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A NOBLE GIFT
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The pace at which the party started soon slackened, for neither Albert nor Hal Carter could maintain it. However, it was not long before they heard the sentry challenge: "Who go there?"
"Sir Albert De Courcy and Sir Edgar Ormskirk escaped from Ypres," Edgar answered.
"Stand where you are till I call the sergeant," the man said, and shouted "Sergeant!" at the top of his voice. In five minutes a sergeant and two men-at-arms came up.
"Hurry, sergeant, I pray you," Edgar said. "We have swum three ditches, and my companions, being weakened by their wounds, are well-nigh perished."
"Come on," the sergeant said, "it is clear at any rate that you are Englishmen." He had brought a torch with him, and as they came up looked at them narrowly, then he saluted. "I know you, Sir Edgar, disguised as you are. I was fighting behind you on the wall five weeks since, and had it not been for the strength of your arm, I should have returned no more to England."
"How is Sir Hugh Calverley?" Edgar asked, as they hurried towards the camp.
"His wounds are mending fast," the sergeant said, "and he went out of his tent to-day for the first time. I saw him myself."
A quarter of an hour's walking brought them to the tent occupied by Sir Hugh and his followers. A light was still burning there, and they heard voices within.
"May we enter?" Edgar said, as he slightly opened the flap of the tent.
"Surely, that must be the voice of Sir Edgar Ormskirk!" Sir Hugh exclaimed.
"It is I, sure enough, and with me is Sir Albert De Courcy and my brave man-at-arms."
As he spoke he stepped into the tent. Two knights were there, and they and Sir Hugh advanced with outstretched hands to meet the new-comers.
"Welcome back, welcome back!" Sir Hugh exclaimed, in a tone of emotion. "My brave knights, I and my two comrades here have to thank you for our lives, for, although in truth I know naught about it, I have heard from Sir Thomas Vokes and Sir Tristram Montford how you brought the band to our assistance, and how you kept the enemy at bay, while this good fellow of yours bore me down the ladder on his shoulder; while from those who escaped afterwards we heard how you both, with but two or three others, kept the foe back, and gave time for the rest to jump from the walls or slide down the ladders. But your faces are blue, and your teeth chattering!"
"We have had to swim three ditches, and the ice having formed pretty thickly, it was no child's work."
"First, do you each drain a goblet of wine," Sir Hugh said, "and then to your tent. All your things are untouched. Knights, will you go with them and rub them down till their skin glows, and then wrap them up in blankets?" He called, and two servants came in. "Heat three bottles of wine in a bowl with plenty of spices," he said, "and carry it to these knights' tent, and take a portion to the tent of their men-at-arms for the use of this good fellow. See that your comrades rub you down," he said to Hal. "They will be glad indeed to see you back; for, although we heard from a prisoner that the two knights were alive, we knew not whether any others had been taken with them. Tell Hawkins to light two torches at once and fix them in the knights' tent, and put two others in that of the men-at-arms. Mind, Sir Edgar, once between the blankets, you stay there till morning. Your story will keep until then."
After throwing off their wet clothes, and being rubbed down until they glowed, Edgar and Albert were soon covered up in blankets, and after drinking the hot spiced wine, soon fell asleep. In the morning they related their story to Sir Hugh Calverley and the other two knights. " 'Tis Sir Edgar who should tell the tale," Albert said, "for indeed I know but little about it from the time I saw you lowered over the wall. Things went well with us for a time; we were joined by more men, and were strong enough to divide into two parties, Edgar going to the right while I went to the left. We cleared the wall for some distance, and methinks had there been ladders, so that we could have been helped more quickly, the town would have been won, but the enemy were reinforced more quickly than we were, and we began to lose ground. Then came a body of knights who beat us back till we were close to the point where the ladders were set. Then a knight made at me with a mace. I saw his arms raised, and after that I knew nothing more."
"The last man who jumped from the wall, Sir Albert, told us that he saw that you were down and that Sir Edgar and one of his men-at-arms were fighting like demons over you. Now, Sir Edgar, tell us how the matter ended."
"We made a shift to keep them back, Sir Hugh, for some five minutes, when one of the French knights offered to give us terms of surrender on ransom, and seeing no use in fighting longer when the matter could only have terminated one way, I surrendered."
Then he related the good treatment they had met with at the hands of Sir Robert De Beaulieu, and the manner in which he had enabled them to escape the fury of the rabble of Ypres, and had sent them away free from ransom.
"It was well done, indeed, of him," Sir Hugh said, warmly. "Truly a courteous and knightly action. And so you have both given your pledge to fight no more in this campaign. By St. George, I should not be ill-pleased if someone would put me under a similar pledge, for I tell you that I am heartily sick of it. Never did so disordered an army start from England. An army led by bishops and priests is something strange. Bishops have before now ridden often in battle, but never before did they assume command. Methinks when I go home that I will ask the king to give me the direction of Westminster Monastery and Abbey; at any rate I could not make a worse hand of it than the Bishop of Norwich is doing of this. And you say that De Beaulieu promised to send your armour on the first opportunity. That is, indeed, a generous action, for the armour of a prisoner is always the property of his captor, and your armour is of great value. I would that we could do something to show the good knight that we appreciate his generosity."
"We have our chains," Edgar said. "Of course we did not carry them about us when we should have to fight, and they are very heavy and of the finest workmanship. These would we gladly send to him, would we not, Albert, in token of our gratitude? Though, costly as they are, they are of much less value than the armour."
"I would gladly add something of my own account," Sir Hugh said, "seeing that you are in my train, and one does not like to be surpassed by a foreign knight. As to the matter of the ransom, that does not trouble me, and indeed, seeing that you surrendered to him, and that he felt that he could not give protection, and you had to risk your lives in getting away, it was but reasonable that he should remit it, but in the matter of the armour the case is different. I will add to your chains a reliquary which was presented to me by Pedro of Castile when I saved his life in the fight at Najarra. He told me that it contained a nail of the true cross, and that it was brought to Spain by a Spaniard of royal blood who was a knight commander of the Temple.
"I do not know how far this is true, for as one gets older one loses faith in these monkish stories of reliquaries. However, the casket is set with gems of value, and there is with it a parchment setting forth its history; at any rate it is a gift that is worthy of even a prince's acceptance. I will send it to him as a token that Sir Hugh Calverley recognizes his chivalrous behaviour to the knights who were captured while covering his carriage from the ramparts of Ypres, and, therefore, sends this gift to him in all honour and courtesy, together with the gold chains of the knights themselves. We shall not have long to wait. There are fights well-nigh every day, and when these are over there is a truce of an hour to carry off the wounded and dead."
The young knights thanked Sir Hugh for thus generously supplementing their own offering in return for their armour, but he waved it aside.
"You saved my life," he said; "or at any rate you saved me from capture, and had I fallen into their hands methinks that I should have had to pay a far heavier ransom before they let me out again."
Two days later there was heavy fighting again and much loss on both sides. It ceased as usual without any advantage being won by the besiegers. The fighting ended soon after mid-day, and at one o'clock the trumpet sounded a truce. Sir Hugh mounted, with his two knights, saying to Edgar: "It were perhaps best that you should not ride with me. 'Tis likely that the townsmen still think that you are in Beaulieu's house, and were it known that you had escaped it might bring trouble upon him and the two knights who aided your escape from the wall."
He took with him a pursuivant and trumpeter, and, riding through the English and Flemish men-at-arms, who were already engaged in carrying away the dead and wounded, he rode up to within a short distance of the wall, then the pursuivant and trumpeter advanced to the edge of the moat, and the latter blew a loud blast.
In a short time a knight appeared on the wall, and the pursuivant cried in a loud voice: "Sir Hugh Calverley, a valiant and puissant knight of England, desires speech with Sir Robert De Beaulieu, a brave and gentle knight of Flanders."
"I am Sir Robert De Beaulieu. Pray tell Sir Hugh Calverley to do me the courtesy to wait for me a quarter of an hour, and I will then issue forth and speak to him."
At the end of that time Sir Robert rode out, and crossed the bridge which had been lowered across the ditch for the passage of the soldiers engaged in collecting the dead. He was followed by two esquires and four men-at-arms, the latter bearing something behind them on their horses. The two knights saluted each other courteously, and Sir Hugh introduced his two companions to Sir Robert.
"I am glad, indeed," the latter said to Calverley, "thus to have the opportunity of meeting one of the most famous knights in Europe. My men-at-arms are bearers of the armour of Sir Edgar Ormskirk and Sir Albert De Courcy, who are, I believe, knights riding in your train. I promised them that I would send the armour on the first opportunity, and am glad indeed that the occasion has come so speedily."
He and Sir Hugh had both dismounted after saluting each other, and the latter held out his mailed hand to the Fleming.
"Sir Robert De Beaulieu," he said, "I have heard of you as a brave and honourable knight, and you have in this matter proved yourself to be a chivalrous and generous one in thus rendering up the spoil fairly won by you, without ransom; but it is not our custom to be outdone in generosity. The armour is of no ordinary value, and, as these knights of mine were made prisoners while covering my removal when insensible and helpless, I feel that the debt is mine as well as theirs. They have begged me to give you these two chains, both, as you see, of value, and of the best Italian work. To these I add, as a token of my esteem for you, this casket, which was given to me by Don Pedro of Spain when I rode with the Black Prince to aid him in his struggle with Don Henry. As you will see by the parchment attached to the casket, it contains a nail of the true cross, brought from Palestine by a Spanish grandee who was knight commander of the Spanish branch of the Knights Templar. I pray you to accept it, not as part of the ransom for my knights' armour, but as a proof of my esteem for one who has shown himself a flower of knightly courtesy."
"It would be churlish, Sir Hugh Calverley, for me to refuse so noble a gift thus courteously tendered. I shall prize it beyond any in my possession, not only for its own value and holiness, but as the gift of so noble and famous a knight. As to the chains, I pray you to return them to your brave young knights. Never did I see men who bore themselves more gallantly, and Sir Edgar, especially, withstood with honour a score of us for some time, and at last he yielded, not because he was conquered, but to save further bloodshed. They are young, and may, like enough, some day be again made prisoners. In that case they may find the chains, which are of singular beauty, of value to them; therefore, I pray you, hand them back to them again as a token of how warmly I appreciate their bravery and conduct."
"Right gladly will I do so. As you put it in that way, Sir Robert, they will appreciate the gift as much as I do, and, as you say, maybe the chains will be useful to them some day, for they are not of those who battle for spoil, and, like myself, have refused all share in that which the army has taken in Flanders, holding that we had no cause of dispute with your people, and that our assault upon them was unfairly and unjustly made."
After some more compliments had been exchanged, the two knights grasped each other's hands courteously, remounted, and then saluting again, rode off. While the conversation had been going on, Sir Robert's men-at-arms had handed over the armour to the three retainers who had ridden behind Sir Hugh and his two knights.
Edgar and Albert were delighted at regaining their armour. It would have been impossible for them to have replaced the harness by similar suits, and, moreover, they felt that they would have been humiliated had they, on their return to England, been obliged to confess to Sir Robert Gaiton that they had lost the splendid presents that he had given them. They were less pleased at the return of their chains, but Sir Hugh assured them that it would be an act of discourtesy were they to send them back to De Beaulieu.
There was now nothing to detain them longer in the camp, and taking leave of Sir Hugh, they started the next morning, with Hal Carter and the other surviving retainers, and rode by easy stages to Gravelines, where they took ship for Dover. Instead of riding directly home, they journeyed to London, as they were bearers of a letter from Sir Hugh Calverley to the council, and one also to the king. The latter received them with marked pleasure.
"What! back from the wars, sir knights?" he said, as they handed him Sir Hugh's letter. "Surely Calverley might have chosen as his messengers some whose swords could have been better spared."
"We were chosen, your Majesty, because we had the misfortune to be taken prisoners at Ypres, and it was a condition of our release that we should take no further part in the campaign, and as we were returning in consequence, Sir Hugh committed to us this letter to yourself, and one to the council."
"Prisoners!" the king said, with a laugh; "that you had got yourselves killed would not have surprised me, but that you should surrender never entered my mind."
The two young knights coloured.
"It cannot be said that Sir Albert surrendered," Edgar said, "seeing that he was insensible from his wounds. As for myself, your Majesty, as I and one of my men-at-arms stood alone on the walls of Ypres surrounded by foes, I trust that your Majesty will see that it was wiser for me to yield, and so to have the opportunity of fighting again some day under your royal banner, than to give away my life uselessly."
"Assuredly, assuredly," the young king said, hastily. "I did but jest, Sir Edgar, for I know that so long as a chance of victory remained, you would not lower your sword. However, let me see what the stout knight says. I know already that he does not approve of the way in which the war is being carried on; and, indeed, had we thought that the headstrong bishop would have disregarded Sir Hugh's counsel and embroiled us with the Flemings, whom we regard as our allies, we should not have placed him at the head of the army, for though it is but, as the bishop maintains, a church army, and not an English army, Europe will assuredly hold us responsible for its doings."
He cut with his dagger the silk that bound the roll of parchment together.
The king read the letter carefully, and when he concluded said: "Truly, young sirs, you have borne yourselves right gallantly and well; Sir Hugh Calverley speaks strongly indeed in your favour, and says that he owes his freedom if not his life to you. And now, tell me, think you that Ypres will be taken?"
"I fear not, your Majesty," Edgar said. "I thought that the siege of Oudenarde was worse conducted than anything I had ever read of, but the siege of Ypres is to the full as faulty. The place is strong and stoutly defended, and it can only be taken by regular works erected against it and machines placed to batter a breach. Nothing of this sort has been attempted. The troops march valiantly against the walls, but they throw away their lives in vain; and if, as is said, the French king is marching to its assistance with a strong army, there will be naught for us but to retreat to the ports unless strong aid arrives from England."
"But the bishop has some eight thousand Englishmen and twenty thousand Ghentois," the king said. "Surely we might fight and win, as our grandfathers did at Crécy."
"Yes, sire; but the English army at Crécy was commanded by a king, and was composed of good fighting men, with a great number of knights and nobles to lead them. The army in Flanders is commanded by a bishop, and there are many of the men who have gone over for the sake of plunder, and they will make but a poor stand in battle."
"My uncle of Lancaster has gathered a large force, and is ready to cross over to their aid," the king said.
"So we have heard by the way, sire, and if he joins the bishop all may be well, for his authority would be paramount, but at present he has not crossed, and unless he arrives before the King of France, things will assuredly go badly with the bishop."
"I have no doubt that Sir Hugh has set forth these matters in his letter to the council," the king said, "but assuredly Lancaster should be there in time. And now, tell me how you made your escape from Ypres."
Edgar related the circumstances.
"Your captor was an honourable gentleman," the king said, "and it is well that you escaped, for these Flemish burghers are masterful men and might well have murdered you. I must now to the council; I have summoned it to assemble. Have you been home yet?"
"No, sire. Our first duty was to bring you the letters, but, with your permission, we shall ride down into Kent tomorrow."
"Do you know that your friend Van Voorden has again returned to London? He found that he could do naught in Flanders, which at present is wholly at the orders of the King of France."
They rode first to Sir Robert Gaiton's house, where, as always, they were welcomed most warmly, and Albert narrated their adventures in Flanders, and how they still owned the armour he had given them.
After staying there for some time they went to the house where Van Voorden was lodging, having obtained his address from Sir Robert Gaiton. They had not seen him since they had parted from him in Ghent, a year before.
"I thought you intended to settle in Flanders, Mynheer," Edgar said, after the first greetings were over.
"I hoped to do so, and after I left Antwerp I went to Louvain and took a house there, but when the King of France defeated and killed Van Artevelde, and all Flanders save Ghent came under his power, the country was no longer safe for me. It was known, of course, that I was for many years here, and that I had done all in my power to effect a league between Ghent and England, so three months ago I crossed hither, leaving my wife and daughter at Louvain. I stopped for a short time at Ghent, and had much to do with bringing it about that Ghent should send an army to assist the English; but I fear that the doings of the bishop's troops--the sacking of towns by them--has so set the Flemings against England that there is no hope of a general alliance being made with Flanders.
"There were other things for which I wished to come over. I had hoped to return before this, but matters seem to be going on but badly, and if the King of France and his army defeat or drive out the bishop, his power will be greater than ever in Flanders, and in that case I shall send for my wife and daughter to come over again, and establish myself here finally."
On taking leave of them he handed a wooden box to each, saying: "I pray you not to open these until you reach home."
The next day Edgar and Albert rode down into Kent. Great was the surprise that their presence excited when they arrived at De Courcy's castle. Aline ran down into the courtyard and embraced her brother warmly, and then, as was the custom, held up her cheek to be kissed by Edgar.
"What, tired of the wars already?" she said, laughing. "Or have you killed all your enemies? or how is it that you are here?"
"We have been prisoners, Aline," her brother said, "and have been bound to take no farther part in the war."
"Prisoners!" she repeated; "you are joking with me, Albert. Surely you and Edgar would never have surrendered unharmed?"
"Nor did we, Aline. I was cut down and stunned by the blow of a mace, and was lying insensible."
"And what was Edgar doing?" she asked, looking reproachfully at him.
"Edgar was not near me when I was struck down, Aline, but no sooner did I fall than he, with his man-at-arms, Hal Carter, stood over me and kept at bay a host of knights and soldiers, and slew so many that they were glad at last to give him terms of surrender."
The girl's face flushed, and she would have spoken had not Sir Ralph and her mother at that moment issued from the door.
"Why! what brings you home, lads?" Sir Ralph asked, heartily.
"They have been taken prisoners, father," Aline interposed, "and Albert has been wounded, and they have both been obliged to give their parole not to serve again through the war."
"That is bad news indeed," the knight said. "It means another farm gone, and perhaps two, to pay for Albert's ransom. However, it is the fortune of war. Now come in and tell us all about it; but doubtless you are both hungry, and the matter will keep till you have dined. The meal is already on the table. You are not looking much the worse for your wounds, Albert," his father went on as they seated themselves at table.
"I have been healed of them for the last month, father. I was brought down by the blow of a mace, which would have finished me had it not been for the good work put into my helmet by the Milanese armourer. Also I had a wound on the neck, but fortunately it was not very deep."
"And did you come out of it scatheless, Edgar?"
"Nearly scatheless, for I knew not that I had been wounded until the fight was over, and it was but a pike thrust that entered at the shoulder-joint and cut the flesh thence to the neck. It was but an affair of a bandage and a bit of plaster. The only one seriously hurt was Hal Carter--it was some three weeks before he began to mend. He had half a dozen wounds. Another of my men was killed and two of Albert's."
"Now let us hear all about it," Sir Ralph said when the meal was over; "that you bore yourselves well I have no doubt, but I would fain hear the details of the matter."
Albert told the whole story of the assault and the escape, interrupted by Edgar, who protested that Albert was always belittling his own doings, and giving him credit when everything had been done equally by them both.
"You blame Albert unjustly, Edgar," Sir Ralph said when the story was concluded. "Albert has behaved well, but he has neither your strength, your skill, nor your quickness. It was you who thought of carrying the broken ladder to another spot, and so taking the besieged on the wall by surprise, and you were the first to mount it. It was you who, when you saw that the case had become altogether hopeless, ordered the soldiers to save themselves, while you held the enemy at bay. Albert would like enough have been killed, had you not so stoutly defended him that they gave terms of surrender to you both. You, again, had the idea of making your escape along the roofs, and took the lead in it. There is all credit due to Albert that he well seconded you, but it was you who led. Again, it is probable that neither he nor your man-at-arms would have been able to cross those half-frozen ditches, had you not first broken the ice for them and then dragged them over. You have done wonders for Albert, but you could not accomplish miracles. You have transformed him from a weakling into a brave young knight, of whom I am proud, but you cannot give him your strength or your quickness. If you go on as you have began, Edgar, you will become a famous captain. He will remain, and will be content to remain, your companion and lieutenant. What have you in those boxes that were strapped behind your saddles?"
"I know not, Sir Ralph," Albert said. "They were given to us by Mynheer Van Voorden, and he charged us not to open them until we arrived here."
"It is a mystery, then!" Aline exclaimed. "Let us send for them and open them at once. I am glad one of the boxes was not given to me to take care of, for I am afraid I should never have had the patience to wait until I arrived here before opening it."
Sir Ralph ordered the boxes to be brought in. "They are light enough," he said, "and I should judge from their weight that they contain papers of some sort. Open yours first, Albert."
They were fastened by three skeins of silk, the Fleming's seal being affixed to the knots.
"Cut them, Albert!" Aline exclaimed, as her brother proceeded to break the seals and untie the knots.
"No, no," he said; "silk is not to be picked up on the wayside, and it will be little trouble to undo them."
Indeed, in a minute he had unfastened the knots and raised the lid. At the top lay a piece of paper, on which was written, _A slight testimony of gratitude for inestimable services rendered to yours gratefully, John Van Voorden_. Underneath was a roll of parchment.
"What have we here?" Sir Ralph said. Albert ran his eye over the crabbed black-letter writing, and gave an exclamation of surprise.
"Now, then, Albert," Aline exclaimed, impatiently, "don't keep it all to yourself. We are burning to know what it is all about!"
Albert made no reply, but continued to read. "It is an assignment to me," he said, at last, in a low and agitated voice, "of the lands, castle, messuages, tenements, etc., of Cliffe."
Sir Ralph leapt to his feet. "A princely gift, Albert! The lands are four times as large as mine, and as I have heard, a fair castle has been rising there for months past. Art sure that there is no mistake?"
"There can be no mistake in the deed, father; but can I accept such a gift at the hands of the Fleming?"
"That you can, my son, and without any hesitation. Van Voorden is known to be the richest Fleming in England. He has on various occasions lent vast sums to the king and council, and noble as the gift is, it is one that he can doubtless well afford. You have saved the lives of himself, his wife, and daughter, and he may well feel grateful. He told me when he gave you that suit of armour that it was no recognition of what he felt he owed you, and that he hoped in the future to discharge the debt more worthily. Now, Edgar, let us see what is in your box."
Edgar had been quietly untying the knots of the silk, and the box was already open. The words on the top were similar to those in Albert's box.
"Please read it, Albert," he said, handing over the parchment. "You can decipher the characters better than I can." Albert read it through to himself. " 'Tis similar to mine," he said, "and assigns you the land, manors, the castle, and all rights and privileges thereto appertaining of the hundred of Hoo."
"Bravo, bravo!" Sir Ralph exclaimed. "Another noble gift, and fully equal to that of Albert. This Fleming is a very prince. I congratulate you, Edgar, with all my heart. I had heard that Sir John Evesham had sold his estates, which comprise the whole hundred of Hoo, a year since, in order to live at Court, but none seemed to know who was the purchaser. I heard, too, that a large number of men had been employed in building a castle on the heights looking down the Medway past Upnor to Chatham. Why, lads, if you ever win to the rank of knight banneret, you will have land enough to support the dignity, and to take the field with two or three knights and a fair following of men-at-arms in your train. I have gained good sums for the ransom of prisoners, but I never had the luck to save the life of a Flemish merchant and his family."
"It seems well-nigh impossible," Edgar said.
"You must remember, Edgar, that these rich Flemings are the bankers of half the princes in Europe. You, who have been in their houses, know that they live in comfort and luxury such as none of our nobles possess. They could find the money for a king's ransom, or pay beforehand the taxes of a country. If a king can grant estates like these to his favourites, and not only the king, but many of our nobles can do so, it is not strange that one of the richest of these Flemings should make such gifts to those who have saved his life without feeling that he has in any way overpaid the service."
"I must be riding on now," Edgar said, "to carry this wonderful news to my father."
While they had been dining, Hal Carter had been getting a hearty meal in the kitchen, where he and Albert's two retainers were surrounded by all the men-at-arms, who were anxious to hear the details of the expedition. When Edgar sent down for his horse, Sir Ralph went down with him to the courtyard, and as Hal brought the horses round, the old knight put his hand upon his shoulder.
"My brave fellow," he said, "I have heard how you stood with your master across my son's body, and how doughtily you fought. Do not forget that I am your debtor, but for the present I can only say that I thank you for the part you played."
"It would have been strange, indeed, Sir Ralph, had I not hit my hardest, for my own life depended upon it, and it was not like that I should draw back a foot when Sir Albert, whom I love only next to my master, was lying there; but, indeed, it was a right merry fight, the only one that came up to my expectations of what a stiffly fought _mêlée_ would be. I would not have missed it for anything."
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{
"id": "7061"
}
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19
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WELL SETTLED
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"Well, well, well," Mr. Ormskirk exclaimed when Edgar brought the story of all that had happened since he had been away to an end, "indeed you surprise me. I know that many knights fit out parties and go to the wars, not so much for honour and glory as for the spoils and ransoms they may gain, and that after Crécy and Poictiers, there was not a single soldier but came back laden with booty and with rich jewels, gold chains, and costly armour, gathered from the host of French nobles who fell on those fields; while knights who were fortunate enough to capture counts, earls, or princes, gained ransoms that enabled them to purchase estates, and live without occasion to go further to the wars during their lives. But I never thought that you would benefit by such a chance. As it is to my mind more honourable to save life than to take it, I rejoice that you have come to your fortune, not by the slaying of enemies, but by the saving the lives of a man, his wife, and daughter, who are rich enough to reward you.
"Assuredly, if a man like Mynheer Van Voorden had fallen into the hands of the Count of Flanders, the latter would have extracted from him, as the price of his freedom, a sum many times larger than that which he has expended on the purchase of these two estates, and the building of the castles. Well, Edgar, I congratulate you heartily. You can now ride to the wars when the king's banner is spread to the winds, and do your duty to your country, but there will be no occasion for you to become a mere knight adventurer--a class I detest, ever ready to sell their swords to the highest bidder, and to kill men, against whom they have no cause of complaint, as indifferently as a butcher would strike down a bullock with a pole-axe.
"Between these men and those who fight simply in the wars of their own country, the gulf is a wide one, as wide as that betwixt a faithful house-dog and a roving wolf. When are you going to receive your new acquisition, or are you intending to ride first to London to thank the Fleming for his noble gift?"
"Assuredly, we should have first ridden to London, father, but we each found in the bottom of our boxes a short letter which we had at first overlooked. The letters were the same, save for our names. Mine ran:-- "'_Dear Sir Edgar,_ "'_It has given me very great pleasure to prepare this little surprise for you. I pray you, do not mar it in any way by returning me thanks. The gift is as naught in comparison with the service rendered. I am proceeding to the North to-morrow on business with Earl Percy, and shall not return for some weeks. When we meet next, I pray you, let there be no word of thanks concerning this affair, for I consider myself still greatly your debtor. You will find an agent of mine at your castle. He has been there some time, has made the acquaintance of all the vassals and others, and will introduce you to them as their lord. He has my instructions either to remain there to manage your affairs for six months, or for any less time you may choose. But methinks you will do well to keep him for that time, as he is a good man of business, and you will need such an one until you have mastered all the details, and can take matters entirely in your own hands. _' "So you see, father, we shall be free to start to-morrow. Sir Ralph, Lady De Courcy, and Mistress Aline will ride with us, and I trust that you will come also. We shall first go to Cliffe, which will be on our road, and, indeed, I believe that for some distance Albert's lands join mine. Then we shall go on to my castle--it sounds absurd, doesn't it, father? --and doubtless we shall be able to stay in Hoo, or if not, 'tis but two or three miles to Stroud, where we are sure to find good lodging."
"I should like to ride with you, Edgar, but it is years since I have bestridden a horse."
"We shall ride but slowly, father, for Dame De Courcy loves not for her palfrey to go beyond a walk. If you like you could bestride Hal Carter's horse, which is a strong and steady animal, and he can walk alongside, so as to be ready to catch the rein if it be needed. He will be very glad to go, for the honest fellow is in the highest delight at the news of my good fortune."
"I think that I could do that, Edgar, yet I will not go by Cliffe, but straight to Hoo. I can then travel as I like, and shall not have to join in talk with Dame De Courcy nor the others, nor feel that my bad horsemanship makes me a jest."
"Very well, father, perhaps that would be the pleasantest way for you."
"If I get there before you, Edgar, I shall stop at a tavern in the main street of Hoo. There is sure to be one there; and will rest until you come along. If Hal Carter learns that you have passed through before my arrival, I will come straight on to the castle."
Accordingly, early the next morning, Mr. Ormskirk started with Hal, and Edgar, after seeing them fairly on their way, rode over to the De Courcys'. All were in readiness for the start.
"Is not Mr. Ormskirk coming with us?" Dame De Courcy asked. "Recluse though he is, I thought he would surely tear himself from his books on such an occasion."
"He has done so, dame, and is already on the road to Hoo, under the charge of Hal Carter. 'Tis so many years since he has bestridden a horse that he said that he should be ill at ease riding with such a party, and that he would therefore go on quietly, with Hal walking beside him, and would join us when we came to Hoo."
They mounted at once. Dame De Courcy rode on a pillion behind Sir Ralph. Aline bestrode--for side-saddles had not yet come into use--her own pony. Two retainers followed, one leading a sumpter horse, with two panniers well filled with provisions and wine, together with some women's gear, in case the weather should turn bad, and a change be required at the halting-place for the night. They started briskly, and Edgar was glad that his father had gone on alone; the pace would have sorely discomposed him. Alternately walking and going at a canter they arrived in three hours at Cliffe.
"There is your castle, Albert!" Aline exclaimed. "It seems well-nigh, if not quite, finished, and is strongly posted on that hill, overlooking the whole country from Dartford to Sheerness. You will need a chatelaine before long, brother mine."
Albert laughed, but coloured a little.
"Time enough to think of that, Aline."
"Nay, I am in earnest. Many are betrothed, if not married, long before they attain your age."
"I may say the same to you, Aline. 'Tis the fashion now for girls to be betrothed between twelve and fourteen. I have been wandering about and fighting and have had no time to think of love-making."
Aline shrugged her shoulders. "You had better ask Sir Ralph and my mother for their views about me, Albert. It is not for a maid to make her own marriage, but a valiant knight like yourself can manage your own affairs, Methought perhaps that you would have to tell us that the Fleming's fair daughter was to assist you in the management of the castle that her father has given you."
"Joanna Van Voorden!" Albert exclaimed, indignantly, while Edgar burst into laughter; "why, she is well-nigh as big as her mother already, and promises to be far bigger. Thank you, Aline; if the castle and estate had been offered me on the condition that I married her, I would have had none of them."
"Well, sir, shall I make another guess?" Aline asked, mischievously.
"No, no, Aline," Albert said, hastily. "No more guessing, if you please."
They had by this time approached the castle. "Look, father!" Aline exclaimed, clapping her hands; "they must have been on the watch for us. See! they are raising a flag on that staff on the turret, and see, there are your arms blazoned on it." " 'Tis a goodly castle for its size," the knight said, as he drew rein and turned his horse so that his dame might get a better view of it. "There is a dry moat, which is lined with stonework. The walls are not very high, but they are well defended by those flanking towers, and the place could stand any sudden assault. I should say that it was about the same strength as our own. So far as I can see, the other arrangements are quite different. There is no keep, and it seems to me that the house is built rather for comfort than for defence; the windows are large, and it looks more like a Flemish house built within a castle wall than an English place of strength. Now let us ride on," and they pressed their horses forward. The gates were thrown open when they approached within a hundred yards; the drawbridge over the moat had been already lowered.
"Ride you first, Albert," Sir Ralph said; "you are lord of the place."
As they came to the head of the drawbridge, a middle-aged man of grave aspect, dressed in the garb of a citizen, appeared at the gate, and six men-at-arms, in steel caps and body armour, armed with pike and sword, drew up behind him.
The man bowed deeply to Albert. "Welcome to Cliffe Castle, sir knight," he said. "I am Nicholas Hocht, and have, by the orders of my master, Mynheer Van Voorden, been here for the last year to superintend the building of this castle, and in carrying out his other commands respecting it, with further orders to remain here, should you desire it, for the further space of six months as your steward. I received a message from him yesterday, saying that possibly you would be here to-day, and I must, therefore, have everything in readiness for you. The warning was somewhat short, but I have done my best, and I trust that you will pardon any shortcomings."
"I am much beholden to you, Master Hocht," Albert said. "You have done well, indeed, for a fairer castle and one better placed no one could desire."
The men-at-arms saluted as he rode on. Entering the gate, they were able to see the house itself. It was, as Sir Ralph had said, rather a Flemish house than a knightly castle; the lower range of windows were small and heavily barred, but above there were large casements, pointed roofs, and projecting gables. It had an air of comfort and brightness. On the top of the broad steps leading to the great door were four retainers, all similarly attired in doublets of russet cloth and orange hose. As soon as the party alighted they ascended the steps, led by the steward. When they entered the great hall a general exclamation of surprise broke from them.
They had expected to see bare walls and every sign of the place having only just left the builders' hands; instead of this everything was complete, the massive oak beams and panels of the ceilings were varnished, the walls were wainscoted, the oak floor highly polished; Eastern rugs lay here and there upon it, carved benches ran along the sides, and a large banqueting table stood in the centre; rich curtains hung by the window, and a huge fire was piled on the hearth.
"Why, this is a work of enchantment, Master Hocht," Dame Agatha said.
"I have had but little to do with it, lady," the steward replied. "The woodwork was all made in London, to my master's orders, and I had but to superintend its being placed in position."
He led them from room to room, their surprise and delight continually increasing; all were furnished richly in the Flemish style with cabinets, tables, settees, and armoires. There were hangings to the windows and rugs on the floors; everything was ready for habitation, the linen presses were full of table-cloths and napkins and sheets. The beds were ready for sleeping in, with their great bags of soft feathers, their thick blankets and silken coverlets. These more than anything else excited the dame's admiration. Never had she seen beds approaching these in softness and daintiness.
"With the exception of the furniture in the hall," Master Hocht explained, "everything has come direct from Flanders, having been selected by Mynheer Van Voorden himself, and sent by sea to Gravesend."
After having inspected the whole of the house they returned to the hall. Here the table had been spread. A silver skewer, to act as a fork, an article then unknown in England, was placed before each, and an admirable repast was served, the steward himself officiating as carver, while the four servitors carried the platters, which were of fine Flemish ware, to the guests. Albert had begged his father to take the head of the table, but the latter refused positively. He sat on one side of his son and his dame on the other. Fish of several kinds, meats, and poultry were served. All cut up their meat with their daggers, and carried it to their mouths on the point of the skewer.
Albert and Edgar had learned the use of them in Flanders. Lady Agatha and Aline said that they were charming, but Sir Ralph declared that he greatly preferred using his fingers. After the meal was concluded, water was brought round in a silver bowl, with a damask napkin for them to wipe their fingers on.
"The wine is excellent," Sir Ralph said. "You can scarcely have purchased this at Cliffe or Gravesend."
"It is from the cellar, Sir Ralph, which is well stocked with the wines of France and Spain."
"Truly, Albert," Dame Agatha said, "this is not a castle; it is a veritable enchanted palace. Mynheer Van Voorden is like one of the good genii the Saracens believe in, who can, at will, summon up from the ground a vast palace, ready built and furnished. I trust that it will not at once vanish as soon as we leave it. Were it to do so I should scarcely be more surprised than I have been at its splendour and comfort."
"Do you tarry here to-night, Sir Albert?" the steward asked, as they rose from the table.
"No, we are going to take horse at once and ride to Hoo."
"Will you take the men-at-arms with you? They have horses in the stables."
"Not to-day," Albert said. "We are a family party, and travelling quietly."
As they rode into the street of Hoo, Mr. Ormskirk came out of a tavern, where he had been resting. After greeting the ladies and Sir Ralph, he said, "I had begun to think that you must have changed your minds, and that you were not coming hither to-day. I expected you three hours ago."
"We have been viewing the marvels of an enchanted castle, Mr. Ormskirk," Dame Agatha said. "We will not tell you about them, for doubtless you will see others like them here, and it would be a pity for me to prepare you for what you are to see."
The castle was indeed in all respects an almost exact duplicate to that of Cliffe. They were received as before by the Flemish steward. There were the same number of men-at-arms and servitors, and the fittings and furnishings were as perfect as those of Cliffe. After going over it, Edgar drew Sir Ralph aside.
"Sir Ralph," he said, "the castle, perfect as it is, still lacks one thing--a mistress. I have long hoped that the time would some day come that I should ask you for the hand of Mistress Aline, but though I have been fortunate, and have won rank and some distinction, I was but a landless knight, and in no position to ask for your daughter's hand. That obstacle has now been removed, and I pray you to give her to me. I love her very truly. My thoughts have never wandered for a moment from her, and I trust that I shall be able to make her happy. Unless the banner of England is hoisted I shall go no more to the wars."
"I am in no way surprised at your request, Edgar," the knight said; "and, indeed, for the past two years my dame and I have talked this over, and hoped that it might be. I have during the past year had more than one request for her hand, but have refused them, for her mother told me she believed that Aline's fancy has long inclined towards you."
He called Dame Agatha to join him, and on hearing Edgar's request, she heartily concurred with the knight.
"Nothing could please us better," she said. "We have long regarded you almost as our son, and we need have no fear that Aline will thwart our wishes and yours. Have you spoken to your father?"
"I spoke to him last night, lady, and told him what my hopes have long been, and that Van Voorden's noble gift now rendered it possible for me to speak; that it might be some time before it could be more than a betrothal, since, although I had rank and land, I was still without money to enable me to make the castle comfortable for her abode. Now that, owing to the Fleming's generosity, this difficulty is also removed, I hope that you will not think it necessary that our marriage should be delayed."
"I see no reason at all," Sir Ralph said. "Here is everything ready for her, and no noble in England could offer so comfortable a home to his bride. The castle lacks a mistress, and the sooner it has one the better. Therefore, you can take her as soon as her mother can get her ready."
They now joined Albert, Aline, and Mr. Ormskirk, who had mounted to the top of one of the turrets and were admiring the view. " 'Tis a fair home," Sir Ralph said.
"It is indeed, father."
"What say you to becoming its mistress, daughter? Sir Edgar has asked for your hand, and has gained mine and your mother's hearty consent. What say you?"
The girl coloured up to her forehead as her father spoke. "I am ready to obey your orders, father," she said, in a low tone, "the more so as my heart goes wholly with them."
"Take her, Edgar. 'Tis not often that a young knight gains castle, and land, and bride in twenty-four hours. May your good luck continue all your life."
"You have robbed me of my chatelaine, Edgar," Albert said, after the first congratulations were over. "Aline had half promised to come and keep house for me for the present."
"You must follow Edgar's example," Sir Ralph said. "Who is it to be, lad?"
"I had intended to speak to you shortly, father, but as you ask me I will do so at once. I have seen no one whom I could love so well as Mistress Ursula, daughter of Sir Robert Gaiton, and methinks that I am not indifferent to her."
"She is a fair maid," Sir Ralph said, "and her father is a right good fellow, though but a city knight. Still, others of higher rank than yourself have married in the city, and as Sir Robert has no other children, and is said to be one of the wealthiest of the London citizens, she will doubtless come to you better dowered than will Aline, for, as Edgar knows, my estates bring me in scarcely enough to keep up my castle and to lay by sufficient to place my retainers in the field should the king call on me for service. So be it then, my son. As we have settled to sleep here to-night, it will be to-morrow afternoon before we get home. The next day I will ride with you to London, and will ask Sir Robert for his daughter's hand for you."
Not the least happy of the party at the castle was Hal Carter. He passed the afternoon in walking, sometimes round the walls, sometimes going out and making a circuit of the moat, or walking away short distances to obtain views of the castle from various points. The news that his master and Aline De Courcy would shortly be married raised his delight to the highest pitch, for it pointed to an early occupation of the castle. The thought that he, Hal Carter, was to be the captain of the men-at-arms in a castle like this seemed to him a huge joke. It was but two years before that he had been hunted as a rioter, and would have been executed if caught. That so famous a leader as Sir Hugh Calverley should have praised him greatly, and that he was now to have men under his command, seemed to him as wonderful a thing as that his master, whom he had known as a young boy, should stand high in the king's favour, and should be lord of a castle and a wide estate.
"Of course, father," Edgar said, as early the next morning he took a turn upon the battlements with him, "you will leave St. Alwyth and come here?"
"I don't think that I could do that, Edgar," Mr. Ormskirk said, doubtfully.
"You will find it very lonely there, father; and, of course, we can fit you up a laboratory here, and you can go on just the same way as you did at home."
"I do not see that I shall be more lonely than I have been for the last two years, Edgar, and, indeed, as you know, even when you were at home I lived very much my own life, and only saw you at meals and for an hour or so of an evening; therefore, your being established here will make but little difference in my life, and, indeed, whenever I feel lonely I can ride over here for a day or two. I thank you all the same, Edgar; but, at any rate, for the present I will continue to live at St. Alwyth. I have the good prior, who often comes in for a talk with me in the evening, and makes me heartily welcome should I, as I do sometimes, go to the monastery for an hour after sunset. Sir Ralph never passes my door on his way down to Dartford without dismounting and coming in. I am happy in my own life, and as long as I have health and strength shall hope to continue it. Should my interest in my work flag, or when I feel that I am getting too old for useful work, which will, I trust, be not for many years yet, I will then gladly come and end my days here."
So the matter was left for the time, and although Edgar more than once tried to shake his father's determination, and Aline added her persuasions to his, he failed to alter Mr. Ormskirk's resolution. Sir Ralph and Albert returned from London after staying there for a few days. Sir Robert Gaiton had consented willingly to his daughter's marriage with Albert, and had announced his intention of giving her a dowry greater than that which most nobles could have bestowed on a daughter. The king had expressed very great satisfaction at hearing of the gift Master Van Voorden had bestowed on the young knights, and took great interest in their approaching marriages.
"They will then have enough land for a knight banneret's feu," he said; "that pleases me much. I should, on the report of Sir Hugh Calverley, have appointed them to that rank, but at present there are no estates in my gift, and I waited till some might fall in before I appointed them. Now, however, there is no further need for delay, and I will order the patent appointing them to be made out at once, for they can now, if called upon for service, take the field with the proper following of their rank. Has Sir Edgar adopted any cognizance? Of course your son will take yours."
"I don't think that he has ever so much as thought of it, sire."
"I will talk it over with my heralds," the king said, "and see if we can fix upon something appropriate, and that is not carried by any noble or knight. When will the weddings be?"
"In two months' time, sire. Sir Robert Gaiton and his dame asked for that time. My son will, of course, be married in London, and will be wed in St. Paul's, I have not yet thought about my daughter's marriage, but it will doubtless be at the chapel in the castle." " 'Tis a pity that they could not be married together here, Sir Ralph."
"I believe that my daughter's tastes and those of Sir Edgar would incline to a quiet wedding, with just our neighbours and friends, and doubtless Albert's would also lie that way; but in this matter Sir Robert must, of course, carry out the arrangements as he wishes; and as an alderman and like to be lord mayor in two years he would wish to make a brave show on the occasion."
Before the time for the weddings approached came the news that things had gone badly in Flanders. At the approach of the French army a council was held among the leaders, and it was agreed that the allied army could not fight with any hope of success against it. Accordingly, the men of Ghent retired to their own city, and the English marched with great haste to the coast and shut themselves up in Bruckburg, while the bishop himself galloped as far as Bergues. Bruckburg surrendered on the arrival of the French army, all the English being permitted to embark with the great spoil that had been taken. Sir Hugh Calverley, whose advice throughout had been always disregarded, had ridden to Gravelines with his small body of men-at-arms and thence took ship to England. The bishop, on his arrival home, was, with the knights who had been his councillors, very badly received; for it was held that by their conduct and ignorance of affairs, and by the manner in which they had behaved in Flanders, they had brought great discredit upon England.
Sir Hugh Calverley, on the other hand, was received with honour, it being well known that all that had been done had been contrary to his advice, and that had this been followed the event would have turned out very differently. The people at large, however, considered that the blame for the ill ending of the expedition was due entirely to the delay on the part of the Duke of Lancaster in crossing over with the army under him. It was known that he had been altogether opposed to the expedition, which had prevented the one he desired from sailing to Spain, and that he was minded to bring ruin upon it by delaying, under many false pretences, from crossing to France. He had been extremely unpopular before, but this added very greatly to the ill-feeling with which he was regarded.
But, in truth, the bishop's expedition failed from its own weakness. In no case could an army so collected and led have effected any great thing; but the headstrong folly and arrogance of the bishop, and his unprovoked attack upon the Flemings, precipitated matters, and the scornful neglect of all the counsel tendered by the veteran knight who accompanied the expedition, rendered it a shameful disaster.
The marriage of Sir Edgar with Aline was celebrated a fortnight before that of the bride's brother. The ceremony took place at the castle of the De Courcys, and was attended only by neighbours and friends, and by Sir Robert Gaiton, who rode down from town and presented the bride with a superb casket of jewels.
On the following day Sir Edgar with his wife rode to his castle at Hoo, where for the first time his banner, with the cognizance chosen by the king, a very simple one, being a sword with the words "_For King and Honour_," was hoisted at their approach, while the banneret denoting Edgar's new rank flew from another tower. The number of the men-at-arms had been increased to ten, and great was Hal Carter's pride as he took his place in front of them and saluted as Sir Edgar rode in. Ten days later they started for London to attend Albert's wedding; which was celebrated with much pomp in St. Paul's, the king himself and most of the nobles of the Court being present.
Neither of the two young knights ever rode to the wars again, for in King Richard's time the royal banner was never again raised in France; and yet they were not without a share of fighting. Many depredations were committed along the coasts and at the mouths of rivers by French freebooters and lawless people, and the castles of Hoo and Cliffe were well placed for preventing such incursions by men landing anywhere in the Hundred, either from the Medway or the Thames. There was no fear of such marauders sailing up the Medway past Hoo, for Upnor Castle barred the way, and indeed Rochester was too large a place, defended as it was by its castle, to be attacked by such pirates, but below Hoo a landing could be effected anywhere, and boats with a few hands on board could row up the creeks in the marshes, pounce upon a quiet hamlet, carry off anything of value, and set the place on fire.
Such incursions had been carried far up the Thames and great damage done, but as the ships of Fowey and other places were equally busy damaging French commerce and ravaging their sea-coast, no complaints could be made to France even during the very brief period when there was a truce between the two countries. Not only from across the Channel did these marauders come, but from the islands of Friesland and Zeeland, where the inhabitants--hardy sailors to a man--were lawless and uncontrolled. After having suffered several times from these pirates, and been moved by the constant complaints of their tenants, Edgar and Albert went up to town and laid the matter before the king and council, pointing out that these attacks were becoming more frequent and general all along the coast, and praying that measures might be adopted for putting a stop to them.
"But what do you propose should be done, sir knights?" the king asked.
"I would suggest, your Majesty, that either a few fast ships should be placed at various points, such as the mouth of the Medway, Harwich, Dover, Hastings, and Southampton, that might keep a watch for these pirates, or else that some of your vassals round the coast should be appointed to keep forces of some strength always under arms, just as the Percys are at all times in readiness to repel the incursions of the Scots; but should you and the council think this too weighty a plan, we would pray you to order better protection for the Thames. It was but the other day some pirates burnt six ships in Dartford Creek, and if they carry on these ravages unpunished, they may grow bolder and will be sailing higher still, and may cause an enormous loss to your merchants by setting fire to the vessels at the wharves, or to those anchored out in the stream."
"The matter would be serious, assuredly," the king said, "and would cause so great a trouble to the citizens of London that it would be well that some means should be taken to prevent it. I will talk the matter over with the council, sir knights, and will let you know in an hour's time whether we can do aught in the matter."
When the young knights returned, the king said: "There is a royal manor at Bromley at present vacant; 'tis of the value of fifty-six pounds a year. This we will hand over to you jointly, upon your undertaking to keep thirty men-at-arms fully equipped and ready for service, each of you; and also that each of you shall maintain, at the spots which may seem to you the most advisable, a galley with oars, in which you can put out and attack these pirates."
Edgar begged permission to consult with his friend.
"You see, Albert, we have already each of us ten men-at-arms, and the revenue of the manor should well-nigh, if not quite, pay the expenses of the others. As to the galleys, we could keep them in the little creek between Cliffe and Graves-end. It would give us employment, and should we ever be called upon to take the field, the sixty men-at-arms will make a good beginning for the force we should gather."
Albert assented, and, returning, they informed the council that they were ready to undertake the charge of keeping thirty men-at-arms each, always in readiness for service, and for fighting the pirates by land or water. Returning home, preparations were speedily made, and the men enrolled and drilled. A watch-tower was raised on an eminence that was visible from both castles, and a look-out place also erected at the mouth of the Medway. This was some sixty feet high. A great cresset was placed at the summit ready for firing, and an arrangement made with the tenants, on whose land it stood, that a man should be on watch night and day. His duty would be to keep a vigilant eye on the river, and to light the beacon if any suspicious vessels were seen coming up. The smoke by day or the fire at night could be seen at both castles, and by a pre-arranged system signals could then be exchanged between Edgar and Albert by means of the watch-tower on the hill.
Albert had two large and fast galleys constructed, for his wife's dowry enabled him to spend money more freely than Edgar. They had a good many encounters with the freebooters. Two or three times strong parties that had landed from ships were attacked by the garrisons of both castles, joined by the tenantry near, and were driven to the boats with heavy loss.
Once the beacon from the mouth of the Medway signalled that three ships had entered the mouth of that river. Edgar signalled to Cliffe, and when at ten o'clock the French landed just below Hoo, thinking to make an easy capture of the village, and, perhaps, even to carry the castle by surprise, they were allowed to ascend the hill undisturbed, and were then attacked by the sixty men-at-arms, led by the two knights, together with a number of villagers and countrymen armed with bows and bills. Although superior in numbers the French were driven down the hill with great slaughter. Only a few succeeded in regaining their ships; but the tide had not yet turned, and there was little wind. Boats were obtained at Upnor, the vessels boarded, and all on board put to the sword.
Three or four sharp engagements also took place between the galleys and the pirates ascending the Thames, and at various times rich prizes that the pirates had taken higher up the river were recovered from them; so that in time the depredations greatly abated, and the city of London presented the two knights with costly swords and a vote of thanks for the great services they had rendered to the city, and to those trading with it.
They were both too happy in their homes to care to go often to Court, but they viewed with pain the increasing unpopularity of the king, brought about by his reckless extravagance, his life of pleasure, and the manner in which he allowed himself to be dominated by unworthy favourites. Van Voorden, who had permanently settled in England, often came down with his wife and daughter to stay for a few days with them, and declared that he had never laid out money so well as that which had established two such happy households. The last few years of Mr. Ormskirk's life were spent at Hoo, where he still dabbled a little in his former occupation, but never succeeded in finding the elixir he had laboured so long to discover. On the departure of the Flemish steward, Hal Carter was appointed to the post, with the understanding that if his lord should ever ride to battle, he was to revert to the command of the men-at-arms. Hal was ignorant of figures, but he had a young assistant given him to manage this part of the work, and his honesty, his acquaintance with farming, and his devotion to his master, made up for any deficiency on that score. Both knights sent contingents under their sons to fight at Agincourt, and were only prevented from taking the field themselves by the entreaties of their wives and daughters, and by the thought that it would be as well to give their sons the opportunity of distinguishing themselves, as they themselves had done, in their early youth.
THE END.
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{
"id": "7061"
}
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1
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LIFE IN CANTONMENTS.
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Very bright and pretty, in the early springtime of the year 1857, were the British cantonments of Sandynugghur. As in all other British garrisons in India, they stood quite apart from the town, forming a suburb of their own. They consisted of the barracks, and of a maidan, or, as in England it would be called, "a common," on which the troops drilled and exercised, and round which stood the bungalows of the military and civil officers of the station, of the chaplain, and of the one or two merchants who completed the white population of the place.
Very pretty were these bungalows, built entirely upon the ground floor, in rustic fashion, wood entering largely into their composition. Some were thatched; others covered with slabs of wood or stone. All had wide verandas running around them, with tatties, or blinds, made of reeds or strips of wood, to let down, and give shade and coolness to the rooms therein. In some of them the visitor walked from the compound, or garden, directly into the dining-room; large, airy, with neither curtains, nor carpeting, nor matting, but with polished boards as flooring. The furniture here was generally plain and almost scanty, for, except at meal-times, the rooms were but little used.
Outside, in the veranda, is the real sitting-room of the bungalow. Here are placed a number of easy-chairs of all shapes, constructed of cane or bamboo--light, cool, and comfortable; these are moved, as the sun advances, to the shady side of the veranda, and in them the ladies read and work, the gentlemen smoke. In all bungalows built for the use of English families, there is, as was the case at Sandynugghur, a drawing-room as well as a dining-room, and this, being the ladies' especial domain, is generally furnished in European style, with a piano, light chintz chair-covers, and muslin curtains.
The bedroom opens out of the sitting-room; and almost every bedroom has its bathroom--that all-important adjunct in the East--attached to it. The windows all open down to the ground, and the servants generally come in and out through the veranda. Each window has its Venetian blind, which answers all purposes of a door, and yet permits the air to pass freely.
The veranda, in addition to serving as the general sitting-room to the family, acts as a servants' hall. Here at the side not used by the employers, the servants, when not otherwise engaged, sit on their mats, mend their clothes, talk and sleep; and it is wonderful how much sleep a Hindoo can get through in the twenty-four hours. The veranda is his bedroom as well as sitting-room; here, spreading a mat upon the ground, and rolling themselves up in a thin rug or blanket from the very top of their head to their feet, the servants sleep, looking like a number of mummies ranged against the wall. Out by the stables they have their quarters, where they cook and eat, and could, if they chose, sleep; but they prefer the coolness and freshness of the veranda, where, too, they are ready at hand whenever called. The gardens were all pretty, and well kept, with broad, shady trees, and great shrubs covered by bright masses of flower; for Sandynugghur had been a station for many years, and with plenty of water and a hot sun, vegetation is very rapid.
In two of the large reclining chairs two lads, of fifteen and sixteen respectively, were lolling idly; they had been reading, for books lay open in their laps, and they were now engaged in eating bananas, and in talking to two young ladies, some three years their senior, who were sitting working beside them.
"You boys will really make yourselves ill if you eat so many bananas."
"It is not that I care for them," said the eldest lad; "they are tasteless things, and a good apple is worth a hundred of them; but one must do something, and I am too lazy to go on with this Hindoo grammar; besides, a fellow can't work when you girls come out here and talk to him."
"That's very good, Ned; it is you that do all the talking; besides, you know that you ought to shut yourselves up in the study, and not sit here where you are sure to be interrupted."
"I have done three hours' steady work this morning with that wretched Moonshi, Kate; and three hours in this climate is as much as my brain will stand."
Kate Warrener and her brothers, Ned and Dick, were the children of the major of the One Hundred and Fifty-first Bengal Native Infantry, the regiment stationed at Sandynugghur. Rose Hertford, the other young lady, was their cousin. The three former were born in India, but had each gone to England at the age of nine for their education, and to save them from the effects of the climate which English children are seldom able to endure after that age. Their mother had sailed for England with Dick, the youngest, but had died soon after she reached home. Dick had a passion for the sea, and his father's relations having good interest, had obtained for him a berth as a midshipman in the royal navy, in which rank he had been serving for upward of a year. His ship being now in Indian waters, a month's leave had been granted him that he might go up the country to see his father. The other lad had arrived from England three months before, with his sister and cousin. Major Warrener had sent for his daughter, whose education was finished, to take the head of his house, and, as a companion, had invited Rose Hertford, who was the orphan child of his sister, to accompany her. Ned, who had been at Westminster till he left England, was intended for the Indian army. His father thought that it would be well for him to come out to India with his sister, as he himself would work with him, and complete his education, to enable him to pass the necessary examination--then not a very severe one--while he could be at the same time learning the native languages, which would be of immense benefit to him after he had entered the army. Coming out as they had done in the cold season, none of the four exhibited any of that pallor and lassitude which, at any rate during the summer heats, are the rule throughout the Anglo-Indian community.
As Ned finished his sentence the sound of the tread of two horses was heard along the road.
"Captains Dunlop and Manners," Dick exclaimed; "a shilling to a penny! Will either of you bet, girls?"
Neither his sister nor cousin replied to this offer; and the boys gave a sly nod of intelligence to each other, as two horsemen rode up to the veranda and dismounted; throwing their reins to the _syces_, who, whatever the pace at which their masters ride, run just behind, in readiness to take the horses, should they dismount.
"Good-morning, Miss Warrener; good-morning, Miss Hertford: we have brought you some interesting news."
"Indeed!" said the girls, as they shook hands with the newcomers, who were two as good specimens of tall, well-made, sunburnt Anglo-Saxons as one would wish to see. "What is it?"
"We have just got the news that a family of wild boars have come down, and are doing a lot of damage near Meanwerrie, four miles off. I suppose they have been disturbed somewhere further away, as we have not heard of any pig here for months; so to-morrow morning there is going to be grand pig-sticking; of course you will come out and see the fun?"
"We shall be delighted," said Kate; but Rose put in: "Yes; but oh! how unfortunate! it's Mrs. Briarley's garden party."
"That has been put off till next day. It is not often we get a chance at pig, and we have always got gardens. The two need not have interfered with each other, as we shall start at daylight for Meanwerrie; but we may be out some hours, and so it was thought better to put off the party to a day when there will be nothing else to do."
"Hurrah!" shouted Dick; "I am in luck! I wanted, above all things, to see a wild boar hunt; do you think my father will let me have a spear?"
"Hardly, Dick, considering that last time you went out you tumbled off three times at some jumps two feet wide, and that, were you to fall in front of a pig, he would rip you up before you had time to think about it; besides which, you would almost certainly stick somebody with your spear."
Dick laughed.
"That was the first time I had ever been on a horse," he said; "will you ride, Ned?"
"No," said Ned; "I can ride fairly enough along a straight road, but it wants a first-rate rider to go across country at a gallop, looking at the boar instead of where you are going, and carrying a spear in one hand."
"Do you think papa will ride?" Kate asked.
"I don't know, Miss Warrener; the major is a famous spear; but here he is to speak for himself."
Major Warrener was in uniform, having just come up from the orderly-room. He was a tall, soldierly figure, inclining to stoutness. His general expression was that of cheeriness and good temper; but he was looking, as he drove up, grave and serious. His brow cleared, however, as his eye fell upon the group in the veranda.
"Ah! Dunlop, brought the news about the boar, eh?"
"You will take us with you?" the girls asked in a breath.
"Oh, yes, you shall go; I will drive you myself. I am getting too heavy for pig-sticking, especially with such responsibilities as you about. There, I will get out of this uniform; it's hot for the time of year. What are you drinking? nothing? Boy, bring some soda and brandy!"
Then, producing his cigar-case, he took a cheroot.
"Ag-low!" he shouted, and a native servant ran up with a piece of red-hot charcoal held in a little pair of tongs.
"There, sit down and make yourselves comfortable till I come back."
The lads, finding that their society was not particularly required, strolled off to the stables, where Ned entered into a conversation with the _syces_ as to the distance to Meanwerrie and the direction in which that village lay. Like all Anglo-Indian children brought up in India, the boys had, when they left India, spoken the language fluently. They had almost entirely forgotten it during their stay in England, but it speedily came back again, and Ned, at the end of three months' work, found that he could get on very fairly. Dick had lost it altogether.
When they went back to the veranda they found that the girls had gone indoors, and that their father was sitting and smoking with his brother officers. When the lads came up the conversation ceased, and then the major said: "It is as well the boys should know what is going on."
"What is it, father?" Ned asked, struck with the grave tone in which the major spoke, and at the serious expression in all their faces.
"Well, boys, for some months past there have been all sorts of curious rumors running through the country. Chupatties have been sent round, and that is always considered to portend something serious."
"Do you mean the chupatties we eat--flat cakes, father?"
"Yes, Ned. Nobody knows who sends them round, or the exact meaning of the signal, but it seems to be an equivalent for to 'prepare,' 'make ready.' Chupatties are quickly prepared; they are the bread eaten on a journey, and hence probably their signification. At any rate, these things have been circulated among the native troops all over the country. Strangers are known to have come and gone, and there is a general uneasy and unsettled feeling prevalent among the troops. A ridiculous rumor has circulated among them that the new cartridges have been greased with pig's fat, in order that the caste of all who put it to their lips might be destroyed. To-day I have received news from Calcutta that the Nineteenth native regiment at Berhampore has behaved in a grossly mutinous manner, and that it is feared the regiments at Barrackpore and Dumdum will follow their example. The affair has been suppressed, but there is an uneasy feeling abroad, and all the troops in Bengal proper appear tainted with paltry disaffection. We have no reason for believing that the spirit has spread to the northwest, and are convinced that as far as our own regiment is concerned they can be relied on; but the affair, taken in connection with the previous rumors, is very strange, and I fear that there are lots of trouble ahead. I wish now that I had not had the girls out for another year; but I could not foresee this, and, indeed, until this morning, although there has been a good deal of talk, we all hoped it would have passed off without anything coming of it. One hopes still that it will spread no further; but should it do so, it is impossible to say what may happen. All we have to do is to be watchful, and to avoid with care anything that can offend the men's prejudices. We must explain to the native officers the folly of the greased cartridge story, and tell them to reassure the men. You don't see anything else to do, Dunlop?"
"No, major; I trust that the regiment is to be depended upon; it has always been well treated and the men have seemed attached to us all. We will do our best to reassure them; but if there is any insubordination, I hope that the colonel will give the men a lesson which will put an end to the nonsense in the bud."
"Of course you will stay to tiffin?" the major said, as the _kitmagar_, or head servant, announced that tiffin was ready.
"Many thanks, major, but we promised to tiff with Bullen, and he would be mad if we did not turn up. How are you thinking of going to-morrow? I intend to drive over, and send my horse on; so I can give one of your boys a lift in my buggy."
"Thank you," the major said, "that would suit us exactly. I shall drive in my dog-cart, which will carry four of us; and if you will take Dick, that will make it all right."
"What time do we start?"
"We are to be there by seven; we set it so late to give the ladies time to breakfast comfortably before starting. I will call here at half-past six for Dick; it will be all in my way. Good-morning."
Two minutes later the girls, Ned, and Dick came into the dining-room, and the party sat down to luncheon--a meal always called tiffin in India. It is a great mistake to suppose that people in India cannot eat because of the heat; in the extreme heat of summer their appetites do, no doubt, fall off; but at other times, they not only eat, but eat more largely than is good for them; and a good deal of the liver complaint which is the pest of India is in no small degree due to the fact that, the appetite being unnaturally stimulated by hot and piquant food, people eat more than in such a climate as this can be properly digested. The meal consisted of curries, with which were handed round chutney and Bombay ducks--a little fish about the size of a smelt, cut open, dried, and smoked with assafoetida, giving it an intolerably nasty taste to strangers, but one which Anglo-Indians become accustomed to and like--no one knows why they are called Bombay ducks--cutlets, plantains sliced and fried, pomegranates, and watermelons. They were waited upon by two servants, both dressed entirely in white, but wearing red turbans, very broad and shallow. These turbans denoted the particular tribe and sect to which their wearers belonged. The castes in India are almost innumerable, and each has a turban of a peculiar color or shape, and by these they can be at once distinguished by a resident. On their foreheads were lines and spots of a yellowish white paint, indicating also their caste, and the peculiar divinity to whose worship they were specially devoted. On their feet they wore slippers, and were as noiseless as cats in all their movements. There are no better or more pleasant waiters in the world than the natives of Hindostan.
Early as the hour named for the start would appear in England, it was by no means early for India, where every one is up and about soon after daylight--the morning hours up to eight o'clock being the most pleasant of the whole day.
Kate and Rose were up, and all had had "_chota hazaree_" (little breakfast) by half-past six, and were ready when Captain Dunlop drew up in his buggy--a conveyance which will only hold two. The dog-cart was already at the door, and the whole party were soon in motion. On the road they passed several of their friends, for every one was going out to the hunt, and merry greetings were exchanged.
The scenery round Sandynugghur resembles that which is common to all the great plains of India watered by the Ganges and Jumna. The country is for the most part perfectly flat, and cut up into little fields, divided by shallow ditches. Here and there nullahs, or deep watercourses, with tortuous channels and perpendicular sides, wind through the fields to the nearest stream. These nullahs constitute the great danger of hunting in the country. In the fields men may be noticed, in the scantiest of attire, working with hoes among their springing crops; women, wrapped up in the dark blue calico cloth which forms their ordinary costume, are working as hard as the men. Villages are scattered about, generally close to groves of trees. The huts are built of mud; most of them are flat-topped, but some are thatched with rushes. Rising above the villages is the mosque, where the population are Mohammedan, built of mud like the houses, but whitewashed and bright. The Hindoo villages generally, but not always, have their temples. The vegetation of the great plains of India is not tropical, according to the ideas of tropical vegetation gathered from British hothouses. There are a few palms and many bananas with their wide leaves, but the groves are composed of sturdy trees, whose appearance at a distance differs in no way from that of ordinary English forest trees. Viewed closer, the banian with its many stems is indeed a vegetable wonder; but, were it not for the villages and natives, a traveler might journey for very many miles across the plains of India without seeing anything which would specially remind him that he was out of England.
There were a considerable number of traps assembled when Major Warrener drew up, and some eight or ten gentlemen on horseback, each carrying a boar-spear--a weapon not unlike the lance of an English cavalryman, but shorter in the handle. The riders were mostly dressed in coats of the Norfolk jacket type, and knee-breeches with thick gaiters. The material of their clothes was a coarse but very strong cloth of native make, gray or brown in color. Some wore round hats and forage caps with puggarees twisted round them.
A chorus of greeting saluted the party as they drove up.
"Well, young ladies," the colonel said, "so you have come out to see the death of the boar, "'The boar, the boar, the mighty boar,' as the song says? So you are not going to take a spear to-day, major? Think it's time to leave it to the youngsters, eh?"
"Where are the wild boars, Mrs. Renwick?" Kate asked of the colonel's wife.
"Pig, my dear; we always call them pig when we speak of them together, though we talk of the father of the family as the boar. Do you see that clump of long grass and jungle right across the plain? That's where they are. They have been watched all night. They went out to feed before daybreak and have just gone back again. Do you think we are in the best place for seeing the sport, Major Warrener?"
"I think, Mrs. Renwick, that if you leave your trap and go up to the top of that knoll, two hundred yards to the right, you will get a really good view of the plain."
Mrs. Renwick alighted from the dog-cart in which the colonel had driven her, and the whole party, following her example, walked in a laughing group to the spot which Major Warrener had indicated, and which was pronounced as just the place. The _syces_ stood at the heads of the horses, and those who were going to take part in the sport cantered off toward the spot where the pigs were lurking, making, however, a wide _détour_ so as to approach it from the other side, as it was desired to drive them across the plain. At some distance behind the clump were stationed a number of natives, with a variety of mongrel village curs. When they saw the horsemen approach they came up and prepared to enter the jungle to drive out the pigs.
The horsemen took up their position on either side of the patch in readiness to start as soon as the animals were fairly off. A number of villagers, in whose fields of young rice the family had done much damage during the few days that they had taken up their abode in their present quarters, were assembled on such little rises of ground as were likely to give a good view of the proceedings. There were about a dozen horsemen with spears; of these, three or four were novices, and these intended to try their skill for the first time upon the "squeakers," as the young pigs are called, while the others prepared for a race after the old ones.
Great nerve, considerable skill, and first-rate horsemanship are required for the sport of pigsticking. The horse, too, must be fast, steady, well-trained and quick, for without all these advantages the sport is a dangerous one. The wild boar is, at the start, as fast as a horse. He is very quick at turning, and when pressed always attacks his pursuers, and as he rushes past will lay open the leg or flank of a horse with a sweeping cut with his sharp tusk. If he can knock a horse down the position of his rider would be serious indeed, were not help to arrive in time to draw off the attention of the enraged animal from his foe. Heavy falls, too, take place over watercourses and nullahs, and in some parts of India the difficulties are greatly increased by bowlders of all kinds being scattered over the ground, and by the frequent occurrence of bushes and shrubs armed with most formidable spines and thorns. Conspicuous among these is the bush known as the "wait-a-bit thorn," which is furnished with two kinds of thorn--the one long, stiff, and penetrating, the other short and curved, with a forked point almost like a fishhook. When this once takes hold it is almost necessary to cut the cloth to obtain a release.
Scarcely had the beaters, with much shouting and clamor, entered the patch of bush in which the pigs were lying, than the porcine family, consisting of a splendid boar and sow, and eight nearly full-grown squeakers, darted out on the open, and in a moment the horsemen were off in pursuit. The ground was deep and heavy, and the pigs at the first burst gained fast upon their pursuers. There was no attempt on the part of the pigs to keep together, and directly after starting they began to diverge. The old boar and sow both kept across the plain--one bearing toward the left, the other to the right. The squeakers ran in all directions--some at right angles to the line that the old ones were taking. The object of one and all was to gain cover of some kind.
With their hats pressed well down upon their heads, and their spears advanced with the head some two or three feet from the ground, the hunters started after them--some making after the boar, some after the sow, according to the position which they occupied at the commencement of the chase, while some of the young hands dashed off in pursuit of the squeakers.
There were five, however, after the boar; Captain Dunlop, a young ensign named Skinner, the Scotch doctor of the regiment, and two civilians. For a short time they kept together, and then Captain Dunlop and Skinner began to draw ahead of the others.
The boar was a stanch one, and a mile had been passed before his speed began sensibly to diminish. The young ensign, who was mounted on a very fast Arab, began to draw up to him three or four lengths ahead of Captain Dunlop, bearing his horse so as to get upon the left side of the boar, in order to permit him to use his spear to advantage.
He was nearly up to him when Captain Dunlop, who saw the boar glancing back savagely, cried: "Look out, Skinner! he will be round in a moment; keep your horse well in hand!"
A moment later the boar was round. The horse, young and unbroken at the work, started violently, swerved, and, before his rider could get him round, the boar was upon him. In an instant the horse was upon the ground, with a long gash upon his flank, and Skinner, flying through the air, fell almost directly in the boar's way.
Fortunately for the young ensign, Captain Dunlop, as he shouted his warning, had turned his horse to the left, so as to cut off the boar when he turned, and he was now so close that the boar, in passing, had only time to give a vicious blow at the fallen man, which laid his arm open from his shoulder to his elbow.
At that instant Captain Dunlop arrived, and his spear pierced the animal's flank. His aim was, however, disconcerted by his horse, at the moment he struck, leaping over the fallen ensign; the wound, therefore, was but a glancing one, and in a moment the boar was round upon his new assailant. Fortunately the horse was a well-trained one, and needed not the sharp touch of his master's rein to wheel sharp round on his hind legs, and dart off at full speed. The boar swerved off again, and continued his original line of flight, his object being to gain a thick patch of jungle, now little over a quarter of a mile distant; the detention, however, was fatal to him, for the doctor, who was close on Captain Dunlop's heels, now brought up his horse with a rush and, with a well-aimed thrust, ran the animal through, completely pinning him to the earth. The honor of his death was therefore divided between the doctor and Captain Dunlop, for the latter had drawn first blood, or, as it is termed, had taken first spear, while the former had scored the kill.
The sow had been more fortunate than her lord. She had taken a line across a part of the plain which was intersected by several nullahs. She, too, had been wounded, but one of the nullahs had thrown out several of her pursuers: one rider had been sent over his horse's head and stunned; and the sow, turning sharp down a deep and precipitous gully, had made her escape. Three of the squeakers fell to the spears of the Griffs--young hands--and the rest had escaped. The boar had been killed only a short distance from the rise upon which the spectators from Sandynugghur were assembled, and the beaters soon tied its four legs together, and, putting a pole through them, six of them carried the beast up to the colonel's wife for inspection.
"What a savage-looking brute it is!" said Kate; "not a bit like a pig, with all those long bristles, and that sharp high back, and those tremendous tusks."
"Will you accept the skin, Miss Warrener?" Captain Dunlop said to her afterward; "I have arranged with the doctor. He is to have the hams, and I am to have the hide. If you will, I will have it dressed and mounted."
"Thank you, Captain Dunlop, I should like it very much;" but, as it turned out, Kate Warrener never got the skin.
The boar killed, the doctor's first care was to attend to the wounded, and Skinner's arm was soon bound up, and he was sent home in a buggy; the man who was stunned came to in a short time. The unsuccessful ones were much laughed at by the colonel and major, for allowing half the game started to get away.
"You ought not to grumble, colonel," Captain Manners said. "If we had killed them all, we might not have had another run for months; as it is, we will have some more sport next week."
There was some consultation as to the chance of getting the sow even now, but it was generally agreed that she would follow the nullah down, cross the stream, and get into a large canebrake beyond, from which it would take hours to dislodge her; so a general move was made to the carriages, and in a short time the whole party were on their way back to Sandynugghur.
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{
"id": "7071"
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THE OUTBREAK.
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A week after the boar-hunt came the news that a Sepoy named Mangul Pandy, belonging to the Thirty-fourth Native Infantry, stationed at Barrackpore, a place only a few miles out of Calcutta, had, on the 29th of March, rushed out upon the parade ground and called upon the men to mutiny. He then shot the European sergeant-major of the regiment, and cut down an officer. Pandy continued to exhort the men to rise to arms, and although his comrades would not join him, they refused to make any movement to arrest him. General Hearsey now arrived on the parade ground with his son and a Major Ross, and at once rode at the man, who, finding that his comrades would not assist him, discharged the contents of the musket into his own body.
Two days later the mutinous Nineteenth were disbanded at Barrackpore. On the 3rd of April Mangul Pandy, who had only wounded himself, was hung, and the same doom was allotted to a native officer of his regiment, for refusing to order the men to assist the officer attacked by that mutineer, and for himself inciting the men to rise against the government.
"What do you think of the news, papa?" Dick asked his father.
"I hope that the example which has been set by the execution of these ringleaders, and by the disbandment of the Nineteenth, may have a wholesome effect, Dick; but we shall see before long."
It needed no great lapse of time to show that this lesson had been ineffectual. From nearly every station throughout Bengal and the northwest provinces came rumors of disaffection; at Agra, at Umballah, and at other places incendiary fires broke out with alarming frequency, letters were from time to time intercepted, calling upon the Sepoys to revolt, while at Lucknow serious disturbances occurred, and the Seventh Regiment were disarmed by Sir Henry Lawrence, the Commissioner of Oude. So the month of April passed, and as it went on the feeling of disquiet and danger grew deeper and more general. It was like the anxious time preceding a thunderstorm, the cloud was gathering, but how or when it would burst none could say. Many still maintained stoutly that there was no danger whatever, and that the whole thing would blow over; but men with wives and families were generally inclined to take a more somber view of the case. Nor is this to be wondered at. The British form an almost inappreciable portion of the population of India; they are isolated in a throng of natives, outnumbered by a thousand to one. A man might therefore well feel his helplessness to render any assistance to those dear to him in the event of a general uprising of the people. Soldiers without family ties take things lightly, they are ready for danger and for death if needs be, but they can always hope to get through somehow; but the man with a wife and children in India, at the time when a general outbreak was anticipated, would have the deepest cause for anxiety. Not, however, that at this time any one at Sandynugghur looked for anything so terrible. There was a spirit of insubordination abroad in the native troops, no doubt, but no one doubted but that it would, with more or less trouble, be put down. And so things went on as usual, and the garden parties and the drives, and the friendly evening visiting continued just as before. It was at one of these pleasant evening gatherings that the first blow fell. Most of the officers of the station, their wives, and the two or three civilians were collected at Major Warrener's. The windows were all open. The girls were playing a duet on the piano; five or six other ladies were in the drawing-room and about the same number of gentlemen were standing or sitting by them, some four or five were lounging in the veranda enjoying their cheroots; native servants in their white dresses moved noiselessly about with iced lemonade and wine, when a Sepoy came up the walk.
"What is it?" asked Major Warrener, who was one of the group in the veranda.
"Dispatch for the colonel, Sahib."
The colonel, who was sitting next to the major, held out his hand for the message, and was rising, when Major Warrener said: "Don't move, colonel; boy, bring a candle."
The servant brought it: the colonel opened the envelope and glanced at the dispatch. He uttered an exclamation which was half a groan, half a cry.
"Good Heaven! what is the matter, colonel?"
"The native troops at Meerut have mutinied, have murdered their officers and all the European men, women, and children they could find, and are marching upon Delhi. Look after your regiment."
A low cry broke from the major. This was indeed awful news, and for a moment the two men sat half-stunned at the calamity, while the sound of music and merry talk came in through the open window like a mockery on their ears.
"Let us take a turn in the compound," said the major, "where no one can hear us."
For half an hour they walked up and down the garden. There could be no doubt about the truth of the news, for it was an official telegram from the adjutant at Meerut; and as to the extent of the misfortune, it was terrible.
"There is not a single white regiment at Delhi," exclaimed the colonel; "these fiends will have it all their own way, and at Delhi there are scores of European families. Delhi once in their hands will be a center, and the mutiny will spread like wildfire over India. What was the general at Meerut about? what were the white troops up to? It is as inexplicable as it is terrible. Is there anything to be done, major, do you think?" But Major Warrener could think of nothing. The men at present knew nothing of the news, but the tidings would reach them in two or three days; for news in India spreads from village to village, and town to town, with almost incredible speed, and Meerut was but a hundred and fifty miles distant.
"Had we better tell them inside?" the major asked.
"No," answered the colonel; "let them be happy for to-night; they will know the news to-morrow. As they are breaking up, ask all the officers to come round to the messroom; I will meet them there, and we can talk the matter over; but let the ladies have one more quiet night; they will want all their strength and fortitude for what is to come."
And so, clearing their brows, they went into the house and listened to the music, and joined in the talk until ten o'clock struck and every one got up to go, and so ended the last happy evening at Sandynugghur.
The next morning brought the news of the rising at Delhi, but it was not till two days later that letters giving any details of these terrible events arrived, and the full extent of the awful calamity was known.
The flame broke out at Meerut at seven o'clock in the evening of Sunday, the 10th of May. On the previous day a punishment parade had been held to witness the military degradation of a number of men of the Third Native Cavalry, who had been guilty of mutinous conduct in respect to the cartridges. The native regiments at the station consisted of the Third Cavalry, the Eleventh and Twentieth Infantry; there were also in garrison the Sixtieth Rifles, the Sixth Dragoon Guards, and two batteries of artillery; a force amply sufficient, if properly handled, to have crushed the native troops, and to have nipped the mutiny in the bud. Unhappily, they were not well handled. The cantonments of Meerut were of great extent, being nearly five miles in length by two in breadth, the barracks of the British troops were situated at some distance from those of the native regiments, and the action of the troops was paralyzed by the incompetency of the general, an old man who had lost all energy, and who remained in a state of indecision while the men of the native regiments shot their officers, murdered all the women and children, and the white inhabitants whose bungalows were situated at their end of their cantonment, opened the jail doors, and after setting fire to the whole of this quarter of Meerut, marched off toward Delhi, unmolested by the British troops. Even then an orderly sent off with dispatches to the officer commanding at Delhi, informing him of what had happened, and bidding him beware, might have saved the lives of hundreds of Englishmen and women, even if it were too late to save Delhi; but nothing whatever was done; the English troops made a few meaningless and uncertain movements, and marched back to their barracks. No one came forward to take the lead. So the white troops of Meerut remained stationary under arms all night, and the English population of Delhi were left to their fate.
From Meerut to Delhi is thirty-two miles, and the mutineers of Meerut, marching all night, arrived near the town at eight in the morning. Singularly enough, the ancient capital of India, the place around which the aspiration of Hindoos and Mohammedans alike centered, and where the ex-emperor and his family still resided, was left entirely to the guard of native troops; not a single British regiment was there, not a battery of white troops. As the center of the province, a large white population were gathered there-the families of the officers of the native infantry and artillery, of the civil officers of the province, merchants, bankers, missionaries, and others. As at all other Indian towns, the great bulk of the white inhabitants lived in the cantonments outside the town; had it not been for this, not one would have escaped the slaughter that commenced as soon as the Third Cavalry from Meerut rode into the town. The Fifty-fourth Native Infantry, who had hastily been marched out to meet them, fraternized with them at once, and, standing quietly by, looked on while their officers were murdered by the cavalrymen. Then commenced a scene of murder and atrocity which is happily without parallel in history. Suffice to say, that with the exception of some half-dozen who in one way or other managed to escape, the whole of the white population inside the walls of Delhi were murdered under circumstances of the most horrible and revolting cruelty. Had the news of the outbreak of Meerut been sent by a swift mounted messenger, the whole of these hapless people would have had time to leave the town before the arrival of the mutineers. Those in the cantonments outside the city fared somewhat better. Some were killed, but the greater part made their escape; and although many were murdered on the way, either by villagers or by bodies of mutineers, the majority reached Meerut or Aliwal. The sufferers of Delhi did not die wholly unavenged. Inside the city walls was an immense magazine containing vast stores of powder, cartridges, and arms. It was all-important that this should not fall into the hands of the mutineers. This was in charge of Lieutenant Willoughby of the royal artillery, who had with him Lieutenants Forrest and Rayner, and six English warrant and non-commissioned officers, Buckley, Shaw, Scully, Crow, Edwards, and Stewart. The following account was given by Lieutenant Forrest: "The gates of the magazine were closed and barricaded, and every possible arrangement that could be made was at once commenced. Inside the gate leading to the park were placed two six-pounders doubly charged with grape. These were under acting sub-conductor Crow and Sergeant Stewart, with lighted matches in their hands. Their orders were that if any attempt was made to force the gate the guns were to be fired at once, and they were to fall back to that part of the magazine where Lieutenant Willoughby and I were posted. The principal gate of the magazine was similarly defended by two guns and by the _chevaux-de-frise_ laid down in the inside. For the further defense of this gate and the magazine in its vicinity, there were two six-pounders so placed as to command it and a small bastion close by. Within sixty yards of the gate, and commanding two cross roads, were three six-pounders, and one twenty-four pound howitzer, which could be so managed as to act upon any part of the magazine in that neighborhood. After all these guns and howitzers had been placed in the several positions above named, they were loaded with a double charge of grape. After these arrangements had been completed a train was laid ready to be fired at a preconcerted signal. On the enemy approaching the walls of the magazine, which was provided with scaling ladders, the native establishment at once deserted us by climbing up the sloped sheds on the inside of the magazine and descending the ladders on the outside."
When the attack began the mutineers climbed the walls in great numbers, and opened fire upon the little garrison; these replied by an incessant fire of grape-shot, which told severely upon the enemy. There were but two men to each gun, but they stood nobly to their pieces until all were more or less wounded by the enemy's fire. Finding that no more could be done, Lieutenant Willoughby gave the order, Conductor Scully fired the several trains, and in another instant a tremendous explosion took place which shook all Delhi, and covered the city with a cloud of black smoke. It was calculated that from fifteen hundred to two thousand of the mutineers and rabble of the town were killed by the falling walls, or crushed under the masses of masonry. Lieutenants Willoughby, Forrest, Rayner, and Conductor Buckley survived the explosion, and effected their retreat in the confusion through a small sallyport on the river face. The mutineers were so enraged by their misfortune that they rushed to the palace and demanded of the king a number of European officers and ladies who had sought refuge under his protection. They were handed over to the mutineers, and at once slaughtered.
The Warreners listened with pale faces as their father, on his return from the orderly-room, where the news had been discussed, told them the sad story.
"There is nothing to be done, I suppose, papa?" Ned said gently.
"No, my boy; we are in the hands of God. We must wait now for what may come. At present the regiment professes its fidelity, and has now volunteered to march against the mutineers. The colonel believes them, so do some of the others; I do not; it may be that the men mean what they say at present, but we know that emissaries come and go, and every fresh rising will be an incentive to them. It is no use blinking the truth, dear; we are like men standing on a loaded mine which may at any moment explode. I have been thinking, indeed for the last week I have done nothing but think, what is best to be done. If the mutiny breaks out at night or at any time when we are not on parade, we have agreed that all the whites shall make at once for Mr. Thompson's house. It is the strongest of any of the residences--for there would of course be no getting to the messhouse--and then we will sell our lives as dearly as we may. If it happens when we are on parade, defense by the rest of the residents would be useless. There are but six civilians, with you two boys--for we have counted you--eight. Probably but few of you could gain Thompson's house in time; and if all did, your number would be too small to defend it. There remains then nothing but flight. The rising will most likely take place on parade. The residents have agreed that each day they will, on some excuses or other, have their traps at their door at that hour, so that at the sound of the first shot fired they may jump in and drive off."
"But, you, papa?" Kate asked.
"My dear," said her father, "I shall be on duty; so long as a vestige of the regiment remains as a regiment, I shall be with it; if the whole regiment breaks up and attacks us, those who do not fall at the first volley will be justified in trying to save their lives. The colonel, the adjutant, and myself are mounted officers, and two or three of the others will have their dogcarts each day brought up to the messhouse, as they often do. If there is a mutiny on parade, the unmounted officers will make for them, and we who are mounted will as far as possible cover their retreat. So it is arranged."
"But will the road be open to Meerut, uncle?" Rose asked after a pause, for the danger seemed so strange and terrible that they felt stunned by it.
"No, my dear; it certainly will not. There are three garrison towns between us, and they also will probably be up. The only thing is to keep to the road for the first ten or twelve miles, and then take to the woods, and make your way on foot. I have spoken to Saba this morning. We can trust her; she nursed you all, and has lived with me ever since as a sort of pensioner till you came out. I have asked her to get two dresses of Mussulman country women; in those only the eyes are visible, while the Hindoo dress gives no concealment. I have also ordered her to get me two dresses: one, such as a young Mussulman _zemindar_ wears; the other, as his retainer. They are for you boys. Keep the bundles, when you get them, in that closet in the dining-room, so as to be close at hand; and in case of alarm, be sure and take them with you. Remember my instructions are absolute. If by day, escape in the trap at the first alarm; if the trap is not available, escape at once on foot. If you hear the enemy are close, hide till nightfall in that thick clump of bushes in the corner of the compound, then make for that copse of trees, and try and find your way to Meerut. I trust I may be with you, or that I may join you on the road. But in any case, it will relieve my anxiety greatly to know that your course is laid down. If I had to return here to look for you, I should bring my pursuers after me, and your chance of escape would be gone--for I rely upon you all to follow my instructions to the letter."
"Yes, indeed, papa," was the unanimous answer of the young Warreners, who were deeply affected at the solemn manner in which their father spoke of the situation.
"I have a brace of revolvers upstairs," he said, "and will give one to each of you boys. Carry them always, but put them on under your coats, so that they may not be noticed; it would be as well for you to practice yourselves in their use; but when you do so, always go some distance from the station, so that the sound will not be heard."
"Can you give Rose and me a pistol each, too, papa?" Kate said quietly.
Major Warrener kissed his daughter and niece tenderly.
"I have a pair of small double-barreled pistols; you shall each have one," he answered with a deep sigh.
That afternoon the young Warreners and their cousin went out for a walk, and, fixing a piece of paper against a tree, practiced pistol shooting for an hour. Any passer-by ignorant of the circumstances would have wondered at the countenances of these young people, engaged, apparently, in the amusement of pistol practice. There was no smile on them, no merry laugh when the ball went wide of the mark, no triumphant shout at a successful shot. Their faces were set, pale, and earnest, Scarcely a word was spoken. Each loaded in silence, took up a place at the firing point, and aimed steadily and seriously; the boys with an angry eye and frowning brow, as if each time they were firing at a deadly foe; the girls as earnestly, and without any of the nervousness or timidity which would be natural in girls handling firearms for the first time. Each day the exercise was repeated, and after a week's practice all could hit, with a fair amount of certainty, a piece of paper six inches square, at a distance of ten yards.
During this time Captains Dunlop and Manners spent their whole time, when not engaged upon their military duties, at Major Warrener's. They were now the recognized lovers of Kate and Rose; and although, in those days of tremendous anxiety and peril, no formal engagements were entered upon, the young people understood each other, and Major Warrener gave his tacit approval. Very earnestly all the party hoped that when the dread moment came it might come when they were all together, so that they might share the same fate, whatever it might be. The young officers' buggies now stood all day in Major Warrener's compound, with the patient _syces_ squatting near, or talking with the servants, while the major's horses stood ready saddled in the stables.
However much the party might hope to be together when the crisis came, they felt that it was improbable that they would be so, for at the first symptoms of mutiny it would be the duty of the officers to hasten to the barracks to endeavor to quell it, even if certain death should meet them there.
In the face of the tidings from Meerut and Delhi, all the pretense of confidence, which had hitherto been kept up at the station, came to an end; and even had there been implicit confidence in the regiment, the news of such terrible events would have caused an entire cessation of the little amusements and gatherings in which Sandynugghur had previously indulged.
As is usual in cases of extreme danger, the various temperaments of people come strongly into relief at these awful times. The pretty young wife of the doctor was nearly wild with alarm. Not daring to remain at home alone, she passed the day in going from house to house of her female friends. Advice and example she obtained from these, but poor comfort. The colonel's wife was as brave as any man in the station; she hardly shared her husband's opinion that the regiment would remain faithful in the midst of an almost general defection; but she was calm, self-possessed, and ready for the worst.
"It is no use crying, my dear," she said to the doctor's wife. "Our husbands have enough to worry them without being shaken by our tears. Death, after all, can only come once, and it is better to die with those we love than to be separated."
But there were not many tears shed in Sandynugghur. The women were pale and quiet. They shook hands with a pressure which meant much, lips quivered, and tears might drop when they spoke of children at home; but this was not often, and day after day they bore the terrible strain with that heroic fortitude which characterized English women in India during the awful period of the mutiny. Ten days after the news came in of the rising at Delhi Major Warrener told his family, on his return from parade, that the regiment had again declared its fidelity, and had offered to march against the mutineers.
"I am glad of it," he said, "because it looks as if at present, at least, they have not made up their minds to mutiny, and I shall be able to go to mess with a lighter heart; as I told you yesterday, it is the colonel's birthday, so we all dine at mess."
In the meantime Saba had faithfully carried out her commission as to the dresses, and had added to the bundles a bottle containing a brown juice which she had extracted from some berries; this was to be used for staining the skin, and so completing the disguise. The Warreners knew that if their old nurse had any information as to any intended outbreak she would let them know; but she heard nothing. She was known to be so strongly attached to the major's family that, had the other servants known anything of it, they would have kept it from her.
