OF all the fools Nature produces with the help of Society, fathers of first-borns are about the most offensive.
The mothers of ditto are bores too, flinging their human dumplings at every head; but, considering the tortures they have suffered, and the anguish the little egotistical viper they have just hatched will most likely give them, and considering further that their love of their firstborn is greater than their pride, and their pride unstained by vanity, one must make allowances for them.
But the male parent is not so excusable. His fussy vanity is an inferior article to the mother's silly but amiable pride. His obtrusive affection is two-thirds of it egotism, and blindish egotism, too; for if, at the very commencement of the wife's pregnancy the husband is sent to India, or hanged, the little angel, as they call it—Lord forgive them!—is nurtured from a speck to a mature infant by the other parent, and finally brought into the world by her just as effectually as if her male confederate had been tied to her apron-string: all the time, instead of expatriated or hanged.
Therefore the Law—for want, I suppose, of studying Medicine—is a little inconsiderate in giving children to fathers, and taking them by force from such mothers as can support them; and therefore let Gallina go on clucking over her first-born, but Gallus be quiet, or sing a little smaller.
With these preliminary remarks, let me introduce to you a character new in fiction, but terribly old in history—
THE CLUCKING COCK.
Upon the birth of a son and heir Mr. Richard Bassett was inflated almost to bursting. He became suddenly hospitable, collected all his few friends about him, and showed them all the Boy at great length, and talked Boy and little else. He went out into the world and made calls on people merely to remind them he had a son and heir.
His self-gratulation took a dozen forms; perhaps the most amusing, and the richest food for satire, was the mock-querulous style, of which he showed himself a master.
“Don't you ever marry,” said he to Wheeler and others. “Look at me; do you think I am the master of my own house? Not I; I am a regular slave. First, there is a monthly nurse, who orders me out of my wife's presence, or graciously lets me in, just as she pleases; that is Queen 1. Then there's a wet-nurse, Queen 2, whom I must humor in everything, or she will quarrel with me, and avenge herself by souring her milk. But these are mild tyrants compared with the young King himself. If he does but squall we must all skip, and find out what he ails, or what he wants. As for me, I am looked upon as a necessary evil; the women seem to admit that a father is an incumbrance without which these little angels could not exist, but that is all.”
He had a christening feast, and it was pretty well attended, for he reminded all he asked that the young Christian was the heir to the Bassett estates. They feasted, and the church-bells rang merrily.
He had his pew in the church new lined with cloth, and took his wife to be churched. The nurse was in the pew too, with his son and heir. It squalled and spoiled the Liturgy. Thereat Gallus chuckled.
He made a gravel-walk all along the ha-ha that separated his garden from Sir Charles's, and called it “The Heir's Walk.” Here the nurse and child used to parade on sunny afternoons.
He got an army of workmen, and built a nursery fit for a duke's nine children. It occupied two entire stories, and rose in the form of a square tower high above the rest of his house, which, indeed, was as humble as “The Heir's Tower” was pretentious. “The Heir's Tower” had a flat lead roof easy of access, and from it you could inspect Huntercombe Hall, and see what was done on the lawn or at some of the windows.
Here, in the August afternoons, Mr. and Mrs. Bassett used to sit drinking their tea, with nurse and child; and Bassett would talk to his unconscious boy, and tell him that the great house and all that belonged to it should be his in spite of the arts that had been used to rob him of it.
Now, of course, the greater part of all this gratulation was merely amusing, and did no harm except stirring up the bile of a few old bachelors, and imbittering them worse than ever against clucking cocks, crowing hens, inflated parents, and matrimony in general.
But the overflow of it reached Huntercombe Hall, and gave cruel pain to the childless ones, over whom this inflated father was, in fact, exulting.
As for the christening, and the bells that pealed for it, and the subsequent churching, they bore these things with sore hearts, and bravely, being things of course. But when it came to their ears that Bassett and his family called his new gravel-walk “The Heir's Walk,” and his ridiculous nursery “The Heir's Tower,” this roused a bitter animosity, and, indeed, led to reprisals. Sir Charles built a long wall at the edge of his garden, shutting out “The Heir's Walk” and intercepting the view of his own premises from that walk.
Then Mr. Bassett made a little hill at the end of his walk, so that the heir might get one peep over the wall at his rich inheritance.
Then Sir Charles began to fell timber on a gigantic scale. He went to work with several gangs of woodmen, and all his woods, which were very extensive, rang with the ax, and the trees fell like corn. He made no secret that he was going to sell timber to the tune of several thousand pounds and settle it on his wife.
Then Richard Bassett, through Wheeler, his attorney, remonstrated in his own name, and that of his son, against this excessive fall of timber on an entailed estate.
