Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Vol. 1 (of 3)Blackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
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Cradock Nowell: A Tale of the New Forest. Vol. 1 (of 3)
Blackmore, R. D. (Richard Doddridge)
New Forest (England : Forest) -- Fiction
He shoved away his Tauchnitz Herodotus in his shooting–coat pocket.
Neither of the men he met was a scholar; neither would feel any
interest in it. Being driven forth by his fatherʼs grumbling at the
little pleasure he showed in the fuss that was making about him, he
had brought his genial, true cosmopolite to show him a thing which his
heart would have loved. Cradock had doubled down the leaf whereon was
described the building of the boat–bridge over the Hellespont. Neither
had he forgotten the interment of the Scythian kings. It was not that
he purposed to instruct the carpenters thence, or to shed any light on
their doings; but that he hoped to learn from them some words to jot
down on the margin. He had discovered already, being helped thereto by
the tongue of Ytene, that hundreds of forcible Saxon words still lurk
in the crafts to which the beaten race betook itself—words which are
wanted sadly, and pieced out very unpleasantly by roundabout foreign
fanglements.
Even the gratitude now due to the good–will of all the neighbourhood,
had failed to reconcile his mind to the turgid part before him. At
Oxford he had been dubbed already “Caradoc the Philosopher”; and the
more he learned, the less he thought of his own importance. He had
never regarded the poor around him as dogs made for him to whistle
to; he even knew that he owed them some duties, and wondered how to
discharge them. Though bred of high Tory lineage, and corded into it
by the twists of habit and education, he never could hang by neck and
gullet; he never could show basement only, as a well–roped onion does.
Encased as he was by strict surroundings, he never could grow quite
straight and even, without a seed inside him, as a prize cucumber does
in the cylinder of an old chimney–glass.
Some of this dereliction sprang, no doubt, from his granulation, and
some from the free trade of his mind with the great heart called “John
Rosedew”.
Now he came up, and smiled, like a boy of fourteen, in Mr. Garnetʼs
face; for he liked Bull Garnetʼs larger qualities, and had no fear of
his smaller ones. Mr. Garnet never liked; he always loved or hated. He
loved Cradock Nowell heartily, and heartily hated Clayton.
“Behind my time, you see, Cradock. I am glad you are doing my duty.—Ha,
there! _I see you, my man_”.
The man was skulking his work, in rigging out with coloured lamps an
old oak fifty yards off. That ancient oak, the pride of the chase, was
to represent, to–morrow night, a rainbow reflecting “Cradock Nowell”.
Young Crad, who regarded it all as ill–taste, if it were not positive
sin, had lifted his voice especially against that oakʼs bedizenment.
“It will laugh at us from every acorn”, he had said to his father.
But Sir Cradock was now a man of sixty; and threescore resents being
budded. The incision results in gum only.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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