The hour for the mess-dinner was eight, and the young Warreners had finished their evening meal before their father started.
"God bless you, my children, and watch over and protect us all till we meet again!" such was the solemn leave-taking with which the major and his children had parted--if only for half an hour--since the evil days began.
For an hour and a half the young Warreners and their cousin sat and read, and occasionally talked.
"It's time for tea," Kate said, looking at her watch; and she struck a bell upon the table.
Usually the response was almost instantaneous; but Kate waited two minutes, and then rang sharply twice. There was still no reply.
"He must be asleep," she said, "or out of hearing; but it is curious that none of the others answer!"
Dick went out into the veranda, but came in again in a minute or two: "There is no one there, Kate; and I don't hear any of them about anywhere."
The four young people looked at each other. What did this mean? Had the servants left in a body? Did they know that something was going to happen? Such were the mute questions which their looks asked each other.
"Girls!" said Ned, "put your dark shawls round you. It may be nothing, but it is better to be prepared. Get the bundles out. Dick, put a bottle of wine in your pocket; and let us all fill our pockets with biscuits."
Silently and quietly the others did as he told them.
"There is that great biscuit-tin full," Ned said when they had filled their pockets; "let us empty it into that cloth, and tie it up. Now, if you will put your shawls on I will look in at the stables."
In a couple of minutes he returned.
"The horses are all unharnessed," he said, "and not a soul is to be seen. Ah, is that Saba?"
The old nurse had been found asleep in her favorite place outside the door of her young mistresses' room.
"Do you know what is the matter, Saba? All the servants are gone!"
The old nurse shook her head. "Bad news; no tell Saba."
"Now, Saba, get ready to start," for the nurse had declared that she would accompany them, to go into the villages to buy food; "Dick, come with me; we will put one of the horses into the dogcart."
They were leaving the room when they heard the sound of a rifle. As if it were the signal, in a moment the air rang with rifle shots, shouts, and yells. The boys leaped back into the room and caught up the bundles.
"Quick, for your lives, girls! some of them are not fifty yards off! To the bushes! Come, Saba!"
"Saba do more good here," the old nurse said, and seated herself quietly in the veranda.
It was but twenty yards to the bushes they had marked as the place of concealment; and as they entered and crouched down there came the sound of hurrying feet, and a band of Sepoys, led by one of the jemadars, or native officers, rushed up to the veranda from the back.
"Now," the jemadar shouted, "search the house; kill the boys, but keep the white women; they are too pretty to hurt."
Two minutes' search--in which furniture was upset, curtains pulled down, and chests ransacked--and a shout of rage proclaimed that the house was empty.
The jemadar shouted to his men: "Search the compound; they can't be far off; some of you run out to the plain; they can't have got a hundred yards away; besides, our guards out there will catch them."
The old nurse rose to her feet just as the Sepoys were rushing out on the search.
"It is of no use searching," she said; "they have been gone an hour."
"Gone an hour!" shouted the enraged jemadar; "who told them of the attack?"
"I told them," Saba said steadily; "Saba was true to her salt."
There was a yell of rage on the part of the mutineers, and half a dozen bayonets darted into the faithful old servant's body, and without a word she fell dead on the veranda, a victim to her noble fidelity to the children she had nursed.
"Now," the jemadar said, "strip the place; carry everything off; it is all to be divided to-morrow, and then we will have a blaze."
Five minutes sufficed to carry off all the portable articles from the bungalow; the furniture, as useless to the Sepoys, was left, but everything else was soon cleared away, and then the house was lit in half a dozen places. The fire ran quickly up the muslin curtains, caught the dry reeds of the tatties, ran up the bamboos which formed the top of the veranda, and in five minutes the house was a sheet of flame.
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{
"id": "7071"
}
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3
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THE FLIGHT.
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The young Warreners and their cousin, hurrying on, soon gained the thick bush toward which they were directing their steps. As they cowered down in its shelter the girls pulled their shawls over their heads, and with their hands to their ears to keep out the noise of the awful din around them, they awaited, in shuddering horror, their fate. The boys sat, revolver in hand, determined to sell their lives dearly. Ned translated the jemadar's speech, and at his order to search the compound both felt that all was over, and, with a grasp of each other's hand, prepared to sally forth and die. Then came Saba's act of noble self-sacrifice, and the boys had difficulty in restraining themselves from rushing out to avenge her.
In the meantime the night was hideous with noises; musket shots, the sharp cracks of revolvers, shouts, cries, and at times the long shrill screams of women. It was too much to be borne, and feeling that for the present Saba's act had saved them, the boys, laying down their weapons, pressed their hands to their ears to keep out the din. There they sat for half an hour, stunned by the awful calamity, too horror-stricken at what had passed, and at the probable fate of their father, to find relief in tears.
At the end of that time the fire had burned itself out, and a few upright posts still flickering with tongues of fire, and a heap of glowing embers marked where the pretty bungalow, replete with every luxury and comfort, had stood an hour before.
Dick was the first to move; he touched Ned's arm.
"All is quiet here now, but they may take it into their heads to come back and search. We had better make for the trees; by keeping close to that cactus hedge we shall be in shadow all the way."
The girls were roused from their stupor of grief.
"Now, dears, we must be brave," said Ned, "and carry out our orders. God has protected us thus far; let us pray that He will continue to do so."
In another five minutes the little party, stealing cautiously out from their shelter, kept along close to the wall to a side door, through which they issued forth into the open. Ten steps took them to the cactus hedge, and stooping low under its shelter, they moved on till they safely reached the clump of trees.
For some time the little party crouched among the thick bushes, the silence broken only by the sobs of the girls. Ned and Richard said nothing, but the tears fell fast down their cheeks. The crackling of the flames of many of the burning bungalows could be distinctly heard; and outside the shadow of the trees it was nearly as light as day. Yells of triumph rose on the night air, but there was no firing or sounds of conflict, and resistance was plainly over. For a quarter of an hour they sat there, crushed with the immensity of the calamity. Then Ned roused himself and took the lead.
"Now, dears, the fires have burned down, and we must be moving, for we should be far away from here before morning. No doubt others have hidden in the woods round this place, and those black fiends will be searching everywhere to-morrow. Remember what our orders are;" and he paused for a moment to choke down the sob which would come when he thought of who had given the order, and how it was given. "We were to make for Meerut. Be strong and brave, girls, as father would have had you. I have gone over the course on the district map, and I think I can keep pretty straight for it. We need not change our clothes now; we can do that when we halt before daylight. We must walk all night, to be as far as possible away before the search begins. We know this country pretty well for some miles round, which will make it easier. Come, girls, take heart; it is possible yet that some of the officers have cut their way out, and our father may be among them. Who can say?"
"I knew that he had talked over with Dunlop and Manners the very best course to take whenever they might be attacked," Dick said in a more cheerful tone, "so they were sure to keep together, and if any one has got away, they would." Neither of the boys had at heart the least hope, but they spoke as cheerfully as they could, to give strength and courage to the girls. Their words had their effect. Kate rose, and taking her cousin's arm said: "Come, Rose, the boys are right. There is still some hope; let us cling to it as long as we can. Now let us be moving: but before we go, let us all thank God for having saved us from harm so far, and let us pray for His protection and help upon the road."
Silently the little group knelt in prayer, and when they rose followed Ned--who had naturally assumed the position of leader--out into the open country beyond the grove, without a word being spoken. The moon was as yet quite young, a favorable state for the fugitives, as it afforded light enough to see where they were going without giving so bright a light as to betray them to any one at a distance.
"The moon will be down in a couple of hours," Ned said; "but by that time we shall be beyond where any sentries are likely to have been placed on the road, so we can then trust ourselves on that till it begins to get daylight. We must keep in the fields till we are past Nussara, which is five miles by the road; then we can walk straight on. There is a nullah a few yards on; we had better keep in that for a quarter of a mile; it does not go quite the way we want, but it will be safer to follow it till we are well out of sight of any one who may be watching the plain."
They scrambled down into the bed of the nullah. Then Kate said, "Walk on as fast as you can, Ned; we can keep up with you, and if we hurry on we shan't be able to think."
"All right," Ned answered; "I will go fast for a bit, but you must not knock yourselves up; we have a long journey before us."
Walking fast, however, was impossible at the bottom of the nullah, for it was pitch dark between its steep banks, and there were bowlders and stones lying here and there. After half an hour's walking Ned scrambled up and looked back.
"It is quite safe now," he said; "let us make as straight as we can for Nussara."
Kate Warrener and Rose Hertford have never been able to recall any incidents of that night's walk. Mechanically, as in a dreadful dream, they followed Ned's guidance, stumbling across little watercourses, tramping through marshy rice-fields, climbing into and out of deep nullahs, now pausing to listen to the barking of a village dog, now making their way through a thick clump of trees, and at last tramping for hours--that seemed ages--along the dead flat of the highroad. This at the first faint dawn of morning they left, and took refuge in a thick grove a quarter of a mile from the highway. Before throwing themselves down to rest, the girls, at Ned's earnest request, tried to eat a piece of biscuit, but tried in vain, they, however, each sipped a little wine from the bottles, and then, utterly worn out and exhausted, soon forgot their misery in a deep and heavy sleep.
The sun was upon the point of setting when their companions aroused them, and they woke up to their sorrows and dangers. The day had passed quietly; the boys, after both sleeping for some four or five hours, had watched by turns. No one had approached the wood; but a party of four Sepoys, mounted on horses, had passed from Sandynugghur; and a larger party had, later in the afternoon, come along in the other direction. From this the boys guessed that a successful revolt had also taken place at Nalgwa, the next station to Sandynugghur.
"Now, girls, the first thing to do is to eat. Here are biscuits for some days, and the two bottles of wine, which we must be sparing of. Dick and I have eaten lots of biscuits, and have had some water from a well at a little distance behind the wood. There was a large gourd lying by it which we have taken the liberty of borrowing. You can drink some water if you like, but you must each take a glass of wine. You must keep up your strength. There is no one in sight, so if you like you can go to the well and have a wash. Don't be longer than you can help; it would be ruin to be seen before we have changed our clothes. While you are away washing, Dick and I will put on our dresses, and when you come back you can do the same. We can stain our faces and hands afterward."
The girls chose to have their wash first and their meal afterward, and felt refreshed and brighter after they had done so. Then they dressed in the clothes Saba had provided for them, and could, at any other time, have laughed at the comicality of their aspect, muffled up in white, with only their eyes visible. The awkward shoes were the only part of the costume to which they objected; but the sight of European boots below the native dress would have betrayed them instantly; however, they determined to adopt them for walking in at nights, or when crossing the fields, and to put the native shoes in a bundle, to be worn in public.
The boys presently joined them, Ned in the dress of a young Mussulman zemindar, Dick as his follower.
"I should not have known you in the least," Rose said; "as far as appearances go, I think we are all safe now."
When it was quite dark they again started, regained the road, and kept steadily along it. After two hours' walking they approached a village. After some consultation it was decided that Dick, whose dress was the darkest and least noticeable, should steal forward and reconnoiter. If every one was indoors they would push boldly through; if not, they would make a circuit round it. In ten minutes he returned.
"Ned, there are two troopers' horses standing before the largest house of the place. I suppose they belong to some of the men of the cavalry regiment at Nalgwa. If we could but steal them!"
"Splendid, Dick; why should we not? I can get on one, you on the other; one of the girls can sit behind each of us, with her arms round our waists. What do you say, girls? With our dress it would be natural for us to be on horseback, and no one would ask any questions. We are pretty safe, because if they come out there are but two of them, and we are more than a match for them with our pistols."
"It seems a terrible risk to run, Ned; but I do think it would be our best plan. What do you say, Rose?"
"I think we had better try, Kate."
"Now let us settle everything before we start," said Ned. "We must mount first, I think, that we may be able to help you more easily; and you would have less risk of falling off if you get up in front of us. We can change when we have gone half a mile. Will you stand close to Dick, Kate, when he mounts; Rose, you keep close to me. The moment we are fairly in the saddle, and have got the reins in our hands, you put your foot on mine, and take hold of my hand, and climb up in the saddle in front of me. Put your arms round our necks and hold us, because we shall want one hand for the reins, the other for a pistol."
"Let us cut a stick, Ned, to give them a lick and make them start at a gallop."
Very gently, and with bated breath, they stole up the village. The horses were still standing with their reins thrown over a hook in the wall. Very quietly the boys unhooked the reins, but the horses moved uneasily, and objected to their mounting them, for horses accustomed to natives dislike to be touched by Europeans. However, the boys had just managed to climb into their seats when a shutter of the house opened, and a voice said in Hindostanee, "What is fidgeting the horses?" Then a head looked out.
"Some one is stealing the horses," he shouted.
"Quick, girls, up with you," Ned said; and the girls, as light as feathers, sprang up. "Go along," the boys cried, bringing down their sticks on the animals' sides. Dick's at once leaped forward, but Ned's horse only backed. Ned gave his stick to Rose and seized his pistol, which was cocked and ready for use. As he did so a native trooper rushed from the house. As he came out Ned fired, and the man fell forward on his face.
Startled by the shot, the horse darted off after his companion. For a few minutes they went forward at a gallop, the boys holding on as well as they could, but expecting every moment to be thrown off. For awhile shouts and cries were heard from the village, and then all was quiet again. The two boys reined in their horses.
"That was awful," Dick said; "I would rather sit on the yardarm in a storm than ride on that beast any further at the pace we have been going."
The girls had not spoken a word since they started, and they now slipped to the ground. It was not an easy thing for them to get up behind, and several slips were made before their attempts were successful. Once seated, they were more comfortable, and they again went on, this time at an easy canter. After half an hour's ride they came to a crossroad, and turned up there, going now at a walk. After awhile they took a well-marked path running in a parallel direction to the road; this they followed for some time, passing fearlessly through one or two small villages.
Then, feeling by the flagging walk of their horses that they were becoming fatigued, they plunged deep into a thick wood, dismounted, and prepared for the night. Attached to the saddle of each horse was a nose-bag with some forage. These were put on, the horses fastened up, and the little party were soon asleep again.
Before starting next morning the first care of the boys was to take off the embroidery of the horse-cloths, and as much of the metal work on the bridles as could be possibly dispensed with, in order to conceal the fact that the horses had belonged to a British cavalry regiment; then they mounted, with the girls behind them, and rode quietly forward, taking care not to travel by the main road, as the news of the carrying off the horses would have been generally known there.
They passed through several villages, attracting but little attention as they did so, for there was now nothing unusual in the appearance of a Mohammedan zemindar and follower riding with two closely-veiled women _en croupe_. Late in the afternoon they stopped at a village store, and Ned purchased, without exciting any apparent suspicion, some grain for the horses. That night they slept as usual in a wood, and congratulated themselves on having made fully twenty-five miles of their journey toward Meerut.
The next morning, after two miles' riding, they entered a large village. As they were passing through it a number of peasants suddenly rushed out into the road, and shouted to them to stop. They were armed with sticks and hoes, and a few had guns. Looking behind, Ned saw a similar body fill up the road behind them, cutting off their escape.
"Look, Ned, at that old fellow with the gun; that's the man who sold us the grain last night," Dick said.
"We must charge them, Dick; there's nothing else to do. Hold tight, girls. Now for your revolver, Dick! Now!"
And, digging their heels into their horses' side, the boys rode at the crowd of peasants. There was a discharge of guns, and Dick felt as if a hot iron had been drawn suddenly across his cheek; then they were in the midst of the crowd, emptying their revolvers with deadly effect among them; some fell, and the horses dashed forward, followed by the yells of their assailants. A minute later three or four more guns were discharged, the rear party having now joined the other, and being therefore able for the first time to fire.
Dick heard a little startled cry from Kate.
"Are you hurt, darling?" he cried in alarm.
"Nothing to speak of, Dick. Ride on."
In a quarter of a mile they drew rein, and found that a ball had passed through the upper part of Kate's arm, as it went round Dick's body. Fortunately it had gone through the flesh only, without touching the bone. Dick was bleeding copiously from a wound across the cheek.
"Another two inches to the right," he said, "and it would have taken me fairly in the mouth. It's well it's no worse."
Kate's arm was soon bandaged up, and a handkerchief tied round Dick's face. Ned proposed that for Kate's sake they should make a halt at the first wood they came to, but Kate would not hear of it.
"On the contrary, Ned, we ought to press forward as hard as we can, for it is very possible that at that village where we were recognized--I suppose because they had heard about the horses--they may have dispatched people to the main road, as well as further on to stop us here; and we may be pursued at any moment, if there happens to be any native cavalry upon the road. Evidently they are very much in earnest about catching us, and have sent word to look after four people on two horses all over the country, or they could not have known about it at the village yesterday evening."
"I am afraid you are right, Kate; if we could turn off this road I should not fear, but the river cannot be far to our right, and the main road is to our left. There is nothing for it but to press straight on. Fortunately, the country is not thickly populated, and there is a good deal of jungle. If the worst comes to the worst, we must leave our horses and go on foot again. I fear that is more fatiguing for you, but we can hide ourselves a good deal better."
It was late in the afternoon when Rose cried. "They are coming, Ned; there is a party of cavalry behind!"
Ned looked round; and far back, along the straight road, he saw a body of horsemen.
"They are a long distance behind," he said; "now for a race!"
The boys plied their sticks, and the horses sprang on at full gallop.
"How much are they gaining, Rose?" he asked, after twenty minutes' hard riding.
"They are nearer, Ned--a good deal nearer; but they have not gained half their distance yet."
"The sun set fully ten minutes ago," Ned said; "in another half-hour it will be dark. Their horses must be done up, or they would gain faster on us, as ours have to carry double, and are getting terribly blown; but there is a wood, which looks a large one, a couple of miles ahead. If we can get there five minutes before them, we are safe."
By dint of flogging their horses they entered the wood while their pursuers were half a mile behind.
"Another hundred yards," Ned said, "and then halt. Now, off we get."
In an instant they leaped off, and gave a couple of sharp blows with their sticks to the horses, who dashed off at a gallop down the road.
It was already perfectly dark in the wood, and the fugitives hurried into the thickest part. In five minutes they heard the cavalry come thundering past.
"We must push on," Ned said; "fortunately, we have done no walking, for we must be far away by to-morrow morning. They will come up with the horses before very long, and will know we are in the wood, and they will search it through and through in the morning."
A quarter of a mile, and the wood grew thicker, being filled with an undergrowth of jungle.
"If you will stop here, Ned, I will push on through this jungle, and see how far it goes. The girls can never get through this. I think we are near the edge of the wood; it looks lighter ahead."
In ten minutes he came back.
"Ned, we are on the river; it is not fifty yards from here."
This was serious news.
"What a pity we did not take to the left instead of the right when we left the horses. However, they won't know which way we have gone, and must watch the whole wood. We must push forward, and, by keeping as close as we can to the river, shall most likely pass them; besides, they will be some time before they decide upon forming a chain round the wood, and as there are only about twenty of them they will be a long way apart. There! Do you hear them? They are coming back! Now let us go on again!"
In ten minutes they reached the edge of the wood. They could see nothing of the horsemen. Keeping in the fields, but close to the line of jungle that bordered the river, they walked onward for upward of an hour. Then they came upon the road. The river had made a bend, and the road now followed its bank.
"Shall we cross it, and keep in the open country, or follow it, girls?"
"Follow it as long as we can keep on walking," Kate said. "It is in the right direction, and we can go on so much faster than in the fields. If we hear them coming along we can get into the jungle on the bank."
"Listen, Kate," Rose said a few minutes afterward; "they are following!"
"I expect," Ned said, "they find that the wood is too big to be watched, and some of them are going on to get some help from the next garrison, or, perhaps, to rouse up a village and press them in the work. Trot on, girls; the jungle is so thick here you could hardly squeeze yourself in. We have plenty of time; they won't be here for five minutes yet."
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{
"id": "7071"
}
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4
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BROKEN DOWN.
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They ran at the top of their speed, but the sound of the horses' feet grew louder.
"There is a path leading to the river," Ned said; "let us turn down there; we can hide under the jungle on the bank."
Breathlessly they ran down to the river.
"Hurrah! here is a boat, jump in;" and in another minute they had pushed off from the bank, just as they heard a body of cavalry--for that they were troops they knew by the jingling of their accouterments--pass at a gallop. The stream was strong; and the boys found that with the rude oars they could make no way whatever.
"We had better land again, and get further from the river," Ned said. "We will push the boat off, and it will be supposed that we have gone off in it."
This was soon done, and having regained the road, they crossed it and struck over the fields.
The moon, which had been hitherto hidden under a passing cloud, was soon out fully, and for some time they kept across the country, carefully avoiding all villages. These were here more thinly scattered; patches of jungle and wood occurred more frequently; and it was evident that they were getting into a less highly cultivated district. It was long before daybreak that Rose declared that she was too fatigued to go further, and they entered a large wood. Here they lay down, and were soon fast asleep. It was broad daylight when the Warreners woke. Rose still slept on.
Presently Kate came to her brothers. "I am afraid Rose is going to be ill. She keeps talking and moaning in her sleep; her face is flushed, and her hands as hot as fire."
As they were looking sadly at her she opened her eyes.
"Is it time to get up?" she asked. "Oh, my head! it is aching terribly. Is the trap at the door?"
Then she closed her eyes again, and went on talking incoherently to herself.
"She has fever," Kate said, "and we must get her under shelter, at whatever risk."
"I heard a dog bark not far off, just as I went to sleep," Ned said. "I will go and reconnoiter. Dick, you had better stay here."
Dick nodded, and Ned advanced cautiously to the edge of the wood. There he saw a farmhouse of a better class than usual. Three peons were just starting for work, and an elderly man with a long beard was standing at the door. Then he went in, and after a few minutes reappeared with a long staff in his hands, and went out into the fields. He did not, however, follow the direction which the peons had taken, but took a line parallel with the edge of the wood. "He looks a decent old fellow," Ned said to himself; "I can but try; at any rate, at the worst I am more than a match for him."
So saying, he stepped out into the field. The farmer started with surprise at seeing a young Mussulman appear before him.
"I am English," Ned said at once. "I think you are kind by your face, and I tell you the truth. There are two English girls in the wood, and one is ill. We can go no further. Will you give them shelter?"
The old man stood for some time in thought.
"I have no complaint against the Feringhees," he said; "in my fathers time the country was red with blood, but all my life I have eaten my bread in peace, and no man has injured me. Where are the English ladies?"
Ned led the way to the spot where Rose was still lying. The old man looked at her flushed face, and then at Kate, and said: "The English ladies have suffered much, and can have done harm to no one. I will shelter them. My wife and daughter will nurse the sick one. They will be in the women's chamber, and my servants will not know that there is a stranger there. I believe that they would be faithful, but one who knows nothing can tell no tales. On the other side of the wood there is a shed. It is empty now, and none go near it. The English sahibs can live there, and each day I will bring them food. When their sister is well they can go on again."
Ned translated the old man's words, and Kate, who was kneeling by Rose, caught his hand and kissed it in her gratitude. He patted her head and said, "Poor child!"
"How are we to carry Rose? I don't think she can walk," Kate asked.
The farmer solved the difficulty by motioning them to stay where they were. He then went off, and in ten minutes returned, bearing a dried bullock's skin. On this Rose was laid. The Hindoo took the two ends at her feet, the boys each one of those by her head, and then, slung as in a hammock, Rose was carried to the house, where the wife and daughter of their host, prepared by him for what was coming, received them with many expressions of pity, and she was at once carried into the inner room. The farmer then placed before the boys two bowls of milk and some freshly made chupatties, and then gave them some food for the day. With an expression of fervent gratitude to him, and a kiss from Kate, who came out to tell them that Rose would be well nursed and cared for, the boys started for the hut in the direction the Hindoo pointed out to them. It was a small building, and had apparently been at some time used as a cattle shed. The floor was two feet deep in fodder of the stalks of Indian corn. Above was a sort of rough loft, in which grain had been stored.
The boys at once agreed that, to prevent suspicion, it was safer to occupy this, and they soon transferred enough of the fodder from below to make a comfortable bed. Then, feeling secure from discovery, even if by chance some passer-by should happen to glance into the shed, they were soon deep in a sounder sleep than they had enjoyed since they left Sandynugghur.
The next day, when the old man came to see them, he was accompanied by Kate. She looked pale and wan.
"How is Rose?" was their first question.
"She is as bad as she can be, dears. She has been delirious all night, and is so this morning. I did not like to leave her for a moment. But this kind old man wanted me to go with him, as I think he has something to say to you."
"Have you any news?" Ned asked him.
"My servants tell me that the Sepoys are searching the whole country, some of the officers have escaped from Sandynugghur, and also from Nalgwa, where the troops rose on the same night; some of the residents have escaped also. There is a reward offered for them alive or dead, and any one hiding them is to be punished with death. The white lady is very ill. She is in the hand of God; she may get better, she may die. If she gets better it will be weeks before she can go through the hardships of the journey to Meerut. I think it better that you should go on alone; the white ladies will be as my daughters. I have told my servants that my daughter is ill, so that if they hear cries and voices at night they will think that it is she who is in pain. You can do no good here. If the woods are searched you may be found; if you are found they will search everywhere closely, and may find them. I will hide them here safely. The orders are, I hear, that the captives taken are to be carried to Delhi; but if they should be found I will myself journey to Meerut to bring you the news. You will give me your names, and I will find you; then you may get help and rescue them on the way."
Ned translated the old man's opinion and kind offer to his brother and sister, and said that he was very unwilling to leave the girls--a sentiment in which Dick heartily joined.
Kate, however, at once expressed her warm approval of the plan.
"It will be weeks, dears, before Rose can walk again, and I shall have an anxious time with her. It would add greatly to my anxiety if I knew that you were near, and might at any time be captured and killed. If dear papa has escaped he will be in a terrible state of anxiety about us, and you could relieve him if you can join him at Meerut, and tell him how kindly we are treated here. Altogether, boys, it would be so much better for you to go; for if the Sepoys do come, you could not defend us against more than two or three, and they are sure to come in a stronger party than that."
In spite of their disinclination to leave the girls without such protection as they could give them, the boys saw that the course advised was the best to be pursued, and told their Hindoo friend that they agreed to follow his counsel, thanking him in the warmest terms for his kindness.
He advised them to leave their Mohammedan dresses behind, and to dress in the simple costume of Hindoo peons, with which he could supply them. They would then attract far less attention, and could even by day pass across the fields without any comment whatever from the natives at work there, who would naturally suppose that they belonged to some village near at hand. "Englishmen could not do this," he said; "too much leg, too much arm, too much width of shoulders; but boys are thinner, and no one will notice the difference. In half an hour I will come back with the things." Ned gave him the rest of the berries, which they had preserved, and asked him to boil them up in a little water, as they would now have to color their bodies and arms and legs, in addition to their faces.
It was a sad parting between Kate and her brothers, for all felt that they might never meet again. Still the course decided upon was, under the circumstances, evidently the best that could be adopted.
In an hour the Hindoo returned. The boys took off their clothes, and stained themselves a deep brown from head to foot. The farmer then produced a razor and a bowl of water and some soap, and said that they must shave their hair off their heads, up to a level with the top of the ears, so as to leave only that which could be concealed by their turban. This, with some laughter--the first time they had smiled since they left Sandynugghur--they proceeded to do to each other, and the skin thus exposed they dyed the same color as the rest of the body. They then each put on a scanty loincloth, and wrapping a large piece of dark blue cotton stuff first round their waists and then over one shoulder, their costume was complete, with the exception of a pair of sandals and a white turban. The old Hindoo surveyed them gravely when their attire was completed, and expressed his belief that they would pass without exciting the slightest suspicion. Their pistols were a trouble. They were determined that, come what might, they would not go without these, and they were finally slung behind them from a strap passing round the waist under the loin-cloth; the spare ammunition and a supply of biscuit were stowed in stout cotton bags, with which their friend provided them, and which hung by a band passing over one shoulder. Their money and a box of matches they secured in a corner of their clothes. A couple of stout staves completed their outfit.
Bidding a grateful farewell to their friendly Hindoo, the boys started on their journey. The sandals they found so difficult to keep on that they took them off and carried them, except when they were passing over stony ground. They kept to bypaths and avoided all villages. Occasionally they met a native, but either they passed him without speech, or Ned muttered a salutation in answer to that of the passer. All day they walked, and far into the night. They had no fear of missing their way, as the road on one hand and the river on the other both ran to Meerut; and although these were sometimes ten miles apart, they served as a fair index as to the line they should take. The biscuits, eked out with such grain as they could pluck as they crossed the fields, lasted for two days; but at the end of that time it became necessary to seek another supply of food.
"I don't know what to ask for, Dick; and those niggers always chatter so much that I should have to answer, and then I should be found out directly. I think we must try some quiet huts at a distance from the road."
The wood in which they that night slept was near three or four scattered huts. In the morning they waited and watched for a long time until one of the cottages was, as far as they could judge, deserted, all its inmates being gone out to work in the fields. They then entered it boldly. It was empty. On hunting about they found some chupatties which had apparently been newly baked, a store of rice and of several other grains. They took the chupatties, five or six pounds of rice, and a little copper cooking-pot. They placed in a conspicuous position two rupees, which were more than equivalent to the value of the things they had taken, and went on their way rejoicing.
At midday they sat down, lit a fire with some dried sticks, and put their rice in the pot to boil. As Ned was stooping to pick up a stick he was startled by a simultaneous cry of "Look out!" from Dick, and a sharp hiss; and looking up, saw, three or four feet ahead of him, a cobra, with its hood inflated, and its head raised in the very act of springing. Just as it was darting itself forward Dick's stick came down with a sharp tap on its head and killed it.
"That was a close shave, Ned," the boy said, laughing; "if you had stooped he would have bit you on the face. What would have been the best thing to do if he had bitten you?"
"The best thing is to suck the wound instantly, to take out a knife and cut deeply in, and then, as we have no vesuvians, I should break up half a dozen pistol cartridges, put the powder into and on the wound, and set it alight. I believe that that is what they do in some parts of Eastern Europe in the case of the bites of mad dogs; and this, if no time is lost after the bite is given, is almost always effectual in keeping off hydrophobia."
"Well, Ned, I am very thankful that we had not to put the virtue of the receipt to a practical test."
"Would you like to eat the snake, Dick? I believe that snake is not at all bad eating."
"Thank you," Dick said, "I will take it on trust. We have got rice; and although I am not partial to rice it will do very well. If we could have got nothing else we might have tried the snake; but as it is, I had rather not. Two more days, Ned, and we shall be at Meerut. The old Hindoo said it was a hundred miles, and we go twenty-five a day, even with all our bends and turns to get out of the way of villages."
"Yes, I should think we do quite that, Dick. We walk from daylight to sunset, and often two or three hours by moonlight; and though we don't go very fast, we ought to get over a lot of ground. Listen! There is music!" Both held their breath. "Yes, there are the regular beats of a big drum. It is on the highroad, I should say, nearly abreast of us. If we go to that knoll we shall have a view of them; and there cannot be the least danger, as they must be fully a mile away."
Upon gaining the rise in question they saw a regiment in scarlet, winding along the road.
"Are they mutineers, Dick, or British?"
It was more than any one could say. Mounted officers rode at the head of the regiment; perfect order was to be observed in its marching; there was nothing that in any way differed from its ordinary aspect.
"Let us go back and get our rice and lota, Dick. We can't afford to lose that; and if we go at a trot for a couple of miles we can get round into some trees near the road, where we can see their faces. If the mounted officers are white it is all right; if not, they are mutineers."
Half an hour's trot brought them to such a point of vantage as they desired. Crouched in some bushes at the edge of a clump of trees, not fifty yards from the road, they awaited the passage of the regiment. They had not been in their hiding-place five minutes when the head of the column appeared.
"They march in very good order, Ned; do you think that they would keep up such discipline as that after they had mutinied?"
"I don't know. Dirk; but they'll want all their discipline when they come to meet our men. For anything we know we may be the two last white men left in India; but when the news gets to England there will be such a cry throughout the land that, if it needed a million men to win back the country, I believe they would be found and sent out. There! There are two mounted officers; I can't see their color, but I don't think they are white."
"No, Ned; I am sure they are not white; then they must be mutineers. Look! Look! Don't you see they have got three prisoners? There they are, marching in the middle of that column; they are officers; and oh! Ned! I do think that the middle one's father." And the excited boy, with tears of joy running down his cheeks, would have risen and dashed out had not Ned forcibly detained him.
"Hush! Dick! and keep quiet. Yes! It is father! and Dunlop and Manners. Thank God!" he said, in deep gratitude.
"Well, let's go to them, Ned; we may as well be all together."
"Keep quiet, Dick," the elder said, holding him down again; "you will destroy their chance as well as ours. We must rescue them if we can."
"How, Ned, how?"
"I don't know yet, Dick; but we must wait and see; anyhow, we will try. There goes the bugle for a halt. I expect they have done their day's march. Come on, Dick; we must get out of this. When they have once pitched their tents they will scatter about, and, as likely as not, some will come into this wood. Let us get further back, so as to be able to see them pitch their tents, and watch, if we can, where they put the prisoners."
The regiment piled arms, and waited until the bullock-carts came up with the tents. These were taken out and pitched on the other side of the road, and facing the wood. The ground being marked out, the men were told off to their quarters, and the poles of the tents aligned with as much regularity and exactness as could have been used when the regiment possessed its white officers.
Near the quarter-guard tent--that is, the tent of the men engaged upon actual duty--a small square tent was erected; and into this the three officers, who were handcuffed, were thrust; and two sentries, one in front, the other at the back of the tent, were placed.
"Now, Dick, we know all about it; let us get further away, and talk over how it is to be managed."
The task was one of extreme difficulty, and the boys were a long time arranging the details. Had there been but one sentry, the matter would have been easy enough: but with two sentries, and with the quarter guard close at hand, it seemed at first as if no possible scheme could be hit upon. The sentry at the back of the tent must be the one to be disposed of, and this must be done so noiselessly as not to alarm the man in front. Each marched backward and forward some eight paces to the right, and as much to the left, of the tent, halting occasionally. When both marched right and left at the same time, they were in sight of each other except during the time of passing before and behind the tent; when they walked alternately, the tent hid them altogether from each other.
"I suppose there is no chance of our being able to gag that fellow, Ned? It's horrid to think of killing a man in cold blood."
"There is no help for it, Dick. If he were alone, we might gag him; as it is, he must be killed. These scoundrels are all mutineers and murderers. This regiment has, no doubt, like the others, killed its officers, and all the men, women, and children at the station. I would not kill the man unless it could be helped, but our father's life depends upon it; and to save him I would, if there were no other way, cut the throats of the whole regiment while they were asleep! This is no ordinary war, Dick; it is a struggle for existence; and though I'm sure I hate the thought of it, I shall not hesitate for an instant."
"I shan't hesitate," the midshipman said; "but I wish the fellow could make a fight of it. However, as he would kill me if he had a chance, he mustn't grumble if I do the same for him. Now, Ned, you tell me exactly what I am to do, and you may rely on my doing it."
Every minute detail of the scheme was discussed and arranged; and then, as the sun set, the boys lit a fire in a nullah and boiled some rice, and ate their food with lighter hearts than they had done since they left Sandynugghur, for the knowledge that their father had escaped death had lifted a heavy burden from their hearts. As to the danger of the expedition that they were about to undertake, with the happy recklessness of boys they thought but little of it.
Across the plain they could see the campfires, but as the evening went on these gradually died away, and the sounds which had come faintly across the still night air ceased altogether. As patiently as might be, they waited until they guessed that it must be about ten o'clock. The night was, for the country, cold--a favorable circumstance, as the natives, who are very chilly, would be less likely to leave their tents if they felt restless. The moon was now half full and shining brightly, giving a light with which the boys could well have dispensed.
"Now, Dick, old boy, let's be moving. May God help us in our night's work!"
They made a considerable detour to approach the camp in the rear, where they rightly judged that the Sepoys, having no fear whatever of any hostile body being near, would have placed no sentries.
"Listen!" Dick said, as they were pausing to reconnoiter; "that sounded like a cannon in the far distance."
There was no doubt of it; faintly, but quite distinct, across the air came the sound of heavy cannon fired at regular intervals.
"Those cannon must be fired as a salute to some great chief newly arrived at Delhi--we should not fire so late, but I suppose they are not particular," Ned said; "we calculated it was not more than twenty-five miles off, and we should hear them at that distance easily. We had better wait a few minutes to see if any one comes out to listen to it."
But there was no movement among the white tents. Then they stole quietly into the camp.
The tents of the Indian native regiments are large, oblong tents, with two poles, holding thirty men each. They are manufactured at the government prison at Jubbalpore, and are made of thick cotton canvas, lined with red or blue cotton. In the daytime they open right along one side, the wall of the tent being propped outward, with two slight poles, so as to form a sort of veranda, and shade the inside of the tent while admitting the air. At night-time, in the cool season, this flap is let down and the tent closed. In front of the tents the muskets of the men inside are piled.
Into one of these tents Dick crawled, Ned watching outside. When Dick first entered it was so dark that he could see nothing; but the moonlight penetrated dimly through the double cotton, and he was soon able to discover objects around. The ground was all occupied by sleeping figures, each wrapped up from head to foot in his blanket, looking like so many mummies. Their uniforms were folded, and placed between their heads and the wall of the tent. Six of these, with the same number of caps, and six ammunition pouches and belts, and a uniform cloak, taken carefully off one of the sleepers, Dick collected and passed out through the door of the tent to Ned. Not a sleeper stirred while he did so, and he crept quietly out, with the first part of his task accomplished. Gathering the things together, the boys made all speed back to a clump of trees half a mile in the rear of the camp. Here Ned put on one of the uniforms and the cloak, and they then started back again for the camp.
The sentries upon the prisoners' tent were changed at twelve o'clock, and a few minutes later the sentry at the rear of the tent saw one of his comrades come out of one of the large tents close to the end of his beat. He was wrapped in his blanket, and his face was tied up with a cloth. Coughing violently, he squatted himself in front of his tent, and rocked himself to and fro, with his hands to his face, uttering occasional groans. This was all so natural--for the natives of India suffer much from neuralgia in the cold weather--that the sentry thought nothing of the matter. He continued to pace his beat, turning back each time when within a yard or two of the sufferer. The third time he did so the figure dropped off his blanket, and, with a sudden bound, threw himself on the sentry's back; at the same moment a Sepoy in uniform darted out from the tent. One hand of the assailant--in which was a damp cloth--was pressed tightly over the mouth and nostrils of the sentry; the other grasped the lock of his musket, so that it could not be discharged. Thrown backward off his balance, taken utterly by surprise, the sentry was unable even to struggle, and in an instant the second antagonist plunged a bayonet twice into his body, and he fell a lifeless mass on the ground. It was the work of an instant to drag the body a yard or two into the shadow of the tent, and before the other sentry appeared from the opposite side of the prisoner's tent the native was rocking himself as before; the sentry, wrapped in his cloak, was marching calmly on his beat. The whole affair had lasted but twenty seconds, and had passed as noiselessly as a dream.
The next time the sentry in front was hidden from view the native started from his sitting position and stole up behind the tent. Cautiously and quietly he cut a slit in the canvas and entered. Then he knelt down by the side of one of the sleepers, and kissed him. He moved in his sleep, and his disturber, putting his hand on his mouth to prevent sudden speech, shook him gently. The major opened his eyes.
"Father, it is I--Richard; hush! do not speak."
Then, as the bewildered man gradually understood what was said, his son fell on his neck, kissing him with passionate delight.
After the first rapturous joy of the recognition was over, "Ned and the girls?" Major Warrener asked.
"The girls are at present safe," Dick said; "Ned is outside behind. He is the sentry. Now, father, wake the others, and then let us steal off. Take off your boots; the men's tents are only ten yards behind; once there, you are safe. I will let Ned know when you are ready, and he will occupy the sentry. We can't silence him, because he is within sight of the sentry of the quarter-guard."
Major Warrener aroused his sleeping companions, and in a few whispered words told them what had happened. In silence they wrung Dick's hand, and then taking off their boots, stole one by one out of the tent. As Ned passed he exchanged a silent embrace with his father. The next time the sentry in front was passing before the tent, a heavy stone, hurled by Ned, crashed into a bush upon the other side of the road. The sentry halted instantly, and, with gun advanced, listened, but he could hear nothing, for his comrade was at that instant seized with a fit of coughing.
After standing in a listening attitude for three or four minutes the Sepoy supposed that the noise must have been caused by some large bird suddenly disturbed in the foliage.
"Did you hear anything?" he asked Ned, as their path crossed.
"Nothing," Ned answered, continuing his march.
For another quarter of an hour he passed backward and forward, his only fear being that the sentry might take it into his head to open the tent and look in to see if the prisoners were safe. In a quarter of an hour he knew that the fugitives would have gained the trees, and would have time to put on the Sepoy uniforms before he reached them; and also, by the aid of a couple of large stones, have got rid of their handcuffs, lie might therefore be off to join them.
Waiting till the sentry was at the other end of his beat, he slipped round the tent, stripped off his cloak, lay down his musket and belt--for Dick had arranged that they should carry off five muskets in their retreat--threw off the Sepoy jacket, and in light running order, darted through the tents. He calculated that he should have at least a couple of minutes start before his absence was discovered, another minute or two before the sentry was sufficiently sure of it to hail the quarter-guard and report the circumstance. Then would follow the discovery of the escape of the prisoners; but by that time he would be far out on the plain, and even if seen, which was unlikely, he was confident that he could outrun any native.
His anticipations turned out correct; he was already some distance off when he heard the call of the sentry to the quarter-guard, followed almost immediately by a still louder shout, that told that he had discovered the flight of the prisoners; then came the sound of a musket shot, a drum beat the alarm, and a babel of sounds rang on the still air. But by this time Ned was halfway to the clump of trees, and three minutes later he was in his father's arms. There was no time to talk then. Another coat was hurried on to him, an ammunition belt and pouch thrown over his shoulder, and Captain Manners carrying his musket until he should have quite recovered breath, the five went off at a steady trot, which after a quarter of an hour broke into a walk--for there was no fear of pursuit--in the direction in which they knew Delhi to lie.
|
{
"id": "7071"
}
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5
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BACK UNDER THE FLAG.
|
"How far is it to Delhi? We heard the guns there just now."
"Not thirty miles."
"Have you heard how things are going on there?" Dick asked.
"According to the Sepoy reports, fresh regiments are pouring in from all quarters; and they boast that they are going to drive us out of the country. Our troops are still at Meerut, and a force is gathering at Umballah; but they are after all a mere handful."
"Do you think there is any chance of help coming to us?"
"None for the present. The Sepoys say that every station has gone down except Agra, Allahabad, and Benares, and that these are soon to go too. Cawnpore and Lucknow have risen."
"Are all the whites killed everywhere?"
"I am afraid they are all killed where there are no white troops; but there, we must hope that they are making a stand. We shall be a long time before we know anything. It is but a week yet since our station went; seven days longer since Delhi rose."
"It seems ages ago," Ned said. "You don't mean to try and get to Meerut to-night, I hope; we could walk as far if it were absolutely necessary, but we have done a long day's walk already."
"No, no, Ned. I only want to get well away from our late camp. To-morrow we will get near the river, hide all next day, and cross after nightfall. There is a clump of trees; we will pass the night there; I think we are safe enough now. The mutineers are too anxious to be at Delhi to spend much time in looking for us. Now, first of all, let us get a fire."
"We have never had a fire at night," Dick said, "since we started; we have been too much afraid of being seen."
"There is not much chance of its being observed in a wood; especially if the bushes are thick. We are four miles at least from the camp, and we are all wet through with dew. Now for sticks."
The whole party soon collected a pile of sticks; and the major was about to scatter some powder among the dead leaves, when Ned said, "We have matches, father."
"Oh, that's all right, Ned. There we are, fairly alight. Yes, we have chosen the place well; there are bushes all around. Now," he said, when the fire had burned up brightly, "let us hear the full story of what has passed; you gave us a short account when we first got free. Now let us hear all about it."
Ned and Dick told the story--sometimes one taking it up, sometimes the other. There were many questions from their auditors, and expressions of warm approval of their conduct; and Captain Dunlop threatened under his breath that if he ever had a chance he would not leave one cake of mud upon another in the village where Kate was wounded. He and Captain Manners proposed that they should go back, and afford what protection they could to the girls. But Major Warrener at once negatived this idea.
"If they could come straight back with us, I should say yes," he said, "for with us five we might hope to get them through safely; but even that would be very risky, for the larger the party is, the more easily it attracts attention, and the whole country is alive with rebels marching to Delhi. But as Rose cannot be fit to travel for weeks, we have no choice in the matter. They must remain where they are, and we can only hope and pray for their safety. Our duty lies clearly at Meerut, where every man who can sight a rifle will be wanted most urgently. Now let us be off to sleep; the fire has burned low, and in another hour or two it will be daybreak; however, there will be no reveille, and we can sleep on with lighter hearts than we have had for some time."
"What figures you are in those uniforms!" Dick said, laughing, next morning; "you can scarcely move in them, and they won't meet by eight or nine inches. It does not seem to me that they are any disguise at all. Any one could see in a moment that they were not made for you."
"They are wretchedly uncomfortable, Dick." his father said; "and, as you say, any one could see they were not made for us. But they are useful. As we go along, any one who saw us at a distance would take us for a straggling party of mutineers making our way to Delhi; while the bright scarlet of our own uniform would have told its tale miles off."
"I shall be glad enough to get rid of mine, Dick; I feel as if I had got into a boy's jacket by mistake. Jack Sepoy has no shoulders to speak of; as far as height goes he is well enough; but thirty Sepoys on parade take up no more room than twenty English. I had to take my jacket off last night and lay it over my shoulders; I might as well have tried to go to sleep in a vise. There! major; do you hear the music? These rascals are on the march again."
The strains of music came very faintly to the ear, for the bivouac was nearly a mile from the road.
"That is all right," the major said. "Now they have gone by, we can be moving. We must give them an hour's start."
"Now, father, we have not heard your adventures yet; please tell us all about them."
"Well, we have not had so much variety as you, but we have gone through a good deal. You know we had talked over the best possible course to take in case of an attack, come when it might. We had arranged what each should do in case of a night attack, or of a rising upon parade; and we had even considered the probability of being set upon when gathered in the messroom. We had all agreed that if taken by surprise, resistance would mean certain death; they would shoot us down through the doors and windows, and we should be like rats in a cage. We agreed, therefore, that in case of an attack, a simultaneous attempt to break out must be made, and we had even settled upon the window by which we should go. The married men were, of course, to make for their bungalows, except where, as in my case, I had made other arrangements; and the rest to various bungalows agreed upon, where traps were to be in readiness. Dunlop, Manners, and myself had agreed to make for Dunlop's, as it was the nearest, and his trap was to be ready that evening.
"There were not many who believed in a mutiny that night. The villains, only in the morning, having sworn to be faithful, deceived most of us, for it was very hard to believe they could be capable of such diabolical treachery. Swords and pistols were, of course, taken off, but instead of being left in the anteroom, were brought into the messroom. Some fellows put theirs in a corner, others against the wall behind them. I was sitting between Dunlop and Manners, and we were, as it happened, at the corner nearest the window fixed upon for the bolt. Things went on all right till dinner was over, There was an insolent look about some of the servants' faces I did not like, but nothing to take hold of. I pointed it out to Dunlop, and we agreed that the plan arranged was the best possible; and that, as resistance would be of no use, if at each of the eight large windows and the two doors a stream of musketry fire were being poured in, we would make a rush straight for the window. Presently the colonel rose and gave 'The Queen.' We all rose, and as if--as I have no doubt it was--the toast was the signal, there was a sudden trampling in the veranda outside, and at every window appeared a crowd of Sepoys, with their arms in their hands. I shouted, 'To the window for your lives!' and without stopping to get my sword, I dashed at the Sepoys who were there. Dunlop and Manners were with me, and before the scoundrels had time to get their guns to their shoulders, we were upon them. We are all big men; and our weight and impetus, and the surprise, were too much for them; we burst through them, standing as they did four or five deep, as if they had been reeds. They gave a yell of rage and astonishment as they went down like ninepins; but we scarcely saw it, for as we went through them the musketry fire broke out round the messroom.
[Illustration: BEFORE THE SCOUNDRELS HAD TIME TO GET THEIR GUNS TO THEIR SHOULDERS, WE WERE UPON THEM.]
"Whether any of the others tried to follow us, we don't know. I think most of them forgot their arrangement, and rushed to their arms: certainly some of them did so, for we heard the crack of revolvers between the rifle shots. We made straight across the parade for Dunlop's bungalow, with musket balls flying in all directions, as soon as the fellows we had gone through recovered from their first astonishment; but they are not good shots at the best, and a man running at his top speed is not an easy mark by moonlight. We heard yells and musket shots all round, and knew that while a part of the regiment was attacking us, parties were told off to each bungalow. By the time we had got over the few hundred yards to Dunlop's, the whistling of the bullets round us had pretty well ceased, for the fellows had all emptied their muskets; besides, we were nearly out of range. None of them were near us, for they had stopped in their run to fire; they were too much interested in the massacre going on inside, and we seemed pretty safe; when, just as I entered the gate of the compound, a stray bullet hit me on the head, and down I went like a log.
"Happily, the syce had proved faithful; he had been with Dunlop ever since he joined the regiment, and Dunlop once risked his life to save him from a tiger. There was the syce with the trap. He had not dared bring it out till the first shot was fired, lest his fellow-servants, who were all traitors, should stop it; but the instant it began, he came round. They ran the horse up to where I was lying, lifted me in, and jumped in, and drove out of the gate as a score of fellows from the mess-house came making toward the bungalow. We had fifty yards' start, but they fired away at us, a ball passing through the syce's leg as he scrambled up behind. The horse went along at a gallop; but we were not safe, for parties were carrying on their hellish work in every bungalow, Dunlop and Manners were maddened by the screams they heard; and if it had not been for having me under their charge, and by the thoughts of the girls, I believe they would have jumped out and died fighting. A few of the black devils, hearing wheels, ran out and fired; but we kept on at a full gallop till we were well out of the place. A mile further Dunlop found the horse begin to slacken his speed, and to go very leisurely. He jumped out to see what was the matter, and found, as he expected, that the horse had been hit. He had one bullet in the neck, another in the side. It was evident that it could not go much further. They lifted me out and carried me to a patch of bushes thirty yards from the road. The syce was told to drive on quietly till the horse dropped. Dunlop gave him money and told him to meet us at Meerut."
"Why did you not keep him with you? he would have been very useful?" Dick asked.
"You see I wanted to get the trap as far away as possible before the horse fell," Captain Dunlop said. "We did not know how severely wounded the major was; indeed, we both feared he was killed; but the mutineers, when they found the dead horse in the morning, were certain to make a search in its neighbourhood, and would have found your father had he been close by laid up with a wound."
"Happily I now began to come to," the major went on, continuing his story. "The ball was nearly spent, and had given me a nasty scalp wound, and had stunned me, but I now began to come round. The instant I was able to understand where I was or what had happened, Dunlop and Manners, who were half-wild with excitement and grief, made me promise to lie quiet, while they went back to see what had become of you all. Of course I consented. They were away about three hours, for they had to make a circle of the cantonments, as our bungalow was quite at the other end. They brought cheering news. They had first been to the house, and found it utterly destroyed as they expected. That told them nothing; for if you had been killed, your bodies would probably have been burned with the house. Then they went out to the tope of trees where it was agreed that you should, if possible, first fly. Here they found a pocket-handkerchief of Rose's; and going round to the other side, found by the marks upon the soil that four of you had started together. With hearts immensely lightened by the discovery that you had, at any rate, all escaped from the first massacre, they hurried back to gladden me with the news. I was past understanding it when they arrived, for the intense pain in my head and my terrible anxiety about you had made me delirious. It would have been certain death to stay so near the road, so they dipped their handkerchiefs in water, and tied them round my head; and then supporting me, one on each side, they half-dragged, half-carried, me to a deserted and half-ruinous cottage, about a mile away.
"Next day I was still feverish, but fortunately no one came near us. Dunlop and Manners went out at night, and got a few bananas. Next morning our regiment marched away; and Dunlop then appealed to an old cottager for shelter and food for us all. He at once promised to aid us, and I was removed to his cottage, where everything in his power was done for me. I was now convalescent, and a day later we were talking of making a move forward. That night, however, the cottage was surrounded--whether the peasant himself or some one else betrayed us, we shall never know--but the men that we saw there belonged to a regiment of mutineers that had marched in that afternoon from Dollah. We saw at once that resistance was useless, and we were, moreover, without arms. Had we had them, I have no doubt we should have fought and been killed. As it was, we were bound and marched into the camp at Sandynugghur. It was resolved to take us in triumph into Delhi; and we were marched along with the regiment till you saw us. We had talked over every conceivable plan of escape, and had determined that we would try to-night, which will be the last halt before they get to Delhi. It is very unlikely that we should have succeeded, but it was better to be shot down than to be taken to Delhi and given over to the mob to torture before they killed us. I am convinced we had no chance of really getting off, and that you have saved our lives, just as Dunlop and Manners saved mine, at the risk of their own, on that first night of our flight. And now let us be on the march."
They had not gone far before the three officers found that it was impossible to walk in their Sepoy jackets. They accordingly took them off, and slung them from their muskets. Ned and Dick were fairly fitted. They halted for the night near the river, about ten miles above Delhi. In the morning they were off early. By nine o'clock they stood on the bank of the river, five miles higher up.
The river is wide, or rather the bed of the river is wide, half a mile at least; this in the rainy season is full to the brim, but at other times the stream is not more than half that width. After crossing the river they would have fifteen miles still to traverse to arrive at Meerut; and it was probable that the whole intervening country was in the hands of the Sepoys.
"Had we not better keep this side of the river for a bit, father?" Ned asked.
"No, my boy; we will cross here after dark, and make straight for Meerut. If we can't find a boat, we will each cut a large bundle of rushes, to act as a lifebuoy and carry your guns and ammunition, and so swim across after it is dark."
"Well, major, as the sun is getting awfully hot, I vote we get into the shade of those stunted trees, and have a nap till the afternoon. It won't do to begin even to make the raft till the sun is down."
Captain Dunlop's proposition was carried into effect; but it is questionable whether any of the party slept much, for they were excited by the thought that in a few hours they would be with friends, once more soldiers instead of fugitives, with power to fight in defense of their sovereign's dominions, and of the helpless women and children exposed to the fury of the atrocious mutineers. With these thoughts mingled the anxiety which was wearing them all, although each refrained from talking about it, as to the safety of the girls, whose lives wore dependent upon the fidelity of a native and his servants.
Over and over again, since they met the boys, had they regretted that they had not gone back to watch over them; but the fact that Rose might be weeks before she was able to stand, and that, as their protector had said, the presence of Europeans near them might be detected, and would be a source of constant danger, convinced them that they had taken the proper course. They knew, too, that in acting as they had done they were performing their duty; and that at a moment when the fate of British India trembled in the balance, the place of every soldier was by the side of the British troops who still maintained the old flag flying in the face of increasing numbers of the enemy. Still, although they knew that they were doing their duty, and were, moreover, taking the wisest course, the thoughts of the girls alone in the midst of danger, with one of them down with fever, tried them terribly, and they longed with a fierce desire for the excitement of work and of danger to keep them from thinking of it.
"Here, boys, is a ear of Indian corn apiece; eat that and then get to work."
The frugal meal was soon over, and they then set to work, cutting down, breaking off, and tearing up large reeds with which to make floats. The boys had knives, but the others had been stripped of everything they had at the time of their capture. In about an hour, however, five bundles were made, each some six feet long and nearly three feet thick. The muskets and ammunition pouches were fastened on these, and soon after it was quite dark they entered the water.
"There are no crocodiles, I hope," Dick whispered to Ned.
"Nothing to fear in these large rivers; the chances of meeting one are very small."
"All right," Dick said. "Of course we've got to risk it. But they're as bad as sharks; and sharks, as the Yankee said, is pison. Well, here goes."
When the bundles were placed in the water they were lashed side by side with long trailing creepers which grew abundantly among the rushes; and they were thus secured from the risk of turning over from the weights on the top. Upon the raft thus formed their clothes were placed, and then, side by side, pushing it before them, the party shoved off from shore. In twenty minutes they touched ground on the other side. They dressed, examined their muskets to see if they were in good order, and then started in the direction in which they knew Meerut to be. Several times they paused and listened, for they could occasionally hear the noise of galloping men, and it was evident that there were troops of some kind or other moving about.
They walked for some hours until they thought that they could not be far from their destination, and had begun to congratulate themselves upon being near their friends, when the sound of a strong body of men was heard sweeping along the level plain across which they were now passing.
"There is a small building ahead," the major said; "run for that; they are coming across here."
They were seen, for a shout of "Who goes there?" in Hindostanee was heard.
"Give me your musket, Dick," Captain Dunlop exclaimed. For the lad, with the weight of his musket and ammunition, could hardly keep up with the others.
Just in time they reached the building in front of them, rushed in, and closed the door as the cavalry swept up. It was a small temple; a building of massive construction, with one little window about six inches square, and on the same side a strong door.
"Pile everything against the door," the major cried. "Dunlop, fire at once at them. Our only chance is to hold out with the hope that we may be heard, and that some of our fellows may come to the rescue."
Captain Dunlop fired just as the troopers dashed up to the door.
"Now, Manners, steady, pick off your man," the major said, as, aided by the boys, he jammed a beam of wood between the door and the wall, at such an angle that, except by breaking it to pieces, the door could not be forced.
"Now," he said, "it's my turn;" and he fired into the enraged enemy. "Now, Ned, steady. Are you loaded again, Dunlop?"
"Yes, major; just ready."
"Dick, you follow; take good aim."
The cavalry answered their fire, every shot of which was taking effect, by a confused discharge of their pistols at the door and window.
"Draw off!" their leader shouted; "rear-rank men hold the horses, front-rank men dismount and break in the door."
The order was obeyed; and the troopers rushed forward on foot, and were met by a steady fire, to which the straggling return of their pistols was but an inefficient answer. Vainly the mutineers hacked at the door with their sabers and struck it with their pommels.
"Throw yourselves against it, all at once," cried their leader; and a dozen men sent themselves against the door; it creaked and strained, but the beam kept it in its place.
"You keep up the fire through the window," said the major; "the boys and I will fire through the door."
Yells and shrieks followed each shot through the door, and after three or four minutes the troopers drew off.
"Any one hurt?" the major asked.
"I have got a bullet in my shoulder," said Captain Dunlop.
But that was the only reply. There was a shout outside, and Manners exclaimed: "Confound the fellows, they have got a big log of wood that will soon splinter the door."
"We must stop them as long as we can," said the major, as he fired among the men who were advancing with the log.
Several Sepoys fell before they got up to the house, but they pressed on, and, at the first blow given by the battering-ram driven by the men, the door split from top to bottom.
"Fix bayonets," the major said. "Now, Manners, you and I will hold them back. Not more than two can come at once, and their swords are of no use against bayonets in a narrow space. Dunlop, will you stand in reserve? you have still got your right hand; use your bayonet as a dagger if a rush comes. Boys, you go on loading and firing; put in four balls each time. If they get in, of course use your bayonets; there goes the door!"
A shout burst from the natives as the last portion of the door dropped from its hinges, and the doorway was open. There was, however, no inclination betrayed to make a rush.
"Forward! Death to the infidel dogs!" shouted their officer.
"Suppose you lead us," said one of the troopers; "the officers always show the way."
"Come, then," cried an old officer, on whose breast hung several medals; "follow me!"
Drawing his sword, he rushed forward, followed by twenty of his men. But as he passed over the threshold he and the trooper next to him fell beneath the bayonet thrusts of Major Warrener and his companion. The next two, pushed forward by their comrades, shared the same fate; while, as they fell, the muskets of Ned and Dick sent their contents into the mass. The rest recoiled from the fatal doorway, while the defenders set up a cheer of triumph. It was drowned in a crash of musketry, mingled with a cry of surprise and despair from the natives, as a body of British soldiers leaped from the wood, and followed their volley by an impetuous charge. The cavalry on the plain turned and fled at a gallop; and in five minutes, but for a few dark figures prostrate on the plain, not an enemy was in sight.
"Well, gentlemen, you have made a stout defense," the officer in command said, as he returned to the shrine, outside which the little party had gathered. "It seems as if you could have done without my help. Who are you, may I ask? And where have you sprung from?"
"Why, Sibbold, is it you? You haven't forgotten Warrener? And here are Dunlop and Manners."
"Hurrah!" shouted the officer. "Thank God, old fellows, you are saved; we fancied that you had all gone down. I am glad;" and he shook hands enthusiastically with his friends; while two of the officers, coming up, joined in the hearty greeting.
"Do those two men belong to your regiment?" Captain Sibbold asked. "If so, they are wonders; for I don't know a case as yet where any of the men proved true when the rest mutinied."
"They are my sons," Major Warrener answered.
"What?" exclaimed the other, laughing--believing that the major was joking.
"It's a fact, as you will see when they have got rid of the stains on their faces," he replied; while Captain Dunlop added, "and two as fine young fellows as ever stepped. Do you know that we three were prisoners, and that these lads rescued us from the middle of a pandy regiment. If they hadn't we should have been dead men before now. And now have you got anything to eat at Meerut, for we are famishing? In the next place, I have got a bullet in my shoulder, and shall enjoy my food all the more after it has been taken out. Our stories are long and will keep. How go things here?"
"Not very brightly, Dunlop; however, that will keep, too; now let us be off. Have we any casualties, sergeant?" he asked a non-commissioned officer who came up for orders.
"None, sir."
"What is the enemy's loss?"
"There are fifteen which can be fairly counted to us, sir, and nineteen here."
"That's a respectable total. Fall in, lads," he said to the men who had gathered round, "and let us get back. You will be glad to hear that these officers have escaped from the massacre at Sandynugghur."
There was a hearty cheer of satisfaction from the men, for Englishmen were knit very closely together in those terrible days. Then, falling in, the two companies of the Sixtieth Rifles marched back again to their cantonments at Meerut.
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{
"id": "7071"
}
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6
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A DASHING EXPEDITION.
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On arriving at the cantonments, the party were soon surrounded by the troops, who had been called under arms at the sound of distant firing, but had been dismissed again on the arrival of a message to the effect that the enemy had fled. The news had spread rapidly that some fugitives had escaped from Sandynugghur, where it was supposed that the massacre had been general; and officers pressed forward to shake their hands, and the men uttered words of kindly congratulation and welcome. The greeting swelled into a cheer as the detachment fell out, and, scattering among their comrades, told of the desperate defense, and of the slaughter inflicted upon the enemy by this handful of men. The fugitives were, of course, taken first to the messroom, Captain Dunlop being, however, carried off by the surgeon to his quarters, to have his wound examined and attended to.
It seemed almost like a dream to the worn and weary party, as they sat down again to a table laid with all the brightness and comfort of civilization, and felt that they were indeed safe among friends. Many were the questions asked them by officers who had friends and acquaintances among the military and civilians at Sandynugghur; and the fugitives learned that they were, so far as was known, the only survivors from the massacre. The story of their escape, and the safety of the girls, was told briefly, and listened to with eager interest; and very deep and hearty were the congratulations which the boys received for their share in the history. In return, Major Warrener learned what had taken place in the last ten days.
The story was not reassuring; tidings of evil were coming from all parts. As yet the number of stations where risings had taken place was comparatively small; but the position was everywhere critical. In Agra, Allahabad, and Benares, the attitude of the native troops and population was more than doubtful. At Lucknow and Cawnpore every precaution was being taken, but a rising was regarded as inevitable. In fact everywhere, save in the Punjab, trouble had either come or was coming. General Anson was collecting in all haste a force at Umballah, which was intended to advance upon Delhi--where the ex-king had been proclaimed Emperor of India--but his force would necessarily be an extremely small one; and no help could possibly arrive up country for many weeks. There was therefore only the Punjab to look to for aid. Happily, the troops of the Madras and Bombay presidencies had so far remained faithful.
"I suppose you have a good many men from Delhi, civilians and military, as well as from other places?"
"Oh, yes, we are crowded; every bungalow has been given up to the ladies, and we all sleep under canvas."
"I intend to ask leave to get up a troop of volunteers," Major Warrener said; "in the first place to go out and bring in my daughter and niece, and afterward to do any scouting or other duty that may be required."
"There has already been a talk of forming the unattached officers and civilians into a sort of irregular cavalry, so I should think that you will get leave; but it will be a hazardous business to make your way eighty miles through the country, especially as the mutineers are marching in all directions toward Delhi."
The next morning Major Warrener obtained permission, without difficulty, to carry out his scheme; and the news no sooner was known through the cantonments that a body of irregular horse was to be formed for scouting and general purposes, and that unattached officers might, until they received further orders, join it, than the tent which had been assigned to Major Warrener was besieged by men anxious to join a corps which seemed likely to afford them a chance of striking an early blow at the mutineers.
Hitherto, the officers who had escaped from Delhi and other stations, those who had come in from police duties in isolated districts, and civilians, both merchants and government officials, had been fretting that they could not be doing something to aid the great work of holding India, and punishing those who had murdered their friends and relations. Major Warrener's Light Horse, as it was to be called, afforded the opportunity desired, and by the next morning eighty-five volunteers had enrolled themselves. Some thirty-five of these were officers, the rest civilians. Many of them had ridden in, others had driven, so that most of them were already provided with horses. An appeal was made to the officers of the Meerut garrison, and to the civilians resident there, to give up any horses they might be able to spare for the public service, while others were bought from friendly zemindars. In a week the troop were all mounted, and during this time they had worked hard to acquire a sufficient amount of cavalry drill to enable them to perform such simple evolutions as might be necessary. Major Warrener divided the squadron into two troops, each with a captain and subaltern; all these officers being cavalrymen, as were the officers who did duty as sergeants. Thus Major Warrener had the general command, each troop being maneuvered by its own officers. In the ranks as simple privates were two majors and a dozen captains--among these latter, Captain Manners. Captain Dunlop was for the present in the surgeon's hands; but he was resolved that when the time came for a start for the rescue of the girls he would take his place in the ranks. The boys of course formed part of the troop. The uniform was simple, consisting simply of a sort of Norfolk jacket made of karkee, a kind of coarse brown holland of native make. Each man carried a revolver, and sword belt of brown leather. Their headgear was a cap of any kind, wrapped round and round with the thick folds of a brown puggaree. Beyond the Norfolk jacket and puggaree there was no actual uniform. Most of the men had hunting breeches, many had high boots, others had gaiters; but these were minor points, as were the horses' equipments.
Nothing had been said as to the intended expedition to bring in the fugitives, as native spies might have carried the news to the rebels, and so caused a renewed search to be made for their hiding-place. There was, therefore, a deep feeling of satisfaction, as well as of surprise, when, on the tenth day after the formation of the corps, the men were told, on being dismissed from morning parade, that the squadron would parade for duty at evening gunfire; that each man was to be provided with a blanket and a haversack, with cooked food sufficient for four days, and a bag with twenty pounds of forage for his horse, each horse to be well fed before coming on parade.
Had the route been free from enemies, the distance might have been done in two long night marches; but it would be necessary to make a detour on starting, so as to avoid striking the main road, as on the way out it was all-important to avoid detection, as the enemy might muster in such strength that their return would be difficult and dangerous in the extreme. The girls once in their hands, the return journey would be easy, as they could avoid any infantry, and had no fear of being able to cut their way through any body of cavalry whom they might accidentally come across, especially as they would have all the advantage of a surprise. Half an hour after sunset the squadron rode out from the lines at Meerut, amid a hearty cheer from the many troops at the station, who, hearing that Warrener's Light Horse were off on an expedition against the mutineers, had assembled to see the start. Major Warrener rode at the head of the squadron, with Captain Kent, who commanded the first troop, by his side, and behind them came two native guides well acquainted with the country. These had been dressed in the uniform of a native cavalry regiment, in order that if they passed any village and were challenged, they could ride forward and represent the troop as a body of native cavalry sent out from Delhi on a mission to a friendly rajah. The precaution was unnecessary. During two long night marches, with occasional halts to rest the horses, they rode without interruption. They passed through several villages; but although the tramp of the horses and the rattle of sabers must have been heard by the inhabitants, none stirred, for the mutineers took what they wanted without paying, and were already behaving as masters of the country; and even thus early the country people were beginning to doubt whether the fall of the English Raj, and the substitution of the old native rule, with its war, its bloodshed, and its exactions, was by any means a benefit, so far as the tillers of the soil were concerned. Just before morning, on the third day, the troop halted in a thick grove, having watered their horses at a tank a half-hour before. They had ridden some seventy miles, and were, they calculated, about fifteen miles from the place where they had left the girls. It might have been possible to push on at once, but the day was breaking, and it would have been inexpedient to tire out the horses when they might want all their speed and strength on the return journey. Very slowly passed the day. Most of the men, after seeing to their horses and eating some food, threw themselves down and slept soundly. But Major Warrener, his sons, and Captains Dunlop and Manners were far too anxious to follow their example, for some time. It was more than a fortnight since the boys had left the ladies, and so many things, of which they hardly dare think, might have happened since.
"Don't let us talk about it any more," Major Warrener said at last; "we only add to each other's anxiety. Now, Dunlop, you must positively lie down; you know Johnson said it was mad in you to get on horseback till your bone had set firmly, and that it was ten to one in favor of inflammation coming on again. You have much to go through yet."
[Illustration: AFTER FIVE MINUTES' RIDING, THEY DREW UP THEIR HORSES WITH A CRY OF DISMAY.]
Gradually sleepiness overcame excitement, and with the exception of ten men told off as sentries and to look after the horses, the whole party slept quietly for some hours. It had been determined to start in time to arrive at the farmhouse before it was dark, as the boys required daylight to enable them to recognize the locality; besides which it was advisable to get as far back upon the return journey as possible before daybreak. The boys were now riding in front with their father.
"That is the wood," Ned said presently. "I know by those three palm trees growing together in a clump, at a short distance in advance. I noticed them particularly."
"Where is the house?" Major Warrener asked.
"We ought to see the house," Dick said, and he looked at his brother apprehensively.
"Yes," Ned said; "we certainly ought to see it."
"You are sure you are not mistaken in the locality?" their father asked.
"Quite sure," the boys answered together; "but the house----" "Let us gallop on," Major Warrener said, catching the fear which was expressed in each of his sons' faces.
Five minutes' riding, and they drew up their horses with a cry of dismay. A large patch of wood ashes marked the spot where the house had stood. No words were needed; the truth was apparent; the fugitives had been discovered, and the abode of their protectors destroyed. Their two friends joined the little group, and the rest of the troop dismounted at a short distance, respecting the deep pain which the discovery had caused to their leader.
"What is to be done?" Major Warrener asked, breaking the deep silence.
For a moment no one answered; and then Dick said: "Perhaps we may find some of the farmer's people in the hut where we slept, and we may get news from them."
"A capital thought, Dick," said Major Warrener. "We must not give up hope; there are no bodies lying about, so the farm people are probably alive. As to the girls, if they are carried off we must rescue them. Where is the hut?"
A few minutes' walking brought them to it. Even before they reached it it was evident that it was inhabited, for two or three peons were squatted near the door. These rose on seeing the group of Englishmen, but made no attempt at flight. They entered the hut without ceremony, and Ned and Dick hurried to the side of an old man lying on a heap of straw, while some females standing near hastily veiled themselves at the entrance of the strangers.
"Where are the girls? what has happened? are you hurt?" were the three questions poured out rapidly by Ned, as the boy seized the old man's hands.
"Is it you, sahibs? I am glad, indeed. I did not break my promise to come and tell you; but as you see," and he pointed to the bandage which enveloped his head, "I was wounded, and am still ill."
"But the girls?" asked Ned.
"They have been carried off by the troops of the Rajah of Nahdoor."
"How long since?"
"Thursday, sahib."
"How far off is Nahdoor?"
"Ten miles, sahib."
Major Warrener now took up the interrogation.
"How is the one who was ill?"
"She was better, and was getting stronger again when they carried her off."
"Do you think they are still at Nahdoor? or that they have been sent into Delhi?"
"They are still there," the Hindoo said. "I have sent a man each day to watch, so that directly I got better I might be able to tell you the truth of the matter. My servant has just returned; they had not left at three o'clock, and they would be sure not to start after that hour. The rajah will go with his troops in a few days to pay his respects to the emperor; he will probably take the _mem_ sahibs with him."
"Thank God for that," Major Warrener said. "If they have not yet been taken to that horrible den of murder we will save them. I am the father of one, and the other is my niece," he said to the zemindar; "and I owe their lives so far to you. The debt of gratitude I can never pay to you--or to your wife and daughter," he added, turning to the women, who, their first impulse of alarm over, had now, in the presence of friends, uncovered their faces, for it is only the higher class of Hindoo women who closely veil--"for your care in nursing my niece, and for giving them shelter, when to do so was to risk your lives. This debt I can never pay; but the losses you have sustained in the destruction of your house, and the loss of animals, I can happily more than replace. And now tell me how it happened."
"It was late in the afternoon," the Hindoo said, "when a body of horse galloped across the field to my door. Their captain rode up to me. 'Are there any Feringhees hid here, old man?' he asked. 'I have seen no man of the white race since the troubles began,' I said; and you know I spoke not falsely. 'I must search the house,' he said; 'there are a party of fugitives hiding somewhere in this district, and the orders from Delhi are strict that every Feringhee is to be hunted down and sent there.' 'You will find no one here,' I said, 'but my women, one of whom is sick.' 'I must see them,' he said; and he knocked loudly at the door of the women's room, and ordered them to come out. My wife and daughter came to the door. 'Where is the one who is said to be sick?' he said; 'I must see her too.' Then, seeing that he was determined to enter, the young _mem_ sahib came to the door. The captain gave a shout of pleasure; calling in his men, he entered the room, and, in spite of the entreaties of her sister, brought the one who was sick out also. She was able to walk, but, as we had agreed between us should be done if discovery was made, she pretended that she was almost at the point of death. Some poles were got; a hammock was made; and borne by four bearers, she was carried away, her sister being placed on a horse closely guarded. As he turned to ride off the captain's eye fell upon me. 'Ah! old traitor!' he said; 'I had forgotten you!' and he drew a pistol and fired at me. I know no more; his men put fire to the barn and granaries, and drove off our cattle and horses. When he had ridden off my servants--who thought I was dead--by order of my sorrowing wife carried me here. Happily, however, by the will of Brahma, the bullet, instead of going through my skull, glanced off, and I was only stunned. I had lost much blood, but I determined to set out as soon as I could walk to bring you the news, and in the meantime have had a watch kept upon Nahdoor."
Major Warrener and his sons thanked the old peasant and his family in the warmest terms for what they had done, and the former pressed upon the farmer a sum of money which would cover all the losses he had sustained.
"Your conduct," he said, "will be reported to the government, and you will find when these troubles are over that England knows how to reward those who proved faithful when so many were faithless. Now we will say adieu. When the war is over the ladies you have so kindly treated will themselves return to thank you."
In a few minutes the troop was in the saddle again, and directed its march toward Nahdoor.
On the way Major Warrener questioned his guide as to the strength and position of the fortress, which lay away from the main road, and had not been visited by any of the troop--as the major had ascertained before starting. The account was not reassuring. The guide reported that it stood on a rock, which rose perpendicularly some eighty or a hundred feet from the plain; the only access being by a zigzag road cut in the face of the cliff, with a gateway defended by a gun, and loopholed walls at each turn, and with a very strong wall all round the edge of the rock. The garrison, they had learned from the persons at the farm, was some three hundred strong, the ordinary number of retainers being at present increased by many fighting men, who had within the last few days joined the rajah, on hearing that he was going to march to Delhi to fight under the emperor against the Feringhees.
The troop halted in a wood three miles from Nahdoor; as the guide said that there was no place nearer where they could be concealed without a certainty of discovery.
Before morning Major Warrener and his second in command put on native clothes, which the former bad brought with him, in case it should be necessary to open communication with the girls, and left the wood with one of the native guides. The disguises were not meant to deceive close investigation, and no attempt was made to change the color of the skin, but they were sufficient to enable the wearers to pass without exciting suspicion by any one who only saw them at a distance.
When morning broke they stood within half a mile of the fortress, which answered exactly to the description they had received of it. Gradually--keeping always at a distance, and availing themselves as far as possible of cover--they made a circuit of the place, and then returned to the troop, who were anxiously awaiting their report.
"It is a very hard nut to crack," Major Warrener said to his sons. "There is no possibility of climbing the rock anywhere, or of attacking in any way except by the regular ascent. There are eight gateways to be forced before arriving at the main entrance through the walls. We should require petards to blow in gates, and ought to have field guns to drive them out of the gate-houses. I do not say it would be absolutely impossible, because before now British troops have done what seemed impossible in India; but the difficulties would be so enormous, the risk of failure so great, and the loss certainly so crushing, that I should not be justified in undertaking such a desperate adventure on my own responsibility, and for my own private ends. We have no right, boys, to cause the loss of some thirty or forty of these fine young fellows, even to rescue the girls. An attack by surprise is the only possibility. At present we don't see the way, but something may turn up to help us. Failing that, our only plan is to wait till the rajah starts with his following and the girls for Delhi, and then to attack them on their way. The drawback to this is that he may not leave for days, and that at any moment we may be discovered. Besides, there is the difficulty of feeding the horses and ourselves. Now, boys, you know as much as I do. Think it over while I have a talk with Dunlop and Manners."
"Manners is at the other end of the wood, father, half a mile away. We found, after you had gone, that the main Delhi road ran through the further skirts of the wood, so Manners suggested to Lieutenant Simmons that he should go with ten men and hide there, so that they could see who went along the road and perhaps intercept some messenger between Delhi and Nahdoor."
"A capital idea," Major Warrener said.
Two hours later Captain Manners returned with his party, bringing in two prisoners.
"Who have you there, Manners?" Major Warrener asked.
"Two of the rascally Third Cavalry, who mutinied at Meerut. This fellow, as you see, is a native officer; there were two of them and two sowars, but they showed fight when we surrounded them, and tried to ride through us, so we had to shoot two of them. They are bearers of a letter from the Delhi prince to the rajah. Here it is."
Major Warrener looked sternly at the prisoners, who were still wearing their British uniform, and then ordered them to be taken away and hung at once.
"What did you do with the others, Manners?"
"We hid their bodies under some bushes at a distance from the road."
"You must go back," the major said, "with another; take Larkin with you. You must strip off the uniforms and bring them here."
Half an hour later Major Warrener summoned the captains of his two troops, and took them into council.
"Nothing could be more fortunate than this capture," he said; "it seems to clear the way for us altogether. What I propose to do is this: that two of the best linguists of the troop, with the two native guides, should dress in the uniforms of these scoundrels. They can then go boldly in with the letter from the prince. They will of course be well received, and will stay for the night. The two who go as officers will be entertained by the rajah, and will learn the plan of the state apartments; the other two will be made welcome by the retainers. When all is quiet at night they must steal out and wait on the wall. That projecting watch-tower that overhangs the cliff on the other side would be the best. We will be below. Then a rope must be lowered. We have two long picketing ropes, either of which would be long enough, but they would be too bulky to carry in without suspicion. Our native guides, however, will soon tear up some cloth, and twist a rope not much thicker than string, but strong enough to hold the rope. Then the string can be twisted round the body without fear of detection, and when the time comes lowered, with a stone at the end. We shall be below with a strong rope ladder, made with the picket-ropes and bamboo staves; and once fixed, we shall be up in no time. I leave it to you to decide who are the best linguists. They must of course be asked if they are willing to undertake it. I will speak to the guides. What do you think of the general plan?"
"Excellent," the officers said. "It might be as well," one suggested, "that each of the party should have a light rope wound round him, so that if one, two, or even three could not slip away, the fourth could still carry out the plan."
Some other details were arranged, and then the officers went to pick out the two men who could best pass as natives. There was no difficulty upon this score, for two of the troop, who had for years commanded large police districts, spoke the language as perfectly as natives, and these, upon being asked, readily accepted the duty. The work of making the rope ladders, and the light ropes for hauling them up, was entered upon, and by sunset all were ready for the expedition.
It was fortunate that they had no longer to stay in the wood, for during the day five or six natives who came in to gather wood had to be seized and bound, and it was certain that a search would be set on foot there next morning. Fortunately a large field of Indian corn bordered one side of the wood, and from this both man and horse had satisfied their hunger.
Every detail of the plan was carefully considered and discussed, so that no mistake could occur; and each of the principal actors in the piece had his part assigned to him. The two native guides, who had themselves served as soldiers in native regiments, consented willingly to perform their parts, and just at sunset the two officers and men rode off to Nahdoor, bearing the letter from the prince of Delhi to the rajah.
There was high feasting in Nahdoor that night. The rajah had received with all honor the officers from Delhi. The letter from the prince had promised him a high command in the army which was to exterminate the last infidel from the land. It had thanked him for the capture of the white women, and had begged him to bring them on with him to Delhi, and to come at once with his own force. From the officers the rajah had heard how the mutiny was everywhere a success, and that at Lucknow and Cawnpore the troops would rise in a day or two and massacre all the whites. The evening ended early, for the officers from Delhi were fatigued with their long ride, and being shown into a little square marble-lined room off the great hall where they had supped, were soon apparently asleep on the cushions and shawls spread for them. The rajah retired to his apartments, and his officers to their quarters; and although for another hour talking and laughing went on round the little fires in the courtyard, presently these too were hushed, and a profound stillness fell upon Nahdoor. Then, barefooted, the officers from Delhi stole out of their apartment and made for the outer wall. As they had anticipated, they found no one about; beyond a sentry at the lower gate there would be no watch kept, and they reached the watch-tower on the wall without the slightest interruption. Here two other figures had already arrived, and after throwing down some small stones as a signal, which was answered by a faint whistle, the ropes were lowered without delay. One of them was soon seized from below, and the others being also found and fastened to the rope ladder, the weight of which was considerable, those above began to draw up. Everything succeeded admirably. One by one fifty men appeared at the top of the wall. Quietly they made their way down to the courtyard, and broke up into parties, taking their places at the entrance to the various buildings; then, all further need for concealment being at an end, a bugle call sounded loud in the air. It was answered by another down upon the plain near the gate. The rajah himself was one of the first to rash out. He was seized and disarmed before he was aware of what had happened.
"Tell your men to throw down their arms and surrender," Major Warrener said to him, "or we will put you and every soul here to the sword. The place is surrounded, and there is no escape. Do you not hear our bugles on the plain?"
It needed not the rajah's order; the garrison, taken utterly by surprise, and finding the castle captured by an enemy of unknown strength, threw down their arms as they came out of their quarters. Orders were sent by the rajah to the men at the various gates on the hill to come up and lay down their arms, and the sentry at the lowest of all was to open it to the troops there. A bugler and ten men were left below, and the rest joined the party in the castle.
Long ere they had arrived, the joyful meeting of the captives and their friends had taken place. Rose and Kate had awoke at the sound of the bugle, but had heeded it little, believing that it was only a Sepoy call. Even the stir and commotion outside had not disturbed them, and they had lain quiet until they heard a loud knocking at the door of the women's apartments, followed by screams from the women, and then--they could scarcely believe their ears--their names shouted in Major Warrener's voice. With a cry of delight both sprang up, and seizing shawls, rushed to the door, and in another moment Kate was in the arms of her father.
"We are all here, dear," he said, after the first wild greeting--"the boys, and Dunlop, and Manners. Hurry on your clothes, darlings; they are longing to see you."
The garrison of the castle were all collected in one of the smaller courts, where twenty troopers, revolver in hand, kept guard over them. The whole of the arms found in the castle were broken to pieces and thrown over the walls, and the cannon planted there were first spiked and then pitched over. The guns on the gates were similarly rendered useless, and the stores of gunpowder all wetted. The rajah and his two sons, boys of six and eight, were then told to prepare to accompany the troops, and warning was given that they would be shot in case an attack was made upon the force as it returned to Meerut.
"Tell your followers this," Major Warrener said, "and order them to give no alarm, or to spread the news; for if we are caught your life and that of your sons will pay forfeit. As it is, you may hope for clemency. You have as yet taken no part in the insurrection; and although there is no doubt of your intention, your good conduct in the future may, perhaps, wipe out the memory of your faults."
It needs not to say anything of the rapturous greeting of the girls and their brothers and lovers, or the happy half-hour which was spent together in the great hall while the preparations for the departure were being made outside. Captain Kent saw to all that there was to be done, leaving the major free to join the happy party within.
"Are you strong enough to ride, Rose?"
"Oh, I think so, uncle; I have been shamming ill, and they thought I could not walk; but I am pretty strong, and if I can't ride by myself I must be tied on to some one else."
"I dare say my horse will carry double," Captain Manners said, laughing.
"Have the women here been kind?" Major Warrener asked.
The girls shook their heads: "Not very, papa; they have been talking of Delhi;" and Kate shuddered.
The major frowned; he could guess what they must have suffered. He went to the door.
"Kent, order the women out of the _zenana_ into one of the other rooms. Tell them that they will all be searched as they come out, and that if one brings out an ornament or a jewel with her she will be put to death. Of course you will not search them; but the threat will do. Let no insult be offered them. Then let Rivers take four men, and go in, and take all the loot you can find. The jewels we will divide among the men when at Meerut. Tell off another party to loot the rest of the rooms, but only take what is really valuable and portable. We cannot cumber ourselves with baggage. It would serve the rajah right if I were to burn his castle down; he may think himself lucky to get off with his life."
The girls pleaded for the women. "We bear them no ill-feeling," they said. "They are very ignorant; they only acted as they were taught."
"Well, well," said the major, "we will take the jewels alone; they are a fair loot."
Another hour and the troops were already well on their way on the Delhi road. The good luck which had attended them so far followed them to the end. Anxious to avoid an encounter with the enemy, they took an even more circuitous route than that by which they had come, and on the fourth afternoon after leaving rode into Meerut, where their arrival after the long and successful expedition created quite an excitement. A comfortable house was found for the girls, with some old friends of the major, who resided permanently at Meerut; as for the major and his troops, they prepared to accompany the column which was on the point of marching against Delhi.
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{
"id": "7071"
}
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7
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DELHI.
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Never did a government or a people meet a terrible disaster with a more undaunted front than that displayed by the government and British population of India when the full extent of the peril caused by the rising of the Sepoys was first clearly understood. By the rising of Delhi, and of the whole country down to Allahabad, the northern part of India was entirely cut off from Calcutta, and was left wholly to its own resources. Any help that could be spared from the capital was needed for the menaced garrisons of Allahabad, Benares, and Agra, while it was certain that the important stations of Cawnpore and Lucknow, in the newly-annexed province of Oude, would at best be scarcely able to defend themselves, and would in all probability urgently require assistance. Thus the rebel city of Delhi, the center and focus of the insurrection, was safe from any possibility of a British advance from the south. Nor did it look as if the position of the English was much better in the north. At Sealkote, Lahore, and many other stations, the Sepoys mutinied, and the Sikh regiments were disturbed, and semi-mutinous. It was at this all-important moment that the fidelity of two or three of the great Sikh chieftains saved British India. Foremost of them was the Rajah of Puttiala, who, when the whole Sikh nation was wavering as to the course it should take, rode into the nearest British station with only one retainer, and offered his whole force and his whole treasury to the British government. A half-dozen other prominent princes instantly followed the example; and from that moment Northern India was not only safe, but was able to furnish troops for the siege of Delhi. The Sikh regiments at once returned to their habitual state of cheerful obedience, and served with unflinching loyalty and bravery through the campaign.
Not a moment was lost, as it was all-important to make an appearance before Delhi, and so, by striking at the heart of the insurrection, to show the waverers all over India that we had no idea of giving up the game. The main force was collected at Umballah, under General Anson. Transport was hastily got together, and in the last week of May this force moved forward, while a brigade from Meerut advanced to effect a junction with it. With this latter force were Warrener's irregular horse, which had returned only the evening before the advance from its successful expedition to Nahdoor. On the 30th of May the Meerut force under Brigadier-General Wilson came in contact with the enemy at Ghazee-ud-deen-Nugghur, a village fifteen miles from Delhi, where there was a suspension bridge across the Hindur. This fight, although unimportant in itself, is memorable as being the first occasion upon which the mutineers and the British troops met. Hitherto the Sepoys had had it entirely their own way. Mutiny, havoc, murder, had gone on unchecked; but now the tide was to turn, never to ebb again until the Sepoy mutiny was drowned in a sea of blood. Upon this, their first meeting with the white troops, the Sepoys were confident of success. They were greatly superior in force; they had been carefully drilled in the English system; they were led by their native regimental officers; and they had been for so many years pampered and indulged by government, that they regarded themselves, as being, man for man, fully equal to the British. Thus, then, they began to fight with a confidence of victory which, however great their superiority in numbers, was never again felt by the mutineers throughout the war. Upon many subsequent occasions they fought with extreme bravery, but it was the bravery of despair; whereas the British soldiers were animated with a burning desire for vengeance, and an absolute confidence of victory. Thus the fight at Ghazee-ud-deen-Nugghur is a memorable one in the annals of British India.
The mutineers, seeing the smallness of the British force, at first advanced to the attack; but they were met with such fury by four companies of the Sixtieth Rifles, supported by eight guns of the artillery, by the Carbineers and Warrener's Horse, that, astounded and dismayed, they broke before the impetuous onslaught, abandoned their intrenchments, threw a way their arms, and fled, leaving five guns in the hands of the victors, and in many cases not stopping in their flight until they reached the gates of Delhi. The next day considerable bodies of fresh troops came out to renew the attack; but the reports of the fugitives of the day before, of the fury and desperation with which the British troops were possessed, had already effected such an impression that they did not venture upon close fighting, but after engaging in an artillery duel at long distances, fell back again to Delhi.
