs, not to mention his hat, full. One lonely day thig October, before the frost set in

if — a frost of a length and severity most rare at that time of year — Bob Garnet j took his basket and trowels, nets, lens, i ' etc., and set oat for a sandy patch, not [ . far from the stream by the rectory, ; where in his July holidays he had [found some Gladiolus Illyricus, a bloom of which he had carried home, and now he wanted some roots of it. . He could not think why his father left him so very much to himself now, and had ceased from those little caresses and fondlings which used to make ' Bob look quite ashamed sometimes in the presence of strangers. He felt that his father loved him quite «as much as ever, and he had found those strong eyes set upon him with an expression, as it appeared to him, of sorrow and compassion. He had a 1 great mind to ask what the matter ! was ; but his love for his father was a strange feeling, mixed with sorao dread and uncertainty. He would make Pearl tell him all about if, tint would be the best way ; f- 1 she «s well had been carrying on very oddly :of late. She satin her own room all ' day long, and would never come down I to dinner, and would m*ver come out j for a stroll with him, I v"i slipped out by herself sometimes in the evening ; ; that at least, he was sure of* And t > 'tell him, • md 3d, him iom* oi.noyv for-sevente'.A years of a so, that he was too young to a.«k vi cjiijus! lie wouM let her know, lie was quite resolvt'dj that because she hapje ifd to ! be two jeirs older — a. pretty n ason that was fur treating liiiu like a baby! fthe who didn't know a wire-worm i from a ring-worm, nor an elater from a tipula, and thought that the tippettnoth was a moth that fad upon tippets ! Recalling fifty other instances of poor Pearl's deep ignorance Bob grew more and more indignant, as he thought of the way she treated him. He would stand it no longer. If she j was iv trouble, that, was only the ; greater reason Holloa ! I Ilelter, skelter, off dashed Bob after a Queen of Spain fritillary, the j first he had ever seen on the wing, and i : -a grand prize for any collector, even of iten times his standing. It was one of the second brood, invited by the sun to j sport awhile. And rare sport it affoLded Bob, who knew it at once from the other fritiliaries, for the shape of ; the wings is quite different", and he had seen it in grand collections. An active little chap it was, greatly preferring life to death, and thoroughly aware that man is the lather's chief agent. Once Bob made quite sure of it, : for it had settled on a blackberry spray and smack the net came down upon it, but a smack too hard, for the thorns came grinning out at the bottom, and away went the butterfly laughing. Bob made good the net in a moment, with some very line pins which he carried, and off again in still hotter pursuit, having kept his eyes on dear Lathonia. But the prey was now grown won- 1 drous skeary since that narrow shave, and the huntMnan^BaW";tliat:Jbis-oaL};---chanc"e r wa^a^clever swoop in mid air. So he raised his net high, and zig* zagged recklessly round the trees, through the bushes. At last he got quite close to her, but she flipped round a great beech trunk ; Bob made a cast at hazard, and cougtit not the Queen, but Amy. Amy was not frightened much, neither was she hurt, though her pretty round head came out through j the net — for she had taken her hat off — and the ring lay upon her shoulders", which the rich ha I# r had shielded from bruises. She would have been frightened terribly, only she knew what was going on, and had stepped behind the tree to avoid the appearance of interfering. l?or she did not wish — she; knew not why— but by some instinct ; she did not wish to have much to do '■ with the Garnets. She regarded poor \ Bob as a sghdolboy, who was very iond I of inseofcs, and snowed his love by: killing them. (To be continued.)