BLACK SHEEP!

BY THE AUTHOR OF "LAND AT LAST," " KISSING THE ROD,
&c. &c.

BOOK II.

CHAPTER I.     AT POYNINGS.

LIFE at Poynings had its parallel in hundreds
of country-houses, of which it was but a type.
It was a life essentially English in its character,
in its staid respectability, in its dull decorum.
There are old French chateaux without number,
visible in bygone days to travellers in the banquettes
of diligences, and glimpses of which may
still occasionally be caught from the railways,
grey, square, four pepper-box turreted old buildings,
wherein life is dreary but not decorous,
and sad without being staid. It is the day-dream
of many an English country gentleman that his
house should, in the first place, be respectable,
in the second place, comfortable, in the third
place, free from damp; after these successes are
achieved, he takes no further thought for it:
within and without the dulness may be soul-harrowing;
that is no affair of his. So long as his
dining-room is large enough to contain the four-
and-twenty guests who, on selected moonlight
nights, are four times in every year bidden to
share his hospitality—so long as the important
seignorial dignities derivable from the possession
of lodge, and stable, and kennel are maintained—
so long as the state devolving upon him as justice
of the peace, with a scarcely defined hope
of one day arriving at the position of deputy-
lieutenant, is kept up, vaulting ambition keeps
itself within bounds, and the young English
country gentleman is satisfied.

More than satisfied, indeed, was Mr. Capel
Carruthers in the belief that all the requirements
above named were properly fulfilled. In
his earlier life he had been haunted by a dim
conviction that he was rather an ass than otherwise;
he remembered that that had been the
verdict returned at Rugby, and his reflections on
his very short career at Cambridge gave him no
reason to doubt the decision of his schoolfellows.
Not a pleasant source of reflection even to a
man of Mr. Carruthers's blunted feelings; in
fact, a depressing, wrong, Radical state of mind,
for which there was only one antidote—the
thought that he was Mr. Carruthers of Poynings,
a certain settled stable position which
would have floated its possessor over any
amount of imbecility. Carruthers of Poynings!
There it was in old county histories, with a
genealogy of the family and a charming copper
engraving of Poynings at the beginning of the
century, with two ladies in powder and hoops
fishing in an impossible pond, and a gentleman
in a cocked-hat and knee-breeches pointing out
nothing in particular to nobody at all. Carruthers
of Poynings! All the old armour in the
hall, hauberks and breastplates, now propped
upon a slight wooden frame, instead of enclosing
the big chests and the thews and sinews which
they had preserved through the contests of the
rival Roses or the Cavaliers and Roundheads—
all the old ancestors hanging round the dining-
room, soldiers, courtiers, Kentish yeomen, staring
with grave eyes at the smug white-whiskered old
gentleman, their descendant—all the old tapestry
worked by Maud Carruthers, whose husband was
killed in the service of Mary Stuart—all the
carvings and gildings about the house, all the
stained glass in the windows, all the arms and
quartering and crests upon the family plate—all
whispered to the present representative of the
family that he was Carruthers of Poynings, and
as such had only to make a very small effort to
find life no very difficult matter, even for a
person scantily endowed with brains. He tried
it accordingly—tried it when a young man,
had pursued the course ever since, and found
it successful. Any latent suspicion of his
own want of wisdom had vanished long since,
as how, indeed, could it last? When Mr.
Carruthers took his seat as chairman of the
magisterial bench at Amherst, he found himself
listening with great admiration to the prefatory
remarks which he addressed to the delinquent in
custody before passing sentence on him,
unconscious that those remarks only echoed the
magistrate's clerk, who stood close behind him
whispering into his ear. When, as was his regular
custom, he walked round the barn, where, on
rent-days, the tenants were assembled at dinner,
and heard his health proposed in glowing terms,
and drunk with great enthusiasm—for he was a
good and liberal landlord—and when he
addressed a few conventional words of thanks in
reply, and stroked his white whiskers, and bowed,
amidst renewed cheering, how should a thought
of his own short-comings ever dawn upon him?