On the 7th of June the Meerut force joined that from Umballah, at Alipore, a short march from Delhi; and the next morning the little army, now under the command of Sir H. Barnard--for General Anson, overwhelmed by work and responsibility, had died a few days before advanced upon the capital of India, After four miles march they came at Badulee-Ka-Serai upon the enemy's first line of defense, a strong intrenched position, held by three thousand Sepoys with twelve guns. These pieces of artillery were much heavier than the British field guns, and as they opened a heavy fire, they inflicted considerable damage upon our advancing troops. The British, however, were in no humor for distant fighting; they panted to get at the murderers of women and children--these men who had shot down in cold blood the officers, whose only fault had been their too great kindness to, and confidence in them. Orders were given to the Seventy-fifth to advance at once and take the position; and that regiment, giving a tremendous cheer, rushed forward with such impetuosity through the heavy fire that, as at Ghazee-ud-deen-Nugghur, the Sepoys were seized with a panic, and fled in wild haste from their intrenchments, leaving their cannon behind them.
At the foot of the steep hill on which the signal tower stands, another and stronger line of defense had been prepared; but the mutineers stationed here were infected by the wild panic of the fugitives from the first position, and so, deserting their position, joined in the flight into the city.
The British troops had marched from their encampment at Alipore at one in the morning, and by nine A.M. the last Sepoy disappeared within the walls of the town, and the British flag flew out on the signal tower on the Ridge, almost looking down upon the rebel city, and the troops took up their quarters in the lines formerly occupied by the Thirty-eighth, Fifty-fourth, and Seventy-fourth native regiments. As the English flag blew out to the wind from the signal tower, a thrill of anxiety must have been felt by every one in Delhi, from the emperor down to the lowest street ruffian. So long as it waved there it was a proof that the British Raj was not yet overthrown--that British supremacy, although sorely shaken, still asserted itself--and that the day of reckoning and retribution would, slowly perhaps, but none the less surely, come for the blood-stained city. Not only in Delhi itself, but over the whole of India, the eyes of the population were turned toward that British flag on the Ridge. Native and British alike recognized the fact that English supremacy in India depended upon its maintenance. That England would send out large reinforcements all knew, but they also knew that many an anxious week must elapse before the first soldier from England could arrive within striking distance. If the native leaders at Delhi, with the enormously superior forces at their command, could not drive off their besiegers and pluck down the flag from the Ridge, the time must come when, with the arrival of the reinforcements, the tide would begin to flow against them. So India argued, and waited for the result. The Delhi leaders, as well as the English, felt the importance of the issue, and the one never relaxed their desperate efforts to drive back the besiegers--the other with astonishing tenacity held on against all odds; while scores of native chiefs hesitated on the verge, waiting, until they saw the end of the struggle at Delhi. It was called the siege of Delhi, but it should rather have been called the siege of the Ridge, for it was our force rather than that of the enemy which was besieged. Never before in the history of the world did three thousand men sit down before a great city inhabited by a quarter of a million bitterly hostile inhabitants, and defended moreover by strong walls, a very powerful artillery, and a well-drilled and disciplined force, at first amounting to some ten thousand men, but swelled later on, as the mutineers poured in from all quarters, to three times that force. Never during the long months which the struggle lasted did we attempt to do more than to hold our own. The city was open to the enemy at all sides, save where we held our footing; large forces marched in and out of the town; provisions and stores poured into it; and we can scarcely be said to have fired a shot at it until our batteries opened to effect a breach a few days before the final assault.
The troops with which Sir H. Barnard arrived before Delhi consisted of the Seventy-fifth Regiment, six companies of the Sixtieth Rifles, the First Bengal Fusiliers, six companies of the Second Fusiliers--both composed of white troops--the Sirmoor battalion of Goorkhas, the Sixth Dragoon Guards (the Carbineers), two squadrons of the Ninth Lancers, and a troop or two of newly-raised irregular horse. The artillery consisted of some thirty pieces, mostly light field-guns.
Upon the day following the occupation of the Ridge a welcome accession of strength was received by the arrival of the Guides, a picked corps consisting of three troops of cavalry and six companies of infantry. This little force had marched five hundred and eighty miles in twenty-two days, a rate of twenty-six miles a day, without a break--a feat probably altogether without example, especially when it is considered that it took place in India, and in the hottest time of the year.
The Ridge, which occupies so important a place in the history of the siege of Delhi, is a sharp backed hill, some half a mile long, rising abruptly from the plain. From the top a splendid view of Delhi, and of the country, scattered with mosques and tombs--the remains of older Delhi--can be obtained. The cantonments lay at the back of this hill, a few posts only, such as Hindoo Rao's house, being held in advance. Until the work of building batteries and regularly commencing the siege should begin, it would have been useless putting the troops unnecessarily under the fire of the heavy guns of the city bastions.
When the troops had fairly taken possession of the old native lines on the 8th of June many of them, as soon as dismissed from duty, made their way up to the flagstaff tower, on the highest point of the Ridge, to look down upon Delhi. Among those who did so were Major Warrener and his two sons. Both uttered an exclamation of pleasure as the city came into view: "What a superb city!"
Delhi is indeed a glorious city as viewed from the Ridge. It is surrounded by a lofty crenelated wall, strengthened with detached martello towers, and with eleven bastions, each mounting nine guns, the work of our own engineers, but in admirable architectural keeping with the towers. Conspicuous, on a high table rock rising almost perpendicularly in the heart of the city, is the Jumma Musjid, the great mosque, a superb pile of building, with its domes and minarets. To the left, as viewed from the Ridge, is the great mass of the king's palace--a fortress in itself--with its lofty walls and towers, and with its own mosques and minarets. These rise thickly, too, in other parts, while near the palace the closely-packed houses cease, and lofty trees rise alone there. The Ridge lies on the north of the city, and opposite to it is the Cashmere gate, through which our storming parties would rush later on; and away, a little to the right, is the Lahore gate, through which the enemy's sorties were principally made. On the left of the Ridge the ground is flat to the river, which sweeps along by the wall of the town and palace. There are two bridges across it, and over them the exulting mutineers were for weeks to pass into the city--not altogether unpunished, for our guns carried that far, and were sometimes able to inflict a heavy loss upon them as they passed, with music playing and flags flying, into the town.
"A glorious city!" Ned Warrener said, as they looked down upon it. "What a ridiculous handful of men we seem by the side of it! It is like Tom Thumb sitting down to besiege the giant's castle. Why, we should be lost if we got inside!"
"Yes, indeed, Ned," said his father; "there will be no possibility of our storming that city until our numbers are greatly increased; for if we scaled the walls by assault, which we could no doubt do, we should have to fight our way through the narrow streets, with barriers and barricades everywhere; and such a force as ours would simply melt away before the fire from the housetops and windows. There is nothing so terrible as street fighting; and drill and discipline are there of comparatively little use. The enemy will naturally fight with the desperation of rats in a hole: and it would be rash in the extreme for us to make the attempt until we are sure of success. A disastrous repulse here would entail the loss of all India. The news is worse and worse every day from all the stations of the northwest; and as the mutineers are sure to make for Delhi, the enemy will receive reinforcements vastly more rapidly than we shall, and it will be all we shall be able to do to hold our own here. We may be months before we take Delhi."
"I hope they won't keep us here all that time," Dick said, "for cavalry can't do much in a siege; besides, the ground is all cut up into gardens and inclosures, and we could not act, even if we had orders to do so."
"We may be very useful in going out to bring convoys in," Major Warrener replied, "and to cut off convoys of the enemy, to scout generally, and to bring in news; still, I agree with you, Dick, that I hope we may be sent off for duty elsewhere. Hullo! what's that?"
As he spoke a sudden fire broke out from the walls and bastions; shot and shell whizzed over their heads, many of them plunging down behind the Ridge, among the troops who were engaged in getting up their tents; while a crackling fire of musketry broke out in the gardens around Hindoo Rao's house, our advanced post on the right front.
"A sortie!" exclaimed the major. "Come along, boys." And those who had gathered around the flagstaff dashed down the hill to join their respective corps. The Sixtieth Rifles, however, of whom two companies held Hindoo Rao's, repulsed the sortie, and all calmed down again; but the enemy's artillery continued to play, and it was evident that the foe had it in his power to cause great annoyance to all our pickets on the Ridge.
Fortunately our position could only be assailed on one side. Our cavalry patrolled the plain as far as the river, and our rear was covered by a canal, possessing but few bridges, and those easily guarded. It was thus from our right and right front alone that serious attacks could be looked for.
The next afternoon a heavy firing broke out near Hindoo Rao's house, and the troops got under arms. The enemy were evidently in force.
An aid-de-camp rode up: "Major Warrener, you will move up your troop, and fall in with the Guide cavalry."
At a trot Warrener's Horse moved off toward the right. The guns on the walls were now all at work, and our artillery at Hindoo Rao's were answering them, and the shots from a light battery placed by the flagstaff went singing away toward the right.
Warrener's Horse were now at the station assigned to them. The musketry fire in the gardens and broken ground near Hindoo Rao's was very heavy, and a large body of the enemy's cavalry was seen extending into the plain, with the intention of pushing forward on the right of the Ridge.
"You will charge the enemy at once," an aid-de-camp said; and with a cheer the Guides and Warrener's Horse dashed forward.
It was the moment they had longed for; and the fury with which they charged was too much for the enemy, who, although enormously superior in numbers, halted before they reached them, and fled toward the city, with the British mixed with them, in a confused mass of fighting, struggling men. The pursuit lasted almost to the walls of the city. Then the guns on the wall opened a heavy fire, and the cavalry fell back as the balls plunged in among them.
There were but two or three hurt, but among them was Lieutenant Quentin Battye, a most gallant young officer, a mere lad, but a general favorite alike with other officers and the men. Struck by a round shot in the body, his case was hopeless from the first; he kept up his spirits to the last, and said with a smile to an old school-friend who came in to bid him farewell: "Well, old fellow, _Dulce et decorum est pro patriá mori_, and you see it's my case."
Such was the spirit which animated every officer and man of the little army before Delhi; and it is no wonder that, day after day, and week after week, they were able to repulse the furious attacks of the ever-increasing enemy.
On the 9th, 10th, and 11th fresh sorties were made. Before daybreak on the 13th a large force of the mutineers came out quietly, and worked their way round to the left, and just as it began to be light, made a furious assault on the company of the Seventy-fifth who were holding the flagstaff battery. Warrener's Horse were encamped on the old parade-ground, immediately behind and below the flagstaff, and the men leaped from their beds on hearing this outburst of firing close to them.
There was a confused shouting, and then the major's voice was heard above the din: "Breeches and boots, revolvers and swords, nothing else. Quick, lads; fall in on foot. We must save the battery at all hazards."
In a few seconds the men came rushing out, hastily buckling on their belts, with their pouches of revolver ammunition, and fell into rank; and in less than two minutes from the sound of the first shot the whole were dashing up the steep ascent to the battery, where the tremendous musketry fire told them how hardly the Seventy-fifth were pressed.
"Keep line, lads; steady!" shouted the major as they neared the crest. "Now get ready for a charge; go right at them. Don't fire a shot till you are within five paces, then give them three barrels of your revolvers; then at them with the sword; and keep your other shots in case you are pressed. Hurrah!"
With a thundering cheer the gallant little band fell on the mutineers, many of whom had already made their way into the battery, where the handful of white troops were defending themselves with desperation. Struck with terror and surprise at this sudden attack, and by the shower of pistol bullets which swept among them, the enemy wavered and broke at the fierce onslaught, sword in hand, of these new foes; while the Seventy-fifth, raising a shout of joy at the arrival of their friends, took the offensive, swept before them the mutineers who had made their way into the battery, and, joining the irregulars, drove the mutineers, astounded and panic-stricken at the fierceness of the assault, pell-mell before them down the hill.
The reinforcements had arrived but just in time, for Captain Knox, who commanded at this post, and nearly half his force, had fallen before Major Warrener's band had come up to their aid. The next day, and the next, and the next, the sorties from the city were repeated, with ever-increasing force and fury, each fresh body of mutineers who came into the city being required to testify their loyalty to the emperor by heading the attack on his foes. Desperately the little British force had to fight to maintain their position, and their losses were so serious, the number of their enemies so large, so rapidly increasing, that it was clear to all that the most prodigious efforts would be necessary to enable them to hold on until reinforcements arrived, and that all idea of an early capture of the city must be abandoned.
Warrener's Horse, however, had no share in these struggles, for on the day after the fight at the flagstaff a report spread among them that they were again to start upon an expedition. A note had been brought in by a native to the effect that several English ladies and gentlemen were prisoners at the fortress of Bithri, in Oude, some hundred and fifty miles from Delhi. The instructions given to Major Warrener were that he was to obtain their release by fair means, if possible; if not, to carry the place and release them, if it appeared practicable to do so with his small force; that he was then to press on to Cawnpore. Communications had ceased with Sir H. Wheeler, the officer in command there; but it was not known whether he was actually besieged, or whether it was merely a severance of the telegraph wire. If he could join Sir H. Wheeler he was to do so; if not, he was to make his way on, to form part of the force which General Havelock was collecting at Allahabad for an advance to Cawnpore and Lucknow. It would be a long and perilous march, but the troops were admirably mounted; and as they would have the choice of routes open to them, and would travel fast, it was thought that they might hope to get through in safety, and their aid would be valuable either to Sir H. Wheeler or to General Havelock.
It was a lovely moonlight evening when they started. During their stay at Delhi they had, profiting by their previous expedition, got rid of every article of accouterment that could make a noise. Wooden scabbards had taken the place of steel, and these were covered in flannel, to prevent rattle should they strike against a stirrup. The water bottles were similarly cased in flannel, and the rings and chains of the bits in leather. Nothing, save the sound of the horses' hoofs, was to be heard as they marched, and even these were muffled by the deep dust that lay on the road. Each man, moreover, carried four leathern shoes for his horse, with lacings for fastening them. Under the guidance of two natives, the troop made their first six stages without the slightest adventure. The country was flat, and the villages sparsely scattered. The barking of the dogs brought a few villagers to their doors, but in those troubled times the advantages of non-interference were obvious and the peasant population in general asked nothing better than to be let alone.
The troop always marched by night, and rested by day at villages at a short distance from the main road. Upon a long march like that before them, it would have been impossible to maintain secrecy by resting in woods. Food for men and horses was requisite, and this could only be obtained in villages. So far no difficulty had been met with. The head men of the villages willingly provided provender for the horses, while flour, milk, eggs, and fowls were forthcoming in sufficient quantities for the men, everything being strictly paid for.
The last night march was as successful as the preceding, and crossing the river by a bridge at Banat, they halted some five miles from the fortified house, or castle, which was the immediate object of their expedition. They were now in Oude, and had, since crossing the river, avoided the villages as much as possible, for in this province these are little fortresses. Each is strongly walled and guarded, and petty wars and feuds are common occurrences. The people are warlike, and used to arms, and without artillery even a small village could not be carried without considerable loss. The troops therefore had made circuits round the villages, and bivouacked at the end of their march in a wood, having brought with them a supply of food and grain from the village where they had halted on the previous day. They had not slept many hours when one of the vedettes came in to say that there was a sound of beating of drums in a large village not far away, and that bodies of peasantry had arrived from other villages, and that he believed an attack was about to take place.
Major Warrener at once took his measures for defense. The first troop were to defend the front of their position with their carbines against an attack. The second troop were to move round to the extreme end of the tope, were to mount there, and when the enemy began to waver before the musketry fire, were to sweep round and take them in flank. Major Warrener himself took command of the dismounted troop, and posted the men along behind a bank with a hedge, a short distance in front of the trees. Then, each man knowing his place, they fell back out of the scorching sunshine to the shade of the tree's, and waited. In half an hour a loud drumming was heard, and a motley body, two or three thousand strong, of peasants in a confused mass, with a tattered banner or two, made their appearance.
The "Avengers," as Warrener's Horse called themselves, took their places behind the bank, and quietly awaited the attack. The enemy opened a heavy fire, yet at a long distance. "Answer with a shot or two, occasionally," Major Warrener had ordered, "as they will then aim at the bank instead of tiring into the wood. We don't want the horses hurt."
Slowly and steadily the rifled carbines spoke out in answer to the heavy fire opened on the bank, and as almost every man of Warrener's Horse was a sportsman and a good shot, very few shots were thrown away. The enemy beat their drums more and more loudly, and shouted vociferously as they advanced. When they were within three hundred yards Major Warrener gave the word: "Fire fast, but don't throw away a shot."
Astonished at the accuracy and deadliness of the fire which was poured into them by their still invisible foe, the enemy wavered. Their leaders, shouting loudly, and exposing themselves bravely in front, called them on, as slowly, and with heavy loss, the main body arrived within a hundred yards of the hedge. Those in front were, however, falling so fast that no efforts of their leaders could get them to advance further, and already a retrograde movement had begun, when there was a yell of fear, as the mounted troop, hitherto unnoticed, charged furiously down upon their flank.
"Empty your rifles, and then to horse," shouted Major Warrener; and the men dashed back through the tope to the spot in the rear, where four of their number were mounting guard over the horses.
In three minutes they were back again on the plain, but the fight was over. The enemy in scattered bodies were in full flight, and the cavalry, dashing through them, were cutting them down, or emptying their revolvers among them.
"Make for the village," Major Warrener said. "Gallop!"
At full speed the troop dashed across the plain to the village, whose gate they reached just as a large body of the fugitives were arriving. These gave a yell as this fresh body of horsemen fell upon them; a few tried to enter the gates of the village, but the main body scattered again in flight. The cavalry dashed in through the gates, and sabered some men who were trying to close them. A few shots were fired inside, but resistance was soon over, and the male inhabitants who remained dropped over the wall and sought refuge in flight. A bugle call now summoned the other troop from pursuit, and the women and children being at once, without harm or indignity, turned out of the village, the conquerors took possession.
"This will be our headquarters for a day or two," the major said, as the troop gathered round him; "there is an abundance of food for horse and man, and we could stand a siege if necessary."
Warrener's Horse was the happiest of military bodies. On duty the discipline was severe, and obedience prompt and ready. Off duty, there was, as among the members of a regimental mess, no longer any marked distinction of rank; all were officers and gentlemen, good fellows and good comrades. The best house in the village was set aside for Major Warrener, and the rest of the squadron dispersed in the village, quartering themselves in parties of threes and fours among the cleanest-looking of the huts. Eight men were at once put on sentry on the walls, two on each side. Their horses were first looked to, fed and watered, and soon the village assumed as quiet an aspect as if the sounds of war had never been heard in the land. At dark all was life and animation. A dozen great fires blazed in the little square in the center of the village, and here the men fried their chickens, or, scraping out a quantity of red-hot embers, baked their chupatties, with much laughter and noise.
Then there was comparative quiet, the sentries on the walls were trebled, and outposts placed at a couple of hundred yards beyond the gates. Men lighted their pipes and chatted round the fires, while Major Warrener and a dozen of the oldest and most experienced of his comrades sat together and discussed the best course to be pursued.
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{
"id": "7071"
}
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8
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A DESPERATE DEFENSE.
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"Well, major, what do you think of the situation?" one of the senior captains asked, after the pipes had begun to draw.
"It looks rather bad, Crawshay. There's no disguising the fact. We shall have the country up in force; they will swarm out like wasps from every village, and by to-morrow night we shall have, at the very least, ten thousand of them round us. Against a moderate force we could defend the village; but it is a good-sized place, and we have only twenty-five men for each wall, and a couple of hundred would be none too little."
"But surely, major, we might prevent their scaling the walls. It is not likely that they would attack on all sides at once, and without artillery they could do little."
"They will have artillery," said Captain Wilkins, an officer, who had served for some time in Oude. "These talookdars have all got artillery. They were ordered to give it up, and a good many old guns were sent in; but there is not one of these fellows who cannot bring a battery at the very least into the field. By to-morrow night, or at the latest next day, we may have some thirty or forty pieces of artillery round this place."
"It will not do to be caught like rats in a trap here," Major Warrener said. "For to-night it is a shelter, after that it would be a trap. But about Bithri; I don't like to give up the idea of rescuing our country-people there. Still, although the matter has been left to my discretion, I cannot risk losing the whole squadron."
"What is the castle like, Warrener? have you heard?" Captain Crawshay asked.
"A square building, with high walls, and a deep moat. Beyond the moat is another wall with a strong outwork and gate. There are believed to be a couple of guns on the outwork, and eight on the inner wall."
"Do you think they will attack us to-morrow, Wilkins? You know these Oude fellows."
"They will muster strong, no doubt, and be prepared to attack us if we sally out; but I should think if we remain quiet they would wait till next day, so as to gather as many men and guns as possible."
"Then you think we ought to be out of this early?" Major Warrener asked.
"I don't say we ought to be, major; I only say we ought to be if we intend to get off without having to fight our way through them. I suppose the Bithri man is sure to come out to attack us?"
"Oh, no doubt," Major Warrener answered; "he has openly declared against us."
"The thing would be to pop into his place, just as he is thinking of popping in here," Captain Dunlop said, laughing.
"That's a good idea, Dunlop--a capital idea, if it could be carried out. The question is, is it possible?"
Then gradually the plan was elaborated, until it finally was definitely arranged as afterward carried into execution.
The night passed quietly, but fires could be seen blazing in many directions over the plain, and occasionally a distant sound of drums, or a wild shout, came faintly on the still air. Next morning Major Warrener started early, with half a troop, to reconnoiter the country toward Bithri. The party got to a spot within two miles of the castle, and had a look at it and its surroundings, and were able to discern that a great deal of bustle was going on around it, and that considerable numbers of horse and footmen were gathered near the gate. Then they rode rapidly back again, having to run the gantlet of several bodies of natives, who fired at them. One party indeed had already placed themselves on the road, about a mile from the village; but Captain Kent, seeing with his glass what was going on, rode out with his troop to meet the little reconnoitering party, and the enemy, fearing cavalry on the open, fell back after a scattering fire, but not quickly enough to prevent the horse from cutting up their rear somewhat severely.
At eight o'clock large bodies of men could, be seen approaching the village. These, when they arrived within gunshot, discharged their long matchlocks at the walls, with much shouting and gesticulation. Major Warrener's order was that not a shot should be returned, as it was advisable to keep them in ignorance as to the long range of the Enfield carbine.
"Let all get their breakfasts," he said, "and let the horses be well groomed and attended to; we shall want all their speed to-morrow."
At eleven some elephants, surrounded by a large body of horse, could be seen across the plain.
"Here come some of the talookdars," Captain Wilkins said. "I suspect those elephants are dragging guns behind them."
"Yes, the fun will soon begin now," Captain Dunlop answered. "Now, Dick," he went on to young Warrener, "you are going to see a little native artillery practice. These fellows are not like the Delhi pandies, who are artillerymen trained by ourselves; here you will see the real genuine native product; and as the manufacture of shell is in its infancy, and as the shot seldom fits the gun within half an inch, or even an inch, you will see something erratic. They may knock holes in the wall, but it will take them a long time to cut enough holes near each other to make a breach. There, do you see? there are another lot of elephants and troops coming from the left. We shall have the whole countryside here before long. Ah! that's just as we expected; they are going to take up their position on that rising ground, which you measured this morning, and found to be just five hundred yards off. Our carbines make very decent practice at that distance, and you will see we shall astonish them presently."
The two forces with elephants reached the rising ground at the same time, and there was great waving of flags, letting off of muskets, and beating of drums, while the multitude of footmen cheered and danced.
By this time the greater portion of the little garrison were gathered behind the wall. This was some two feet thick, of rough sun-dried bricks and mud. It was about fourteen feet high. Against it behind was thrown up a bank of earth five feet high, and in the wall were loopholes, four feet above the bank. At the corners of the walls, and at intervals along them, were little towers, each capable of holding about four men, who could fire over the top of the walls. In these towers, and at the loopholes, Major Warrener placed twenty of his best shots. There was a great deal of moving about on the rising ground; then the footmen cleared away in front, and most of the elephants withdrew, and then were seen ten guns ranged side by side. Close behind them were two elephants, with gaudy trappings, while others, less brilliantly arrayed, stood further back.
Major Warrener was in one of the little towers, with his second in command, and his two sons to act as his orderlies.
"Run, boys, and tell the men in the other towers to fire at the howdahs of the chief elephants; let the rest of them fire at the artillery. Tell them to take good aim, and fire a volley; I will give the word. Make haste, I want first shot; that will hurry them, and they will fire wild."
The boys started at a run, one each way, and in a minute the instructions were given. The major glanced down, saw that every carbine was leveled, and gave the word: "Fire!"
The sound of the volley was answered in a few seconds by a yell of dismay from the enemy. One of the state elephants threw up its trunk, and started at a wild gallop across the plain, and a man was seen to fall from the howdah as it started. There was also confusion visible in the howdahs of the other elephants. Several men dropped at the guns; some, surprised and startled, fired wildly, most of the balls going high over the village; while others, whose loading was not yet complete, ran back from the guns. Only one ball hit the wall, and made a ragged hole of a foot in diameter.
"That's sickened them for the present," Captain Dunlop said, "I expect they'll do nothing now till it gets a bit cooler, for even a nigger could hardly stand this. Ah, we are going to give them another volley, this time a stronger one."
Fifty carbines spoke out this time, and the wildest confusion was caused among the elephants and footmen, who were now trying to drag the guns back. Again, a third volley, and then the garrison were dismissed from their posts, and told to lie down and keep cool till wanted again.
Half an hour later another large train of elephants, ten of them with guns, came from the direction of Bithri, and proceeded to a tope at about a mile from the village. There the elephants of the first comers had gathered after the stampede, and presently a great tent was raised in front of the tope.
"Bithri is going to do it in style," Dick laughed to his brother. "I shouldn't mind some iced sherbet at present, if he has got any to spare."
"Look, Dick, there is a movement; they are getting the guns in position on that knoll a little to the right, and a hundred yards or so in front of their tent."
Dick took the field-glass which his brother handed him.
"Yes, we shall have a salute presently; but they won't breach the wall this afternoon at that distance."
Twenty guns opened fire upon the village, and the shot flew overhead, or buried themselves in the ground in front, or came with heavy thuds against the wall, or, in some instances, crashed into the upper parts of the houses. After an hour's firing it slackened a little, and finally died out, for the heat was tremendous.
At three o'clock there was a move again; ten of the guns were brought forward to a point about a thousand yards from the wall, while ten others were taken round and placed on the road, at about the same distance, so as to command the gate. Again the fire opened, and this time more effectually. Again the men were called to the loopholes. The greater portion of them were armed, not with the government carbines, but with sporting rifles, shortened so as to be carried as carbines; and although none of the weapons were sighted for more than six hundred yards, all with sufficient elevation could send balls far beyond that distance. Ten of the best-armed men were told off against each battery of artillery, and a slow, steady fire was opened. It was effective, for, with the field-glasses, men could be seen to fall frequently at the guns, and the fire became more hurried, but much wilder and even less accurate, than it had hitherto been. The rest of the men, with the exception of ten told off for special duty, were dispersed round the walls, to check the advance of the footmen, who crept daringly to within a short distance, and kept up a rolling fire around the village.
At five o'clock half of the men were taken off the walls, and several were set to build a wall four feet high, in a semicircle just inside the gate, which had been struck by several shots, and showed signs of yielding. Two or three of the nearest huts were demolished rapidly, there being plenty of native tools in the village, and a rough wall was constructed of the materials; a trench five feet deep and eight feet wide was simultaneously dug across the entrance. At six o'clock, just as the wall was finished, an unlucky shot struck one of the doorposts, and the gate fell, dragging the other post with it. A distant yell of triumph came through the air.
The gates fell partly across the trench. "Now, lads, push them back a bit if you can; if not, knock the part over the ditch to pieces; it's half-smashed already."
It was easier to knock the gate, already splintered with shot, to pieces, than to remove it.
"Now, Dunlop, fetch one of those powder-bags we brought for blowing up the gates; put it in the trench, with a long train. You attend to the train, and when I give the word, fire it. Bring up those two big pots of boiling water to the gate-towers. Captain Kent, thirty men of your troop will hold the other three walls; but if you hear my dog-whistle, every man is to leave his post and come on here at a run. Thirty men more will man this front wall and towers. They are to direct their fire to check the crowd pushing forward behind those immediately assaulting. The remaining forty will fire through the loopholes as long as possible, and will then form round the breastwork and hold it to the last. One man in each gate-tower, when the enemy reach the gate, will lay down his carbine, and attend to the boiling water. Let them each have a small pot as a ladle. But let them throw the water on those pressing toward the gate, not on those who have reached it. Those are our affair."
In five minutes every man was at his post, and a sharp fire from the seventy men along the front wall opened upon the masses of the enemy, who came swarming toward the gate. The effect on the crowd, many thousand strong, was very severe, for each shot told; but the Mussulmen of Oude are courageous, and the rush toward the gate continued. Fast as those in front fell, the gaps were imperceptible in the swarming crowd. Major Warreners band of forty men were called away from the loopholes, and were drawn up behind the ditch; and as the head of the assaulting crowd neared the gate volley after volley rang out, and swept away the leaders, foremost among whom were a number of Sepoys, who, when their regiments mutinied, had returned to their homes, and now headed the peasantry in their attack upon the British force. When the dense mass arrived within thirty yards of the gate Major Warrener gave the word, and a retreat was made behind the breastwork. On, with wild shouts, came the assailants; the first few saw the trench, and leaped it; those who followed fell in, until the trench was full; then the crowd swept in unchecked. The defenders had laid by their carbines now, and had drawn their revolvers. They were divided into two lines, who were alternately to take places in front and fire, while those behind loaded their revolvers. The din, as the circle inclosed by the low wall filled with the assailants, was prodigious; the sharp incessant crack of the revolver; the roll of musketry from the walls; the yells of the enemy; the shrieks, which occasionally rose outside the gate as the men in the towers scattered the boiling water broadcast over them, formed a chaos. With the fury and despair of cornered wild beasts, the enemy fought, striving to get over the wall which so unexpectedly barred their way; but their very numbers and the pressure from behind hampered their efforts.
If a man in the front line of defenders had emptied his revolver before the one behind him had reloaded, he held his place with the sword.
"The wall's giving from the pressure!" Dick exclaimed to his father; and the latter put his whistle to his lips, and the sound rang out shrill and high above the uproar.
A minute later the front of the wall tottered and fell. Then Major Warrener held up his hand, and Captain Dunlop, who had stood all the time quietly watching him, fired the train. A thundering explosion, a flight of bodies and fragments of bodies through the air, a yell of terror from the enemy, and then, as those already rushing triumphantly through the breach stood paralyzed, the British fell upon them sword in hand; the men from the other walls came rushing up, eager to take their part in the fray, and the enemy inside the gate were either cut down or driven headlong through it!
The crowd beyond, already shaken by the murderous fire that the party on the walls kept up unceasingly upon them, while they stood unable to move from the jam in front, had recoiled through their whole mass at the explosion, and the sight of the handful of their comrades flying through the gate completed the effect. With yells of rage and discomfiture, each man turned and fled, while the defenders of the gateway passed out, and joined their fire to that of their comrades above on the flying foe.
"Thank God, it is all over!" Major Warrener said; "but it has been hot while it lasted. Have we had many casualties?"
The roll was soon called, and it was found that the besieged had escaped marvelously. One young fellow, a civil servant, had been shot through the head, by a stray ball entering the loophole through which he was firing. Thirteen of the defenders of the gateway were wounded with pistol shots, or with sword cuts; but none of the injuries were of a serious character.
It was now rapidly becoming dark, and Major Warrener mounted one of the towers to have a last look.
The enemy had rallied at a distance from the walls, and two fresh bodies of troops, with elephants, were to be seen approaching from the distance.
"That is all right," he said. "They will wait, and renew the attack to-morrow."
An hour afterward it was night. The moon had not risen yet, and Major Warrener had a huge bonfire lighted outside the gate, with posts and solid beams from the fallen gates and from the houses.
"That will burn for hours," he said, "quite long enough for our purpose."
Lights could be seen scattered all over the side of the plain on which the tents were erected, some of them coming up comparatively close to the walls. On the road in front, but far enough to be well beyond the light of the fire, voices could be heard, and occasionally a shout that they would finish with the infidel dogs to-morrow rose on the air. Evidently by the low buzz of talk there were a large number here, and probably the guns had been brought closer, to check any attempt on the part of the little garrison to dash through their enemies. The blazing fire, however, throwing as it did a bright light upon the empty gateway through which they must pass, showed that at present, at least, the besieged had no idea of making their escape.
At nine o'clock the whole of the garrison stood to their horses. Not only had their feet been muffled with the leather shoes, but cloths, of which there were plenty in the village, had been wound round them, until their footfalls would, even on the hardest road, have been noiseless. Then Major Warrener led the way to the spot where ten men had been at work during the afternoon.
At this point, which was on the side furthest from that upon which was the main camp of the enemy, a clump of trees and bushes grew close to the wall outside; behind them a hole in the wall, wide enough and high enough for a horse to pass through easily, had been made, and the ditch behind had been filled up with rubbish. There was no word spoken; every one had received his orders, and knew what to do; and as silently as phantoms the troop passed through, each man leading his horse. Once outside the bushes, they formed fours and went forward, still leading their horses-as these were less likely to snort with their masters at their heads.
Ten minutes' walking convinced them that they had little to fear, and that no guards had been set on that side. It was regarded by the enemy as so certain that the English would not abandon their horses and fly on foot, only to be overtaken and destroyed the next day, that they had only thought it necessary to watch the gateway through which, as they supposed, the British must, if at all, escape on horseback.
The troop now mounted, and trotted quietly away, making a wide detour, and then going straight toward Bithri. The moon had risen; and when, about a mile and a half in front, they could see the castle, Major Warrener, who with Captain Kent and the native guides was riding ahead, held up his hand. The troop came to a halt.
"There are some bullock-carts just ahead. Take the mufflings off your horse's feet and ride on by yourself," he said to one of the native guides, "and see what is in the wagons, and where they are going."
The man did as ordered, but he needed no questions. The wagons were full of wounded men going to Bithri. He passed on with a word of greeting, turned his horse when he reached a wood a little in front, and allowed them to pass, and then rode back to the troop.
"Four bullock-carts full of wounded, sahib."
"The very thing," Major Warrener exclaimed; "nothing could be more lucky."
Orders were passed down the line that they were to ride along until the leaders were abreast of the first cart, then to halt and dismount suddenly. The drivers were to be seized, gagged, and bound. The wounded were not to be injured.
"These men are not mutinous Sepoys, with their hands red with the blood of women," Major Warrener said; "they are peasants who have fought bravely for their country, and have done their duty, according to their light."
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{
"id": "7071"
}
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9
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SAVE BY A TIGER.
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The drivers of the bullock-carts were startled at the noiseless appearance by their side of a body of horsemen; still more startled, when suddenly that phantom-like troop halted and dismounted. The rest was like a dream; in an instant they were seized, bound, and gagged, and laid down in the field at some distance from the road; one of them, however, being ungagged, and asked a few questions before being finally left. The wounded, all past offering the slightest resistance, were still more astonished when their captors, whom the moonlight now showed to be white, instead of cutting their throats as they expected, lifted them tenderly and carefully from the wagons, and laid them down on a bank a short distance off.
"Swear by the Prophet not to call for aid, or to speak, should any one pass the road, for one hour!" was the oath administered to each, and all who were still conscious swore to observe it. Then with the empty wagons the troops proceeded on their way. At the last clump of trees, a quarter of a mile from the castle, there was another halt. The troop dismounted, led their horses some little distance from the road, and tied them to the trees. Twenty men remained as a guard. Four of the others wrapped themselves up so as to appear at a short distance like natives, and took their places at the bullocks' heads, and the rest crowded into the wagons, covering themselves with their cloaks to hide their light uniforms. Then the bullocks were again set in motion across the plain. So careless were the garrison that they were not even challenged as they approached the gate of the outworks, and without a question the gate swung back.
"More wounded!" the officer on guard said. "This is the third lot. Those children of Sheitan must have been aided by their father. Ah, treachery!" he cried, as, the first cart moving into the moonlight beyond the shadow of the gateway, he saw the white faces of the supposed wounded.
There was a leap from the nearest driver upon him, and he was felled to the ground. But the man at the open gate had heard the cry, and drew a pistol and fired it before he could be reached. Then the British leaped from the carts, and twenty of them scattered through the works, cutting down those who offered resistance and disarming the rest. These were huddled into the guardroom, and five men with cocked revolvers placed at the door, with orders to shoot them down at the first sign of movement.
The garrison in the castle itself had been alarmed by the shots; and shouts were heard, and loud orders, and the sentries over the gate discharged their muskets. There was little time given them to rally, however; for Captain Kent, with four of his men, had, on leaping from the cart, made straight across the drawbridge over the moat, for the gateway, to which they attached the petards which they had brought with them. Then they ran back to the main body, who stood awaiting the explosion. In a few seconds it came, and then with a cheer the troops dashed across the drawbridge, and in through the splintered gate. There was scarcely any resistance. Taken utterly by surprise, and being numerically inferior to their assailants--for nearly all the fighting men had gone out with their lord--the frightened retainers tried to hide themselves rather than to resist, and were speedily disarmed and gathered in the courtyard.
Major Warrener, informed by the bullock drivers of the quarter in which the Europeans were confined, followed by a dozen men, made his way straight to it, and had the delight of being greeted by the voices of his countrymen and women. These were, as reported, three officers and five ladies, all of whom were absolutely bewildered by the surprise and suddenness of their rescue.
There was no time for explanation. The stables were ransacked and eight of the rajah's best horses taken. Then, when all was ready for starting, Major Warrener proceeded to the door of the women's apartments. Here, in obedience to the order he had sent her, the wife of the talookdar, veiled from head to foot, and surrounded by her attendants, stood to await the orders of her captor.
"Madam," said Captain Wilkins, who spoke the dialect in use in Oude, "Major Warrener, the British officer in command, bids me tell you that this castle, with you and all that it contains, are in his power, and that he might give it to the flames and carry you off as hostage. But he will not do this. The Rajah of Bithri is a brave man, but he is wrong to fight against fate. The English Raj will prevail again, and all who have rebelled will be punished. We treat him as a brave but mistaken enemy; and as we have spared his castle and his family, so we hope that he in turn will behave kindly to any Englishman or woman who may fall into his hands or may ask his aid. Lastly, let no one leave this castle till daybreak, for whoever does so we will slay without mercy."
Then, turning round again, Warrener and his companions returned to the courtyard. The moment the castle was entered and opposition quelled, half the troops had run back for the horses, and in twenty minutes from the arrival of the bullock-carts at the gateway of Bithri the last of its captors filed out from its walls and trotted off into the darkness. Day broke before any of the inhabitants of Bithri dared issue from its walls. Then a horseman took the news on to the camp. The artillery, increased now to thirty-six guns, had already opened upon the village ere he reached the great tent on the plain. The rajah could not credit the intelligence that the enemy had escaped, that his castle had been attacked and carried, and the white prisoners released; but his surprise and fury were overpowered by the delight he felt at the news that his women and children were safe and his ancestral dwelling uninjured. "The English are a great people," he said, stroking his beard; then, issuing from his tent, he told the news. Like wildfire it ran through the camp, and as none of the thousands gathered there had his feelings of gratitude and relief to soften their anger and disappointment, the fury of the multitude was unbounded.
With a wild rush they made for the gate-almost blocked with their dead-scoured the little village, and soon discovered the hole through which the besieged had escaped. Then with wild yells three thousand horsemen set off in pursuit; but it was six o'clock now, and the fugitives had got seven hours' start. The Rajah of Bithri's contingent took no part in the pursuit. On issuing from his tent he had, after telling the news, briefly given orders for his tents to be struck and for all his troops to return at once to the castle, toward which he himself, accompanied by his bodyguard, set out on his elephant of state.
Major Warrener and his troops had no fear of pursuit. New foes might be met; but with horses fresh and in good condition, and six hours' start--for they were confident that no pursuit could commence before daybreak at the earliest--they felt safe, from the enemy who had just attacked them, especially as these could not know the direction which they were pursuing, and would believe that their aim would be to return with their rescued friends to Delhi, instead of proceeding through the heart of Oude. The party whom they had found at Bithri consisted of Mr. Hartford, a deputy commissioner, with his wife and two daughters; of a Mrs. Pearson and her sister, the former the wife of a district magistrate, who had been absent on duty when the rising at the little station at which they lived took place; and of Captain Harper and Lieutenant Jones, who were the officers of the detachment there. The men, native cavalry, had ridden off without injuring their officers, but the fanatical people of the place had killed many of the residents and fired their bungalows. Some had escaped on horseback or in carriages; and the present party, keeping together, had, when near Bithri, been seized and brought in to the chief, who intended to take them with him to Lucknow, when--an event of which he daily expected news--the little body of English there were destroyed by the forces gathering round them. The captives had heard what was doing, both at Lucknow and Cawnpore. At the latter place not only had the native troops mutinied, but the Rajah of Bithoor, Nana Sahib, whom the English had regarded as a firm friend, had joined them. Sir Hugh Wheeler, with the officers of the revolted regiments the civilians of the station, and forty or fifty white troops, having some eight hundred women and children in their charge, were defending a weak position against thousands of the enemy, provided with artillery.
When after riding thirty miles, the party stopped at daybreak at a ruined temple standing in its grove at a distance from the main road, Major Warrener called his officers into council, to determine what was the best course to adopt under the circumstances. Should they dash through the lines of the besiegers of Cawnpore, or should they make for Agra, or endeavor to join the force which was being collected at Allahabad to march to their relief?
Finally, and very reluctantly, the latter course was decided upon. It was agreed--and the truth of their conclusion was proved by the fact that throughout the mutiny there was no single instance of the rebels, however numerous, carrying a position held by any body of Englishmen--that Sir Hugh Wheeler and his force could probably hold the intrenchments against any assault that the enemy could make, and that if forced to surrender it would probably be from want of supplies. In that case the arrival of a hundred men would be a source of weakness rather than of strength. The reinforcement would not be of sufficient strength to enable the garrison, incumbered as it was with women and children, to cut its way out, while there would be a hundred more mouths to fill. It was therefore resolved to change their course, to avoid Cawnpore, and to make direct for Allahabad, with the news of the urgent strait in which Sir Hugh Wheeler was placed, and of the necessity for an instant advance to his relief.
Cawnpore was now but forty miles away, and Lucknow was about the same distance, but in a different direction; and as they stretched themselves on the ground and prepared for sleep, they could distinctly hear the dull, faint sounds that told of a heavy artillery fire. At which of the stations, or if at both, the firing was going on, they could not tell; but in fact it was at Cawnpore, as this was the 25th of June, and the siege of the Lucknow Residency did not begin in earnest until the 30th of that month.
The course had now to be decided upon, and maps were consulted, and it was determined to cross the river at Sirapore. It was agreed, too, that they should, at the first village they passed through that evening, question the inhabitants as to the bodies of rebels moving about, and find out whether any large number were stationed at any of the bridges.
At nine o'clock in the evening they were again in the saddle, and an hour later halted at a village. There several of the men were examined separately, and their stories agreed that there were no large bodies of Sepoys on the line by which they proposed to travel, but that most of the talookdars were preparing to march to Lucknow and Cawnpore, when the British were destroyed. Having thus learned that the bridge by which they intended to cross was open to them, the troop again proceeded on their way, leaving the village lost in astonishment as to where this body of British horse could have come from.
Upon this night's ride Ned and Dick Warrener were on rearguard--that is to say, they rode together some two hundred yards behind the rest of the squadron.
An hour after leaving the village, as they were passing through a thick grove of trees some figures rose as from the ground. Ned was knocked off his horse by a blow with the butt-end of a gun; and Dick, before he had time to shout or make a movement in his defense, was dragged from his horse, his head wrapped in a thick cloth, and his arms bound. Then he could feel himself lifted up and rapidly carried off. After a time he was put on his legs and the covering of his head removed. He found Ned beside him; and a word of congratulation that both were alive was exchanged. Then a rope was placed round each of their necks, and surrounded by their captors, two of whom rode their horses, they were started at a run, with admonitions from those around them that any attempt to escape or to shout would be punished with instant death.
For full two hours they were hurried along, and then the party halted at the edge of a thick jungle, lighted a fire, and began to cook. The prisoners were allowed to sit down with their captors. These were matchlock-men, on their way to join the forces besieging the Residency at Cawnpore, toward which town they had been making their way, as the boom of the guns sounded sharper and clearer every mile that they traveled. Ned gathered from the talk that their capture was the effect of pure accident. The party had sat down in the wood to eat, when they heard a troop of horsemen passing. A word or two spoken in English as the leaders came along sufficed to show the nationality of the troop, and the band lay quiet in the bushes until, as they supposed, all had passed. They had risen to leave when the two last horsemen came in view, and these they determined to capture and carry off, if possible, hoping to get a considerable reward from Nan a Sahib on their arrival at Cawnpore.
Nana Sahib's name had not as yet that terrible history attached to it which rendered it execrated wherever the English tongue is spoken; but the boys had heard that after pretending to be the friend of the whites, he was now leading the assault against them, and that he was therefore a traitor, and fighting as it were with a rope round his neck. At the hands of such a man they had no mercy to expect.
"It is of no use trying to make a bolt, Ned?"
"Not the least in the world. The two fellows next to us are appointed to watch us. Don't you see they are sitting with their guns across their knees? We should be shot down in a moment."
There was a debate among the band whether to push on to Cawnpore at once; but they had already made a long day's journey, and moreover thought that they could create a greater effect by arriving with their prisoners by daylight. The fire was made up, and the men wrapped themselves in their cloths--the native of India almost invariably sleeps with his head covered, and looking more like a corpse than a living being. Anxiously the boys watched in hopes that their guards would follow the example. They showed, however, no signs of doing so, but sat talking over the approaching destruction of the English rule and of the restoration of the Mohammedan power.
Two hours passed; the fire burned low, and the boys, in spite of the danger of their position, were just dropping off to sleep, when there was a mighty roar--a rush of some great body passing over them--a scream of one of the natives--a yell of terror from the rest. A tiger stood with one of the guards in his mouth, growling fiercely, and giving him an occasional shake, as a cat would shake a mouse, while one of his paws held down the prostrate figure of the other.
There was a wild stampede--men tumbled over and over each other in their efforts to escape from the terrible presence, and then, getting to their feet, started off at full speed. For a moment the boys had lain paralyzed with the sudden advent of the terrible man-eater, and then had, like the rest, darted away.
"To the jungle!" Ned exclaimed; and in an instant they had plunged into the undergrowth, and were forcing their way at full speed through it. Man-eating tigers are rarely found in pairs, and there was little fear that another was lurking in the wood; and even had such been the case, they would have preferred death in that form to being murdered in cold blood by the enemy. Presently they struck on a track leading through the wood, and followed it, until in five minutes they emerged at the other side. As they did so they heard the report of firearms in the direction of their last halting-place, and guessed that the peasants were firing at hazard, in hopes of frightening the tiger into dropping his prey. As to their own flight, it was probable that so far they had been unthought of. The first object of the fugitives was to get as far as possible from their late captors, who would at daybreak be sure to organize a regular hunt for them, and accordingly they ran straight ahead until in three-quarters of an hour they came into a wide road. Then, exhausted with their exertions, they threw themselves down, and panted for breath.
Dick was the first to speak. "What on earth are we to do now, Ned? These uniforms will betray us to the first person we meet, and we have no means of disguise."
"We must get as far away as we can before daylight, Dick, and then hide up. Sooner or later we must throw ourselves on the hospitality of some one, and take our chance. This is evidently the main road to Cawnpore, and, judging from the guns, we cannot be more than ten or twelve miles away. It will not do to go back along this road, for the fellows we have got away from may strike it below us and follow it up. Let us go forward along it till we meet a side road, and take that."
Ten minutes' walking brought them to a point where a side road came in, and, taking this, they walked steadily on. They passed two or three villages, which the moonlight enabled them to see before they reached them; these they avoided by a detour, as the dogs would be sure to arouse the inhabitants, and it was only in a solitary abode that they had a chance of being sheltered. Toward morning they saw ahead a building of considerable size, evidently the abode of a person of consequence. It was not fortified; but behind it was a large inclosure, with high walls.
"I vote we climb over that wall, Ned; there are several trees growing close up to it. If they hunt the country round for us they will never look inside there; and I expect that there is a garden, and we are sure to find a hiding-place. Then, if the owner comes out, we can, if he looks a decent chap, throw ourselves on his hands."
"I think that a good idea, Dick; the sooner we carry it out the better, for in another half-hour day will be breaking."
[Illustration: A TIGER STOOD, WITH ONE OF THE GUARDS IN HIS MOUTH, GROWLING FIERCELY.]
They made a detour round to the back of the building, and after some search found a tree growing close enough to the wall to assist them. This they climbed, got along a branch which extended over the top of the wall, and thence dropped into the garden. Here there were pavilions and fountains, and well-kept walks, with great clumps of bushes and flowering shrubs well calculated for concealment. Into one of these they crept, and were soon fast asleep.
It was late in the afternoon when they awoke, roused by the sound of laughter, and of the chatter of many voices.
"Good gracious!" Ned exclaimed; "we have got into the women's garden."
In another minute a group of women came in sight. The principal figure was a young woman of some twenty-two or twenty-three, and with a red wafer-like patch on her forehead, very richly dressed.
"She is a Hindoo," Ned whispered; "what luck!"
There are indeed very few Hindoos in Oude, and the Mohammedan being the dominant race, a Hindoo would naturally feel far more favorably inclined toward a British fugitive than a Mohammedan would be likely to do, as the triumph of the rebellion could to them simply mean a restoration, of Mohammedan supremacy in place of the far more tolerant British rule.
Next to the ranee walked an old woman, who had probably been her nurse, and was now her confidante and adviser. The rest were young women, clearly dependants.
"And so, Ahrab, we must give up our garden, and go into Cawnpore; and in such weather too!"
"It must be so indeed," the elder woman said. "These Mohammedans doubt us, and so insist on your highness showing your devotion to the cause by taking up your residence in Cawnpore, and sending in all your retainers to join in the attack on the English."
The ranee looked sad.
"They say there are hundreds of women and little children there," she said, "and that the English who are defending them are few."
"It is so," Ahrab said. "But they are brave. The men of the Nana, and the old regiments, are fifty to one against them, and the cannon fire night and day, and yet they do not give way a foot."
"They are men, the English sahibs."
While they were speaking the two chief personages of the party had taken their seats in a pavilion close to the spot where the young Warreners were hidden.
Ned translated the purport of the talk to Dick, and both agreed that the way of safety had opened to them.
Seeing that their mistress was not in the humor for laughter and mirth, and would rather talk quietly with her chief friend and adviser, the attendants gradually left them, and gathered in a distant part of the garden.
Then Ned and Dick crept out of their hiding-place, and appeared suddenly at the entrance to the pavilion, where they fell on one knee, in an attitude of supplication, and Ned said: "Oh, gracious lady, have pity upon two fugitives!"
The ranee and her counselor rose to their feet with a little scream, and hastily covered their heads.
"Have pity, lady," Ned went on earnestly; "we are alone and friendless; oh, do not give us up to our enemies."
"How did you get here?" asked the elder woman.
"We climbed the wall," Ned said. "We knew not that this garden was the ladies' garden, or we might not have invaded it; now we bless Providence that has brought us to the feet of so kind and lovely a lady."
The ranee laughed lightly behind her veil.
"They are mere boys, Ahrab."
"Yes, your highness, but it would be just as dangerous for you to shelter boys as men. And what will you do, as you have to go to Cawnpore to-morrow?"
"Oh, you can manage somehow, Ahrab--you are so clever," the ranee said coaxingly; "and I could not give them up to be killed: I should never feel happy afterward."
"May Heaven bless you, lady!" Ned said earnestly; "and your kind action may not go unrewarded even here. Soon, very soon, an English army will be at Cawnpore to punish the rebels, and then it will be well with those who have succored British fugitives."
"Do you say an English army will come soon?" Ahrab said doubtfully. "Men say the English Raj is gone forever."
"It is not true," Ned said. "England has not begun to put out her strength yet. She can send tens of thousands of soldiers, and the great chiefs of the Punjab have all declared for her. Already Delhi is besieged, and an army is gathering at Allahabad to march hither. It may be quickly; it may be slowly; but in the end the English rule will be restored, her enemies will be destroyed, and her friends rewarded. But I know," he went on, turning to the ranee, "that it needs not a thought of this to influence you, and that in your kind heart compassion alone will suffice to secure us your protection."
The ranee laughed again.
"You are only a boy," she said, "but you have learned to flatter. Now tell us how you got here."
"Your highness," Ahrab interrupted, "I had better send all the others in, for they might surprise us. Let these young sahibs hide themselves again; then we will go in, and I will call in your attendants. Later, when it is dusk, you will plead heat, and come out here with me again, and then I can bring some robes to disguise the sahibs; that is, if your highness has resolved to aid them."
"I think I have resolved that, Ahrab," the ranee said. "You have heard, young sahibs; retire now, and hide. When the sun has set we will be here again."
With deep assurance of gratitude from Ned, the lads again took refuge in the shrubs, delighted with the result of their interview.
"I do hope that the old one will bring us something to eat, Ned. I am as hungry as a hunter! That ranee's a brick, isn't she?"
Two hours later a step was heard coming down the garden, and a woman came and lit some lamps in the pavilion, and again retired. Then in another ten minutes the ranee and her confidante made their appearance. The former took her seat on the couch in the pavilion, the latter remained outside the circle of light, and clapped her hands softly. In a minute the boys stood before her. She held out a basket of provisions, and a bundle of clothes.
"Put these wraps on over your uniforms," she said; "then if we should be surprised, no one will be any the wiser."
The boys retired, hastily ate some food, then wrapped themselves in the long folds of cotton which form the principal garment of native women of the lower class, and went forward to the pavilion.
The ranee laughed outright.
"How clumsy you are!" she said. "Ahrab, do arrange them a little more like women."
Ahrab adjusted their robes, and brought one end over their heads, so that it could, if necessary, be pulled over the face at a moment's notice.
The ranee then motioned to them to sit down upon two cushions near her; and saying to Ahrab, "It is very hot, and they are only boys," removed the veil from her face. "You make very pretty girls, only you are too white," she said.
"Lady, if we had some dye we could pass as natives, I think," Ned said; "we have done so before this, since the troubles began."
"Tell me all about it," the ranee said. "I want to know who you are, and how you came here as if you had dropped from the skies."
Ned related their adventures since leaving Delhi, and then the ranee insisted upon an account of their previous masquerading as natives.
"How brave you English boys are," she said. "No wonder your men have conquered India. Now, Ahrab, tell these young sahibs what we propose."
"We dare not leave you here," Ahrab said. "You would have to be fed, and we must trust many people. We go to Cawnpore to-morrow, and you must go with us. My son has a garden here; we can trust him, and he will bring a bullock-cart with him to-morrow morning. In this will be placed some boxes, and he will start. You must wait a little way off, and when you see him you will know him, because he will tie a piece of red cloth to the horns of the bullock; you will come up and get in. He will ask no questions, but will drive you to the ranee's. I will open the door to you and take you up to a little room where you will not be disturbed. We shall all start first. You cannot go with us, because the other women will wonder who you are. Here is some stuff to dye your faces and hands. I will let you out by a private door. You will see a wood five minutes along the road. You must stop there to-night, and do not come out till you see the ranee and her party pass. There is a little hut, which is empty, in the wood, where you can sleep without fear of disturbance. The ranee is sorry to turn you out to-night, but we start at daybreak, and I should have no opportunity of slipping away and letting you out."
Everything being now arranged, the ranee rose. Ned reiterating the expression of the gratitude of his brother and himself, the ranee coquettishly held out a little hand whose size and shape an Englishwoman might have envied; and the boys kissed it--Ned respectfully, Dick with a heartiness which made her laugh and draw it away.
"You are a darling," Dick said in English, with the native impudence of a midshipman, "and I wish I knew enough of your lingo to tell you."
"What does he say?" she asked of Ned.
"He is a sailor," Ned said; "and sailors say things we on shore would not venture to say. My brother says you are the flower of his heart."
"Your brother is an impudent boy," the ranee said, laughing, "and I have a good mind to hand him over to the Nana. Now good-by! Ahrab will let you out."
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{
"id": "7071"
}
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10
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TREACHERY.
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Of all the names connected with the Indian mutiny, Cawnpore stands out conspicuous for its dark record of treachery, massacre, and bloodshed; and its name will, so long as the English language continues, be regarded as the darkest in the annals of our nation. Cawnpore is situated on the Ganges, one hundred and twenty-three miles northwest of Allahabad, and was at the time of our story a large straggling town, extending nearly five miles along the river. It stands on a sandy plain, intensely hot and dusty in summer, and possesses no fort or other building such as proved the safety of the Europeans in Agra and Allahabad. The force stationed there at the first outbreak of the mutiny consisted of the First, Fifty-third, and Fifty-sixth Native Regiments, the Second Regiment of Bengal Cavalry, and about fifty European invalid artillerymen. When the news of the revolt at Meerut reached Cawnpore, and it was but too probable that the mutiny would spread to all the native regiments throughout the country, Sir Hugh Wheeler, who was in command, at once set to work to prepare a fortified position, in which to retire with the European residents in case of necessity. To this end he connected with breastworks a large unfinished building intended as a military hospital, with the church and some other buildings, all standing near the center of the grand parade, and surrounded the whole with an intrenchment. Within these lines he collected ammunition, stores and provisions for a month's consumption for a thousand persons, and having thus, as he hoped, prepared for the worst, he awaited the event.
Although there was much uneasiness and disquietude, things went on tolerably well up to the middle of May. Then Sir Hugh Wheeler sent to Lucknow, forty miles distant, to ask for a company of white troops, to enable him to disarm the Sepoys; and he also asked aid of Nana Sahib, Rajah of Bithoor, who was looked upon as a stanch friend of the English. On the 22d of May fifty-five Europeans of the Thirty-second Regiment, and two hundred and forty native troopers of the Oude irregular cavalry, arrived from Lucknow, and two guns and three hundred men were sent in by the Rajah of Bithoor.
Nana Sahib was at this time a man of thirty-two years of age, having been born in the year 1825. He was the son of poor parents, and had at the age of two years and a half been adopted by the Peishwa, who had no children of his own. In India adoption is very common, and an adopted son has all the legal rights of a legitimate offspring. The Peishwa, who was at one time a powerful prince, was dethroned by us for having on several occasions joined other princes in waging war against us, but was honorably treated, and an annuity of eighty thousand pounds a year was assigned to him and his heirs. In 1851 the Peishwa died, leaving Nana Dhoondu Pant, for that was the Nana's full name, his heir and successor. The Company refused to continue the grant to Nana Sahib, and in so doing acted in a manner at once impolitic and unjust. It was unjust, because they had allowed the Peishwa and Nana Sahib, up to the death of the former, to suppose that the Indian law of adoption would be recognized here as in all other cases; it was impolitic, because as the greater portion of the Indian princes had adopted heirs, these were all alarmed at the refusal to recognize the Nana, and felt that a similar blow might be dealt to them.
Thus, at this critical period of our history, the minds of the great Indian princes were all alienated from us, by what was in their eyes at once a breach of a solemn engagement, and a menace to every reigning house. Nana Sahib, however, evinced no hostility to the English rule. He had inherited the private fortune of the Peishwa, and lived in great state at Bithoor. He affected greatly the society of the British residents at Cawnpore, was profuse in his hospitality, and was regarded as a jovial fellow and a stanch friend of the English. When the mutiny broke out, it proved that he was only biding his time. Nana Sahib was described by an officer who knew him four years before the mutiny, as then looking at least forty years old and very fat. "His face is round, his eyes very wild, brilliant and restless. His complexion, as is the case with most native gentlemen, is scarcely darker than that of a dark Spaniard, and his expression is, on the whole, of a jovial, and indeed, somewhat rollicking character." In reality, this rollicking native gentleman was a human tiger.
On the very night that the men of the Thirty-second came in from Oude, there was an alarm of a rising, and the ladies and children of the station took refuge in the fortified post prepared for them; and from that time the sufferings of the residents commenced, although it was not for a fortnight afterward that the mutiny took place; for the overcrowding and the intense heat at once began to affect the health of those huddled together in ill-ventilated rooms, and deprived of all the luxuries which alone make existence endurable to white people in Indian cities on the plains during the heats of summer. Scarce a day passed without news of risings at other stations taking place, and with the receipt of each item of intelligence the insolence displayed by the Sepoys increased.
A few English troops arrived from Allahabad and at midnight upon the 4th of June, when the natives broke into revolt, there were in the intrenchments of Cawnpore eighty-three officers of various regiments, sixty men of the Eighty-fourth Regiment, and seventy of the Thirty-second, fifteen of the First Madras Fusiliers, and a few invalid gunners; the whole defensive force consisting of about two hundred and forty men, and six guns. There were under their charge a large number of ladies and children, the wives and families of the officers and civilians at the station, sixty-four women and seventy-six children belonging to the soldiers, with a few native servants who remained faithful. The total number of women, children, and non-effectives amounted to about eight hundred and seventy persons.
During the night of the 4th of June the whole of the native troops rose, set fire to all the European residences outside the intrenchments, and marched to Nawabgunge, a place four miles away. A message was sent by them to Nana Sahib, to the effect that they were marching to Delhi, and inviting him to assume the command. This he at once assented to, and arrived at Nawabgunge a few hours later, with six hundred troops and four guns; and his first act was to divide the contents of the English treasury there, which had been guarded by his own troops, among the mutineers.
Having destroyed the European buildings, the force marched to Kulleanpore, on its way to Delhi; but on its reaching this place the same evening, Nana Sahib called together the native officers, and advised them to return to Cawnpore and kill all the Europeans there. Then they would be thought much of when they arrived at Delhi. The proposal was accepted with acclamation, and during the night the rebel army marched back to Cawnpore, which they invested the next morning; the last message from Sir Hugh Wheeler came through on that day, fighting having begun at half-past ten in the morning.
The first proceeding of the mutineers was to take possession of the native town of Cawnpore, where the houses of the peaceable and wealthy inhabitants were at once broken open and plundered, and many respectable natives slaughtered.
The bombardment of the British position began on the 6th, and continued with daily increasing fury. Every attempt to carry the place by storm was repelled, but the sufferings of the besieged were frightful. There was but one well, in the middle of the intrenchments, and upon this by night and by day the enemy concentrated their fire, so that it might be said that every bucket of water cost a man's life. After four or five days of incessant bombardment, the enemy took to firing red-hot shot, and on the 13th the barracks were set on fire, and, a strong wind blowing, the fire spread so rapidly that upward of fifty sick and wounded were burned. The other buildings were so riddled with shot and shell that they afforded scarcely any shelter. Many of the besieged made holes in the ground or under the banks of the intrenchments; but the deaths from sunstroke and fever were even more numerous than those caused by the murderous and incessant fire.
In the city a reign of terror prevailed. All the native Christians were massacred, with their wives and families; and every white prisoner brought in--and they were many--man, woman, or child, was taken before the Nana, and murdered by his orders.
Day by day the sufferings of the garrison in the intrenchments became greater, and the mortality among the woman and children was terrible. Every day saw the army of the Nana increasing, by the arrival of mutineers from other quarters, until it reached a total of over twelve thousand men, while the fighting force of the garrison had greatly decreased; yet the handful of Englishmen repulsed every effort of the great host of assailants to carry the fragile line of intrenchments.
When Ned and Dick Warrener, having carried out the instructions given by the ranee, arrived next morning at her house at Cawnpore, Ahrab at once led them to a small apartment.
"I have much news to tell you. The fighting is over here. The Nana sent in a messenger to the English sahibs, to say that if they would give up the place, with the guns and treasure, he would grant a free passage for all; and the Nana and his Hindoo officers have sworn the sacred oath of our religion, and the Mohammedans have sworn on the Koran, that these conditions shall be observed. Boats are to be provided for them all. They leave to-morrow at dawn. Her highness the ranee will shelter you here if you like to stay; but if you wish it you can go at daybreak and join your countrymen."
With many thanks for the ranee's offer, the boys at once decided to join their countrymen; and accordingly next morning after a kind farewell from their protectress, they started before daybreak under charge of their driver of the day before, and, still in their disguises of native women, made their way to a point on the line of route outside the town. There were but few people here, and, just as day broke the head of the sad procession came along. The women and children, the sick and wounded--among the latter Sir H. Wheeler, the gallant commander of the garrison--were in wagons provided by the Nana; the remnant of the fighting men marched afterward. Hastily dropping their women's robes, the boys slipped in among the troops, unnoticed by any of the guards of Nana's troops who were escorting the procession.
A few words explained to their surprised compatriots that they were fugitives who had been in shelter in the town, and many a word of welcome was muttered, and furtive handshakes given. In return the boys were able to give the news of the arrival of the British before Delhi, and the commencement of the siege, all of which was new to the garrison, who had been for twenty-two days without a word from the outer world. At last the column reached the ghat, or landing-place, fixed upon for their embarkation.
Here seventeen or eighteen boats were collected. The way down to the river was steep, for the bank of the Ganges is here rather high, and covered with thick jungle. At the top of the ghat is a small Hindoo temple. The wounded and sick were carried down the bank and placed in the boats, the ladies and children took their places, the officers and men then followed. When all was ready, the Nana's officer suddenly called the native boatmen to come ashore to receive their wages for the passage down to Benares.
Then, as if by magic, from out the thick jungle on both sides of the path to the ghat, hundreds of Sepoys rushed; while at the same moment lines of bushes fell to the ground, and showed a number of cannon, all placed in position. In a moment a tremendous fire was opened upon the unhappy fugitives. Numbers of them were at once killed in the boats; some jumped into the water, and, pushing the boats afloat, made for the opposite shore; while others leaped into the river on the deeper side and tried to escape by swimming. But upon the other shore were enemies as bloodthirsty as those they left behind, for there the Sepoys of the Seventeenth Native Regiment, who had mutinied at Azimghur, were posted, and these cut off the retreat of the fugitives there. Then all the boats, with the exception of two or three which had drifted down stream, followed by bands of Sepoys with cannon on either bank, were brought back to the starting-place, which is known, and will be known through all time, as "the slaughter ghat." There all the men still alive were taken on shore and shot; while the women and children, many of them bleeding from wounds, were taken off to a house formerly belonging to the medical department of the European troops, called the Subada Khotee.
Dick and Ned Warrener were in one of the boats which were still ashore when the treacherous Sepoys burst from their hiding-place. "The scoundrels!" burst from Ned indignantly; while Dick, seeing at a glance the hopelessness of their position, grasped his brother's arm.
"We must swim for it, Ned, Take a long dive, and go under again the moment you have got breath."
Without an instant's delay the brothers leaped into the water, as dozens of others were doing; and although each time their heads came up for an instant the bullets splashed around them, they kept on untouched until they reached the center of the stream. They were still within musket range, but the distance was sufficient to render them pretty safe except against an accidental shot. They looked back and saw the Sepoys had many of them entered the river up to their shoulders, to shoot the swimmers: others on horseback had ridden far out, and were cutting down those who, unable to swim far, made again toward shallow water; while cannon and muskets still poured in their fire against the helpless crowds in the boats.
"Look, Ned, it is of no use making for the other shore," Dick said; "there is another body of the wretches there; we must simply float down the stream in the middle. If we keep on our backs, and sink as low as we can, so as to show only our noses and mouths above water, they may fire for a week without hitting us. There, give me your hand, so that we may float together; I will look up from time to time to see that we are floating pretty fairly in the middle, I will do it quickly, so as not to be seen, for if we lie still on our backs they won't watch us after a time, but will take us for two drifting dead bodies. Now, old boy!" So saying, the lads turned on their backs, and occasionally giving a quiet stroke with their legs, or paddling with their hands, drifted down stream, showing so little of their faces above water that they could scarcely have been seen from the shore.
Both the lads were good swimmers, but Dick was perfectly at home in the water; and Ned, knowing his own inferiority in this respect, left himself entirely in his brother's hands. Soon Dick, in his quick glances to note their position, perceived that three boats alone of all the number had got fairly away down stream--that their occupants had got out oars and were quickly coming up to the swimmers; but he saw, too, that on both banks the Sepoy guns kept abreast of them, and that a fire of artillery and musketry was maintained. For a moment he thought of being taken on board; but their chance of escaping the fire centered upon them seemed hopeless, and he judged it was better to keep on in the water. He accordingly paddled himself out of the center of the stream, so as to give the boats a wide berth, trusting that the attention of the enemy would be so much directed at the boats that the floating bodies would be unnoticed. As to keeping afloat for any time, he had no fear whatever. The water of Indian rivers in the heat of summer is so warm that swimmers can remain in them for many hours without any feeling of chill or discomfort.
An hour later Dick lifted his head and looked forward. The firing was two miles ahead now. But one boat of the three still floated, and Dick congratulated himself that he had decided not to join his fate to that of those on board. Hour after hour passed, and still the boys floated on, until at last the sun went down, dusk came and went, and when all was dark they turned on their faces and swam quietly down the stream. For many hours, alternately swimming and floating, they kept their course down the river, until toward morning they gently paddled ashore, crept into the thick jungle of the bank, and fell asleep almost instantly.
It was dusk again before they awoke. They were desperately hungry, but they agreed to spend one more night in the river before searching for food, so as to put as much distance as possible between themselves and Cawnpore. They had been twenty hours in the water before, and allowing two miles an hour for the current, and something for their swimming, they calculated that Cawnpore must be forty-six or forty-seven miles behind. Eight hours' more steady swimming added twenty to this, and they landed again with a hope that Nana Sahib's ferocious bands must have been left behind, and that they had now only the ordinary danger of travel in such times, through a hostile country, to face.
It yet wanted an hour or so of daybreak, and they struck off at right angles to the river, and walked till it became light, when they entered a small wood near to which was a hut. Watching this closely, they saw only an old man come out, and at once made to it, and asked him for food and shelter. Recovered from his first surprise, he received them kindly, and gave them the best which his hut, in which he lived alone with his wife, afforded. A meal of cakes and parched grain greatly revived them, and, after a long sleep, they started again at nightfall, with enough food for the next two days' supply. That they were not ahead of all their foes was certain, from the fact that the peasant said that he had heard firing on the river bank on the previous day. They knew by this also that the one boat ahead of them had at any rate escaped its perils of the first day.
For two more nights they walked, passing one day in a thick wood, the other in a ruined temple, their hopes rising; for, as they knew, the further they got from Cawnpore the loss likely the country people were to be hostile.
The third morning they again entered a hut to ask for food.
"I will give you food," the peasant said, "but you had better go to the rajah's, his house is over there, half an hour's walk. He has four Englishmen there who came from the river, and he is the friend of the Feringhees."
Delighted at the news, the boys went forward. As they entered the courtyard of the house they were greeted with a hearty salutation in English, and their hands were clasped a moment afterward by Lieutenant Delafosse, an officer who had greatly distinguished himself in the defense of Cawnpore, and was one of the few survivors. He took them in to the rajah, who received them most kindly, and after they had been fed Lieutenant Delafosse told them how he and his three comrades had escaped.
The boat had, although many on board had been hit by rifle balls, escaped the first day. She was crowded, and very low in the water, having on board most of those who had been in the two boats sunk by the enemy. The next day they were again fired at without effect by artillery, infantry accompanying the boat all day, and keeping up an incessant fire. On the third day the boat was no longer serviceable, and grounded on a sand-bank. Then the enemy's infantry fired so heavily that those still able to carry arms, fourteen in number, made for the shore and attacked their foes. These fell back, and the handful of Englishmen followed them. Great numbers of the enemy now came up, and the English took refuge in a little temple; here they defended themselves till the enemy piled bushes at the entrance, and set them on fire. Then the English burst through the flames, and made again for the river. Seven out of the twelve who got through the fire reached the river, but of these two were shot before they had swum far. Three miles lower down, one of the survivors, an artilleryman, swimming on his back, went too near the bank and was killed. Six miles lower down the firing ceased, and soon afterward the four survivors were hailed by natives, who shouted to them to come ashore, as their master, the rajah, was friendly to the English. They did so, and were most kindly received by him.
An abundant meal and another good sleep did wonders for the young Warreners, and the next morning they determined to set out to join their countrymen at Allahabad, where they expected to find their father and his troops. The rajah and their fellow-countrymen endeavored in vain to dissuade them, but the former, finding that they were determined, gave them dresses as native women, furnished them with a guide, and sent them across the river in a boat--for they were on the Oude side--with a message to a zemindar there to help them forward.
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{
"id": "7071"
}
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11
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RETRIBUTION BEGINS.
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The zemindar to whom the Warreners' guide conducted them, after crossing the Ganges, received them kindly, and told them that the safest way would be for them to go on in a hackery, or native cart, and placed one at once at their disposal, with a trusty man as a driver, and another to accompany them in the hackery. He told them that British troops were, it was said, arriving fast at Allahabad, and that it was even reported that an advance had already taken place. Nana Sahib would, it was said, meet them at Futtehpore, a place forty-eight miles from Cawnpore, and seventy-five from Allahabad. As yet, however, none of his troops had reached Futtehpore, which was fortunate, for the main road ran through that place, which was but twenty miles from the point where they had crossed the Ganges; and although they would keep by a road near the river, and so avoid the town, the Nana's troops would be sure to be scouring the country. This news decided them not to accept the zemindar's invitation to stay the night and start the next morning early. It was still but little past noon, and they might do many miles before darkness.
Before they halted the party had made fifteen miles, and in passing through a village learned the welcome news that a small English force had advanced to Synee, some ten miles only beyond Futtehpore. This force had, it was said, met with little resistance as yet, and the country people were full of stories of the manner in which the Sepoys and others who had been engaged with them were, as soon as captured, hung up in numbers. Already, in the minds of the peasantry, the idea that the British would be the final conquerors in the strife was gaining ground; and as the whole country had suffered from the exactions and insolence of the triumphant Sepoys, and life and property were no longer safe for a moment, the secret sympathy of all those who had anything to lose was with the advancing British force.
The next day the party followed the road near the river all day, as they feared to fall either into the hands of Sepoys retiring before the English, or of those coming down from Cawnpore. They halted for the night at a village whence a road ran direct to Synee, which was about eight miles distant. The villagers repeated that the Sepoys had all fallen back, and that there would be a great fight at Futtehpore. The English force was small, but a large body were on their way up from Allahabad.
The boys started at daybreak, and had proceeded about three miles when a body of cavalry were seen rapidly approaching.
The driver of the hackery put his head inside the leather curtain of the vehicle.
"English," he said. The boys looked out, and gave a shout of joy as they saw the well-known uniforms; and, regardless of their women's robes, they leaped out and ran to meet them. The advanced guard of the cavalry stopped in surprise.
"Halloo! what is up? who are you?"
"Why, Dunlop, don't you know us?" the boys shouted.
"The Warreners!" exclaimed Captain Dunlop, leaping from his horse and seizing them by the hand. "My dear boys, this is joy."
The men set up a cheer, which was caught up by the main body as they came up, and in another minute the boys were in their father's arms.
The young Warreners had been mourned as dead, for no one doubted that they had been carried to Cawnpore, and had shared the fate of the garrison of that place; and the joy of their father therefore was intense, while the whole corps, with whom the boys were general favorites, were delighted.
After the first rapturous greeting Major Warrener took off his cap reverently, and said a few words of deep gratitude to God, the men all baring their heads as he did so. Then Captain Kent said: "Shall I push on to the Ganges, major, with my troop? or perhaps your sons can tell us what we are ordered to find out?"
"What is it?" Ned asked.
"Whether there are any bodies of troops pushing down by the river. It would not do for them to get behind us, and threaten our communications."
The boys were able to affirm that there was no body of mutineers near the Ganges below Futtehpore, as they had just come down that way.
"Then we can ride back at once," Major Warrener said. "Major Renaud was on the point of marching when we started, and he will be glad to have us back again. First, though, what have these natives done for you?"
Ned in a few words explained that they came by the instruction of their master, and had been with them for three days.
The major made them a handsome present, and sent a message to the zemindar, to the effect that his kindness would be reported to government; and Dick scribbled a few words to Lieutenant Delafosse, with the news of the British advance, and a kind message to the rajah.
"Now, Dick, you jump up behind me," his father said. "Dunlop can take you, Ned; and you can give us a short account of what has befallen you as we ride back. We must get you a couple of horses of some kind or another at Synee. Can't you cast off these women's clothes?"
"We have got nothing to speak of underneath," Dick laughed; "we got rid of our uniforms in the Ganges, and want a rig out from top to toe."
"Well, we must see what we can do for you tonight. And now," he asked, as they trotted along at the head of the column, amid the smiles of the men at the appearance of their commanding officer carrying, as it seemed, a native woman _en croupe_, "how did you escape, boys? We did not miss you until we halted for half an hour at midnight. Then six of us rode back ten miles, but could find no trace of you, and we gave you up as lost; so we rode on till we met Major Renaud's force coming up, when we sent our rescued friends on to Allahabad, and turned back with just a shadow of hope that we might yet find you alive somewhere or other."
Dick then told the story of the intervention of the tiger in their behalf, and said that afterward an Indian lady had succored them, hinting that at the end of the war it was probable that Ned would present his father with a daughter-in-law.
"That's all very well," Ned laughed. "If Dick had understood the language, I should have been nowhere. You should have seen him kiss her hand."
"Well, anyhow," Dick said, "she was a brick, father, and no mistake."
By this time Synee was reached. In spite of Major Warrener's liberal offers, no horses or even ponies were forthcoming, so completely had the Sepoys stripped the country, most of the villages having been burned as well as plundered by them. From the valises of the troop various articles of clothing were contributed, which enabled the lads again to take their places in the ranks, but riding as before _en croupe_. In two hours after their arrival at Synee they were moving forward again at a trot, and in four hours came up with Major Renaud's force, encamped for the day.
They were glad to get in, for the rain, since they left Synee, had been falling in sheets. The force was fortunately moving now along the grand trunk road, a splendid piece of road-making, extending from Calcutta to Peshawur, for already the country roads would have been almost impassable.
"Do we halt here for the day?" Ned asked his father, as they drew rein in the camp.
"Yes, Dick, the enemy are in force at Futtehpore, which is only some fourteen miles away. Havelock is coming up by double marches. He halted last night fifteen miles the other side of Synee. To-day he will reach Synee; will bivouac there for a few hours, and will march on here in the night. We are to be under arms by the time he will arrive, and the whole of us will push forward to Khaga, five miles this side of Futtehpore. So Havelock's men will have marched twenty-four miles straight off, to say nothing of the fifteen to-day. The troops could not do it, were it not that every one is burning to get to Cawnpore, to avenge the murder of our comrades and to rescue the women and children, if it be yet time."
The boys were at once taken by their father to Major Renaud, who welcomed them warmly. This officer had under his command a force of four hundred British, and four hundred and twenty native troops, with two pieces of cannon.
After being introduced to Major Renaud the boys went to the tents allotted to their corps, which were already pitched, and Major Warrener asked the officers, and as many of the volunteers as his tent would hold, to listen to the account of the massacre of Cawnpore, which was now for the first time authentically told; for hitherto only native reports had come down from the city. Great was the indignation and fury with which the tale of black treachery and foul murder was heard; and when the story was told it had to be repeated to the officers of the other corps in camp.
The terrible tale soon spread through the camp; and men gnashed their teeth in rage, and swore bitter oaths--which were terribly kept--to avenge the deeds that had been committed. Uppermost of all, however, was the anxiety about the women and children; for the boys had heard, when staying at the friendly rajah's, that near one hundred and twenty of these unfortunates--the survivors of the siege, and of the river attack--had been shut up in a room in the Cawnpore lines.
At three o'clock next morning--the 11th of July--the troops were under arms, the tents struck, and all in readiness for an advance. Presently a dull sound was heard; it grew louder, and the head of General Havelock's column came up.
There was a short halt while Major Renaud reported to the general the state of affairs in front, as far as he knew them. He mentioned, too, that two survivors of the Cawnpore massacre had that day come in, and that four others were in shelter with a native rajah on the Oude side of the Ganges. The general at once requested that the Warreners should be brought up to him; and the lads were accordingly presented to the man whose name, hitherto unknown outside military circles, was--in consequence of the wonderful succession of battles and of victories, of which that date, the 12th of July, was to mark the first--to become a household word in England.
"The column had better move forward, Major Renaud; your division will lead. If you will ride by me, gentlemen, you can tell me of this dreadful business as we go."
Fortunately there were several horses in Major Renaud's camp, which had been taken from men of the enemy's cavalry who had been surprised in the upward march, and two of them had been assigned to the boys, so that they were able to feel once more as soldiers.
On arriving at Khaga, an insignificant village, General Havelock said to the lads: "Thank you very much for your information. You have behaved with great coolness and courage, and Major Warrener, your father, has every reason to be proud of you. I am short of aids-de-camp, and shall be glad if you will act as my gallopers"--an honor which, it need hardly be said, the boys joyfully accepted.
The following was the total force under General Havelock's command when he commenced the series of battles which were finally to lead him to Lucknow: Seventy-six men of the Royal Artillery, three hundred and seventy-six of the Madras Fusiliers, four hundred and thirty-five of the Sixty-fourth Regiment, two hundred and eighty-four of the Seventy-eighth Highlanders one hundred and ninety men of the Eighty-fourth Regiment, twenty-two men of the Bengal Artillery. Total of British regular troops, thirteen hundred and eighty-three, with eight guns. Besides these he had Warrener's Horse. Of natives he had the Ferozepore Regiment (Sikhs), four hundred and forty-eight strong, ninety-five men of the native irregular cavalry, who were worse than useless, and eighteen mounted native police.
The order for a halt was welcome indeed to the troops. Havelock's column had marched twenty-four miles without resting or eating, and fires were speedily lighted, and preparation made for breakfast. Major Tytler, quartermaster-general to the force, had, on arriving at the halting-place, taken twenty of Warrener's Horse, and had gone forward to reconnoiter. The water was growing hot, and the tired soldiers as they lay on the ground, pipes in mouths, were thinking that breakfast would soon be ready, when there was an exclamation: "Here come the Horse! Something's up!"
The reconnoitering party were seen galloping back at full speed, and a minute or two later a large body of the enemy's cavalry in rapid pursuit emerged from a tope on the edge of the plain. The bugles sounded to arms, and the men grasped their fire-arms and fell in, but not without many a muttered exclamation of disgust.
"Confound them! they might have given us time for breakfast!"
"They need not be in such a hurry; the day's long enough."
"I thought I hated them fellows as bad as a chap could do; but I owe them another now."
A laugh was raised by a young officer saying cheerily to his men, "Nevermind, lads, we'll return good for evil. They won't let us have enough to eat, and we are going to give them more than they can digest."
In a very short time a considerable force of the enemy's infantry appeared, following the cavalry, and with them were some guns, which at once opened on the British force.
Hitherto General Havelock had made no move. He knew that his men urgently needed rest and food. The sun had come out, and was blazing fiercely; and it was of great importance that the troops should eat before undertaking what could not but be a heavy morning's work; but the enemy, who believed that they had only Major Renaud's weak force before them, pressed forward so boldly that there was no refusing the challenge so offered. The order was given to advance, and the men, with a hearty cheer, moved forward against the enemy, whose force consisted of fifteen hundred Sepoys, fifteen hundred Oude tribesmen, and five hundred rebel cavalry, with twelve guns. Their position was a strong one, for on each side of the road the plain was a swamp, and in many places was two and even more feet under water. In front, on a rising ground, were some villages with gardens and mango-groves, and behind this Futtehpore itself, with gardens with high walls, and many houses of solid masonry.
It may, however, be said that the fight was decided as soon as begun. The British artillery silenced that of the enemy; the British rifles drove their infantry before them. Warrener's Horse and the irregular cavalry moved on the flank, the infantry marched straight the swamps, and while some of the guns kept on the solid road, others had to be dragged and pushed with immense labor through the morass. As the British advanced the enemy fell back, abandoning gun after gun. The general of the Sepoy force was on an elephant, on rising ground in the rear of his troops, and Captain Maude, who commanded the artillery, by a well-aimed shot knocked the elephant over, to the great delight of the gunners. After that the rebels attempted no further resistance, and fled to Futtehpore. There they prepared to make a stand in the houses and gardens; but our men, whose blood was now thoroughly up, and who were disgusted at their failure to get at their foe, went forward with a rush, and the enemy fled without hesitation.
The streets of Futtehpore were absolutely choked with the baggage train of the defeated rebels, and the discovery of many articles of attire of English ladies and children raised the fury of the troops to the highest point. Pursuit of the enemy was, however, impossible. The troops were utterly exhausted, and officers and men threw themselves down where-ever a little shade could be found. At three o'clock the baggage came up, and by the forethought of the commissariat officer in charge some camels laden with rum and biscuit came up with it, so that the men were able to have a biscuit and a little spirits and water, which revived them; for whatever be the demerits of spirits upon ordinary occasions, on an emergency of this kind it is a restorative of a very valuable kind.
Singularly enough, in this battle, in which thirty-five hundred men were defeated and twelve guns captured, not a single British soldier was killed, the enemy never waiting until fairly within shot. Twelve soldiers, however, fell and died from sunstroke during the fight.
On the 13th the troops halted to rest. The guns taken from the enemy were brought in, and the great baggage train captured in the town organized for our own service.
On the 14th the force again advanced along a road literally strewn with arms, cartridges, chests of ammunition, shot, clothing, and tents, abandoned in their flight by the insurgents. The most welcome find to the army were forty barrels of English porter, part of the Sepoys' loot at one of the scenes of mutiny. That night the force encamped at Kulleanpore, twenty-seven miles from Cawnpore.
"So far it has been easy work, except for the legs," Major Warrener said, as he sat with his sons and his officers on the evening of the 13th; "but it will be very different work now. These scoundrels are fighting with ropes round their necks; they know that every Cawnpore Sepoy who falls into our hands will have but a short shrift, and they can't help fighting. Altogether, they have something like five times our force; and as they have all been most carefully drilled and trained by ourselves, the scoundrels ought to make a good fight of it."
"I don't mind the fighting," Ned said, "so much as the heat; it is awful."
"It is hot, Ned," Captain Dunlop said; "but at rate it is better for us who sit on horseback than for the men who have to march, and carry a rifle and ammunition."
"Do you think we shall have fighting to-morrow, father?" Dick asked.
"We are certain to do so. The pandies have been intrenching themselves very strongly at Dong, which is five miles from here. But this is not the worst part. We know they have placed two heavy guns on the other side of the Pandoo Nuddee, which is a large stream three miles beyond Dong. These guns will sweep not only the bridge, but the straight road for a mile leading to it. The bridge, too, has, we know, been mined; and our only chance is to go on with the mutineers, so as to give them no time to blow it up."
The work of the 14th, however, was less severe than was expected. The enemy fought stoutly at the village, advancing beyond the inclosures to meet our troops. Our superior rifle and artillery fire, however, drove them back, and then they clung stubbornly to the village and inclosures, our advance being retarded by the threatening attitude of large bodies of the enemy's cavalry, who moved upon the flanks and menaced the baggage. The force under Havelock being so weak in cavalry--for the native irregulars had been disarmed and dismounted for their bad conduct--there remained only Warrener's Horse, who were known in the force as the "volunteers." These covered the baggage, and executed several brilliant charges on parties of the enemy's cavalry who came too boldly forward; but the artillery had to be brought from the front, and to open upon the heavy masses of the enemy's cavalry, before they would fall back. Then the column pressed forward again, captured Dong, with two guns placed there, and drove the enemy out in headlong flight.
Then the force moved forward to the capture of the Pandoo bridge. As the artillery, who were at the head of the column, debouched from a wood into the straight bit of road leading to the bridge two puffs of smoke burst from a low ridge ahead, followed by the boom of heavy guns, and the twenty-four pound shot, splendidly aimed, crashed in among the guns, bullocks, and men. Again and again the enemy's guns were fired with equal accuracy. Our light guns were at the distance no match for these twenty-four pounders, and Captain Maude ordered two guns to advance straight along the road until within easy practice distance, and two others to go across the country to the right and left, so as to take the bridge, which stood at the extremity of a projecting bend of the river, or, as it is called in military parlance, a salient angle, in flank.
The Madras Fusiliers, in skirmishing line, preceded the guns, and their Enfield fire, as soon as they were within range, astonished the enemy. Then the artillery opened with shrapnel, and nearly at the first round silenced the enemy's guns by killing the majority of the gunners and smashing the sponging rods. Then the infantry advanced at a charge, and the enemy, who were massed to defend the bridge, at once lost heart and fled. They tried to blow up the bridge, but in their haste they blundered over it; and while the parapets were injured, the arches remained intact.
After all this fighting, the British loss was but six killed and twenty-three wounded--among the latter being that brave officer Major Renaud, whose leg was broken by a musket shot while leading the Madras Fusiliers.
Finding that the resistance was becoming more and more obstinate, General Havelock sent off a horseman to Brigadier General Neil at Allahabad, begging him to send up three hundred more British troops with all speed. On receiving the message General Neil sent off two hundred and twenty-seven men of the Eighty-fourth Regiment in bullock vans, with orders to do twenty-five miles a day, which would take them to Cawnpore in less than five days. He himself came on with the reinforcements, Allahabad being by this time quiet and safe.
At daybreak next morning the troops marched fourteen miles, halted, and cooked their food; after which, at one o'clock, they prepared to attack the enemy, who were, our spies told us, in a position extremely strong in the front, but capable of being attacked by a flank movement. In the burning heat of the sun, with men falling out fainting at every step, the troops, under a heavy artillery fire of the enemy, turned off the road and swept round to execute the flank movement as calmly and regularly as if on parade.
When they reached the points assigned to them for the attack they advanced; and then, while the skirmishers and the artillery engaged the enemy, who were strongly posted in the inclosures of a village, the main body lay down. The enemy's guns were, however, too strongly posted to be silenced, and the Seventy-eighth were ordered to take the position by assault. The Highlanders moved forward in a steady line until within a hundred yards of the village; then at the word "Charge!" they went at it with a wild rush, delighted that at last they were to get hand to hand with their foe. Not a shot was fired or a shout uttered as they threw themselves upon the mutineers; the bayonet did its work silently and thoroughly.
