"My Novel" — Complete. Эдвард Бульвер-Литтон
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stocks! And the words uttered by the squire came back on his soul, like the voice of conscience in the ears of some doomed Macbeth: “A sad disgrace, Lenny,—you’ll never be in such a quandary.” “Quandary”—the word was unfamiliar to him; it must mean something awfully discreditable. The poor boy could have prayed for the earth to swallow him.
CHAPTER VIII
“Kettles and frying-pans! what has us here?” cried the tinker.
This time Mr. Sprott was without his donkey; for it being Sunday, it is presumed that the donkey was enjoying his Sabbath on the common. The tinker was in his Sunday’s best, clean and smart, about to take his lounge in the park.
Lenny Fairfield made no answer to the appeal.
“You in the wood, my baby! Well, that’s the last sight I should ha’ thought to see. But we all lives to larn,” added the tinker, sententiously. “Who gave you them leggins? Can’t you speak, lad?”
“Nick Stirn.”
“Nick Stirn! Ay, I’d ha’ ta’en my davy on that: and cos vy?”
“‘Cause I did as he told me, and fought a boy as was trespassing on these very stocks; and he beat me—but I don’t care for that; and that boy was a young gentleman, and going to visit the squire; and so Nick Stirn—” Lenny stopped short, choked by rage and humiliation.
“Augh,” said the tinker, starting, “you fit with a young gentleman, did you? Sorry to hear you confess that, my lad! Sit there and be thankful you ha’ got off so cheap. ‘T is salt and battery to fit with your betters, and a Lunnon justice o’ peace would have given you two months o’ the treadmill.
“But vy should you fit cos he trespassed on the stocks? It ben’t your natural side for fitting, I takes it.”
Lenny murmured something not very distinguishable about serving the squire, and doing as he was bid.
“Oh, I sees, Lenny,” interrupted the tinker, in a tone of great contempt, “you be one of those who would rayther ‘unt with the ‘ounds than run with the ‘are! You be’s the good pattern boy, and would peach agin your own border to curry favour with the grand folks. Fie, lad! you be sarved right; stick by your border, then you’ll be ‘spected when you gets into trouble, and not be ‘varsally ‘spised,—as you’ll be arter church-time! Vell, I can’t be seen ‘sorting with you, now you are in this d’rogotary fix; it might hurt my c’r’acter, both with them as built the stocks and them as wants to pull ‘em down. Old kettles to mend! Vy, you makes me forgit the Sabbath! Sarvent, my lad, and wish you well out of it; ‘specks to your mother, and say we can deal for the pan and shovel all the same for your misfortin.”
The tinker went his way. Lenny’s eye followed him with the sullenness of despair. The tinker, like all the tribe of human comforters, had only watered the brambles to invigorate the prick of the horns. Yes, if Lenny had been caught breaking the stocks, some at least would have pitied him; but to be incarcerated for defending them! You might as well have expected that the widows and orphans of the Reign of Terror would have pitied Dr. Guillotin when he slid through the grooves of his own deadly machine. And even the tinker, itinerant, ragamuffin vagabond as he was, felt ashamed to be found with the pattern boy! Lenny’s head sank again on his breast heavily, as if it had been of lead. Some few minutes thus passed, when the unhappy prisoner became aware of the presence of another spectator to his shame; he heard no step, but he saw a shadow thrown over the sward. He held his breath, and would not look up, with some vague idea that if he refused to see he might escape being seen.
CHAPTER IX
“Per Bacco!” said Dr. Riccabocca, putting his hand on Lenny’s shoulder, and bending down to look into his face,—“per Bacco! my young friend, do you sit here from choice or necessity?”
Lenny slightly shuddered, and winced under the touch of one whom he had hitherto regarded with a sort of superstitious abhorrence.
“I fear,” resumed Riccabocca, after waiting in vain for an answer to his question, “that though the situation is charming, you did not select it yourself. What is this?”—and the irony of the tone vanished—“what is this, my poor boy? You have been bleeding, and I see that those tears which you try to check come from a deep well. Tell me, povero fanciullo mio” (the sweet Italian vowels, though Lenny did not understand them, sounded softly and soothingly),—“tell me, my child, how all this happened. Perhaps I can help you; we have all erred,—we should all help each other.”
Lenny’s heart, that just before had seemed bound in brass, found itself a way as the Italian spoke thus kindly, and the tears rushed down; but he again stopped them, and gulped out sturdily,—
“I have not done no wrong; it ben’t my fault,—and ‘t is that which kills me!” concluded Lenny, with a burst of energy.
“You have not done wrong? Then,” said the philosopher, drawing out his pocket-handkerchief with great composure, and spreading it on the ground,—“then I may sit beside you. I could only stoop pityingly over sin, but I can lie down on equal terms with misfortune.”
Lenny Fairfield did not quite comprehend the words, but enough of their general meaning was apparent to make him cast a grateful glance on the Italian. Riccabocca resumed, as he adjusted the pocket-handkerchief, “I have a right to your confidence, my child, for I have been afflicted in my day; yet I too say with thee, ‘I have not done wrong.’ Cospetto!” (and here the doctor seated himself deliberately, resting one arm on the side column of the stocks, in familiar contact with the captive’s shoulder, while his eye wandered over the lovely scene around)—“Cospetto! my prison, if they had caught me, would not have had so fair a look-out as this. But, to be sure, it is all one; there are no ugly loves, and no handsome prisons.”
With that sententious maxim, which, indeed, he uttered in his native Italian, Riccabocca turned round and renewed his soothing invitations to confidence. A friend in need is a friend indeed, even if he come in the guise of a Papist and wizard. All Lenny’s ancient dislike to the foreigner had gone, and he told him his little tale.
Dr. Riccabocca was much too shrewd a man not to see exactly the motives which had induced Mr. Stirn to incarcerate his agent (barring only that of personal grudge, to which Lenny’s account gave him no clew). That a man high in office should make a scapegoat of his own watch-dog for an unlucky snap, or even an indiscreet bark, was nothing strange to the wisdom of the student of Machiavelli. However, he set himself to the task of consolation with equal philosophy and tenderness. He began by reminding, or rather informing, Leonard Fairfield of all the instances of illustrious men afflicted by the injustice of others that occurred to his own excellent memory. He told him how the great Epictetus, when in slavery, had a master whose favourite amusement was pinching his leg, which, as the amusement ended in breaking that limb, was worse than the stocks. He also told him the anecdote of Lenny’s own gallant countryman, Admiral Byng, whose execution gave rise to Voltaire’s celebrated witticism, “En Angleterre on tue un admiral pour encourager les autres.”
[“In England they execute one admiral in order to encourage the others.”]
Many other illustrations, still more pertinent to the case in point, his erudition supplied from the stores of history. But on seeing that Lenny did not seem in the slightest degree consoled by these memorable examples, he shifted his ground, and reducing his logic to the strict argumentum ad rem, began to prove, first, that there was no disgrace at all in Lenny’s present position, that every equitable person would recognize the tyranny of Stirn and the innocence of its victim; secondly, that if even here he were mistaken, for public opinion was not always righteous, what was public opinion after all?—“A breath, a puff,” cried Dr. Riccabocca, “a thing without matter,—without length, breadth, or substance,—a shadow, a goblin of our own creating. A man’s own conscience is his sole tribunal, and he should care no more for that phantom