Sir Charles chafed like a lion stung by a gad-fly, but vouchsafed no reply: the answer came from Mr. Oldfield; he said Sir Charles had a right under the entail to fell every stick of timber, and turn his woods into arable ground, if he chose; and even if he had not, looking at his age and his wife's, it was extremely improbable that Richard Bassett would inherit the estates: the said Richard Bassett was not personally named in the entail, and his rights were all in supposition: if Mr. Wheeler thought he could dispute both these positions, the Court of Chancery was open to his client.
Then Wheeler advised Bassett to avoid the Court of Chancery in a matter so debatable; and Sir Charles felled all the more for the protest. The dead bodies of the trees fell across each other, and daylight peeped through the thick woods. It was like the clearing of a primeval forest.
Richard Bassett went about with a witness and counted the fallen.
The poor were allowed the lopwood: they thronged in for miles round, and each built himself a great wood pile for the winter; the poor blessed Sir Charles: he gave the proceeds, thirteen thousand pounds, to his wife for her separate use. He did not tie it up. He restricted her no further than this: she undertook never to draw above 100 pounds at a time without consulting Mr. Oldfield as to the application. Sir Charles said he should add to this fund every year; his beloved wife should not be poor, even if the hated cousin should outlive him and turn her out of Huntercombe.
And so passed the summer of that year; then the autumn; and then came a singularly mild winter. There was more hunting than usual, and Richard Bassett, whom his wife's fortune enabled to cut a better figure than before, was often in the field, mounted on a great bony horse that was not so fast as some, being half-bred, but a wonderful jumper.
Even in this pastime the cousins were rivals. Sir Charles's favorite horse was a magnificent thoroughbred, who was seldom far off at the finish: over good ground Richard's cocktail had no chance with him; but sometimes, if toward the close of the run they came to stiff fallows and strong fences, the great strength of the inferior animal, and that prudent reserve of his powers which distinguishes the canny cocktail from the higher-blooded animal, would give him the advantage.
Of this there occurred, on a certain 18th of November, an example fraught with very serious consequences.
That day the hounds met on Sir Charles's estate. Sir Charles and Lady Bassett breakfasted in Pink; he had on his scarlet coat, white tie, irreproachable buckskins, and top-boots. (It seemed a pity a speck of dirt should fall on them.) Lady Bassett was in her riding-habit; and when she mounted her pony, and went to cover by his side, with her blue-velvet cap and her red-brown hair, she looked more like a brilliant flower than a mere woman.
A veteran fox was soon found, and went away with unusual courage and speed, and Lady Bassett paced homeward to wait her lord's return, with an anxiety men laugh at, but women can appreciate. It was a form of quiet suffering she had constantly endured, and never complained, nor even mentioned the subject to Sir Charles but once, and then he pooh-poohed her fancies.
The hunt had a burst of about forty minutes that left Richard Bassett's cocktail in the rear; and the fox got into a large beech wood with plenty of briars, and kept dodging about it for two hours, and puzzled the scent repeatedly.
Richard Bassett elected not to go winding in and out among trees, risk his horse's legs in rabbit-holes, and tire him for nothing. He had kept for years a little note book he called “Statistics of Foxes,” and that told him an old dog-fox of uncommon strength, if dislodged from that particular wood, would slip into Bellman's Coppice, and if driven out of that would face the music again, would take the open country for Higham Gorse, and probably be killed before he got there; but once there a regiment of scythes might cut him out, but bleeding, sneezing fox-hounds would never work him out at the tail of a long run.
So Richard Bassett kept out of the wood, and went gently on to Bellman's Coppice and waited outside.
His book proved an oracle. After two hours' dodging and maneuvering the fox came out at the very end of Bellman's Coppice, with nothing near him but Richard Bassett. Pug gave him the white of his eye in an ugly leer, and headed straight as a crow for Higham Gorse.
Richard Bassett blew his horn, collected the hunt, and laid the dogs on. Away they went, close together, thunder-mouthed on the hot scent.
After a three miles' gallop they sighted the fox for a moment just going over the crest of a rising ground two furlongs off. Then the hullabbaloo and excitement grew furious, and one electric fury animated dogs, men, and horses. Another mile, and the fox ran in sight scarcely a furlong off; but many of the horses were distressed: the Bassetts, however, kept up, one by his horse being fresh, the other by his animal's native courage and speed.
Then came some meadows, bounded by a thick hedge, and succeeded by a plowed field of unusual size—eighty acres.
When the fox darted into this hedge the hounds were yelling at his heels; the hunt burst through the thin fence, expecting to see them kill close to it.