A breach once made in the enemy's line, position after position was carried--Highlanders, Sixty-fourth men, and Sikhs vieing with each other in the ardor with which they charged the foe, the enemy everywhere fighting stubbornly, though vainly.
At last, at six in the evening, all opposition ceased, and the troops marched into the old parade ground of Cawnpore, having performed a twenty-two miles' march, and fought for five hours, beneath a sun of tremendous power.
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{
"id": "7071"
}
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12
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DANGEROUS SERVICE.
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On the morning of the 17th of July the troops rose with light hearts from the ground where they had thrown themselves, utterly exhausted, after the tremendous exertions of the previous day. Cawnpore was before them, and as they did not anticipate any further resistance--for the whole of the enemy's guns had fallen into their hands, and the Sepoys had fled in the wildest confusion at the end of the day, after fighting with obstinacy and determination as long as a shadow of hope of victory remained--they looked forward to the joy of releasing from captivity the hapless women and children who were known to have been confined in the house called the Subada Khotee, since the massacre of their husbands and friends on the river.
Just after daybreak there was a dull, deep report, and a cloud of gray smoke rose over the city. Nana Sahib had ordered the great magazine to be blown up, and had fled for his life to Bithoor. Well might he be hopeless. He had himself commanded at the battle of the preceding day, and had seen eleven thousand of his countrymen, strongly posted, defeated by a thousand Englishmen. What chance, then, could there be of final success? As for himself, his life was a thousandfold forfeit; and even yet his enemies did not know the measure of his atrocities. It was only when the head of the British column arrived at the Subada Khotee that the awful truth became known. The troops halted, surprised that no welcome greeted them. They entered the courtyard; all was hushed and quiet, but fragments of dresses, children's shoes, and other remembrances of British occupation, lay scattered about. Awed and silent, the leading officers entered the house, and, after a glance round, recoiled with faces white with horror. The floor was deep in blood; the walls were sprinkled thickly with it. Fragments of clothes, tresses of long hair, children's shoes with the feet still in them--a thousand terrible and touching mementos of the butchery which had taken place there met the eye. Horror-struck and sickened, the officers returned into the courtyard, to find that another discovery had been made, namely, that the great well near the house was choked to the brim with the bodies of women and children. Not one had escaped.
On the afternoon of the 15th, when the defeat at Futtehpore was known, the Nana had given orders for a general massacre of his helpless prisoners. There, in this ghastly well, were the remains, not only of those who had so far survived the siege and first massacre of Cawnpore, but of some seventy or eighty women and children, fugitives from Futteyghur. These had, with their husbands, fathers and friends, a hundred and thirty in all, reached Cawnpore in boats on the 12th of July. Here the boats had been fired upon and forced to put to shore, when the men were, by the Nairn's orders, all butchered, and the women and children sent to share the fate of the prisoners of Cawnpore.
Little wonder is it that the soldiers, who had struggled against heat and fatigue and a host of foes to reach Cawnpore, broke clown and cried like children at that terrible sight; that soldiers picked up the bloody relics--a handkerchief, a lock of hair, a child's sock sprinkled with blood--and kept them to steel their hearts to all thoughts of mercy; and that, after this, they went into battle crying to each other: "Remember the ladies!" "Remember the babies!" "Think of Cawnpore!" Henceforth, to the end of the war, no quarter was ever shown to a Sepoy.
One of the first impulses of the Warreners, when the tents were pitched in the old cantonments, and the troops were dismissed, was to ride with their father to the house of the ranee. It was found to be abandoned-as, indeed, was the greater part of the town--and an old servant, who alone remained, said that two days previously the ranee had left for her country abode. Major Warrener at once drew out a paper, saying that the owner of this house had shown hospitality and kindness to English fugitives, and that it was therefore to be preserved from all harm or plunder; and having obtained the signature of the quartermaster-general in addition to his own, he affixed the paper to the door of the dwelling. The next day he rode out with his sons and twenty of his men to the house where the boys had first been sheltered. The gates were opened at his summons by some trembling retainers, who hastened to assure them that the ranee, their mistress, was friendly to the English.
"Will you tell her that there is no cause for alarm, but that we desire an interview with her?" the major said, dismounting.
In a minute the servant returned, and begged the major to follow him, which he did, accompanied by his sons. They were shown into a grand reception room, where the ranee, thickly veiled, was sitting on a couch, surrounded by her attendants, Ahrab standing beside her.
The ranee gave a little cry of pleasure on recognizing the boys, and Ahrab instantly signed to the other attendants to retire. Then the ranee unveiled, and the major, who had remained near the entrance until the attendants had left, came forward, the boys kissing the hands that the ranee held out to them.
"I have mourned for you as dead," she said. "When the news of that horrible treachery came, and I thought that I had let you go to death, my heart turned to water."
"This is our father, dear lady," Ned said; "he has come to thank you himself for having saved and sheltered us."
The interview lasted for half an hour; refreshment being served, Ned recounted the particulars of their escape. Major Warrener, on leaving, handed the ranee a protection order signed by the general, to show to any British troops who might be passing, and told her that her name would be sent in with the list of those who had acted kindly to British fugitives, all of whom afterward received honors and rewards in the shape of the lands of those who had joined the mutineers. Then, with many expressions of good-will on both sides, the major and his sons took their leave, and, joining the troops below, rode back to Cawnpore.
For three days after his arrival at Cawnpore General Havelock rested his troops, and occupied himself with restoring order in the town. Numbers of Sepoys were found in hiding, and these were, as soon as identified, all hung at once. On the third day Brigadier-General Neil arrived, with the two hundred and twenty men of the Eighty-fourth, who had been hurried forward-a most welcome reinforcement, for Havelock's force was sadly weakened by loss in battle, sunstroke, and disease. On the 20th the army marched against Bithoor, every heart beating at the thought of engaging Nana Sahib, who, with five thousand men and a large number of cannon, had made every preparation for the defense of his castle. At the approach of the avenging force, however, his courage, and the courage of his troops, alike gave way, and they fled without firing a shot, leaving behind them guns, elephants, baggage, men, and horses, in great numbers. The magazine was blown up, and the palace burned, and the force, with their captured booty, returned to Cawnpore.
During the advance to Cawnpore the zeal and bravery of the young Warreners had not escaped the notice of the general, who had named them in his official report as gentlemen volunteers who had greatly distinguished themselves. On the return from Bithoor, on the evening of the 20th, he turned to them as he dismounted, and said, "Will you come to my tent in two hours' time?"
"Young gentlemen," he said, when they presented themselves, and had at his request seated themselves on two boxes which served as chairs, "in what I am going to say to you, mind, I express no wish even of the slightest. I simply state that I require two officers for a service of extreme danger. I want to send a message into Lucknow. None of the officers of the English regiments can speak the language with any fluency, and those of the Madras Fusiliers speak the dialects of Southern India. Therefore it is among the volunteers, who all belong to the northwest, that I must look. I have no doubt that there are many of them who would undertake the service, and whose knowledge of the language would be nearly perfect, but there are reasons why I ask you whether you will volunteer for the work. In the first place, you have already three times passed, while in disguise, as natives; and in the second, your figures being slight, and still a good deal under the height you will attain, render your disguise far less easy to be detected than that of a full-grown man would be. If you undertake it, you will have a native guide, who last night arrived from Lucknow with a message to me, having passed through the enemy's lines. You understand, young gentlemen, the service is one of great honor and credit if accomplished, but it is also one of the greatest risk. I cannot so well intrust the mission to the native alone, because I dare not put on paper the tidings I wish conveyed, and it is possible, however faithful he may be, that he might, if taken and threatened with death, reveal the message with which he is charged. I see by your faces what your answer is about to be, but I will not hear it now. Go first to your father. Tell him exactly what I have told you, and then send me the answer if he declines to part with you--bring it me if he consents to your going. Remember that in yielding what I see is your own inclination, to his natural anxiety, you will not fall in the very least from the high position in which you stand in my regard. In an hour I shall expect to hear from you. Good-night, if I do not see you again."
"Of course father will let us go," Dick said when they got outside the tent. Ned did not reply.
"Dick, old boy," he said presently, as they walked along, "don't you think if I go alone it would be better. It would be an awful blow to father to lose both of us."
"No, Ned," Dick said warmly, "I hope he will not decide that. I know I can't talk the lingo as you can, and that so I add to your danger; still sometimes in danger two can help each other, and we have gone through so much together--oh, Ned, don't propose that you should go alone."
Major Warrener--or Colonel Warrener as he should now be called, for General Havelock had given him a step in rank, in recognition of the most valuable service of his troop during the battles on the road to Cawnpore--heard Ned in silence while he repeated, as nearly as possible word for word, the words of the general. For some time he was silent, and sat with his face in his hands.
"I don't like you both going, my boys," he said huskily.
"No, father," Dick said, "I feared that that was what you would say; but although in some respects I should be a hindrance to Ned from not speaking the language, in others I might help him. Two are always better than one in a scrape, and if he got ill or wounded or anything I could nurse him; and two people together keep up each other's spirits. You know, father, we have got through some bad scrapes together all right, and I don't see why we should not get through this. We shall be well disguised; and no end of Sepoys, and people from Cawnpore, must be making their way to Lucknow, so that very few questions are likely to be asked. It does not seem to me anything like as dangerous a business as those we have gone through, for the last thing they would look for is Englishmen making their way to Lucknow at present. The guide who is going with us got out, you know; and they must be looking out ten times as sharp to prevent people getting out, as to prevent any one getting in."
"I really do not think, father," Ned said, "that the danger of detection is great-certainly nothing like what it was before. Dick and I will of course go as Sepoys, and Dick can bind up his face and mouth as if he had been wounded, and was unable to speak. There must be thousands of them making their way to Lucknow, and we shall excite no attention whatever. The distance is not forty miles."
"Very well, boys, so be it," Colonel Warrener said. "There is much in what you say; and reluctant as I am to part with you both, yet somehow the thought that you are together, and can help each other, will be a comfort to me. God bless you, my boys! Go back to the general, and say I consent freely to your doing the duty for which he has selected you. I expect you will have to start at once, but you will come back here to change."
General Havelock expressed his warm satisfaction when the boys returned with their father's consent to their undertaking the adventure. "I understand from Colonel Warrener," he said, addressing Ned, "that you are intended for the army. I have deferred telling you that on the day of the first fight I sent your name home, begging that you might be gazetted on that date to a commission in the Sixty-fourth. Your name will by this time have appeared in order. There are only two ensigns now in the regiment, and ere I see you again there will, I fear, be more than that even of death vacancies, so that you will have got your step. I will do the same for you," he said, turning to Dick, "if you like to give up your midshipman's berth and take to the army."
"No, thank you, sir," Dick said, laughing. "By the time this is over, I shall have had enough of land service to last my life."
"I have already sent down a report to the admiral of your conduct," General Havelock said; "and as a naval brigade is coming up under Captain Peel, you will be able to sail under your true colors before long. Now for your instructions. You are to inform Colonel Inglis, who is in command since the death of Sir H. Lawrence, that, although I am on the point of endeavoring to push forward to his rescue, I have no hope whatever of success. Across the river large forces of Oude irregulars, with guns, are collected, and every step of the way will be contested. I must leave a force to hold Cawnpore, and I have only eleven hundred bayonets in all. With such a force as this it is impossible, if the enemy resists as stubbornly as may be expected, for me to fight my way to Lucknow, still more to force my way through the city, held by some ten or fifteen thousand men, to the Residency, I may say that I have no hope of doing this till I am largely reinforced. Still, my making a commencement of a march, and standing constantly on the offensive, will force the enemy to keep a large force on the road to oppose me, and will in so far relieve the Residency from some of its foes. You see the importance of your message. Did the enemy know my weakness, they would be able to turn their whole force against the Residency. Tell our countrymen there that they must hold out to the last, but that I hope and believe that in a month from the present time the reinforcements will be up, and that I shall be able to advance to their rescue. Colonel Inglis says that their stores will last to the end of August, and that he believes that he can repel all attacks. The native who goes with you bears word only that I am on the point of advancing to the relief of the garrison. So if the worst happens, and you are all taken, his message, if he betrays it, will only help to deceive the enemy. You will start tonight if possible. I leave it to you to arrange your disguises, and have ordered the guide to be at your father's tent at nine o'clock--that is, in an hour and a half's time--so that if you can be ready by that time, you will get well away before daybreak. There is a small boat four miles up the river, that the guide crossed in; he hid it in some bushes, so you will cross without difficulty; and even if you are caught crossing, your story that you are Sepoys who have been hiding for the last few days will pass muster. Now, good-by, lads, and may God watch over you and keep you!"
Upon their return to Colonel Warrener's tent they found their friends Captains Dunlop and Manners, and two or three of the officers most accustomed to native habits and ways, and all appliances for disguise. First the boys took a hearty meal; then they stripped, and were sponged with iodine from head to foot; both were then dressed in blood-stained Sepoy uniforms, of which there were thousands lying about, for the greater portion of the enemy had thrown off their uniforms before taking to flight. Ned's left arm was bandaged up with bloody rags, and put in a sling, and Dick's head and face were similarly tied up, though he could not resist a motion of repugnance as the foul rags were applied to him. Both had a quantity of native plaster and bandages placed next to the skin, in case suspicion should fall upon them and the outside bandages be removed to see if wounds really existed; and Dick was given a quantity of tow, with which to fill his mouth and swell out his cheeks and lips, to give the appearance which would naturally arise from a severe wound in the jaw. Caste marks were painted on their foreheads; and their disguise was pronounced to be absolutely perfect to the eye. Both were barefooted, as the Sepoys never travel in the regimental boots if they can avoid it.
At the appointed time the guide was summoned, an intelligent-looking Hindoo in country dress. He examined his fellow-travelers, and pronounced himself perfectly satisfied with their appearance.
Outside the tent six horses were in readiness. Colonel Warrener, and his friends Dunlop and Manners, mounted on three, the others were for the travelers; and with a hearty good-by to their other friends in the secret, the party started.
Half an hour's riding took them to the place where the boat was concealed in the bushes; and with a tender farewell from their father, and a hearty good-by from his companions, the three adventurers took their places in the boat and started.
Noiselessly they paddled across the Ganges, stepped out in the shallow water on the other side, turned the boat adrift to float down with the stream, and then struck across the country toward Lucknow.
They were now off the main road, on which the Oude mutineers collected to oppose the advance of General Havelock were for the most part stationed. Thus they passed village after village, unchallenged and unquestioned, and morning, when it dawned, found them twenty miles on the road toward Lucknow. Then they went into a wood and lay down to sleep, for even if any one should enter accidentally and discover them, they had no fear of any suspicion arising. They were now near the main road, and when they started--just as it became dusk--they met various parties of horse and foot proceeding toward Cawnpore; sometimes they passed without a question, sometimes a word or two were said, the guide answering, and asking how things went at Lucknow.
The subject was evidently a sore one; for curses on the obstinate Feringhee dogs, and threats as to their ultimate fate, were their only reply.
Eighteen miles' walk, and a great black wall rose in front of them.
"That is the Alumbagh," the guide said; "the sahibs will have a big fight here. It is a summer palace and garden of the king. Once past this we will leave the road. It is but two miles to the canal and we must not enter the city--not that I fear discovery, but there would be no possibility of entering the Residency on this side. Our only chance is on the side I left it; that is by crossing the river. We must work round the town."
"How far are we from the Residency now? I can hear the cannon very clearly;" and indeed for the last two hours of their walk the booming of guns had been distinctly audible.
"It is about five miles in a straight line, but it will be double by the route we must take."
Turning to the right after passing the dark mass of the Alumbagh, the little party kept away through a wooded country until another great building appeared in sight.
"That is the Dilkouska," the guide said. "Now we will go half a mile further and then sleep; we cannot get in to-night."
In the afternoon they were awake again, and took their seats on a bank at a short distance from any road, and looked at the city.
"What an extraordinary view!" Ned said. "What fantastic buildings! What an immense variety of palaces and mosques! What is that strange building nearest to us?" he asked the guide.
"That is the Martinière. It was built many years ago by a Frenchman in the service of the king of Oude. Now it is a training college. All the pupils are in the Residency, and are fighting like men. Beyond, between us and the Residency, are several palaces and mosques. That is the Residency; do you not see an English house with a tower, and a flag flying over it, standing alone on that rising ground by the river?"
"And that is the Residency!" the boys exclaimed, looking at the building in which, and the surrounding houses, a handful of Englishmen were keeping at bay an army.
"That is the Residency," their guide said; "do you not see the circle of smoke which rises around it? Listen; I can hear the rattle of musketry quite distinctly."
"And how are we to get there?" the boys asked, impatient to be at work taking part in the defense.
"We will keep on here to the right; the river is close by. We will swim across after it gets dark, make a wide sweep round, and then come down to the river again opposite the Residency, swim across, and then we are safe."
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{
"id": "7071"
}
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13
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LUCKNOW.
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Lucknow, although the capital of Oude, the center of a warlike people smarting under recent annexation, had for a long time remained tranquil after insurrection and massacre were raging unchecked in the northwest. Sir Henry Lawrence, a man of great decision and firmness united to pleasant and conciliating manners, had, when the Sepoys began to hold nightly meetings and to exhibit signs of recklessness, toward the end of April, telegraphed to government for full power to act; and having obtained the required authorization, he awaited with calmness the first sign of insubordination. This was exhibited by the men of the Seventh Oude Irregular Infantry, who on the 3d of May endeavored to seduce the men of the Forty-eighth Native Regiment from its allegiance, and broke out into acts of open mutiny. Sir Henry Lawrence the same evening marched the Thirty-second Foot and and a battery of European artillery, with some native regiments to their lines, three miles from the city, surrounded and disarmed them, and arrested their ringleaders. After this act of decision and energy, Lucknow had peace for some time. The native troops, awed and subdued, remained tranquil, and on the 27th of May Lucknow still remained quiet, whereas every other station in Oude, except Cawnpore, was in the hands of the rebels.
At the same time every preparation had been made for the struggle which all regarded as inevitable. The houses which formed two sides of the large irregular square in the center of which stood the Residency were connected by earthworks, and a breastwork, composed of sandbags and fascines, surrounded the other sides. Stores of provisions were collected, cattle driven in, and every preparation made for a lengthened defense. The cantonments were three miles distant from the Residency, and were occupied by the Thirteenth, Forty-eighth, and Seventy-first Native Infantry and Seventh Native Cavalry. Her majesty's Twenty-second Regiment, a battery of European artillery, and a small force of native horse.
On the evening of the 30th of May the revolt broke out. It began in the lines of the Seventy-first, and spread at once to the other native regiments, who took up arms, fired the bungalows, and killed all the officers upon whom they could lay hands. Happily all was in readiness, and a company of European troops, with two guns, took up their post on the road leading to the city, so as to bar the movement of the mutineers in that direction. Nothing could be done till morning, when Sir Henry Lawrence, with a portion of the Thirty-second, and the guns, moved to attack the mutineers. The British were joined by seven hundred men of the various regiments, who remained true to their colors, and the mutineers at once fled, with such rapidity that, although pursued for seven miles, only thirty prisoners were taken.
The troops then marched quickly back to the Residency, where their presence was much needed, as there was great excitement in the town, and a good deal of fighting between the police and the roughs of the city, who endeavored to get up a general rising and an indiscriminate plunder of the town. Sir Henry Lawrence upon his return restored order, erected a large gallows outside the fort and hung some of the rioters, executed a dozen of the mutinous Sepoys, rewarded those who had remained faithful, and for a time restored order. All the European residents in Lucknow were called into the lines of the Residency, the small European force being divided between that post and the Mutchee Bawn, a strong fort three-quarters of a mile distant, and the remnant of the native infantry regiments who had so far remained true, but who might at any moment turn traitors, were offered three months' leave to go home to their friends. Many accepted the offer and left, but a portion remained behind, and fought heroically through the siege by the side of the whites. Thus one source of anxiety for the garrison was removed; and safe now from treachery within, they had only to prepare to resist force from without.
So determined was the front shown by the little body of British that Lucknow, with its unruly population of over a quarter of a million, remained quiet all through the month of June. It was not until the last day of the month that the storm was to burst. On the 30th a body of insurgent Sepoys, some seven or eight thousand strong, having approached to Chinhut, within a few miles of the town, Sir Henry Lawrence, with two companies of the Thirty-second, eleven guns, some of them manned by natives, and eighty native cavalry, went out to give them battle.
The affair was disastrous; the native cavalry bolted, the native gunners fled, and after a loss of sixty men, three officers, and six guns, the British troops with difficulty fought their way back to the Residency. The rebels entered the town in triumph, and the city at once rose, the respectable inhabitants were killed, the bazaar looted, and then, assured of success, the enemy prepared to overwhelm the little British garrison.
Immediately upon the return of the defeated column, it became evident that the weakened force could not hold the two positions. Accordingly the Mutchee Bawn was evacuated, its great magazine, containing two hundred and forty barrels of powder and six hundred thousand rounds of ammunition, was blown up, and the British force was reunited in the Residency.
In order that the position of affairs in this, perhaps the most remarkable siege that ever took place, should be understood, it is as well to give a full description of the defenses. The Residency and its surroundings formed an irregular, lozenge-shaped inclosure, having its acute angles nearly north and south, the southern extremity being contiguous to the Cawnpore Road, and the northern point approaching near to the iron bridge over the river Goomtee. Near the south point of the inclosure was the house of Major Anderson, standing in the middle of a garden or open court, and surrounded by a wall; the house was defended by barricades, and loopholed for musketry, while the garden was strengthened by a trench and rows of palisades. Next to this house, and communicating with it by a hole in the wall, was a newly constructed defense work called the Cawnpore Battery, mounted with guns, and intended to command the houses and streets adjacent to the Cawnpore Road. The house next to this, occupied by a Mr. Deprat, had a mud wall, six feet high and two and a half thick, built along in front of its veranda, and this was continued to the next house, being raised to the height of nine feet between the houses, and loopholed for musketry. This next house was inhabited by the boys from the Martinière School. It was defended by a stockade and trench, both of which were continued across a road which divided this house from the next, which stood near the western angle, and was the brigade messhouse. This house had a lofty and well-protected terrace, commanding the houses outside the inclosure. In its rear were a number of small buildings, occupied by officers and their families.
Next to the brigade messhouse were two groups of low buildings, called the Sikh Squares, and on the flat roofs of these buildings sandbag parapets were raised. Next to this, at the extreme western point, stood the house of Mr. Gubbins, the commissioner, a strong building, defended with stockades, and having at the angle a battery, called Gubbins' Battery. Along the northwestern side were a number of yards and buildings, the racket-court, the sheep-pens, the slaughter-house, the cattle-yard, a storehouse for the food for the cattle, and a guardhouse; and behind them stood a strong building known as Ommaney's house, guarded by a deep ditch and cactus hedge, and defended with two pieces of artillery. A mortar battery was planted north of the slaughter-house. Next along the line was the church, converted now into a granary, and in the churchyard was a mortar battery. Next came the house of Lieutenant Innis, a weak and difficult post to hold, commanded as it was by several houses outside the inclosure. Commanding the extreme north point, which was in itself very weak, was the Redan Battery, a well-constructed work. From this point, facing the river, was a strong earthwork, and outside the sloping garden served as a glacis, and rendered attack on this side difficult. Near the eastern angle stood the hospital, a very large stone building, formerly the banqueting-hall of the British residents at the court of Oude. Near the hospital, but on lower ground, was the Bailey Guard. Dr. Fayrer's house, south of the hospital, was strongly built, and from its terraced roof an effective musketry fire could be kept up on an enemy approaching on this side. Next to it came the civil dispensary, and then the post office, a strong position, defended by a battery. Between this and the south corner came the financial office, Sago's house, the judicial office, and the jail. The Residency, a spacious and handsome building, stood in the center of the northern portion of the inclosure, surrounded by gardens. It was on elevated ground, and from its terraced roof a splendid view of the city and surrounding country could be obtained. The begum's khotee, or ladies' house, stood near the center of the inclosure; it was a large building, and was used as a commissariat store and for the dwellings of many officers' families. Thus it will be seen that the Residency at Lucknow, as defended against the insurgents, comprised a little town grouped round the dwelling of the Resident.
In this little circle of intrenchments were gathered, on the 1st of July, when the siege began, over a thousand women and children, defended by a few hundred British troops and civilians, and about a hundred and fifty men remaining faithful from the Sepoy regiments. Upon that day the enemy opened fire from several batteries. A shell penetrated the small room in the Residency in which Sir Henry Lawrence was sitting, and passed between him and his private secretary, Mr. Cowper. His officers begged him to change his room, but he declined to do so, saying laughingly that the room was so small that there was no chance of another shell finding its way in. He was, however, mistaken, for the very next day a shell entered, and burst in the room, the fragments inflicting a mortal wound upon Sir Henry, who died a few hours afterward. The loss was a heavy one indeed, both to the garrison, to whom his energy, calmness, and authority were invaluable, and to England, who lost in him one of her noblest and most worthy sons. On his death the command of the defense devolved upon Colonel Inglis, of the Thirty-second Regiment, a most gallant and skillful officer. After this, day after day the fighting had continued, the enemy ever gaining in numbers and in strength, erecting fresh batteries, and keeping up a ceaseless fire night and day upon the garrison.
The Warreners with their guide experienced the difficulties which this increased activity of the attack caused to emissaries trying to enter or leave the Residency. After it had become dark they swam the Goomtee, and made a wide circuit, and then tried to approach the river again opposite the Residency. Several batteries, however, had been erected on this side since the guide had left, five days before, and these were connected by a chain of sentries, so closely placed that it would have been madness to endeavor to pass them unseen. It was clear that the mutineers were determined to cut off all communication to or from the garrison. The little party skirted the line of sentries, a line indicated clearly enough by the bivouac fires on the near side of them. Round these large numbers of mutineers were moving about, cooking, smoking, and conversing.
"It is hopeless to attempt to get through here," said Ned.
"We will go on to the road leading to the iron bridge," the guide replied; "we can follow that to the river and then slip aside."
Here, however, they were foiled again, as fires were lighted and there were sentries on the road to forbid all except those on business to pass. Presently a body of men came along, bearing shell upon their heads for the service of the batteries on the other side of the river.
"Whence are they fetching these?" Ned asked the guide.
"From the king's magazine, a quarter of a mile away to the right. They are taking ammunition, now, for the bridge is within four hundred yards of the Redan battery, and they cannot cross at daylight under fire."
"Here is a party coming back," Ned said; "let us fall in behind them, go to the magazine and get shell, and then follow back again till we are close to the bridge, and trust to luck in getting clear."
The guide assented, and they followed the Sepoys down to the magazine, keeping a little behind the others, and being the last to enter the yard where the loaded shell were standing.
Each took a shell and followed closely upon the heels of the party. In the dark no one noticed the addition to their number, and they passed the sentries on the road without question. Then they fell a little behind. The natives paused just before they reached the bridge; for the British knowing that ammunition was nightly being carried over, fired an occasional shot in that direction. The party halted under shelter of a house until a shot flew past, and then hurried forward across the exposed spot. As they did so, the Warreners and their guide placed the shells they were carrying on the ground, turned off from the road, climbed a garden wall, and in a minute were close to the river.
"Go silently," the guide said; "there are some more sentries here."
Stealing quietly along, for they were all shoeless, they could see crouching figures between them and the water, every twenty yards apart.
"We shall have to run the gantlet, Ned," Dick said. "Our best chance will be to shove one of these fellows suddenly into the water, jump in and dive for it. You and I can dive across that river, and we shall come up under the shadow of the opposite bank."
Ned spoke to the guide.
"The water is shallow for the first few yards, sahib, but we shall get across that into two feet, which is deep enough for us, before the sentries have recovered from their surprise. They are sure to fire at random, and we shall be out of the water on the other side before they have loaded again."
The plan agreed to, they stripped off their uniforms, and crept quietly along until they were close to a sentry. Then with a bound they sprang upon him, rolled him over the bank into the shallow water, and dashed forward themselves at the top of their speed.
So sudden was their rush that they were knee-deep before the nearest sentry fired, his ball whizzing over their heads as they threw themselves face downward in the stream, and struck out under water.
Even when full the Goomtee is not more than ninety yards wide, and from the point where they started to equally shallow water on the other side was now not more than forty. The boys could both dive that distance; but their guide, although a good swimmer, was a less expert diver, and had to come twice to the surface for breath. He escaped, however, without a shot; for, as they had expected, the report of the musket was followed by a general volley in the direction of the splash, by all the sentries for some distance on either side. Therefore, when the party rose from the water, and dashed up the other bank, not a shot greeted them. It was clear running now, only a hundred yards up the slope of the garden, to the British earthwork.
"We are friends!" the boys shouted as they ran, and a cheer from the men on watch greeted them. A few shots flew after them from the other side of the river, but these were fired at random, and in another minute the party had scrambled over the earthwork and were among friends.
Hearty were the hand-shakes and congratulations bestowed upon them all; and as the news that messengers had arrived flew like wild-fire round the line of trenches, men came running down, regardless of the bullets which, now that the enemy were thoroughly roused up, sang overhead in all directions.
"We won't ask your message," was the cry, "till you have seen the colonel; but do tell us, is help at hand?"
"English general coming," the native guide said.
"Yes," Ned said, as delighted exclamations at the news arose; "but not yet. Do not excite false hopes among the ladies; some time must pass before help arrives. I must not say more till I have seen Colonel Inglis; but I should be sorry if false hopes were raised."
Cloaks were lent to the boys, and they were taken at once to the Residency, and along passages thronged with sleepers were conducted to Colonel Inglis' room. He had already heard that the native messenger had returned, with two Englishmen in disguise, and he was up and ready to receive them--for men slept dressed, and ready for action at a moment's call.
"Well done, subadar," he exclaimed, as the native entered; "you have nobly earned your step in rank and the five thousand rupees promised to you. Well, what is your message?"
"The General Sahib bids me say that he is coming on to Lucknow with all speed. Cawnpore was taken four days before I left. The Nana has fled from Bithoor, and all goes well. These officers have further news to give you."
"I am indeed glad to see you, gentlemen," Colonel Inglis said, warmly shaking them by the hand. "Whom have I the pleasure of seeing, for at present your appearance is admirably correct as that of two Sepoys?"
"Our name is Warrener," Ned said; "we are brothers. I have just been gazetted to the Sixty-fourth; my brother is a midshipman. We have a message for your private ear, sir; and if I might suggest, it would be better to keep our native friend close by for a few minutes, lest his news spread. You will see the reason when we have spoken to you."
Colonel Inglis gave the sign, and the other officers retired with the guide.
"Our message, sir, is, I regret to say, far less favorable than that transmitted by the subadar, and it was for that reason that General Havelock sent us with him. If taken, he would have told his message, for the general had ordered him to make no secret of his instructions if he fell into the enemy's hands, as it was desirable that they should believe that he was about to advance, and thus relieve the pressure upon you by keeping a large force on the road up from Cawnpore. But in fact, sir, General Havelock bids us tell you that he cannot advance. He has but a thousand bayonets fit for service. He must hold Cawnpore, and the force available for an advance would be hopelessly insufficient to fight his way through Oude and force a road through the city. The instant he receives reinforcements he will advance, and will in the meantime continue to make feints, so as to keep a large force of the enemy on the alert. He fears that it may be a month before he will be able to advance to your aid with a chance of success."
"A month!" Colonel Inglis said; "that is indeed a long time, and we had hoped that already help was at hand. Well, we must do our best. We are even now sorely pressed; but I doubt not we can hold out for a month. General Havelock cannot accomplish impossibilities, and it is wonderful that he should have recaptured Cawnpore with so small a force."
"We thought it better to give you this news privately, colonel, in order that you might, should you think fit, keep from the garrison the knowledge that so long a time must elapse without succor."
"You were quite right, sir," Colonel Inglis said; "but the truth had better be made public. It is far better that all should know that we are dependent upon our own exertions for another month than that they should be vainly looking for assistance to arrive. And now, gentlemen, I will call my officers in, and you shall get some clothes. Unhappily, death is so busy that there will be no difficulty in providing you in that respect. You must want food, too, and that, such as it is, is in plenty also."
The other officers were now called in, and the commandant told them the news that he had received from the Warreners. There was a look of disappointment for a moment, and then cheering answers that they were all good for another month's fighting were made.
"I know, gentlemen," Colonel Inglis said, "our thoughts are all the same. We are ready to fight another month, but we dread the delay for the sake of the women and children. However, God's will be done. All that men can do, this garrison will, I know, do; and with God's help, I believe that whether aid comes a little sooner or later, we shall hold these battered ruins till it arrives. Captain Fellows, will you get these officers something to eat, and some clothes? Then, if they are not too tired, they will perhaps not mind sitting up an hour or two and giving us the news from the outside world."
Daylight was breaking before Ned and Dick--who had, at Colonel Inglis' suggestion separated, Ned going to the colonel's room, while Dick formed the center of a great gathering in a hall below, in order that as many might hear the news as possible--brought to a conclusion the account of Havelock's advance, of the awful massacre of Cawnpore, of the fresh risings that had taken place in various parts of India, of the progress of the siege of Delhi, and the arrival of reinforcements from China and England. With daybreak, the cannon, which had tired at intervals through the night, began to roar incessantly, and shot and shell crashed into the Residency.
"Is this sort of thing always going on?" Dick asked in astonishment.
"Always," was the answer, "by day, and four nights out of five. We have not had so quiet a time as last night for a week. Now I will go and ask the chief to which garrison you and your brother are to be assigned."
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{
"id": "7071"
}
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14
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THE BESIEGED RESIDENCY.
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The Warrener's were taken to Gubbins' house, or garrison, as each of these fortified dwellings was now called; and the distance, short as it was, was so crowded with dangers and disagreeables that they were astonished how human beings could have supported them for a month, as the garrison of Lucknow had done. From all points of the surrounding circle shot and shell howled overhead, or crashed into walls and roofs. Many of the enemy's batteries were not above a hundred yards from the defenses, and the whistling of musket-balls was incessant.
Here and there, as they ran along, great swarms of flies, millions in number, rose from some spot where a bullock, killed by an enemy's shot, had been hastily buried, while horrible smells everywhere tainted the air.
Running across open spaces, and stooping along beneath low walls, the Warreners and their conductor, Captain Fellows, reached Gubbins' house. Mr. Gubbins himself--financial commissioner of Oude, a man of great courage and firmness--received them warmly.
"You will find we are close packed," he said, "but you will, I am sure, make the best of it. I am glad to have you, for every man is of value here; and after the bravery you have shown in coming through the enemy's lines you will be just the right sort of men for me. I think you will find most room here; I lost two of my garrison from this room on the 20th, when we had a tremendous attack all round."
The room was small and dark, as the window was closed by a bank of earth built against it on the outside. It was some fourteen feet by eight, and here, including the newcomers, eight men lived and slept. Here the Warreners, after a few words with those who were in future to be their comrades, threw themselves down on the ground, and, in spite of the din which raged around them, were soon fast asleep.
It was nearly dark when they awoke, and they at once reported themselves to Mr. Johnson--a police magistrate, who was the senior officer of the party in the room--as ready to begin duty.
"You will not be on regular duty till to-night," he replied. "Altogether, there are about forty men in the garrison. Eight are always on duty, and are relieved every four hours. So we go on every twenty hours. Only half our set go on duty together, as that gives room for those who remain. Two came off duty at eight this morning, four are just going on. You will go on with the two who came off this morning, at midnight. Besides their sentry work, of course every one is in Readiness to man the walls at any moment in case of alarm, and a good deal of your time can be spent at loopholes, picking off the enemy directly they show themselves. One of the party, in turn, cooks each day. Besides the fighting duty, there is any amount of fatigue work, the repairing and strengthening of the defenses, the fetching rations and drawing water for the house, in which there are over fifty women and children, the burying dead cattle, and covering blood and filth with earth. Besides defending our own post, we are, of course, ready to rush at any moment to assist any other garrison which may be pressed. Altogether, you will think yourself lucky when you can get four hours' sleep out of the twenty-four."
"Are our losses heavy?" Ned asked.
"Terribly heavy. The first week we lost twenty a day shot in the houses; but now that we have, as far as possible, blocked every loophole at which a bullet can enter, we are not losing so many as at first, but the daily total is still heavy, and on a day like the 20th we lost thirty. The enemy attacked us all round, and we mowed them down with grape; we believe we killed over a thousand of them. Unfortunately, every day our losses are getting heavier from disease, foul air, and overcrowding; the women and children suffer awfully. If you are disposed to make yourselves useful when not on duty, you will find abundant opportunity for kindness among them. I will take you round the house and introduce you to the ladies, then you can go among them as you like."
First the Warreners went to what, in happier times, was the main room of the house, a spacious apartment some thirty-five feet square, with windows opening to the ground at each end, to allow a free passage of air. These, on the side nearest the enemy, were completely closed by a bank of earth; while those on the other side were also built up within a few inches of the top, for shots and shell could equally enter them. The Warreners were introduced to such of the garrison as were in, the greater part being at work outside the house repairing a bank which had been injured during the day. Then Mr. Johnson went to one of the rooms leading off the main apartment. A curtain hung across it instead of a door, and this was now drawn aside to allow what air there was to circulate.
"May I come in?" he asked.
"Certainly, Mr. Johnson," a lady said, coming to the entrance.
"Mrs. Hargreaves, let me introduce the Messrs. Warreners, the gentlemen who have so gallantly come through the enemy's lines with the message. They are to form part of our garrison."
The lady held out her hand, but with a slight air of surprise.
"I suppose our color strikes you as peculiar, Mrs. Hargreaves," Ned said, "but it will wear off in a few days; it is iodine, and we are already a good many shades lighter than when we started."
"How silly of me not to think of that," Mrs. Hargreaves said; "of course I heard that you were disguised. But please come in; it is not much of a room to receive in, but we are past thinking of that now. My daughter, Mrs. Righton; her husband is with mine on guard at present. These are my daughters, Edith and Nelly; these five children are my grandchildren. My dears, these are the Messrs. Warreners, who brought the news from General Havelock. Their faces are stained, but will be white again in time."
The ladies all shook hands with the Warreners, who looked with surprise on the neatness which prevailed in this crowded little room. On the ground, by the walls, were several rolls of bedding covered over with shawls, and forming seats or lounges. On the top of one of the piles two little children were fast asleep. A girl of six sat in a corner on the ground reading. There were two or three chairs, and these the ladies, seating themselves on the divan, as they called the bedding, asked their visitors to take.
Mrs. Hargreaves was perhaps forty-five years old, with a pleasant face, marked by firmness and intelligence. Mrs. Righton was twenty-five or twenty-six, and her pale face showed more than that of her mother the effects of the anxiety and confinement of the siege. Edith and Nelly were sixteen and fifteen respectively, and although pale, the siege had not sufficed to mar their bright faces or to crush their spirits.
"Dear me," Nelly said, "why, you look to me to be quite boys; why, you can't be much older than I am, are you?"
"My dear Nelly," her mother said reprovingly; but Dick laughed heartily.
"I am not much older than you are," he said; "a year, perhaps, but not more. I am a midshipman in the Agamemnon. My brother is a year older than I am, and he is gazetted to the Sixty-fourth; so you see, if the times were different, we should be just the right age to be your devoted servants."
"Oh, you can be that now," Nelly said. "I am sure we want them more than ever; don't we, mamma?"
"I think you have more than your share of servants now, Nelly," replied her mother. "We are really most fortunate, Mr. Johnson, in having our ayah still with us; so many were deserted by their servants altogether, and she is an admirable nurse. I do not know what we should do without her, for the heat and confinement make the poor children sadly fractious. We were most lucky yesterday, for we managed to secure a dobee for the day, and you see the result;" and she smilingly indicated the pretty light muslins in which her daughters were dressed. "You see us quite at our best," she said, turning to the boys. "But we have, indeed," she went on seriously, "every reason to be thankful. So far we have not lost any of our party, and there are few indeed who can say this. These are terrible times, young gentlemen, and we are all in God's hands. We are exceptionally well off, but we find our hands full. My eldest daughter has to aid the ayah with the children; then there is the cooking to be done by me, and the room to be kept tidy by Edith and Nelly, and there are so many sick and suffering to be attended to. You will never find us all here before six in the evening; we are busy all day; but we shall always be glad to see you when you can spare time for a chat in the evening. All the visitors we receive are not so welcome, I can assure you;" and she pointed to three holes in the wall where the enemy's shot had crashed through.
"That is a very noble woman," Mr. Johnson said, as they went out. "She spends many hours every day down at the military hospital where, the scenes are dreadful, and where the enemy's shot and shell frequently find entry, killing alike the wounded and their attendants. The married daughter looks after her children and the neatness of the rooms. The young girls are busy all day about the house nursing sick children, and yet, as you see, all are bright, pleasant, and the picture of neatness, marvelous contrasts indeed to the disorder and wretchedness prevailing among many, who might, by making an effort, be as bright and as comfortable as they are. There are, as you will find, many brilliant examples of female heroism and self-devotion exhibited here; but in some instances women seem to try how helpless, how foolish a silly woman can be. Ah," he broke off, as a terrific crash followed by a loud scream was heard, "I fear that shell has done mischief."
"Mrs. Shelton is killed," a woman said, running out, "and Lucy Shelton has had her arm cut off. Where is Dr. Topham?"
Mrs. Hargreaves came out of her door with a basin of water and some linen torn into strips for bandages just as the doctor ran in from the Sikh Square, where he had been attending to several casualties.
"That is right," he nodded to Mrs. Hargreaves; "this is a bad business, I fear."
"All hands to repair defenses!" was now the order, and the boys followed Mr. Johnson outside.
"The scoundrels are busy this evening," he observed.
"It sounds like a boiler-maker's shop," Dick said; "if only one in a hundred bullets were to hit, there would not be many alive by to-morrow morning."
"No, indeed," Mr. Johnson replied; "they are of course firing to some extent at random, but they aim at the points where they think it likely that we may be at work, and their fire adds greatly to our difficulty in setting right at night the damage they do in the daytime."
For the next four hours the lads were hard at work with the rest of the garrison. Earth was brought in sacks or baskets and piled up, stockades repaired, and fascines and gabions mended. The work would have been hard anywhere; on an August night in India it was exhausting. All the time that they were at work the bullets continued to fly thickly overhead, striking the wall of the house with a sharp crack, or burying themselves with a short thud in the earth. Round shot and shell at times crashed through the upper part of the house, which was uninhabited; while from the terraced roof, and from the battery in the corner of the garden, the crack of the defenders' rifles answered the enemy's fire.
By the time that the work was done it was midnight, and the Warreners' turn for guard. They had received rifles, and were posted with six others in the battery. There were three guns here, all of which were loaded to the muzzle with grape; three artillerymen, wrapped in their cloaks, lay asleep beside them, for the number of artillerymen was so small that the men were continually on duty, snatching what sleep they could by their guns during the intervals of fighting. The orders were to listen attentively for the sound of the movement of any body of men, and to fire occasionally at the flashes of the enemy's guns. The four hours passed rapidly, for the novelty of the work, the thunder of cannon and crackling of musketry, all round the Residency, were so exciting that the Warreners were surprised when the relief arrived. They retired to their room, and were soon asleep; but in an hour the alarm was sounded, and the whole force at the post rushed to repel an attack. Heralded by a storm of fire from every gun which could be brought to bear upon the battery, thousands of fanatics rushed from the shelter of the houses outside the intrenchments and swarmed down upon it. The garrison lay quiet behind the parapet until the approach of the foe caused the enemy's cannon to cease their fire. Then they leaped to their feet and poured a volley into the mass. So great were their numbers, however, that the gaps were closed in a moment, and with yells and shouts the enemy leaped into the ditch, and tried to climb the earthwork of the battery. Fortunately at this moment the reserve of fifty men of the Thirty-second, which were always kept ready to launch at any threatened point, came up at a run, and their volley over the parapet staggered the foe. Desperately their leaders called upon them to climb the earthworks, but the few who succeeded in doing so were bayoneted and thrown back into the ditch, while a continuous musketry fire was poured into the crowd. Over and over again the guns, charged with grape, swept lines through their ranks, and at last, dispirited and beaten, they fell back again to the shelter from which they had emerged. The Thirty-second men then returned to the brigade messroom, and the garrison of the fort were about to turn in when Mr. Gubbins said cheerfully: "Now, lads, we have done with those fellows for to-day, I fancy. I want some volunteers to bury those horses which were killed yesterday; it's an unpleasant job, but it's got to be done."
The men's faces testified to the dislike they felt for the business; but they knew it was necessary, and all made their way to the yard, where, close by the cattle, the horses were confined. The boys understood at once the repugnance which was felt to approaching this part of the fort. The ground was covered deep with flies, who rose in a black cloud, with a perfect roar of buzzing.
Lucknow was always celebrated for its plague of flies, but during the siege the nuisance assumed surprising proportions. The number of cattle and animals collected, the blood spilled in the slaughter-yard, the impossibility of preserving the cleanliness so necessary in a hot climate, all combined to generate swarms of flies, which rivaled those of Egypt. The garrison waged war against them, but in vain. Powder was plentiful, and frequently many square yards of infected ground, where the flies swarmed thickest, would be lightly sprinkled with it, and countless legions blown into the air; but these wholesale executions, however often repeated, appeared to make no impression whatever on the teeming armies of persecutors.
Their task finished, the fatigue party returned to their houses, and then all who had not other duties threw themselves down to snatch a short sleep. In spite of a night passed without rest, sleep was not easily wooed. The heat in the open air was terrific, in the close little room it was stifling; while the countless flies irritated them almost to madness. There was indeed but the choice of two evils: to cover closely their faces and hands, and lie bathed in perspiration; or to breathe freely, and bear the flies as best they might. The former alternative was generally chosen, as heat, however great, may be endured in quiet, and sleep may insensibly come on; but sleep with a host of flies incessantly nestling on every exposed part of the face and body was clearly an impossibility.
That day was a bad one for the defenders of Gubbins' garrison, for no less than twelve shells penetrated the house, and five of the occupants were killed or wounded. The shells came from a newly erected battery a hundred and fifty yards to the north. Among the killed was one of Mrs. Righton's children; and the boys first learned the news when, on rising from a fruitless attempt to sleep, they went to get a little fresh air outside. Edith and Nelly Hargreaves came out from the door, with jugs, on their way to fetch water.
The Warreners at once offered to fetch it for them, and as they spoke they saw that the girls' faces were both swollen with crying.
"Is anything the matter, Miss Hargreaves?" Ned asked.
"Have you not heard," Edith said, "how poor little Rupert has been killed by a shell? The ayah was badly hurt, and we all had close escapes; the shells from that battery are terrible."
Expressing their sorrow at the news, the boys took the jugs, and crossing the yard to the well, filled and brought them back.
"I wish we could do something to silence that battery," said Dick; "it will knock the house about our ears, and we shall be having the women and children killed every day."
"Let's go and have a look at it from the roof," replied Ned.
The roof was, like those of most of the houses in the Residency, flat, and intended for the inmates to sit and enjoy the evening breeze. The parapet was very low, but this had been raised by a line of sandbags, and behind them five or six of the defenders were lying, firing through the openings between the bags, in answer to the storm of musketry which the enemy were keeping up on the post.
Stooping low to avoid the bullets which were singing overhead, the Warreners moved across the terrace, and lying down, peered out through the holes which had been left for musketry. Gubbins' house stood on one of the highest points of the ground inclosed in the defenses, and from it they could obtain a view of nearly the whole circle of the enemy's batteries. They were indeed higher than the roofs of most of the houses held by the enemy, but one of these, distant only some fifty yards from the Sikh Square, dominated the whole line of the British defenses on that side, and an occasional crack of a rifle from its roof showed that the advantage was duly appreciated.
"What do they call that house?" Ned asked one of the officers on the terrace.
"That is Johannes' house," he answered. "It was a terrible mistake that we did not destroy it before the siege began; it is an awful thorn in our side. There is a black scoundrel, a negro, in the service of the king of Oude, who has his post there; he is a magnificent shot, and he has killed a great number of ours. It is almost certain death to show a head within the line of his fire."
"I wonder we have not made a sortie, and set fire to the place," said Ned.
"The scoundrels are so numerous that we could only hope to succeed with considerable loss, and we are so weak already that we can't afford it. So the chief sets his face against sorties, but I expect that we shall be driven to it one of these days. That new battery is terribly troublesome also. There, do you see, it lies just over that brow, so that the shot from our battery cannot touch it, while it can pound away at our house, and indeed at all the houses along this line."
"I should have thought," Dick said, "that a rush at night might carry it, and spike the guns."
"No; we should be certain to make some sort of noise, however quiet we were. There are six guns, all loaded at nightfall to the muzzle with grape; we know that, for once they fancied they heard us coming, and they fired such a storm of grape that we should have been all swept away; besides which, there are a large number of the fellows sleeping round; and although sometimes the battery ceases firing for some hours, the musketry goes on more or less during the night."
The Warreners lay wistfully watching the battery, whose shots frequently struck the house, and two or three times knocked down a portion of the sandbag parapet--the damage being at once repaired with bags lying in readiness, but always under a storm of musketry, which opened in the hopes of hitting the men engaged upon the work; these were, however, accustomed to it, and built up the sandbags without showing a limb to the enemy's shot.
"There were two children killed by that last shot," an officer said, coming up from below and joining them; "it made its way through the earth and broke in through a blocked-up window."
"We must silence that battery, Ned, whatever comes of it," Dick said in his brother's ear.
"I agree with you, Dick; but how is it to be done? have you got an idea?"
"Well, my idea is this," the midshipman said. "I think you and I might choose a dark night, as it will be to-night. Take the bearings of the battery exactly; then when they stop firing, and we think the gunners are asleep, crawl out and make for the guns. When we get there we can make our way among them, keeping on the ground so that the sentry cannot see us against the sky; and then with a sponge full of water we can give a squeeze on each of the touchholes, so there would be no chance of their going off till the charges were drawn. Then we could make our way back and tell Gubbins the guns are disabled, and he can take out a party, carry them with a rush, and spike them permanently."
"Capital, Dick; I'm with you, old boy."
"Now let us take the exact bearings of the place. There was a lane, you see, before the houses were pulled down, running along from beyond that corner nearly to the guns. When we get out we must steer for that, because it is comparatively clear from rubbish, and we ain't so likely to knock a stone over and make a row. We must choose some time when they are pounding away somewhere else, and then we shan't be heard even if we do make a little noise. We will ask Mrs. Hargreaves for a couple of pieces of sponge; we need not tell her what we want them for."
"And you think to-night, Dick?"
"Well, to-night is just as likely to succeed as any other night, and the sooner the thing is done the better. Johnson commands the guard from twelve to four, and he is an easy-going fellow, and will let us slip out, while some of the others wouldn't."
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{
"id": "7071"
}
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15
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SPIKING THE GUNS.
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As soon as night fell a little procession with three little forms on trays covered with white cloths, and two of larger size, started from Gubbins' house to the churchyard. Mr. and Mrs. Hargreaves, and Mrs. Righton and her husband, with two other women, followed. That morning all the five, now to be laid in the earth, were strong and well; but death had been busy. In such a climate as that, and in so crowded a dwelling, no delay could take place between death and burial, and the victims of each day were buried at nightfall. There was no time to make coffins, no men to spare for the work; and as each fell, so were they committed to the earth.
A little distance from Gubbins' house the procession joined a larger one with the day's victims from the other parts of the garrison--a total of twenty-four, young and old. At the head of the procession walked the Rev. Mr. Polehampton, one of the chaplains, who was distinguished for the bravery and self-devotion with which he labored among the sick and wounded. The service on which they were now engaged was in itself dangerous, for the churchyard was very exposed to the enemy's fire, and--for they were throughout the siege remarkably well-informed of what was taking place within the Residency--every evening they opened a heavy fire in the direction of the spot where they knew a portion of the garrison would be engaged in this sad avocation. Quietly and steadily the little procession moved along, though bullets whistled and shells hissed around them. Each stretcher with an adult body was carried by four soldiers, while some of the little ones' bodies were carried by their mothers as if alive. Mrs. Hargreaves and her daughter carried between them the tray on which the body of little Rupert Righton lay. Arrived at the churchyard, a long shallow trench, six feet wide, had been prepared, and in this, side by side, the dead were tenderly placed. Then Mr. Polehampton spoke a few words of prayer and comfort, and the mourners turned away, happily without one of them having been struck by the bullets which sang around, while some of the soldiers speedily filled in the grave.
While the sad procession had been absent, the boys had gone to Mrs. Hargreaves' room. The curtain was drawn, and they could hear the girls sobbing inside.
"Please, Miss Hargreaves, can I speak to you for a moment?" Ned said. "I would not intrude, but it is something particular."
Edith Hargreaves came to the door.
"Please," Ned went on, "will you give us two good-sized pieces of sponge? We don't know any one else to ask, and--but you must not say a word to any one--my brother and myself mean to go out to-night to silence that battery which is doing such damage."
"Silence that battery!" Edith exclaimed in surprise. "Oh, if you could do that; but how is it possible?"
"Oh, you dear boy," Nelly, who had come to the door, exclaimed impetuously, "if you could but do that, every one would love you. We shall all be killed if that terrible battery goes on. But how are you going to do it?"
"I don't say we are going to do it," Ned said, smiling at the girl's excitement, "but we are going to try to-night. We'll tell you all about it in the morning when it is done; that is," he said seriously, "if we come back to tell it. But you must not ask any questions now, and please give us the pieces of sponge." Edith disappeared for a moment, and came back with two large pieces of sponge.
"We will not ask, as you say we must not," she said quietly, "but I know you are going to run some frightful danger. I may tell mamma and Carrie when they come back that much, may I not? and we will all keep awake and pray for you tonight--God bless you both!" And with a warm clasp of the hands the girls went back into their room again.
"I tell you what, Ned," the midshipman said emphatically, when they went out into the air, "if I live through this war I'll marry Nelly Hargreaves; that is," he added, "if she'll have me, and will wait a bit. She is a brick, and no mistake. I never felt really in love before; not regularly, you know."
At any other time Ned would have laughed; but with Edith's farewell words in his ear he was little disposed for mirth, and he merely put his hand on Dick's shoulder and said: "There will be time to talk about that in the future, Dick. There's the battery opening in earnest. There! Mr. Gubbins is calling for all hands on the roof with their rifles to try and silence it. Come along."
For an hour the fire on both sides was incessant. The six guns of the battery concentrated their fire upon Gubbins' house, while from the walls and houses on either side of it the fire of the musketry flashed unceasingly, sending a hail of shot to keep down the reply from the roof.
On their side the garrison on the terrace disregarded the musketry fire, but, crowded behind the sandbags, kept up a steady and concentrated fire at the flashes of the cannon; while from the battery below, the gunners, unable to touch the enemy's battery, discharged grape at the houses tenanted by the enemy's infantry. The Sepoys, carefully instructed in our service, had constructed shields of rope to each gun to protect the gunners, but those at the best could cover but one or two men, and the fire from the parapet inflicted such heavy losses upon the gunners that after a time their fire dropped, and an hour from the commencement of the cannonade all was still again on both sides. The Sepoy guns were silenced.
It was now ten o'clock, and the Warreners went and lay down quietly for a couple of hours. Then they heard the guard changed, and after waiting a quarter of an hour they went out to the battery, having first filled their sponges with water. There they joined Mr. Johnson.
"Can't sleep, boys?" he asked; "those flies are enough to drive one mad. You will get accustomed to them after a bit."
"It is not exactly that, sir," Ned said, "but we wanted to speak to you. Dick and I have made up our minds to silence that battery. We have got sponges full of water, and we mean to go out and drown the priming. Then when we come back and tell Mr. Gubbins, I dare say he will take out a party, make a rush, and spike them."
"Why, you must be mad to think of such a thing!" Mr. Johnson said in astonishment.
"I think it is easy enough, sir," Ned replied; "at any rate, we mean to try."
"I can't let you go without leave," Mr. Johnson said.
"No, sir, and so we are not going to tell you we are going," Ned laughed. "What we want to ask you is to tell your men not to fire if they hear a noise close by in the next few minutes, and after that to listen for a whistle like this. If they hear that they are not to fire at any one approaching from the outside. Good-by, sir."
And without waiting for Mr. Johnson to make up his mind whether or not his duty compelled him to arrest them, to prevent them from carrying out the mad scheme of which Ned had spoken, the Warreners glided off into the darkness.
They had obtained a couple of native daggers, and took no other arms. They did not take off their boots, but wound round them numerous strips of blanket, so that they would tread noiselessly, and yet if obliged to run for it would avoid the risk of cutting their feet and disabling themselves in their flight. Then, making sure that by this time Mr. Johnson would have given orders to his men not to fire if they heard a noise close at hand, they went noiselessly to the breastwork which ran from the battery to the house, climbed over it, and dropped into the trench beyond.
Standing on the battery close beside them, they saw against the sky the figure of Mr. Johnson.
"Good-by, sir," Ned said softly; "we will be back in half an hour if we have luck."
Then they picked their way carefully over the rough ground till they reached the lane, and then walked boldly but noiselessly forward, for they knew that for a little way there was no risk of meeting an enemy, and that in the darkness they were perfectly invisible to any native posted near the guns. After fifty yards' walking, they dropped on their hands and knees. Although the guns had been absolutely silent since their fire ceased at ten o'clock, a dropping musketry fire from the houses and walls on either side had, as usual, continued. This indicated to the boys pretty accurately the position of the guns. Crawling forward foot by foot, they reached the little ridge which sheltered the guns from the battery in Gubbins' garden.
The guns themselves they could not see, for behind them was a house, and, except against the sky line, nothing was visible. They themselves were, as they knew, in a line between Gubbins' house and any one who might be standing at the guns, so that they would not show against the sky. They could hear talking among the houses on either side of the guns, and could see the light of fires, showing that while some of their enemies were keeping up a dropping fire, others were passing the night, as is often the native custom, round the fires, smoking and cooking. There was a faint talk going on ahead, too, beyond the guns; but the enemy had had too severe a lesson of the accuracy of the English rifle-fire to dare to light a fire there.
Having taken in the scene, the boys moved forward, inch by inch. Presently Ned put his hand on something which, for a moment, made him start back; an instant's thought, however, reassured him; it was a man, but the hardness of the touch told that it was not a living one. Crawling past it, the lads found other bodies lying thickly, and then they touched a wheel. They had arrived at the guns, and the bodies were those of the men shot down a few hours before in the act of loading.
Behind the guns a number of artillerymen were, as the boys could hear, sitting and talking; but the guns themselves stood alone and unguarded. A clasp of the hand, and the boys parted, one going, as previously arranged, each way. Ned rose very quietly by the side of the gun, keeping his head, however, below its level, and running his hand along it until it came to the breech. The touch-hole was covered by a wad of cloth to keep the powder dry from the heavy dew. This he removed, put up his hand again with the wet sponge, gave a squeeze, and then cautiously replaced the covering.
Dick did the same with the gun on the right, and so each crept along from gun to gun, until the six guns were disabled. Then they crawled back and joined each other.
A clasp of the hands in congratulation, and then they were starting to return, when they heard a dull tramp, and the head of a dark column came along just ahead of them. The boys shrank back under the guns, and lay flat among the bodies of the dead. The column halted at the guns, and a voice asked: "Is the colonel here?"
"Here am I," said a voice from behind the guns, and a native officer came forward.
[Illustration: THE WARRENERS DROWNING THE PRIMING OF THE SEPOY GUNS.]
"We are going to make an attack from the house of Johannes. We shall be strong, and shall sweep the Kaffirs before us. It is the order of the general that you open with your guns here, to distract their attention."
"Will it please you to represent to the general that we have fought this evening, and that half my gunners are killed. The fire of the sons of Sheitan is too strong for us. Your excellency will see the ground is covered with our dead. Bring fire," he ordered, and at the word one of the soldiers lighted a torch made of straw, soaked in oil, which threw a lurid flame over the ground. "See, excellency, how we have suffered."
"Are they all dead?" asked the officer, stepping nearer.
The boys held their breath, when there was a sharp cracking of musketry, the man with the torch fell prostrate, and several cries arose from the column. The watchers on the roof of Gubbins' house had been quick to discern their enemy.
"Move on, march!" the officer exclaimed hastily, "double. Yes, I see, it is hot here; but when we have attacked, and their attention is distracted, you may do something."
So saying, he went off at a run with his regiment.
The boys lost no time in creeping out again, and making the best of their way back; once fairly over the crest, they rose to their feet and ran down toward the intrenchment. As they neared this Ned whistled twice. The whistle was answered, and in a minute hands were stretched down to help them to scramble over the earthwork.
"All right," Ned said to Mr. Johnson; "the guns are useless, and weakly guarded. There are lots of infantry on both sides, but some of them will be drawn off, for they are going to make an attack from Johannes' house. Where is Mr. Gubbins?"
"He has just made his rounds," Mr. Johnson said; "I will take you to him."
Mr. Gubbins was astonished when he heard from the boys that they had been out, and rendered the guns temporarily useless. "You were wrong to act without orders," he said, "but I can't scold you for such a gallant action. We must act on it at once. I would send for a reinforcement, but we must not lose a moment. If the attack from Johannes' house begins before our attack, the artillerymen will prepare for action, and may discover that the breeches of their guns are wet. Call up every man at once, Mr. Johnson, and let them fall in on the battery; and do you," he turned to another, "run down to the Sikh Square and Martinière garrison, and warn them that a great attack is just going to be made. Tell them that we are making a sortie, and ask them to bring every rifle to bear on the houses to the left of the guns, so as to keep down the infantry fire there."
In two minutes every man of the garrison was assembled in the battery, even those from the roof being called down.
"Bring a dark lantern," Mr. Gubbins said; "it may be useful. Now, lads, we are going to spike the guns; they have been rendered useless, so we have only got to make a dash for them. The moment they are in our possession, you, Mr. Johnson, with ten men, will clear the house immediately behind it, and look for the magazine. Mr. Leathes, you, with fifteen men, will move to the right a little; and you, Mr. Percival, with your command, to the left. Do not go far, but each carry a house or two, set them on fire, and fall back here when you hear the bugle. I have got the hammer and spiking nails. Now, as quietly as you can till you hear that we are discovered, and then go with a rush at the guns."
In fact, they had gone very few paces before there was a shout in the enemy's line. The noise of so many men stumbling over the _débris_ of leveled houses was heard in an instant in the night air.
"Forward!" Mr. Gubbins shouted; "don't fire, give them the bayonet."
At a charge the little party rushed along. They were in the lane now, and were able to run fast. The shout had been followed by a shot, then by a dozen others, and then a rapid fire broke out from the houses and walls in front.
They were still invisible, however, and the balls whistled overhead. They heard the voice of the officer at the guns shout to his men: "Steady; don't fire till they are on the crest, then blow them into dust."
They topped the crest and rushed at the guns.
"Fire!" shouted the officer, but a cry of dismay alone answered his words, and in a moment the British rushed on to the guns, and bayoneted the astonished and dismayed enemy.
Then they separated each to the work assigned to them, while Mr. Gubbins, with a man with the lantern, went from gun to gun and drove a nail down the touchhole of each. Then he followed into the house behind. Here a short but furious fight had taken place. The Sepoys lodged there fought desperately but unavailingly. A few leaped from the windows, but the rest were bayoneted. The fight was stern and silent; no words were spoken, for the Sepoys knew that it was useless to ask for quarter; the clashing of sabers against muskets, an occasional sharp cry, and the sound of the falling of heavy bodies alone told of the desperate struggle.
It ended just as Mr. Gubbins entered.
"Look about," he said; "they must have a magazine somewhere here; perhaps a large one."
There was a rapid search.
"Here it is," Ned said, as he looked into a large outhouse behind the building. "There are some twenty barrels of powder and a large quantity of shot and shell."
"Break open a barrel, quick!" Mr. Gubbins said. "Mr. Johnson, I will do this with the Warreners. Do you line that low wall, and keep back the pandies a minute or two; they will be on us like a swarm of bees. Run into the house," he said to Dick, as Mr. Johnson led his men forward to the wall, "you will see a bucket of water in the first room. Bring it here quick. Now then," he said, "empty this barrel among the others; that's right, smash in the heads of three or four others with this hammer. That's right," as Dick returned with the water. "Now fill your cap with powder."
Dick did so, and Mr. Gubbins poured some water into it, stirred them together till the powder was damped through, and with this made a train some five feet long to the dry powder.
The party at the wall were now hotly engaged with a mass of advancing enemy.
"Fall back, Mr. Johnson, quickly. Sound the retreat, bugler. Go along, lads; I'll light the train."
He waited until the last man had passed, applied a lighted match to the train, which began to fizz and sputter, and then ran out and followed the rest, shutting the door of the magazine as he went out, in order that the burning fuse should not be seen.
By this time the houses on either side were alight, and the whole party were returning at a double toward the intrenchments.
As they neared the lines the enemy swarmed out from their cover, and the head of the reinforcements were pouring out through the house into the battery, when the earth shook, a mighty flash of fire lit the sky; there was a roar like thunder, and most of the retreating party were swept from their feet by the shock, while a shower of stones and timber fell in a wide circle. They were soon up again, and scrambled over the earthworks.
For a minute the explosion was succeeded by a deathlike stillness, broken only by the sound of the falling fragments; then from the whole circle of the British lines a great cheer of triumph rose up, while a yell of fury answered them from the enemy's intrenchments.
"Any loss?" was Mr. Gubbins' first question.
"No one killed," was the report of the officers of the three sections.
"Any wounded?"
Four of the men stepped forward; two were slightly wounded only; two were seriously hit, but a glance showed that the wounds were not of a nature likely to be fatal.
"Hurrah! my lads," Mr. Gubbins said cheerily; "six guns spiked, our garrison freed from that troublesome battery, a lesson given to the enemy, and I expect a few hundred of them blown up, and all at the cost of four wounded."
"Well done, indeed," a voice said; and General Inglis, with two or three of his officers, stepped forward. "Gallantly done; but how was it that the guns were silent? you could hardly have caught them asleep."
"No, sir," Mr. Gubbins said; "the gentlemen who brought in the message from General Havelock, two days ago, went out on their own account, and silenced the guns by wetting the priming."
A suppressed cheer broke from the whole party; for until now only Mr. Johnson and those on guard with him knew what had happened, and the silence of the guns had been a mystery to all.
"Step forward, young gentlemen, will you?" General Inglis said. "You have done a most gallant action," he went on, shaking them by the hand, "a most gallant action; and the whole garrison are greatly indebted to you. I shall have great pleasure in reporting your gallant conduct to the commander-in-chief, when the time comes for doing so. I will not mar the pleasure which all feel at your deed by blaming you for acting on your own inspiration, but I must do so to-morrow. Good fortune has attended your enterprise, but the lives of brave men are too valuable to allow them to undertake such risks as this on their own account. And now that I have said what I was obliged to say, I ask you all to give three cheers for our gallant young friends."
Three hearty cheers were given, and then the general hurried off to superintend the preparations for the defense of the quarter threatened by the attack from Johannes' house, if indeed that attack should not be postponed, owing to the discouragement which the blow just inflicted would naturally spread. Surrounded by their comrades, the Warreners re-entered the house.
"What was that terrible explosion?" "What has happened?" was asked by a score of female voices as they entered.
"Good news," Mr. Gubbins said; "you can sleep in peace. The guns of the battery which has annoyed us are all spiked, and their magazine blown up, and all this without the loss of a man, thanks to the Warreners, who went out alone and disabled all the guns, by wetting the primings. All your thanks are due to them."
There was a general cry of grateful joy; for since the battery had begun to play upon the house, no one had felt that his own life or the lives of those dearest to him were safe for a moment. All were dressed, for in these times of peril no one went regularly to bed; and they now crowded round the boys, shaking them by the hand, patting them on the shoulders, many crying for very joy and relief.
Mrs. Hargreaves was standing at the door, and the boys went up to her. She drew back the curtain for them to enter; for, sure that the boys intended to carry out some desperate enterprise, none of her family had even lain down. Mr. Hargreaves and Mr. Righton followed them in.
"We were all praying for you," she said simply, "as if you had been my own sons; for you were doing as much for me and mine as my own could have done;" and she kissed both their foreheads.
"I think, Mrs. Hargreaves," said Dick, with the demure impudence of a midshipman, "that that ought to go round."
"I think you have fairly earned it, you impudent boy," Mrs. Hargreaves said, smiling.
Mrs. Righton kissed Dick tearfully, for she was thinking that, had the battery been silenced only one day earlier, her little one would have been saved. Edith glanced at her mother, and allowed Dick to kiss her; while Nelly threw her arms round his neck and kissed him heartily, telling him he was a darling boy.
Ned, who possessed none of the impudence of his brother, and who was moreover at the age when many boys become bashful with women, contented himself with shaking hands with Mrs. Righton and Edith, and would have done the same with Nelly, but that young lady put up her cheek with a laugh.
"I choose to be kissed, sir," she said; "it is not much kissing that we get here, goodness knows."
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{
"id": "7071"
}
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16
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A SORTIE AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
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The night passed off without the expected attack from Johannes' house, the rebels being too much disconcerted by the destruction of the battery, and the loss of so many men, to attempt any offensive operations. The destruction of the house behind the guns, and of all those in its vicinity, deterred them from re-establishing a battery in the same place, as there would be no shelter for the infantry supporting the guns; and after the result of the sortie it was evident to them that a large force must be kept in readiness to repel the attacks of the British.
For a few days life was more tolerable in Gubbins' garrison; for although shot and shell frequently struck the house, and batteries multiplied in the circle around, none kept up so deadly and accurate a fire as that which they had destroyed.
The Warreners took their fair share in all the heavy fatigue work, and in the picket duty in the battery or on the roof; but they enjoyed their intervals of repose, which were now always spent with Mr. Hargreaves' family.
Mr. Hargreaves was collector of a district near Lucknow, and was high in the Civil Service. He was a fit husband for his kindly wife; and as Mr. Righton was of a cheerful and hopeful disposition, the boys found themselves members of a charming family circle. Often and often they wished that their father, sister, and cousin could but join them; or rather, as Ned said, they could join the party without, for no one could wish that any they loved should be at Lucknow at that time.
One evening late they were sitting together in a group outside the house, the enemy's fire being slack, when Mr. Johnson came up from the battery to Mr. Gubbins, who formed one of the party.
"I am afraid, sir, they are mining again; lying on the ground, we think we can hear the sound of blows."
"That is bad," Mr. Gubbins said; "I heard this afternoon that they believe that two mines are being driven from Johannes' house in the direction of the Martinière, and the brigade messhouse; now we are to have our turn, eh? Well, we blew in the last they tried, and must do it again; but it is so much more hard work. Now, gentlemen, let us see who has the best ears. Excuse us, Mrs. Hargreaves, we shall not be long away."
On entering the battery they found the men on guard all lying down listening, and were soon at full length with their ears to the ground. All could hear the sound; it was very faint, as faint as the muffled tick of a watch, sometimes beating at regular intervals of a second or so, sometimes ceasing for a minute or two.
"There is no doubt they are mining," Mr. Gubbins said; "the question is, from which way are they coming."
None could give an opinion. The sound was so faint, and seemed to come so directly from below, that the ear could not discriminate in the slightest.
"At any rate," Mr. Gubbins said, "we must begin at once to sink a shaft. If, when we get down a bit, we cannot judge as to the direction, we must drive two or three listening galleries in different directions. But before we begin we must let Major Anderson, of the Royal Engineers, know, and take his advice; he is in command of all mining operations."
In ten minutes Major Anderson was on the ground.
"The fellows are taking to mining in earnest," he said; "this is the third we have discovered to-day, and how many more there may be, goodness only knows. I think you had better begin here," he said to Mr. Gubbins. "You have got tools, I think. Say about six feet square, then two men can work at once. I will be here the first thing in the morning, and then we will look round and see which is the likeliest spot for the fellows to be working from. Will you ask your sentries on the roof to listen closely to-night, in order to detect, if possible, a stir of men coming or going from any given point."
Picks and shovels were brought out, the garrison told off into working parties of four each, to relieve each other every hour, and the work began. Well-sinking is hard work in any climate, but with a thermometer marking a hundred and five at night, it is terrible; and each set of workers, as they came up bathed in perspiration, threw themselves on the ground utterly exhausted. Mr. Hargreaves and a few of the elders of the garrison were excused this work, and took extra duty on the terrace and battery.
The next day it was decided that the enemy were probably working from a ruined house near their former battery, and a gallery was begun from the bottom of the shaft. This was pushed on night and day for three days, the workers being now certain, from the rapidly increasing sound of the workers, that this was the line by which the enemy was approaching. The gallery was driven nearly twenty yards, and then three barrels of powder were stored there, and the besieged awaited the approach of the rebels' gallery.
The Sepoys had now erected batteries whose cross fire swept the ground outside the intrenchments, so that a sortie could no longer be carried out with any hope of success. Had it been possible to have attempted it, a party would have gone out, and driving off any guard that might have been placed, entered the enemy's gallery and caught them at their work. A sentry was placed continually in the gallery, and each hour the sound of the pick and crowbar became louder.
On the fifth day the engineers judged that there could not be more than a yard of earth between them. The train was laid now, and a cautious watch kept, until, just at the moment when it was thought that an opening would be made, the train was fired. The earth heaved, and a great opening was made, while a shower of stones flew high in the air. The enemy's gallery was blown in, and the men working destroyed, and a loud cheer broke from the garrison at the defeat of another attempt upon them.
The month of August began badly in Lucknow. Major Banks, the civil commissioner named by Sir Henry Lawrence to succeed him, was shot dead while reconnoitering from the top of an outhouse. The Reverend Mr. Polehampton, who had been wounded at the commencement of the siege, was killed, as were Lieutenants Lewin, Shepherd, and Archer.
On the 8th large bodies of Sepoys were observed to enter the city, and on the 10th a furious attack was made all round the British line. Every man capable of bearing arms stood at his post, and even the sick and wounded crawled out of hospital and took posts on housetops wherever they could fire on the foe. The din was prodigious--the yells of the enemy, their tremendous fire of musketry, the incessant roar of their cannon, but they lacked heart for close fighting.
Frequently large bodies of men showed from behind their shelter, and, carrying ladders, advanced as if with the determination of making an assault. Each time, however, the withering fire opened upon them from the line of earthworks, from the roof of every house, and the storm of grape from the batteries, caused them to waver and fall back. Each fresh effort was led by brave men, fanatics, who advanced alone far in front of the rest, shrieking, "Death to the infidel!"
But they died, and their spirit failed to animate their followers. Only once or twice did the assailing parties get near the line of intrenchments, and then but to fall back rapidly after heavy loss.
Day after day the position of the besieged grew more unendurable. The buildings were crumbling away under the heavy and continued fire; and as one after another became absolutely untenable, the ladies and children were more closely crowded in those which still offered some sort of shelter. Even death, fearful as were its ravages, did not suffice to counteract the closeness of the packing. Crowded in dark rooms, living on the most meager food--for all the comforts, such as tea, sugar, wine, spirits, etc., were exhausted, and even the bread was made of flour ground, each for himself, between rough stones--without proper medicines, attendance, or even bedding; tormented by a plague of flies, sickened by disgusting smells, condemned to inaction and confinement, the women and children died off rapidly, and the men, although better off with regard to light and air, sickened fast. Half the officers were laid up with disease, and all were lowered in health and strength.
On the 18th, as the Warreners had just returned from a heavy night's work, strengthening the defenses, and burying horses and cattle, a great explosion was heard, and one of those posted on the roof ran down shouting: "To arms! they have fired a mine under the Sikh Square!"
Every man caught up his rifle and rushed to the spot. The mine had carried away a portion of the exterior defense, and the enemy, with yells of triumph, rushed forward toward the opening. Then ensued a furious _mêlée_; each man fought for himself, hand to hand, in the breach; Mussulmen and Englishmen struggled in deadly combat; the crack of the revolver, the thud of the clubbed guns, the clash of sword against steel, the British cheer and the native yell, were mingled in wild confusion. While some drove the enemy back, others brought boxes and beams, fascines and sandbags, to repair the breach. The enemy were forced back, and the British poured out with shouts of triumph.
Our men's blood was up, and they followed their advantage. Part of the engineers, ever on the alert, joined the throng with some barrels of powder, and the enemy were pushed back sufficiently far to enable some of the houses, from which we had been greatly annoyed by the enemy's sharpshooters, to be blown up.
This success cheered the besieged, and on the 20th, when it was discovered that the enemy were driving two new mines, a fresh sortie was determined upon.
The garrison of Gubbins' house had now less cover than before, for the building had been reduced almost to a shell by the enemy's fire, and all the women and children had the day before been removed to other quarters. The Residency itself was a tottering mass of ruins, and this also had been emptied of its helpless ones, who were crowded in a great underground room in the Begum Khotee. It is difficult to form an idea of the storm of shot and shell which swept the space inclosed within the lines of defense, but some notion may be obtained from the fact that an officer had the curiosity to count the number of cannon balls of various sizes that fell on the roof of the brigade messhouse in one day, and found that they amounted to the almost incredible number of two hundred and eighty. Living such a life as this, the Warreners were rejoiced when they received orders, with ten of the other defenders of the ruins of Gubbins' house, to join in the sortie on the 20th of August. About a hundred of the garrison formed up in the Sikh Square, and at the word being given dashed over the stockade and intrenchment, and made a charge for Johannes' house. This had throughout the siege been the post from which the enemy had most annoyed them, the king of Oude's negro in particular having killed a great many of our officers and men. It was from this point that the mines being driven, and it was determined at all hazards to destroy it.
The rush of the British took the enemy by surprise. Scarce a shot was fired until they had traversed half the distance, and then a heavy fire of musketry opened from all the houses held by the enemy. Still the English pushed on at full speed, without pausing to return a shot. With a cheer they burst into the inclosure in which the house stood, and while half the party entered it and engaged in a furious combat with those within, the others, in accordance with orders, pressed forward into the houses beyond, so as to keep the enemy from advancing to the assistance of their friends, thus caught in a trap. The Warreners belonged to the party who advanced, and were soon engaged in a hand-to-hand fight with the enemy. Scattering through the houses, they drove the Sepoys before them. The Warreners were fighting side by side with Mr. Johnson, and with him, after driving the enemy through the next house, they entered an outhouse beyond it.
Mr. Johnson entered first, followed by Ned, Dick being last of the party. Dick heard a sudden shout and a heavy blow, and rushed in. Mr. Johnson lay on the ground, his skull beaten in with a blow from the iron-bound staff of a dervish, a wild figure with long hair and beard reaching down to his waist. Dick was in time to see the terrible staff descend again upon Ned's head. Ned guarded it with his rifle, but the guard was beaten down and Ned stretched senseless on the ground. Before the fakir had time to raise his stuff again, Dick drove his bayonet through his chest, and the fakir fell prostrate, his body rolling down some steps into a cellar which served as a woodstore.
As he fell Dick heard a fierce growl, and a bear of a very large size, who was standing by the fakir, rose on his hind legs. Fortunately Dick's rifle was still loaded, and, pointing it into the fierce beast's mouth, he fired, and the bear rolled down the wooden steps after his master. Throwing aside his rifle, Dick turned to raise his brother. Ned lay as if dead.
Dick leaped to his feet, and ran out to call for succor. He went into the house, but it was empty. He rushed to the door, and saw the rest of the party in full retreat. He shouted, but his voice was lost in the crackle of musketry fire. He ran back to Ned and again tried to lift him, and had got him on his shoulders, when there was a tremendous explosion. Johannes' house had been blown up.
Following close upon the sound came the yells of the enemy, who were flocking up to pursue the English back to their trenches. Escape was now hopeless. Dick lowered Ned to the ground, hastily dragged the body of Mr. Johnson outside the door, and then, lifting Ned, bore him down the steps into the cellar into which the fakir and the bear had fallen. He carried him well into the cellar, took away the wooden steps, and then, with great difficulty, also dragged the bodies of the fakir and the bear further in, so that any one looking down into the hole from the outside would observe nothing unusual.
Then, as he lay down, faint from his exertions, he could hear above the tread of a great number of men, followed by a tremendous musketry fire from the house. Once or twice he thought he heard some one come to the door of the outhouse; but if so, no one entered.
Beyond rubbing Ned's hands, and putting cold stones to his forehead, Dick could do nothing; but Ned breathed, and Dick felt strong hopes that he was only stunned. In a quarter of an hour he showed signs of reviving, and in an hour was able to hear from Dick an account of what had happened, and where they were.
"We are in a horrible fix this time, Dick, and no mistake; my head aches so, I can hardly think; let us be quiet for a bit, and we will both try to think what is best to be done. There is no hurry to decide. No one is likely to come down into this place, but we may as well creep well behind this pile of wood and straw, and then we shall be safe."
Dick assented, and for an hour they lay quiet, Ned's regular breathing soon telling his brother that he had dropped off to sleep. Then Dick very quietly crept out again from their hiding-place.
"It is a grand idea," he said to himself; "magnificent. It's nasty, horribly nasty; but after three weeks of what we have gone through in the Residency one can see and do things which it would have made one almost sick to think of a month back; and as our lives depend upon it we must not stand upon niceties. I wish, though, I had been brought up a red Indian; it would have come natural then, I suppose."
So saying, he took out his pocket-knife, opened it, and went to the body of the dead fakir. He took the long, matted hair into his hand with an exclamation of disgust, but saw at once that his idea was a feasible one. The hair was matted together in an inextricable mass, and could be trusted to hang together.
He accordingly set to work to cut it off close to the head; but although his knife was a sharp one it was a long and unpleasant task, and nothing but the necessity of the case could have nerved him to get through with it.
At last it was finished, and he looked at his work with complacency.
"That's a magnificent wig," he said. "I defy the best barber in the world to make such a natural one. Now for the bear."
This was a long task; but at last the bear was skinned, and Dick set to to clean, as well as he could, the inside of the hide. Then he dragged into a corner and covered up the carcass of the bear and the body of the fakir, having first stripped the clothes off the latter, scattered a little straw over the bear's skin, and then, his task being finished, he crept behind the logs again, lay down, and went off to sleep by the side of Ned. It was getting dark when he awoke. Ned was awake, and was sitting up by his side. Outside, the din of battle, the ceaseless crack of the rifle, and the roar of cannon was going on as usual, without interruption.
"How do you feel now, Ned?" Dick asked.
"All right, Dick. I have got a biggish bump on the side of my head, and feel a little muddled still, but that is nothing. I can't think of any plan for escaping from this place, Dick, nor of getting hold of a disguise; for even if we could get out of this place and neighborhood we must be detected, and in this town it is of no use trying to beg for shelter or aid."
"It is all arranged," Dick said cheerfully. "I have got two of the best disguises in the world, and we have only to dress up in them and walk out."
Ned looked at Dick as if he thought that he had gone out of his mind.
"You don't believe me? Just you wait, then, two minutes, till I have dressed up, and then I'll call you;" and without waiting for an answer, Dick went out.
He speedily stripped to the waist, rubbed some mud from the damp floor on his arms, wound the fakir's rags round his body with a grimace of disgust, put the wig on his head--his hair, like that of all the garrison, had been cut as close to the head as scissors would take it--shook the long, knotted hair over his face and shoulders--behind it hung to the waist--took the staff in his hand, and called quietly to Ned to come out. Ned crept out, and remained petrified with astonishment.
"The fakir!" he exclaimed at last. "Good heavens, Dick! is that you?"
"It's me, sure enough," Dick said, taking off his wig. "Here is a wig in which the sharpest eyes in the world could not detect you."
"But where--" began Ned, still lost in surprise.
"My dear Ned, I have borrowed from the fakir. It was not quite a nice job," he went on, in answer to Ned's astonished look, "but it's over now, and we need not say any more about it. The hair and rags are disgustingly filthy, there is no doubt about that. Their late owner never used a comb, and was otherwise beastly in his habits; still, old man, that cannot be helped, and if you like, when we once get out of the town, we can put them in water for twenty-four hours, or make a sort of oven, and bake them to get rid of their inhabitants. Our lives are at stake, Ned, and we must not mind trifles."
"Right, old boy," Ned said, making a great effort to overcome his first sensation of disgust. "As you say, it is a trifle. You have hit upon a superb idea, Dick, superb; and I think you have saved our lives from what seemed a hopeless scrape. But what is your other disguise?"
"This," Dick said, lifting the bear's skin. "I can get into this, and if we travel at night, so that I can walk upright, for I never could travel far on all-fours, I should pass well enough, as I could lie curled up by your side in the daytime, and no one will ask a holy fakir any troublesome questions. I don't think you could get into the skin, Ned, or I would certainly take the fakir for choice; for it will be awfully hot in this skin."
"I don't mind doing the fakir a bit," Ned said. "Fortunately the sun has done his work, and the color of our skins can be hidden by a good coat of dirt, which will look as natural as possible. Now let us set about it at once."
It took an hour's preparation; for, although Ned's toilet was quickly made, needing in fact nothing but a coating of mud, it took some time to sew Dick up in the skin, the opening being sewn up by means of the small blade of the knife and some string. It was by this time quite dark, and the operation had been completed so perfectly that once Ned was dressed they had no fear whatever of interruption.
"Now, Ned, before we go I will set fire to the straw. I don't suppose any one will go down and make any discoveries, but they may be looking for wood, so it's as well to prevent accidents. We will throw that big piece of matting over the opening in the floor, so the light won't show till we get well away."
He ran down the ladder, struck a match, lit the straw, and then ran quickly up again. The mat was dragged across the opening, and then the boys went boldly out into the yard, Ned striding along, and Dick trotting on all-fours beside him. The night was dark, and although there were many men in the yard, sitting about on the ground round fires, no one noticed the boys, who, turning out through a gateway, took the road into the heart of Lucknow.
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{
"id": "7071"
}
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17
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OUT OF LUCKNOW.
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One hundred yards or so after starting the disguised fakir and his bear entered a locality teeming with troops, quartered there in order to be close at hand to the batteries, to assist to repel sorties, or to join in attacks. Fortunately the night was very dark, and the exceedingly awkward and unnatural walk of the bear passed unseen. Over and over again they were challenged and shouted to, but the hoarse "Hoo-Hac," which is the cry of the fakirs, and the ring of the iron-bound staff with its clanking rings on the ground, were a sufficient pass.
Ned guessed, from the fact of their having been met with so close to the fort, that the fakir and his bear would be well known to the mutineers; and this proved to be the case.
Several of the men addressed him, but he waved his arm, shook his head angrily, and strode on; and as fakirs frequently pretend to be absorbed in thought, and unwilling to converse, the soldiers fell back. Beyond this, the streets were deserted. The most populous native quarter lay far away, and few of the inhabitants, save of the lowest classes, cared to be about the streets after nightfall.
The instant that they were in a quiet quarter Dick rose on to his feet.
"My goodness," he whispered to Ned, "that all-fours' work is enough to break one's back, Ned."
They now struck sharply to the left, presently crossed the wide street leading from the Cawnpore Bridge, and kept on through quiet lanes until they came to the canal. This would be the guide they wanted, and they followed it along, taking nearly the route which General Havelock afterward followed in his advance, until they came to a bridge across the canal. Once over, they were, they knew, fairly safe. They kept on at a rapid walk until well in the country, and then sat down by the roadside for a consultation as to their best course of proceeding. The lads were both of opinion that the dangers which would lie in the way of their reaching Cawnpore would be very great. This road was now occupied by great numbers of troops, determined to bar the way to Lucknow against General Havelock. They had advanced without question, because it was natural that Sepoys should be making their way from Cawnpore to Lucknow; but it would not be at all natural that a fakir should at this time be going in the opposite direction. Moreover--and this weighed very strongly with them--they knew that General Havelock would advance with a force wholly inadequate to the task before him; and they thought that even should he succeed in getting into Lucknow, he would be wholly unable to get out again, hampered, as he would be, with sick, wounded, women, and children. In that case he would have to continue to hold Lucknow until a fresh relieving force arrived, and the lads had already had more than enough of the confinement and horrors of a siege such as that of Cawnpore.
Animated by these considerations, they determined to push to Delhi, where they hoped that they might arrive in time to see the end of the siege, at whose commencement they had been present.
No suspicion would be likely to be excited by their passage through that line of country, which, indeed, would be found altogether denuded of the enemy's troops, for all the regiments that had mutinied along this line had marched off, either to Delhi or Lucknow, and the country was in the hands of the zemindars, who would neither suspect nor molest a wandering fakir. It certainly was unusual for a fakir to be accompanied by a bear, but as the fakir they had killed had a bear with him, it was clearly by no means impossible. Dick protested that it was absolutely essential that they should walk at night, for that he would be detected at once in the day.
"I vote that we walk all night, Ned, and make our thirty-five or forty miles, then turn in, hide up all day. In the evening when it gets quite dusk, we can go into the outskirts of a village. Then you will begin to shout, and I will lie down, as if tired, by you. They will bring you lots of grub, under the idea that you will give them charms, and so on, next day. When the village is asleep, we will go on. You can easily ask for cloth--I am sure your rags are wretched enough--and then I can dress at night, after setting out from each village, in native dress, for it would be awful to walk far in this skin; besides, my feet are as uncomfortable as possible."
This plan was agreed upon, and they struck across country for the main Delhi road, Dick slipping out of his bear's skin, and simply wearing it wrapped loosely round him.
The Warreners had been accustomed to such incessant labor at Lucknow that they had no difficulty in keeping going all night. As day was breaking they retired into a tope of trees and threw themselves down, Dick first taking the precaution to get into the bear's skin and lace it up, in case of surprise. It was of course hot, but at least it kept off flies and other insects; and as it was quite loose for him, it was not so hot as it would have been had it fitted more tightly. The lads were both utterly fatigued, and in a very few minutes were fast asleep.
It was late in the afternoon before they awoke, and although extremely hungry, they were forced to wait until it became dusk before proceeding on their way.
At the first village at which they arrived they sat down near the first house, and Ned began to strike his staff to the ground and to shout "Hoo-Hac" with great vehemence. Although the population were for the most part Mussulmen, there were many Hindoos everywhere scattered about, and these at once came out and formed a ring round the holy man. Some bore torches, and Dick played his part by sitting up and rocking uneasily, in the manner of a bear, and then lying down and half-covering his face with his paw, went apparently to sleep.
