Hazeldean

“ Sir, I'd have called him out."
"Mr. Hazeldean! Mr. Hazeldean! I'm shocked at you," cried the Parson; and, putting his lips close to the Squire's ear, he went on in a whisper: "What an example to your son! You'll have him fighting duels one of these days, and nobody to blame but yourself."
This warning cooled Mr. Hazeldean; and muttering, "Why the deuce did you set me off?" ”

“ When occasion needed, Mrs. Hazeldean could, however, lay by her more sumptuous and imperial raiment for a stout riding-habit of blue Saxony, and canter by her husband's side to see the hounds throw off. Nay, on the days on which Mr. Hazeldean drove his famous fast-trotting cob to the market town, it was rarely that you did not see his wife on the left side of the gig. ”

“ He was pleased to see the cold hesitation with which Frank just touched the hand offered to him. But Randal had not been the only person whose watch upon Beatrice the keen-eyed Harley had noticed. Harley had seen the angry looks of Frank Hazeldean, and divined the cause. So he smiled forgivingly at the slight he had received.
"You are like me, Mr. Hazeldean," said he. "You think something of the heart should go with all courtesy that bespeaks friendship—
"The hand of Douglas is his own." ”

“ Yet Frank Hazeldean has stuff in him,—a good heart, and strict honour. Fool though he seem, there is sound sterling sense in some odd corner of his brains, if one could but get at it. All he wants to save him from perdition is, to do what he has never yet done,—namely, pause and think. But, to be sure, that same operation of thinking is not so easy for folks unaccustomed to it, as people who think—think! ”

“ MY DEAR MR. HAZELDEAN,—I wrote to you a few hasty lines on leaving town, to inform you that the match you so dreaded was broken off, and proposing to defer particulars till I could visit your kind and hospitable roof, which I trusted to do for a few hours during my stay at Lansmere, since it is not a day’s journey hence to Hazeldean. But I did not calculate on finding so sharp a contest. In no election throughout the kingdom do I believe that a more notable triumph, or a more stunning defeat, for the great landed interest can occur. ”

“ Hazeldean entreated the honor of an interview. As soon as the servant vanished on this errand, Frank seized the thin man by the arm: "What is this? an execution?"
"Yes, sir."
"For what sum?"
"Fifteen hundred and forty-seven pounds. We are the first in possession."
"There are others, then?"
"Or else, sir, we should never have taken this step. Most painful to our feelings, sir; but these foreigners are here to-day, and gone to-morrow. And—"
The servant re-entered. Madame di Negra would see Mr. Hazeldean. Would he walk up-stairs? Frank hastened to obey this summons. ”

“ Stirn, as he stood still, hat in hand, in the middle of the road, stung, humbled, and exasperated by the mortification he had received from the lips of Randal Leslie, would have felt that that young gentleman was the proper object of his resentment, yet such a breach of all the etiquette of diplomatic life as resentment towards a superior power was the last idea that would have suggested itself to the profound intellect of the premier of Hazeldean. ”

“ The great commoner had, indeed, "something to show" for the money he had disdained and squandered. But for Frank Hazeldean's mode of getting rid of the dross, when gone, what would be left to tell the tale? Paltry prints in a bachelor's lodging; a collection of canes and cherry sticks; half-a-dozen letters in ill-spelt French from a figurante; some long-legged horses, fit for nothing but to lose a race; that damnable Betting-Book; and—sic transit gloria—down sweeps some hawk of a Levy, on the wings of an I O U, and not a feather is left of the pigeon! ”

“ He has a very good living, it is true,—much better than he ought to have, according to the "political" opinions of those tracts! but Lenny is obliged to confess that if Parson Dale were a penny the poorer, he would do a pennyworth's less good; and comparing one parish with another, such as Rood Hall and Hazeldean, he is dimly aware that there is no greater CIVILIZER than a parson tolerably well off. Then, too, Squire Hazeldean, though as arrant a Tory as ever stood upon shoe-leather, is certainly not a vampire nor blood sucker. He does not feed on the public ”

