CHAPTER XXIV.
The parson put on the shovel-hat, which--conjoined with other details in
his dress peculiarly clerical, and already, even then, beginning to be
out of fashion with Churchmen--had served to fix upon him emphatically
the dignified but antiquated style and cognomen of "Parson;" and took his
way towards the Home Farm, at which he expected to find the squire. But
he had scarcely entered upon the village green when he beheld Mr.
Hazeldean, leaning both hands on his stick, and gazing intently upon the
parish stocks. Now, sorry am I to say that, ever since the Hegira of
Lenny and his mother, the Anti-Stockian and Revolutionary spirit in
Hazeldean, which the memorable homily of our parson had a while averted
or suspended, had broken forth afresh. For though while Lenny was
present to be mowed and jeered at, there had been no pity for him, yet no
sooner was he removed from the scene of trial than a universal compassion
for the barbarous usage he had received produced what is called "the
reaction of public opinion." Not that those who had mowed and jeered
repented them of their mockery, or considered themselves in the slightest
degree the cause of his expatriation. No; they, with the rest of the
villagers, laid all the blame upon the stocks. It was not to be expected
that a lad of such exemplary character could be thrust into that place of
ignominy, and not be sensible to the affront. And who, in the whole
village, was safe, if such goings-on and puttings-in were to be tolerated
in silence, and at the expense of the very best and quietest lad the
village had ever known? Thus, a few days after the widow's departure,
the stocks was again the object of midnight desecration: it was bedaubed
and bescratched, it was hacked and hewed, it was scrawled over with pithy
lamentations for Lenny, and laconic execrations on tyrants. Night after
night new inscriptions appeared, testifying the sarcastic wit and the
vindictive sentiment of the parish. And perhaps the stocks was only
spared from axe and bonfire by the convenience it afforded to the malice
of the disaffected: it became the Pasquin of Hazeldean.
As disaffection naturally produces a correspondent vigour in authority,
so affairs had been lately administered with greater severity than had
been hitherto wont in the easy rule of the squire and his predecessors.
Suspected persons were naturally marked out by Mr. Stirn, and reported to
his employer, who, too proud or too pained to charge them openly with
ingratitude, at first only passed them by in his walks with a silent and
stiff inclination of his head; and afterwards, gradually yielding to the
baleful influence of Stirn, the squire grumbled forth "that he did not
see why he should be always putting himself out of his way to show
kindness to those who made such a return. There ought to be a difference
between the good and the bad." Encouraged by this admission, Stirn had
conducted himself towards the suspected parties, and their whole kith and
kin, with the iron-handed justice that belonged to his character. For
some, habitual donations of milk from the dairy and vegetables from the
gardens were surlily suspended; others were informed that their pigs were
always trespassing on the woods in search of acorns, or that they were
violating the Game Laws in keeping lurchers. A beer-house, popular in
the neighbourhood, but of late resorted to over-much by the grievance-
mongers (and no wonder, since they had become the popular party), was
threatened with an application to the magistrates for the withdrawal of
its license. Sundry old women, whose grandsons were notoriously ill-
disposed towards the stocks, were interdicted from gathering dead sticks
under the avenues, on pretence that they broke down the live boughs; and,
what was more obnoxious to the younger members of the parish than most
other retaliatory measures, three chestnut-trees, one walnut, and two
cherry-trees, standing at the bottom of the Park, and which had, from
time immemorial, been given up to the youth of Hazeldean, were now
solemnly placed under the general defence of "private property." And the
crier had announced that, henceforth, all depredators on the fruit trees
in Copse Hollow would be punished with the utmost rigour of the law.
Stirn, indeed, recommended much more stringent proceedings than all these
indications of a change of policy, which, he averred, would soon bring
the parish to its senses,--such as discontinuing many little jobs of
unprofitable work that employed the surplus labour of the village. But
there the squire, falling into the department and under the benigner
influence of his Harry, was as yet not properly hardened. When it came
to a question that affected the absolute quantity of loaves to be
consumed by the graceless mouths that fed upon him, the milk of human
kindness--with which Providence has so bountifully supplied that class of
the mammalia called the "Bucolic," and of which our squire had an extra
"yield"--burst forth, and washed away all the indignation of the harsher
Adam.
