Cecilia de Noël | Page 9

too am a landowner, and I mean to look over my audit accounts to-day."
"Don't compare yourself to a poor overworked underpaid landowner like me. You are one of the landlords they spout about in London parks on Sundays. You have nothing to do but sign receipts for your rents, paid in full and up to date."
"Mr. Lyndsay is an excellent landlord," said Lady Atherley; "and they tell me the new church and the schools he has built are charming."
"Very mischievous things both," said Atherley. "Ta-ta."
That afternoon, Atherley being still absent, and Lady Atherley having gone forth to pay a round of calls, the little boys undertook my entertainment. They were in rather a sober mood for them, having just forfeited four weeks' pocket-money towards expenses incurred by Tip in the dairy, where they had foolishly allowed him to enter; so they accepted very good-humouredly my objections to wading in the river or climbing trees, and took me instead for a walk to Beggar's Stile. We climbed up the steep carriage-drive to the lodge, passed through the big iron gates, turned sharply to the left, and went down the road which the park palings border and the elms behind them shade, past the little copse beyond the park, till we came to a tumble-down gate with a stile beside it in the hedgerow; and this was Beggar's Stile. It was just on the brow of the little hill which sloped gradually downward to the village beneath, and commanded a wide view of the broad shallow valley and of the rising ground beyond.
I was glad to sit down on the step of the stile.
"Are you tired already, Mr. Lyndsay?" inquired Harold incredulously.
"Yes, a little."
"I s'pose you are tired because you always have to pull your leg after you," said Denis, turning upon me two large topaz-coloured eyes. "Does it hurt you, Mr. Lyndsay?"
"Mother told you not to talk about Mr. Lyndsay's leg," observed Harold sharply.
"No, she didn't; she said I was not to talk about the funny way he walked. She said--"
"Well, never mind, little man," I interrupted. "Is that Weald down there?"
"Yes," cried Denis, maintaining his balance on the topmost bar but one of the gate with enviable ease. "All these cottages and houses belong to Weald, and it is all daddy's on this side of the river down to where you see the white railings a long way down near the poplars, and that is the road we go to tea with Aunt Eleanour; and do you see a little blue speck on the hill over there? You could see if you had a telescope. Daddy showed me once; but you must shut your eye. That is Quarley Beacon, where Aunt Cissy lives."
"No, she does not, stupid," cried Harold, now suspended, head downwards, by one foot, from the topmost rail of the gate. "No one lives there. She lives in Quarley Manor, just behind."
Denis replied indirectly to the discourteous tone of this speech by trying with the point of his own foot to dislodge that by which Harold maintained his remarkable position, and a scuffle ensued, wherein, though a non-combatant, I seemed likely to get the worst, when their attention was fortunately diverted by the sight of Tip sneaking off, and evidently with the vilest motives, towards the covert.
My memory was haunted that day by certain words spoken seven months ago by Atherley, and by me at the time very ungraciously received:
"Remember, if you do come a cropper, it will go hard with you, old man; you can't shoot or hunt or fish off the blues, like other men."
No, nor could I work them off, as some might have done. I possessed no distinct talents, no marked vocation. If there was nothing behind and beyond all this, what an empty freak of destiny my life would have been--full, not even of sound and fury, but of dull common-place suffering: a tale told by an idiot with a spice of malice in him.
Then the view before me made itself felt, as a gentle persistent sound might have done: a flat, almost featureless scene--a little village church with cottages and gardens clustering about it, straggling away from it, by copses and meadows in which winter had left only the tenderest shades of the saddest colours. The winding river brightened the dull picture with broken glints of silver, and the tawny hues of the foreground faded through soft gradations of violet and azure into a far distance of pearly grey. It is not the scenery men cross continents and oceans to admire, and yet it has a message of its own. I felt it that day when I was heart-weary, and was glad that in one corner of this restless world the little hills preach peace.
Meantime Tip had been recaptured, and when he,