"The servant of Siva is hungry," Ned said, "and would eat. He wants cloth;" and he pointed to the rags which scarce held together over his shoulder. Supplies of parched grain and of baked cakes were brought him, and a woman carried up a sick child and a length of cloth. Ned passed his hand over the child's face, and by that and the heat of her hand judged that she had fever. First, after the manner of a true fakir, he mumbled some sentence which no one could understand. Then in silence he breathed a sincere prayer that the child might be restored to health. After this he bade the mother give her cooling drinks made of rice water and acid fruit, to keep her cool, and to damp her hands and face from time to time; and then he signified by a wave of his hand that he would be alone.
The villagers all retired, and the lads made a hearty meal; then taking what remained of the food, they started on their night's journey, pausing in a short time for Dick to get out of his skin, and to wrap himself from head to foot in the dark blue cotton cloth that the woman had given.
"I felt like an impostor, getting that cloth under false pretenses, Dick."
"Oh, nonsense," Dick said. "The woman gave it for what the fakir could do, and I am sure your advice was better than the fakir would have given, so she is no loser. If ever we come on one of these sort of trips again we will bring some quinine and some strong pills, and then we really may do some good."
Dick took no pains about coloring his face or hands, for both were burned so brown with exposure to the sun that he had no fear that a casual glance at them at night, even in torchlight, would detect that he was not a native.
"Now, Ned, I promised to stop for twenty-four hours, if you liked, to soak that head of hair in a pond; what do you say?"
"No," Ned said; "it is terribly filthy, but we will waste no time. To-morrow, when we halt, we will try and make an oven and bake it. I will try to-morrow to get a fresh cloth for myself, and throw these horrible rags away. Even a fakir must have a new cloth sometimes."
They made a very long march that night; and had the next evening a success equal to that of the night before. Another long night-tramp followed, and on getting up at the end of the day's sleep Ned collected some dry sticks and lit a fire. Then he made a hole in the ground, and filled it with glowing embers. When the embers were just extinct he cleared them out, took off his wig, rolled it up, and put it into the hot oven he had thus prepared, and covered the top in with a sod. Then carefully looking to see that no natives were in sight, he threw away his old rags, and Dick and he enjoyed a dip in a small irrigation tank close to the wood. After this Ned again smeared himself over with mud, and sat down in the sun to dry. Then he dressed himself in the cloth that had been given him the night before, opened his oven, took out the wig, gave it a good shake, and put it on, saying, "Thank God, I feel clean again; I have had the horrors for the last three days, Dick."
In the three nights' journey the boys had traveled a hundred and eleven miles, and were now close to Ferruckabad, a town of considerable size. They pursued their usual tactics--entered it after dusk, and sat down near the outskirts. The signal calls were answered as before, and a number of the faithful gathered round with their simple offerings of food.
As they began stating their grievances, Ned as usual warned them off with a brief "to-morrow" when he saw outside the group of Hindoos two or three Mussulman troopers.
These moved closely up, and contemplated the wild-looking fakir, with his tangled hair and his eyes peering out through the tangle. One of them looked at the bear for some time attentively, and then said: "That is no bear; it is a man in a bear's skin."
Ned had feared that the discovery might be made, and had from the first had his answer ready.
"Fool," he said in a loud, harsh voice, "who with his eyes in his head supposed that it was a bear? It is one who has sinned and is under a vow. Dogs like you know naught of these things, but the followers of Siva know."
"Do you call me a dog?" said the Mussulman angrily, and strode forward as if to strike; but Ned leaped to his feet, and twirling his staff round his head, brought it down with such force on the soldier's wrist that it nearly broke the arm. The Hindoos began to shout "Sacrilege!" as the Mussulman drew his pistol. Before he could fire, however, his comrades threw themselves upon him. At this time it was the policy of Hindoos and Mussulmans alike to drop all religious differences, and the troopers knew that any assault upon a holy fakir would excite to madness the Hindoo population.
The furious Mohammedan was therefore dragged away by his fellows, and Ned calmly resumed his seat. The Hindoos brought a fresh supply of food for the holy man expiating his sin in so strange a way, and then left the fakir to his meditation and his rest.
Half an hour later the Warreners were on their way, and before morning congratulated themselves upon having done more than half of the two hundred and eighty miles which separate Lucknow from Delhi. The remaining distance took them, however, much longer than the first part had done, for Dick cut his foot badly against a stone the next night, and was so lamed that the night journeys had to be greatly shortened. Instead, therefore, of arriving in eight days, as they had hoped, it was the 3d of September--that is, thirteen days from their start--before they saw in the distance the British flag flying on the watch tower on the Ridge. They had made a long detour, and came in at the rear of the British position. On this side the country was perfectly open, and the villagers brought in eggs and other produce to the camp.
Upon the 25th of August the enemy had sent a force of six thousand men to intercept the heavy siege train which was on its way to the British camp from the Punjaub. Brigadier-General Nicholson, one of the most gallant and promising officers of the British army, was sent out against them with a force of two thousand men, of which only one-fourth were British. He met them at Nujufghur and routed them, capturing all their guns, thirteen in number. A curious instance here occurred of the manner in which the least courageous men will fight when driven to bay. The army of six thousand men had made so poor a fight that the British loss in killed and wounded amounted to only thirty-three men. After it was over it was found that a party of some twenty rebels had taken shelter in a house in a village in the British rear. The Punjaub infantry was sent to drive them out, but its commanding officer and many of its men were killed by the desperate handful of mutineers. The Sixty-first Queen's was then ordered up, but the enemy was not overpowered until another officer was dangerously wounded and many had fallen. Altogether the victory over this little band of men cost us sixteen killed and forty-six wounded--that is to say, double the loss which had been incurred in defeating six thousand of them in the open. The result of this engagement was that the road in the rear of the British camp was perfectly open, and the Warreners experienced no hindrance whatever in approaching the camp.
Dick had, after crossing the Oude frontier, left his bear's skin behind him, and adopted the simple costume of a native peasant, the blue cloth and a white turban, Ned having begged a piece of white cotton for the purpose. Traveling only at night, when the natives wrap themselves up very much, there was little fear of Dick's color being detected; and as he kept himself well in the background during the short time of an evening when Ned appeared in public, he had passed without attracting any attention whatever.
The Warreners' hearts leaped within them on beholding, on the afternoon of the 3d of September, a party of British cavalry trotting along the road, two miles from camp.
"It is the Guides," Ned said. "We know the officer, Dick. Keep on your disguise a minute longer; we shall have some fun."
Ned accordingly stood in the middle of the road and shouted his "Hoo-Hac!" at the top of his voice.
"Get out of the way, you old fool," the officer riding at its head said, as he drew up his horse on seeing the wild figure, covered with shaggy hair to the waist, twirling his formidable staff.
Ned stopped a moment. "Not a bit more of an old fool than you are yourself, Tomkins," he said.
The officer reined his horse back in his astonishment. He had spoken in English unconsciously, and being answered in the same language, and from such a figure as this, naturally petrified him.
"Who on earth are you?" he asked.
"Ned Warrener; and this is my brother Dick;" and Ned pulled off his wig.
"By Jove!" the officer said, leaping from his horse; "I am glad to see you. Where on earth have you come from? Some one who came up here from Allahabad had seen some fellow there who had come down from Cawnpore, and he reported that you had gone on into Lucknow in disguise, and that news had come you had got safely in."
"So we did," Ned said; "and as you see, we have got safely out again. We left there on the night of the 20th."
"And what was the state of things then?" Lieutenant Tomkins asked. "How long could they hold out? We know that it will be another three weeks before Havelock can hope to get there."
"Another three weeks!" Ned said. "That is terrible. They were hard pushed indeed when we left; the enemy were driving mines in all directions; the garrison were getting weaker and weaker every day, and the men fit for duty were worked to death. It seems next to impossible that they could hold out for another four or five weeks from the time we left them; but if it can be done, they will do it. Do you happen to have heard of our father?"
"The man that brought the news about you said he was all right and hearty, and the troop was doing good work in scouring the country round Cawnpore. Now will you ride back and report yourself to General Wilson?" So saying, he ordered two of the troopers to dismount and walk back to camp.
Ned had thrown down the wig when he took it off; but before mounting Dick picked it up, rolled it up into a little parcel, and said: "It is my first effort in wig-making, and as it has saved our lives I'll keep it as long as I live, as a memento; besides, who knows? it may be useful again yet."
Quite an excitement was created in the camp behind the Ridge by the arrival of the Guide cavalry with two Englishmen in native dress, and the news that they were officers from Lucknow quickly spread.
The cavalry drew up at their own lines, and then dismounting, Lieutenant Tomkins at once sent an orderly to the general with the news, while the boys were taken inside a tent, and enjoyed the luxury of a bath, and a message was sent round to the officers of the regiment, which rapidly resulted in sufficient clothes being contributed to allow the boys to make their appearance in the garb of British officers.
A curry and a cup of coffee were ready for them by the time they were dressed, and these were enjoyed indeed after a fortnight's feeding upon uncooked grain, varied only by an occasional piece of native bread or cake. The hasty meal concluded, they accompanied Lieutenant Tomkins to the general's tent.
They were most cordially received by General Wilson; and omitting all details, they gave him an account of their having been cut off during a successful sortie from Lucknow, and having made their way to Delhi in disguise. Then they proceeded to describe fully the state of affairs at Lucknow, a recital which was at once interesting and important, inasmuch as though several native messengers had got through from Lucknow to General Havelock, as none of them carried letters--for these would have insured their death if searched--they had brought simply messages from General Inglis asking for speedy help, and their stories as to the existent state of things in the garrison were necessarily vague and untrustworthy.
The most satisfactory portion of the boys' statement was, that although the garrison were now on short rations, and that all the comforts, and many of what are regarded as almost the necessaries of life, were exhausted, yet that there was plenty of grain in the place to enable the besieged to exist for some weeks longer.
"The great fear is that some essential part of the defense may be destroyed by mines," Ned concluded. "Against open attacks I think that the garrison is safe; but the enemy are now devoting themselves so much to driving mines that however great the care and vigilance of the garrison, they may not be always able to detect them, or, even if they do so, to run counter-mines, owing to the numerical weakness of our force."
"Thanks for your description, gentlemen; it throws a great light upon the state of affairs, and is very valuable. I will at once telegraph a _resumé_ of it to the central government and to General Havelock. The pressing need of aid will no doubt impress the Calcutta authorities with the urgent necessity to place General Havelock in a position to make an advance at the earliest possible moment. He will, of course, communicate to Colonel Warrener the news of your safe arrival here. You have gone through a great deal indeed since you left here, while we have been doing little more than hold our own. However, the tide has turned now. We have received large reinforcements and our siege train; and I hope that in the course of a fortnight the British flag will once again wave over Delhi. In the meantime you will, at any rate for a few days, need rest. I will leave you for a day with your friends of the Guides, and will then attach you to one of the divisional staffs. I hope that you will both dine with me to-day."
That evening at dinner the Warreners met at the general's table General Nicholson, whose chivalrous bravery placed him on a par with Outram, who was called the Bayard of the British army. He was short of staff officers, and did not wish to weaken the fighting powers of the regiments of his division by drawing officers from them. He therefore asked General Wilson to attach the Warreners to his personal staff. This request was at once complied with. Their new chief assured them that for the present he had no occasion for their services, and that they were at liberty to do as they pleased until the siege operations began in earnest. The next few days were accordingly spent, as Dick said, in eating and talking.
Every regiment in camp was anxious to hear the tale of the siege of Lucknow, and of the Warreners' personal experience in entering and leaving the besieged Residency; and accordingly they dined, lunched, or breakfasted by turns with every mess in camp. They were indeed the heroes of the day; and the officers were much pleased at the simplicity with which these gallant lads told their adventures, and at the entire absence of any consciousness that they had done anything out of the way. In fact, they rather regarded the whole business as two schoolboys might regard some adventure in which they had been engaged, Dick, in particular, regarding all their adventures, with the exception only of the sufferings of the garrison of Lucknow, in the light of an "immense lark."
In the meantime, the troops were working day and night in the trenches and batteries, under the directions of the engineer officers; and every heart beat high with satisfaction that, after standing for months on the defensive, repelling continual attacks of enormously superior numbers, at last their turn had arrived, and that the day was at hand when the long-deferred vengeance was to fall upon the bloodstained city.
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{
"id": "7071"
}
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18
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THE STORMING OF DELHI.
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On the morning of the 8th of September the battery, eight hundred yards from the Moree gate of Delhi, opened fire, and sent the first battering shot against the town which had for three months been besieged. Hitherto, indeed, light shot, shell, and shrapnel had been fired at the gunners on the walls to keep down their fire, and the city and palace had been shelled by the mortar batteries; but not a shot had been fired with the object of injuring the walls or bringing the siege to an end.
For three months the besiegers had stood on the offensive, and the enemy not only held the city, but had erected very strong works in the open ground in front of the Lahore gate, and had free ingress and egress from the town at all points save from the gates on the north side, facing the British position on the Ridge. During these three long months, however, the respective position of the parties had changed a good deal. For the first month the mutineers were elated with their success all over that part of India. They were intoxicated with treason and murder; and their enormous numbers in comparison with those of the British troops in the country made them not only confident of success, but arrogant in the belief that success was already assured. Gradually, however, the failure of all their attempts, even with enormously superior forces, to drive the little British force from the grip which it so tenaciously held of the hill in front of Delhi, damped the ardor of their enthusiasm. Doubts as to whether, after all, their mutiny and their treachery would meet with eventual success, and fear that punishment for their atrocities would finally overtake them, began for the first time to enter their minds.
Quarrels and strife broke out between the various leaders of the movement, and pitched battles were fought between the men of different corps. Then came pestilence and swept the crowded quarters. A reign of terror prevailed throughout the city; the respectable inhabitants were robbed and murdered, shops were burst open and sacked, and riot and violence reigned supreme.
The puppet monarch, terrified at the disorder that prevailed, and finding his authority was purely nominal--the real power resting in the hands of his own sons, who had taken a leading share in getting up the revolt, and in those of the Sepoy generals--began to long for rest and quiet. The heavy shell which from time to time crashed into his palace disturbed his peace, and, through his wives, he secretly endeavored to open negotiations with the British. These overtures were, however, rejected. The king had no power whatever, and he and his household were all concerned in the massacres which had taken place in the palace itself.
It was then, by an army which, however small, was confident of victory, against one which, however large, was beginning to doubt that final success would be theirs, that the siege operations began on the morning of the 8th of September. Thenceforth the besiegers worked night and day. Every night saw fresh batteries rising at a distance of only three hundred yards from the walls; fifteen hundred camels brought earth; three thousand men filled sandbags, placed fascines, and erected traverses for the guns. The batteries rose as if by magic. The besieged viewed these preparations with a strange apathy. They might at the commencement of the work have swept the ground with such a shower of grape and musketry fire that the erection of batteries so close to their walls would have been impossible; but for the first three nights of the work they seemed to pay but little heed to what we were doing, and when at last they awoke to the nature of our proceedings, and began a furious cannonade against the British, the works had reached a height that afforded shelter to those employed upon them. Each battery, as fast as the heavy siege guns were placed in position, opened upon the walls, until forty heavy guns thundered incessantly.
The enemy now fought desperately. Our fire overpowered that of the guns at the bastions opposed to them; but from guns placed out in the open, on our flank, they played upon our batteries, while from the walls a storm of musketry fire and rockets was poured upon us. But our gunners worked away unceasingly. Piece by piece the massive walls crumbled under our fire, until, on the 13th, yawning gaps were torn through the walls of the Cashmere and Water bastions. That night four engineer officers--Medley, Long, Greathead, and Home--crept forward and examined the breaches, and returned, reporting that it would be possible to climb the heaps of rubbish and enter at the gaps in the wall. Orders were at once issued for the assault to take place at daybreak next morning.
The assaulting force was divided into four columns; the first, composed of three hundred men of the Seventy-fifth Regiment, two hundred and fifty men of the First Bengal Fusiliers, and four hundred and fifty men of the Second Punjaub Infantry--in all one thousand men, under Brigadier-General Nicholson, were to storm the breach near the Cashmere bastion. The second column, consisting of two hundred and fifty men of the Eighth Regiment, two hundred and fifty men of the Second Bengal Fusiliers, and three hundred and fifty men of the Fourth Sikh Infantry, under Colonel Jones, Q.B., were to storm the breach in the Water bastion. The third column, consisting of two hundred men of the Fifty-second Regiment, two hundred and fifty men of the Ghoorka Kumaan battalion, and five hundred men of the First Punjaub Infantry, under Colonel Campbell, were to assault by the Cashmere gate, which was to be blown open by the engineers. The fourth column, eight hundred and sixty strong, was made up of detachments of European regiments, the Sirmoor battalion of Ghoorkas, and the Guides. It was commanded by Major Reed, and was to carry the suburb outside the walls, held by the rebels, called Kissengunge, and to enter the city by the Lahore gate. In addition to the four storming columns was the reserve, fifteen hundred strong, under Brigadier Longfield. It consisted of two hundred and fifty men of the Sixty-first Regiment, three hundred of the Beloochee battalion, four hundred and fifty of the Fourth Punjab Infantry, three hundred of the Jhind Auxiliary Force, and two hundred of the Sixtieth Rifles, who were to cover with their fire the advance of the storming column, and then to take their places with the reserves. This body was to await the success of the storming column, and then follow them into the city, and assist them as required. The cavalry and the rest of the force were to cover the flank and defend the Ridge, should the enemy attempt a counter attack.
Precisely at four o'clock on the morning of the 14th, the Sixtieth Rifles dashed forward in skirmishing order toward the walls, and the heads of the assaulting columns moved out of the batteries, which had until this moment kept up their fire without intermission.
The Warreners were on duty by the side of General Nicholson; and accustomed as they were to danger, their hearts beat fast as they awaited the signal. It was to be a tremendous enterprise--an enterprise absolutely unrivaled in history--for five thousand men to assault a city garrisoned by some thirty thousand trained troops, and a fanatical and turbulent population of five hundred thousand, all, it may be said, fighting with ropes round their necks.
As the Rifles dashed forward in front, and the head of the column advanced, a terrific fire of musketry broke out from wall and bastion, which the British, all necessity for concealment being over, answered with a tremendous cheer as they swept forward. Arrived at the ditch there was a halt. It took some time to place the ladders, and officers and men fell fast under the hail of bullets. Then as they gathered in strength in the ditch there was one wild cheer, and they dashed up the slope of rubbish and stones, and passed through the breach.
The entrance to Delhi was won.
Scrambling breathlessly up, keeping just behind their gallant general, the Warreners were among the first to win their way into the city.
An equally rapid success had attended the assault upon the breach in the Water bastion by the second column. Nor were the third far behind in the assault through the Cashmere gate, But here a deed had first to be done which should live in the memories of Englishmen so long as we exist as a nation.
As the head of the assaulting column moved forward a little party started at the double toward the Cashmere gate. The party consisted of Lieutenants Home and Salkeld, of the Royal Engineers, and Sergeants Smith and Carmichael, and Corporal Burgess, of the same corps; Bugler Hawthorne of the Fifty-second regiment; and twenty-four native sappers and miners under Havildars Mahor and Tilluh Sing. Each of the sappers carried a bag of powder, and, covered by such shelter as the fire of the Sixtieth skirmishers could give them, they advanced to the gate. This gate stands close to an angle in the wall, and from the parapets a storm of musketry fire was poured upon them. When they reached the ditch they found the drawbridge destroyed, but crossed in single file upon the beams on which it rested. The gate was of course closed, but a small postern-door beside it was open, and through this the mutineers added a heavy fire to that which streamed from above. The sappers laid their bags against the gate, and slipped down into the ditch to allow the firing party to do their work. Many had already fallen. Sergeant Carmichael was shot dead as he laid down his powder bag; Havildar Mahor was wounded. As Lieutenant Salkeld tried to fire the fuse he fell, shot through the arm and leg; while Havildar Tilluh Sing, who stood by, was killed, and Ramloll Sepoy was wounded. As he fell Lieutenant Salkeld handed the slow match to Corporal Burgess, who lit the fuse, but fell mortally wounded as he did so. Then those who survived jumped, or were helped, into the ditch, and in another moment a great explosion took place, and the Cashmere gate blew into splinters, killing some forty mutineers who were behind it. Then Lieutenant Home, seeing that the way was clear, ordered Bugler Hawthorne to sound the advance, and the assaulting column came rushing forward with a cheer, and burst through the gateway into the city.
Of the six Englishmen who took part in that glorious deed only two lived to wear the Victoria cross, the reward of valor. Two had died on the spot, and upon the other four General Wilson at once bestowed the cross; but Lieutenant Salkeld died of his wounds, and Lieutenant Home was killed within a week of the capture of the city. Thus only Sergeant Smith and Bugler Hawthorne lived to wear the honor so nobly won.
General Nicholson, who was in general command of the whole force, concentrated the two columns which had entered in a wide open space inside the Cashmere gate, and then swept the enemy off the ramparts as far as the Moree bastion, the whole of the north wall being now in the possession of our troops. Then he proceeded to push on toward the Lahore gate, where he expected to meet Major Reed with, the fourth column. This column had, however, failed even to reach the Lahore gate, the enemy's position in the suburb beyond the wall proving so strong, and being held by so numerous a force, that, after suffering very heavily, the commander had to call back his men, his retreat being covered by the cavalry.
Thus, as General Nicholson advanced through the narrow lane between the wall and the houses, the column was swept by a storm of fire from window, loophole, and housetop--a fire to which no effective reply was possible. Then, just as he was in the act of cheering on his men, the gallant soldier fell back in the arms of those behind him, mortally wounded. He was carried off by his sorrowing soldiers, and lingered until the 26th of the month, when, to the deep grief of the whole army, he expired.
It being evident that any attempt to force a path further in this direction would lead to useless slaughter, and that the place must be won step by step, by the aid of artillery, the troops were called back to the bastion.
A similar experience had befallen the third column, which had, guided by Sir T. Metcalfe, who knew the city intimately, endeavored to make a circuit so as to reach and carry the Jumma Musjid, the great mosque which dominated the city. So desperate was the resistance experienced that this column had also to fall back to the ramparts. The reserve column had followed the third in at the Cashmere gate, and had, after some fighting, possessed itself of some strong buildings in that neighborhood, most important of which was a large and commanding house, the residence of Achmed Ali Khan; and when the third column fell back Skinner's house, the church, the magazine, and the main-guard were held, and guns were planted to command the streets leading thereto. One cause of the slight advance made that day was, that the enemy, knowing the weakness of the British soldier, had stored immense quantities of champagne and other wines, beer, and spirits in the streets next to the ramparts, and the troops--British, Sikhs, Beloochees, and Ghoorkas alike--parched with thirst, and excited by the sight of these long untasted luxuries, fell into the snare, and drank so deeply that the lighting power of the force was for awhile very seriously impaired.
On the 15th the stubborn fighting recommenced. From house to house our troops fought their way; frequently, when the street was so swept by fire that it was impossible to progress there, making their way by breaking down the party walls, and so working from one house into another. During this day guns and mortars were brought into the city from our batteries, and placed so as to shell the palace and the great building called the Selimgur.
The next morning the Sixty-first Regiment and the Fourth Punjaub Rifles made a rush at the great magazine, and the rebels were so stricken by their rapidity and dash that they threw down their portfires and fled, without even once discharging the cannon, which, crammed to the muzzle with grape, commanded every approach. Here one hundred and twenty-five cannon and an enormous supply of ammunition fell into our hands, and a great many of the guns were at once turned against their late owners.
So day by day the fight went on. At night the sky was red with the flames of burning houses, by day a pall of smoke hung over the city. From either side cannon and mortars played unceasingly, while the rattle of musketry, the crash of falling houses, the shrieks of women, the screams of children, and the shouting of men mingled in a chaos of sounds. To the credit of the British soldier be it said, that infuriated as they were by the thirst for vengeance, the thought of the murdered women, and the heat of battle, not a single case occurred, so far as is known, of a woman being ill-treated, insulted, or fired upon--although the women had been present in the massacres, and had constantly accompanied and cheered on the sorties of the mutineers. To the Sepoys met with in Delhi no mercy was shown; every man taken was at once bayoneted, and the same fate befell all townsmen found fighting against us. The rest of the men, as well as the women and children, were, after the fighting was over, permitted to leave the city unmolested, although large numbers of them had taken share in the sack of the white inhabitants' houses, and the murder of every Christian, British or native, in the town. It would, however, have been impossible to separate the innocent from the guilty; consequently all were allowed to go free.
From the time that the British troops burst through the breaches, an exodus had begun from the gates of the town on the other side, and across the bridge over the Jumna. Our heavy guns could have destroyed this bridge, and our cavalry might have swept round the city and cut off the retreat on the other side; but the proverb that it is good to build a bridge for a flying foe was eminently applicable here. Had the enemy felt their retreat cut off--had they known that certain death awaited them unless they could drive us out of the city, the defense would have been so desperate that it would have been absolutely impossible for the British forces to have accomplished it. The defense of some of the Spanish towns in the Peninsular war by the inhabitants, lighting from house to house against French armies, showed what could be effected by desperate men lighting in narrow streets; and the loss inflicted on our troops at Nujufghur by twenty Sepoys was another evidence of the inexpediency of driving the enemy to despair. As it was, the rebels after the first day fought feebly, and were far from making the most of the narrow streets and strongly-built houses. No one liked to be the first to retreat, but all were resolved to make off at the earliest opportunity. Men grew distrustful of each other, and day by day the desertions increased, the resistance diminished, and the districts held by the rebels grew smaller and smaller. It is true that by thus allowing tens of thousands of rebels to escape we allowed them to continue the war in the open country, but here, as it afterward proved, they were contemptible foes, and their defeat did not cost a tithe of the loss which would have resulted in their extermination within the walls of Delhi.
Up to the 20th the palace still held out. This was a fortress in itself, mounting many cannon on its walls, and surrounded by an open park-like space. On that morning the engineers began to run a trench, to enable a battery to be erected to play upon the Lahore gate of the palace. Before, however, they had been long at work, a party of men of the Sixty-first, with some Sikhs and Ghoorkas, ran boldly forward, and taking shelter under a low wall close to the gate, opened fire at the embrasures and loopholes. The answering fire was so weak that Colonel Jones, who was in command of the troops in this quarter--convinced that the report that the king with his wives and family, and the greater part of the garrison of the palace, had already left was true--determined upon blowing in the gate at once. Lieutenant Home was appointed to lead the party told off for the duty, which was happily effected without loss. The British rushed in, and found three guns loaded to the muzzle placed in the gateway, but fortunately the Sepoys who should have fired them had fled.
The news that the palace was taken spread rapidly, and there was a rush to share in the spoil. But few of the enemy were found inside; these were at once bayoneted, and then a general scramble ensued. The order had been given that no private plundering should be allowed, but that everything taken should be collected, and sold for the general benefit of the troops. Orders like this are, however, never observed, at any rate with portable articles; and Sikhs, Ghoorkas, and British alike, loaded themselves with spoil. Cashmere shawls worth a hundred pounds were sold for five shillings, silk dresses might be had for nothing, and jewelry went for less than the value of the setting.
The same day the headquarters of the army were removed to the palace of Delhi. As the Union Jack of England ran up the flagstaff on the palace so lately occupied by the man crowned by the rebels Emperor of India, the seat and headquarters of the revolt which had deluged the land with blood, and caused the rule of England to totter, a royal salute was fired by the British guns, and tremendous cheers arose from the troops in all parts of the city.
The raising of that flag, the booming of those guns, were the signal of the deathblow of the Indian mutiny. Over one hundred thousand rebels were still in arms against the British government, but the heart of the insurrection was gone. It was no longer a war, it was a rebellion. There was no longer a head, a center, or a common aim. Each body of mutineers fought for themselves--for life rather than for victory. The final issue of the struggle was now certain; and all the native princes who had hitherto held aloof, watching the issue of the fight at Delhi, and remaining neutral until it was decided whether the Sepoys could pluck up the British flag from the Ridge, or the British tear down the emblem of rebellion from above the palace of Delhi, hesitated no longer, but hastened to give in their allegiance to the victorious power.
Nothing has been said as to the part the Warreners bore in that fierce six days' fighting. They did their duty, as did every other man in the British army, but they had no opportunity for specially distinguishing themselves. As staff officers, they had often to carry messages to troops engaged in stubborn fight, and in doing so to dash across open spaces, and run the gantlet of a score of musket balls; both, however, escaped without a scratch. They had not been present on the occasion of the taking of the palace, for they had been at early morning on the point of going in to the headquarters for orders, when Captain Hodgson came out. They had dined with him on the day previous to the assault, and he came up them now.
"Now," he said, "I am just going on an expedition after your own hearts, lads. We have news that the king and queen have stolen away, and have gone to the palace at the Kotub Minar. I am going with my troops to bring them in. Would you like to go?"
"Oh, yes, of all things," the Warreners exclaimed. "But we have no horses."
"Oh, I can mount you," he said. "Several of my fellows slipped into the town in hopes of getting some loot, and three or four were shot; so if the general will give you leave, I will take you."
The Warreners at once went in to Brigadier-General Jones, to whom they had been attached since the fall of General Nicholson. As they were supernumeraries on his staff, the general at once gave them leave, and in high delight they followed their friend--a most gallant and fearless officer, who had greatly distinguished himself by the dashing exploits which he had executed with his troop of irregular horse--to his camp outside the walls. Half an hour later they were riding at a trot toward the spot where the ex-emperor had taken refuge. Their route lay across ground hitherto in possession of the enemy, and they rode past thousands of armed budmashes, or blackguards, of Delhi, who had left the city, and were making their way to join some of the rebel leaders in the field. These scowled and muttered curses as the little troop rode by; but the blow which had just been dealt was so crushing, the dread inspired by British valor so complete, that although apparently numerous enough to have destroyed the little band without difficulty, not a man dared raise his voice or lift a weapon.
"What are all these wonderful ruins?" Dick asked Captain Hodgson, by whose side they were riding.
"This is where old Delhi stood. These great buildings are tombs of kings and other great men; the smaller houses have gone to dust centuries ago, but these massive buildings will remain for as many centuries more. Wait till you see Kotub Minar; in my opinion there is nothing in India or in the world to equal it."
Another half-hour's riding brought them into sight of a magnificent shaft of masonry, rising far above the plain.
"That is the Minar," Captain Hodgson said; "it is the same word as minaret. Is it not magnificent?"
The Kotub Minar is an immense shaft tapering gradually toward the top. It is built in stages, with a gallery round each. Each stage is different. In one it is fluted with round columns like a huge mass of basalt. In another the columns are angular; and in the next, round and angular alternately. The highest stage is plain. The height is very great, and the solidity of execution and the strength of the edifice are as striking as its height and beauty.
They were not, however, to go so far as the Kotub, for, questioning some peasants, they learned that the king had halted at a building called Durzah-Nizam-oo-deen. The gates were shut, and it was certain that the king would have a large body of retainers with him. Matchlock men showed at the windows and on the roof, and things looked awkward for the little troop of cavalry. Captain Hodgson rode forward, however, without hesitation, and struck on the great gate. A window by the side of the gate opened, and he was asked what was wanted.
"I am come to take, and to carry into Delhi, the ex-king and his family. It is better to submit quietly, for if I have to force my way in, every soul in the place will be put to the sword."
In two minutes the postern opened, and a closely veiled figure made her appearance.
"I am the Begum," she said. And Captain Hodgson bent in acknowledgment that the favorite wife of the man who was yesterday regarded as the emperor of India, stood before him.
"The king will surrender," she said, "if you will promise that his life shall be spared; if not, he will defend himself to the last, and will die by his own hand."
"Defense would be useless," Captain Hodgson said. "The force I have would suffice amply to carry the place; and if it did not, in three hours any reinforcements I could ask for would be here. I have no authority to give such a promise."
"If you give the promise it will be kept," the Begum said. "If you refuse, the king will shoot himself when the first soldier passes the gate."
Captain Hodgson hesitated. It was true that he had no authority to make such a promise; but he felt that government would far rather have the king a captive in their hands than that he should excite a feeling of regret and admiration among the people by dying by his own hand in preference to falling into those of the British.
"I agree," he said after a pause. "I promise that the king's life shall be spared."
In a minute the gate was thrown back, and an aged man came out, followed by several women. The age of the king was nearly eighty-five, and he was from first to last a mere puppet in the hands of others. In no case would he have been executed by the government, since the old man was clearly beyond any active participation in what had taken place.
The litter in which the king and his wives had been conveyed from Delhi was again brought into requisition, and the party were soon _en route_ for Delhi. The royal palace had been but a few hours in our hands before the ex-king was brought in, a prisoner where he had so lately reigned. He was lodged with his women in a small building in the palace, under a strong guard, until it should be decided what to do with him.
"I shall go out to-morrow to try and catch some of the sons of the old man. They are the real culprits in the matter. If you like to go out again, and can get off duty, well and good," Captain Hodgson said.
The boys, who were very pleased at having been present at so historical an event as the capture of the king of Delhi, warmly thanked Captain Hodgson; and, having again obtained leave, started with him on the following morning at daybreak. Some of the princes a spy had reported to Captain Hodgson as being at Humayoon's tomb, a large building near the Kotub Minar. They rode in the same direction that they had gone out on the preceding day, but proceeded somewhat further.
"That is Humayoon's tomb," Captain Hodgson said, pointing to a large square building with a domed roof and four lofty minarets, standing half a mile off the road.
The troop rode up at a gallop, and, surrounding the building, dismounted. Soldiers were placed at all the various doors of the building, with orders to shoot down any one who might come out, and Captain Hodgson sent a loyal moulvie, named Rujol Ali, who had accompanied him, into the building, to order the princes there to come out. Then arose within the building a great tumult of voices, as the question whether they should or should not surrender was argued. Several times the moulvie returned, to ask if any conditions would be given; but Hodgson said sternly that no conditions whatever would be made with them.
At last, after two hours' delay, two of the sons and a grandson of the king, all of whom had been leaders in the mutiny, and authors of massacres and atrocities, came out and surrendered. They were immediately placed in a carriage which had been brought for the purpose, a guard was placed over them, and ordered to proceed slowly toward the city.
Then Hodgson, accompanied by the Warreners, entered the inclosure which surrounded the tomb. Here from five to six thousand of the refuse of the city, many of them armed, were assembled. A yell of hate arose as the little band entered; guns were shaken defiantly; sabers waved in the air. The odds were tremendous, and the Warreners felt that nothing remained but to sell their lives dearly.
"Lay down your arms!" Captain Hodgson shouted in a stentorian voice.
Eight or ten shots were fired from the crowd, and the bullets whistled over the heads of the horsemen, but fortunately none were hit.
"Lay down your arms!" he shouted again. "Men, unsling your carbines. Level."
As the carbines were leveled, the bravery of the mob evaporated at once. Those nearest threw down their arms, and as with leveled guns the horsemen rode through the crowd, arms were everywhere thrown down, and resistance was at an end. Over a thousand guns, five hundred swords, and quantities of daggers and knives were collected; and a number of elephants, camels, and horses were captured.
Ordering the native lieutenant to remain with the troop in charge of these things until some carts could be sent out for the arms, Captain Hodgson, accompanied by the boys, rode off after the carriage, which had started two hours before.
They rode rapidly until they neared Delhi, when they saw the carriage, surrounded by a great mob. Captain Hodgson set spurs to his horse and galloped forward at full speed, followed by the boys. They burst through the crowd, who were a large body of ruffians who had just left the city, where the fighting was even now not over, and who were all armed. A defiant cry broke from them as the three horsemen rode up to the carriage, from which with the greatest difficulty the guard had so far kept the crowd.
There was not a moment for hesitation. Captain Hodgson raised a hand, and a momentary silence reigned.
"These men in the carriage," said he in loud tones, "have not only rebelled against the government, but have ordered and witnessed the massacre and shameful treatment of women and children. Thus, therefore, the government punishes such traitors and murderers!"
Then drawing his revolver, before the crowd could move or lift a hand he shot the three prisoners through the head. The crowd, awed and astonished, fell back, and the carriage with the dead bodies passed into the city.
|
{
"id": "7071"
}
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19
|
A RIOT AT CAWNPORE.
|
While the guns of Delhi were saluting the raising of the British flag over the royal palace, General Havelock and his force were fighting their way up to Lucknow. On the 19th of September he crossed the Ganges, brushed aside the enemy's opposition, and, after three days' march in a tremendous rain, found them in force at the Alumbagh. After a short, sharp fight they were defeated, and the Alumbagh fell into our hands. All the stores and baggage were left here, with a force strong enough to hold it against all attacks; and after a day to rest his troops, General Havelock advanced on the 22d, defeated the enemy outside Lucknow, and then, as the direct route was known to be impassable, he followed the canal as far as the Kaiserbagh, and there turning off, fought his way through the streets to the Residency, where he arrived only just in time, for the enemy had driven two mines right under the defenses, and these would, had the reinforcements arrived but one day later, have been exploded, and the fate of the garrison of Cawnpore might have befallen the defenders of Lucknow.
The desperate street fighting had, however, terribly weakened the little force which had performed the feat. Out of fifteen hundred men who had entered the city, a third were killed or wounded, among the former being the gallant Brigadier-General Neil.
With so weak a force it was evident that it would be hopeless to endeavor to carry off the sick, the wounded, the women, and children through the army of rebels that surrounded them, and it was therefore determined to continue to hold the Residency until further aid arrived. The siege therefore recommenced, but under different conditions, for the increased force enabled the British to hold a larger area; and although the discomforts and privations were as great as before--for the reinforcements had brought no food in with them--the danger of the place being carried by assault was now entirely at an end.
One noble action connected with the relief of Lucknow will never be forgotten. Before General Havelock started up from Cawnpore, General Sir James Outram, his senior officer, arrived, with authority to take the command. Upon his arrival, however, he issued a general order, to say that to General Havelock, who had done such great deeds to relieve Lucknow, should be the honor of the crowning success; and that he therefore waived his seniority, and would fight under General Havelock as a volunteer until Lucknow was relieved. A more generous act of self-negation than this was never accomplished. To the man who relieved Lucknow would fall honor, fame, the gratitude of the English people, and all this General Outram of his own accord resigned. He was worthy indeed of the name men gave him--the "Bayard of India."
The news that Lucknow was relieved caused almost as much delight to the troops at Delhi as their own successes had given them, for the anxiety as to the safety of the garrison was intense. To the Warreners the news gave an intense pleasure, for the thought of the friends they had left behind in that terrible strait had been ever present to their mind. The faces of the suffering women, the tender girls, the delicate children, had haunted them night and day; and their joy at the thought that these were rescued from the awful fate impending over them knew no bounds.
It was not at Delhi, however, that the Warreners heard the news; for on the 23d, only three days after the occupation of the city, they left with the flying column of Colonel Greathead, which was ordered to march down to Agra, clearing away the bands of mutineers which infested the intervening country, and then to march to Cawnpore, to be in readiness to advance on Lucknow. The boys had no difficulty in obtaining leave to accompany this column, as Ned would naturally on the first opportunity rejoin his regiment, which was at Cawnpore, while Dick was longing to form one of the naval brigade, which, under Captain Peel, was advancing up the country.
The rebels were found in force at Allyghur, and were defeated without difficulty; and after several minor skirmishes the force marched hastily down to Agra, which was threatened by a large body of the enemy. Without a halt they marched thirty miles to Agra, and encamped in the open space outside the fort.
Just as they were cooking their meals a battery of artillery opened upon them, an infantry fire broke out from the surrounding houses, and a large body of cavalry dashed in among them.
For a moment all was confusion; but the troops were all inured to war; with wonderful rapidity they rallied and attacked the enemy, who were over five thousand strong, and finally defeated them with great slaughter, and captured fourteen guns. Agra saved, the column started two days later for Cawnpore; upon the way it defeated bodies of rebels, and punished some zemindars who had taken part against us, and arrived at Cawnpore on the 26th of October.
At Majupoorie, halfway up from Agra, the force had been joined by a brigade under Colonel Hope Grant, who, as senior officer, took the command of the column. They marched into Cawnpore three thousand five hundred strong, all troops who had gone through the siege of Delhi; and Ned at once joined his regiment, where he was warmly received.
On the following day the Ninety-third Highlanders and a part of the naval brigade, two hundred strong, arrived; and Dick's delight as the column marched in was unbounded. He reported himself for duty at once, and, as among the officers were some of his own shipmates, he was at once at home.
There was little sleep in the tents of the junior officers of the brigade that night. Dick's name had been twice mentioned in dispatches, and all sorts of rumors as to his doings had reached his comrades. The moment, therefore, that dinner was over, Dick was taken to a tent, placed on a very high box on a table, supplied with grog, and ordered to spin his yarn, which, although modestly told, elicited warm applause from his hearers.
On the 30th Colonel Grant's column moved forward, and arrived after three days' march within six miles of the Alumbagh. They had with them a great convoy of siege material and provisions, and these were next day escorted safely into the Alumbagh, where the little garrison had held their own, though frequently attacked, for six weeks. The Sixty-fourth Regiment had already done so much fighting that it was not to form part of the advance. The naval brigade was increased on the 1st of November by the arrival of Captain Peel himself, with two hundred more sailors and four hundred troops. They had had a heavy fight on the way up, and had protected the convoy and siege guns of which they were in charge, and had defeated the enemy, four thousand strong, and captured all his guns, but with a loss to themselves of nearly one hundred men. Soon after the commencement of the engagement, Colonel Powell, who was in command of the column, was killed; and Captain Peel then took command of the force, and won the victory.
The astonishment of the people of Cawnpore at the appearance of the brawny tars was unbounded. The sailors went about the streets in knots of two or three, staring at the contents of the shops, and as full of fun and good humor as so many schoolboys. Greatly delighted were they when the natives gave them the least chance of falling foul of them--for they knew that the people of the town had joined the mutineers--and were only too glad of an excuse to pitch into them. They all carried cutlasses, but these they disdained to use, trusting, and with reason, to their fists, which are to the natives of India a more terrible, because a more mysterious weapon than the sword. A sword they understand; but a quick hit, flush from the shoulder, which knocks them off their feet as if struck by lightning, is to them utterly incomprehensible, and therefore very terrible.
One day the Warreners were strolling together through the town, and turned off from the more frequented streets, with a view of seeing what the lower-class quarters were like. They had gone some distance, when Ned said: "I think we had better turn, Dick. These scowling scoundrels would be only too glad to put a knife into us, and we might be buried away under ground in one of these dens, and no one be ever any the wiser for it. I have no doubt when we have finished with the fellows, and get a little time to look round, there will be a clear sweep made of all these slums."
The lads turned to go back, when Dick said, "Listen!"
They paused, and could hear a confused sound of shouting, and a noise as of a tumult. They listened attentively.
"Ned," Dick exclaimed, "I am sure some of those shouts are English. Some of our fellows have got into a row; come on!"
So saying, he dashed off up the narrow street, accompanied by his brother. Down two more lanes, and then, in an open space where five or six lanes met, they saw a crowd. In the midst of it they could see sabers flashing in the air, while British shouts mingled with the yells of the natives.
"This is a serious business," Ned said, as they ran; "we are in the worst part of Cawnpore."
Three or four natives, as they approached the end of the lane, stepped forward to prevent their passage; but the lads threw them aside with the impetus of their rush, and then, shoulder to shoulder, charged the crowd.
Expecting no such assault, the natives fell aside from the shock, and in a few seconds the boys stood by their countrymen. There were six in all--sailors, as the boys had expected. The fight had evidently been a sharp one. Four or five natives lay upon the ground, and two of the sailors were bleeding from sword-cuts. The tars gave a cheer at the sight of this reinforcement, especially as one of the newcomers was a naval officer--for Dick had bought the uniform of a naval officer killed in the fight of the 1st.
The infuriated crowd drew back for a moment; but seeing that the reinforcement consisted only of two lads, again attacked fiercely. The boys had drawn their swords, and for a minute the little party fought back to back. It was evident, however, that this could not last, for every moment added to the number of their foes, the budmashes flocking down from every quarter.
"Now, lads," Ned shouted, "get yourselves ready, and when I say the word make a dash all together for that house at the left corner. The door is open. Once in there, we can hold it till help comes. Press them a bit first, so as to scatter them a little, and then for a rush. Are you all ready? Now!"
With a cheer the sailors hurled themselves upon the crowd in a body. The surprise, added to the weight and force of the charge, was irresistible; the natives were sent flying like ninepins, and before the enemy quite understood what had happened, the whole party were safe in the house, and the door slammed-to and bolted.
"See if there are any windows they can get in at."
The men ran into the two rooms of which, on the ground floor, the house consisted; but the windows in these, as is often the case in Indian towns, were strongly barred. There was a furious beating at the door.
"It will give in a minute," Dick said. "Upstairs, lads; we can hold them against any number."
"It's lucky they did not use their pistols," Ned said, as they gathered in the upper room; "we should have been polished off in no time had they done so."
"I expect they made sure of doing for us with their swords and knives," Dick replied, "and did not like to risk calling attention by the sound of pistol-shots. Now, lads, how did you get into this row?"
"Well, your honor," said one of the tars, "we were just cruising about as it might be, when we got down these here lanes, and lost our bearings altogether. Well, we saw we had fallen among land pirates, for the chaps kept closing in upon us as if they wanted to board, and fingering those long knives of theirs. Then one of them he gives a push to Bill Jones, and Bill gives him a broadside between the eyes, and floors him. Then they all begins to yell, like a pack o' they jackals we heard coming up country. Then they drew their knives, and Bill got a slash on his cheek. So we, seeing as how it were a regular case of an engagement all along the line, drew our cutlasses and joins action. There were too many of them, though, and we were nigh carried by the pirates, when you bore up alongside."
At this moment a crash was heard below; the door had yielded, and the crowd rushed into the lower part of the house. When it was found to be empty there was a little delay. No one cared to be the first to mount the stairs, and encounter the determined band above. Dick stepped forward to glance at the state of things below, when half a dozen pistol-shots were fired. One inflicted a nasty cut on his cheek, and another struck him on the hand.
"Are you hurt, Dick?" Ned said, as his brother leaped back.
"No, nothing to speak of; but it was a close shave. Perkins, pick up my sword, will you? I didn't think of their firing."
"Being indoors, they are not afraid of the pistols being heard any distance," Ned said. "Keep a sharp lookout, lads, in case they make a rush upstairs, while I tie up my brother's hand and face."
"They are coming, sir," the sailors cried, as the house shook with the rush of a body of men up the stairs.
"Stand well back, lads, and cut them down as they enter the door."
Pushed from behind, five or six of the enemy burst simultaneously into the room; but ere they could fire a pistol, or even put themselves into an attitude of defense, they were cut down or run through the body. Then a tremendous crash and a wild cry was heard.
"Hurrah!" Dick shouted, "the staircase has given way."
Many groans and shrieks were heard below; then there was a sound of persons being carried out, and for awhile, quiet below, while outside the hubbub became greater.
"What is going on outside?" Ned said, and Dick and he peered through the closed jalousies into the street.
A number of budmashes were bringing bundles of bamboos from a basket-maker's shop opposite; some of the crowd were opposing them.
"They are going to fire the house," Dick exclaimed. "The people opposing are the neighbors, no doubt. They'll do it, though," he added, as the fiercer spirits drove the others back. "What's best to be done, Ned?"
Ned looked round, and then up.
"Let us cut through the bamboo ceiling, Dick; there must be a space between that and the roof. The wall won't be thick between that and the next house, and we can work our way from house to house; and if the flames gain--for they are sure to spread--we can but push off the tiles and take to the roofs, and run the gantlet of their pistols and muskets. Their blood's up now, and they will shoot, to a certainty. Do you think that the best plan?"
"That's it. Now, lads, two of you stand close together; now, Perkins, you jump on their shoulders and cut a hole through the bamboos with your cutlass. Quick, lads, there's no time to lose;" for they could hear the tramping of feet below, and the sound as the bundles of bamboo were thrown down.
"Now, lads," Dick went on--for as a naval officer he was naturally in command of the men--"take two or three of those rugs on that couch there, and knot them together. Shut the door, to keep the smoke out. There, they've lit it!" --as a shout of pleasure rose from below.
The bamboos were tough, and Perkins could not use his strength to advantage. Smoke curled up through the crevices of the floor, and all watched anxiously the progress made.
"That's big enough," Dick cried at last; "we have not a moment to lose, the flames are making through the floor. Now, Perkins, climb through the hole; now, lads, follow in turn."
Four of the sailors were rapidly through the hole.
"Now, lads, one of you two; don't waste time. Now, Ned, catch hold of this man's legs and give him a hoist; that's right. Now drop that rope, lad. Now, Ned, I'm in command; go on. Now, lads, catch this bundle of rugs; that's right. Give me one end. There we are. Now spread one of those rugs over the hole, to keep the smoke out. Now, lads, how is the wall?"
"Quite soft, your honor; we'll be through in a minute."
In accordance with orders, those first up had begun at once with their cutlasses to pick a hole through the mud wall which formed the partition between the houses. Although thicker below, the divisions between what may be called the lofts of the houses were made but of a single brick of unbaked clay or mud, and as Dick clambered up through the hole, the sailors had already made an opening quite large enough to get through. All crept through it, and again Dick hung a rug over the hole to keep out the smoke.
"Now, lads, attack the next wall again; but don't make more noise about it than you can help. The people below will be removing what things they can, and making a row; still, they might hear us; and it is as well they should think us burned in the house where we were. But you must look sharp, lads, for the fire spreads through these dried-up houses as if they were built of straw."
The sailors labored hard, and they worked their way from house to house; but the flames followed as fast; and at last, almost choked by smoke and dust, Dick said: "Quick, my men, knock off some tiles, and get on the roof, or we shall be burned like rats in a trap. This side, the furthest from the street."
The tiles gave way readily; and each man thrust his head out through the hole he had made, for a breath of fresh air. In a minute all were on the roof.
"Crouch down, lads; keep on this side of the roof; people are not likely to be looking out for us this side, they will be too busy moving their furniture. Move on, boys; the fire is spreading now pretty nearly as fast as we can scramble along."
It was already a great fire; down both the lanes at whose junction the house first fired stood, the flames had spread rapidly, and leaping across the narrow streets had seized the opposite houses. Already fifty or sixty houses were in a blaze, although it was not five minutes from the beginning of the fire.
"There is a cross lane about ten houses ahead, Dick," Ned said.
"We will stick on the last house as long as we can, Ned, and then slide down by the rope on to that outhouse. They are too busy now with their own affairs to think about us; besides, they suppose we are dead long ago, and the fellows who are at the head of it will have made off to look after their own houses, for the wind is blowing fresh, and there is no saying how far the fire may spread. Besides, we shall have our fellows up in a few minutes. Directly the fire is seen, they are sure to be sent down to preserve order."
They were soon gathered on the roof of the last house in the lane, and three minutes later were driven from it by the flames. One by one they scrambled down by the aid of the rope on to the outhouse, and thence to the ground. Then they passed through the house into the lane beyond. Looking up the lane, it was an arch of fire; the flames were rushing from every window and towering up above every roof, almost meeting over the lane. Upon the other hand, all was wild confusion and terror; men were throwing out of upper windows bedding and articles of furniture; women laden with household goods, and with children in their arms and others hanging to their clothes, were making their way through the crowd; bedridden people were being brought out; and the screams, shrieks, and shouts mingled with the roaring of flames and the crashes of falling roofs. As in great floods in India, the tiger and the leopard, the cobra and the deer, may all be seen huddled together on patches of rising ground, their mutual enmity forgotten in the common danger, so no one paid the slightest attention to the body of Englishmen who so suddenly joined the crowd.
"Sheathe your cutlasses, my lads," Dick said. "There's no more fighting to be done. Lend a hand to help these poor wretches. There, two of you take up that poor old creature; they have carried her out, and then left her; take her on till you find some open space to set her down in. Now, Ned, you take a couple of men and work one side of the lane, I will take the opposite side with the others. Let us go into every room and see that no sick people or children are left behind. There, the flames have passed the cross lane already; the corner house is on fire."
For quarter of an hour the tars labored assiduously; and many a bedridden old woman, or a forgotten baby, did they bring out. Fortunately at the end of the lane was an open space of some extent, and here piles of household goods and helpless people were gathered.
At the end of a quarter of an hour they heard a deep tramp, and the naval brigade, led by Captain Peel, filed up through the lane. The sailors burst into a cheer as they saw their friends arrive, and these responded upon seeing some of their comrades at work carrying the sick and aged. Dick at once made his way to Captain Peel, and reported briefly that the fire was in the first place lighted with the purpose of burning him and his party; but that they had escaped, and had since been at work helping the inhabitants.
"Very well," Captain Peel said. "You can give details afterward; at present we have got to try and stop the flames. It seems a large block of fire."
"It is, sir. It extends across several lanes; there must be a couple of hundred houses in flames, and I fear, from what we have seen in the lane we have been working in, a considerable loss of life."
"Mr. Percival," Captain Peel said to one of his officers, "take your company and knock down or blow up all the houses on this side of that lane there. Mr. Wilkinson, you take number two company, and do the same with the lane to the right. The rest follow me. March!"
In five minutes all the tars and the Highlanders--who arrived on the ground immediately after the sailors--were at work pulling down houses, so as to arrest the progress of the flames by isolating the burning block. Upon three sides they succeeded, but upon the other the fire, driven by the wind, defied all their efforts, and swept forward for half a mile, until it burned itself out when it had reached the open country. In its course it had swept away a great part of the worst and most crowded quarters of Cawnpore.
All through the evening and night the troops and sailors toiled; and morning had broken before all danger of any further extension was over; the men were then ordered home, a fresh body of troops coming up to preserve order, and prevent the robbery, by the lawless part of the population, of the goods which had been rescued from the flames. Then, after a ration of grog had been first served out to each man, and breakfast hastily cooked and eaten, all sought their tents, exhausted after their labors.
It was not until evening that signs of life were visible in the camp. Then men began to move about; and an orderly presently came across to request the Warreners to go to Captain Peel's quarters to report the circumstances through which the fire arose.
The lads related the history of the affair from the time when they had come upon the scene, and Captain Peel expressed himself in terms of warm laudation of their gallantry, quickness, and presence of mind. Then the sailors were called up, and their story, although longer and more diffuse than that told by the Warreners, was yet substantially the same, and Captain Peel told the men that they ought not to have wandered in that way into the slums of Cawnpore, but that beyond that indiscretion they had acted, as reported by Mr. Warrener, with great courage, coolness, and good discipline. Then the Warreners went back to their tent, and had to go through their yarn again with great minuteness and detail.
"I do think," said Rivers, a midshipman of some two years older standing than Dick, "that you are the luckiest youngster in the service. It is not one fellow in a hundred thousand who has such chances."
"That is so, Rivers," one of the lieutenants answered; "but it is not one in a hundred thousand who, having gone through such adventures, would have been alive to tell them at the end. The getting into these scrapes may be luck, but the getting out of them demands courage, coolness, and quickness of invention, such as not one lad in a thousand possesses. Now, Rivers, tell me honestly whether you think that, had you been cut off as he was in that sortie at Lucknow, you would ever have thought of robbing that old fakir of his wig?"
"No," Rivers said; "I am quite sure it would never have occurred to me. Yes, as you say, sir, Dick Warrener has no end of luck, but he certainly deserves and makes the best of it."
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{
"id": "7071"
}
|
20
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THE RELIEF OF LUCKNOW.
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On the 6th of November Captain Peel, with five hundred of his gallant bluejackets, marched from Cawnpore, taking with them the heavy siege guns. Three days later they joined General Grant's column, which was encamped at a short distance from the Alumbagh, and in communication with the force holding that position. On the 9th Sir Colin Campbell, who had come out from England with all speed to assume the chief command in India, arrived in camp, and his coming was hailed with delight by the troops, who felt that the hour was now at hand when the noble garrison of Lucknow were to be rescued.
The total force collected for the relief were: Her Majesty's Eighth, Fifty-third, Seventy-fifth, and Ninety-third regiments of infantry; two regiments of Punjaub infantry; and a small party of native sappers and miners. The cavalry consisted of the Ninth Lancers, and detachments of Sikh cavalry and Hodgson's Horse. The artillery comprised Peel's naval brigade, with eight heavy guns, ten guns of the Royal Horse Artillery, six light field guns, and a heavy battery of the Royal Artillery. A total of about twenty-seven hundred infantry and artillery, and nine hundred cavalry.
On the morning of the 10th Mr. Kavanagh, a civilian, came into camp. He had, disguised as a native, started the evening before from the Residency with a native guide, named Kunoujee Lal, had swum the Goomtee, recrossed by the bridge into the city, passed through the streets, and finally made his way in safety. He was perfectly acquainted with the city, and brought plans from Sir James Outram for the guidance of the commander-in-chief in his advance.
After an examination of the plans Sir Colin Campbell determined that, instead of forcing his way through the narrow streets as General Havelock had done, he would move partly round the town, and attack by the eastern side, where there was much open ground, sprinkled with palaces and mosques and other large buildings. These could be attacked and taken one by one, by a series of separate sieges, and thus the Residency could be approached with far less loss than must have taken place in an attempt to force a way through the crowded city.
On the 15th the troops marched to the Alumbagh, defeating a small rebel force which attempted to stop their way.
At the Alumbagh Dick Warrener--for Ned was with his regiment, which, to his great disgust, had remained at Cawnpore--had the joy of meeting his father again, as Warrener's Horse had not shared in Havelock's advance to the Residency, but had remained as part of the garrison of the Alumbagh. It is needless to tell of the delight of that meeting after all that the lads had gone through since they parted from their father, nearly four months before, at Cawnpore. Colonel Warrener had heard of the safe arrival of his sons at Delhi before he marched up from Cawnpore, but since then no word had reached him. Captains Dunlop and Manners were also delighted to meet him again; and the whole of the troop vied with each other in the heartiness of the welcome accorded to him. Disease and death had sadly lessened the ranks; and of the one hundred men who had volunteered at Meerut to form a body of horse, not more than fifty now remained in the ranks. It was very late at night--or rather, early in the morning--before the party assembled in Colonel Warrener's tent separated, to seek a few hours' sleep before the _réveillé_ sounded for the troops to rise and prepare for the advance.
Soon after daybreak the column were under arms. The Seventy-fifth Regiment, to its intense disappointment, was ordered to stay and guard the Alumbagh, with its immense accumulation of stores and munitions; and the rest of the troops, turning off from the direct road and following the line the boys had traversed when they made their way into the Residency, marched for the Dil Koosha, a hunting-palace of the late king of Oude.
The enemy, who had anticipated an advance by the direct line taken by Havelock, and who had made immense preparations for defense in that quarter, were taken aback by the movement to the right, and no opposition was experienced until the column approached the beautiful park, upon an elevated spot in which the Dil Koosha stood.
Then a brisk musketry fire was opened upon them. The head of the column was extended in skirmishing order, reinforcements were sent up, and, firing heavily as they advanced, the British drove the enemy before them, and two hours after the first shot was fired were in possession of the palace. The enemy fled down the slope toward the city; but the troops pressed forward, and, with but slight loss, carried the strong position of the Martinière College, and drove the enemy across the canal. By this time the enemy's troops from the other side of the city were flocking up, and prepared to recross the canal and give battle; but some of the heavy guns were brought up to the side of the canal, and the rebels made no further attempt to take the offensive.
The result of the day's fighting more than answered the commander-in-chief's expectations, for not only had a commanding position, from which the whole eastern suburb could be cannonaded, been obtained, but a large convoy of provisions and stores had been safely brought up, and a new base of operations obtained.
The next day, the 15th of November, is celebrated in the annals of British military history as that upon which some of the fiercest and bloodiest fighting which ever took place in India occurred. At a short distance beyond the canal stood the Secunderbagh (Alexander's garden), a building of strong masonry, standing in a garden surrounded by a very high and strong wall. This wall was loopholed for musketry; the gate, which led through a fortified gateway, had been blocked with great piles of stones behind it, and a very strong garrison held it. In front, a hundred yards distant, was a fortified village, also held in great force. Separated from the garden of the Secunderbagh only by the road was the mosque of Shah Nujeeff. This building was also situated in a garden with a strong loopholed wall, and this was lined with the insurgent troops; while the terraced roof of the mosque, and the four minarets which rose at its corners, were crowded with riflemen.
The column of attack was commanded by Brigadier Hope; and as it crossed the bridge of the canal and advanced, a tremendous musketry fire was opened upon it from the village which formed the advanced post of the enemy. The column broke up into skirmishing line and advanced steadily.
"The guns to the front!" said an aide-de-camp, galloping up to the naval brigade.
With a cheer the sailors moved across the bridge, following the Horse Artillery, which dashed ahead, unlimbered, and opened fire with great rapidity. It took somewhat longer to bring the ponderous sixty-eight-pounders of the naval brigade into action; but their deep roar when once at work astonished the enemy, who had never before heard guns of such heavy metal.
The rebels fought obstinately, however; but Brigadier-General Hope led his troops gallantly forward, and after a brief, stern fight the enemy gave way and fled to the Secunderbagh.
The guns were now brought forward and their fire directed at the strong wall. The heavy cannon soon made a breach and the assault was ordered. The Fourth Sikhs had been directed to lead the attack, while the Ninety-third Highlanders and detachments from the Fifty-third and other regiments were to cover their advance, by their musketry fire at the loopholes and other points from which the enemy were firing.
The white troops were, however, too impatient to be at the enemy to perform the patient role assigned to them, and so joined the Sikhs in their charge. The rush was so fierce and rapid that a number of men pushed through the little breach before the enemy had mustered in force to repel them. The entrance was, however, too small for the impatient troops, and a number of them rushed to the grated windows which commanded the gates. Putting their caps on the ends of the muskets, they raised them to the level of the windows, and every Sepoy at the post discharged his musket at once. Before they could load again the troops leaped up, tore down the iron bars, and burst a way here also into the garden.
[Illustration: THE RUSH WAS SO FIERCE, THAT A NUMBER OF MEN PUSHED THROUGH THE LITTLE BREACH BEFORE THE ENEMY COULD REPEL THEM.]
Then ensued a frightful struggle; two thousand Sepoys held the garden, and these, caught like rats in a trap, fought with the energy of despair. Nothing, however, could withstand the troops, mad with the long-balked thirst for vengeance, and attacked with the cry--which in very truth was the death-knell of the enemy--"Remember Cawnpore!" on their lips. No quarter was asked or given. It was a stubborn, furious, desperate strife, man to man--desperate Sepoy against furious Englishman. But in such a strife weight and power tell their tale, and not one of the two thousand men who formed the garrison escaped; two thousand dead bodies were next day counted within the four walls of the garden.
The battle had now raged for three hours, but there was more work yet to be done. From the walls and minarets of the Shah Nujeeff a terrible fire had been poured upon the troops as they fought their way into the Secunderbagh, and the word was given to take this stronghold also. The gate had been blocked up with masonry. Captain Peel was ordered to take up the sixty-eight-pounders and to breach the wall. Instead of halting at a short distance, the gallant sailor brought up his guns to within ten yards of the wall, and set to work as if he were fighting his ship broadside to broadside with an enemy. It was an action probably unexampled in war. Had such an attack been made unsupported by infantry, the naval brigade would have been annihilated by the storm of fire from the walls, and Dick Warrener's career would have come to a close. The Highlanders and their comrades, however, opened with such a tremendous fire upon the points from which the enemy commanded the battery, and at every loophole in the wall, that the mutineers could only keep up a wild and very ineffectual fire upon the gunners. The massive walls crumbled slowly but surely, and in four hours several gaps were made.
Then the guns ceased their fire, and the infantry with a wild cheer burst into the garden of the Shah Nujeeff, and filled the mosque and garden with the corpses of their defenders. The loss of the naval brigade in this gallant affair was not heavy, and Dick Warrener escaped untouched.
Evening was approaching now, and the troops bivouacked for the night. The Ninetieth and that portion of the Fifty-third not engaged in the assault of the Secunderbagh and Shah Nujeeff were now to have their turn as leaders of the attack.
The next point to be carried was the messhouse, a very strong position, situated on an eminence, with flanking towers, a loopholed mud wall, and a ditch. The naval guns began the fray, and the heavy shot soon effected a breach in the wall. The defenders of the post were annoyed, too, by a mortar battery in an advanced post of the British force in the Residency--for the space between the garrison and the relieving force was rapidly lessening. The word was given, and the Ninetieth, Fifty-third, and Sikhs dashed forward, surmounted all obstacles, and carried the position with the bayonet; and the observatory, which stood behind it, was soon afterward most gallantly carried by a Sikh regiment.
In the meantime the garrison of the Residency was not idle. On the day of the arrival of the British at Dil Koosha flag-signals from the towers of that palace had established communication with the Residency, and it was arranged that as soon as the relieving forces obtained possession of the Secunderbagh the troops of the garrison should begin to fight their way to meet them.
Delighted at taking the offensive after their long siege, Havelock's troops, on the 16th, attacked the enemy with fury, and carried two strong buildings known as Hern Khana and engine-house, and then dashed on through the Chuttur Munzil, and carried all before them at the point of the bayonet.
All the strongholds of the enemy along this line had now fallen; and on the 17th of March Sir Colin Campbell met Generals Outram and Havelock, amid the tremendous cheers of British troops, which for awhile drowned the heavy fire which the enemy was still keeping up.
The loss of the relieving column during the operations was far less than that which had befallen Havelock's force in its advance--for it amounted only to one hundred and twenty-two officers and men killed, and three hundred and forty-five wounded. The loss of the enemy considerably exceeded four thousand. The relieving force did not advance into the Residency, but were stationed along the line which they had conquered between the Dil Koosha and the Residency, for the enemy were still in enormously superior force, and threatened to cut the line by which the British had penetrated.
The first operation was to pour in a supply of luxuries from the stores at the Dil Koosha. White bread, oranges, bananas, wine, tea, sugar, and other articles were sent forward; and these, to those who had for nearly six months existed on the barest and coarsest food, were luxuries indeed. An even greater pleasure was afforded by sending in the mails which had accumulated, and thus affording the garrison the intense delight of hearing of those loved ones at home from whom they had been so long cut off.
The day that the junction was made Dick obtained leave for a few hours to visit his friends in the Residency. It was singular to the lad to walk leisurely across the open space of the Residency garden, where before it would have been death to show one's self for a minute, and to look about rather as an unconcerned spectator than as formerly, with nerves on strain night and day to repel attack, which, if successful, meant death to every soul in the place.
In the battered walls, the shattered roofs, the destruction everywhere visible, he saw how the terrors of the siege had increased after he had left; and in view of the general havoc that met his view Dick was astonished that any one should have survived the long-continued bombardment. In some respects the change had been favorable. The accession of strength after the arrival of General Havelock's force had enabled great and beneficial alteration to be made in the internal arrangements, and the extension of the lines held had also aided in improving the sanitary condition. But the change in the appearance of the place was trifling in comparison with that in the faces of the defenders. These were, it is true, still pinched and thin, for the supply of food had been reduced to a minimum, and the rations had been lowered almost to starvation point. But in place of the expression of deep anxiety or of stern determination then marked on every face, all now looked joyous and glad, for the end to the terrible trials had arrived.
As he moved along men looked at the midshipman curiously, and then, as the lad advanced with outstretched hands, greeted him with cries of astonishment and pleasure; for it was naturally supposed in the garrison that the Warreners had fallen in the sortie on Johannes' house. Very hearty were the greetings which Dick received, especially from those whom he met who had fought side by side with him at Gubbins' house. This pleasure, however, was greatly dashed by the answers to his questions respecting friends. "Dead," "dead," "killed," were the replies that came to the greater part of the inquiries after those he had known, and the family in whom he was chiefly interested had suffered heavily. Mr. Hargreaves was killed; Mr. and Mrs. Ritchie and all their children had succumbed to the confinement and privation; but Mrs. Hargreaves and the girls were well. After briefly telling how they had escaped in disguise, after having been cut off from falling back after the successful sortie, Dick Warrener hurried off to the house where he heard that his friends were quartered.
It was outside the bounds of the old Residency, for the ground held had, since the arrival of Havelock's force, been considerably extended, and the ladies had had two rooms assigned to them in a large building. Dick knocked at the door of the room, and the ayah opened it--looked at him--gave a scream, and ran back into the room, leaving the door open. Dick, seeing that it was a sitting-room, followed her in. Mrs. Hargreaves, alarmed at the cry, had just risen from her chair, and Nelly and Edith ran in from the inner room as Dick entered. A general cry of astonishment broke from them.
"Dick Warrener!" Mrs. Hargreaves exclaimed. "Is it possible? My clear boy, thank God I see you again. And your brother?"
"He escaped too," Dick said.
Mrs. Hargreaves took him in her arms and kissed him as a dear relative would have done; for during the month they had been together the boys had become very dear to her, from their unvarying readiness to aid all who required it, from their self-devotion and their bravery. Nor were the girls less pleased, and they warmly embraced the young sailor, whom they had come to look upon as if he had been a member of the family, and whom they had wept as dead.
For a time all were too much moved to speak more than a few disjointed words, for the sad changes which had occurred since they had last met were present in all their thoughts. Nelly, the youngest, was the first to recover, and wiping away her tears, she said, half-laughing, half-crying: "I hate you, Dick, frightening us into believing that you were killed, when you were alive and well all the time. But I never quite believed it after all. I said all along that you couldn't have been killed; didn't I, mamma? and that monkeys always got out of scrapes somehow."
Mrs. Hargreaves smiled.
"I don't think you put it in that way exactly, Nelly; but I will grant that between your fits of crying you used to assert over and over again that you did not believe that they were killed. And now, my dear boy, tell us how this seeming miracle has come about."
Then they sat down quietly, and Dick told the whole story; and Mrs. Hargreaves warmly congratulated him on the manner in which they had escaped, and upon the presence of mind they had shown. Then she in turn told him what they had gone through and suffered. Edith burst into tears, and left the room, and her mother presently went after her.
"Well, Nelly, I have seen a lot since I saw you, have I not?"
"Yes, you are a dear, brave boy, Dick," the girl said.
"Even though I am a monkey, eh?" Dick answered. "And did you really cry when you thought I was dead?"
"Yes," the girl said demurely; "I always cry when I lose my pets. There was the dearest puppy I ever had--" Dick laughed quietly. "Who is the monkey now?" he asked.
"I am," she said frankly; "but you know I can't help teasing you, Dick."
"Don't balk yourself, Nelly, I like it. I should like to be teased by you all my life," he said in lower tones.
The girl flushed up rosy red. "If you could always remain as you are now," she said after a little pause, "just an impudent midshipman, I should not mind it. Do you know, Dick, they give terriers gin to prevent their growing; don't you think you might stop yourself? It is quite sad," she went on pathetically, "to think that you may grow up into a great lumbering man."
"I am quite in earnest, Nelly," Dick said, looking preternaturally stern.
"Yes," Nelly said, "I have always understood midshipmen were quite in earnest when they talked nonsense."
"I am quite in earnest," Dick said solemnly and fixedly again.
"No, really, Dick, we are too old for that game," Nelly said, with a great affectation of gravity. "I think we could enjoy hide-and-seek together, or even blindman's buff; but you know children never play at being little lovers after they are quite small. I remember a dear little boy, he used to wear pinafores----" Here Mrs. Hargreaves again entered the room, and Dick, jumping up suddenly, said that it was quite time for him to be off. "I shall only just have time to be back by the time I promised."
"Good-by, Dick. I hope to see you again tomorrow."
Edith came in, and there was a hearty shake of the hand all round, except that Dick only touched the tips of Nelly's fingers, in a manner which he imagined betokened a dignified resentment, although as he looked up and saw the girl's eyes dancing with amusement, he could scarcely flatter himself that it had produced any very serious effect. Dick returned in an indignant mood to the naval brigade, which was quartered in the Shah Nujeeff's mosque and gardens.
"You are out of sorts to-night, Dick," one of his brother midshipmen said, as they leaned together upon the parapet of the mosque, looking down on the city; "is anything the matter?"
"Were you ever in love, Harry?"
"Lots of times," Harry said confidently.
"And could you always persuade them that you were in earnest?" Dick asked.
Harry meditated. "Well, I am not quite sure about that, Dick; but then, you see, I was never quite sure myself that I was in earnest, and that's rather a drawback, you know."
"But what would you do, Harry, supposing you were really quite in earnest, and she laughed in your face and told you you were a boy?" Dick asked.
"I expect," the midshipman said, laughing, "I should kiss her straight off, and say that as I was a boy she couldn't object."
"Oh, nonsense," Dick said testily; "I want advice, and you talk bosh!"
The midshipman winked confidentially at the moon, there being no one else to wink at, and then said gravely: "I think, Dick, the right thing to do would be to put your right hand on your heart, and hold your left hand up, with the forefinger pointing to the ceiling, and to say, 'Madam, I leave you now. When years have rolled over our heads I will return, and prove to you at once my affection and my constancy.'"
Dick's eyes opened to their widest, and it was not until his friend went off in a shout of laughter that he was certain that he was being chaffed; then, with an exclamation of "Confound you, Harry!" he made a rush at his comrade, who dodged his attack, and darted off, closely pursued by Dick. And as they dashed round the cupola and down the stairs their light-hearted laughter--for Dick soon joined in the laugh against himself--rose on the evening air; and the tars, smoking their pipes round the bivouac fires below, smiled as the sound came faintly down to them, and remarked, "Them there midshipmites are larking, just as if they were up in the maintop."
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{
"id": "7071"
}
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21
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A SAD PARTING.
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Sir Colin Campbell had considered it possible that the enemy would, upon finding that the Residency was relieved, and the prey, of whose destruction they had felt so sure, slipped from between their fingers, leave the city and take to the open, in which case he would, after restoring order, have left a strong body of troops in the city, and have set off in pursuit of the rebels.
It soon became apparent, however, that the enemy had no intention of deserting their stronghold. Lucknow abounded with palaces and mosques, each of which had been turned into a fortress, while every street was barricaded, every wall loopholed. As from forty thousand to fifty thousand men, including many thousands of drilled soldiers, stood ready to defend the town, foot by foot, it was clear that the fighting force at Sir Colin Campbell's command was utterly inadequate to attempt so serious an operation as the reduction of the whole city. To leave a portion of the force would only have submitted them to another siege, with the necessity for another advance to their relief. The commander-in-chief therefore determined to evacuate the Residency and city altogether, to carry off the entire garrison, and to leave Lucknow to itself until the reinforcements from England should arrive, and he should be able to undertake the subjugation of the city with a force adequate for the purpose.
His intention was kept a secret until the last moment, lest the news might reach the enemy, who, from the batteries in their possession, could have kept up a terrible fire upon the road along which the women and children would have to pass, and who would have attacked with such fury along the whole line to be traversed, that it would have been next to impossible to draw off the troops.
In order to deceive the enemy, guns were placed in position to play upon the town, and a heavy fire was opened against the Kaiserbagh, or King's Palace, a fortress of great strength. In the meantime preparations for retreat were quietly carried on. Bullock hackeries were prepared for the carriage of the ladies and children; and on the morning of the 23d of November the occupants of the Residency were informed that they must prepare to leave that afternoon, and that no luggage beyond a few personal necessaries could be carried.
The order awakened mingled emotions--there was gladness at the thought of leaving a place where all had suffered so much, and round which so many sad memories were centered; there was regret in surrendering to the foe a post which had been so nobly defended for so many months. Among many, too, there was some dismay at the thought of giving up all their movable possessions to the enemy. One small trunk was all that was allowed to each, and as each tried to put together the most valuable of his or her belongings, the whole of the buildings occupied were littered, from end to end, with handsome dresses, silver plate, mirrors, clocks, furniture, and effects of all kinds. A short time since every one would have gladly resigned all that they possessed for life and liberty; but now that both were assured, it was felt to be hard to give up everything.
Dick went in to Mrs. Hargreaves' to see if he could be of any service, but there was comparatively little to do, for that lady had lost all her portable property in the destruction of the bungalow on the estate owned by her husband, and had come into Lucknow shortly before the outbreak, when the cloud began to lower heavily, with but a small amount of baggage. Dick had not been able to see them since his first visit, being incessantly on duty.
"I was so sorry I could not come up before," he explained; "but each of the officers has been up to have a look at the Residency; and as we may be attacked at any moment, Captain Peel expects them all to be on the spot with their men."
"Shall we get away without being fired at?" Nelly asked.
"I am afraid you will have to run the gantlet in one or two places," Dick said. "The enemy keep up an almost incessant fire; and although, we must hope, they will not have an idea that any number of people are passing along the road, and their fire will therefore be only a random one, it may be a little unpleasant; but you are all accustomed to that now. I must be off again, Mrs. Hargreaves; I really only came to explain why I did not come yesterday, and only got leave for an hour, so I have come at a trot all the way."
And so Dick made off again; and as he shook hands with them, he could feel that Nelly had not yet forgiven the coldness of his last good-by.
Upon the previous day all the sick and wounded had been moved to the Dil Koosha; that done, the very large amount of money, amounting to nearly a quarter of a million, in the government treasury, was removed, together with such stores as were required. Then the guns were silently withdrawn from the batteries, and at half-past four in the afternoon the emigration of the women and children commenced. All had to walk to the Secunderbagh, along a road strewn with _débris_, and ankle deep in sand, and in some places exposed to a heavy fire. At one of these points a strong party of seamen were stationed, among whom Dick was on duty. As each party of women arrived at the spot they were advised to stoop low, and to run across at full speed, as the road being a little sunk, they thus escaped observation by the enemy, whose battery was at some little distance, but the grape whistled thickly overhead, and several were wounded as they passed.
Dick had been on the lookout for the Hargreaves party, and came forward and had a talk with them before they started across the open spot. He had quite recovered from Nelly's attack upon his dignity as a man and a naval officer, and the pair as usual had a wordy spar. Dick was, however, rather serious at the prospect of the danger they were about to run.
"Will you let me cross with you one at a time?" he asked.
"Certainly not, Dick," Mrs. Hargreaves said. "You could do us no good, and would run a silly risk yourself. Now, girls, are you ready?"
"Stoop low, for heaven's sake!" Dick urged.
Mrs. Hargreaves started at a run, accompanied by Alice. Nelly was a little behind. Dick took her hand and ran across, keeping between her and the enemy.
"Down low!" he cried, as, when they were half across, a heavy gun fired. As he spoke, he threw his arms round Nelly, and pulled her to the ground. As he did so a storm of grape swept just above them, striking the wall, and sending a shower of earth over them. Another half-minute and they were across on the other side.
"Good-by," he said to them all; "you are over the worst now."
"Good-by, my dear boy. Mind how you cross again. God bless you." And Mrs. Hargreaves and Alice shook his hand, and turned to go. Nelly held hers out to him. He took it and clasped it warmly; he was loosening his hold when the girl said: "You have saved my life, Dick."
"Oh, nonsense," he said.
"You did, sir, and--yes, I am coming, mamma"--in answer to a word from her mother. "Oh, how stupid you are, Dick!" she cried, with a little stamp of her foot; "don't you want to kiss me?"
"Of course I do," Dick said.
"Then why on earth don't you do it, sir? --There, that is enough. God bless you, dear Dick;" and Nelly darted off to join her mother.
Then he returned to his post, and the ladies went on to the Secunderbagh. Here a long halt was entailed, until all were gathered there, in order that they might be escorted by a strong guard on to the Dil Koosha. Then came an anxious journey--some in bullock-carts, some in doolies, some on foot. The Hargreaves walked, for the anxiety was less when moving on foot than if shut up in a conveyance. Several times there were long halts in expectation of attack; and a report that a great movement could be heard among the enemy at one time delayed them until reinforcements could be sent for and arrived. But about midnight all reached the Dil Koosha, where a number of tents had been erected, and refreshments prepared for the many fugitives.
Later on the troops came tramping in, having gradually, and in regular order, evacuated their posts, leaving their fires burning and moving in absolute silence, so that it was not until next morning that the enemy awoke to the knowledge that the Residency was deserted, and that their expected prey had safely escaped them.
The next day was spent quietly, all enjoying intensely the open air, the relief from the long pressure, and the good food, wine, and other comforts now at their disposal. Dick brought Colonel Warrener to make the acquaintance of his friends, and a pleasant afternoon was spent together. On the 25th a heavy gloom fell upon all, for on that day the gallant General Havelock, worn out by his labors and anxieties, was seized with dysentery, and in a few hours breathed his last. He was a good man as well as a gallant soldier, and his death just at the moment when the safety of those for whom he had done so much was assured cast a gloom not only over his comrades and those who had fought under him, but on the whole British nation. All that day the great convoy had been on the move between the Dil Koosha and the Alumbagh. Half the fighting force served as an escort, the other half stood in battle order between them and Lucknow, in case the enemy should come out to the attack. The whole road between the two stations was throughout the day covered by a continuous stream of bullock carts, palanquins, carts, camels, elephants, guns, ammunition carts, and store wagons.
Mrs. Hargreaves and her daughters were on an elephant, with their ayah; and as the Warreners had placed in the howdah a basket of refreshments, the long weary march was borne, not only without inconvenience, but with some pleasure at the novelty of the scene and the delight of air and freedom.
Sir Colin Campbell had intended to allow a halt of seven days at the Alumbagh, but on the 27th of May a continuous firing was heard in the direction of Cawnpore. Fearful for the safety of that all-important post, the commander determined to push forward his convoy at once. On the morning of the 28th they started. Dick had come soon after daybreak to the tents where the Hargreaves were, with many others, sleeping.
"There is bad news from Cawnpore," he said, "and you will have to push on. I expect that it will be a terrible two days' march with all this convoy. Pray take enough provisions with you for the two days in the howdah, and some blankets and things to make a cover at night. I am sure that the tents will not be got up, and the confusion at the halting-place will be fearful; but if you have everything with you, you will be able to manage."
It was well that they were so prepared, for the first march, owing to the immense length of the convoy, lasted until long past dark; then there was a halt for a few hours, and then a thirty miles' journey to the bridge of boats on the Ganges.
The naval brigade accompanied the convoy, but Dick had seen nothing of his friends. Colonel Warrener, however, who with his troop had moved along the line at intervals, spoke to them, and was able at the halting-place to assist them to make a temporary shelter, where they snatched a few hours' sleep.
The news that had caused this movement was bad indeed. General Wyndham, in command at Cawnpore, had been defeated by the Gwalior rebel contingent, aided by the troops of Nana Sahib and those of Koer Sing, a great Oude chief, and part of the town had been taken. Sir Colin himself pushed forward at all speed with a small body of troops and some heavy guns, so as to secure the safety of the bridge of boats; for had this fallen into the hands of the enemy the situation of the great convoy would have been bad indeed. However, the rebels had neglected to take measures until it was too late, and the approaches to the bridge on either side were guarded by our guns. The passage of the convoy then began, and for thirty-nine hours a continuous stream passed across the river.
The whole force which had accomplished the relief of Lucknow had not returned, as it was considered necessary to keep some troops to command the town, and prevent the great body of mutineers gathered there from undertaking expeditions. The Alumbagh was accordingly held by the Fifth, Seventy-eighth, Eighty-fourth, and Ninetieth Foot, the Madras Fusiliers, the Ferozepore Sikhs, and a strong artillery force, the whole under the command of Sir James Outram.
As the long day went on, and the thunder of the guns at Cawnpore grew louder and louder, Sir Colin Campbell took the naval brigade and the greater portion of the fighting troops, and pushed forward. The regiments as they arrived were hurried across the bridge, to take part in the defense of the position guarding the bridge, where General Wyndham's troops were defending themselves desperately against immense forces of the enemy.
"What has happened?" was the question the officers of the naval brigade asked those of the garrison when they first met.
"Oh, we have been fearfully licked. A series of blunders and mismanagement. We have lost all the camp equipage, all the stores--in fact, everything. It is the most disgraceful thing which has happened since the trouble began. We lost heavily yesterday, frightfully to-day. They say the Sixty-fourth is cut to pieces."
It had indeed been a wretched business, and was the only occasion when British troops were, in any force, defeated throughout the mutiny. The affair happened in this way. The British force at Cawnpore were stationed in an intrenched position, so placed as to overawe the city, and to command the river and bridge of boats, which it was all-important to keep open. The general in command received news that the mutinous Gwalior contingent, with several other rebel bodies, was on its way to Cawnpore. Unfortunately, they were approaching on the opposite side of the city to that upon which the British intrenchments were situated, and the general therefore determined to leave a portion of his force to protect the intrenchments and bridge, while with the rest he started to give battle to the enemy in the open at a distance on the other side of the city, as it was very important to prevent Cawnpore from again falling into their hands. He advanced first to Dhubarlee, a strong position on the canal, where a vigorous defense could have been made, as a cross canal covered our flank. Unfortunately, however, the next day he again marched forward eight miles, and met the advanced guard of the enemy at Bhowree. The British force consisted of twelve hundred infantry, made up of portions of the Thirty-fourth, Eighty-second, Eighty-eighth, and Rifles, with one hundred native cavalry, and eight guns. The troops advanced with a rush, carried the village, defeated the enemy, and took two guns, and then pressing forward, found themselves in face of the main body of the enemy's army. Then for the first time it appears to have occurred to the general that it was imprudent to fight so far from the city. He therefore ordered a retreat, and the British force fell back, closely followed by the enemy. Had he halted again at Dhubarlee, he might still have retrieved his error; but he continued his retreat, and halted for the night on the plain of Jewar, a short distance from the northeast angle of the city.
No preparations appear to have been made in case of an attack by the enemy, and when in the morning they came on in immense force, the British position was seriously threatened on all sides. For five hours the troops held their ground nobly, and prevented the enemy advancing by a direct attack. A large body, however, moved round to the flank and entered the city, thus getting between the British forces and their intrenchments. The order was therefore given to retire, and this was carried out in such haste that the whole of the camp equipage, consisting of five hundred tents, quantities of saddlery, uniforms for eight regiments, and a vast amount of valuable property of all kinds, fell into the hands of the mutineers. All these stores had been placed in a great camp on the plain outside the fortified intrenchments. It was a disastrous affair; and Cawnpore blazed with great fires, lighted by the triumphant mutineers.
During the retreat a gun had been capsized and left in one of the lanes of the town, and at dead of night one hundred men of the Sixty-fourth, accompanied by a detachment of sailors, went silently out, and succeeded in righting the gun, and bringing it off from the very heart of the city.
The next day the whole force moved out, and took up their position to prevent the enemy from approaching the intrenchments. The mutineers, commanded by Nana Sahib in person, advanced to the attack. One British column remained in reserve. The column under Colonel Walpole succeeded in repulsing the body opposed to it, and captured two of its eighteen-pounder guns. The column under General Carthew maintained its position throughout the day, but fell back toward the evening--a proceeding for which the officer in command was severely censured by the commander-in-chief, who, riding on ahead of his convoy, with a small body of troops, reached the scene of action just at nightfall.
But it was the division under Brigadier-General Wilson, colonel of the Sixty-fourth, that suffered most heavily. Seeing that General Carthew was hardly pressed, he led a part of his own regiment against four guns which were playing with great effect. Ned Warrener's heart beat high as the order to charge was given, for it was the first time he had been in action with his gallant regiment. With a cheer the little body, who numbered fourteen officers and one hundred and sixty men, advanced. Their way led along a ravine nearly half a mile long; and as they moved forward a storm of shot, shell, and grape from the guns was poured upon them, while a heavy musketry fire broke out from the heights on either side. Fast the men fell, but there was no wavering; on at the double they went, until within fifty yards of the guns, and then burst into a charge at full speed.
Ned, accustomed as he was to fire, had yet felt bewildered at the iron storm which had swept their ranks. All round him men were falling; a bullet knocked off his cap, and a grape-shot smashed his sword off short in his hand. The Sepoy artillerymen stood to their guns and fought fiercely as the British rushed upon them. Ned caught up the musket of a man who fell dead by his side, and bayoneted a gunner; he saw another man at four paces off level a rifle at him, felt a stunning blow, and fell, but was up in a minute again, having been knocked down by a brick hurled by some Sepoy from a dwelling close behind the guns--a blow which probably saved his life. Two of the guns where spiked while the hand-to-hand conflict raged.
Major Stirling fell dead, Captain Murphy and Captain Macraw died fighting nobly beside him, and the gallant Colonel Wilson received three bullets through his body. From all sides masses of the enemy charged down, and a regiment of Sepoy cavalry swept upon them. Captain Sanders was now in command, and gave the word to fall back; and even faster than they had approached, the survivors of the Sixty-fourth retreated, literally cutting their way through the crowds of Sepoys which surrounded them.
Ned was scarcely conscious of what he was doing; and few could have given a detailed account of the events of that most gallant charge. The men kept well together; old veterans in fight, they knew that only in close ranks could they hope to burst through the enemy; and striking, and stabbing, and always running, they at last regained the position they had quitted. Of the fourteen officers, seven were killed and two wounded; of the one hundred and sixty men, eighteen killed and fifteen wounded; a striking testimony to the valor with which the officers had led the way. Such slaughter as this among the officers is almost without parallel in the records of the British army; and lads who went into the fray low down on the list of lieutenants came out captains. Among them was Ned Warrener, who stood fifth on the list of lieutenants, and who, by the death vacancies, now found himself a captain.
It was not until they halted, breathless and exhausted, that he discovered that he had been twice wounded; for in the wild excitement of the fight he had been unconscious of pain. A bullet had passed through the fleshy part of his left arm, while another had cut a clean gash just across his hip. Neither was in any way serious; and having had them bound up with a handkerchief, he remained with his regiment till nightfall put an end to the fighting, when he made his way to the hospital. This was crowded with badly wounded men; and Ned seeing the pressure upon the surgeons, obtained a couple of bandages, and went back to his regiment, to have them put on there. As he reached his camp, Dick sprang forward.
"My dear old boy, I was just hunting for you. We crossed to-night, and directly we were dismissed I rushed off, hearing that your regiment has suffered frightfully. I hear you are hit; but, thank God! only slightly."