But the wily fox had other resources at his command than speed. Appreciating his peril, he doubled and ran sixty yards down the ditch, and the impetuous hounds rushed forward and overran the scent. They raved about to and fro, till at last one of the gentlemen descried the fox running down a double furrow in the middle of the field. He had got into this, and so made his way more smoothly than his four-footed pursuers could. The dogs were laid on, and away they went helter-skelter.
At the end of this stiff ground a stiffish leap awaited them; an old quickset had been cut down, and all the elm-trees that grew in it, and a new quickset hedge set on a high bank with double ditches.
The huntsman had an Irish horse that laughed at this fence; he jumped on to the bank, and then jumped off it into the next field.
Richard Bassett's cocktail came up slowly, rose high, and landed his forefeet in the field, and so scrambled on.
Sir Charles went at it rather rashly; his horse, tried hard by the fallow, caught his heels against the edge of the bank, and went headlong into the other ditch, throwing Sir Charles over his head into the field. Unluckily some of the trees were lying about, and Sir Charles's head struck one of these in falling; the horse blundered out again, and galloped after the hounds, but the rider lay there motionless.
Nobody stopped at first; the pace was too good to inquire; but presently Richard Bassett, who had greeted the accident with a laugh, turned round in his saddle, and saw his cousin motionless, and two or three gentlemen dismounting at the place. These were newcomers. Then he resigned the hunt, and rode back.
Sir Charles's cap was crushed in, and there was blood on his white waistcoat; he was very pale, and quite insensible.
The gentlemen raised him, with expressions of alarm and kindly concern, and inquired of each other what was best to be done.
Richard Bassett saw an opportunity to conciliate opinion, and seized it. “He must be taken home directly,” said he. “We must carry him to that farmhouse, and get a cart for him.”
He helped carry him accordingly. The farmer lent them a cart, with straw, and they laid the insensible baronet gently on it, Richard Bassett supporting his head. “Gentlemen,” said he, rather pompously, “at such a moment everything but the tie of kindred is forgotten.” Which resounding sentiment was warmly applauded by the honest squires.
They took him slowly and carefully toward Huntercombe, distant about two miles from the scene of the accident.
This 18th November Lady Bassett passed much as usual with her on hunting days. She was quietly patient till the afternoon, and then restless, and could not settle down in any part of the house till she got to a little room on the first floor, with a bay-window commanding the country over which Sir Charles was hunting. In this she sat, with her head against one of the mullions, and eyed the country-side as far as she could see.
Presently she heard a rustle, and there was Mary Wells standing and looking at her with evident emotion.
“What is the matter, Mary?” said Lady Bassett.
“Oh, my lady!” said Mary. And she trembled, and her hands worked.
Lady Bassett started up with alarm painted in her countenance.
“My lady, there's something wrong in the hunting field.”
“Sir Charles!”
“An accident, they say.”
Lady Bassett put her hand to her heart with a faint cry. Mary Wells ran to her.
“Come with me directly!” cried Lady Bassett. She snatched up her bonnet, and in another minute she and Mary Wells were on their road to the village, questioning every body they met.
But nobody they questioned could tell them anything. The stable-boy, who had told the report in the kitchen of Huntercombe, said he had it from a gentleman's groom, riding by as he stood at the gates.
The ill news thus flung in at the gate by one passing rapidly by was not confirmed by any further report, and Lady Bassett began to hope it was false.
But a terrible confirmation came at last.
In the outskirts of the village mistress and servant encountered a sorrowful procession: the cart itself, followed by five gentlemen on horseback, pacing slowly, and downcast as at a funeral.
In the cart Sir Charles Bassett, splashed all over with mud, and his white waistcoat bloody, lay with his head upon Richard Bassett's knee. His hair was wet with blood, some of which had trickled down his cheek and dried. Even Richard's buckskins were slightly stained with it.
At that sight Lady Bassett uttered a scream, which those who heard it never forgot, and flung herself, Heaven knows how, into the cart; but she got there, and soon had that bleeding head on her bosom. She took no notice of Richard Bassett, but she got Sir Charles away from him, and the cart took her, embracing him tenderly, and kissing his hurt head, and moaning over him, all through the village to Huntercombe Hall.
Four years ago they passed through the same village in a carriage-and-four—bells pealing, rustics shouting—to take possession of Huntercombe, and fill it with pledges of their great and happy love; and as they flashed past the heir at law shrank hopeless into his little cottage. Now, how changed the pageant!—a farmer's cart, a splashed and bleeding and senseless form in it, supported by a childless, despairing woman, one weeping attendant walking at the side, and, among the gentlemen pacing slowly behind, the heir at law, with his head lowered in that decent affectation of regret which all heirs can put on to hide the indecent complacency within.
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