Cornleigh never saw them; he passed them just as he passed the pillar-box; he would look them right in the face without knowing it. Yet if he was spoken to he would answer affably, and even offer a cigar, and the next day go by the same individual without turning his head.
As for Letitia, she trampled on them in contemptuous indifference. “Such a capital thing for Cornleigh! Just the wife for Cornleigh!” Now in course of time it usually happens that great houses, even houses like the House of Cornleigh, come to need friends: Letitia’s was hardly the way to secure them.
But there are people in this servile world who will endure any trampling, and at the first beck rush delightedly to proffer their assistance. Perhaps Letitia understood this. These old folk—in order to disguise their inborn servility from themselves—used to say that after all it was not Cornleigh; he was all right; he did not do these things, only his agents, and of course a gentleman could not be expected to know everything his groom was about. If only Cornleigh Cornleigh could be got at he would be a very good fellow indeed.
The Squire was inimitable in doing nothing. He pottered about in a way not easily described, because to describe you must mention something, and Cornleigh did nothing to mention. If he took up the newspaper he did not read it; in fact, he never read anything. He sat about, and presently strolled down to the estate-office; then came out and stood in the doorway, and lit his cigar and looked up and down the street, seeing no one.
His cigar was always an especially good one—Cornleigh was exact in his cigars as in his “Sporting Calendar;” it was a common remark in the hotel bars, “This cigar is equal to Cornleigh’s!”
IX
His morning cigar usually led him across the now secluded and private park, and along a narrow wagon-track to the gamekeeper’s. After looking at the puppies or the coops without a word, the Squire would go back into the wagon-track, and post himself against a gate under an oak-tree.
He often had dogs with him; and, as he began his second cigar, he let these dogs hunt as they listed, driving pheasants one way, chicks another, giving tongue at rabbits, “and jest playing old Harry, hang ’em!” said the keeper, with an accent on “ ’em” that made it sound perilously like “him.” Here the Squire enjoyed his cigar in the sunshine, and looked downwards at nothing. He was often here for an hour at a time.
Sometimes the dogs would come back to his feet, fawn on him, and streak his trousers with their sandy paws; finding he took no notice, away they ran again to chivy everything in the hedge.
Occasionally a blue jay crossed over from the firs and screamed to his fellow just as he reached the ash cover. Squirrels darted out into the lane, limping along the ground, and rushed back at the sound of the scampering dogs.
The white clouds drifted over—shadow and sunshine; light airs rustled the oak leaves; sweet summer sounds whispered over grass and spray.
Enclosed within its thick bark the oak was passive to the beauty of the summer hours. As unobservant as the oak, it seemed that the man, enclosed in a thick bark of indifference, was passive as the timber; he neither saw nor heard.
A maxim, well established, is that the man or the woman always come out in their deeds. Whatever they may profess, in time the act betrays them, and upon that outward act and deed the world invariably bases its opinion of their character. Is this just?
Do you always do as you would like to do were it in your power? I find that circumstances force me often to act in a manner quite opposite to what I should prefer; I am of course judged by my acts, but do they really afford a true key to my character? I think not.
What passes in a man’s mind it is not possible to tell, and in despite of Cornleigh’s apparent indifference, it occurs to me to hazard the inquiry whether after all, he did not see the sunshine, the green leaf, the flower-grown grass. Did he in some dim way enter into the frolic joy of his dogs, released from control? Did he enjoy the quiet—the absolute do-nothing of the lane? Did he slumber awake under the rich colour of the sky, seeing it without looking?
There was no Letitia in nature; no one with a loud voice who must be obeyed.
The keeper believed the Squire, when the family were at their house in London, made up pretences to rund own a day or two, just to come and do his cigar in the lane. “He likes to do nothing with nobody to help him,” said the keeper.
There was some resemblance in this to the oak’s passive happiness in self-absorption—receiving the sun’s rays, receiving the air as it blew; silent under the song of birds; doing nothing, saying nothing; simply existing. So it seemed as if Cornleigh simply existed.
Wits in the town asked the question if Cornleigh did or did not know himself to be a fool? Some thought his mind so perfect a blank as to be also oblivious to his own failings. Others thought they detected a painful consciousness of his own defects, and averred that his supineness was only a cloak. The dispute was never settled.
A French saying, I think, points out that everyone has his own way of getting out of the rain. Possibly quiescence—doing as he was bid, without will of his own—was Cornleigh’s method.
But if indeed the man was conscious, or partly conscious of mental deficiency, then a great sadness is wound up with the lot of Cornleigh Cornleigh, master of so many many acres; a mere helpless jelly in the hands of Letitia.
How singularly just and thoughtful the world was in