"Very slightly, old boy; nothing worth talking about. It has been an awful business, though. And how are you? and how is father?"
"Quite well, Ned. Not a scratch either of us."
"And the Hargreaves?"
"Mrs. Hargreaves and the girls are all right, Ned, and will be in to-morrow; all the rest are gone."
"Gone! dear, dear! I am sorry. Now, Dick, come to the fire and bandage up my arm; and you must congratulate me, old boy, for by the slaughter to-day I have my company."
"Hurrah!" Dick exclaimed joyfully. "That is good news. What luck! not eighteen yet, and a captain."
It was only on the 1st of December that the whole of the convoy from Lucknow were gathered in tents on the parade-ground at Cawnpore, and all hoped for a short period of rest.
On the morning of the 3d, however, notice was issued that in two hours the women, children, and civilians of Lucknow would proceed to Allahabad, under escort of five hundred men of the Thirty-fourth Regiment. It would be a long march, for the convoy would be incumbered by the enormous train of stores and munitions of war, while a large number of vehicles were available for their transport.
Colonel Warrener heard the news early, and knowing how interested his sons were in the matter, he rode round to their respective camps and told them. Leaving them to follow, he then rode over to the Hargreaves' tent.
They had just heard the news, and short as the time was, had so few preparations to make that they were ready for a start. A dawk-garry, or post-carriage, was allotted to them, which, the ayah riding outside, would hold them with some comfort, these vehicles being specially constructed to allow the occupants, when two in number only, to lie down at full length. It would be a close fit for the three ladies, but they thought that they could manage; and it was a comfort to know that, even if no tents could be erected at night, they could lie down in shelter.
The young Warreners soon arrived, and while their father was discussing the arrangements with Mrs. Hargreaves, and seeing that a dozen of claret which his orderly had at his orders brought across, with a basket of fruit, was properly secured on the roof, they sauntered off with the girls, soon insensibly pairing off.
"It will be two years at least before I am home in England, Nelly," Dick said, "and I hope to be a lieutenant soon after, for I am certain of my step directly I pass, since I have been mentioned three times in dispatches. I know I am a boy, not much over sixteen, but I have gone through a lot, and am older than my age; but even if you laugh at me, Nelly, I must tell you I love you."
But Nelly was in no laughing mood.
"My dear Dick," she said, "I am not going to laugh; I am too sad at parting. But you know I am not much over fifteen yet, though I too feel older--oh, so much older than girls in England, who are at school till long past that age. You know I like you, Dick, very, very much. It would be absurd to say more than that to each other now. We part just on these terms, Dick. We know we both like each other very much. Well, yes, I will say 'love' if you like, Dick; but we cannot tell the least in the world what we shall do five years hence. So we won't make any promises, or anything else; we will be content with what we know; and if either of us change, there will be no blame and misery. Do you agree to that, Dick?"
Dick did agree very joyfully, and a few minutes later the pair, very silent now, strolled back to the tent. Ned and Edith were already there, for Ned had no idea of speaking out now, or of asking Edith to enter into an engagement which she might repent when she came to enter society in England; and yet, although he said nothing, or hardly anything, the pair understood each other's feelings as well as did Dick and Nelly.
All was now ready for the start, everything in its place, and the ayah on the seat with the driver. Then came the parting--a very sad one. Mrs. Hargreaves was much moved, and the girls wept unrestrainedly, while Colonel Warrener, who had made his adieus, and was standing a little back, lifted his eyebrows, with a comical look of astonishment, as he saw the farewell embraces of his sons with Edith and Nelly.
"Humph!" he muttered to himself. "A bad attack of calf love all round. Well," as he looked at the manly figures of his sons, and thought of the qualities they had shown, "I should not be surprised if the boys stick to it; but whether those pretty little things will give the matter a thought when they have once come out at home remains to be seen. It would not be a bad thing, for Hargreaves was, I know, a very wealthy man, and there are only these two girls."
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{
"id": "7071"
}
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22
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THE LAST CAPTURE OF LUCKNOW.
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The women and children brought from Lucknow once sent off from the British camp, the commander-in-chief was able to direct his attention to the work before him--of clearing out of Cawnpore the rebel army, composed of the Gwalior contingent and the troops of Koer Sing and Nana Sahib, in all twenty-five thousand men. Against this large force he could only bring seventy-five hundred men; but these, well led, were ample for the purpose.
The position on the night of the 5th of December was as follows. The British camp was separated from the city by a canal running east and west. The enemy were entirely on the north of this canal, their center occupying the town. Outside the city walls lay the right of the rebel army, while his left occupied the space between the walls and the river. In the rear of the enemy's left was a position known as the Subadar's Tank. The British occupied as an advanced post a large bazaar on the city side of the river.
The operations of the 6th of December were simple. A demonstration was made against the city from the bazaar, which occupied the attention of the large force holding the town. The main body of the British were quietly massed on its left, and, crossing three bridges over the canal, attacked the enemy's right with impetuosity. These, cut off by the city wall from their comrades within, were unable to stand the British onslaught and the thunder of Peel's guns, and fled precipitately, pursued by the British for fourteen miles along the Calpee Road. Every gun and ammunition wagon of the mutineers on this side fell into the hands of the victors.
As the victorious British force swept along past the city, Sir Colin Campbell detached a force under General Mansfield to attack and occupy the position of the Subadar's Tank--which was captured after some hard fighting. Thus the British were in a position in rear of the enemy's left. The mutineers, seeing that their right was utterly defeated, and the retreat of their left threatened, lost all heart, and as soon as darkness came on, fled, a disorganized rabble, from the city they had entered as conquerors only six days before. The cavalry started next day in pursuit, cut up large numbers, and captured the greater part of their guns.
The threatening army of Gwalior thus beaten and scattered, and Cawnpore in our hands, Sir Colin Campbell was able to devote his whole attention to clearing the country in his rear, and in preparing for the great final campaign against Lucknow, which, now that Delhi had fallen, was the headquarters of the mutiny.
The next two months were passed in a series of expeditions by flying columns. In some of these the Warreners took part, and both shared in the defeats of the Sepoys and the capture of Futtyghur and Furruckabad--places at which horrible massacres of the whites had taken place in the early days of the mutiny. During these two months large reinforcements had arrived; and Jung Bahadoor, Prince of Nepaul, had come down with an army of ten thousand Ghoorkas to our aid.
On the 15th of February the tremendous train of artillery, ammunition and stores, collected for the attack upon the city, began to cross the river; and upon the 26th of the month the order was given for the army to move upon the following day.
The task before it was a difficult one. From all the various points from which the British had driven them--from Delhi, from Rohilcund, and the Doab, from Cawnpore, Furruckabad, Futtyghur, Etawah, Allyghur, Goruckpore, and other places--they retreated to Lucknow, and there were now collected sixty thousand revolted Sepoys and fifty thousand irregular troops, besides the armed rabble of the city of three hundred thousand souls. Knowing the storm that was preparing to burst upon their heads, they had neglected no means for strengthening their position. Great lines of fortifications had been thrown up; enormous quantities of guns placed in position; every house barricaded and loopholed, and the Kaiserbagh transformed into a veritable citadel. In hopes of destroying the force under General Sir James Outram, at the Alumbagh--which had been a thorn in their side for so long--a series of desperate attacks had been made upon them; but these had been uniformly defeated with heavy loss by the gallant British force. On the 3d of March the advanced division occupied the Dil Koosha, meeting with but slight resistance; and the commander-in-chief at once took up his headquarters here. The next three days were spent in making the necessary disposition for a simultaneous attack upon all sides of the town--General Outram on one side, Sir Hope Grant upon another, Jung Bahadoor, with his Nepaulese, on the third, and the main attack, under Sir Colin Campbell himself, on the fourth.
Great was the excitement in the camp on the eve of this tremendous struggle. Colonel Warrener and his sons met on the night before the fighting was to begin.
"Well, boys," he said, after a long talk upon the prospects of the fighting, "did you do as you talked about, and draw your pay and get it changed into gold?"
"Most of it," Ned said; "we could not get it all; and had to pay a tremendous rate of exchange for it."
"Here are the twenty pounds each, in gold, lads," Colonel Warrener said, "that I told you I could get for you. Now what do you want it for? You would not tell me at Cawnpore."
"Well, father, at Delhi there was lots of loot taken, quantities of valuable things, and the soldiers were selling what they had got for next to nothing. I had some lovely bracelets offered me for a few rupees, but no one had any money in their pockets. So Dick and I determined that if we came into another storming business, we would fill our pockets beforehand with money. They say that the palaces, the Kaiserbagh especially, are crowded with valuable things; and as they will be lawful loot for the troops, we shall be able to buy no end of things."
Colonel Warrener laughed.
"There is nothing like forethought, Ned, and I have no doubt that you will be able to pick up some good things. The soldiers attach no value to them, and would rather have gold, which they can change for spirits, than all the precious stones in the world. I shall be out of it, as, of course, the cavalry will not go into the city, but will wait outside to cut off the enemy's retreat."
The fighting began with General Outram's division, which worked round the city, and had on the 7th, 8th, and 9th to repulse heavy attacks of the enemy.
On the 9th Sir Colin Campbell advanced, took the Martinière with but slight opposition, crossed the canal, and occupied the Secunderbagh--the scene of the tremendous fighting on the previous advance. The Begum's palace, in front of Bank House, was then attacked, and after very heavy fighting, carried. Here Major Hodgson, the captor of the king of Delhi, was mortally wounded. General Outram's force had by this time taken up a position on the other side of the river, and this enabled him to take the enemy's defenses in flank, and so greatly to assist the advancing party.
Day by day the troops fought their way forward; and on the 14th the Imaumbarra, a splendid palace of the king of Oude, adjoining the Kaiserbagh, was breached and carried. The panic-stricken defenders fled through the court and garden into the Kaiserbagh, followed hotly by the Sikhs, Ghoorkas, and Highlanders. Such was the terror which their appearance excited that a panic seized also the defenders of the Kaiserbagh, and these too fled, deserting the fortifications raised with so much care, and the British poured into the palace. For a few minutes a sharp conflict took place in every room, and then, the Sepoys being annihilated, the victors fell upon the spoil. From top to bottom the Kaiserbagh was crowded with valuable articles, collected from all parts of the world. English furniture, French clocks and looking-glasses, Chinese porcelain, gorgeous draperies, golden thrones studded with jewels, costly weapons inlaid with gold, enormous quantities of jewelry--in fact, wealth of all kinds to an almost fabulous value. The wildest scene of confusion ensued. According to the rule in these matters, being taken by storm, the place was lawful plunder. For large things the soldiers did not care, and set to to smash and destroy all that could not be carried away. Some put on the turbans studded with jewels; others hung necklaces of enormous value round their necks, or covered their arms with bracelets. None knew the value of the costly gems they had become possessed of; and few indeed of the officers could discriminate between the jewels of immense value and those which were mere worthless imitations.
As soon as the news spread that the Kaiserbagh was taken the guns fired a royal salute in honor of the triumph; and all officers who could obtain an hour's leave from their regiments hurried away to see the royal palace of Oude.
The Warreners were both near the spot when the news came; both were able to get away, and met at the entrance to the palace. Already soldiers, British and native, were passing out laden with spoil.
"What will you give me for this necklace, sir?" a soldier asked Ned.
"I have no idea what it's worth," Ned said.
"No more have I," said the soldier; "it may be glass, it may be something else. You shall have it for a sovereign."
"Very well," Ned said; "here is one."
So onward they went, buying everything in the way of jewels offered them, utterly ignorant themselves whether the articles they purchased were real gems or imitation.
Penetrating into the palace, they found all was wild confusion. Soldiers were smashing chandeliers and looking-glasses, breaking up furniture, tumbling the contents of chests and wardrobes and caskets over the floors, eager to find, equally eager to sell what they had found.
Bitter were the exclamations of disappointment and disgust which the Warreners heard from many of the officers that they were unprovided with money--for the soldiers would not sell except for cash; but for a few rupees they were ready to part with anything. Strings of pearls, worth a thousand pounds, were bought for a couple of rupees--four shillings; diamond aigrettes, worth twice as much, went for a sovereign; and the Warreners soon laid out the seventy pounds which they had between them when they entered the palace; and their pockets and the breasts of their coats were stuffed with their purchases, and each had a bundle in his handkerchief.
"I wonder," Dick said, as they made their way back, "whether we have been fools or wise men. I have not a shadow of an idea whether these things are only the sham jewels which dancing girls wear, or whether they are real."
"It was worth running the risk, anyhow; for if only half of them are real they are a big fortune. Anyhow, Dick, let's hold our tongues about it. It's no use making fellows jealous of our good luck if they turn out to be real, or of getting chaffed out of our lives if they prove false. Let us just stow them away till it's all over, and then ask father about them."
It was calculated that twenty thousand soldiers and camp-followers obtained loot of more or less value, from the case of jewelry, valued at one hundred thousand pounds, that fell into the hands of an officer, to clocks, candelabra, and articles of furniture, carried off by the least fortunate. The value of the treasure there was estimated at ten millions of money at the lowest computation.
The fall of the Kaiserbagh utterly demoralized the enemy; and from that moment they began to leave the town by night in thousands. Numbers were cut off and slaughtered by our cavalry and artillery; but large bodies succeeded in escaping, to give us fresh trouble in the field.
Day by day the troops fought their way from palace to palace and from street to street. Day and night the cannon and mortar batteries thundered against the districts of the city still uncaptured; and great fires blazed in a dozen quarters, until gradually the resistance ceased and Lucknow was won.
It was not until a week after the storming of the Kaiserbagh--by which time everything had settled down, order was restored, and the inhabitants were, under the direction of the military authorities, engaged in clearing away rubbish, leveling barricades, and razing to the ground a considerable portion of the city--that Colonel Warrener and his sons met. The troops were now all comfortably under canvas in the cantonments, and were enjoying a well-earned rest after their labors.
"Well, boys," he said, "have you heard Warrener's Horse is to be broken up? The officers have all been appointed to regiments, the civilians are anxious to return to look after their own affairs. I am to go up to take the command of a newly-raised Punjaub regiment. Dunlop goes with me as major. Manners has been badly hit, and goes home. The greater part of the naval brigade march down to Calcutta at once. The force will be broken up into flying columns, for there is much to be done yet. The greater portion of these scoundrels have got away; and there are still considerably more than one hundred thousand of the enemy scattered in large bodies over the country. I am going to Delhi, through Agra, with Dunlop; I accompany a detachment of fifty irregular Punjaub horse, who are ordered down to Agra. Then I shall go up to Meerut, and have a week with the girls; and do you know I have seen Captain Peel and your colonel, Ned, and have got leave for you both for a month. Then you will go down to Calcutta, Dick, and join your ship; Ned will of course, rejoin his regiment."
The lads were delighted at the prospect of again seeing their sister and cousin; and Dick indulged in a wild dance, expressive of joy.
"Well, boys, and how about loot; did you lay out your money?"
"We laid it out, father; but we have not the least idea whether we have bought rubbish or not. This black bag is full of it."
So saying, Ned emptied a large handbag upon the top of a barrel which served as a table. Colonel Warrener gave a cry of astonishment, as a great stream of bracelets, necklaces, tiaras, aigrettes, and other ornaments, poured out of the bag.
"Good gracious, boys! do you mean to say all these are yours?"
"Ours and yours, father; there were forty pounds of your money, and thirty-five of ours. Do you think they are real?"
Colonel Warrener took one or two articles from the flashing heap of diamonds, emeralds, rubies, opals, and pearls.
"I should say so," he said; "some of them are certainly. But have you any idea what these are worth?"
"Not the least in the world," Ned said; "if they are real, though, I suppose they are worth some thousands of pounds."
"My boys, I should say," Colonel Warrener replied, turning over the heap, "they must be worth a hundred thousand if they are worth a penny."
The boys looked at each other in astonishment: "Really, father?"
"Really, my boys."
"Hurrah," Dick said. "Then you can give up the service when this war is over, father, and go home and live as a rich man; that will be glorious."
"My dear boys, the prize is yours."
"Nonsense, father!" exclaimed the boys together. And then began an amicable contest, which was not finally concluded for many a long day.
"But what had we better do with all these things, father?" Dick said at last.
"We will get a small chest and put them in, boys. I will give it to the paymaster--he is sending a lot of treasure down under a strong escort--and will ask him to let it go down with the convoy. I will direct it to a firm at Calcutta, and will ask them to forward it to my agent at home, to whom I will give directions to send it to a first-class jeweler in London, to be by him opened and valued. I will tell the Calcutta firm to insure it on the voyage as treasure at twenty thousand pounds. Even if some of them turn out to be false, you may congratulate each other that you are provided for for life."
"And when do we set out, father?" Ned asked, after they had talked for some time longer about their treasure.
"In three days' time. We shall accompany a flying column for the first two days' march, and then strike across for Agra."
The next two days the Warreners spent in investigating the town, in wandering through the deserted palaces, and admiring their vast extent, and in saying good-by to their friends. A great portion of the teeming population of Lucknow had fled, and the whole city outside the original town was to be cleared away and laid out in gardens, so that henceforth Lucknow would be little more than a fifth of its former size. The ruined Residency was to be cleared of its _débris_, replanted with trees, and to be left as a memorial of British valor. The entire district through which Havelock's men had fought their way was to be cleared of its streets, and the palaces only were to be left standing, to be utilized for public purposes. The whole of the remaining male population of Lucknow was set to work to carry out these alterations. The scene was busy and amusing, and the change from the fierce fight, the din of cannon, and the perpetual rattle of musketry, to the order, regularity, and bustle of work, was very striking. Here was a party of sappers and miners demolishing a row of houses, there thousands of natives filling baskets with rubbish and carrying them on their heads to empty into bullock carts, whence it was taken to fill up holes and level irregularities. Among the crowd, soldiers of many uniforms--British infantry, Rifles, Highlanders, artillery and cavalry, sinewy Sikhs, and quiet little Nepaulese--wandered at will or worked in fatigue parties.
The three days past, Colonel Warrener, his sons, and Major Dunlop took their places on horseback with the troop of irregular cavalry commanded by Lieutenant Latham, and joined the flying column which was setting out to attack a large body of the enemy, who were reported to be gathering again near Furruckabad, while simultaneously other columns were leaving in other directions, for broken at Lucknow, the rebels were swarming throughout all Oude. The day was breaking, but the sun was not yet up, when the column started--for in India it is the universal custom to start very early, so as to get the greater part of the march over before the heat of the day fairly begins--and the young Warreners were in the highest spirits at the thought that they were on their way to see their sister and cousin, and that their nine months of marching and fighting were drawing to a close, for it is possible to have too much even of adventure. At ten o'clock a halt was called at the edge of a large wood, and after preparing breakfast there was a rest in the shade until four in the afternoon, after which a two hours' march took them to their halting-place for the night. Tents were pitched, fires lighted, and then, dinner over, they made merry groups, who sat smoking and chatting until nine o'clock, when the noise ceased, the fires burned down, and all was quiet until the _réveillé_ sounded at four o'clock, after which there was an hour of busy work, getting down, rolling up, and packing the tents and baggage in the wagons.
Another day's march and halt, and then Colonel Warrener and his friends said good-by to their acquaintances in the column, and started with the troop of cavalry for Agra. Unincumbered by baggage, and no longer obliged to conform their pace to that of the infantry, they trotted gayly along, and accomplished forty miles ere they halted for the night near a village. The country through which they had passed had an almost deserted appearance. Here and there a laborer was at work in the fields, but the confusion and alarm created by the bodies of mutineers who had swept over the country, and who always helped themselves to whatever pleased them, had created such a scare that the villagers for the most part had forsaken their abodes, and driven their animals, with all their belongings, to the edge of jungles or other unfrequented places, there to await the termination of the struggle.
At the end of the day's journey they halted in front of a great mosque-like building with a dome, the tomb of some long dead prince. The doors stood open, and Colonel Warrener proposed that they should take up their quarters for the night in the lofty interior instead of sleeping in the night air, for although the temperature was still high, the night dews were the reverse of pleasant. It was evident by the appearance of the interior that it had been used as the headquarters and storehouse of some body of the enemy, for a considerable quantity of stores, military saddles, harness, coils of rope, and barrels of flour were piled against the wall. A space was soon swept, and a fire lighted on the floor. Outside the troopers dismounted, some proceeded to a wood at a short distance off to fetch fuel, others took the horses to a tank or pond to drink. It was already getting dusk, and inside the great domed chamber it was nearly dark.
"The fire looks cheerful," Colonel Warrener said, as, after seeing that the men had properly picketed their horses, and had made all their arrangements, the little group of officers returned to it. A trooper had already prepared their meal, which consisted of kabobs, or pieces of mutton--from a couple of sheep, which they had purchased at a village where they halted in the morning--a large bowl of boiled rice, and some chupatties, or griddle cakes; a pannikin of tea was placed by each; and spreading their cloaks on the ground, they set to with the appetite of travelers. Dinner over, a bottle of brandy was produced from one of Major Dunlop's holsters, the pannikin was washed out, and a supply of fresh water brought in, pipes and cheroots were lighted, and they prepared for a cheerful evening.
"I am very sorry Manners is not here," Dick said; "it would have been so jolly to be all together again. However, it is a satisfaction to know that his wound is doing well, and that he is likely to be all right in a few months."
"Yes," Colonel Warrener said, "but I believe that he will have to leave the service. His right leg will always be shorter than the left."
"I don't suppose he will mind that," Ned said. "I should think he must have had enough of India to last for his life."
"Mr. Latham," Dick said presently to the officer in command of the cavalry, "will you tell us your adventures? We know all about each other's doings."
So they sat and talked until ten o'clock, when Mr. Latham went round to see that the sentries were properly placed and alert. When he returned the door was shut, to keep out the damp air, and the whole party, rolling themselves in their cloaks, and using their saddles for pillows, laid up for the night. Dick was some time before he slept. His imagination was active; and when he at last dozed off, he was thinking what they had best do were they attacked by the enemy.
It was still dark when with a sudden start the sleeping party in the tomb awoke and leaped to their feet. For a moment they stood bewildered, for outside was heard on all sides the crack of volleys of musketry, wild yells and shouts, and the trampling of a large body of cavalry.
"Surprised!" exclaimed the colonel. "The sentries must have been asleep!"
There was a rush to the door, and the sight that met their eyes showed them the extent of the disaster. The moon was shining brightly, and by her light they could see that a large body of rebel cavalry had fallen upon the sleeping troopers, while the heavy musketry fire showed that a strong body of infantry were at work on the other side of the mosque. Lieutenant Latham rushed down the steps with his sword drawn, but fell back dead shot through the heart.
"Back, back!" shouted Colonel Warrener. "Let us sell our lives here!"
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{
"id": "7071"
}
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23
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A DESPERATE DEFENSE.
|
In an instant the door was closed and bolted, and the four set to work to pile barrels and boxes against it. Not a word was spoken while this was going on. By the time they had finished the uproar without had changed its character; the firing had ceased, and the triumphant shouts of the mutineers showed that their victory was complete. Then came a loud thundering noise at the door.
"We have only delayed it a few minutes," Colonel Warrener said. "We have fought our fight, boys, and our time has come. Would to God that I had to die alone!"
"Look, father," Dick said, "there is a small door there. I noticed it last night. No doubt there is a staircase leading to the terrace above. At any rate, we may make a good fight there."
"Yes," Major Dunlop said, "we may fight it out to the last on the stairs. Run, Dick, and see."
Dick found, as he supposed, that from the door a narrow winding staircase led to the terrace above, from which the dome rose far into the air. The stairs were lit by an occasional narrow window. He was thinking as he ran upstairs of the ideas that had crossed his brain the night before.
"It is all right," he said, as he came down again. "Look, father, if we take up barrels and boxes, we can make barricades on the stairs, and defend them for any time almost."
"Excellent," the colonel said. "To work. They will be a quarter of an hour breaking in the door. Make the top barricade first, a few feet below the terrace."
Each seized a box or barrel, and hurried up the stairs. They had a longer time for preparation than they expected, for the mutineers, feeling sure of their prey, were in no hurry, and finding how strong was the door, decided to sit down and wait until their guns would be up to blow it in. Thus the defenders of the tomb had an hour's grace, and in that time had constructed three solid barricades. Each was placed a short distance above an opening for light, so that while they themselves were in darkness, their assailants would be in the light. They left a sufficient space at the top of each barricade for them to scramble over, leaving some spare barrels on the stairs above it to fill up the space after taking their position.
"Now for the remains of our supper, father," Dick said, "and that big water jug. I will carry them up. Ned, do you bring up that long coil of thin rope."
"What for, Dick?"
"It may be useful, Ned; ropes are always useful. Ah, their guns are up."
As he spoke a round shot crashed through the door, and sent splinters of casks and a cloud of flour flying.
"Now, Ned, come along," Dick said; and followed by Colonel Warrener and Major Dunlop, they entered the little doorway and ran up the narrow stairs.
At the first barricade, which was some thirty steps up, the officers stopped, and proceeded to fill up the passage hitherto left open, while the boys continued their way to the terrace.
"Let us have a look round, Ned; those fellows will be some minutes before they are in yet; and that barricade will puzzle them."
Day was breaking now, and the lads peered over the parapet which ran round the terrace.
"There are a tremendous lot of those fellows, Dick, four or five thousand of them at least, and they have got six guns."
"Hurrah, Ned!" Dick said, looking round at the great dome; "this is just what I hoped."
He pointed to a flight of narrow steps, only some twelve inches across, fixed to the side of the dome, which rose for some distance almost perpendicularly. By the side of the steps was a low hand-rail. They were evidently placed there permanently, to enable workmen to ascend to the top of the dome, to re-gild the long spike which, surmounted by a crescent, rose from its summit, or to do any repairs that were needful.
"There, Ned, I noticed these steps on some of the domes at Lucknow. When the worst comes to the worst, and we are beaten from the stairs, we can climb up that ladder--for it's more like a ladder than stairs--and once on the top could laugh at the whole army of them. Now, Ned, let us go down to them; by that cheering below, the artillery has broken the door open."
The mutineers burst through the broken door into the great hall with triumphant yells, heralding their entrance by a storm of musketry fire, for they knew how desperately even a few Englishmen will sell their lives. There was a shout of disappointment at finding the interior untenanted; but a moment's glance round discovered the door, and there was a rush toward it, each longing to be the first to the slaughter. The light in the interior was but faint, and the stairs were pitch dark, and were only wide enough for one man to go up with comfort, although two could just stand side by side. Without an obstacle the leaders of the party stumbled and groped their way up the stairs, until the first came into the light of a long narrow loophole in the wall. Then from the darkness above came the sharp crack of a revolver, and the man fell on his face, shot through the heart. Another crack, and the next shared his fate. Then there was a pause, for the spiral was so sharp that not more than two at a time were within sight of the defenders of the barricade.
The next man hesitated at seeing his immediate leaders fall; but pressed from behind he advanced, with his musket at his shoulder, in readiness to fire when he saw his foes; but the instant his head appeared round the corner a ball struck him, and he too fell. Still the press from behind pushed the leaders forward, and it was not until six had fallen, and the narrow stairs were impassable from the dead bodies, that an officer of rank, who came the next on the line, succeeded by shouting in checking the advance. Then orders were passed down for those crowding the doorway to fall back, and the officer, with the men on the stairs, descended, and the former reported to the leader that six men had fallen, and that the stairs were choked with their bodies. After much consultation orders were given the men to go up, and keeping below the spot at which, one after another, their comrades had fallen, to stretch out their arms and pull down the bodies. This was done, and then an angry consultation again took place. It was clear that, moving fast, only one could mount the stairs at a time, and it seemed equally certain that this one would, on reaching a certain spot, be shot by his invisible foes. Large rewards and great honor were promised by the chief to those who would undertake to lead the assault, and at last volunteers were found, and another rush attempted.
It failed, as had the first. Each man as he passed the loophole fell, and again the dead choked the stairs. One or two had not fallen at the first shot, and had got a few steps higher, but only to fall back dead upon their comrades. Again the assault ceased, and for two or three hours there was a pause. The officers of the mutineers deliberated and quarreled; the men set-to to prepare their meal. That over, one of the troopers went in to the officers and proposed a plan, which was at once approved of, and a handsome reward immediately paid him. Before enlisting he had been a carpenter, and as there were many others of the same trade, no time was lost in carrying out the suggestion. Several of the thick planks composing the door remained uninjured. These were cut and nailed together, so as to make a shield of exactly the same width as the staircase, and six feet high; on one side several straps and loops were nailed, to give a good hold to those carrying it; and then with a cheer the Sepoys again prepared for an attack. The shield was heavy, but steadily, and with much labor, it was carried up the stairs step by step, by two men, others pressing on behind.
When they reached the loophole the pistol shots from above again rang out; but the door was of heavy seasoned wood, three inches thick, and the bullets failed to penetrate. Then the shield ascended step by step, until it reached the barrier. There it stopped, for the strength that could be brought to bear upon it was altogether insufficient to move in the slightest the solid pile, and after some time spent in vain efforts, the shield was taken back again, as gradually and carefully as it had been advanced, until out of the range of the pistols of the defenders.
"What will be the next move, I wonder?" Colonel Warrener said, as the little party sat down on the stairs and waited for a renewal of the attack.
"I don't like that shield," Major Dunlop remarked; "it shows that there is some more than usually intelligent scoundrel among them, and he will be up to some new trick."
An hour passed, and then there was a noise on the stairs, and the shield was again seen approaching. As before, it advanced to the barrier and stopped. There was then a sort of grating noise against it, and the door shook as this continued.
"What on earth are they up to now?" Major Dunlop exclaimed.
"Piling fagots against it," Dick said, "or I am mistaken. I have been afraid of fire all along. If they had only lit a pile of damp wood at the bottom of the stairs, they could have smoked us out at the top; and then, as the smoke cleared below, they could have gone up and removed the barricade before the upper stairs were free enough from smoke for us to come down. There, I thought so! Make haste!" and Dick dashed up the stairs, followed by his friends, as a curl of smoke ascended, and a loud cheer burst from the Sepoys below.
Quickly as they ran upstairs, the smoke ascended still more rapidly, and they emerged upon the terrace half-suffocated and blinded.
"So ends barricade number one," Major Dunlop said, when they had recovered from their fit of coughing. "I suppose it will be pretty nearly an hour before the fire is burned out."
"The door would not burn through in that time," said Major Warrener; "but they will be able to stand pretty close, and the moment the fagots are burned out they will drag the screen out of the way, and, with long poles with hooks, or something of that sort, haul down the barricade. Directly the smoke clears off enough for us to breathe, we will go down to our middle barricade. They may take that the same way they took the first, but they cannot take the last so."
"Why not, father?" Ned asked.
"Because it's only ten steps from the top, Ned; so that, however great a smoke they make, we can be there again the instant they begin to pull it down."
It was now past midday, and the party partook sparingly of their small store of food and water. The smoke continued for some time to pour out of the door of the stairs in dense volumes, then became lighter. Several times the lads tried to descend a few steps, but found that breathing was impossible, for the smoke from the green wood was insupportable. At last it became clear enough to breathe, and then the party ran rapidly down to their second barricade. That, at least, was intact, but below they could hear the fall of heavy bodies, and knew that the lower barricade was destroyed.
"I don't suppose that screen of theirs was burned through, father, so very likely they will try the same dodge again. Of course they don't know whether we have another barricade, or where we are, so they will come on cautiously. It seems to me than if you and Dunlop were to take your place a bit lower than this, stooping down on the stairs, and then when they come were boldly to throw yourselves with all your weight suddenly against the shield, you would send it and its bearers headlong downstairs, and could then follow them and cut them up tremendously."
"Capital, Dick! that would be just the thing; don't you think so, Dunlop? If they haven't got the shield, we can shoot them down, so either way we may as well make a sortie."
"I think so," Major Dunlop said. "Here goes, then."
Halfway down they heard the trampling of steps again. The Sepoys had extinguished the fires with buckets of water, had put straps to the door again, and were pursuing their former tactics. The two officers sat down and awaited the coming of their foes. Slowly the latter ascended, until the door was within two steps of the Englishmen. Then the latter simultaneously flung all their weight against it.
Wholly unprepared for the assault, the bearers were hurled backward, with the heavy shield upon them, knocking down those behind them, who, in turn, fell on those below. Sword in hand, Colonel Warrener sprang upon the hindmost of the falling mass, while, pressing just behind him, and firing over his shoulder, Major Dunlop followed.
Shrieks of dismay rose from the Sepoys who crowded the stairs, as the bodies of those above were hurled upon them; flight or defense was equally impossible; turning to descend, they leaped upon their comrades below. A frightful scene ensued--such a scene as has sometimes been seen on the stairs of a theater on fire. What was the danger above, none thought; a wild panic seized all; over each other they rolled, choking the stairs and obstructing all movement, until the last twenty feet of the stairs were packed closely with a solid mass of human beings, lying thickly on each other, and stifling each other to death. On reaching this mass Colonel Warrener and his friend paused. There was nothing more to be done. Over fifty human beings lay crushed together; those on the top of the heap were shot, and then the officers retraced their steps. Many lay on the stairs, but Major Dunlop had passed his sword through their bodies as he passed them. Four muskets were picked up, and all the ammunition from the pouches; and then, with the boys, who had followed closely behind them, they again ascended to the terrace and sat down.
"We are safe now for some time," Colonel Warrener said. "It will take them a long time to clear away that heap of dead, and they won't try the shield dodge again."
It was indeed late in the afternoon before the Sepoys made any fresh move against the defenders of the stairs. The time, however, had not passed idly with the latter. One of them keeping watch at the barrier, the others had maintained a steady musketry fire through the open work of the parapet upon the enemy below. The Sepoys had answered with a scattering fire; but as the defenders were invisible behind the parapet, and could move from one point to another unobserved, there was but little fear of their being hit; while their steady fire did so much execution among the throng of Sepoys that these had to move their camping ground a couple of hundred yards back from the tomb.
It was nearly dark, when several men, bearing large bundles of straw and bamboos, ran across the open ground and entered the mosque, and the besieged guessed that another attempt was to be made to smoke them out. There had been much consultation on the part of the enraged mutineers, and this time two men, with their muskets leveled at their shoulders, led the advance. Very slowly they made their way up, until a pistol shot rang out, and one of the leaders, discharging his musket before him, fell. Then there was a halt. Another Sepoy, with fixed bayonet, took the place in front, and over the shoulders of him and his comrade those behind threw bundles of straw mixed with wet leaves; a light was applied to this, and with a sheet of flame between themselves and the besieged, they had no fear. Now they pressed forward, threw on fresh straw, and then, knowing that the besieged would have fled higher, reached through the flames with a pole with a hook attached to it, and hauled down the barricade. The moment the fire burned a little low, two men lighted fresh bundles, and, stamping out the fire, advanced up the stairs, carrying before them the blazing bundles like torches, the volumes of smoke from these of course preceding them.
The party on the terrace had noticed the smoke dying down, and had prepared to descend again, when a fresh addition to the smoke convinced them that the enemy were still piling on bundles, and that there was nothing to fear. So they sat, quietly chatting until Ned, who was sitting next to the door, exclaimed: "Listen! They are pulling down our top barricade."
Sword in hand, he rushed down, the others closely following him. Just as he turned the spiral which would bring him in sight of the upper barricade a musket was fired, and Ned would have fallen forward had not Major Dunlop seized him by the collar, and pulled him backward.
"Hold the stairs, colonel!" he said; "they are at the barricade, but are not through yet; I will carry Ned up. He's hit in the shoulder."
Major Dunlop carried Ned to the platform, and, laying him down, for he had lost consciousness, rushed back to assist to hold the stairs, for the crack of Colonel Warrener's and Dick's revolvers could be heard. The advantage, however, was so great with them, standing above the others, and so placed as to be able to fire the instant that their foes came round the corner, that the Sepoys, after losing several of their number, ceased their attack.
The defenders hurried up to Ned, confident that the enemy would not renew the assault again for the moment, as they could not tell whether there was yet another barrier to be stormed. Dick stood sentry at the door, and the colonel and Major Dunlop examined Ned's wound. It was a serious one; the ball had entered the chest below the collarbone; had it been fired from a level it would have been fatal; but the Sepoy having stood so much below it had gone out near the neck, smashing the collar-bone on its way. Ned had become unconscious from the shock to the system.
"We must take to the dome at once," Colonel Warrener said. "The next assault those fellows will gain the terrace. I will carry Ned up."
"No, colonel, I will take him," Major Dunlop said. "I can carry him over my shoulders as easily as possible."
"Well, Dunlop, you are the younger man, so I will hand him over to you. I will put this coil of rope round my neck, and will take the water and food. It is so dark now that they will not see us from below. If those fellows had but waited half an hour we could have gained the top without this sad business. Will you go first, Dunlop?"
Major Dunlop, who was a very powerful and active man, lifted Ned on his shoulders, and began to ascend the narrow steps to the dome. It was hard work at first, but as he got on the ascent became less steep, and the last part was comparatively easy. Colonel Warrener mounted next, also heavily laden. Dick remained on guard at the door until he saw his father pass the shoulder of the dome, out of sight from those on the terrace; he then slung two muskets and cartridge pouches on his shoulders, briskly climbed the steps, and was soon by his father.
In three minutes the party were gathered round the central spike of the dome. Suddenly a loud cheer was heard from below.
"They are out on the terrace," Dick said. "I will go down a bit to guard the steps; you will be more use with Ned than I should."
The shouts on the terrace were answered by a great cheer of exultation from the Sepoy host around, who had been chafed almost to madness at the immense loss which was being caused by three or four men, for they knew not the exact strength of the party. The shouts of exultation, however, were silenced when, rushing round the terrace, the Sepoys found that their foes had again evaded them. There was no other door, no hiding-place, nowhere, in fact, that the besieged could have concealed themselves; but the ladder-like steps soon met the eye of the searchers. A yell of anger and disappointment arose. Not even the bravest among them thought for a moment of climbing the stairs, for it Would indeed have been clearly impossible for men forced to climb in single file to win their way against well-armed defenders, who would simply shoot them down from above as fast as a head appeared over the shoulder of the dome.
The position was indeed practically impregnable against assault, although exposed to artillery fire, and to distant musketry. It was for this reason that the defenders of the stairs had not taken to it at once. They felt confident in their ability to defend the stair all day, and to inflict heavy loss upon the enemy; whereas, by climbing up the dome in daylight, they would have been a target to all those below while climbing, and would have been exposed all day to a distant fire. That they would have to support it for two or three days was nearly certain, but clearly the less time the better.
The enemy, consoling themselves with the thought that on the morrow their cannon would finish the contest which had thus far cost them so dearly, placed a guard of fifty men on the terrace at the foot of the steps, lighted a large fire there, in order that they could see any one attempting to descend long before he reached the level, and then retired below.
By this time Ned had recovered consciousness, and having taken a drink of water, was able to understand what had happened. His father had cut his uniform off his shoulder and arm, and having also cut off one of his own shirt sleeves, had soaked it in water, and applied it as a bandage on the wound.
"I am very glad we had agreed that only Dick should go," Ned said, "otherwise I should have blamed myself for keeping you here."
"No, we could not have gone in any case," Colonel Warrener said, "as there would have been no one to have lowered the rope here; besides which, it is only a sailor or a practiced gymnast who can let himself down a rope some eighty feet."
"When will Dick try?"
"As soon as the camp gets quiet. The moon will be up by twelve o'clock, and he must be off before that. Are you in much pain, old boy?"
"Not much, father; I feel numbed and stupid."
"Now, Dunlop," Colonel Warrener said, "will you relieve Dick on guard at the steps? You may as well say good-by to him. It is about eight o'clock now, and in a couple of hours he will be off. After he has gone I will relieve you. Then a four hours' watch each will take us to daylight; there won't be much sleeping after that."
By ten o'clock the noise in the rebel camp had nearly ceased. Groups still sat and talked round the campfires, but the circle was pretty large round the tomb, for the Sepoys had fallen back when the musketry fire was opened upon them from the parapet, and had not troubled to move again afterward.
"Now," Dick said, "it is time for me to be off. I have got a good seventy miles to ride to Lucknow. It is no use my thinking of going after the column, for they would be some fifty miles away from the place where we left them by to morrow night. If I can get a good horse I may be at Lucknow by midday to-morrow. The horses have all had a rest to-day. Sir Colin will, I am sure, send off at once, and the troops will march well to effect a rescue. They will make thirty-five miles before they halt for the night, and will be here by the following night."
"We must not be too sanguine, Dick. It is just possible, dear boy, that if all goes well you may be back as you say, in forty-eight hours, but we will make up our minds to twice that time. If you get here sooner, all the better; but I don't expect that they will hit us, and after tiring a bit the chances are they will not care to waste ammunition, and will try to starve us out."
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{
"id": "7071"
}
|
24
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BEST AFTER LABOR.
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With a tender farewell of his father and brother, the midshipman prepared for his expedition. One end of the rope had been fastened round the large mast which rose from the dome. Holding the coil over his shoulder, Dick made his way down the dome, on the side opposite that at which they had ascended, until it became too steep to walk; then he lay down on his back, and paying the rope out gradually, let himself slip down. The lower part of the descent was almost perpendicular; and Dick soon stood safely on the terrace. It was, as he expected confidently that it would be, quite deserted on this side. Then he let go of the rope, and Major Warrener, who was watching it, saw that the strain was off it, pulled it up a foot to make sure, and then untied the knot. Dick pulled it gently at first, coiling it up as it came down, until at last it slid rapidly down. He caught it as well as he could, but he had little fear of so slight a noise being heard on the other side of the great dome; then he tied the rope to the parapet, lowered it carefully down, and then, when it was all out, swung himself out over the parapet, and slid down the rope. The height was over eighty feet; but the descent was a mere nothing for Dick, accustomed to lark about in the rigging of a man-o'-war.
He stood perfectly quiet for a minute or two after his feet touched the ground, but outside everything was still. Through the open-carved stonework of a window he could hear voices inside the tomb, and had no doubt that the leaders of the enemy's force were there.
From the parapet, in the afternoon, he had gained an accurate idea of the position of the cavalry, and toward this he at once made his way. He took off his boots and walked lightly until he approached the enemy's bivouac. Then he went cautiously. The ground was covered with sleeping figures, all wrapped like mummies in their clothes; and although the night was dusk, it was easy in the starlight to see the white figures. Even had one been awake, Dick had little fear, as, except near a fire, his figure would have been indistinguishable. There was no difficulty, when he neared the spot, in finding the horses, as the sound of their pawing the ground, eating, and the occasional short neigh of two quarreling, was clearly distinguishable.
Their position once clear, Dick moved round them. He had noticed that four officers' horses were picketed further away, beyond the general mass of the men's, and these could therefore be more easily removed, and would, moreover, be more likely to be fast and sound. They had, too, the advantage of being placed close to the road by which the English force had marched on the day before.
Dick was some time in finding the horses he was on the lookout for; but at last he heard a snorting at a short distance off, and on reaching the spot found the horses he was in search of. They were all saddled, but none had bridles. It would be, Dick knew, useless to look for them, and he felt sure that the halter would be sufficient for well-trained horses.
Before proceeding to work he reconnoitered the ground around. He found the way to the road, which was but twenty yards distant, and discovered also that the syces, or grooms, were asleep close by the horses; a little further off were a party of sleeping troopers. Dick now cut off the heel ropes by which two of the horses were picketed, and then, leading them by the halters, moved quietly toward the road. To get upon this, however, there was a ditch first to be passed, and in crossing it one of the horses stumbled.
"What is that?" exclaimed one of the syces, sitting up. "Halloo!" he continued, leaping up; "two of the horses have got loose."
The others leaped to their feet and ran in the direction whence came the noise which had awakened them, thinking that the horses had drawn their picket pegs.
By this time Dick was in the saddle, and giving a kick with his heels to the horse he was on, and striking the other with the halter which he held in his hand, dashed off into a gallop.
A shout burst from the syces, and several of the troopers, springing to their feet and seizing their arms, ran up to know what was the matter.
"Some thief has stolen the colonel's horse," exclaimed one of the syces.
The troopers did not like to fire, as it would have alarmed the camp; besides, which a random fire in the darkness would be of no avail; so, grumbling that the syces would have to answer for it in the morning, they went off to sleep again; while the men in charge of the two horses which had been taken after some consultation decided that it would be unsafe to remain to meet the anger of the officers in the morning, and so stole off in the darkness and made for their native villages.
Dick, hearing that he was not pursued, pulled up in a half a mile, and gave a loud, shrill "cooey," the Australian call. He knew that this would be heard by his father, sitting listening at the top of the dome, and that he would learn that so far he had succeeded. Then he set the horses off again in a hand gallop and rode steadily down the road. Every hour or so he changed from horse to horse, thus giving them a comparative rest by turns. Occasionally he allowed them to walk for a bit to get their wind, and then again rode on at a gallop. It was about eleven o'clock when he started on his ride. By four in the morning he was at the spot where the party had separated from the column, having thus made forty miles. After that he went more slowly; but it was a little past nine when, with his two exhausted horses, he rode into the camp at Lucknow, where his appearance created quite an excitement.
Dick's story was briefly told; and the two horses, which were both splendid animals, were taken off to be fed and rubbed down; while Dick, accompanied by the colonel of the cavalry regiment where he had halted, went at once to the camp of the commander-in-chief.
Sir Colin listened to Dick's story in silence.
"This will be the band," he said, "that Colonel Lawson's column went to attack; they must have altered their course. Something must be done at once. There shall be no delay, my lad; a force shall be ready to start in an hour. I suppose you will want to go with them. I advise you to go back to Colonel Harper's tent, get into a bath, and get a couple of natives to shampoo you. That will take away all your stiffness. By the time that's over, and you have had some breakfast, the troops will be in readiness."
Dick left Sir Colin, but delighted at the readiness and promptness of the fine old soldier; while Sir Colin called his military secretary, and at once arranged for the dispatch of a body of troops.
"There must be no delay," the commander-in-chief said. "If possible--and it is possible--these scoundrels must be attacked at daylight to-morrow morning. They will see the rope the lad escaped by, but they will not dream of an attack so early, and may be caught napping. Besides, it is all important to rescue those officers, whom they will have been making a target of all day, especially as one is badly wounded, and will be in the full blaze of the sun. See that a wagon and an ambulance accompany the column. Send a regiment of Punjaub horse, three field guns, and three hundred infantry in light marching order. Let gharries be got together at once to take the infantry forty miles, then they will start fresh for a thirty-mile march. The cavalry and guns can go on at once; let them march halfway, then, unsaddle and rest. If they are off by half-past ten, they can get to their halting-place by five. Then if they have five hours' rest they will catch the infantry up before daybreak, and attack just as it gets light. Those light Punjaub horse can do it. Now, which regiments shall we send?"
A quarter of an hour later bugles were blowing, and by ten o'clock three hundred British infantry were packed in light carts, and the cavalry and guns were drawn up in readiness. Dick took his place in the ambulance carriage, as, although greatly refreshed, he had had plenty of riding for a time, and in the ambulance he could lie down, and get through the journey without fatigue. Sir Colin himself rode up just as they were starting, and shook hands with Dick, and expressed his warm hope that he would find his friends safe at the end of the journey, and then the cavalry started.
Dick has always asserted that never in his life did he make such a short journey as that. Worn out by the excitement and fatigue of the preceding thirty hours, he fell fast asleep in the ambulance before he had gone a mile, and did not awake until the surgeon shook him by the shoulder.
"Halloo!" he cried, leaping up; "where are we?"
"We are, as far as we can tell, about half a mile from the tomb. I would not wake you when we halted, Warrener. I thought you wanted sleep more than food. We have been halting half an hour here, and the cavalry have just come up. It is about an hour before daybreak. The colonel wants you to act as guide."
"All right," Dick said, leaping out; "just to think that I have been asleep for eighteen hours!"
A hasty council was held, and it was determined that as the country was somewhat wooded beyond the tomb, but perfectly open on that side, the cavalry and artillery should remain where they were; that the infantry should make a _détour_, and attack at daybreak from the other side; and that as the enemy fell back, the artillery and cavalry should deal with them: Not a moment was lost. The infantry, who were sitting down after their long tramp, got cheerily on to their feet again, for they knew that they were going to attack the enemy; and Dick led them off the road by a considerable _détour_, to come upon the enemy from the other side. By the moonlight the tomb was visible, and served as a center round which to march; but they were too far off to enable Dick to see whether any damage had been done to the dome.
Day was just breaking when the infantry gained the desired position; then throwing out two hundred men in skirmishing order, while the other one hundred were kept in hand as a reserve, the advance began. It was not until they were within three hundred yards of the enemy that they were perceived by the sentries. The challenge was answered by a musket shot, and as the rebels sprang to their feet a heavy fire was poured in upon them. In an instant all was wild confusion. Taken completely by surprise, and entirely ignorant of the strength of the enemy, the natives, after a wild fire in the direction of the advancing foe, fled precipitately. Their officers tried to rally them, and as the smallness of the force attacking them became visible, the Sepoys with their old habit of discipline began to draw together. But at this moment the guns, loaded with grape, poured into their rear, and with a cheer the Punjaub cavalry burst into their midst.
Thenceforth there was no longer any idea of fighting; it was simply a rout any a pursuit. The rebels' own guns fell at once into the hands of the infantry, and were quickly turned upon the masses of fugitives, who, mown down by the fire of the nine guns, and cut up by the cavalry who charged hither and thither among them, while volleys of musketry swept through them, threw away their arms and fled wildly. Over a thousand of them were left dead on the plain, and had not the horses of the cavalry been too exhausted to continue the pursuit, a far greater number would have fallen.
Dick took no part in their fighting; a company, fifty strong, with an officer, had been told off to attack and carry the tomb, under his guidance. Disregarding all else, this party with leveled bayonets had burst through the throng, and made straight for the door of the tomb. Many of the enemy's troops had run in there, and for a minute or two there was a fierce fight in the great hall; then, when the last foe had fallen, Dick led the men to the stairs, up which many of the enemy had fled.
"Quick," he shouted, "follow them close up!"
Some of them were but a few steps ahead, and Dick, closely followed by his men, burst on to the terrace at their very heels. It was well that he did so; for the guard upon the terrace, seeing that all was lost below, were preparing to sell their lives dearly, and to make a long resistance at the top of the stairs. Dick and his men, however, rushed so closely upon the heels of their own comrades from below that they were taken completely by surprise. Some turned at once to fly, others made an effort to oppose their enemy; but it was useless. Two or three of the Sepoy leaders, calling to their men to follow them, made a rush at the British, and Dick found himself engaged in a hand-to-hand contest with Aboo Raab, the rebel leader. He was a powerful and desperate man, and with a swinging blow he beat down Dick's guard and inflicted a severe wound on his head; but Dick leaped forward and ran him through the body, just as the bayonet of one of the British soldiers pierced him in the side.
For a minute or two the fight was fierce, but every moment added to the avenging force, and with a cheer the soldiers rushed at them with the bayonet. In five minutes all was over. Many of the Sepoys leaped over the parapet, and were dashed to pieces, preferring that death to the bayonet; while on the terrace no single Sepoy at the end of that time remained alive.
When all was over Dick gave a shout, which was answered from above.
"Are you all right, Dunlop?"
"Yes, thank God; but Ned is delirious. Send some water up at once."
Dick was too much shaken by the severe cut he had received in the head to attempt to climb the ladder, but the officer in command of the company at once offered to ascend. Several of the men had a little water left in their water-bottles, and from them one was filled, and slung over the officer's neck.
"I have some brandy in my flask," he said, and started up the steps.
In a few minutes he descended again.
"Your brother is wildly delirious," he said; "they have bound his injured arm to his side with a sash, but they cannot leave him. How is he to be got down?"
"There is plenty of rope and sacking down below," Dick said, after a moment's thought. "I think that they had better wrap him up in sacking, so that he cannot move his arms, tie a rope round him, and lower him down close by the side of the steps, my father coming down side by side with him, so as to speak to him and tranquillize him."
A soldier was sent below for the articles required, and with them the officer, accompanied by a sergeant to assist him in lowering Ned from above, again mounted. In a few minutes Dick's plan was carried out, and Ned was lowered safely to the terrace. Then four soldiers carried him below, and he was soon laid on a bed of sacks in the great hall, under the care of the surgeon, with cold-water bandages round his head.
Then Dick had time to ask his father how the preceding day had passed.
"First tell me, Dick, by what miracle you got back so soon. To-morrow morning was the very earliest time I thought that relief was possible!"
Dick told his story briefly; and then Colonel Warrener related what had happened to them on the dome during the day.
"As soon as day broke, Dick, they opened a heavy musketry fire at us, but they were obliged to go so far off to get a fair view of us that the smooth-bore would hardly carry up, and even had we been hit, I question if the balls would have penetrated, though they might have given a sharp knock. Half an hour later the artillery fire began. We agreed that Dunlop and I should by turns lie so as to command the stairs, while the other kept with Ned on the other side of the dome. The enemy divided their guns, and put them on each side also. Lying down, we presented the smallest possible mark for them; but for some hours it was very hot. Nine out of ten of their shot, just went over the dome altogether. The spike was hit twenty or thirty times, and lower down a good many holes were knocked in the dome; but the shots that struck near us all glanced and flew over. They fired a couple of hundred shot altogether, and at midday they stopped--for dinner, I suppose--and did not begin again. I suspect they were running short of ammunition. Once, when the firing was hottest, thinking, I suppose, to catch us napping, an attempt was made to climb the ladder; but Dunlop, who was on watch, put a bullet through the first fellow's head, and by the yell that followed I suspect that in his fall he swept all the others off the ladder. Anyhow, there was no repetition of the trial. The heat was fearful, and Dunlop and I suffered a good deal from thirst, for there was not much water left in the bottle, and we wanted that to pour down Ned's throat from time to time, and to sop his bandages with. Ned got delirious about eleven o'clock, and we had great trouble in holding him down. The last drop of water was finished in the night, and we should have had a terrible day of it if you had not arrived. And now let us hear what the surgeon says about poor Ned."
The doctor's report was not consoling; the wound was a very severe one, the collar-bone had been smashed in fragments; but the high state of fever was even a more serious matter than the wound.
"What will you do, father?"
"I must carry out my orders, Dick. Dunlop and I must go on to Agra, and then on to join our regiment. Ned will, of course, be taken back to Lucknow, and you must give up your trip, and stay and nurse him. Of course, if he gets over it, poor boy, he will be invalided home, and you can travel with him down to Calcutta. I shall send the girls home by the first opportunity. India will be no place for ladies for some time. We shall have months of marching and fighting before we finally stamp out the mutiny. There will be sure to be convoys of sick and wounded going down, and a number of ladies at Meerut who will be leaving at the first opportunity. It is very sad, old boy, leaving you and Ned at such a time; but I must do my duty, whatever happens." The British force encamped for that day and the next around the tomb which had been the scene of so much fierce fighting; for the animals were so much exhausted by their tremendous march that it was thought better to give them rest. Ned continued delirious; but he was more quiet now, as his strength diminished. Fortunately, the ambulance was well supplied; and cooling drinks were given to him, and all was done that care and attention could suggest. There were three other wounded in addition to Dick, all men who had taken part in the fight on the terrace; none had been killed. Elsewhere no casualty had happened in the force.
Early on the third morning the column was again in motion. The forty miles to the crossroads were done in two days, and here Colonel Warrener and Major Dunlop parted from Dick, going on with a small escort of cavalry to Agra.
It was a sad parting; and it is doing no injustice to Dick's manhood to say that he shed many tears. But his father promised that if the Lucknow jewels turned out to be real, he would leave the service, and come back to England at the end of the war.
The gharries were all in waiting at the crossroad, and another day brought them to Lucknow, where the news of the defeat and dispersion of the rebel force had already been sent on by a mounted orderly.
For a week Ned lay between life and death; then the fever left him, and the most critical point of his illness was reached. It was for days a question whether he had strength left to rally from his exhaustion. But youth and a good constitution triumphed at last, and six weeks from the day on which he was brought in, he started in a litter for Calcutta.
Dick had telegraphed to Captain Peel, and had obtained leave to remain with his brother, and he now started for the coast with Ned. He himself had had a sharp attack of fever--the result of his wound on the head and the exertion he had undergone; but he was now well and strong again, and happy in Ned's convalescence.
The journey was easy and pleasant. At Benares they went on board a steamer, and were taken down to Calcutta. By the time they reached the capital, Ned was sufficiently recovered to walk about with his arm in Dick's. The use of his left arm was gone, and it was a question whether he could ever recover it.
At Calcutta the Warreners had the delight of meeting their sister and cousin, who had arrived there the week previous. The next four days were happy ones indeed, and then there was another parting, for the girls and Ned sailed in a Peninsular and Oriental steamer for England. Dick remained a fortnight at Calcutta, until a sloop-of-war sailed to join the China fleet, to which his ship was now attached.
It was two years later when the whole party who had been together in the bungalow at Sandynuggher when the mutiny broke out met in London, on the return of Dick's ship from the East. The Lucknow jewels had turned out to be of immense value; and Messrs. Garrard, to whom they had been sent, had offered one hundred and thirty thousand pounds for them. The offer had been at once accepted; and the question of the division had, after an endless exchange of letters, been finally left by Colonel Warrener to the boys. They had insisted that Colonel Warrener should take fifty thousand pounds, and the remainder they had divided in four equal shares between themselves, their sister and cousin, whom they regarded as one of themselves. This had enabled the latter to marry, without delay, Captain Manners, whose wound had compelled him to leave the service; while Miss Warrener had a few months later married Major Dunlop.
Ned, too, was no longer a soldier. He had, when he arrived in England, found that his name had been included in the brevet rank bestowed upon all the captains of his regiment for distinguished service. He had a year's leave given him; but at the end of that time a medical board decided that, although greatly recovered, it would be years before he thoroughly regained his strength; and he therefore sold his commission and left the service.
Dick had passed as a lieutenant, and had immediately been appointed to that rank, with a fair prospect of getting his commander's step at the earliest possible date, as a reward for the distinguished services for which he had been several times mentioned in dispatches at the time of the mutiny.
General Sir Henry Warrener--for he received a step in rank, and knighthood, on retiring from the service--had renewed his acquaintance with Mrs. Hargreaves immediately on his return to England; and Dick, to his intense astonishment and delight, on arriving home--for he had received no letters for many months--found his old friend installed at the head of his father's establishment as Lady Warrener.
The daughters were of course inmates of the house; and Dick was not long in getting Nelly to acknowledge that so far she had not changed her mind as expressed at Cawnpore. More than that he could not get her to say. But when, three years later, he returned with commander's rank, Nelly, after much entreaty, and many assertions that it was perfectly ridiculous for a boy of twenty-one to think about marrying, consented; and as Ned and Edith had equally come to an understanding, a double marriage took place.
General Warrener and his wife are still alive. Major Warrener has a seat in Parliament; and Captain Warrener, who never went to sea after his marriage, lives in a pretty house down at Ryde, where his yacht is known as one of the best and fastest cruisers on the coast.
At Christmas the whole party--the Dunlops, Manners and Warreners--meet; and an almost innumerable troop of children of all ages assemble at the spacious mansion of General Warrener in Berkeley Square, and never fail to have a long talk of the adventures that they went through in the TIMES OF PERIL.
THE END.
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YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt Polly--Tom's Aunt Polly, she is--and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.
Now the way that the book winds up is this: Tom and me found the money that the robbers hid in the cave, and it made us rich. We got six thousand dollars apiece--all gold. It was an awful sight of money when it was piled up. Well, Judge Thatcher he took it and put it out at interest, and it fetched us a dollar a day apiece all the year round --more than a body could tell what to do with. The Widow Douglas she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn't stand it no longer I lit out. I got into my old rags and my sugar-hogshead again, and was free and satisfied. But Tom Sawyer he hunted me up and said he was going to start a band of robbers, and I might join if I would go back to the widow and be respectable. So I went back.
The widow she cried over me, and called me a poor lost lamb, and she called me a lot of other names, too, but she never meant no harm by it. She put me in them new clothes again, and I couldn't do nothing but sweat and sweat, and feel all cramped up. Well, then, the old thing commenced again. The widow rung a bell for supper, and you had to come to time. When you got to the table you couldn't go right to eating, but you had to wait for the widow to tuck down her head and grumble a little over the victuals, though there warn't really anything the matter with them,--that is, nothing only everything was cooked by itself. In a barrel of odds and ends it is different; things get mixed up, and the juice kind of swaps around, and the things go better.
After supper she got out her book and learned me about Moses and the Bulrushers, and I was in a sweat to find out all about him; but by and by she let it out that Moses had been dead a considerable long time; so then I didn't care no more about him, because I don't take no stock in dead people.
Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn't. She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was a-bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. And she took snuff, too; of course that was all right, because she done it herself.
Her sister, Miss Watson, a tolerable slim old maid, with goggles on, had just come to live with her, and took a set at me now with a spelling-book. She worked me middling hard for about an hour, and then the widow made her ease up. I couldn't stood it much longer. Then for an hour it was deadly dull, and I was fidgety. Miss Watson would say, "Don't put your feet up there, Huckleberry;" and "Don't scrunch up like that, Huckleberry--set up straight;" and pretty soon she would say, "Don't gap and stretch like that, Huckleberry--why don't you try to behave?" Then she told me all about the bad place, and I said I wished I was there. She got mad then, but I didn't mean no harm. All I wanted was to go somewheres; all I wanted was a change, I warn't particular. She said it was wicked to say what I said; said she wouldn't say it for the whole world; she was going to live so as to go to the good place. Well, I couldn't see no advantage in going where she was going, so I made up my mind I wouldn't try for it. But I never said so, because it would only make trouble, and wouldn't do no good.
Now she had got a start, and she went on and told me all about the good place. She said all a body would have to do there was to go around all day long with a harp and sing, forever and ever. So I didn't think much of it. But I never said so. I asked her if she reckoned Tom Sawyer would go there, and she said not by a considerable sight. I was glad about that, because I wanted him and me to be together.
Miss Watson she kept pecking at me, and it got tiresome and lonesome. By and by they fetched the niggers in and had prayers, and then everybody was off to bed. I went up to my room with a piece of candle, and put it on the table. Then I set down in a chair by the window and tried to think of something cheerful, but it warn't no use. I felt so lonesome I most wished I was dead. The stars were shining, and the leaves rustled in the woods ever so mournful; and I heard an owl, away off, who-whooing about somebody that was dead, and a whippowill and a dog crying about somebody that was going to die; and the wind was trying to whisper something to me, and I couldn't make out what it was, and so it made the cold shivers run over me. Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving. I got so down-hearted and scared I did wish I had some company. Pretty soon a spider went crawling up my shoulder, and I flipped it off and it lit in the candle; and before I could budge it was all shriveled up. I didn't need anybody to tell me that that was an awful bad sign and would fetch me some bad luck, so I was scared and most shook the clothes off of me. I got up and turned around in my tracks three times and crossed my breast every time; and then I tied up a little lock of my hair with a thread to keep witches away. But I hadn't no confidence. You do that when you've lost a horseshoe that you've found, instead of nailing it up over the door, but I hadn't ever heard anybody say it was any way to keep off bad luck when you'd killed a spider.
I set down again, a-shaking all over, and got out my pipe for a smoke; for the house was all as still as death now, and so the widow wouldn't know. Well, after a long time I heard the clock away off in the town go boom--boom--boom--twelve licks; and all still again--stiller than ever. Pretty soon I heard a twig snap down in the dark amongst the trees --something was a stirring. I set still and listened. Directly I could just barely hear a "me-yow! me-yow!" down there. That was good! Says I, "me-yow! me-yow!" as soft as I could, and then I put out the light and scrambled out of the window on to the shed. Then I slipped down to the ground and crawled in among the trees, and, sure enough, there was Tom Sawyer waiting for me.
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WE went tiptoeing along a path amongst the trees back towards the end of the widow's garden, stooping down so as the branches wouldn't scrape our heads. When we was passing by the kitchen I fell over a root and made a noise. We scrouched down and laid still. Miss Watson's big nigger, named Jim, was setting in the kitchen door; we could see him pretty clear, because there was a light behind him. He got up and stretched his neck out about a minute, listening. Then he says: "Who dah?"
He listened some more; then he come tiptoeing down and stood right between us; we could a touched him, nearly. Well, likely it was minutes and minutes that there warn't a sound, and we all there so close together. There was a place on my ankle that got to itching, but I dasn't scratch it; and then my ear begun to itch; and next my back, right between my shoulders. Seemed like I'd die if I couldn't scratch. Well, I've noticed that thing plenty times since. If you are with the quality, or at a funeral, or trying to go to sleep when you ain't sleepy--if you are anywheres where it won't do for you to scratch, why you will itch all over in upwards of a thousand places. Pretty soon Jim says: "Say, who is you? Whar is you? Dog my cats ef I didn' hear sumf'n. Well, I know what I's gwyne to do: I's gwyne to set down here and listen tell I hears it agin."
So he set down on the ground betwixt me and Tom. He leaned his back up against a tree, and stretched his legs out till one of them most touched one of mine. My nose begun to itch. It itched till the tears come into my eyes. But I dasn't scratch. Then it begun to itch on the inside. Next I got to itching underneath. I didn't know how I was going to set still. This miserableness went on as much as six or seven minutes; but it seemed a sight longer than that. I was itching in eleven different places now. I reckoned I couldn't stand it more'n a minute longer, but I set my teeth hard and got ready to try. Just then Jim begun to breathe heavy; next he begun to snore--and then I was pretty soon comfortable again.
Tom he made a sign to me--kind of a little noise with his mouth--and we went creeping away on our hands and knees. When we was ten foot off Tom whispered to me, and wanted to tie Jim to the tree for fun. But I said no; he might wake and make a disturbance, and then they'd find out I warn't in. Then Tom said he hadn't got candles enough, and he would slip in the kitchen and get some more. I didn't want him to try. I said Jim might wake up and come. But Tom wanted to resk it; so we slid in there and got three candles, and Tom laid five cents on the table for pay. Then we got out, and I was in a sweat to get away; but nothing would do Tom but he must crawl to where Jim was, on his hands and knees, and play something on him. I waited, and it seemed a good while, everything was so still and lonesome.
As soon as Tom was back we cut along the path, around the garden fence, and by and by fetched up on the steep top of the hill the other side of the house. Tom said he slipped Jim's hat off of his head and hung it on a limb right over him, and Jim stirred a little, but he didn't wake. Afterwards Jim said the witches be witched him and put him in a trance, and rode him all over the State, and then set him under the trees again, and hung his hat on a limb to show who done it. And next time Jim told it he said they rode him down to New Orleans; and, after that, every time he told it he spread it more and more, till by and by he said they rode him all over the world, and tired him most to death, and his back was all over saddle-boils. Jim was monstrous proud about it, and he got so he wouldn't hardly notice the other niggers. Niggers would come miles to hear Jim tell about it, and he was more looked up to than any nigger in that country. Strange niggers would stand with their mouths open and look him all over, same as if he was a wonder. Niggers is always talking about witches in the dark by the kitchen fire; but whenever one was talking and letting on to know all about such things, Jim would happen in and say, "Hm! What you know 'bout witches?" and that nigger was corked up and had to take a back seat. Jim always kept that five-center piece round his neck with a string, and said it was a charm the devil give to him with his own hands, and told him he could cure anybody with it and fetch witches whenever he wanted to just by saying something to it; but he never told what it was he said to it. Niggers would come from all around there and give Jim anything they had, just for a sight of that five-center piece; but they wouldn't touch it, because the devil had had his hands on it. Jim was most ruined for a servant, because he got stuck up on account of having seen the devil and been rode by witches.
Well, when Tom and me got to the edge of the hilltop we looked away down into the village and could see three or four lights twinkling, where there was sick folks, maybe; and the stars over us was sparkling ever so fine; and down by the village was the river, a whole mile broad, and awful still and grand. We went down the hill and found Jo Harper and Ben Rogers, and two or three more of the boys, hid in the old tanyard. So we unhitched a skiff and pulled down the river two mile and a half, to the big scar on the hillside, and went ashore.
We went to a clump of bushes, and Tom made everybody swear to keep the secret, and then showed them a hole in the hill, right in the thickest part of the bushes. Then we lit the candles, and crawled in on our hands and knees. We went about two hundred yards, and then the cave opened up. Tom poked about amongst the passages, and pretty soon ducked under a wall where you wouldn't a noticed that there was a hole. We went along a narrow place and got into a kind of room, all damp and sweaty and cold, and there we stopped. Tom says: "Now, we'll start this band of robbers and call it Tom Sawyer's Gang. Everybody that wants to join has got to take an oath, and write his name in blood."
Everybody was willing. So Tom got out a sheet of paper that he had wrote the oath on, and read it. It swore every boy to stick to the band, and never tell any of the secrets; and if anybody done anything to any boy in the band, whichever boy was ordered to kill that person and his family must do it, and he mustn't eat and he mustn't sleep till he had killed them and hacked a cross in their breasts, which was the sign of the band. And nobody that didn't belong to the band could use that mark, and if he did he must be sued; and if he done it again he must be killed. And if anybody that belonged to the band told the secrets, he must have his throat cut, and then have his carcass burnt up and the ashes scattered all around, and his name blotted off of the list with blood and never mentioned again by the gang, but have a curse put on it and be forgot forever.
Everybody said it was a real beautiful oath, and asked Tom if he got it out of his own head. He said, some of it, but the rest was out of pirate-books and robber-books, and every gang that was high-toned had it.
Some thought it would be good to kill the FAMILIES of boys that told the secrets. Tom said it was a good idea, so he took a pencil and wrote it in. Then Ben Rogers says: "Here's Huck Finn, he hain't got no family; what you going to do 'bout him?"
"Well, hain't he got a father?" says Tom Sawyer.
"Yes, he's got a father, but you can't never find him these days. He used to lay drunk with the hogs in the tanyard, but he hain't been seen in these parts for a year or more."
They talked it over, and they was going to rule me out, because they said every boy must have a family or somebody to kill, or else it wouldn't be fair and square for the others. Well, nobody could think of anything to do--everybody was stumped, and set still. I was most ready to cry; but all at once I thought of a way, and so I offered them Miss Watson--they could kill her. Everybody said: "Oh, she'll do. That's all right. Huck can come in."
Then they all stuck a pin in their fingers to get blood to sign with, and I made my mark on the paper.
"Now," says Ben Rogers, "what's the line of business of this Gang?"
"Nothing only robbery and murder," Tom said.
"But who are we going to rob? --houses, or cattle, or--" "Stuff! stealing cattle and such things ain't robbery; it's burglary," says Tom Sawyer. "We ain't burglars. That ain't no sort of style. We are highwaymen. We stop stages and carriages on the road, with masks on, and kill the people and take their watches and money."
"Must we always kill the people?"
"Oh, certainly. It's best. Some authorities think different, but mostly it's considered best to kill them--except some that you bring to the cave here, and keep them till they're ransomed."
"Ransomed? What's that?"
"I don't know. But that's what they do. I've seen it in books; and so of course that's what we've got to do."
"But how can we do it if we don't know what it is?"
"Why, blame it all, we've GOT to do it. Don't I tell you it's in the books? Do you want to go to doing different from what's in the books, and get things all muddled up?"
"Oh, that's all very fine to SAY, Tom Sawyer, but how in the nation are these fellows going to be ransomed if we don't know how to do it to them? --that's the thing I want to get at. Now, what do you reckon it is?"
"Well, I don't know. But per'aps if we keep them till they're ransomed, it means that we keep them till they're dead."
"Now, that's something LIKE. That'll answer. Why couldn't you said that before? We'll keep them till they're ransomed to death; and a bothersome lot they'll be, too--eating up everything, and always trying to get loose."
"How you talk, Ben Rogers. How can they get loose when there's a guard over them, ready to shoot them down if they move a peg?"
"A guard! Well, that IS good. So somebody's got to set up all night and never get any sleep, just so as to watch them. I think that's foolishness. Why can't a body take a club and ransom them as soon as they get here?"
"Because it ain't in the books so--that's why. Now, Ben Rogers, do you want to do things regular, or don't you? --that's the idea. Don't you reckon that the people that made the books knows what's the correct thing to do? Do you reckon YOU can learn 'em anything? Not by a good deal. No, sir, we'll just go on and ransom them in the regular way."
"All right. I don't mind; but I say it's a fool way, anyhow. Say, do we kill the women, too?"
"Well, Ben Rogers, if I was as ignorant as you I wouldn't let on. Kill the women? No; nobody ever saw anything in the books like that. You fetch them to the cave, and you're always as polite as pie to them; and by and by they fall in love with you, and never want to go home any more."
"Well, if that's the way I'm agreed, but I don't take no stock in it. Mighty soon we'll have the cave so cluttered up with women, and fellows waiting to be ransomed, that there won't be no place for the robbers. But go ahead, I ain't got nothing to say."
Little Tommy Barnes was asleep now, and when they waked him up he was scared, and cried, and said he wanted to go home to his ma, and didn't want to be a robber any more.
So they all made fun of him, and called him cry-baby, and that made him mad, and he said he would go straight and tell all the secrets. But Tom give him five cents to keep quiet, and said we would all go home and meet next week, and rob somebody and kill some people.
Ben Rogers said he couldn't get out much, only Sundays, and so he wanted to begin next Sunday; but all the boys said it would be wicked to do it on Sunday, and that settled the thing. They agreed to get together and fix a day as soon as they could, and then we elected Tom Sawyer first captain and Jo Harper second captain of the Gang, and so started home.
I clumb up the shed and crept into my window just before day was breaking. My new clothes was all greased up and clayey, and I was dog-tired.
|
{
"id": "7100"
}
|
3
|
None
|
WELL, I got a good going-over in the morning from old Miss Watson on account of my clothes; but the widow she didn't scold, but only cleaned off the grease and clay, and looked so sorry that I thought I would behave awhile if I could. Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn't so. I tried it. Once I got a fish-line, but no hooks. It warn't any good to me without hooks. I tried for the hooks three or four times, but somehow I couldn't make it work. By and by, one day, I asked Miss Watson to try for me, but she said I was a fool. She never told me why, and I couldn't make it out no way.
I set down one time back in the woods, and had a long think about it. I says to myself, if a body can get anything they pray for, why don't Deacon Winn get back the money he lost on pork? Why can't the widow get back her silver snuffbox that was stole? Why can't Miss Watson fat up? No, says I to my self, there ain't nothing in it. I went and told the widow about it, and she said the thing a body could get by praying for it was "spiritual gifts." This was too many for me, but she told me what she meant--I must help other people, and do everything I could for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself. This was including Miss Watson, as I took it. I went out in the woods and turned it over in my mind a long time, but I couldn't see no advantage about it--except for the other people; so at last I reckoned I wouldn't worry about it any more, but just let it go. Sometimes the widow would take me one side and talk about Providence in a way to make a body's mouth water; but maybe next day Miss Watson would take hold and knock it all down again. I judged I could see that there was two Providences, and a poor chap would stand considerable show with the widow's Providence, but if Miss Watson's got him there warn't no help for him any more. I thought it all out, and reckoned I would belong to the widow's if he wanted me, though I couldn't make out how he was a-going to be any better off then than what he was before, seeing I was so ignorant, and so kind of low-down and ornery.
Pap he hadn't been seen for more than a year, and that was comfortable for me; I didn't want to see him no more. He used to always whale me when he was sober and could get his hands on me; though I used to take to the woods most of the time when he was around. Well, about this time he was found in the river drownded, about twelve mile above town, so people said. They judged it was him, anyway; said this drownded man was just his size, and was ragged, and had uncommon long hair, which was all like pap; but they couldn't make nothing out of the face, because it had been in the water so long it warn't much like a face at all. They said he was floating on his back in the water. They took him and buried him on the bank. But I warn't comfortable long, because I happened to think of something. I knowed mighty well that a drownded man don't float on his back, but on his face. So I knowed, then, that this warn't pap, but a woman dressed up in a man's clothes. So I was uncomfortable again. I judged the old man would turn up again by and by, though I wished he wouldn't.
We played robber now and then about a month, and then I resigned. All the boys did. We hadn't robbed nobody, hadn't killed any people, but only just pretended. We used to hop out of the woods and go charging down on hog-drivers and women in carts taking garden stuff to market, but we never hived any of them. Tom Sawyer called the hogs "ingots," and he called the turnips and stuff "julery," and we would go to the cave and powwow over what we had done, and how many people we had killed and marked. But I couldn't see no profit in it. One time Tom sent a boy to run about town with a blazing stick, which he called a slogan (which was the sign for the Gang to get together), and then he said he had got secret news by his spies that next day a whole parcel of Spanish merchants and rich A-rabs was going to camp in Cave Hollow with two hundred elephants, and six hundred camels, and over a thousand "sumter" mules, all loaded down with di'monds, and they didn't have only a guard of four hundred soldiers, and so we would lay in ambuscade, as he called it, and kill the lot and scoop the things. He said we must slick up our swords and guns, and get ready. He never could go after even a turnip-cart but he must have the swords and guns all scoured up for it, though they was only lath and broomsticks, and you might scour at them till you rotted, and then they warn't worth a mouthful of ashes more than what they was before. I didn't believe we could lick such a crowd of Spaniards and A-rabs, but I wanted to see the camels and elephants, so I was on hand next day, Saturday, in the ambuscade; and when we got the word we rushed out of the woods and down the hill. But there warn't no Spaniards and A-rabs, and there warn't no camels nor no elephants. It warn't anything but a Sunday-school picnic, and only a primer-class at that. We busted it up, and chased the children up the hollow; but we never got anything but some doughnuts and jam, though Ben Rogers got a rag doll, and Jo Harper got a hymn-book and a tract; and then the teacher charged in, and made us drop everything and cut. I didn't see no di'monds, and I told Tom Sawyer so. He said there was loads of them there, anyway; and he said there was A-rabs there, too, and elephants and things. I said, why couldn't we see them, then? He said if I warn't so ignorant, but had read a book called Don Quixote, I would know without asking. He said it was all done by enchantment. He said there was hundreds of soldiers there, and elephants and treasure, and so on, but we had enemies which he called magicians; and they had turned the whole thing into an infant Sunday-school, just out of spite. I said, all right; then the thing for us to do was to go for the magicians. Tom Sawyer said I was a numskull.
"Why," said he, "a magician could call up a lot of genies, and they would hash you up like nothing before you could say Jack Robinson. They are as tall as a tree and as big around as a church."
"Well," I says, "s'pose we got some genies to help US--can't we lick the other crowd then?"
"How you going to get them?"
"I don't know. How do THEY get them?"
"Why, they rub an old tin lamp or an iron ring, and then the genies come tearing in, with the thunder and lightning a-ripping around and the smoke a-rolling, and everything they're told to do they up and do it. They don't think nothing of pulling a shot-tower up by the roots, and belting a Sunday-school superintendent over the head with it--or any other man."
"Who makes them tear around so?"
"Why, whoever rubs the lamp or the ring. They belong to whoever rubs the lamp or the ring, and they've got to do whatever he says. If he tells them to build a palace forty miles long out of di'monds, and fill it full of chewing-gum, or whatever you want, and fetch an emperor's daughter from China for you to marry, they've got to do it--and they've got to do it before sun-up next morning, too. And more: they've got to waltz that palace around over the country wherever you want it, you understand."
"Well," says I, "I think they are a pack of flat-heads for not keeping the palace themselves 'stead of fooling them away like that. And what's more--if I was one of them I would see a man in Jericho before I would drop my business and come to him for the rubbing of an old tin lamp."
"How you talk, Huck Finn. Why, you'd HAVE to come when he rubbed it, whether you wanted to or not."
"What! and I as high as a tree and as big as a church? All right, then; I WOULD come; but I lay I'd make that man climb the highest tree there was in the country."
"Shucks, it ain't no use to talk to you, Huck Finn. You don't seem to know anything, somehow--perfect saphead."
I thought all this over for two or three days, and then I reckoned I would see if there was anything in it. I got an old tin lamp and an iron ring, and went out in the woods and rubbed and rubbed till I sweat like an Injun, calculating to build a palace and sell it; but it warn't no use, none of the genies come. So then I judged that all that stuff was only just one of Tom Sawyer's lies. I reckoned he believed in the A-rabs and the elephants, but as for me I think different. It had all the marks of a Sunday-school.
|
{
"id": "7100"
}
|
4
|
None
|
WELL, three or four months run along, and it was well into the winter now. I had been to school most all the time and could spell and read and write just a little, and could say the multiplication table up to six times seven is thirty-five, and I don't reckon I could ever get any further than that if I was to live forever. I don't take no stock in mathematics, anyway.
At first I hated the school, but by and by I got so I could stand it. Whenever I got uncommon tired I played hookey, and the hiding I got next day done me good and cheered me up. So the longer I went to school the easier it got to be. I was getting sort of used to the widow's ways, too, and they warn't so raspy on me. Living in a house and sleeping in a bed pulled on me pretty tight mostly, but before the cold weather I used to slide out and sleep in the woods sometimes, and so that was a rest to me. I liked the old ways best, but I was getting so I liked the new ones, too, a little bit. The widow said I was coming along slow but sure, and doing very satisfactory. She said she warn't ashamed of me.
One morning I happened to turn over the salt-cellar at breakfast. I reached for some of it as quick as I could to throw over my left shoulder and keep off the bad luck, but Miss Watson was in ahead of me, and crossed me off. She says, "Take your hands away, Huckleberry; what a mess you are always making!" The widow put in a good word for me, but that warn't going to keep off the bad luck, I knowed that well enough. I started out, after breakfast, feeling worried and shaky, and wondering where it was going to fall on me, and what it was going to be. There is ways to keep off some kinds of bad luck, but this wasn't one of them kind; so I never tried to do anything, but just poked along low-spirited and on the watch-out.
I went down to the front garden and clumb over the stile where you go through the high board fence. There was an inch of new snow on the ground, and I seen somebody's tracks. They had come up from the quarry and stood around the stile a while, and then went on around the garden fence. It was funny they hadn't come in, after standing around so. I couldn't make it out. It was very curious, somehow. I was going to follow around, but I stooped down to look at the tracks first. I didn't notice anything at first, but next I did. There was a cross in the left boot-heel made with big nails, to keep off the devil.
I was up in a second and shinning down the hill. I looked over my shoulder every now and then, but I didn't see nobody. I was at Judge Thatcher's as quick as I could get there. He said: "Why, my boy, you are all out of breath. Did you come for your interest?"
"No, sir," I says; "is there some for me?"
"Oh, yes, a half-yearly is in last night--over a hundred and fifty dollars. Quite a fortune for you. You had better let me invest it along with your six thousand, because if you take it you'll spend it."
"No, sir," I says, "I don't want to spend it. I don't want it at all --nor the six thousand, nuther. I want you to take it; I want to give it to you--the six thousand and all."
He looked surprised. He couldn't seem to make it out. He says: "Why, what can you mean, my boy?"
I says, "Don't you ask me no questions about it, please. You'll take it --won't you?"
He says: "Well, I'm puzzled. Is something the matter?"
"Please take it," says I, "and don't ask me nothing--then I won't have to tell no lies."
He studied a while, and then he says: "Oho-o! I think I see. You want to SELL all your property to me--not give it. That's the correct idea."
Then he wrote something on a paper and read it over, and says: "There; you see it says 'for a consideration.' That means I have bought it of you and paid you for it. Here's a dollar for you. Now you sign it."
So I signed it, and left.
Miss Watson's nigger, Jim, had a hair-ball as big as your fist, which had been took out of the fourth stomach of an ox, and he used to do magic with it. He said there was a spirit inside of it, and it knowed everything. So I went to him that night and told him pap was here again, for I found his tracks in the snow. What I wanted to know was, what he was going to do, and was he going to stay? Jim got out his hair-ball and said something over it, and then he held it up and dropped it on the floor. It fell pretty solid, and only rolled about an inch. Jim tried it again, and then another time, and it acted just the same. Jim got down on his knees, and put his ear against it and listened. But it warn't no use; he said it wouldn't talk. He said sometimes it wouldn't talk without money. I told him I had an old slick counterfeit quarter that warn't no good because the brass showed through the silver a little, and it wouldn't pass nohow, even if the brass didn't show, because it was so slick it felt greasy, and so that would tell on it every time. (I reckoned I wouldn't say nothing about the dollar I got from the judge.) I said it was pretty bad money, but maybe the hair-ball would take it, because maybe it wouldn't know the difference. Jim smelt it and bit it and rubbed it, and said he would manage so the hair-ball would think it was good. He said he would split open a raw Irish potato and stick the quarter in between and keep it there all night, and next morning you couldn't see no brass, and it wouldn't feel greasy no more, and so anybody in town would take it in a minute, let alone a hair-ball. Well, I knowed a potato would do that before, but I had forgot it.
Jim put the quarter under the hair-ball, and got down and listened again. This time he said the hair-ball was all right. He said it would tell my whole fortune if I wanted it to. I says, go on. So the hair-ball talked to Jim, and Jim told it to me. He says: "Yo' ole father doan' know yit what he's a-gwyne to do. Sometimes he spec he'll go 'way, en den agin he spec he'll stay. De bes' way is to res' easy en let de ole man take his own way. Dey's two angels hoverin' roun' 'bout him. One uv 'em is white en shiny, en t'other one is black. De white one gits him to go right a little while, den de black one sail in en bust it all up. A body can't tell yit which one gwyne to fetch him at de las'. But you is all right. You gwyne to have considable trouble in yo' life, en considable joy. Sometimes you gwyne to git hurt, en sometimes you gwyne to git sick; but every time you's gwyne to git well agin. Dey's two gals flyin' 'bout you in yo' life. One uv 'em's light en t'other one is dark. One is rich en t'other is po'. You's gwyne to marry de po' one fust en de rich one by en by. You wants to keep 'way fum de water as much as you kin, en don't run no resk, 'kase it's down in de bills dat you's gwyne to git hung."
When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night there sat pap--his own self!
|
{
"id": "7100"
}
|
5
|
None
|
I HAD shut the door to. Then I turned around and there he was. I used to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much. I reckoned I was scared now, too; but in a minute I see I was mistaken--that is, after the first jolt, as you may say, when my breath sort of hitched, he being so unexpected; but right away after I see I warn't scared of him worth bothring about.
He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like he was behind vines. It was all black, no gray; so was his long, mixed-up whiskers. There warn't no color in his face, where his face showed; it was white; not like another man's white, but a white to make a body sick, a white to make a body's flesh crawl--a tree-toad white, a fish-belly white. As for his clothes--just rags, that was all. He had one ankle resting on t'other knee; the boot on that foot was busted, and two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now and then. His hat was laying on the floor--an old black slouch with the top caved in, like a lid.
I stood a-looking at him; he set there a-looking at me, with his chair tilted back a little. I set the candle down. I noticed the window was up; so he had clumb in by the shed. He kept a-looking me all over. By and by he says: "Starchy clothes--very. You think you're a good deal of a big-bug, DON'T you?"
"Maybe I am, maybe I ain't," I says.
"Don't you give me none o' your lip," says he. "You've put on considerable many frills since I been away. I'll take you down a peg before I get done with you. You're educated, too, they say--can read and write. You think you're better'n your father, now, don't you, because he can't? I'LL take it out of you. Who told you you might meddle with such hifalut'n foolishness, hey? --who told you you could?"
"The widow. She told me."
"The widow, hey? --and who told the widow she could put in her shovel about a thing that ain't none of her business?"
"Nobody never told her."
"Well, I'll learn her how to meddle. And looky here--you drop that school, you hear? I'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs over his own father and let on to be better'n what HE is. You lemme catch you fooling around that school again, you hear? Your mother couldn't read, and she couldn't write, nuther, before she died. None of the family couldn't before THEY died. I can't; and here you're a-swelling yourself up like this. I ain't the man to stand it--you hear? Say, lemme hear you read."
I took up a book and begun something about General Washington and the wars. When I'd read about a half a minute, he fetched the book a whack with his hand and knocked it across the house. He says: "It's so. You can do it. I had my doubts when you told me. Now looky here; you stop that putting on frills. I won't have it. I'll lay for you, my smarty; and if I catch you about that school I'll tan you good. First you know you'll get religion, too. I never see such a son."
He took up a little blue and yaller picture of some cows and a boy, and says: "What's this?"
"It's something they give me for learning my lessons good."
He tore it up, and says: "I'll give you something better--I'll give you a cowhide."
He set there a-mumbling and a-growling a minute, and then he says: "AIN'T you a sweet-scented dandy, though? A bed; and bedclothes; and a look'n'-glass; and a piece of carpet on the floor--and your own father got to sleep with the hogs in the tanyard. I never see such a son. I bet I'll take some o' these frills out o' you before I'm done with you. Why, there ain't no end to your airs--they say you're rich. Hey? --how's that?"
"They lie--that's how."
"Looky here--mind how you talk to me; I'm a-standing about all I can stand now--so don't gimme no sass. I've been in town two days, and I hain't heard nothing but about you bein' rich. I heard about it away down the river, too. That's why I come. You git me that money to-morrow--I want it."
"I hain't got no money."
"It's a lie. Judge Thatcher's got it. You git it. I want it."
"I hain't got no money, I tell you. You ask Judge Thatcher; he'll tell you the same."
"All right. I'll ask him; and I'll make him pungle, too, or I'll know the reason why. Say, how much you got in your pocket? I want it."
"I hain't got only a dollar, and I want that to--" "It don't make no difference what you want it for--you just shell it out."
He took it and bit it to see if it was good, and then he said he was going down town to get some whisky; said he hadn't had a drink all day. When he had got out on the shed he put his head in again, and cussed me for putting on frills and trying to be better than him; and when I reckoned he was gone he come back and put his head in again, and told me to mind about that school, because he was going to lay for me and lick me if I didn't drop that.
Next day he was drunk, and he went to Judge Thatcher's and bullyragged him, and tried to make him give up the money; but he couldn't, and then he swore he'd make the law force him.
The judge and the widow went to law to get the court to take me away from him and let one of them be my guardian; but it was a new judge that had just come, and he didn't know the old man; so he said courts mustn't interfere and separate families if they could help it; said he'd druther not take a child away from its father. So Judge Thatcher and the widow had to quit on the business.