“ She shook with horror as much as with indignation, and her “Stop!” blazed out so violently that Mrs. Mant, turning white, feebly groped for the bell.
And it was then, at that very moment,{84} that Charles Hazeldean came in—Charles Hazeldean, the favourite nephew, the pride of the tribe. Lizzie had seen him only once or twice, for he had been absent since her return to New York. ”

“ Certainly his manners were in his favor, and as long as he was merely an acquaintance, and at most a tenant, no one had a right to institute inquiries of a strictly private nature; but that, when he was about to marry a Hazeldean of Hazeldean, it became the Squire at least to know a little more about him—who and what he was. Why did he leave his own country? English people went abroad to save; no foreigner would choose England as a country in which to save money! She supposed that a foreign doctor was no very great things; probably he had been but a professor in some Italian university. ”

“ She had not excluded Henry Prest more rigorously than the others; he had simply been one of the many who received, day by day, the same answer: “Mrs. Hazeldean sees no one but the family.”
Almost immediately after her husband’s death she had sailed for Europe on a long-deferred visit to her father, who was now settled at Nice; but from this expedition she had presumably brought back little comfort, for when she arrived in New York her relations were struck by her air of ill-health and depression. ”

“ Hazeldean,—"there, two can play at that game! And now that we have all seen the stocks, we may as well go home and drink tea. Will you come up and play a rubber, Dale? No! hang it, man, I've not offended you?—you know my ways."
"That I do, and they are among the things I would not have altered," cried the parson, holding out his hand cheerfully. The squire gave it a hearty shake, and Mrs. Hazeldean hastened to do the same.
"Do come; I am afraid we've been very rude: we are sad blunt folks. Do come; that's a dear good man; and of course poor Mrs. Dale too." Mrs. ”

“ After sulking all day, they agreed to put the bolster between them at night." (Roars of laughter amongst the men; the women did not know which way to look, except, indeed, Mrs. Hazeldean, who, though she was more than usually rosy, maintained her innocent genial smile, as much as to say, "There is no harm in the Squire's jests.") The orator resumed—"After they had thus lain apart for a little time, very silent and sullen, John sneezed. ”

“ But mind me, lads, if ever you make the parish regret the loss of the stocks, and the overseers come to me with long faces, and say, 'The stocks must be rebuilded,' why—" Here from all the youth of the village rose so deprecating a clamour, that the squire would have been the most burgling orator in the world, if he said a word further on the subject. He elevated the horn over his head—"Why, that's my old Hazeldean again! Health and long life to you all!" ”

“ PARSON.—"What's what?"
MRS. DALE (pinching her husband's arm very nippingly) . "That thing— there—there."
PARSON.—"Only the new stocks, Carry; I don't wonder they frighten you, for you are a very sensible woman. I only wish they would frighten the squire."
CHAPTER XIII. [Supposed to be a letter from Mrs. Hazeldean to A. Riccabocca, Esq.,
The Casino; but, edited, and indeed composed, by Miss Jemima
Hazeldean.]
HAZELDEAN HALL. DEAR SIR,—To a feeling heart it must always be painful to give pain to another, and (though I am sure unconsciously) you have given the greatest pain to poor Mr. ”

“ You would never have disgraced your family and married a—"
"Hush!" interrupted Egerton, gently. "Do not make matters worse than they are. Madame di Negra is of high birth in her own country; and if scandal—"
"Scandal!" cried the Squire, shrinking and turning pale. "Are you speaking of the wife of a Hazeldean? At least, she shall never sit by the hearth at which now sits his mother; and whatever I may do for Frank, her children shall not succeed. No mongrel cross-breed shall kennel in English Hazeldean. Much obliged to you, Audley, for your good feeling—glad to have seen you ”

“ If, in the simplicity of his heart, and the crudeness of his experience, Lenny Fairfield had conceived it probable that Mr. Stirn would address to him some words in approbation of his gallantry, and in sympathy for his bruises, he soon found himself woefully mistaken. That truly great man, worthy prime-minister of Hazeldean, might, perhaps, pardon a dereliction from his orders, if such dereliction proved advantageous to the interests of the service, or redounded to the credit of the chief ”