Still your policy of half-measures, which irritates without crushing its
victims, which flaps an exasperated wasp-nest with a silk pocket-
handkerchief, instead of blowing it up with a match and train, is rarely
successful; and after three or four other and much guiltier victims than
Lenny had been incarcerated in the stocks, the parish of Hazeldean was
ripe for any enormity. Pestilent Jacobinical tracts, conceived and
composed in the sinks of manufacturing towns, found their way into the
popular beer-house,--Heaven knows how, though the tinker was suspected of
being the disseminator by all but Stirn, who still, in a whisper, accused
the Papishers. And, finally, there appeared amongst the other graphic
embellishments which the poor stocks had received, the rude gravure of a
gentleman in a broad-brimmed hat and top-boots, suspended from a gibbet,
with the inscription beneath, "A warnin to hall tirans--mind your hi!---
sighnde Captin sTraw."
It was upon this significant and emblematic portraiture that the squire
was gazing when the parson joined him. "Well, Parson," said Mr.
Hazeldean, with a smile which he meant to be pleasant and easy, but which
was exceedingly bitter and grim, "I wish you joy of your flock,--you see
they have just hanged me in effigy!"
The parson stared, and though greatly shocked, smothered his emotion; and
attempted, with the wisdom of the serpent and the mildness of the dove,
to find another original for the effigy.
"It is very bad," quoth he, "but not so bad as all that, Squire; that's
not the shape of your bat. It is evidently meant for Mr. Stirn."
"Do you think so?" said the squire, softened. "Yet the top-boots--Stirn
never wears top-boots."
"No more do you, except in the hunting-field. If you look again, those
are not tops, they are leggings,--Stirn wears leggings. Besides, that
flourish, which is meant for a nose, is a kind of hook, like Stirn's;
whereas your nose--though by no means a snub--rather turns up than not,
as the Apollo's does, according to the plaster cast in Riccabocca's
parlour."
"Poor Stirn!" said the squire, in a tone that evinced complacency, not
unmingled with compassion, "that's what a man gets in this world by being
a faithful servant, and doing his duty with zeal for his employer. But
you see things have come to a strange pass, and the question now is, what
course to pursue. The miscreants hitherto have defied all vigilance, and
Stirn recommends the employment of a regular nightwatch, with a lanthorn
and bludgeon."
"That may protect the stocks certainly; but will it keep those detestable
tracts out of the beer-house?"
"We shall shut the beer-house up the next sessions."
"The tracts will break out elsewhere,--the humour's in the blood!"
"I've half a mind to run off to Brighton or Leamingtongood hunting at
Leamington--for a year, just to let the rogues see how they can get on
without me!"
The squire's lip trembled.
"My dear Mr. Hazeldean," said the parson, taking his friend's hand, "I
don't want to parade my superior wisdom; but, if you had taken my advice,
'quieta non movere!' Was there ever a parish so peaceable as this, or a
country gentleman so beloved as you were, before you undertook the task
which has dethroned kings and ruined States,--that of wantonly meddling
with antiquity, whether for the purpose of uncalled-for repairs, or the
revival of obsolete uses."
At this rebuke, the squire did not manifest his constitutional tendencies
to choler; but he replied almost meekly, "If it were to do again, faith,
I would leave the parish to the enjoyment of the shabbiest pair of stocks
that ever disgraced a village. Certainly I meant it for the best,--an
ornament to the green; however, now the stocks is rebuilt, the stocks
must be supported. Will Hazeldean is not the man to give way to a set of
thankless rapscallions."
"I think," said the parson, "that you will allow that the House of Tudor,
whatever its faults, was a determined, resolute dynasty enough,--high-
hearted and strong-headed. A Tudor would never have fallen into the same
calamities as the poor Stuart did!"
"What the plague has the House of Tudor got to do with my stocks?"
"A great deal. Henry VIII. found a subsidy so unpopular that he gave it
up; and the people, in return, allowed him to cut off as many heads as he
pleased, besides those in his own family. Good Queen Bess, who, I know,
is your idol in history--"
"To be sure!--she knighted my ancestor at Tilbury Fort."
"Good Queen Bess struggled hard to maintain a certain monopoly; she saw
it would not do, and she surrendered it with that frank heartiness which
becomes a sovereign, and makes surrender a grace."
"Ha! and you would have me give up the stocks?"
"I would much rather the stocks had remained as it was before you touched
it; but, as it is, if you could find a good plausible pretext--and there
is an excellent one at hand,--the sternest kings open prisons, and grant
favours, upon joyful occasions. Now a marriage in the royal family is of
course a joyful occasion! and so it should be in that of the King of
Hazeldean." Admire that artful turn in the parson's eloquence!---it was
worthy of Riccabocca himself. Indeed, Mr. Dale had profited much by his
companionship with that Machiavellian intellect.
"A marriage,--yes; but Frank has only just got into coattails!"
"I did not allude to Frank, but to your cousin Jemima!"