That pleased the old man till he couldn't rest. He said he'd cowhide me till I was black and blue if I didn't raise some money for him. I borrowed three dollars from Judge Thatcher, and pap took it and got drunk, and went a-blowing around and cussing and whooping and carrying on; and he kept it up all over town, with a tin pan, till most midnight; then they jailed him, and next day they had him before court, and jailed him again for a week. But he said HE was satisfied; said he was boss of his son, and he'd make it warm for HIM.
When he got out the new judge said he was a-going to make a man of him. So he took him to his own house, and dressed him up clean and nice, and had him to breakfast and dinner and supper with the family, and was just old pie to him, so to speak. And after supper he talked to him about temperance and such things till the old man cried, and said he'd been a fool, and fooled away his life; but now he was a-going to turn over a new leaf and be a man nobody wouldn't be ashamed of, and he hoped the judge would help him and not look down on him. The judge said he could hug him for them words; so he cried, and his wife she cried again; pap said he'd been a man that had always been misunderstood before, and the judge said he believed it. The old man said that what a man wanted that was down was sympathy, and the judge said it was so; so they cried again. And when it was bedtime the old man rose up and held out his hand, and says: "Look at it, gentlemen and ladies all; take a-hold of it; shake it. There's a hand that was the hand of a hog; but it ain't so no more; it's the hand of a man that's started in on a new life, and'll die before he'll go back. You mark them words--don't forget I said them. It's a clean hand now; shake it--don't be afeard."
So they shook it, one after the other, all around, and cried. The judge's wife she kissed it. Then the old man he signed a pledge--made his mark. The judge said it was the holiest time on record, or something like that. Then they tucked the old man into a beautiful room, which was the spare room, and in the night some time he got powerful thirsty and clumb out on to the porch-roof and slid down a stanchion and traded his new coat for a jug of forty-rod, and clumb back again and had a good old time; and towards daylight he crawled out again, drunk as a fiddler, and rolled off the porch and broke his left arm in two places, and was most froze to death when somebody found him after sun-up. And when they come to look at that spare room they had to take soundings before they could navigate it.
The judge he felt kind of sore. He said he reckoned a body could reform the old man with a shotgun, maybe, but he didn't know no other way.
|
{
"id": "7100"
}
|
1
|
A LOST LANDMARK
|
“The sins of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.”
These are the words that have followed me always. This is the curse which has fallen on my life.
If I had not known my father, if I had not loved him, if I had not closed his eyes in desert silence deeper than the silence of the grave, even if I could have buried and bewailed him duly, the common business of this world and the universal carelessness might have led me down the general track that leads to nothing.
Until my father fell and died I never dreamed that he could die. I knew that his mind was quite made up to see me safe in my new home, and then himself to start again for still remoter solitudes. And when his mind was thus made up, who had ever known him fail of it?
If ever a resolute man there was, that very man was my father. And he showed it now, in this the last and fatal act of his fatal life. “Captain, here I leave you all,” he shouted to the leader of our wagon train, at a place where a dark, narrow gorge departed from the moilsome mountain track. “My reasons are my own; let no man trouble himself about them. All my baggage I leave with you. I have paid my share of the venture, and shall claim it at Sacramento. My little girl and I will take this short-cut through the mountains.”
“General!” answered the leader of our train, standing up on his board in amazement. “Forgive and forget, Sir; forgive and forget. What is a hot word spoken hotly? If not for your own sake, at least come back for the sake of your young daughter.”
“A fair haven to you!” replied my father. He offered me his hand, and we were out of sight of all that wearisome, drearisome, uncompanionable company with whom, for eight long weeks at least, we had been dragging our rough way. I had known in a moment that it must be so, for my father never argued. Argument, to his mind, was a very nice amusement for the weak. My spirits rose as he swung his bear-skin bag upon his shoulder, and the last sound of the laboring caravan groaned in the distance, and the fresh air and the freedom of the mountains moved around us. It was the 29th of May--Oak-apple Day in England--and to my silly youth this vast extent of snowy mountains was a nice place for a cool excursion.
Moreover, from day to day I had been in most wretched anxiety, so long as we remained with people who could not allow for us. My father, by his calm reserve and dignity and largeness, had always, among European people, kept himself secluded; but now in this rough life, so pent in trackless tracts, and pressed together by perpetual peril, every body's manners had been growing free and easy. Every man had been compelled to tell, as truly as he could, the story of his life thus far, to amuse his fellow-creatures--every man, I mean, of course, except my own poor father. Some told their stories every evening, until we were quite tired--although they were never the same twice over; but my father could never be coaxed to say a syllable more than, “I was born, and I shall die.”
This made him very unpopular with the men, though all the women admired it; and if any rough fellow could have seen a sign of fear, the speaker would have been insulted. But his manner and the power of his look were such that, even after ardent spirits, no man saw fit to be rude to him. Nevertheless, there had always been the risk of some sad outrage.
“Erema,” my father said to me, when the dust from the rear of the caravan was lost behind a cloud of rocks, and we two stood in the wilderness alone--“do you know, my own Erema, why I bring you from them?”
“Father dear, how should I know? You have done it, and it must be right.”
“It is not for their paltry insults. Child, you know what I think all that. It is for you, my only child, that I am doing what now I do.”
I looked up into his large, sad eyes without a word, in such a way that he lifted me up in his arms and kissed me, as if I were a little child instead of a maiden just fifteen. This he had never done before, and it made me a little frightened. He saw it, and spoke on the spur of the thought, though still with one arm round me.
“Perhaps you will live to be thankful, my dear, that you had a stern, cold father. So will you meet the world all the better; and, little one, you have a rough world to meet.”
For a moment I was quite at a loss to account for my father's manner; but now, in looking back, it is so easy to see into things. At the time I must have been surprised, and full of puzzled eagerness.
Not half so well can I recall the weakness, anguish, and exhaustion of body and spirit afterward. It may have been three days of wandering, or it may have been a week, or even more than that, for all that I can say for certain. Whether the time were long or short, it seemed as if it would never end. My father believed that he knew the way to the house of an old settler, at the western foot of the mountains, who had treated him kindly some years before, and with whom he meant to leave me until he had made arrangements elsewhere. If we had only gone straightway thither, night-fall would have found us safe beneath that hospitable roof.
My father was vexed, as I well remember, at coming, as he thought, in sight of some great landmark, and finding not a trace of it. Although his will was so very strong, his temper was good about little things, and he never began to abuse all the world because he had made a mistake himself.
“Erema,” he said, “at this corner where we stand there ought to be a very large pine-tree in sight, or rather a great redwood-tree, at least twice as high as any tree that grows in Europe, or Africa even. From the plains it can be seen for a hundred miles or more. It stands higher up the mountainside than any other tree of even half its size, and that makes it so conspicuous. My eyes must be failing me, from all this glare; but it must be in sight. Can you see it now?”
“I see no tree of any kind whatever, but scrubby bushes and yellow tufts; and oh, father, I am so thirsty!”
“Naturally. But now look again. It stands on a ridge, the last ridge that bars the view of all the lowland. It is a very straight tree, and regular, like a mighty column, except that on the northern side the wind from the mountains has torn a gap in it. Are you sure that you can not see it--a long way off, but conspicuous?”
“Father, I am sure that I can not see any tree half as large as a broomstick. Far or near, I see no tree.”
“Then my eyes are better than my memory. We must cast back for a mile or two; but it can not make much difference.”
“Through the dust and the sand?” I began to say; but a glance from him stopped my murmuring. And the next thing I can call to mind must have happened a long time afterward.
Beyond all doubt, in this desolation, my father gave his life for mine. I did not know it at the time, nor had the faintest dream of it, being so young and weary-worn, and obeying him by instinct. It is a fearful thing to think of--now that I can think of it--but to save my own little worthless life I must have drained every drop of water from his flat half-gallon jar. The water was hot and the cork-hole sandy, and I grumbled even while drinking it; and what must my father (who was dying all the while for a drop, but never took one)--what must he have thought of me?
But he never said a word, so far as I remember; and that makes it all the worse for me. We had strayed away into a dry, volcanic district of the mountains, where all the snow-rivers run out quite early; and of natural springs there was none forth-coming. All we had to guide us was a little traveler's compass (whose needle stuck fast on the pivot with sand) and the glaring sun, when he came to sight behind the hot, dry, driving clouds. The clouds were very low, and flying almost in our faces, like vultures sweeping down on us. To me they seemed to shriek over our heads at the others rushing after them. But my father said that they could make no sound, and I never contradicted him.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
|
2
|
A PACIFIC SUNSET
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At last we came to a place from which the great spread of the earth was visible. For a time--I can not tell how long--we had wholly lost ourselves, going up and down, and turning corners, without getting further. But my father said that we must come right, if we made up our minds to go long enough. We had been in among all shapes, and want of shapes, of dreariness, through and in and out of every thrup and thrum of weariness, scarcely hoping ever more to find our way out and discover memory of men for us, when all of a sudden we saw a grand sight. The day had been dreadfully hot and baffling, with sudden swirls of red dust arising, and driving the great drought into us. To walk had been worse than to drag one's way through a stubbly bed of sting-nettles. But now the quick sting of the sun was gone, and his power descending in the balance toward the flat places of the land and sea. And suddenly we looked forth upon an immeasurable spread of these.
We stood at the gate of the sandy range, which here, like a vast brown patch, disfigures the beauty of the sierra. On either side, in purple distance, sprang sky-piercing obelisks and vapor-mantled glaciers, spangled with bright snow, and shodden with eternal forest. Before us lay the broad, luxuriant plains of California, checkered with more tints than any other piece of earth can show, sleeping in alluvial ease, and veined with soft blue waters. And through a gap in the brown coast range, at twenty leagues of distance, a light (so faint as to seem a shadow) hovered above the Pacific.
But none of all this grandeur touched our hearts except the water gleam. Parched with thirst, I caught my father's arm and tried to urge him on toward the blue enchantment of ecstatic living water. But, to my surprise, he staggered back, and his face grew as white as the distant snow. I managed to get him to a sandy ledge, with the help of his own endeavors, and there let him rest and try to speak, while my frightened heart throbbed over his.
“My little child,” he said at last, as if we were fallen back ten years, “put your hand where I can feel it.”
My hand all the while had been in his, and to let him know where it was, it moved. But cold fear stopped my talking.
“My child, I have not been kind to you,” my father slowly spoke again, “but it has not been from want of love. Some day you will see all this, and some day you will pardon me.”
He laid one heavy arm around me, and forgetting thirst and pain, with the last intensity of eyesight watched the sun departing. To me, I know not how, great awe was every where, and sadness. The conical point of the furious sun, which like a barb had pierced us, was broadening into a hazy disk, inefficient, but benevolent. Underneath him depth of night was waiting to come upward (after letting him fall through) and stain his track with redness. Already the arms of darkness grew in readiness to receive him: his upper arc was pure and keen, but the lower was flaked with atmosphere; a glow of hazy light soon would follow, and one bright glimmer (addressed more to the sky than to the earth), and after that a broad, soft gleam; and after that how many a man should never see the sun again, and among them would be my father.
He, for the moment, resting there, with heavy light upon him, and the dark jaws of the mountain desert yawning wide behind him, and all the beautiful expanse of liberal earth before him--even so he seemed to me, of all the things in sight, the one that first would draw attention. His face was full of quiet grandeur and impressive calm, and the sad tranquillity which comes to those who know what human life is through continual human death. Although, in the matter of bodily strength, he was little past the prime of life, his long and abundant hair was white, and his broad and upright forehead marked with the meshes of the net of care. But drought and famine and long fatigue had failed even now to change or weaken the fine expression of his large, sad eyes. Those eyes alone would have made the face remarkable among ten thousand, so deep with settled gloom they were, and dark with fatal sorrow. Such eyes might fitly have told the grief of Adrastus, son of Gordias, who, having slain his own brother unwitting, unwitting slew the only son of his generous host and savior.
The pale globe of the sun hung trembling in the haze himself had made. My father rose to see the last, and reared his tall form upright against the deepening background. He gazed as if the course of life lay vanishing below him, while level land and waters drew the breadth of shadow over them. Then the last gleam flowed and fled upon the face of ocean, and my father put his dry lips to my forehead, saying nothing.
His lips might well be dry, for he had not swallowed water for three days; but it frightened me to feel how cold they were, and even tremulous. “Let us run, let us run, my dear father!” I cried. “Delicious water! The dark falls quickly; but we can get there before dark. It is all down hill. Oh, do let us run at once!”
“Erema,” he answered, with a quiet smile, “there is no cause now for hurrying, except that I must hurry to show you what you have to do, my child. For once, at the end of my life, I am lucky. We have escaped from that starving desert at a spot--at a spot where we can see--” For a little while he could say no more, but sank upon the stony seat, and the hand with which he tried to point some distant landmark fell away. His face, which had been so pale before, became of a deadly whiteness, and he breathed with gasps of agony. I knelt before him and took his hands, and tried to rub the palms, and did whatever I could think of.
“Oh, father, father, you have starved yourself, and given every thing to me! What a brute I was to let you do it! But I did not know; I never knew! Please God to take me also!”
He could not manage to answer this, even if he understood it; but he firmly lifted his arm again, and tried to make me follow it.
“What does it matter? Oh, never mind, never mind such, a wretch as I am! Father, only try to tell me what I ought to do for you.”
“My child! my child!” were his only words; and he kept on saying, “My child! my child!” as if he liked the sound of it.
At what time of the night my father died I knew not then or afterward. It may have been before the moon came over the snowy mountains, or it may not have been till the worn-out stars in vain repelled the daybreak. All I know is that I ever strove to keep more near to him through the night, to cherish his failing warmth, and quicken the slow, laborious, harassed breath. From time to time he tried to pray to God for me and for himself; but every time his mind began to wander and to slip away, as if through want of practice. For the chills of many wretched years had deadened and benumbed his faith. He knew me, now and then, betwixt the conflict and the stupor; for more than once he muttered feebly, and as if from out a dream, “Time for Erema to go on her way. Go on your way, and save your life; save your life, Erema.”
There was no way for me to go, except on my knees before him. I took his hands, and made them lissome with a soft, light rubbing. I whispered into his ear my name, that he might speak once more to me; and when he could not speak, I tried to say what he would say to me.
At last, with a blow that stunned all words, it smote my stupid, wandering mind that all I had to speak and smile to, all I cared to please and serve, the only one left to admire and love, lay here in my weak arms quite dead. And in the anguish of my sobbing, little things came home to me, a thousand little things that showed how quietly he had prepared for this, and provided for me only. Cold despair and self-reproach and strong rebellion dazed me, until I lay at my father's side, and slept with his dead hand in mine. There in the desert of desolation pious awe embraced me, and small phantasms of individual fear could not come nigh me.
By-and-by long shadows of morning crept toward me dismally, and the pallid light of the hills was stretched in weary streaks away from me. How I arose, or what I did, or what I thought, is nothing now. Such times are not for talking of. How many hearts of anguish lie forlorn, with none to comfort them, with all the joy of life died out, and all the fear of having yet to live, in front arising!
Young and weak, and wrong of sex for doing any valiance, long I lay by my father's body, wringing out my wretchedness. Thirst and famine now had flown into the opposite extreme; I seemed to loathe the thought of water, and the smell of food would have made me sick. I opened my father's knapsack, and a pang of new misery seized me. There lay nearly all his rations, which he had made pretense to eat as he gave me mine from time to time. He had starved himself; since he failed of his mark, and learned our risk of famishing, all his own food he had kept for me, as well as his store of water. And I had done nothing but grumble and groan, even while consuming every thing. Compared with me, the hovering vultures might be considered angels.
When I found all this, I was a great deal too worn out to cry or sob. Simply to break down may be the purest mercy that can fall on truly hopeless misery. Screams of ravenous maws and flaps of fetid wings came close to me, and, fainting into the arms of death, I tried to save my father's body by throwing my own over it.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
|
3
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A STURDY COLONIST
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For the contrast betwixt that dreadful scene and the one on which my dim eyes slowly opened, three days afterward, first I thank the Lord in heaven, whose gracious care was over me, and after Him some very simple members of humanity.
A bronze-colored woman, with soft, sad eyes, was looking at me steadfastly. She had seen that, under tender care, I was just beginning to revive, and being acquainted with many troubles, she had learned to succor all of them. This I knew not then, but felt that kindness was around me.
“Arauna, arauna, my shild,” she said, in a strange but sweet and soothing voice, “you are with the good man in the safe, good house. Let old Suan give you the good food, my shild.”
“Where is my father? Oh, show me my father?” I whispered faintly, as she raised me in the bed and held a large spoon to my lips.
“You shall--you shall; it is too very much Inglese; me tell you when have long Sunday time to think. My shild, take the good food from poor old Suan.”
She looked at me with such beseeching eyes that, even if food had been loathsome to me, I could not have resisted her; whereas I was now in the quick-reviving agony of starvation. The Indian woman fed me with far greater care than I was worth, and hushed me, with some soothing process, into another abyss of sleep.
More than a week passed by me thus, in the struggle between life and death, before I was able to get clear knowledge of any body or any thing. No one, in my wakeful hours, came into my little bedroom except this careful Indian nurse, who hushed me off to sleep whenever I wanted to ask questions. Suan Isco, as she was called, possessed a more than mesmeric power of soothing a weary frame to rest; and this was seconded, where I lay, by the soft, incessant cadence and abundant roar of water. Thus every day I recovered strength and natural impatience.
“The master is coming to see you, shild,” Suan said to me one day, when I had sat up and done my hair, and longed to be down by the water-fall; “if, if--too much Inglese--old Suan say no more can now.”
“If I am ready and able and willing! Oh, Suan, run and tell him not to lose one moment.”
“No sure; Suan no sure at all,” she answered, looking at me calmly, as if there were centuries yet to spare. “Suan no hurry; shild no hurry; master no hurry: come last of all.”
“I tell you, Suan, I want to see him. And I am not accustomed to be kept waiting. My dear father insisted always--But oh, Suan, Suan, he is dead--I am almost sure of it.”
“Him old man quite dead enough, and big hole dug in the land for him. Very good; more good than could be. Suan no more Inglese.”
Well as I had known it long, a catching of the breath and hollow, helpless pain came through me, to meet in dry words thus the dread which might have been but a hovering dream. I turned my face to the wall, and begged her not to send the master in.
But presently a large, firm hand was laid on my shoulder softly, and turning sharply round, I beheld an elderly man looking down at me. His face was plain and square and solid, with short white curls on a rugged forehead, and fresh red cheeks, and a triple chin--fit base for remarkably massive jaws. His frame was in keeping with his face, being very large and powerful, though not of my father's commanding height. His dress and appearance were those of a working--and a really hard-working--man, sober, steadfast, and self-respecting; but what engaged my attention most was the frank yet shrewd gaze of deep-set eyes. I speak of things as I observed them later, for I could not pay much heed just then.
“'Tis a poor little missy,” he said, with a gentle tone. “What things she hath been through! Will you take an old man's hand, my dear? Your father hath often taken it, though different from his rank of life. Sampson Gundry is my name, missy. Have you ever heard your father tell of it?”
“Many and many a time,” I said, as I placed my hot little hand in his. “He never found more than one man true on earth, and it was you, Sir.”
“Come, now,” he replied, with his eyes for a moment sparkling at my warmth of words; “you must not have that in your young head, missy. It leads to a miserable life. Your father hath always been unlucky--the most unlucky that ever I did know. And luck cometh out in nothing clearer than in the kind of folk we meet. But the Lord in heaven ordereth all. I speak like a poor heathen.”
“Oh, never mind that!” I cried: “only tell me, were you in time to save--to save--” I could not bear to say what I wanted.
“In plenty of time, my dear; thanks to you. You must have fought when you could not fight: the real stuff, I call it. Your poor father lies where none can harm him. Come, missy, missy, you must not take on so. It is the best thing that could befall a man so bound up with calamity. It is what he hath prayed for for many a year--if only it were not for you. And now you are safe, and for sure he knows it, if the angels heed their business.”
With these words he withdrew, and kindly sent Suan back to me, knowing that her soothing ways would help me more than argument. To my mind all things lay in deep confusion and abasement. Overcome with bodily weakness and with bitter self-reproach, I even feared that to ask any questions might show want of gratitude. But a thing of that sort could not always last, and before very long I was quite at home with the history of Mr. Gundry.
Solomon Gundry, of Mevagissey, in the county of Cornwall, in England, betook himself to the United States in the last year of the last century. He had always been a most upright man, as well as a first-rate fisherman; and his family had made a rule--as most respectable families at that time did--to run a nice cargo of contraband goods not more than twice in one season. A highly querulous old lieutenant of the British navy (who had served under Nelson and lost both, arms, yet kept “the rheumatics” in either stump) was appointed, in an evil hour, to the Cornish coast-guard; and he never rested until he had caught all the best county families smuggling. Through this he lost his situation, and had to go to the workhouse; nevertheless, such a stir had been roused that (to satisfy public opinion) they made a large sacrifice of inferior people, and among them this Solomon Gundry. Now the Gundries had long been a thickset race, and had furnished some champion wrestlers; and Solomon kept to the family stamp in the matter of obstinacy. He made a bold mark at the foot of a bond for 150 pounds; and with no other sign than that, his partner in their stanch herring-smack (the Good Hope, of Mevagissey) allowed him to make sail across the Atlantic with all he cared for.
This Cornish partner deserved to get all his money back; and so he did, together with good interest. Solomon Gundry throve among a thrifty race at Boston; he married a sweet New England lass, and his eldest son was Sampson. Sampson, in the prime of life, and at its headstrong period, sought the far West, overland, through not much less of distance, and through even more of danger, than his English father had gone through. His name was known on the western side of the mighty chain of mountains before Colonel Fremont was heard of there, and before there was any gleam of gold on the lonely sunset frontage.
Here Sampson Gundry lived by tillage of the nobly fertile soil ere Sacramento or San Francisco had any name to speak of. And though he did not show regard for any kind of society, he managed to have a wife and son, and keep them free from danger. But (as it appears to me the more, the more I think of every thing) no one must assume to be aside the reach of Fortune because he has gathered himself so small that she should not care to strike at him. At any rate, good or evil powers smote Sampson Gundry heavily.
First he lost his wife, which was a “great denial” to him. She fell from a cliff while she was pegging out the linen, and the substance of her frame prevented her from ever getting over it. And after that he lost his son, his only son--for all the Gundries were particular as to quality; and the way in which he lost his son made it still more sad for him.
A reputable and valued woman had disappeared in a hasty way from a cattle-place down the same side of the hills. The desire of the Indians was to enlarge her value and get it. There were very few white men as yet within any distance to do good; but Sampson Gundry vowed that, if the will of the Lord went with him, that woman should come back to her family without robbing them of sixpence. To this intent he started with a company of some twenty men--white or black or middle-colored (according to circumstances). He was their captain, and his son Elijah their lieutenant. Elijah had only been married for a fortnight, but was full of spirit, and eager to fight with enemies; and he seems to have carried this too far; for all that came back to his poor bride was a lock of his hair and his blessing. He was buried in a bed of lava on the western slope of Shasta, and his wife died in her confinement, and was buried by the Blue River.
It was said at the time and long afterward that Elijah Gundry--thus cut short--was the finest and noblest young man to be found from the mountains to the ocean. His father, in whose arms he died, led a sad and lonely life for years, and scarcely even cared (although of Cornish and New England race) to seize the glorious chance of wealth which lay at his feet beseeching him. By settlement he had possessed himself of a large and fertile district, sloping from the mountain-foot along the banks of the swift Blue River, a tributary of the San Joaquin. And this was not all; for he also claimed the ownership of the upper valley, the whole of the mountain gorge and spring head, whence that sparkling water flows. And when that fury of gold-digging in 1849 arose, very few men could have done what he did without even thinking twice of it.
For Sampson Gundry stood, like a bull, on the banks of his own river, and defied the worst and most desperate men of all nations to pollute it. He had scarcely any followers or steadfast friends to back him; but his fame for stern courage was clear and strong, and his bodily presence most manifest. Not a shovel was thrust nor a cradle rocked in the bed of the Blue River.
But when a year or two had passed, and all the towns and villages, and even hovels and way-side huts, began to clink with money, Mr. Gundry gradually recovered a wholesome desire to have some. For now his grandson Ephraim was growing into biped shape, and having lost his mother when he first came into the world, was sure to need the more natural and maternal nutriment of money.
Therefore Sampson Gundry, though he would not dig for gold, wrought out a plan which he had long thought of. Nature helped him with all her powers of mountain, forest, and headlong stream. He set up a saw-mill, and built it himself; and there was no other to be found for twelve degrees of latitude and perhaps a score of longitude.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
|
4
|
THE “KING OF THE MOUNTAINS.”
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If I think, and try to write forever with the strongest words, I can not express to any other mind a thousandth part of the gratitude which was and is, and ought to be forever, in my own poor mind toward those who were so good to me. From time to time it is said (whenever any man with power of speech or fancy gets some little grievances) that all mankind are simply selfish, miserly, and miserable. To contradict that saying needs experience even larger, perhaps, than that which has suggested it; and this I can not have, and therefore only know that I have not found men or women behave at all according to that view of them.
Whether Sampson Gundry owed any debt, either of gratitude or of loyalty, to my father, I did not ask; and he seemed to be (like every one else) reserved and silent as to my father's history. But he always treated me as if I belonged to a rank of life quite different from and much above his own. For instance, it was long before he would allow me to have my meals at the table of the household.
But as soon as I began in earnest to recover from starvation, loss, and loneliness, my heart was drawn to this grand old man, who had seen so many troubles. He had been here and there in the world so much, and dealt with so many people, that the natural frankness of his mind was sharpened into caution. But any weak and helpless person still could get the best of him; and his shrewdness certainly did not spring from any form of bitterness. He was rough in his ways sometimes, and could not bear to be contradicted when he was sure that he was right, which generally happened to him. But above all things he had one very great peculiarity, to my mind highly vexatious, because it seemed so unaccountable. Sampson Gundry had a very low opinion of feminine intellect. He never showed this contempt in any unpleasant way, and indeed he never, perhaps, displayed it in any positive sayings. But as I grew older and began to argue, sure I was that it was there; and it always provoked me tenfold as much by seeming to need no assertion, but to stand as some great axiom.
The other members of the household were his grandson Ephraim (or “Firm” Gundry), the Indian woman Suan Isco, and a couple of helps, of race or nation almost unknown to themselves. Suan Isco belonged to a tribe of respectable Black Rock Indians, and had been the wife of a chief among them, and the mother of several children. But Klamath Indians, enemies of theirs (who carried off the lady of the cattle ranch, and afterward shot Elijah), had Suan Isco in their possession, having murdered her husband and children, and were using her as a mere beast of burden, when Sampson Gundry fell on them. He, with his followers, being enraged at the cold-blooded death of Elijah, fell on those miscreants to such purpose that women and children alone were left to hand down their bad propensities.
But the white men rescued and brought away the stolen wife of the stockman, and also the widow of the Black Rock chief. She was in such poor condition and so broken-hearted that none but the finest humanity would have considered her worth a quarter of the trouble of her carriage. But she proved to be worth it a thousandfold; and Sawyer Gundry (as now he was called) knew by this time all the value of uncultivated gratitude. And her virtues were so many that it took a long time to find them out, for she never put them forward, not knowing whether they were good or bad.
Until I knew these people, and the pure depth of their kindness, it was a continual grief to me to be a burden upon them. But when I came to understand them and their simple greatness, the only thing I was ashamed of was my own mistrust of them. Not that I expected ever that any harm would be done to me, only that I knew myself to have no claim on any one.
One day, when I was fit for nothing but to dwell on trouble, Sampson Gundry's grandson “Firm”--as he was called for Ephraim--ran up the stairs to the little room where I was sitting by myself.
“Miss Rema, will you come with us?” he said, in his deep, slow style of speech. “We are going up the mountain, to haul down the great tree to the mill.”
“To be sure I will come,” I answered, gladly. “What great tree is it, Mr. Ephraim?”
“The largest tree any where near here--the one we cut down last winter. Ten days it took to cut it down. If I could have saved it, it should have stood. But grandfather did it to prove his rights. We shall have a rare job to lead it home, and I doubt if we can tackle it. I thought you might like to see us try.”
In less than a minute I was ready, for the warmth and softness of the air made cloak or shawl unbearable. But when I ran down to the yard of the mill, Mr. Gundry, who was giving orders, came up and gave me an order too.
“You must not go like this, my dear. We have three thousand feet to go upward. The air will be sharp up there, and I doubt if we shall be home by night-fall. Run, Suan, and fetch the young lady's cloak, and a pair of thicker boots for change.”
Suan Isco never ran. That manner of motion was foreign to her, at least as we accomplish it. When speed was required, she attained it by increased length of stride and great vigor of heel. In this way she conquered distance steadily, and with very little noise.
The air, and the light, and the beauty of the mountains were a sudden joy to me. In front of us all strode Sampson Gundry, clearing all tangles with a short, sharp axe, and mounting steep places as if twoscore were struck off his threescore years and five. From time to time he turned round to laugh, or see that his men and trained bullocks were right; and then, as his bright eyes met my dark ones, he seemed to be sorry for the noise he made. On the other hand, I was ashamed of damping any one's pleasure by being there.
But I need not have felt any fear about this. Like all other children, I wrapped myself up too much in my own importance, and behaved as if my state of mind was a thing to be considered. But the longer we rose through the freedom and the height, the lighter grew the heart of every one, until the thick forest of pines closed round us, and we walked in a silence that might be felt.
Hence we issued forth upon the rough bare rock, and after much trouble with the cattle, and some bruises, stood panting on a rugged cone, or crest, which had once been crowned with a Titan of a tree. The tree was still there, but not its glory; for, alas! the mighty trunk lay prostrate--a grander column than ever was or will be built by human hands. The tapering shaft stretched out of sight for something like a furlong, and the bulk of the butt rose over us so that we could not see the mountains. Having never seen any such tree before, I must have been amazed if I had been old enough to comprehend it.
Sampson Gundry, large as he was, and accustomed to almost every thing, collected his men and the whole of his team on the ground-floor or area of the stump before he would say any thing. Here we all looked so sadly small that several of the men began to laugh; the bullocks seemed nothing but raccoons or beavers to run on the branches or the fibres of the tree; and the chains and the shackles, and the blocks and cranes, and all the rest of the things they meant to use, seemed nothing whatever, or at all to be considered, except as a spider's web upon this tree.
The sagacious bullocks, who knew quite well what they were expected to do, looked blank. Some rubbed their horns into one another's sadly, and some cocked their tails because they felt that they could not be called upon to work. The light of the afternoon sun came glancing along the vast pillar, and lit its dying hues--cinnamon, purple, and glabrous red, and soft gray where the lichens grew.
Every body looked at Mr. Gundry, and he began to cough a little, having had lately some trouble with his throat. Then in his sturdy manner he spoke the truth, according to his nature. He set his great square shoulders against the butt of the tree, and delivered himself: “Friends and neighbors, and hands of my own, I am taken in here, and I own to it. It serves me right for disbelieving what my grandson, Firm Gundry, said. I knew that the tree was a big one, of course, as every body else does; but till you see a tree laid upon earth you get no grip of his girth, no more than you do of a man till he lieth a corpse. At the time of felling I could not come anigh him, by reason of an accident; and I had some words with this boy about it, which kept me away ever since that time. Firm, you were right, and I was wrong. It was a real shame, now I see it, to throw down the 'King of the Mountains.' But, for all that, being down, we must use him. He shall be sawn into fifty-foot lengths. And I invite you all to come again, for six or seven good turns at him.”
At the hearing of this, a cheer arose, not only for the Sawyer's manly truth, but also for his hospitality; because on each of these visits to the mountain he was the host, and his supplies were good. But before the descent with the empty teams began, young Ephraim did what appeared to me to be a gallant and straightforward thing. He stood on the chine of the fallen monster, forty feet above us, having gained the post of vantage by activity and strength, and he asked if he might say a word or two.
“Say away, lad,” cried his grandfather, supposing, perhaps, in his obstinate way (for truly he was very obstinate), that his grandson was going now to clear himself from art or part in the murder of that tree--an act which had roused indignation over a hundred leagues of lowland.
“Neighbors,” said Firm, in a clear young voice, which shook at first with diffidence, “we all have to thank you, more than I can tell, for coming to help us with this job. It was a job which required to be done for legal reasons which I do not understand, but no doubt they were good ones. For that we have my grandfather's word; and no one, I think, will gainsay it. Now, having gone so far, we will not be beaten by it, or else we shall not be Americans.”
These simple words were received with great applause; and an orator, standing on the largest stump to be found even in America, delivered a speech which was very good to hear, but need not now be repeated. And Mr. Gundry's eyes were moist with pleasure at his grandson's conduct.
“Firm knoweth the right thing to do,” he said; “and like a man he doeth it. But whatever aileth you, Miss Rema, and what can 'e see in the distance yonner? Never mind, my dear, then. Tell me by-and-by, when none of these folk is 'longside of us.”
But I could not bear to tell him, till he forced it from me under pain of his displeasure. I had spied on the sky-line far above us, in the desert track of mountain, the very gap in which my father stood and bade me seek this landmark. His memory was true, and his eyesight also; but the great tree had been felled. The death of the “King of the Mountains” had led to the death of the king of mankind, so far as my little world contained one.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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5
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UNCLE SAM
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The influence of the place in which I lived began to grow on me. The warmth of the climate and the clouds of soft and fertile dust were broken by the refreshing rush of water and the clear soft green of leaves. We had fruit trees of almost every kind, from the peach to the amber cherry, and countless oaks by the side of the river--not large, but most fantastic. Here I used to sit and wonder, in a foolish, childish way, whether on earth there was any other child so strangely placed as I was. Of course there were thousands far worse off, more desolate and destitute, but was there any more thickly wrapped in mystery and loneliness?
A wanderer as I had been for years, together with my father, change of place had not supplied the knowledge which flows from lapse of time. Faith, and warmth, and trust in others had not been dashed out of me by any rude blows of the world, as happens with unlucky children huddled together in large cities. My father had never allowed me much acquaintance with other children; for six years he had left me with a community of lay sisters, in a little town of Languedoc, where I was the only pupil, and where I was to remain as I was born, a simple heretic. Those sisters were very good to me, and taught me as much as I could take of secular accomplishment. And it was a bitter day for me when I left them for America.
For during those six years I had seen my father at long intervals, and had almost forgotten the earlier days when I was always with him. I used to be the one little comfort of his perpetual wanderings, when I was a careless child, and said things to amuse him. Not that he ever played with me any more than he played with any thing; but I was the last of his seven children, and he liked to watch me grow. I never knew it, I never guessed it, until he gave his life for mine; but, poor little common thing as I was, I became his only tie to earth. Even to me he was never loving, in the way some fathers are. He never called me by pet names, nor dandled me on his knee, nor kissed me, nor stroked down my hair and smiled. Such things I never expected of him, and therefore never missed them; I did not even know that happy children always have them.
But one thing I knew, which is not always known to happier children: I had the pleasure of knowing my own name. My name was an English one--Castlewood--and by birth I was an English girl, though of England I knew nothing, and at one time spoke and thought most easily in French. But my longing had always been for England, and for the sound of English voices and the quietude of English ways. In the chatter and heat and drought of South France some faint remembrance of a greener, cooler, and more silent country seemed to touch me now and then. But where in England I had lived, or when I had left that country, or whether I had relations there, and why I was doomed to be a foreign girl--all these questions were but as curling wisps of cloud on memory's sky.
Of such things (much as I longed to know a good deal more about them) I never had dared to ask my father; nor even could I, in a roundabout way, such as clever children have, get second-hand information. In the first place, I was not a clever child; for the next point, I never had underhand skill; and finally, there was no one near me who knew any thing about me. Like all other girls--and perhaps the very same tendency is to be found in boys--I had strong though hazy ideas of caste. The noble sense of equality, fraternity, and so on, seems to come later in life than childhood, which is an age of ambition. I did not know who in the world I was, but felt quite sure of being somebody.
One day, when the great tree had been sawn into lengths, and with the aid of many teams brought home, and the pits and the hoisting tackle were being prepared and strengthened to deal with it, Mr. Gundry, being full of the subject, declared that he would have his dinner in the mill yard. He was anxious to watch, without loss of time, the settlement of some heavy timbers newly sunk in the river's bed, to defend the outworks of the mill. Having his good leave to bring him his pipe, I found him sitting upon a bench with a level fixed before him, and his empty plate and cup laid by, among a great litter of tools and things. He was looking along the level with one eye shut, and the other most sternly intent; but when I came near he rose and raised his broad pith hat, and made me think that I was not interrupting him.
“Here is your pipe, Uncle Sam,” I said; for, in spite of all his formal ways, I would not be afraid of him. I had known him now quite long enough to be sure he was good and kind. And I knew that the world around these parts was divided into two hemispheres, the better half being of those who loved, and the baser half made of those who hated, Sawyer Sampson Gundry.
“What a queer world it is!” said Mr. Gundry, accepting his pipe to consider that point. “Who ever would have dreamed, fifty years agone, that your father's daughter would ever have come with a pipe to light for my father's son?”
“Uncle Sam,” I replied, as he slowly began to make those puffs which seem to be of the highest essence of pleasure, and wisps of blue smoke flitted through his white eyebrows and among the snowy curls of hair--“dear Uncle Sam, I am sure that it would be an honor to a princess to light a pipe for a man like you.”
“Miss Rema, I should rather you would talk no nonsense,” he answered, very shortly, and he set his eye along his level, as if I had offended him. Not knowing how to assert myself and declare that I had spoken my honest thoughts, I merely sat down on the bench and waited for him to speak again to me. But he made believe to be very busy, and scarcely to know that I was there. I had a great mind to cry, but resolved not to do it.
“Why, how is this? What's the matter?” he exclaimed at last, when I had been watching the water so long that I sighed to know where it was going to. “Why, missy, you look as if you had never a friend in all the wide world left.”
“Then I must look very ungrateful,” I said; “for at any rate I have one, and a good one.”
“And don't you know of any one but me, my dear?”
“You and Suan Isco and Firm--those are all I have any knowledge of.”
“'Tis a plenty--to my mind, almost too many. My plan is to be a good friend to all, but not let too many be friends with me. Rest you quite satisfied with three, Miss Rema. I have lived a good many years, and I never had more than three friends worth a puff of my pipe.”
“But one's own relations, Uncle Sam--people quite nearly related to us: it is impossible for them to be unkind, you know.”
“Do I, my dear? Then I wish that I did. Except one's own father and mother, there is not much to be hoped for out of them. My own brother took a twist against me because I tried to save him from ruin; and if any man ever wished me ill, he did. And I think that your father had the same tale to tell. But there! I know nothing whatever about that.”
“Now you do, Mr. Gundry; I am certain that you do, and beg you to tell me, or rather I demand it. I am old enough now, and I am certain my dear father would have wished me to know every thing. Whatever it was, I am sure that he was right; and until I know that, I shall always be the most miserable of the miserable.”
The Sawyer looked at me as if he could not enter into my meaning, and his broad, short nose and quiet eyes were beset with wrinkles of inquiry. He quite forgot his level and his great post in the river, and tilted back his ancient hat, and let his pipe rest on his big brown arm. “Lord bless me!” he said, “what a young gal you are! Or, at least, what a young Miss Rema. What good can you do, miss, by making of a rout? Here you be in as quiet a place as you could find, and all of us likes and pities you. Your father was a wise man to settle you here in this enlightened continent. Let the doggoned old folk t'other side of the world think out their own flustrations. A female young American you are now, and a very fine specimen you will grow. 'Tis the finest thing to be on all God's earth.”
“No, Mr. Gundry, I am an English girl, and I mean to be an Englishwoman. The Americans may be more kind and generous, and perhaps my father thought so, and brought me here for that reason. And I may be glad to come back to you again when I have done what I am bound to do. Remember that I am the last of seven children, and do not even know where the rest are buried.”
“Now look straight afore you, missy. What do you see yonner?” The Sawyer was getting a little tired, perhaps, of this long interruption.
“I see enormous logs, and a quantity of saws, and tools I don't even know the names of. Also I see a bright, swift river.”
“But over here, missy, between them two oaks. What do you please to see there, Miss Rema?”
“What I see there, of course, is a great saw-mill.”
“But it wouldn't have been 'of course,' and it wouldn't have been at all, if I had spent all my days a-dwelling on the injuries of my family. Could I have put that there unekaled sample of water-power and human ingenuity together without laboring hard for whole months of a stretch, except upon the Sabbath, and laying awake night after night, and bending all my intellect over it? And could I have done that, think you now, if my heart was a-mooning upon family wrongs, and this, that, and the other?”
Here Sampson Gundry turned full upon me, and folded his arms, and spread his great chin upon his deer-skin apron, and nodded briskly with his deep gray eyes, surveying me in triumph. To his mind, that mill was the wonder of the world, and any argument based upon it, with or without coherence, was, like its circular saws, irresistible. And yet he thought that women can not reason! However, I did not say another word just then, but gave way to him, as behooved a child. And not only that, but I always found him too good to be argued with--too kind, I mean, and large of heart, and wedded to his own peculiar turns. There was nothing about him that one could dislike, or strike fire at, and be captious; and he always proceeded with such pity for those who were opposed to him that they always knew they must be wrong, though he was too polite to tell them so. And he had such a pleasant, paternal way of looking down into one's little thoughts when he put on his spectacles, that to say any more was to hazard the risk of ungrateful inexperience.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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6
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A BRITISHER
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The beautiful Blue River came from the jagged depths of the mountains, full of light and liveliness. It had scarcely run six miles from its source before it touched our mill-wheel; but in that space and time it had gathered strong and copious volume. The lovely blue of the water (like the inner tint of a glacier) was partly due to its origin, perhaps, and partly to the rich, soft tone of the granite sand spread under it. Whatever the cause may have been, the river well deserved its title.
It was so bright and pure a blue, so limpid and pellucid, that it even seemed to out-vie the tint of the sky which it reflected, and the myriad sparks of sunshine on it twinkled like a crystal rain. Plodding through the parched and scorching dust of the mountain-foot, through the stifling vapor and the blinding, ochreous glare, the traveler suddenly came upon this cool and calm delight. It was not to be descried afar, for it lay below the level, and the oaks and other trees of shelter scarcely topped the narrow comb. There was no canyon, such as are--and some of them known over all the world--both to the north and south of it. The Blue River did not owe its birth to any fierce convulsion, but sparkled on its cheerful way without impending horrors. Standing here as a child, and thinking, from the manner of my father, that strong men never wept nor owned the conquest of emotion, I felt sometimes a fool's contempt for the gushing transport of brave men. For instance, I have seen a miner, or a tamer of horses, or a rough fur-hunter, or (perhaps the bravest of all) a man of science and topography, jaded, worn, and nearly dead with drought and dearth and choking, suddenly, and beyond all hope, strike on this buried Eden. And then he dropped on his knees and spread his starved hands upward, if he could, and thanked the God who made him, till his head went round, and who knows what remembrance of loved ones came to him? And then, if he had any moisture left, he fell to a passion of weeping.
In childish ignorance I thought that this man weakly degraded himself, and should have been born a woman. But since that time I have truly learned that the bravest of men are those who feel their Maker's Land most softly, and are not ashamed to pay the tribute of their weakness to Him.
Living, as we did, in a lonely place, and yet not far from a track along the crest of the great Californian plain from Sacramento southward, there was scarcely a week which did not bring us some traveler needing comfort. Mr. Gundry used to be told that if he would set up a rough hotel, or house of call for cattle-drovers, miners, loafers, and so on, he might turn twice the money he could ever make by his thriving saw-mill. But he only used to laugh, and say that nature had made him too honest for that; and he never thought of charging any thing for his hospitality, though if a rich man left a gold piece, or even a nugget, upon a shelf, as happened very often, Sawyer Gundry did not disdain to set it aside for a rainy day. And one of his richest or most lavish guests arrived on my account, perhaps.
It happened when daylight was growing shorter, and the red heat of the earth was gone, and the snow-line of distant granite peaks had crept already lower, and the chattering birds that spent their summer in our band of oak-trees were beginning to find their food get short, and to prime swift wings for the lowland; and I, having never felt bitter cold, was trembling at what I heard of it. For now it was clear that I had no choice but to stay where I was for the present, and be truly thankful to God and man for having the chance of doing so. For the little relics of my affairs--so far as I had any--had taken much time in arrangement, perhaps because it was so hard to find them. I knew nothing, except about my own little common wardrobe, and could give no information about the contents of my father's packages. But these, by dint of perseverance on the part of Ephraim (who was very keen about all rights), had mainly been recovered, and Mr. Gundry had done the best that could be done concerning them. Whatever seemed of a private nature, or likely to prove important, had been brought home to Blue River Mills; the rest had been sold, and had fetched large prices, unless Mr. Gundry enlarged them.
He more than enlarged, he multiplied them, as I found out long afterward, to make me think myself rich and grand, while a beggar upon his bounty. I had never been accustomed to think of money, and felt some little contempt for it--not, indeed, a lofty hatred, but a careless wonder why it seemed to be always thought of. It was one of the last things I ever thought of; and those who were waiting for it were--until I got used to them--obliged in self-duty to remind me.
This, however, was not my fault. I never dreamed of wronging them. But I had earned no practical knowledge of the great world any where, much though I had wandered about, according to vague recollections. The duty of paying had never been mine; that important part had been done for me. And my father had such a horror always of any growth of avarice that he never gave me sixpence.
And now, when I heard upon every side continual talk of money, from Suan Isco upward, I thought at first that the New World must be different from the Old one, and that the gold mines in the neighborhood must have made them full of it; and once or twice I asked Uncle Sam; but he only nodded his head, and said that it was the practice every where. And before very long I began to perceive that he did not exaggerate.
Nothing could prove this point more clearly than the circumstance above referred to--the arrival of a stranger, for the purpose of bribing even Uncle Sam himself. This happened in the month of November, when the passes were beginning to be blocked with snow, and those of the higher mountain tracts had long been overwhelmed with it. On this particular day the air was laden with gray, oppressive clouds, threatening a heavy downfall, and instead of faring forth, as usual, to my beloved river, I was kept in-doors, and even up stairs, by a violent snow-headache. This is a crushing weight of pain, which all new-comers, or almost all, are obliged to endure, sometimes for as much as eight-and-forty hours, when the first great snow of the winter is breeding, as they express it, overhead. But I was more lucky than most people are; for after about twelve hours of almost intolerable throbbing, during which the sweetest sound was odious, and the idea of food quite loathsome, the agony left me, and a great desire for something to eat succeeded. Suan Isco, the kindest of the kind, was gone down stairs at last, for which I felt ungrateful gratitude--because she had been doing her best to charm away my pain by low, monotonous Indian ditties, which made it ten times worse; and yet I could not find heart to tell her so.
Now it must have been past six o'clock in the evening of the November day when the avalanche slid off my head, and I was able to lift it. The light of the west had been faint, and was dead; though often it used to prolong our day by the backward glance of the ocean. With pangs of youthful hunger, but a head still weak and dazy, I groped my way in the dark through the passage and down the stairs of redwood.
At the bottom, where a railed landing was, and the door opened into the house-room, I was surprised to find that, instead of the usual cheerful company enjoying themselves by the fire-light, there were only two people present. The Sawyer sat stiffly in his chair of state, delaying even the indulgence of his pipe, and having his face set sternly, as I had never before beheld it. In the visitor's corner, as we called it, where people sat to dry themselves, there was a man, and only one.
Something told me that I had better keep back and not disturb them. The room was not in its usual state of comfort and hospitality. Some kind of meal had been made at the table, as always must be in these parts; but not of the genial, reckless sort which random travelers carried on without any check from the Sawyer. For he of all men ever born in a civilized age was the finest host, and a guest beneath his roof was sacred as a lady to a knight. Hence it happened that I was much surprised. Proper conduct almost compelled me to withdraw; but curiosity made me take just one more little peep, perhaps. Looking back at these things now, I can not be sure of every thing; and indeed if I could, I must have an almost supernatural memory. But I remember many things; and the headache may have cleared my mind.
The stranger who had brought Mr. Gundry's humor into such stiff condition was sitting in the corner, a nook where light and shadow made an eddy. He seemed to be perfectly unconcerned about all the tricks of the hearth flame, presenting as he did a most solid face for any light to play upon. To me it seemed to be a weather-beaten face of a bluff and resolute man, the like of which we attribute to John Bull. At any rate, he was like John Bull in one respect: he was sturdy and square, and fit to hold his own with any man.
Strangers of this sort had come (as Englishmen rove every where), and been kindly welcomed by Uncle Sam, who, being of recent English blood, had a kind of hankering after it, and would almost rather have such at his board than even a true-born American; and infinitely more welcome were they than Frenchman, Spaniard, or German, or any man not to be distinguished, as was the case with some of them. Even now it was clear that the Sawyer had not grudged any tokens of honor, for the tall, square, brazen candlesticks, of Boston make, were on the table, and very little light they gave. The fire, however, was grandly roaring of stub-oak and pine antlers, and the black grill of the chimney bricks was fringed with lifting filaments. It was a rich, ripe light, affording breadth and play for shadow; and the faces of the two men glistened, and darkened in their creases.
I was dressed in black, and could not be seen, though I could see them so clearly; and I doubted whether to pass through, upon my way to the larder, or return to my room and starve a little longer; for I did not wish to interrupt, and had no idea of listening. But suddenly I was compelled to stop; and to listen became an honest thing, when I knew what was spoken of--or, at any rate, I did it.
“Castlewood, Master Colonist; Castlewood is the name of the man that I have come to ask about. And you will find it worth your while to tell me all you know of him.” Thus spoke the Englishman sitting in the corner; and he seemed to be certain of producing his effect.
“Wal,” said Uncle Sam, assuming what all true Britons believe to be the universal Yankee tone, while I knew that he was laughing in his sleeve, “Squire, I guess that you may be right. Considerations of that 'ere kind desarves to be considered of.”
“Just so. I knew that you must see it,” the stranger continued, bravely. “A stiff upper lip, as you call it here, is all very well to begin with. But all you enlightened members of the great republic know what is what. It will bring you more than ten years' income of your saw-mill, and farm, and so on, to deal honestly with me for ten minutes. No more beating about the bush and fencing with me, as you have done. Now can you see your own interest?”
“I never were reckoned a fool at that. Squire, make tracks, and be done with it.”
“Then, Master Colonist, or Colonel--for I believe you are all colonels here--your task is very simple. We want clear proof, sworn properly and attested duly, of the death of a villain--George Castlewood, otherwise the Honorable George Castlewood, otherwise Lord Castlewood: a man who murdered his own father ten years ago this November: a man committed for trial for the crime, but who bribed his jailers and escaped, and wandered all over the Continent. What is that noise? Have you got rats?”
“Plenty of foreign rats, and native 'coons, and skunks, and other varmint. Wal, Squire, go on with it.”
The voice of Uncle Sam was stern, and his face full of rising fury, as I, who had made that noise in my horror, tried to hush my heart with patience.
“The story is well known,” continued the stranger: “we need make no bones of it. George Castlewood went about under a curse--” “Not quite so loud, Squire, if you please. My household is not altogether seasoned.”
“And perhaps you have got the young lady somewhere. I heard a report to that effect. But here you think nothing of a dozen murders. Now, Gundry, let us have no squeamishness. We only want justice, and we can pay for it. Ten thousand dollars I am authorized to offer for a mere act of duty on your part. We have an extradition treaty. If the man had been alive, we must have had him. But as he has cheated the hangman by dying, we can only see his grave and have evidence. And all well-disposed people must rejoice to have such a quiet end of it. For the family is so well known, you see.”
“I see,” Mr. Gundry answered, quietly, laying a finger on his lips. “Guess you want something more than that, though, Squire. Is there nothing more than the grave to oblige a noble Britisher with?”
“Yes, Colonel; we want the girl as well. We know that she was with him in that caravan, or wagon train, or whatever you please to call it. We know that you have made oath of his death, produced his child, and obtained his trunks, and drawn his share in the insurance job. Your laws must be queer to let you do such things. In England it would have taken at least three years, and cost a deal more than the things were worth, even without a Chancery suit. However, of his papers I shall take possession; they can be of no earthly use to you.”
“To be sure. And possession of his darter too, without so much as a Chancery suit. But what is to satisfy me, Squire, agin goin' wrong in this little transaction?”
“I can very soon satisfy you,” said the stranger, “as to their identity. Here is their full, particular, and correct description--names, weights, and colors of the parties.”
With a broad grin at his own exquisite wit, the bluff man drew forth his pocket-book, and took out a paper, which he began to smooth on his knee quite leisurely. Meanwhile, in my hiding-place, I was trembling with terror and indignation. The sense of eavesdropping was wholly lost, in that of my own jeopardy. I must know what was arranged about me; for I felt such a hatred and fear of that stranger that sooner than be surrendered to him I would rush back to my room and jump out of the window, and trust myself to the trackless forest and the snowy night. I was very nearly doing so, but just had sense enough to wait and hear what would be said of me. So I lurked in the darkness, behind the rails, while the stranger read slowly and pompously.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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7
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DISCOMFITURE
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The Englishman drew forth a double eyeglass from a red velvet waistcoat, and mounting it on his broad nose, came nearer to get the full light of the candles. I saw him as clearly as I could wish, and, indeed, a great deal too clearly; for the more I saw of the man, the more I shrank from the thought of being in his power. Not that he seemed to be brutal or fierce, but selfish, and resolute, and hard-hearted, and scornful of lofty feelings. Short dust-colored hair and frizzly whiskers framed his large, thick-featured face, and wearing no mustache, he showed the clumsy sneer of a wide, coarse mouth. I watched him with all my eyes, because of his tone of authority about myself. He might even be my guardian or my father's nearest relation--though he seemed to be too ill-bred for that.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Colonel,” he went on, in a patronizing tone, such as he had assumed throughout. “Here it is. Now prick your ears up, and see if these candid remarks apply. I am reading from a printed form, you see: “'George Castlewood is forty-eight years old, but looks perhaps ten years older. His height is over six feet two, and he does not stoop or slouch at all. His hair is long and abundant, but white; his eyes are dark, piercing, and gloomy. His features are fine, and of Italian cast, but stern, morose, and forbidding, and he never uses razor. On the back of his left hand, near the wrist, there is a broad scar. He dresses in half-mourning always, and never wears any jewelry, but strictly shuns all society, and prefers uncivilized regions. He never stays long in any town, and follows no occupation, though his aspect and carriage are military, as he has been a cavalry officer. From time to time he has been heard of in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and is now believed to be in America.
“'His only surviving child, a girl of about fifteen, has been seen with him. She is tall and slight and very straight, and speaks French better than English. Her hair is very nearly black, and her eyes of unusual size and lustre. She is shy, and appears to have been kept under, and she has a timid smile. Whether she knows of her father's crime or not is quite uncertain; but she follows him like a dog almost.'
“There now, Colonel,” cried the Englishman, as he folded the paper triumphantly; “most of that came from my information, though I never set eyes upon the child. Does the cap fit or not, Brother Jonathan?”
Mr. Gundry was leaning back in his own corner, with a favorite pipe, carved by himself, reposing on his waistcoat. And being thus appealed to, he looked up and rubbed his eyes as if he had been dozing, though he never had been more wide awake, as I, who knew his attitudes, could tell. And my eyes filled with tears of love and shame, for I knew by the mere turn of his chin that he never would surrender me.
“Stranger,” he said, in a most provoking drawl, “a hard day's work tells its tale on me, you bet. You do read so bootiful, you read me hard asleep. And the gutturals of that furrin English is always a little hard to catch. Mought I trouble you just to go through it again? You likes the sound of your own voice; and no blame to you, being such a swate un.”
The Englishman looked at him keenly, as if he had some suspicion of being chaffed; but the face of the Sawyer was so grave and the bend of his head so courteous that he could not refuse to do as he was asked. But he glanced first at the whiskey bottle standing between the candlesticks; and I knew it boded ill for his errand when Uncle Sam, the most hospitable of men, feigned pure incomprehension of that glance. The man should have no more under that roof.
With a sullen air and a muttered curse, at which Mr. Gundry blew a wreath of smoke, the stranger unfolded his paper again, and saying, “Now I beg you to attend this time,” read the whole of his description, with much emphasis, again, while the Sawyer turned away and beat time upon the hearth, with his white hair, broad shoulders, and red ears prominent. The Englishman looked very seriously vexed, but went through his business doggedly. “Are you satisfied now?” he asked when he had finished.
“Wal, now, Squire,” replied Uncle Sam, still keeping up his provoking drawl, but turning round and looking at the stranger very steadfastly, “some thin's is so pooty and so ilegantly done, they seems a'most as good as well-slung flapjacks. A natteral honest stomick can't nohow have enough of them. Mought I be so bold, in a silly, mountaneous sort of a way, as to ax for another heerin' of it?”
“Do you mean to insult me, Sir?” shouted the visitor, leaping up with a flaming face, and throwing himself into an attitude of attack.
“Stranger, I mought,” answered Mr. Gundry, standing squarely before him, and keeping his hands contemptuously behind his back--“I mought so do, barrin' one little point. The cutest commissioner in all the West would have to report 'Non compos' if his orders was to diskiver somethin' capable of bein' insulted in a fellow of your natur'.”
With these words Uncle Sam sat down, and powerfully closed his mouth, signifying that now the matter was taken through every phase of discussion, and had been thoroughly exhausted. His visitor stared at him for a moment, as if at some strange phenomenon, and then fell back into self-command, without attempting bluster.
“Colonel, you are a 'cure,' as we call it on our side of the herring pond. What have I done to 'riz your dander,' as you elegantly express it here?”
“Britisher, nothing. You know no better. It takes more than that to put my back up. But forty years agone I do believe I must 'a heaved you out o' window.”
“Why, Colonel, why? Now be reasonable. Not a word have I said reflecting either upon you or your country; and a finer offer than I have made can not come to many of you, even in this land of gold. Ten thousand dollars I offer, and I will exceed my instructions and say fifteen, all paid on the nail by an order on Frisco, about which you may assure yourself. And what do I ask in return? Legal proof of the death of a man whom we know to be dead, and the custody of his child, for her own good.”
“Squire, I have no other answer to make. If you offered me all the gold dug in these mountains since they were discovered, I could only say what I have said before. You came from Sylvester's ranch--there is time for you to get back ere the snow begins.”
“What a hospitable man you are! Upon my word, Gundry, you deserve to have a medal from our Humane Society. You propose to turn me out of doors to-night, with a great fall of snow impending?”
“Sir, the fault is entirely your own. What hospitality can you expect after coming to buy my guest? If you are afraid of the ten-mile ride, my man at the mill will bed you. But here you must not sleep, because I might harm you in the morning. I am apt to lose my temper sometimes, when I go on to think of things.”
“Colonel, I think I had better ride back. I fear no man, nor his temper, nor crotchets. But if I were snowed up at your mill, I never might cross the hill-foot for months; but from Sylvester's I can always get to Minto. You refuse, then, to help me in any way?”
“More than that. I will do every thing in my power to confound you. If any one comes prowling after that young lady, he shall be shot.”
“That is most discouraging. However, you may think better of it. Write to this address if you do. You have the girl here, of course?”
“That is her concern and mine. Does your guide know the way right well! The snow is beginning. You do not know our snows, any more than you know us.”
“Never mind, Mr. Gundry. I shall do very well. You are rough in your ways, but you mean to do the right; and your indignation is virtuous. But mark my words upon one little point. If George Castlewood had been living, I have such credentials that I would have dragged him back with me in spite of all your bluster. But over his corpse I have no control, in the present condition of treaties. Neither can I meddle with his daughter, if it were worth while to do so. Keep her and make the best of her, my man. You have taken a snake in the grass to your bosom, if that is what you are up for. A very handsome girl she may be, but a bad lot, as her father was. If you wish the name of Gundry to have its due respect hereafter, let the heir of the sawmills have nothing to do with the Honorable Miss Castlewood.”
“Let alone, let alone,” Uncle Sam said, angrily. “It is well for you that the 'heir of the saw-mills' hath not heard your insolence. Firm is a steady lad; but he knoweth well which foot to kick with. No fear of losing the way to Sylvester's ranch with Firm behind you. But, meddlesome as you be, and a bitter weed to my experience, it shall not be said that Sampson Gundry sent forth a fellow to be frozen. Drink a glass of hot whiskey before you get to saddle. Not in friendship, mind you, Sir, but in common human nature.”
That execrable man complied, for he began to be doubtful of the driving snow, now huddling against the window-frames. And so he went out; and when he was gone, I came forth into the fire-light, and threw my arms round the Sawyer's neck and kissed him till he was ashamed of me.
“Miss Rema, my dear, my poor little soul, what makes you carry on so?”
“Because I have heard every word, Uncle Sam, and I was base enough to doubt you.”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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8
|
A DOUBTFUL LOSS
|
When I tried to look out of my window in the morning, I was quite astonished at the state of things. To look out fairly was impossible; for not only was all the lower part of the frame hillocked up like a sandglass, and the sides filled in with dusky plaits, but even in the middle, where some outlook was, it led to very little. All the air seemed choked with snow, and the ground coming up in piles to meet it; all sounds were deadened in the thick gray hush, and nothing had its own proportion. Never having seen such a thing before, I was frightened, and longed to know more of it.
Mr. Gundry had a good laugh at me, in which even Suan Isco joined, when I proposed to sweep a path to the mill, and keep it open through the winter.
“It can be done--I am sure it can,” I exclaimed, with vigorous ignorance. “May I do it if I can? It only requires perseverance. If you keep on sweeping as fast as it falls, you must overcome it. Don't you see, Uncle Sam?”
“To be sure I do, Miss Rema, as plain as any pikestaff. Suan, fetch a double bundle of new brooms from top loft, and don't forget while you be up there to give special orders--no snow is to fall at night or when missy is at dinner.”
“You may laugh as much as you please, Uncle Sam, but I intend to try it. I must try to keep my path to--somewhere.”
“What a fool I am, to be sure!” said Mr. Gundry, softly. “There, now, I beg your pardon, my dear, for never giving a thought to it. Firm and I will do it for you, as long as the Lord allows of it. Why, the snow is two foot deep a'ready, and twenty foot in places. I wonder whether that rogue of a Goad got home to Sylvester's ranch last night? No fault of mine if he never did, for go he would in spite of me.”
I had not been thinking of Mr. Goad, and indeed I did not know his name until it was told in this way. My mind was dwelling on my father's grave, where I used to love to sit and think; and I could not bear the idea of the cold snow lying over it, with nobody coming to care for him. Kind hands had borne him down the mountains (while I lay between life and death) and buried him in the soft peach orchard, in the soothing sound of the mill-wheel. Here had been planted above his head a cross of white un-painted wood, bearing only his initials, and a small “Amen” below them.
With this I was quite content, believing that he would have wished no better, being a very independent man, and desirous of no kind of pomp. There was no “consecrated ground” within miles and miles of traveling; but I hoped that he might rest as well with simple tears to hallow it. For often and often, even now, I could not help giving way and sobbing, when I thought how sad it was that a strong, commanding, mighty man, of great will and large experience, should drop in a corner of the world and die, and finally be thought lucky--when he could think for himself no longer--to obtain a tranquil, unknown grave, and end with his initials, and have a water-wheel to sing to him. Many a time it set me crying, and made me long to lie down with him, until I thought of earth-worms.
All that could be done was done by Sampson and Firm Gundry, to let me have my clear path, and a clear bourne at the end of it. But even with a steam snow-shovel they could not have kept the way unstopped, such solid masses of the mountain clouds now descended over us. And never had I been so humored in my foolish wishes: I was quite ashamed to see the trouble great men took to please me.
“Well, I am sorry to hear it, Firm,” said the Sawyer, coming in one day, with clouts of snow in his snowy curls. “Not that I care a cent for the fellow--and an impudenter fellow never sucked a pipe. Still, he might have had time to mend, if his time had been as good as the room for it. However, no blame rests on us. I told him to bed down to saw-mill. They Englishmen never know when they are well off. But the horse got home, they tell me?”
“The horse got home all right, grandfather, and so did the other horse and man. But Sylvester thinks that a pile of dollars must have died out in the snow-drift. It is a queer story. We shall never know the rights.”
“How many times did I tell him,” the Sawyer replied, without much discontent, “that it were a risky thing to try the gulches, such a night as that? His own way he would have, however; and finer liars than he could ever stick up to be for a score of years have gone, time upon time, to the land of truth by means of that same view of things. They take every body else for a liar.”
“Oh, Uncle Sam, who is it?” I cried. “Is it that dreadful--that poor man who wanted to carry me away from you?”
“Now you go in, missy; you go to the fire-hearth,” Mr. Gundry answered, more roughly than usual. “Leave you all such points to the Lord. They are not for young ladies to talk about.”
“Grandfather, don't you be too hard,” said Firm, as he saw me hurrying away. “Miss Rema has asked nothing unbecoming, but only concerning her own affairs. If we refuse to tell her, others will.”
“Very well, then, so be it,” the Sawyer replied; for he yielded more to his grandson than to the rest of the world put together. “Turn the log up, Firm, and put the pan on. You boys can go on without victuals all day, but an old man must feed regular. And, bad as he was, I thank God for sending him on his way home with his belly full. If ever he turneth up in the snow, that much can be proved to my account.”
Young as I was, and little practiced in the ways of settlers, I could not help perceiving that Uncle Sam was very much put out--not at the death of the man so sadly, as at the worry of his dying so in going from a hospitable house. Mr. Gundry cared little what any body said concerning his honor, or courage, or such like; but the thought of a whisper against his hospitality would rouse him.
“Find him, Firm, find him,” he said, in his deep sad voice, as he sat down on the antlered stump and gazed at the fire gloomily. “And when he is found, call a public postmortem, and prove that we gave him his bellyful.”
Ephraim, knowing the old man's ways, and the manners, perhaps, of the neighborhood, beckoned to Suan to be quick with something hot, that he might hurry out again. Then he took his dinner standing, and without a word went forth to seek.
“Take the snow-harrow, and take Jowler,” the old man shouted after him, and the youth turned round at the gate and waved his cap to show that he heard him. The snow was again falling heavily, and the afternoon was waning; and the last thing we saw was the brush of the mighty tail of the great dog Jowler.
“Oh, uncle, Firm will be lost himself!” I cried, in dismay at the great white waste. “And the poor man, whoever he is, must be dead. Do call him back, or let me run.”
Mr. Gundry's only answer was to lead me back to the fireside, where he made me sit down, and examined me, while Suan was frying the butter-beans.
“Who was it spied you on the mountains, missy, the whole of the way from the redwood-tree, although you lay senseless on the ground, and he was hard at work with the loppings?”
“Why, Ephraim, of course, Uncle Sam; every body says that nobody else could have noticed such a thing at such a distance.”
“Very well, my dear; and who was it carried you all the way to this house, without stopping, or even letting your head droop down, although it was a burning hot May morn?”
“Mr. Gundry, as if you did not know a great deal better than I do! It was weeks before I could thank him, even. But you must have seen him do it all.”
The Sawyer rubbed his chin, which was large enough for a great deal of rubbing; and when he did that, I was always sure that an argument went to his liking. He said nothing more for the present, but had his dinner, and enjoyed it.
“Supposing now that he did all that,” he resumed, about an hour afterward, “is Firm the sort of boy you would look to to lose his own self in a snow-drift? He has three men with him, and he is worth all three, let alone the big dog Jowler, who has dug out forty feet of snow ere now. If that rogue of an Englishman, Goad, has had the luck to cheat the hangman, and the honor to die in a Californy snow-drift, you may take my experience for it, missy, Firm and Jowler will find him, and clear Uncle Sam's reputation.”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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9
|
WATER-SPOUT
|
If Mr. Gundry was in one way right, he was equally wrong in the other. Firm came home quite safe and sound, though smothered with snow and most hungry; but he thought that he should have staid out all the night, because he had failed of his errand. Jowler also was full of discontent and trouble of conscience. He knew, when he kicked up his heels in the snow, that his duty was to find somebody, and being of Alpine pedigree, and trained to act up to his ancestry, he now dropped his tail with failure.
“It comes to the same thing,” said Sawyer Gundry; “it is foolish to be so particular. A thousand better men have sunk through being so pig-headed. We shall find the rogue toward the end of March, or in April, if the season suits. Firm, eat your supper and shake yourself.”
This was exactly the Sawyer's way--to take things quietly when convinced that there was no chance to better them. He would always do his best about the smallest trifle; but after that, be the matter small or great, he had a smiling face for the end of it.
The winter, with all its weight of sameness and of dreariness, went at last, and the lovely spring from the soft Pacific found its gradual way to us. Accustomed as I was to gentler climates and more easy changes, I lost myself in admiration of this my first Californian spring. The flowers, the leagues and leagues of flowers, that burst into color and harmony--purple, yellow, and delicate lilac, woven with bright crimson threads, and fringed with emerald-green by the banks, and blue by the course of rivers, while deepened here and there by wooded shelter and cool places, with the silver-gray of the soft Pacific waning in far distance, and silken vapor drawing toward the carding forks of the mountain range; and over all the never-wearying azure of the limpid sky: child as I was, and full of little worldly troubles on my own account, these grand and noble sights enlarged me without any thinking.
The wheat and the maize were grown apace, and beans come into full blossom, and the peaches swinging in the western breeze were almost as large as walnuts, and all things in their prime of freshness, ere the yellow dust arrived, when a sudden melting of snow in some gully sent a strong flood down our Blue River. The saw-mill happened to be hard at work; and before the gear could be lifted, some damage was done to the floats by the heavy, impetuous rush of the torrent. Uncle Sam was away, and so was Firm; from which, perhaps, the mischief grew. However, the blame was all put on the river, and little more was said of it.
The following morning I went down before even Firm was out-of-doors, under some touch, perhaps, of natural desire to know things. The stream was as pure and bright as ever, hastening down its gravel-path of fine granite just as usual, except that it had more volume and a stronger sense of freshness. Only the bent of the grasses and the swath of the pendulous twigs down stream remained to show that there must have been some violence quite lately.
All Mr. Gundry's strengthening piles and shores were as firm as need be, and the clear blue water played around them as if they were no constraint to it. And none but a practiced eye could see that the great wheel had been wounded, being undershot, and lifted now above the power of the current, according to the fine old plan of locking the door when the horse is gone.
When I was looking up and wondering where to find the mischief, Martin, the foreman, came out and crossed the plank, with his mouth full of breakfast.
“Show me,” I said, with an air, perhaps, of very young importance, “where and what the damage is. Is there any strain to the iron-work?”
“Lor' a mercy, young missus!” he answered, gruffly, being by no means a polished man, “where did you ever hear of ironwork? Needles and pins is enough for you. Now don't you go and make no mischief.”
“I have no idea what you mean,” I answered. “If you have been careless, that is no concern of mine.”
“Careless, indeed! And the way I works, when others is a-snorin' in their beds! I might just as well do nort, every bit, and get more thanks and better wages. That's the way of the world all over. Come Saturday week, I shall better myself.”
“But if it's the way of the world all over, how will you better yourself, unless you go out of the world altogether!” I put this question to Martin with the earnest simplicity of the young, meaning no kind of sarcasm, but knowing that scarcely a week went by without his threatening to “better himself.” And they said that he had done so for seven years or more.
“Don't you be too sharp,” he replied, with a grim smile, partly at himself, perhaps. “If half as I heard about you is true, you'll want all your sharpness for yourself, Miss Remy. And the Britishers are worse than we be.”
“Well, Martin, I am sure you would help me,” I said, “if you saw any person injuring me. But what is it I am not to tell your master?”
“My master, indeed! Well, you need not tell old Gundry any thing about what you have seen. It might lead to hard words; and hard words are not the style of thing I put up with. If any man tries hard words with me, I knocks him down, up sticks, and makes tracks.”
I could not help smiling at the poor man's talk. Sawyer Gundry could have taken him with one hand and tossed him over the undershot wheel.
“You forget that I have not seen any thing,” I said, “and understand nothing but 'needles and pins.' But, for fear of doing any harm, I will not even say that I have been down here, unless I am asked about it.”
“Miss Remy, you are a good girl, and you shall have the mill some day. Lord, don't your little great eyes see the job they are a-doin' of? The finest stroke in all Californy, when the stubborn old chap takes to quartz-crushing.”
All this was beyond me, and I told him so, and we parted good friends, while he shook his long head and went home to feed many pappooses. For the strangest thing of all things was, though I never at that time thought of it, that there was not any one about this place whom any one could help liking. Martin took as long as any body to be liked, until one understood him; but after that he was one of the best, in many ways that can not be described. Also there was a pair of negroes, simply and sweetly delightful. They worked all day and they sang all night, though I had not the pleasure of hearing them; and the more Suan Isco despised them--because they were black, and she was only brown--the more they made up to her, not at all because she governed the supply of victuals. It was childish to have such ideas, though Suan herself could never get rid of them. The truth, as I came to know afterward, was that a large, free-hearted, and determined man was at the head of every thing. Martin was the only one who ever grumbled, and he had established a long right to do so by never himself being grumbled at.
“I'll be bound that poor fellow is in a sad way,” Mr. Gundry said at breakfast-time. “He knows how much he is to blame, and I fear that he won't eat a bit for the day. Martin is a most conscientious man. He will offer to give up his berth, although it would be his simple ruin.”
I was wise enough not to say a word, though Firm looked at me keenly. He knew that I had been down at the mill, and expected me to say something.
“We all must have our little mistakes,” continued Sawyer Gundry; “but I never like to push a man when he feels it. I shall not say a syllable to Martin; and, Ephraim, you will do the like. When a fellow sticks well to his work like Martin, never blame him for a mere accident.”
Firm, according to his habit, made no answer when he did not quite agree. In talking with his own age he might have argued, but he did not argue with his grandfather.
“I shall just go down and put it right myself. Martin is a poor hand at repairing. Firm, you go up the gulch, and see if the fresh has hurt the hurdles. Missy, you may come with me, if you please, and sketch me at work in the mill-wheel. You have drawn that wheel such a sight of times, you must know every feather of it better than the man who made it.”
“Uncle Sam, you are too bad,” I said. “I have never got it right, and I never shall.”
I did not dare as yet to think what really proved to be true in the end--that I could not draw the wheel correctly because itself was incorrect. In spite of all Mr. Gundry's skill and labor and ingenuity, the wheel was no true circle. The error began in the hub itself, and increased, of course, with the distance; but still it worked very well, like many other things that are not perfect.
Having no idea of this as yet, and doubting nothing except my own perception of “perspective,” I sat down once more in my favorite spot, and waited for the master to appear as an active figure in the midst of it. The air was particularly bright and clear, even for that pure climate, and I could even see the blue-winged flies darting in and out of the oozy floats. But half-way up the mountains a white cloud was hanging, a cloud that kept on changing shape. I only observed it as a thing to put in for my background, because I was fond of trying to tone and touch up my sketches with French chalks.
Presently I heard a harsh metallic sound and creaking of machinery. The bites, or clamps, or whatever they are called, were being put on, to keep the wheel from revolving with the Sawyer's weight. Martin, the foreman, was grumbling and growling, according to his habit, and peering through the slot, or channel of stone, in which the axle worked, and the cheery voice of Mr. Gundry was putting down his objections. Being much too large to pass through the slot, Mr. Gundry came round the corner of the building, with a heavy leathern bag of tools strapped round his neck, and his canvas breeches girt above his knees. But the foreman staid inside to hand him the needful material into the wheel.
The Sawyer waded merrily down the shallow blue water, for he was always like a boy when he was at work, and he waved his little skull-cap to me, and swung himself up into the wheel, as if he were nearer seventeen than seventy. And presently I could only see his legs and arms as he fell to work. Therefore I also fell to work, with my best attempts at penciling, having been carefully taught enough of drawing to know that I could not draw. And perhaps I caught from the old man's presence and the sound of his activity that strong desire to do my best which he seemed to impart to every one.
At any rate, I was so engrossed that I scarcely observed the changing light, except as a hindrance to my work and a trouble to my distance, till suddenly some great drops fell upon my paper and upon my hat, and a rush of dark wind almost swept me from the log upon which I sat. Then again all was a perfect calm, and the young leaves over the stream hung heavily on their tender foot-stalks, and the points of the breeze-swept grass turned back, and the ruffle of all things smoothed itself. But there seemed to be a sense of fear in the waiting silence of earth and air.
This deep, unnatural stillness scared me, and I made up my mind to run away. But the hammer of the Sawyer sounded as I had never heard it sound. He was much too hard at work to pay any heed to sky or stream, and the fall of his strokes was dead and hollow, as if the place resented them.
“Come away, come away,” I cried, as I ran and stood on the opposite bank to him; “there is something quite wrong in the weather, I am sure. I entreat you to come away at once, Uncle Sam. Every thing is so strange and odd.”
“Why, what's to do now?” asked the Sawyer, coming to my side of the wheel and looking at me, with his spectacles tilted up, and his apron wedged in a piece of timber, and his solid figure resting in the impossibility of hurry. “Missy, don't you make a noise out there. You can't have your own way always.”
“Oh, Uncle Sam, don't talk like that. I am in such a fright about you. Do come out and look at the mountains.”
“I have seen the mountains often enough, and I am up to every trick of them. There may be a corn or two of rain; no more. My sea-weed was like tinder. There can't be no heavy storm when it is like that. Don't you make pretense, missy, to know what is beyond you.”
Uncle Sam was so seldom cross that I always felt that he had a right to be so. And he gave me one of his noble smiles to make up for the sharpness of his words, and then back he went to his work again. So I hoped that I was altogether wrong, till a bolt of lightning, like a blue dagger, fell at my very feet, and a crash of thunder shook the earth and stunned me. These opened the sluice of the heavens, and before I could call out I was drenched with rain. Clinging to a bush, I saw the valley lashed with cloudy blasts, and a whirling mass of spiral darkness rushing like a giant toward me. And the hissing and tossing and roaring mixed whatever was in sight together.
Such terror fell upon me at first that I could not look, and could scarcely think, but cowered beneath the blaze of lightning as a singed moth drops and shivers. And a storm of wind struck me from my hold, so that I fell upon the wet earth. Every moment I expected to be killed, for I never could be brave in a thunder-storm, and had not been told much in France of God's protection around me. And the darts of lightning hissed and crossed like a blue and red web over me. So I laid hold of a little bent of weed, and twisted it round my dabbled wrist, and tried to pray to the Virgin, although I had often been told it was vanity.
Then suddenly wiping my eyes, I beheld a thing which entirely changed me. A vast, broad wall of brown water, nearly as high as the mill itself, rushed down with a crest of foam from the mountains. It seemed to fill up all the valley and to swallow up all the trees; a whole host of animals fled before it, and birds, like a volley of bullets, flew by. I lost not a moment in running away, and climbing a rock and hiding. It was base, ungrateful, and a nasty thing to do; but I did it almost without thinking. And if I had staid to cry out, what good could I have done--only to be swept away?
Now, as far as I can remember any thing out of so much horror, I must have peeped over the summit of my rock when the head of the deluge struck the mill. But whether I saw it, or whether I knew it by any more summary process, such as outruns the eyes sometimes, is more than I dare presume to say. Whichever way I learned it, it was thus: A solid mass of water, much bigger than the mill itself, burst on it, dashed it to atoms, leaped off with it, and spun away the great wheel anyhow, like the hoop of a child sent trundling. I heard no scream or shriek; and, indeed, the bellow of a lion would have been a mere whisper in the wild roar of the elements. Only, where the mill had been, there was nothing except a black streak and a boil in the deluge. Then scores of torn-up trees swept over, as a bush-harrow jumps on the clods of the field; and the unrelenting flood cast its wrath, and shone quietly in the lightning.
“Oh, Uncle Sam! Uncle Sam!” I cried. But there was not a sign to be seen of him; and I thought of his gentle, good, obstinate ways, and my heart was almost broken. “What a brute--what a wretch I am!” I kept saying, as if I could have helped it; and my fear of the lightning was gone, and I stood and raved with scorn and amazement.
In this misery of confusion it was impossible to think, and instinct alone could have driven my despair to a desperate venture. With my soaked clothes sticking between my legs, I ran as hard as they would go, by a short-cut over a field of corn, to a spot where the very last bluff or headland jutted into the river. This was a good mile below the mill according to the bends of channel, but only a furlong or so from the rock upon which I had taken refuge. However, the flood was there before me, and the wall of water dashed on to the plains, with a brindled comb behind it.
Behind it also came all the ruin of the mill that had any floatage, and bodies of bears and great hogs and cattle, some of them alive, but the most part dead. A grand black bull tossed back his horns, and looked at me beseechingly: he had frightened me often in quiet days, but now I was truly grieved for him. And then on a wattle of brush-wood I saw the form of a man--the Sawyer.
His white hair draggled in the wild brown flood, and the hollow of his arms was heaped with froth, and his knotted legs hung helpless. Senseless he lay on his back, and sometimes the wash of the waves went over him. His face was livid, but his brave eyes open, and a heavy weight hung round his neck. I had no time to think, and deserve no praise, for I knew not what I did. But just as an eddy swept him near me, I made a desperate leap at him, and clutched at something that tore my hands, and then I went under the water. My senses, however, were not yet gone, and my weight on the wattle stopped it, and I came up gurgling, and flung one arm round a fat, woolly sheep going by me. The sheep was water-logged, and could scarcely keep his own poor head from drowning, and he turned his mild eyes and looked at me, but I could not spare him. He struck for the shore in forlorn hope, and he towed us in some little.
It is no good for me to pretend to say how things were managed for us, for of course I could do nothing. But the sheep must have piloted us to a tree, whose branches swept the torrent. Here I let him go, and caught fast hold; and Uncle Sam's raft must have stuck there also, for what could my weak arm have done? I remember only to have felt the ground at last, as the flood was exhausted; and good people came and found him and me, stretched side by side, upon rubbish and mud.
|
{
"id": "7112"
}
|
10
|
A NUGGET
|
In a sacred corner (as soon as ever we could attend to any thing) we hung up the leathern bag of tools, which had done much more toward saving the life of Uncle Sam than I did; for this had served as a kind of kedge, or drag, upon his little craft, retarding it from the great roll of billows, in which he must have been drowned outright. And even as it was, he took some days before he was like himself again.
Firm, who had been at the head of the valley, repairing some broken hurdles, declared that a water-spout had burst in the bosom of the mountain gorge where the Blue River has its origin, and the whole of its power got ponded back by a dam, which the Sawyer himself had made, at about five furlongs above the mill. Ephraim, being further up the gulch, and high above the roaring flood, did his utmost with the keen edge of his eyes to pierce into the mischief; but it rained so hard, and at the same time blew so violently around him, that he could see nothing of what went on, but hoped for the best, with uneasiness.
Now when the Sawyer came round so well as to have a clear mind of things, and learn that his mill was gone and his business lost, and himself, at this ripe time of life, almost driven to begin the world again, it was natural to expect that he ought to indulge in a good deal of grumbling. Many people came to comfort him, and to offer him deep condolence and the truest of true sympathy, and every thing that could be thought of, unless it were a loan of money. Of that they never thought, because it was such a trifling matter; and they all had confidence in his power to do any thing but pay them. They told him that he was a young man still, and Providence watched over him; in a year or two he would be all the better for this sad visitation. And he said yes to their excellent advice, and was very much obliged to them. At the same time it was clear to me, who watched him like a daughter, that he became heavy in his mind, and sighed, as these kind friends, one after the other, enjoyed what he still could do for them, but rode away out of his gate with too much delicacy to draw purse-strings. Not that he would have accepted a loan from the heartiest heart of all of them, only that he would have liked the offer, to understand their meaning. And several of them were men--as Firm, in his young indignation, told me--who had been altogether set up in life by the kindness of Sampson Gundry.
Perhaps the Sawyer, after all his years, had no right to be vexed by this. But whether he was right or wrong, I am sure that it preyed upon his mind, though he was too proud to speak of it. He knew that he was not ruined, although these friends assumed that he must be; and some of them were quite angry with him because they had vainly warned him. He could not remember these warnings, yet he contradicted none of them; and fully believing in the goodness of the world, he became convinced that he must have been hard in the days of his prosperity.
No sooner was he able to get about again than he went to San Francisco to raise money on his house and property for the rebuilding of the mill. Firm rode with him to escort him back, and so did Martin, the foreman; for although the times were not so bad as they used to be some ten years back, in the height of the gold fever, it still was a highly undesirable thing for a man who was known to have money about him to ride forth alone from San Francisco, or even Sacramento town. And having mentioned the foreman Martin, in justice to him I ought to say that although his entire loss from the disaster amounted only to a worn-out waistcoat of the value of about twenty cents, his vehemence in grumbling could only be equaled by his lofty persistence. By his great activity in running away and leaving his employer to meet the brunt, he had saved not only himself, but his wife and children and goods and chattels. This failed, however, to remove or even assuage his regret for the waistcoat; and he moaned and threatened to such good purpose that a speedy subscription was raised, which must have found him in clothes for the rest of his life, as well as a silver tea-pot with an inscription about his bravery.
When the three were gone, after strict injunctions from Mr. Gundry, and his grandson too, that I was on no account to venture beyond calling distance from the house, for fear of being run away with, I found the place so sad and lonesome that I scarcely knew what to do. I had no fear of robbers, though there were plenty in the neighborhood; for we still had three or four men about, who could be thoroughly trusted, and who staid with us on half wages rather than abandon the Sawyer in his trouble. Suan Isco, also, was as brave as any man, and could shoot well with a rifle. Moreover, the great dog Jowler was known and dreaded by all his enemies. He could pull down an Indian, or two half-castes, or three Mexicans, in about a second; and now he always went about with me, having formed a sacred friendship.
Uncle Sam had kissed me very warmly when he said “good-by,” and Firm had shown some disposition to follow his example; but much as I liked and admired Firm, I had my own ideas as to what was unbecoming, and now in my lonely little walks I began to think about it. My father's resting-place had not been invaded by the imperious flood, although a line of driftage, in a zigzag swath, lay near the mound. This was my favorite spot for thinking, when I felt perplexed and downcast in my young unaided mind. For although I have not spoken of my musings very copiously, any one would do me wrong who fancied that I was indifferent. Through the great kindness of Mr. Gundry and other good friends around me, I had no bitter sense as yet of my own dependence and poverty. But the vile thing I had heard about my father, the horrible slander and wicked falsehood--for such I was certain it must be--this was continually in my thoughts, and quite destroyed my cheerfulness. And the worst of it was that I never could get my host to enter into it. Whenever I began, his face would change and his manner grow constrained, and his chief desire always seemed to lead me to some other subject.
One day, when the heat of the summer came forth, and the peaches began to blush toward it, and bronze-ribbed figs grew damask-gray with a globule of sirup in their eyes, and melons and pumpkins already had curved their fluted stalks with heaviness, and the dust of the plains was beginning to fly, and the bright spring flowers were dead more swiftly even than they first were born, I sat with Suan Isco at my father's cross, and told her to make me cry with some of all the many sad things she knew. She knew a wondrous number of things insatiably sad and wild; and the quiet way in which she told them (not only without any horror, but as if they were rightly to be expected), also the deep and rather guttural tone of voice, and the stillness of the form, made it impossible to help believing verily every word she said.
That there should be in the world such things, so dark, unjust, and full of woe, was enough to puzzle a child brought up among the noblest philosophers; whereas I had simply been educated by good unpretentious women, who had partly retired from the world, but not to such a depth as to drown all thought of what was left behind them. These were ready at any time to return upon good opportunity; and some of them had done so, with many tears, when they came into property.
“Please to tell me no more now,” I said at last to Suan; “my eyes are so sore they will be quite red, and perhaps Uncle Sam will come home to-night. I am afraid he has found some trouble with the money, or he ought to have been at home before. Don't you think so, Suan?”
“Yes, yes; trouble with the money. Always with the white mans that.”
“Very well. I shall go and look for some money. I had a most wonderful dream last night. Only I must go quite alone. You had better go and look to the larder, Suan. If they come, they are sure to be hungry.”
“Yes, yes; the white mans always hungry, sep when thirsty.”
The Indian woman, who had in her heart a general contempt for the white race, save those of our own household, drew her bright-colored shawl around her, and set off with her peculiar walk. Her walk was not ungraceful, because it was so purely natural; but it differed almost as much as the step of a quadruped from what we are taught. I, with heavy thoughts but careless steps, set off on my wanderings. I wanted to try to have no set purpose, course, or consideration, but to go wherever chance should lead me, without choice, as in my dream. And after many vague turns, and even closings of rebellious eyes, I found myself, perhaps by the force of habit, at the ruins of the mill.
I seemed to recognize some resemblance (which is as much as one can expect) to the scene which had been in my sleep before me. But sleeping I had seen roaring torrents; waking, I beheld a quiet stream. The little river, as blue as ever, and shrinking from all thoughts of wrath, showed nothing in its pure gaze now but a gladness to refresh and cool. In many nicely sheltered corners it was full of soft reflection as to the good it had to do; and then, in silver and golden runnels, on it went to do it. And the happy voice and many sweetly flashing little glances told that it knew of the lovely lives beside it, created and comforted by itself.
But I looked at the dark ruin it had wrought, and like a child I was angry with it for the sake of Uncle Sam. Only the foundations and the big heavy stones of the mill were left, and the clear bright water purled around, or made little eddies among them. All were touched with silvery sound, and soft caressing dimples. But I looked at the passionate mountains first, to be sure of no more violence; for if a burned child dreads the fire, one half drowned may be excused for little faith in water. The mountains in the sunshine looked as if nothing could move their grandeur, and so I stepped from stone to stone, in the bed of the placid brightness.
Presently I came to a place where one of the great black piles, driven in by order of the Sawyer, to serve as a back-stay for his walls, had been swept by the flood from its vertical sinking, but had not been swept away. The square tarred post of mountain pine reclined down stream, and gently nodded to the current's impact. But overthrown as it was, it could not make its exit and float away, as all its brethren had done. At this I had wondered before, and now I went to see what the reason was. By throwing a short piece of plank from one of the shattered foundations into a nick in the shoulder of the reclining pile, I managed to get there and sit upon it, and search for its obstruction.