“ All I can say to those rigid disciplinarians is, "Every man has his favourite sin: whist was Parson Dale's!—ladies and gentlemen, what is yours?" In truth, I must not set up my poor parson, nowadays, as a pattern parson,—it is enough to have one pattern in a village no bigger than Hazeldean, and we all know that Lenny Fairfield has bespoken that place, and got the patronage of the stocks for his emoluments! Parson Dale was ordained, not indeed so very long ago, but still at a time when Churchmen took it a great deal more easily than they do now. ”

“ Stirn, having now got what he considered a complete and unconditional authority over all the legs and wrists of Hazeldean parish, quoad the stocks, took his departure.
CHAPTER X.
"Randal," said Mrs. Leslie, on this memorable Sunday—"Randal, do you think of going to Mr. Hazeldean's?"
"Yes, ma'am," answered Randal. "Mr. Egerton does not object to it; and as I do not return to Eaton, I may have no other opportunity of seeing Frank for some time. I ought not to fail in respect to Mr. Egerton's natural heir!" ”

“ Dale's convictions as to Riccabocca's scruples on the point of honour, tended much to compose the good man; and if he did not, as my reader of the gentler sex would expect from him, feel alarm lest Miss Jemima's affections should have been irretrievably engaged, and her happiness thus put in jeopardy by the squire's refusal, it was not that the parson wanted tenderness of heart, but experience in womankind; and he believed, very erroneously, that Miss Jemima Hazeldean was not one upon whom a disappointment of that kind would produce a lasting impression. ”

“ Hazeldean. He was shown into the coffee-room, while the waiter went upstairs with his card, to see if the Squire was within, and disengaged. The Times newspaper lay sprawling on one of the tables, and Randal, leaning over it, looked with attention into the column containing births, deaths, and marriages. But in that long and miscellaneous list, he could not conjecture the name which had so excited Mr. Egerton's interest.
"Vexatious!" he muttered; "there is no knowledge which has power more useful than that of the secrets of men." ”

“ Hazeldean, gruffly; "not at all like me. And I'll thank you another time, Cousin Higginbotham, not to put me out when I am speaking on matters of importance; poking your cat into my stocks! They look something like now, don't they, Harry? I declare that the whole village seems more respectable. It is astonishing how much a little improvement adds to the—to the—"
"Charm of a landscape," put in Miss Jemima, sentimentally.
The Squire neither accepted nor rejected the suggested termination ”

“ Randal saw that the squire had two characteristics, which are very common amongst proprietors, and which might be invoked as antagonists to his warm fatherly love. First, the squire was as fond of his estate as if it were a living thing, and part of his own flesh and blood; and in his lectures to Frank upon the sin of extravagance, the squire always let out this foible,—"What was to become of the estate if it fell into the hands of a spendthrift? No man should make ducks and drakes of Hazeldean ”

“ Hazleton's aspirations, however, were all earthly. She thought of little beyond this life. She had never been taught so to think. There are some who are led astray from the path of noble daring, to others as difficult and more intricate, by some loud shout of passion on the right or on the left--and seek in vain to return; some who, misled by an apparent similarity in the course of two paths, although the finger post says, "Thus shalt thou go!" think that the way so plainly beaten, and so seemingly easy, must surely lead them to the same point. ”

“ Hazleton, a little angry--but very little--gave her one of those delightful little scratches which she was practised in administering, saying, "No one knew any thing about your intentions but myself, so, no one can accuse you of weakness or vacillation."
"I care very little," said Lady Hastings (most untruly) "of what people accuse me. I shall of course form my own resolutions from what I know, and execute them or not, dear Mrs. Hazleton, according to circumstances, which are ever changing. What is inexpedient one day may be quite expedient the next." ”

“ If anything could be called clear in Hazels mind, at that minute of supreme and universal confusion, it was, that belonging to somebody was getting to be much more than an idea. And that Mr. Rollo should merely pay her the compliment of requesting to have the fact put in words, might be highly characteristic on his part, but was not exactly composing on hers. How could she think, or speak, without even one hand free? And droop her head as she might, what could the soft falling hair do, but touch up the beautiful flushes which Hazel felt, if she did not see? ”