The water was flowing smoothly toward me, and as clear as crystal, being scarcely more than a foot in depth. And there, on the upper verge of the hole, raised by the leverage of the butt from the granite sand of the river-bed, I saw a great bowlder of rich yellow light. I was so much amazed that I cried out at once, “Oh! what a beautiful great yellow fish!” And I shouted to Jowler, who had found where I was, and followed me, as usual. The great dog was famous for his love of fishing, and had often brought a fine salmon forth.
Jowler was always a zealous fellow, and he answered eagerly to my call by dashing at once into the water, and following the guidance of my hand. But when he saw what I pointed at, he was bitterly disappointed, and gave me to understand as much by looking at me foolishly. “Now don't be a stupid dog,” I said; “do what I tell you immediately. Whatever it is, bring it out, Sir.”
Jowler knew that I would be obeyed whenever I called him “Sir;” so he ducked his great head under the water, and tugged with his teeth at the object. His back corded up, and his tail grew rigid with the intensity of his labor, but the task was quite beyond him. He could not even stir the mighty mass at which he struggled, but he bit off a little projecting corner, and came to me with it in his mouth. Then he laid his dripping jaws on my lap, and his ears fell back, and his tail hung down with utter sense of failure.
I patted his broad intelligent forehead, and wiped his black eyes with his ears, and took from his lips what he offered to me. Then I saw that his grinders were framed with gold, as if he had been to a dentist regardless of expense, and into my hand he dropped a lump of solid glittering virgin ore. He had not the smallest idea of having done any thing worthy of human applause; and he put out his long red tongue and licked his teeth to get rid of uneatable dross, and gave me a quiet nudge to ask what more I wanted of him.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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11
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ROVERS
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From Jowler I wanted nothing more. Such matters were too grand for him. He had beaten the dog of Hercules, who had only brought the purple dye--a thing requiring skill and art and taste to give it value. But gold does well without all these, and better in their absence. From handling many little nuggets, and hearkening to Suan Isco's tales of treachery, theft, and murder done by white men for the sake of this, I knew that here I had found enough to cost the lives of fifty men.
At present, however, I was not possessed with dread so much as I was with joy, and even a secret exultation, at the power placed in my hands. For I was too young to moralize or attempt philosophy. Here I had a knowledge which the wisest of mankind might envy, much as they despise it when they have no chance of getting it. I looked at my father's grave, in the shadow of the quiet peach-trees, and I could not help crying as I thought that this was come too late for him. Then I called off Jowler, who wished (like a man) to have another tug at it; and home I ran to tell my news, but failing of breath, had time to think.
It was lucky enough that this was so, for there might have been the greatest mischief; and sadly excited as I was, the trouble I had seen so much of came back to my beating heart and told me to be careful. But surely there could be no harm in trusting Suan Isco. However, I looked at her several times, and was not quite so sure about it. She was wonderfully true and faithful, and scarcely seemed to concede to gold its paramount rank and influence. But that might only have been because she had never known the want of it, or had never seen a lump worth stealing, which I was sure that this must be; and the unregenerate state of all who have never been baptized had been impressed on me continually. How could I mistrust a Christian, and place confidence in an Indian? Therefore I tried to sleep without telling any one, but was unable.
But, as it happened, my good discovery did not keep me so very long awake, for on the following day our troop of horsemen returned from San Francisco. Of course I have done very foolish things once and again throughout my life, but perhaps I never did any thing more absurd than during the whole of that day. To begin with, I was up before the sun, and down at the mill, and along the plank, which I had removed overnight, but now replaced as my bridge to the pine-wood pile. Then I gazed with eager desire and fear--which was the stronger I scarcely knew--for the yellow under-gleam, to show the safety of my treasure. There it lay, as safe as could be, massive, grand, and beautiful, with tones of varying richness as the ripples varied over it. The pale light of the morning breathed a dewy lustre down the banks; the sun (although unrisen yet) drew furrows through the mountain gaps; the birds from every hanging tree addressed the day with melody; the crystal water, purer than religion's brightest dream, went by; and here among them lay, unmoved, unthought of, and inanimate, the thing which to a human being is worth all the rest put together.
This contemplation had upon me an effect so noble that here I resolved to spend my time, for fear of any robbery. I was afraid to gaze more than could be helped at this grand sight, lest other eyes should spy what was going on, and long to share it. And after hurrying home to breakfast and returning in like haste, I got a scare, such as I well deserved, for being so extremely foolish.
The carpentry of the mill-wheel had proved so very stanch and steadfast that even in that raging deluge the whole had held together. It had been bodily torn from its hold and swept away down the valley; but somewhere it grounded, as the flood ebbed out, and a strong team had tugged it back again. And the Sawyer had vowed that, come what would, his mill should work with the self-same wheel which he with younger hands had wrought. Now this wheel (to prevent any warp, and save the dry timber from the sun) was laid in a little shady cut, where water trickled under it. And here I had taken up my abode to watch my monster nugget.
I had pulled my shoes and stockings off, and was paddling in the runnel, sheltered by the deep rim of the wheel, and enjoying the water. Little fish darted by me, and lovely spotted lizards played about, and I was almost beginning even to forget my rock of gold. In self-defense it is right to say that for the gold, on my own account, I cared as much as I might have done for a fig worm-eaten. It was for Uncle Sam, and all his dear love, that I watched the gold, hoping in his sad disaster to restore his fortunes. But suddenly over the rim of the wheel (laid flat in the tributary brook) I descried across the main river a moving company of horsemen.
These men could have nothing to do with Uncle Sam and his party, for they were coming from the mountain-side, while he would return by the track across the plains. And they were already so near that I could see their dress quite plainly, and knew them to be Mexican rovers, mixed with loose Americans. There are few worse men on the face of the earth than these, when in the humor, and unluckily they seem almost always to be in that humor. Therefore, when I saw their battered sun-hats and baggy slouching boots, I feared that little ruth, or truth, or mercy dwelt between them.
On this account I shrank behind the shelter of the mill-wheel, and held my head in one trembling hand, and with the other drew my wind-tossed hair into small compass. For my blood ran cold at the many dreadful things that came into my mind. I was sure that they had not spied me yet, and my overwhelming desire was to decline all introduction.
I counted fourteen gentlemen, for so they always styled themselves, and would pistol any man who expressed a contrary opinion. Fourteen of them rode to the brink of the quiet blue river on the other side; and there they let their horses drink, and some dismounted and filled canteens, and some of longer reach stooped from the saddle and did likewise. But one, who seemed to be the captain, wanted no water for his rum.
“Cut it short, boys,” I heard him say, with a fine South Californian twang (which, as well as his free swearing, I will freely omit). “If we mean to have fair play with the gal, now or never's the time for it: old Sam may come home almost any time.”
What miserable cowards! Though there were so many of them, they really had no heart to face an old man known for courage. Frightened as I was, perhaps good indignation helped me to flutter no more, and not faint away, but watch those miscreants steadily.
The horses put down their sandy lips over and over again to drink, scarcely knowing when they ought to stop, and seemed to get thicker before my eyes. The dribbling of the water from their mouths prepared them to begin again, till the riders struck the savage unroweled spur into their refreshment. At this they jerked their noses up, and looked at one another to say that they expected it, and then they lifted their weary legs and began to plash through the river.
It is a pretty thing to see a skillful horse plod through a stream, probing with his eyes the depth, and stretching his head before his feet, and at every step he whisks his tail to tell himself that he is right. In my agony of observation all these things I heeded, but only knew that I had done so when I thought long afterward. At the moment I was in such a fright that my eyes worked better than my mind. However, even so, I thought of my golden millstone, and was aware that they crossed below, and could not see it.
They gained the bank upon our side within fifty yards of where I crouched; and it was not presence of mind, but abject fear, which kept me crouching. I counted them again as they leaped the bank and seemed to look at me. I could see the dark array of eyes, and could scarcely keep from shrieking. But my throat was dry and made no sound, and a frightened bird set up a scream, which drew off their attention.
In perils of later days I often thought of this fear, and almost felt that the hand of Heaven had been stretched forth on purpose to help my helplessness.
For the moment, however, I lay as close as if under the hand of the evil one; and the snorting of the horses passed me, and wicked laughter of the men. One was telling a horrible tale, and the rest rejoicing in it; and the bright sun, glowing on their withered skin, discovered perhaps no viler thing in all the world to shine upon. One of them even pointed at my mill-wheel with a witty gibe--at least, perhaps, it was wit to him--about the Sawyer's misfortune; but the sun was then in his eyes, and my dress was just of the color of the timber. So on they rode, and the pleasant turf (having lately received some rain) softly answered to the kneading of their hoofs as they galloped away to surround the house.
I was just at the very point of rising and running up into the dark of the valley, when a stroke of arithmetic stopped me. Fourteen men and fourteen horses I had counted on the other side; on this side I could not make any more than thirteen of them. I might have made a mistake; but still I thought I would stop just a minute to see. And in that minute I saw the other man walking slowly on the opposite bank. He had tethered his horse, and was left as outpost to watch and give warning of poor Uncle Sam's return.
At the thought of this, my frightened courage, in some extraordinary way, came back. I had played an ignoble part thus far, as almost any girl might have done. But now I resolved that, whatever might happen, my dear friend and guardian should not be entrapped and lose his life through my cowardice. We had been expecting him all the day; and if he should come and fall into an ambush, I only might survive to tell the tale. I ought to have hurried and warned the house, as my bitter conscience told me; but now it was much too late for that. The only amends that I could make was to try and warn our travelers.
Stooping as low as I could, and watching my time to cross the more open places when the sentry was looking away from me, I passed up the winding of the little watercourse, and sheltered in the swampy thicket which concealed its origin. Hence I could see for miles over the plain--broad reaches of corn land already turning pale, mazy river fringed with reed, hamlets scattered among clustering trees, and that which I chiefly cared to see, the dusty track from Sacramento.
Whether from ignorance of the country or of Mr. Gundry's plans, the sentinel had been posted badly. His beat commanded well enough the course from San Francisco; but that from Sacramento was not equally clear before him. For a jut of pine forest ran down from the mountains and cut off a part of his view of it. I had not the sense or the presence of mind to perceive this great advantage, but having a plain, quick path before me, forth I set upon it. Of course if the watchman had seen me, he would have leaped on his horse and soon caught me; but of that I scarcely even thought, I was in such confusion.
When I had run perhaps a mile (being at that time very slight, and of active figure), I saw a cloud of dust, about two miles off, rising through the bright blue haze. It was rich yellow dust of the fertile soil, which never seems to cake or clot. Sometimes you may walk for miles without the smallest fear of sinking, the earth is so elastic. And yet with a slight exertion you may push a walking-stick down through it until the handle stops it. My heart gave a jump: that cloud of dust was a sign of men on horseback. And who could it be but Uncle Sam and Firm and the foreman Martin?
As soon as it began to show itself, it proved to be these very three, carelessly lounging on their horses' backs, overcome with heat and dust and thirst. But when they saw me there all alone under the fury of the sun, they knew that something must have gone amiss, and were all wide awake in a moment.
“Well, now,” said the Sawyer, when I had told my tale as well as short breath allowed, “put this thing over your head, my dear, or you may gain a sun-stroke. I call it too bad of them skunks to drive you in Californy noon, like this.”
“Oh, Uncle Sam, never think of me; think of your house and your goods and Suan, and all at those bad men's mercy!”
“The old house ain't afire yet,” he answered, looking calmly under his hand in that direction. “And as for Suan, no fear at all. She knows how to deal with such gallowses; and they will keep her to cook their dinner. Firm, my lad, let us go and embrace them. They wouldn't 'a made much bones of shooting us down if we hadn't known of it, and if they had got miss afore the saddle. But if they don't give bail, as soon as they see me ride up to my door, my name's not Sampson Gundry. Only you keep out of the way, Miss Remy. You go to sleep a bit, that's a dear, in the graywitch spinny yonder, and wait till you hear Firm sound the horn. And then come you in to dinner-time; for the Lord is always over you.”
I hastened to the place which he pointed out--a beautiful covert of birch-trees--but to sleep was out of the question, worn out though I was with haste and heat, and (worst of all) with horror. In a soft mossy nest, where a breeze from the mountains played with the in and out ways of the wood, and the murmurous dream of genial insects now was beginning to drowse upon the air, and the heat of the sun could almost be seen thrilling through the alleys like a cicale's drum--here, in the middle of the languid peace, I waited for the terror of the rifle-crack.
For though Uncle Sam had spoken softly, and made so little of the peril he would meet, I had seen in his eyes some token of the deep wrath and strong indignation which had kept all his household and premises safe. And it seemed a most ominous sign that Firm had never said a word, but grasped his gun, and slowly got in front of his grandfather.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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12
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GOLD AND GRIEF
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It may have been an hour, but it seemed an age, ere the sound of the horn, in Firm's strong blast, released me from my hiding-place. I had heard no report of fire-arms, nor perceived any sign of conflict; and certainly the house was not on fire, or else I must have seen the smoke. For being still in great alarm, I had kept a very sharp lookout.
Ephraim Gundry came to meet me, which was very kind of him. He carried his bugle in his belt, that he might sound again for me, if needful. But I was already running toward the house, having made up my mind to be resolute. Nevertheless, I was highly pleased to have his company, and hear what had been done.
“Please to let me help you,” he said, with a smile. “Why, miss, you are trembling dreadfully. I assure you there is no cause for that.”
“But you might have been killed, and Uncle Sam, and Martin, and every body. Oh, those men did look so horrible!”
“Yes, they always do till you come to know them. But bigger cowards were never born. If they can take people by surprise, and shoot them without any danger, it is a splendid treat to them. But if any one like grandfather meets them face to face in the daylight, their respect for law and life returns. It is not the first visit they have paid us. Grandfather kept his temper well. It was lucky for them that he did.”
Remembering that the Rovers must have numbered nearly three to one, even if all our men were stanch, I thought it lucky for ourselves that there had been no outbreak. But Firm seemed rather sorry that they had departed so easily. And knowing that he never bragged, I began to share his confidence.
“They must be shot, sooner or later,” he said, “unless, indeed, they should be hanged. Their manner of going on is out of date in these days of settlement. It was all very well ten years ago. But now we are a civilized State, and the hand of law is over us. I think we were wrong to let them go. But of course I yield to the governor. And I think he was afraid for your sake. And to tell the truth, I may have been the same.”
Here he gave my arm a little squeeze, which appeared to me quite out of place; therefore I withdrew and hurried on. Before he could catch me I entered the door, and found the Sawyer sitting calmly with his own long pipe once more, and watching Suan cooking.
“They rogues have had all the best of our victuals,” he said, as soon as he had kissed me. “Respectable visitors is my delight, and welcome to all of the larder; but at my time of life it goes agin the grain to lease out my dinner to galley-rakers. Suan, you are burning the fat again.”
Suan Isco, being an excellent cook (although of quiet temper), never paid heed to criticism, but lifted her elbow and went on. Mr. Gundry knew that it was wise to offer no further meddling, although it is well to keep them up to their work by a little grumbling. But when I came to see what broken bits were left for Suan to deal with, I only wondered that he was not cross.
“Thank God for a better meal than I deserve,” he said, when they all had finished. “Suan, you are a treasure, as I tell you every day a'most. Now if they have left us a bottle of wine, let us have it up. We be all in the dumps. But that will never do, my lad.”
He patted Firm on the shoulder, as if he were the younger man of the two, and his grandson went down to the wreck of the cellar; while I, who had tried to wait upon them in an eager, clumsy way, perceived that something was gone amiss, something more serious and lasting than the mischief made by the robber troop. Was it that his long ride had failed, and not a friend could be found to help him?
When Martin and the rest were gone, after a single glass of wine, and Ephraim had made excuse of something to be seen to, the Sawyer leaned back in his chair, and his cheerful face was troubled. I filled his pipe and lit it for him, and waited for him to speak, well knowing his simple and outspoken heart. But he looked at me and thanked me kindly, and seemed to be turning some grief in his mind.
“It ain't for the money,” he said at last, talking more to himself than to me; “the money might 'a been all very well and useful in a sort of way. But the feelin'--the feelin' is the thing I look at, and it ought to have been more hearty. Security! Charge on my land, indeed! And I can run away, but my land must stop behind! What security did I ask of them? 'Tis enough a'most to make a rogue of me.”
“Nothing could ever do that, Uncle Sam,” I exclaimed, as I came and sat close to him, while he looked at me bravely, and began to smile.
“Why, what was little missy thinking of?” he asked. “How solid she looks! Why, I never see the like!”
“Then you ought to have seen it, Uncle Sam. You ought to have seen it fifty times, with every body who loves you. And who can help loving you, Uncle Sam?”
“Well, they say that I charged too much for lumber, a-cuttin' on the cross, and the backstroke work. And it may 'a been so, when I took agin a man. But to bring up all that, with the mill strown down, is a cowardly thing, to my thinking. And to make no count of the beadin' I threw in, whenever it were a straightforrard job, and the turpsy knots, and the clogging of the teeth--'tis a bad bit to swallow, when the mill is strown.”
“But the mill shall not be strown, Uncle Sam. The mill shall be built again. And I will find the money.”
Mr. Gundry stared at me and shook his head. He could not bear to tell me how poor I was, while I thought myself almost made of money. “Five thousand dollars you have got put by for me,” I continued, with great importance. “Five thousand dollars from the sale and the insurance fund. And five thousand dollars must be five-and-twenty thousand francs. Uncle Sam, you shall have every farthing of it. And if that won't build the mill again, I have got my mother's diamonds.”
“Five thousand dollars!” cried the Sawyer, in amazement, opening his great gray eyes at me. And then he remembered the tale which he had told, to make me seem independent. “Oh yes, to be sure, my dear; now I recollect. To be sure--to be sure--your own five thousand dollars. But never will I touch one cent of your nice little fortune; no, not to save my life. After all, I am not so gone in years but what I can build the mill again myself. The Lord hath spared my hands and eyes, and gifted me still with machinery. And Firm is a very handy lad, and can carry out a job pretty fairly, with better brains to stand over him, although it has not pleased the Lord to gift him with sense of machinery, like me. But that is all for the best, no doubt. If Ephraim had too much of brains, he might have contradicted me. And that I could never abide, God knows, from any green young jackanapes.”
“Oh, Uncle Sam, let me tell you something--something very important!”
“No, my dear, nothing more just now. It has done me good to have a little talk, and scared the blue somethings out of me. But just go and ask whatever is become of Firm. He was riled with them greasers. It was all I could do to keep the boy out of a difficulty with them. And if they camp any where nigh, it is like enough he may go hankerin' after them. The grand march of intellect hathn't managed yet to march old heads upon young shoulders. And Firm might happen to go outside the law.”
The thought of this frightened me not a little; for Firm, though mild of speech, was very hot of spirit at any wrong, as I knew from tales of Suan Isco, who had brought him up and made a glorious idol of him. And now, when she could not say where he was, but only was sure that he must be quite safe (in virtue of a charm from a great medicine man which she had hung about him), it seemed to me, according to what I was used to, that in these regions human life was held a great deal too lightly.
It was not for one moment that I cared about Firm, any more than is the duty of a fellow-creature. He was a very good young man, and in his way good-looking, educated also quite enough, and polite, and a very good carver of a joint; and when I spoke, he nearly always listened. But of course he was not to be compared as yet to his grandfather, the true Sawyer.
When I ran back from Suan Isco, who was going on about her charm, and the impossibility of any one being scalped who wore it, I found Mr. Gundry in a genial mood. He never made himself uneasy about any trifles. He always had a very pure and lofty faith in the ways of Providence, and having lost his only son Elijah, he was sure that he never could lose Firm. He had taken his glass of hot whiskey and water, which always made him temperate; and if he felt any of his troubles deeply, he dwelt on them now from a high point of view.
“I may 'a said a little too much, my dear, about the badness of mankind,” he observed, with his pipe lying comfortably on his breast; “all sayings of that sort is apt to go too far. I ought to have made more allowance for the times, which gets into a ticklish state, when a old man is put about with them. Never you pay no heed whatever to any harsh words I may have used. All that is a very bad thing for young folk.”
“But if they treated you badly, Uncle Sam, how can you think that they treated you well?”
He took some time to consider this, because he was true in all his thoughts; and then he turned off to something else.
“Why, the smashing of the mill may have been a mercy, although in disguise to the present time of sight. It will send up the price of scantlings, and we was getting on too fast with them. By the time we have built up the mill again we shall have more orders than we know how to do with. When I come to reckon of it, to me it appears to be the reasonable thing to feel a lump of grief for the old mill, and then to set to and build a stronger one. Yes, that must be about the right thing to do. And we'll have all the neighbors in when we lay foundations.”
“But what will be the good of it, Uncle Sam, when the new mill may at any time be washed away again?”
“Never, at any time,” he answered, very firmly, gazing through the door as if he saw the vain endeavor. “That little game can easily be stopped, for about fifty dollars, by opening down the bank toward the old track of the river. The biggest waterspout that ever came down from the mountains could never come anigh the mill, but go right down the valley. It hath been in my mind to do it often, and now that I see the need, I will. Firm and I will begin tomorrow.”
“But where is all the money to come from, Uncle Sam? You said that all your friends had refused to help you.”
“Never mind, my dear. I will help myself. It won't be the first time, perhaps, in my life.”
“But supposing that I could help you, just some little? Supposing that I had found the biggest lump of gold ever found in all California?”
Mr. Gundry ought to have looked surprised, and I was amazed that he did not; but he took it as quietly as if I had told him that I had just picked up a brass button of his; and I thought that he doubted my knowledge, very likely, even as to what gold was.
“It is gold, Uncle Sam, every bit of it gold--here is a piece of it; just look--and as large, I am sure, as this table. And it may be as deep as this room, for all that one can judge to the contrary. Why, it stopped the big pile from coming to the top, when even you went down the river.”
“Well, now, that explains a thing or two,” said the Sawyer, smiling peacefully, and beginning to think of another pipe, if preparation meant any thing. “Two things have puzzled me about that stump, and, indeed, I might say three things. Why did he take such a time to drive? and why would he never stand up like a man? and why wouldn't he go away when he ought to?”
“Because he had the best of all reasons, Uncle Sam. He was anchored on his gold, as I have read in French, and he had a good right to be crooked about it, and no power could get him away from it.”
“Hush, my dear, hush! It is not at all good for young people to let their minds run on so. But this gold looks very good indeed. Are you sure that it is a fair sample, and that there is any more of it?”
“How can you be so dreadfully provoking, Uncle Sam, when I tell you that I saw it with my own eyes? And there must be at least half a ton of it.”
“Well, half a hundred-weight will be enough for me. And you shall have all the rest, my dear--that is, if you will spare me a bit, Miss Remy. It all belongs to you by discovery, according to the diggers' law. And your eyes are so bright about it, miss, that the whole of your heart must be running upon it.”
“Then you think me as bad as the rest of the world! How I wish that I had never seen it! It was only for you that I cared about it--for you, for you; and I will never touch a scrap of it.”
Mr. Gundry had only been trying me, perhaps. But I did not see it in that light, and burst into a flood of childish tears, that he should misunderstand me so. Gold had its usual end, in grief. Uncle Sam rose up to soothe me and to beg my pardon, and to say that perhaps he was harsh because of the treatment he had received from his friends. He took me in his arms and kissed me; but before I could leave off sobbing, the crack of a rifle rang through the house, and Suan Isco, with a wail, rushed out.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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13
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THE SAWYER'S PRAYER
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The darkness of young summer night was falling on earth and tree and stream. Every thing looked of a different form and color from those of an hour ago, and the rich bloom of shadow mixed with color, and cast by snowy mountains, which have stored the purple adieu of the sun, was filling the air with delicious calm. The Sawyer ran out with his shirt sleeves shining, so that any sneaking foe might shoot him; but, with the instinct of a settler, he had caught up his rifle. I stood beneath a carob-tree, which had been planted near the porch, and flung fantastic tassels down, like the ear-rings of a negress. And not having sense enough to do good, I was only able to be frightened.
Listening intently, I heard the sound of skirring steps on the other side of and some way down the river; and the peculiar tread, even thus far off, was plainly Suan Isco's. And then in the stillness a weary and heavy foot went toiling after it. Before I could follow, which I longed to do, to learn at once the worst of it, I saw the figure of a man much nearer, and even within twenty yards of me, gliding along without any sound. Faint as the light was, I felt sure that it was not one of our own men, and the barrel of a long gun upon his shoulder made a black line among silver leaves. I longed to run forth and stop him, but my courage was not prompt enough, and I shamefully shrank away behind the trunk of the carob-tree. Like a sleuth, compact, and calm-hearted villain, he went along without any breath of sound, stealing his escape with skill, till a white bower-tent made a background for him, and he leaped up and fell flat without a groan. The crack of a rifle came later than his leap, and a curl of white smoke shone against a black rock, and the Sawyer, in the distance, cried, “Well, now!” as he generally did when satisfied.
So scared was I that I caught hold of a cluster of pods to steady me; and then, without any more fear for myself, I ran to see whether it was possible to help. But the poor man lay beyond earthly help; he was too dead to palpitate. His life must have left him in the air, and he could not even have felt his fall.
In violent terror, I burst into tears, and lifted his heavy head, and strove to force his hot hands open, and did I know not what, without thinking, laboring only to recall his life.
“Are you grieving for the skulk who has shot my Firm?” said a stern voice quite unknown to me; and rising, I looked at the face of Mr. Gundry, unlike the countenance of Uncle Sam. I tried to speak to him, but was too frightened. The wrath of blood was in his face, and all his kind desires were gone.
“Yes, like a girl, you are sorry for a man who has stained this earth, till his only atonement is to stain it with his blood. Captain Pedro, there you lie, shot, like a coward, through the back. I wish you were alive to taste my boots. Murderer of men and filthy ravisher of women, miscreant of God, how can I keep from trampling on you?”
It never had been in my dream that a good man could so entirely forget himself. I wanted to think that it must be somebody else, and not our Uncle Sam. But he looked toward the west, as all men do when their spirits are full of death, and the wan light showed that his chin was triple.
Whether it may have been right or wrong, I made all haste to get away. The face of the dead man was quite a pleasant thing, compared with the face of the old man living. He may not have meant it, and I hope he never did, but beyond all controversy he looked barbarous for the moment.
As I slipped away, to know the worst, there I saw him standing still, longing to kick the vile man's corpse, but quieted by the great awe of death. If the man had stirred, or breathed, or even moaned, the living man would have lost all reverence in his fury. But the power of the other world was greater than even revenge could trample on. He let it lie there, and he stooped his head, and went away quite softly.
My little foolish heart was bitterly visited by a thing like this. The Sawyer, though not of great human rank, was gifted with the largest human nature that I had ever met with. And though it was impossible as yet to think, a hollow depression, as at the loss of some great ideal, came over me.
Returning wretchedly to the house, I met Suan Isco and two men bringing the body of poor Firm. His head and both his arms hung down, and they wanted somebody to lift them; and this I ran to do, although they called out to me not to meddle. The body was carried in, and laid upon three chairs, with a pillow at the head; and then a light was struck, and a candle brought by somebody or other. And Suan Isco sat upon the floor, and set up a miserable Indian dirge.
“Stow away that,” cried Martin of the mill, for he was one of those two men; “wait till the lad is dead, and then pipe up to your liking. I felt him try to kick while we carried him along. He come forth on a arrand of that sort, and he seem to 'a been disappointed. A very fine young chap I call him, for to try to do it still, howsomever his mind might be wandering. Missy, keep his head up.”
I did as I was told, and watched poor Firm as if my own life hung upon any sign of life in him. When I look back at these things, I think that fright and grief and pity must have turned an excitable girl almost into a real woman. But I had no sense of such things then.
“I tell you he ain't dead,” cried Martin; “no more dead than I be. He feels the young gal's hand below him, and I see him try to turn up his eyes. He has taken a very bad knock, no doubt, and trouble about his breathing. I seed a fellow scalped once, and shot through the heart; but he came all round in about six months, and protected his head with a document. Firm, now, don't you be a fool. I have had worse things in my family.”
Ephraim Gundry seemed to know that some one was upbraiding him. At any rate, his white lips trembled with a weak desire to breathe, and a little shadow of life appeared to flicker in his open eyes. And on my sleeve, beneath his back, some hot bright blood came trickling.
“Keep him to that,” said Martin, with some carpenter sort of surgery; “less fear of the life when the blood begins to run. Don't move him, missy; never mind your arm. It will be the saving of him.”
I was not strong enough to hold him up, but Suan ran to help me; and they told me afterward that I fell faint, and no doubt it must have been so. But when the rest were gone, and had taken poor Firm to his straw mattress, the cold night air must have flowed into the room, and that, perhaps, revived me. I went to the bottom of the stairs and listened, and then stole up to the landing, and heard Suan Isco, who had taken the command, speaking cheerfully in her worst English. Then I hoped for the best, and, without any knowledge, wandered forth into the open air.
Walking quite as in a dream this time (which I had vainly striven to do when seeking for my nugget), I came to the bank of the gleaming river, and saw the water just in time to stop from stepping into it. Careless about this and every other thing for the moment, I threw myself on the sod, and listened to the mournful melody of night. Sundry unknown creatures, which by day keep timid silence, were sending timid sounds into the darkness, holding quiet converse with themselves, or it, or one another. And the silvery murmur of the wavelets soothed the twinkling sleep of leaves.
I also, being worn and weary, and having a frock which improved with washing, and was spoiled already by nursing Firm, was well content to throw myself into a niche of river-bank and let all things flow past me. But before any thing had found time to flow far, or the lullaby of night had lulled me, there came to me a sadder sound than plaintive Nature can produce without her Master's aid, the saddest sound in all creation--a strong man's wail.
Child as I was--and, perhaps, all the more for that reason as knowing so little of mankind--I might have been more frightened, but I could not have been a bit more shocked, by the roaring of a lion. For I knew in a moment whose voice it was, and that made it pierce me tenfold. It was Uncle Sam, lamenting to himself, and to his God alone, the loss of his last hope on earth. He could not dream that any other than his Maker (and his Maker's works, if ever they have any sympathy) listened to the wild outpourings of an aged but still very natural heart, which had always been proud of controlling itself. I could see his great frame through a willow-tree, with the sere grass and withered reeds around, and the faint gleam of fugitive water beyond. He was kneeling toward his shattered mill, having rolled his shirt sleeves back to pray, and his white locks shone in the starlight; then, after trying several times, he managed to pray a little. First (perhaps partly from habit), he said the prayer of Our Lord pretty firmly, and then he went on to his own special case, with a doubting whether he should mention it. But as he went on he gathered courage, or received it from above, and was able to say what he wanted.
“Almighty Father of the living and the dead, I have lived long, and shall soon be dead, and my days have been full of trouble. But I never had such trouble as this here before, and I don't think I ever shall get over it. I have sinned every day of my life, and not thought of Thee, but of victuals, and money, and stuff; and nobody knows, but myself and Thou, all the little bad things inside of me. I cared a deal more to be respectable and get on with my business than to be prepared for kingdom come. And I have just been proud about the shooting of a villain, who might 'a gone free and repented. There is nobody left to me in my old age. Thou hast taken all of them. Wife, and son, and mill, and grandson, and my brother who robbed me--the whole of it may have been for my good, but I have got no good out of it. Show me the way for a little time, O Lord, to make the best of it; and teach me to bear it like a man, and not break down at this time of life. Thou knowest what is right. Please to do it. Amen.”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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14
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NOT FAR TO SEEK
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In the present state of controversies most profoundly religious, the Lord alone can decide (though thousands of men would hurry to pronounce) for or against the orthodoxy of the ancient Sawyer's prayer. But if sound doctrine can be established by success (as it always is), Uncle Sam's theology must have been unusually sound; for it pleased a gracious Power to know what he wanted, and to grant it.
Brave as Mr. Gundry was, and much-enduring and resigned, the latter years of his life on earth must have dragged on very heavily, with abstract resignation only, and none of his blood to care for him. Being so obstinate a man, he might have never admitted this, but proved against every one's voice, except his own, his special blessedness. But this must have been a trial to him, and happily he was spared from it.
For although Firm had been very badly shot, and kept us for weeks in anxiety about him, his strong young constitution and well-nourished frame got over it. A truly good and learned doctor came from Sacramento, and we hung upon his words, and found that there he left us hanging. And this was the wisest thing perhaps that he could do, because in America medical men are not absurdly expected, as they are in England, to do any good, but are valued chiefly upon their power of predicting what they can not help. And this man of science perceived that he might do harm to himself and his family by predicting amiss, whereas he could do no good to his patient by predicting rightly. And so he foretold both good and evil, to meet the intentions of Providence.
He had not been sent for in vain, however; and to give him his due, he saved Ephraim's life, for he drew from the wound a large bullet, which, if left, must have poisoned all his circulation, although it was made of pure silver. The Sawyer wished to keep this silver bullet as a token, but the doctor said that it belonged to him according to miners' law; and so it came to a moderate argument. Each was a thoroughly stubborn man, according to the bent of all good men, and reasoning increased their unreason. But the doctor won--as indeed he deserved, for the extraction had been delicate--because, when reason had been exhausted, he just said this: “Colonel Gundry, let us have no more words. The true owner is your grandson. I will put it back where I took it from.”
Upon this, the Sawyer being tickled, as men very often are in sad moments, took the doctor by the hand, and gave him the bullet heartily. And the medical man had a loop made to it, and wore it upon his watch chain. And he told the story so often (saying that another man perhaps might have got it out, but no other man could have kept it), that among a great race who judge by facts it doubled his practice immediately.
The leader of the robbers, known far and wide as “Captain Pedro,” was buried where he fell; and the whole so raised Uncle Sam's reputation that his house was never attacked again; and if any bad characters were forced by circumstances to come near him, they never asked for any thing stronger than ginger-beer or lemonade, and departed very promptly. For as soon as Ephraim Gundry could give account of his disaster, it was clear that Don Pedro owed his fate to a bottle of the Sawyer's whiskey. Firm had only intended to give him a lesson for misbehavior, being fired by his grandfather's words about swinging me on the saddle. This idea had justly appeared to him to demand a protest; to deliver which he at once set forth with a valuable cowhide whip. Coming thus to the Rovers' camp, and finding their captain sitting in the shade to digest his dinner, Firm laid hold of him by the neck, and gave way to feelings of severity. Don Pedro regretted his misconduct, and being lifted up for the moment above his ordinary view, perceived that he might have done better, and shaped the pattern of his tongue to it. Firm, hearing this, had good hopes of him; yet knowing how volatile repentance is, he strove to form a well-marked track for it. And when the captain ceased to receive cowhide, he must have had it long enough to miss it.
Now this might have ended honorably and amicably for all concerned, if the captain had known when he was well off. Unluckily he had purloined a bottle of Mr. Gundry's whiskey, and he drew the cork now to rub his stripes, and the smell of it moved him to try it inside. And before very long his ideas of honor, which he had sense enough to drop when sober, began to come into his eyes again, and to stir him up to mischief. Hence it was that he followed Firm, who was riding home well satisfied, and appeased his honor by shooting in cold blood, and justice by being shot anyhow.
It was beautiful, through all this trying time, to watch Uncle Sam's proceedings: he appeared so delightfully calm and almost careless whenever he was looked at. And then he was ashamed of himself perpetually, if any one went on with it. Nobody tried to observe him, of course, or remark upon any of his doings, and for this he would become so grateful that he would long to tell all his thoughts, and then stop. This must have been a great worry to him, seeing how open his manner was; and whenever he wanted to hide any thing, he informed us of that intention. So that we exhorted Firm every day to come round and restore us to our usual state. This was the poor fellow's special desire; and often he was angry with himself, and made himself worse again by declaring that he must be a milksop to lie there so long. Whereas, it was much more near the truth that few other men, even in the Western States, would ever have got over such a wound. I am not learned enough to say exactly where the damage was, but the doctor called it, I think, the sternum, and pronounced that “a building-up process” was required, and must take a long time, if it ever could be done.
It was done at last, thanks to Suan Isco, who scarcely ever left him by day or night, and treated him skillfully with healing herbs. But he, without meaning it, vexed her often by calling for me--a mere ignorant child. Suan was dreadfully jealous of this, and perhaps I was proud of that sentiment of hers, and tried to justify it, instead of laboring to remove it, as would have been the more proper course. And Firm most ungratefully said that my hand was lighter than poor Suan's, and every thing I did was better done, according to him, which was shameful on his part, and as untrue as any thing could be. However, we yielded to him in all things while he was so delicate; and it often made us poor weak things cry to be the masters of a tall strong man.
Firm Gundry received that shot in May, about ten days before the twelvemonth was completed from my father's death. The brightness of summer and beauty of autumn went by without his feeling them, and while his system was working hard to fortify itself by walling up, as the learned man had called it. There had been some difficulties in this process, caused partly, perhaps, by our too lavish supply of the raw material; and before Firm's gap in his “sternum” was stopped, the mountains were coming down upon us, as we always used to say when the snow-line stooped. In some seasons this is a sharp time of hurry, broken with storms, and capricious, while men have to slur in the driving weather tasks that should have been matured long since. But in other years the long descent into the depth of winter is taken not with a jump like that, but gently and softly and windingly, with a great many glimpses back at the summer, and a good deal of leaning on the arm of the sun.
And so it was this time. The autumn and the winter for a fortnight stood looking quietly at each other. They had quite agreed to share the hours, to suit the arrangements of the sun. The nights were starry and fresh and brisk, without any touch of tartness; and the days were sunny and soft and gentle, without any sense of languor. It was a lovely scene--blue shadows gliding among golden light.
The Sawyer came forth, and cried, “What a shame! This makes me feel quite young again. And yet I have done not a stroke of work. No excuse; make no excuse. I can do that pretty well for myself. Praise God for all His mercies. I might do worse, perhaps, than have a pipe.”
Then Firm came out to surprise him, and to please us all with the sight of himself. He steadied his steps with one great white hand upon his grandfather's Sunday staff, and his clear blue eyes were trembling with a sense of gratitude and a fear of tears. And I stepped behind a red strawberry-tree, for my sense of respect for him almost made me sob.
Then Jowler thought it high time to appear upon the scene, and convince us that he was not a dead dog yet. He had known tribulation, as his master had, and had found it a difficult thing to keep from the shadowy hunting ground of dogs who have lived a conscientious life. I had wondered at first what his reason could have been for not coming forward, according to his custom, to meet that troop of robbers. But his reason, alas! was too cogent to himself, though nobody else in that dreadful time could pay any attention to him. The Rovers, well knowing poor Jowler's repute, and declining the fair mode of testing it, had sent in advance a very crafty scout, a half-bred Indian, who knew as much about dogs as they could ever hope to know about themselves. This rogue approached faithful Jowler--so we were told long afterward--not in an upright way, but as if he had been a brother quadruped. And he took advantage of the dog's unfeigned surprise and interest to accost him with a piece of kidney containing a powerful poison. According to all sound analogy, this should have stopped the dear fellow's earthly tracks; but his spirit was such that he simply went away to nurse himself up in retirement. Neither man nor dog can tell what agonies he suffered; and doubtless his tortures of mind about duty unperformed were the worst of all. These things are out of human knowledge in its present unsympathetic state. Enough that poor Jowler came home at last, with his ribs all up and his tail very low.
Like friends who have come together again, almost from the jaws of death, we sat in the sunny noon, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The trees above us looked proud and cheerful, laying aside the mere frippery of leaves with a good grace and contented arms, and a surety of having quite enough next spring. Much of the fruity wealth of autumn still was clustering in our sight, heavily fetching the arched bough down to lessen the fall, when fall they must. And against the golden leaves of maple behind the unpretending roof a special wreath of blue shone like a climbing Ipomaea. But coming to examine this, one found it to be nothing more nor less than the smoke of the kitchen chimney, busy with a quiet roasting job.
This shows how clear the air was; but a thousand times as much could never tell how clear our spirits were. Nobody made any “demonstration,” or cut any frolicsome capers, or even said any thing exuberant. The steadfast brooding breed of England, which despises antics, was present in us all, and strengthened by a soil whose native growth is peril, chance, and marvel. And so we nodded at one another, and I ran over and courtesied to Uncle Sam, and he took me to him.
“You have been a dear good child,” he said, as he rose, and looked over my head at Firm. “My own granddarter, if such there had been, could not have done more to comfort me, nor half so much, for aught I know. There is no picking and choosing among the females, as God gives them. But he has given you for a blessing and saving to my old age, my dearie.”
“Oh, Uncle Sam, now the nugget!” I cried, desiring like a child to escape deep feeling, and fearing any strong words from Firm. “You have promised me ever so long that I should be the first to show Firm the nugget.”
“And so you shall, my dear, and Firm shall see it before he is an hour older, and Jowler shall come down to show us where it is.”
Firm, who had little faith in the nugget, but took it for a dream of mine, and had proved conclusively from his pillow that it could not exist in earnest, now with a gentle, satirical smile declared his anxiety to see it; and I led him along by his better arm, faster, perhaps, than he ought to have walked.
In a very few minutes we were at the place, and I ran eagerly to point it; but behold, where the nugget had been, there was nothing except the white bed of the river! The blue water flowed very softly on its way, without a gleam of gold to corrupt it.
“Oh, nobody will ever believe me again!” I exclaimed, in the saddest of sad dismay. “I dreamed about it first, but it never can have been a dream throughout. You know that I told you about it, Uncle Sam, even when you were very busy, and that shows that it never could have been a dream.”
“You told me about it, I remember now,” Mr. Gundry answered, dryly; “but it does not follow that there was such a thing. My dear, you may have imagined it; because it was the proper time for it to come, when my good friends had no money to lend. Your heart was so good that it got into your brain, and you must not be vexed, my dear child; it has done you good to dream of it.”
“I said so all along,” Firm observed. “Miss Rema felt that it ought to be, and so she believed that it must be, there. She is always so warm and trustful.”
“Is that all you are good for?” I cried, with no gratitude for his compliment. “As sure as I stand here, I saw a great bowlder of gold, and so did Jowler, and I gave you the piece that he brought up. Did you take them all in a dream, Uncle Sam? Come, can you get over that?”
I assure you that for the moment I knew not whether I stood upon my feet or head, until I perceived an extraordinary grin on the Sawyer's ample countenance; but Firm was not in the secret yet, for he gazed at me with compassion, and Uncle Sam looked at us both as if he were balancing our abilities.
“Send your dog in, missy,” at last he said. “He is more your dog than mine, I believe, and he obeys you like a Christian. Let him go and find it if he can.”
At a sign from me, the great dog dashed in, and scratched with all four feet at once, and made the valley echo with the ring of mighty barkings; and in less than two minutes there shone the nugget, as yellow and as big as ever.
“Ha! ha! I never saw a finer thing,” shouted Uncle Sam, like a school-boy. “I were too many for you, missy dear; but the old dog wollops the whole of us. I just shot a barrow-load of gravel on your nugget, to keep it all snug till Firm should come round; and if the boy had never come round, there the gold might have waited the will of the Almighty. It is a big spot, anyhow.”
It certainly was not a little spot, though they all seemed to make so light of it--which vexed me, because I had found it, and was as proud as if I had made it. Not by any means that the Sawyer was half as careless as he seemed to be; he put on much of this for my sake, having very lofty principles, especially concerning the duty of the young. Young people were never to have small ideas, so far as he could help it, particularly upon such matters as Mammon, or the world, or fashion; and not so very seldom he was obliged to catch himself up in his talking, when he chanced to be going on and forgetting that I, who required a higher vein of thought for my youth, was taking his words downright; and I think that all this had a great deal to do with his treating all that gold in such an exemplary manner; for if it had really mattered nothing, what made him go in the dark and shoot a great barrow-load of gravel over it?
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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15
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BROUGHT TO BANK
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The sanity of a man is mainly tested among his neighbors and kindred by the amount of consideration which he has consistently given to cash. If money has been the chief object of his life, and he for its sake has spared nobody, no sooner is he known to be successful than admiration overpowers all the ill-will he has caused. He is shrewd, sagacious, long-headed, and great; he has earned his success, and few men grudge, while many seek to get a slice of it; but he, as a general rule, declines any premature distribution, and for this custody of his wealth he is admired all the more by those who have no hope of sharing it.
As soon as ever it was known that Uncle Sam had lodged at his banker's a tremendous lump of gold, which rumor declared to be worth at least a hundred thousand dollars, friends from every side poured in, all in hot haste, to lend him their last farthing. The Sawyer was pleased with their kindness, but thought that his second-best whiskey met the merits of the case. And he was more particular than usual with his words; for, according to an old saying of the diggers, a big nugget always has children, and, being too heavy to go very far, it is likely to keep all its little ones at home. Many people, therefore, were longing to seek for the frogs of this great toad; for so in their slang the miners called them, with a love of preternatural history. But Mr. Gundry allowed no search for the frogs, or even the tadpoles, of his patriarchal nugget. And much as he hated the idea of sowing the seeds of avarice in any one, he showed himself most consistent now in avoiding that imputation; for not only did he refuse to show the bed of his great treasure, after he had secured it, but he fenced the whole of it in, and tarred the fence, and put loopholes in it; and then he established Jowler where he could neither be shot nor poisoned, and kept a man with a double-barreled rifle in the ruin of the mill, handy to shoot, but not easy to be shot; and this was a resolute man, being Martin himself, who had now no business. Of course Martin grumbled; but the worse his temper was, the better for his duty, as seems to be the case with a great many men; and if any one had come to console him in his grumbling, never would he have gone away again.
It would have been reckless of me to pretend to say what any body ought to do; from the first to the last I left every thing to those who knew so much better; at the same time I felt that it might have done no harm if I had been more consulted, though I never dreamed of saying so, because the great gold had been found by me, and although I cared for it scarcely more than for the tag of a boot-lace, nobody seemed to me able to enter into it quite as I did; and as soon as Firm's danger and pain grew less, I began to get rather impatient, but Uncle Sam was not to be hurried.
Before ever he hoisted that rock of gold, he had made up his mind for me to be there, and he even put the business off, because I would not come one night, for I had a superstitious fear on account of its being my father's birthday. Uncle Sam had forgotten the date, and begged my pardon for proposing it; but he said that we must not put it off later than the following night, because the moonlight would be failing, and we durst not have any kind of lamp, and before the next moon the hard weather might begin. All this was before the liberal offers of his friends, of which I have spoken first, although they happened to come after it.
While the Sawyer had been keeping the treasure perdu, to abide the issue of his grandson's illness, he had taken good care both to watch it and to form some opinion of its shape and size; for, knowing the pile which I had described, he could not help finding it easily enough; and indeed the great fear was that others might find it, and come in great force to rob him; but nothing of that sort had happened, partly because he held his tongue rigidly, and partly, perhaps, because of the simple precaution which he had taken.
Now, however, it was needful to impart the secret to one man at least; for Firm, though recovering, was still so weak that it might have killed him to go into the water, or even to exert himself at all; and strong as Uncle Sam was, he knew that even with hoisting-tackle, he alone could never bring that piece of bullion to bank; so, after much consideration, he resolved to tell Martin of the mill, as being the most trusty man about the place, as well as the most surly; but he did not tell him until every thing was ready, and then he took him straightway to the place.
Here, in the moonlight, we stood waiting, Firm and myself and Suan Isco, who had more dread than love of gold, and might be useful to keep watch, or even to lend a hand, for she was as strong as an ordinary man. The night was sultry, and the fire-flies (though dull in the radiance of the moon) darted, like soft little shooting-stars, across the still face of shadow, and the flood of the light of the moon was at its height, submerging every thing.
While we were whispering and keeping in the shade for fear of attracting any wanderer's notice, we saw the broad figure of the Sawyer rising from a hollow of the bank, and behind him came Martin the foreman, and we soon saw that due preparation had been made, for they took from under some drift-wood (which had prevented us from observing it) a small movable crane, and fixed it on a platform of planks which they set up in the river-bed.
“Palefaces eat gold,” Suan Isco said, reflectively, and as if to satisfy herself. “Dem eat, drink, die gold; dem pull gold out of one other's ears. Welly hope Mellican mans get enough gold now.”
“Don't be sarcastic, now, Suan,” I answered; “as if it were possible to have enough!”
“For my part,” said Firm, who had been unusually silent all the evening, “I wish it had never been found at all. As sure as I stand here, mischief will come of it. It will break up our household. I hope it will turn out a lump of quartz, gilt on the face, as those big nuggets do, ninety-nine out of a hundred. I have had no faith in it all along.”
“Because I found it, Mr. Firm, I suppose,” I answered, rather pettishly, for I never had liked Firm's incessant bitterness about my nugget. “Perhaps if you had found it, Mr. Firm, you would have had great faith in it.”
“Can't say, can't say,” was all Firm's reply; and he fell into the silent vein again.
“Heave-ho! heave-ho! there, you sons of cooks!” cried the Sawyer, who was splashing for his life in the water. “I've tackled 'un now. Just tighten up the belt, to see if he biteth centre-like. You can't lift 'un! Lord bless 'ee, not you. It 'll take all I know to do that, I guess; and Firm ain't to lay no hand to it. Don't you be in such a doggoned hurry. Hold hard, can't you?”
For Suan and Martin were hauling for their lives, and even I caught hold of a rope-end, but had no idea what to do with it, when the Sawyer swung himself up to bank, and in half a minute all was orderly. He showed us exactly where to throw our weight, and he used his own to such good effect that, after some creaking and groaning, the long horn of the crane rose steadily, and a mass of dripping sparkles shone in the moonlight over the water.
“Hurrah! what a whale! How the tough ash bends!” cried Uncle Sam, panting like a boy, and doing nearly all the work himself. “Martin, lay your chest to it. We'll grass him in two seconds. Californy never saw a sight like this, I reckon.”
There was plenty of room for us all to stand round the monster and admire it. In shape it was just like a fat toad, squatting with his shoulders up and panting. Even a rough resemblance to the head and the haunches might be discovered, and a few spots of quartz shone here and there on the glistening and bossy surface. Some of us began to feel and handle it with vast admiration; but Firm, with his heavy boots, made a vicious kick at it, and a few bright scales, like sparks, flew off.
“Why, what ails the lad?” cried the Sawyer, in some wrath; “what harm hath the stone ever done to him? To my mind, this here lump is a proof of the whole creation of the world, and who hath lived long enough to gainsay? Here this lump hath lain, without changing color, since creation's day; here it is, as big and heavy as when the Lord laid hand to it. What good to argue agin such facts? Supposin' the world come out o' nothing, with nobody to fetch it, or to say a word of orders, how ever could it 'a managed to get a lump of gold like this in it? They clever fellers is too clever. Let 'em put all their heads together, and turn out a nugget, and I'll believe them.”
Uncle Sam's reasoning was too deep for any but himself to follow. He was not long in perceiving this, though we were content to admire his words without asking him to explain them; so he only said, “Well, well,” and began to try with both hands if he could heft this lump. He stirred it, and moved it, and raised it a little, as the glisten of the light upon its roundings showed; but lift it fairly from the ground he could not, however he might bow his sturdy legs and bend his mighty back to it; and, strange to say, he was pleased for once to acknowledge his own discomfiture.
“Five hundred and a half I used to lift to the height of my knee-cap easily; I may 'a fallen off now a hundred-weight with years, and strings in my back, and rheumatics; but this here little toad is a clear hundredweight out and beyond my heftage. If there's a pound here, there's not an ounce under six hundred-weight, I'll lay a thousand dollars. Miss Rema, give a name to him. All the thundering nuggets has thundering names.”
“Then this shall be called 'Uncle Sam,'” I answered, “because he is the largest and the best of all.”
“It shall stand, miss,” cried Martin, who was in great spirits, and seemed to have bettered himself forever. “You could not have given it a finer name, miss, if you had considered for a century. Uncle Sam is the name of our glorious race, from the kindness of our natur'. Every body's uncle we are now, in vartue of superior knowledge, and freedom, and giving of general advice, and stickin' to all the world, or all the good of it. Darned if old Sam aren't the front of creation!”
“Well, well,” said the Sawyer, “let us call it 'Uncle Sam,' if the dear young lady likes it; it would be bad luck to change the name; but, for all that, we must look uncommon sharp, or some of our glorious race will come and steal it afore we unbutton our eyes.”
“Pooh!” cried Martin; but he knew very well that his master's words were common-sense; and we left him on guard with a double-barreled gun, and Jowler to keep watch with him. And the next day he told us that he had spent the night in such a frame of mind from continual thought that when our pet cow came to drink at daybreak, it was but the blowing of her breath that saved her from taking a bullet between her soft tame eyes.
Now it could not in any kind of way hold good that such things should continue; and the Sawyer, though loath to lose sight of the nugget, perceived that he must not sacrifice all the morals of the neighborhood to it, and he barely had time to dispatch it on its road at the bottom of a load of lumber, with Martin to drive, and Jowler to sit up, and Firm to ride behind, when a troop of mixed robbers came riding across, with a four-wheel cart and two sturdy mules--enough to drag off every thing. They had clearly heard of the golden toad, and desired to know more of him; but Uncle Sam, with his usual blandness, met these men at the gate of his yard, and upon the top rail, to ease his arm, he rested a rifle of heavy metal, with seven revolving chambers. The robbers found out that they had lost their way, and Mr. Gundry answered that so they had, and the sooner they found it in another direction, the better it would be for them. They thought that he had all his men inside, and they were mighty civil, though we had only two negroes to help us, and Suan Isco, with a great gun cocked. But their curiosity was such that they could not help asking about the gold; and, sooner than shoot them, Uncle Sam replied that, upon his honor, the nugget was gone. And the fame of his word was so well known that these fellows (none of whom could tell the truth, even at confession) believed him on the spot, and begged his pardon for trespassing on his premises. They hoped that he would not say a word to the Vigilance Committee, who hanged a poor fellow for losing his road; and he told them that if they made off at once, nobody should pursue them; and so they rode off very happily.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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16
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FIRM AND INFIRM
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Strange as it may appear, our quiet little home was not yet disturbed by that great discovery of gold. The Sawyer went up to the summit of esteem in public opinion; but to himself and to us he was the same as ever. He worked with his own hard hands and busy head just as he used to do; for although the mill was still in ruins, there was plenty of the finer work to do, which always required hand-labor. And at night he would sit at the end of the table furthest from the fire-place, with his spectacles on, and his red cheeks glowing, while he designed the future mill, which was to be built in the spring, and transcend every mill ever heard, thought, or dreamed of.
We all looked forward to a quiet winter, snug with warmth and cheer in-doors, and bright outside with sparkling trees, brisk air, and frosty appetite, when a foolish idea arose which spoiled the comfort at least of two of us. Ephraim Gundry found out, or fancied, that he was entirely filled with love of a very young maid, who never dreamed of such things, and hated even to hear of them; and the maid, unluckily, was myself.
During the time of his ailment I had been with him continually, being only too glad to assuage his pain, or turn his thoughts away from it. I partly suspected that he had incurred his bitter wound for my sake; though I never imputed his zeal to more than a young man's natural wrath at an outrage. But now he left me no longer in doubt, and made me most uncomfortable. Perhaps I was hard upon him, and afterward I often thought so, for he was very kind and gentle; but I was an orphan child, and had no one to advise me in such matters. I believe that he should have considered this, and allowed me to grow a little older; but perhaps he himself was too young as yet and too bashful to know how to manage things. It was the very evening after his return from Sacramento, and the beauty of the weather still abode in the soft warm depth around us. In every tint of rock and tree and playful glass of river a quiet clearness seemed to lie, and a rich content of color. The grandeur of the world was such that one could only rest among it, seeking neither voice nor thought.
Therefore I was more surprised than pleased to hear my name ring loudly through the echoing hollows, and then to see the bushes shaken, and an eager form leap out. I did not answer a word, but sat with a wreath of white bouvardia and small adiantum round my head, which I had plaited anyhow.
“What a lovely dear you are!” cried Firm, and then he seemed frightened at his own words.
“I had no idea that you would have finished your dinner so soon as this, Mr. Firm.”
“And you did not want me. You are vexed to see me. Tell the truth, Miss Rema.”
“I always tell the truth,” I answered; “and I did not want to be disturbed just now. I have so many things to think of.”
“And not me among them. Oh no, of course you never think of me, Erema.”
“It is very unkind of you to say that,” I answered, looking clearly at him, as a child looks at a man. “And it is not true, I assure you, Firm. Whenever I have thought of dear Uncle Sam, I very often go on to think of you, because he is so fond of you.”
“But not for my own sake, Erema; you never think of me for my own sake.”
“But yes, I do, I assure you, Mr. Firm; I do greatly. There is scarcely a day that I do not remember how hungry you are, and I think of you.”
“Tush!” replied Firm, with a lofty gaze. “Even for a moment that does not in any way express my meaning. My mind is very much above all eating when it dwells upon you, Erema. I have always been fond of you, Erema.”
“You have always been good to me, Firm,” I said, as I managed to get a great branch between us. “After your grandfather, and Suan Isco, and Jowler, I think that I like you best of almost any body left to me. And you know that I never forget your slippers.”
“Erema, you drive me almost wild by never understanding me. Now will you just listen to a little common-sense? You know that I am not romantic.”
“Yes, Firm; yes, I know that you never did any thing wrong in any way.”
“You would like me better if I did. What an extraordinary thing it is! Oh, Erema, I beg your pardon.”
He had seen in a moment, as men seem to do, when they study the much quicker face of a girl, that his words had keenly wounded me--that I had applied them to my father, of whom I was always thinking, though I scarcely ever spoke of him. But I knew that Firm had meant no harm, and I gave him my hand, though I could not speak.
“My darling,” he said, “you are very dear to me--dearer than all the world besides. I will not worry you any more. Only say that you do not hate me.”
“How could I? How could any body? Now let us go in and attend to Uncle Sam. He thinks of every body before himself.”
“And I think of every body after myself. Is that what you mean, Erema?”
“To be sure! if you like. You may put any meaning on my words that you think proper. I am accustomed to things of that sort, and I pay no attention whatever, when I am perfectly certain that I am right.”
“I see,” replied Firm, applying one finger to the side of his nose in deep contemplation, which, of all his manners, annoyed me most. “I see how it is; Miss Rema is always perfectly certain that she is right, and the whole of the rest of the world quite wrong. Well, after all, there is nothing like holding a first-rate opinion of one's self.”
“You are not what I thought of you,” I cried, being vexed beyond bearance by such words, and feeling their gross injustice. “If you wish to say any thing more, please to leave it until you recover your temper. I am not quite accustomed to rudeness.”
With these words, I drew away and walked off, partly in earnest and partly in joke, not wishing to hear another word; and when I looked back, being well out of sight, there he sat still, with his head on his hands, and my heart had a little ache for him.
However, I determined to say no more, and to be extremely careful. I could not in justice blame Ephraim Gundry for looking at me very often. But I took good care not to look at him again unless he said something that made me laugh, and then I could scarcely help it. He was sharp enough very soon to find out this; and then he did a thing which was most unfair, as I found out long afterward. He bought an American jest-book, full of ideas wholly new to me, and these he committed to heart, and brought them out as his own productions. If I had only known it, I must have been exceedingly sorry for him. But Uncle Sam used to laugh and rub his hands, perhaps for old acquaintance' sake; and when Uncle Sam laughed, there was nobody near who could help laughing with him. And so I began to think Firm the most witty and pleasant of men, though I tried to look away.
But perhaps the most careful and delicate of things was to see how Uncle Sam went on. I could not understand him at all just then, and thought him quite changed from my old Uncle Sam; but afterward, when I came to know, his behavior was as clear and shallow as the water of his own river. He had very strange ideas about what he generally called “the female kind.” According to his ideas (and perhaps they were not so unusual among mankind, especially settlers), all “females” were of a good but weak and consistently inconsistent sort. The surest way to make them do whatever their betters wanted, was to make them think that it was not wanted, but was hedged with obstacles beyond their power to overcome, and so to provoke and tantalize them to set their hearts upon doing it. In accordance with this idea (than which there can be none more mistaken), he took the greatest pains to keep me from having a word to say to Firm; and even went so far as to hint, with winks and nods of pleasantry, that his grandson's heart was set upon the pretty Miss Sylvester, the daughter of a man who owned a herd of pigs, much too near our saw-mills, and herself a young woman of outrageous dress, and in a larger light contemptible. But when Mr. Gundry, without any words, conveyed this piece of news to me, I immediately felt quite a liking for gaudy but harmless Pennsylvania--for so her parents had named her when she was too young to help it; and I heartily hoped that she might suit Firm, which she seemed all the more likely to do as his conduct could not be called noble. Upon that point, however, I said not a word, leaving him purely to judge for himself, and feeling it a great relief that now he could not say any thing more to me. I was glad that his taste was so easily pleased, and I told Suan Isco how glad I was.
This I had better have left unsaid, for it led to a great explosion, and drove me away from the place altogether before the new mill was finished, and before I should otherwise have gone from friends who were so good to me; not that I could have staid there much longer, even if this had never come to pass; for week by week and month by month I was growing more uneasy: uneasy not at my obligations or dependence upon mere friends (for they managed that so kindly that I seemed to confer the favor), but from my own sense of lagging far behind my duty.
For now the bright air, and the wholesome food, and the pleasure of goodness around me, were making me grow, without knowledge or notice, into a tall and not altogether to be overlooked young woman. I was exceedingly shy about this, and blushed if any one spoke of it; but yet in my heart I felt it was so; and how could I help it? And when people said, as rough people will, and even Uncle Sam sometimes, “Handsome is as handsome does,” or “Beauty is only skin-deep,” and so on, I made it my duty not to be put out, but to bear it in mind and be thankful. And though I had no idea of any such influence at the moment, I hope that the grandeur of nature around and the lofty style of every thing may have saved me from dwelling too much on myself, as Pennsylvania Sylvester did.
Now the more I felt my grown-up age and health and buoyant vigor, the surer I knew that the time was come for me to do some good with them; not to benefit the world in general, in a large and scattery way (as many young people set out to do, and never get any further), but to right the wrong of my own house, and bring home justice to my own heart. This may be thought a partial and paltry object to set out with; and it is not for me to say otherwise. At the time, it occurred to me in no other light except as my due business, and I never took any large view at all. But even now I do believe (though not yet in pickle of wisdom) that if every body, in its own little space and among its own little movements, will only do and take nothing without pure taste of the salt of justice, no reeking atrocity of national crimes could ever taint the heaven.
Such questions, however, become me not. I have only to deal with very little things, sometimes too slim to handle well, and too hazy to be woven; and if they seem below my sense and dignity to treat of, I can only say that they seemed very big at the time when I had to encounter them.
For instance, what could be more important, in a little world of life, than for Uncle Sam to be put out, and dare even to think ill of me? Yet this he did; and it shows how shallow are all those theories of the other sex which men are so pleased to indulge in. Scarcely any thing could be more ridiculous from first to last, when calmly and truly considered, than the firm belief which no power of reason could for the time root out of him.
Uncle Sam, the dearest of all mankind to me, and the very kindest, was positively low-enough to believe, in his sad opinion of the female race, that my young head was turned because of the wealth to which I had no claim, except through his own justice. He had insisted at first that the whole of that great nugget belonged to me by right of sole discovery. I asked him whether, if any stranger had found it, it would have been considered his, and whether he would have allowed a “greaser,” upon finding, to make off with it. At the thought of this, Mr. Gundry gave a little grunt, and could not go so far as to maintain that view of it. But he said that my reasoning did not fit; that I was not a greaser, but a settled inhabitant of the place, and entitled to all a settler's rights; that the bed of the river would have been his grave but for the risk of my life, and therefore whatever I found in the bed of the river belonged to me, and me only.
In argument he was so much stronger than I could ever attempt to be that I gave it up, and could only say that if he argued forever it could never make any difference. He did not argue forever, but only grew obstinate and unpleasant, so that I yielded at last to own the half share of the bullion.
Very well. Every body would have thought, who has not studied the nature of men or been dragged through it heavily, that now there could be no more trouble between two people entirely trusting each other, and only anxious that the other should have the best of it. Yet, instead of that being the case, the mischief, the myriad mischief, of money set in, until I heartily wished sometimes that my miserable self was down in the hole which the pelf had left behind it.
For what did Uncle Sam take into his head (which was full of generosity and large ideas, so loosely packed that little ones grew between them, especially about womankind)--what else did he really seem to think, with the downright stubbornness of all his thoughts, but that I, his poor debtor and pensioner and penniless dependent, was so set up and elated by this sudden access of fortune that henceforth none of the sawing race was high enough for me to think of? It took me a long time to believe that so fair and just a man ever could set such interpretation upon me. And when it became too plain that he did so, truly I know not whether grief or anger was uppermost in my troubled heart.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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17
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HARD AND SOFT
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Before very long it was manifest enough that Mr. Gundry looked down upon Miss Sylvester with a large contempt. But while this raised my opinion of his judgment, it almost deprived me of a great relief--the relief of supposing that he wished his grandson to marry this Pennsylvania. For although her father, with his pigs and cattle, and a low sort of hostelry which he kept, could settle “a good pile of dollars” upon her, and had kept her at the “learnedest ladies' college” even in San Francisco till he himself trembled at her erudition, still it was scarcely to be believed that a man of the Sawyer's strong common-sense and disregard of finery would ever accept for his grandchild a girl made of affectation, vulgarity, and conceit. And one day, quite in the early spring, he was so much vexed with the fine lady's airs that he left no doubt about his meaning.
Miss Sylvester was very proud of the figure she made on horseback; and having been brought up, perhaps as a child, to ride after pigs and so on, she must have had fine opportunities of acquiring a graceful style of horsemanship. And now she dashed through thick and thin in a most commanding manner, caring no more for a snow-drift than ladies do for a scraping of the road. No one with the least observation could doubt that this young woman was extremely anxious to attract Firm Gundry's notice; and therefore, on the day above spoken of, once more she rode over, with her poor father in waiting upon her as usual.
Now I know very well how many faults I have, and to deny them has never been my practice; but this is the honest and earnest truth, that no smallness of mind, or narrowness of feeling, or want of large or fine sentiments made me bolt my door when that girl was in the house. I simply refused, after seeing her once, to have any thing more to say to her; by no means because of my birth and breeding (which are things that can be most easily waived when the difference is acknowledged), nor yet on account of my being brought up in the company of ladies, nor even by reason of any dislike which her bold brown eyes put into me. My cause was sufficient and just and wise. I felt myself here as a very young girl, in safe and pure and honest hands, yet thrown on my own discretion, without any feminine guidance whatever. And I had learned enough from the wise French sisters to know at a glance that Miss Sylvester was not a young woman who would do me good.
Even Uncle Sam, who was full of thought and delicate care about me, so far as a man can understand, and so far as his simple shrewdness went, in spite of all his hospitable ways and open universal welcome, though he said not a word (as on such a point he was quite right in doing)--even he, as I knew by his manner, was quite content with my decision. But Firm, being young and in many ways stupid, made a little grievance of it. And, of course, Miss Sylvester made a great one.
“Oh, I do declare, I am going away,” through my open window I heard her exclaim in her sweetly affected tone, at the end of that long visit, “without even having the honor of saying a kind word to your young visitor. Do not wait for me, papa; I must pay my devoirs. Such a distinguished and travelled person can hardly be afflicted with mauvaise honte. Why does she not rush to embrace me? All the French people do; and she is so French! Let me see her, for the sake of my accent.”
“We don't want no French here, ma'am,” replied Uncle Sam, as Sylvester rode off, “and the young lady wants no Doctor Hunt. Her health is as good as your own, and you never catch no French actions from her. If she wanted to see you, she would 'a come down.”
“Oh, now, this is too barbarous! Colonel Gundry, you are the most tyrannous man; in your own dominions an autocrat. Every body says so, but I never would believe it. Oh, don't let me go away with that impression. And you do look so good-natured!”
“And so I mean to look, Miss Penny, until you are out of sight.”
The voice of the Sawyer was more dry than that of his oldest and rustiest saw. The fashionable and highly finished girl had no idea what to make of him; but gave her young horse a sharp cut, to show her figure as she reined him; and then galloping off, she kissed her tan gauntlet with crimson net-work down it, and left Uncle Sam to revolve his rudeness, with the dash of the wet road scattered in the air.
“I wouldn't 'a spoke to her so course,” he said to Firm, who now returned from opening the gate and delivering his farewell, “if she wasn't herself so extra particular, gild me, and sky-blue my mouldings fine. How my mother would 'a stared at the sight of such a gal! Keep free of her, my lad, keep free of her. But no harm to put her on, to keep our missy alive and awake, my boy.”
Immediately I withdrew from ear-shot, more deeply mortified than I can tell, and perhaps doing Firm an injustice by not waiting for his answer. I knew not then how lightly men will speak of such delicate subjects; and it set me more against all thoughts of Firm than a month's reflection could have done. When I came to know more of the world, I saw that I had been very foolish. At the time, however, I was firmly set in a strong resolve to do that which alone seemed right, or even possible--to quit with all speed a place which could no longer be suited for me.
For several days I feared to say a single word about it, while equally I condemned myself for having so little courage. But it was not as if there were any body to help me, or tell me what to do; sometimes I was bold with a surety of right, and then again I shook with the fear of being wrong. Because, through the whole of it, I felt how wonderfully well I had been treated, and what a great debt I owed of kindness; and it seemed to be only a nasty little pride which made me so particular. And being so unable to settle for myself, I waited for something to settle it.
Something came, in a way which I had not by any means expected. I had told Suan Isco how glad I was that Firm had fixed his liking steadily upon Miss Sylvester. If any woman on earth could be trusted not to say a thing again, that one was this good Indian. Not only because of her provident habits, but also in right of the difficulty which encompassed her in our language. But she managed to get over both of these, and to let Mr. Ephraim know, as cleverly as if she had lived in drawing-rooms, whatever I had said about him. She did it for the best; but it put him in a rage, which he came at once to have out with me.
“And so, Miss Erema,” he said, throwing down his hat upon the table of the little parlor, where I sat with an old book of Norman ballads, “I have your best wishes, then, have I, for a happy marriage with Miss Sylvester?”
I was greatly surprised at the tone of his voice, while the flush on his cheeks and the flash of his eyes, and even his quick heavy tread, showed plainly that his mind was a little out of balance. He deserved it, however, and I could not grieve.
“You have my best wishes,” I replied, demurely, “for any state of life to which you may be called. You could scarcely expect any less of me than that.”
“How kind you are! But do you really wish that I should marry old Sylvester's girl?”
Firm, as he asked this question, looked so bitterly reproachful (as if he were saying, “Do you wish to see me hanged?”) , while his eyes took a form which reminded me so of the Sawyer in a furious puzzle, that it was impossible for me to answer as lightly as I meant to do.
“No, I can not say, Firm, that I wish it at all; unless your heart is set on it--” “Don't you know, then, where my heart is set?” he asked me, in a deep voice, coming nearer, and taking the ballad-book from my hands. “Why will you feign not to know, Erema, who is the only one I can ever think of twice? Above me, I know, in every possible way--birth and education and mind and appearance, and now far above me in money as well. But what are all these things? Try to think if only you could like me. Liking gets over every thing, and without it nothing is any thing. Why do I like you so, Erema? Is it because of your birth, and teaching, and manners, and sweet looks, and all that, or even because of your troubles?”
“How can I tell, Firm--how can I tell? Perhaps it is just because of myself. And why do you do it at all, Firm?”
“Ah, why do I do it? How I wish I knew! Perhaps then I might cure it. To begin with, what is there, after all, so very wonderful about you?”
“Oh, nothing, I should hope. Most surely nothing. It would grieve me to be at all wonderful. That I leave for American ladies.”
“Now you don't understand me. I mean, of course, that you are wonderfully good and kind and clever; and your eyes, I am sure, and your lips and smile, and all your other features--there is nothing about them that can be called any thing else but wonderful.”
“Now, Firm, how exceedingly foolish you are! I did hope that you knew better.”
“Erema, I never shall know better. I never can swerve or change, if I live to be a hundred and fifty. You think me presumptuous, no doubt, from what you are brought up to. And you are so young that to seek to bind you, even if you loved me, would be an unmanly thing. But now you are old enough, and you know your own mind surely well enough, just to say whether you feel as if you could ever love me as I love you.”
He turned away, as if he felt that he had no right to press me so, and blamed himself for selfishness; and I liked him better for doing that than for any thing he had done before. Yet I knew that I ought to speak clearly, and though my voice was full of tears, I tried.
“Dear Firm,” I said, as I took his hand and strove to look at him steadily, “I like and admire you very much; and by-and-by--by-and-by, I might, that is, if you did not hurry me. Of all the obstacles you have mentioned, none is worth considering. I am nothing but a poor castaway, owing my life to Uncle Sam and you. But one thing there is which could never be got over, even if I felt as you feel toward me. Never can I think of little matters, or of turning my thoughts to--to any such things as you speak of, as long as a vile reproach and wicked imputation lies on me. And before even that, I have to think of my father, who gave his life for me. Firm, I have been here too long delaying, and wasting my time in trifles. I ought to have been in Europe long ago. If I am old enough for what you talk of, I am old enough to do my duty. If I am old enough for love, as it is called, I am old enough for hate. I have more to do with hate than love, I think.”
“Erema,” cried Firm, “what a puzzle you are! I never even dreamed that you could be so fierce. You are enough to frighten Uncle Sam himself.”
“If I frighten you, Firm, that is quite enough. You see now how vain it is to say another word.”
“I do not see any thing of the sort. Come back, and look at me quite calmly.”
Being frightened at the way in which I had spoken, and having passed the prime of it, I obeyed him in a moment, and came up gently and let him look at me to his liking. For little as I thought of such things till now, I seemed already to know more about them, or at least to wonder--which is the stir of the curtain of knowledge. I did not say any thing, but labored to think nothing and to look up with unconscious eyes. But Firm put me out altogether by his warmth, and made me flutter like a stupid little bird.
“My darling,” he said, smoothing back my hair with a kindness such as I could not resent, and quieting me with his clear blue eyes, “you are not fit for the stormy life to which your high spirit is devoting you. You have not the hardness and bitterness of mind, the cold self-possession and contempt of others, the power of dissembling and the iron will--in a word, the fundamental nastiness, without which you never could get through such a job. Why, you can not be contemptuous even to me!”
“I should hope not. I should earn your contempt, if I could.”
“There, you are ready to cry at the thought. Erema, do not mistake yourself. Remember that your father would never have wished it--would have given his life ten thousand times over to prevent it. Why did he bring you to this remote, inaccessible part of the world except to save you from further thought of evil? He knew that we listen to no rumors here, no social scandals, or malignant lies; but we value people as we find them. He meant this to be a haven for you; and so it shall be if you will only rest; and you shall be the queen of it. Instead of redressing his memory now, you would only distress his spirit. What does he care for the world's gossip now? But he does care for your happiness. I am not old enough to tell you things as I should like to tell them. I wish I could--how I wish I could! It would make all the difference to me.”
“It would make no difference, Firm, to me; because I should know it was selfishness. Not selfishness of yours, I mean, for you never could be selfish; but the vilest selfishness of mine, the same as starved my father. You can not see things as I see them, or else you would not talk so. When you know that a thing is right, you do it. Can you tell me otherwise? If you did, I should despise you.”
“If you put it so, I can say no more. You will leave us forever, Erema?”
“No, not forever. If the good God wills it, I will come back when my work is done. Forgive me, dear Firm, and forget me.”
“There is nothing to forgive, Erema; but a great deal I never can hope to forgot.”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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18
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OUT OF THE GOLDEN GATE
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Little things, or what we call little, always will come in among great ones, or at least among those which we call great. Before I passed the Golden Gate in the clipper ship Bridal Veil (so called from one of the Yosemite cascades) I found out what I had long wished to know--why Firm had a crooked nose. At least, it could hardly be called crooked if any body looked aright at it; but still it departed from the bold straight line which nature must have meant for it, every thing else about him being as straight as could be required. This subject had troubled me more than once, though of course it had nothing whatever to do with the point of view whence I regarded him.
Suan Isco could not tell me, neither could Martin of the mill; I certainly could not ask Firm himself, as the Sawyer told me to do when once I put the question, in despair, to him. But now, as we stood on the wharf exchanging farewells, perhaps forever, and tears of anguish were in my eyes, and my heart was both full and empty, ample and unexpected light was thrown on the curvature of Firm's nose.
For a beautiful girl, of about my own age, and very nicely dressed, came up and spoke to the Sawyer (who stood at my side), and then, with a blush, took his grandson's hand. Firm took off his hat to her very politely, but allowed her to see perhaps by his manner that he was particularly engaged just now; and the young lady, with a quick glance at me, walked off to rejoin her party. But a garrulous old negro servant, who seemed to be in attendance upon her, ran up and caught Firm by his coat, and peered up curiously at his face.
“How young massa's poor nose dis long time? How him feel, spose now again?” he inquired, with a deferential grin. “Young massa ebber able take a pinch of good snuff? He! he! missy berry heavy den? Missy no learn to dance de nose polka den?”
“What on earth does he mean?” I could not help asking, in spite of our sorrowful farewell, as the negro went on with sundry other jokes and cackles at his own facetiousness. And then Uncle Sam, to divert my thoughts, while I waited for signal to say good-by, told me how Firm got a slight twist to his nose.
Ephraim Gundry had been well taught, in all the common things a man should learn, at a good quiet school at Frisco, which distinguished itself from all other schools by not calling itself a college. And when he was leaving to begin home life, with as much put into him as he could manage--for his nature was not bookish--when he was just seventeen years old, and tall and straight and upright, but not set into great bodily strength, which could not yet be expected, a terrible fire broke out in a great block of houses newly occupied, over against the school-house front. Without waiting for master's leave or matron's, the boys, in the Californian style, jumped over the fencing and went to help. And they found a great crowd collected, and flames flaring out of the top of the house. At the top of the house, according to a stupid and therefore general practice, was the nursery, made of more nurses than children, as often happens with rich people. The nurses had run away for their lives, taking two of the children with them; but the third, a fine little girl of ten, had been left behind, and now ran to the window with red hot flames behind her. The window was open, and barbs of fire, like serpents' tongues, played over it.
“Jump, child, jump! for God's sake, jump!” cried half a hundred people, while the poor scared creature quivered on the ledge, and shrank from the frightful depth below. At last, stung by a scorching volley, she gathered her night-gown tight, and leaped, trusting to the many faces and many arms raised toward her. But though many gallant men were there, only one stood fast just where she fell, and that one was the youth, Firm Gundry. Upon him she fell, like a stone from heaven, and though he held up his arms in the smoky glare, she came down badly: badly, at least, for him, but, as her father said, providentially; for one of her soles, or heels, alighted on the bridge of Ephraim's young nose. He caught her on his chest, and forgetful of himself, he bore her to her friends triumphantly, unharmed, and almost smiling. But the symmetry of an important part of his face was spoiled forever.
When I heard of this noble affair, and thought of my own pusillanimous rendering--for verily I had been low enough, from rumors of Firm's pugnacity, to attribute these little defects of line to some fisticuffs with some miner--I looked at Firm's nose through the tears in my eyes, and had a great mind not to go away at all. For what is the noblest of all things in man--as I bitterly learned thereafter, and already had some guesses? Not the power of moving multitudes with eloquence or by orders; not the elevation of one tribe through the lowering of others, nor even the imaginary lift of all by sentiments as yet above them: there may be glory in all of these, but the greatness is not with them. It remains with those who behave like Firm, and get their noses broken.
However, I did not know those things at that time of life, though I thought it right for every man to be brave and good; and I could not help asking who the young lady was, as if that were part of the heroism. The Sawyer, who never was unready for a joke, of however ancient quality, gave a great wink at Firm (which I failed to understand), and asked him how much the young lady was worth. He expected that Firm would say, “Five hundred thousand dollars”--which was about her value, I believe--and Uncle Sam wanted me to hear it; not that he cared a single cent himself, but to let me know what Firm could do.
Firm, however, was not to be led into any trap of that sort. He knew me better than the old man did, and that nothing would stir me to jealousy, and he quite disappointed the Sawyer.
“I have never asked what she is worth,” he said, with a glance of contempt at money; “but she scarcely seems worth looking at, compared--compared with certain others.”
In the distance I saw the young lady again, attempting no attraction, but walking along quite harmlessly, with the talkative negro after her. It would have been below me to pursue the subject, and I waited for others to re-open it; but I heard no more about her until I had been for more than a week at sea, and was able again to feel interest. Then I heard that her name was Annie Banks, of the firm of Heniker, Banks, and Co., who owned the ship I sailed in.
But now it was nothing to me who she was, or how beautiful, or how wealthy, when I clung for the last time to Uncle Sam, and implored him not to forget me. Over and over again he promised to be full of thoughts of me, even when the new mill was started, which would be a most trying time. He bowed his tall white head into my sheveled hair, and blessed and kissed me, although I never deserved it, and a number of people were looking on. Then I laid my hand in Firm's, and he did not lift it to his lips, or sigh, but pressed it long and softly, and looked into my eyes without a word. And I knew that there would be none to love like them, wherever I might go.
But the last of all to say “good-by” was my beloved Jowler. He jumped into the boat after me (for we were obliged to have a boat, the ship having laden further down), and he put his fore-paws on my shoulders, and whined and drooped his under-jaw. And when he looked at me as he used, to know whether I was in fun or earnest, with more expression in his bright brown eyes than any human being has, I fell back under his weight and sobbed, and could not look at any one.
We had beautiful weather, and the view was glorious, as we passed the Golden Gate, the entrance to what will one day be the capital of the world, perhaps. For, as our captain said, all power and human energy and strength are always going westward, and when they come here they must stop, or else they would be going eastward again, which they never yet have done. His argument may have been right or wrong--and, indeed, it must have been one or the other--but who could think of such things now, with a grander thing than human power--human love fading away behind? I could not even bear to see the glorious mountains sinking, but ran below and cried for hours, until all was dark and calm.
The reason for my sailing by this particular ship, and, indeed, rather suddenly, was that an old friend and Cornish cousin of Mr. Gundry, who had spent some years in California, was now returning to England by the Bridal Veil. This was Major Hockin, an officer of the British army, now on half-pay, and getting on in years. His wife was going home with him; for their children were married and settled in England, all but one, now in San Francisco. And that one being well placed in the firm of Heniker, Banks, and Co., had obtained for his father and mother passage upon favorable terms, which was, as we say, “an object to them.”
For the Major, though admirably connected (as his kinship to Colonel Gundry showed), and having a baronet not far off (if the twists of the world were set aside), also having served his country, and received a furrow on the top of his head, which made him brush his hair up, nevertheless, or all the more for that, was as poor as a British officer must be without official sesame. How he managed to feed and teach a large and not clever family, and train them all to fight their way in a battle worse than any of his own, and make gentlemen and ladies of them, whatever they did or wherever they went, he only knew, and his faithful wife, and the Lord who helps brave poverty. Of such things he never spoke, unless his temper was aroused by luxury and self-indulgence and laziness.
But now he was a little better off, through having his children off his hands, and by means of a little property left him by a distant relative. He was on his way home to see to this; and a better man never returned to England, after always standing up for her.
Being a child in the ways of the world, and accustomed to large people, I could not make out Major Hockin at first, and thought him no more than a little man with many peculiarities. For he was not so tall as myself, until he put his high-heeled boots on, and he made such a stir about trifles at which Uncle Sam would have only grunted, that I took him to be nothing more than a fidgety old campaigner. He wore a black-rimmed double eyeglass with blue side-lights at his temples, and his hat, from the shape of his forehead, hung back; he had narrow white wiry whiskers, and a Roman nose, and most prominent chin, and keen gray eyes with gingery brows, which contracted, like sharp little gables over them, whenever any thing displeased him. Rosy cheeks, tight-drawn, close-shaven, and gleaming with friction of yellow soap, added vigor to the general expression of his face, which was firm and quick and straightforward. The weather being warm, and the tropics close at hand, Major Hockin was dressed in a fine suit of Nankin, spruce and trim, and beautifully made, setting off his spare and active figure, which, though he was sixty-two years of age, seemed always to be ready for a game of leap-frog.
We were three days out of the Golden Gate, and the hills of the coast ridge were faint and small, and the spires of the lower Nevada could only be caught when the hot haze lifted; and every body lay about in our ship where it seemed to afford the least smell and heat, and nobody for a moment dreamed--for we really all were dreaming--of any body with energy enough to be disturbed about any thing, when Major Hockin burst in upon us all (who were trying not to be red-hot in the feeble shade of poop awnings), leading by the hand an ancient woman, scarcely dressed with decency, and howling in a tone very sad to hear.
“This lady has been robbed!” cried the Major; “robbed, not fifteen feet below us. Robbed, ladies and gentlemen, of the most cherished treasures of her life, the portrait of her only son, the savings of a life of honest toil, her poor dead husband's tobacco-box, and a fine cut of Colorado cheese.”
“Ten pounds and a quarter, gospel true!” cried the poor woman, wringing her hands, and searching for any kind face among us.
“Go to the captain,” muttered one sleepy gentleman. “Go to the devil,” said another sleepy man: “what have we to do with it?”
“I will neither go to the captain,” replied the Major, very distinctly, “nor yet to the devil, as a fellow who is not a man has dared to suggest to me--” “All tied in my own pocket-handkerchief!” the poor old woman began to scream; “the one with the three-cornered spots upon 'un. Only two have I ever owned in all my life, and this was the very best of 'em. Oh dear! oh dear! that ever I should come to this exposing of my things!”
“Madam, you shall have justice done, as sure as my name is Hockin. Gentlemen and ladies, if you are not all asleep, how would you like to be treated so? Because the weather is a trifle warm, there you lie like a parcel of Mexicans. If any body picked your pockets, would you have life enough to roll over?”
“I don't think I should,” said a fat young Briton, with a very good-natured face; “but for a poor woman I can stand upright. Major Hockin, here is a guinea for her. Perhaps more of us will give a trifle.”
“Well done!” cried the Major; “but not so much as that. Let us first ascertain all the rights of the case. Perhaps half a crown apiece would reach it.”
Half a crown apiece would have gone beyond it, as we discovered afterward, for the old lady's handkerchief was in her box, lost under some more of her property; and the tide of sleepy charity taking this direction under such vehement impulse, several other steerage passengers lost their goods, but found themselves too late in doing so. But the Major was satisfied, and the rude man who had told him to go amiss, begged his pardon, and thus we sailed on slowly and peaceably.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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19
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INSIDE THE CHANNEL
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That little incident threw some light upon Major Hockin's character. It was not for himself alone that he was so particular, or, as many would call it, fidgety, to have every thing done properly; for if any thing came to his knowledge which he thought unfair to any one, it concerned him almost as much as if the wrong had been done to his own home self. Through this he had fallen into many troubles, for his impressions were not always accurate; but they taught him nothing, or rather, as his wife said, “the Major could not help it.” The leading journals of the various places in which Major Hockin sojourned had published his letters of grievances sometimes, in the absence of the chief editor, and had suffered in purse by doing so. But the Major always said, “Ventilate it, ventilate the subject, my dear Sir; bring public opinion to bear on it.” And Mrs. Hockin always said that it was her husband to whom belonged the whole credit of this new and spirited use of the fine word “ventilation.”
As betwixt this faithful pair, it is scarcely needful perhaps to say that the Major was the master. His sense of justice dictated that, as well as his general briskness. Though he was not at all like Mr. Gundry in undervaluing female mind, his larger experience and more frequent intercourse with our sex had taught him to do justice to us; and it was pleasant to hear him often defer to the judgment of ladies. But this he did more, perhaps, in theory than in practice; yet it made all the ladies declare to one another that he was a perfect gentleman. And so he was, though he had his faults; but his faults were such as we approve of.
But Mrs. Hockin had no fault in any way worth speaking of. And whatever she had was her husband's doing, through her desire to keep up with him. She was pretty, even now in her sixtieth year, and a great deal prettier because she never tried to look younger. Silver hair, and gentle eyes, and a forehead in which all the cares of eight children had scarcely imprinted a wrinkle, also a kind expression of interest in whatever was spoken of, with a quiet voice and smile, and a power of not saying too much at a time, combined to make this lady pleasant.
Without any fuss or declaration, she took me immediately under her care; and I doubt not that, after two years passed in the society of Suan Isco and the gentle Sawyer, she found many things in me to amend, which she did by example and without reproof. She shielded me also in the cleverest way from the curiosity of the saloon, which at first was very trying. For the Bridal Veil being a well-known ship both for swift passages and for equipment, almost every berth was taken, and when the weather was calm, quite a large assembly sat down to dinner. Among these, of course, were some ill-bred people, and my youth and reserve and self-consciousness, and so on, made my reluctant face the mark for many a long and searching gaze. My own wish had been not to dine thus in public; but hearing that my absence would only afford fresh grounds for curiosity, I took my seat between the Major and his wife, the former having pledged himself to the latter to leave every thing to her management. His temper was tried more than once to its utmost--which was not a very great distance--but he kept his word, and did not interfere; and I having had some experience with Firm, eschewed all perception of glances. And as for all words, Mrs. Hockin met them with an obtuse obliqueness; so that after a day or two it was settled that nothing could be done about “Miss Wood.”
It had been a very sore point to come to, and cost an unparalleled shed of pride, that I should be shorn of two-thirds of my name, and called “Miss Wood,” like almost anybody else. I refused to entertain such a very poor idea, and clung to the name which had always been mine--for my father would never depart from it--and I even burst into tears, which would, I suppose, be called “sentimental;” but still the stern fact stared me in the face--I must go as “Miss Wood,” or not go at all. Upon this Major Hockin had insisted; and even Colonel Gundry could not move him from his resolution.
Uncle Sam had done his utmost, as was said before, to stop me from wishing to go at all; but when he found my whole heart bent upon it, and even my soul imperiled by the sense of neglecting life's chief duty, his own stern sense of right came in and sided with my prayers to him. And so it was that he let me go, with pity for my youth and sex, but a knowledge that I was in good hands, and an inborn, perhaps “Puritanical” faith, that the Lord of all right would see to me.
The Major, on the other hand, had none of this. He differed from Uncle Sam as much as a trim-cut and highly cultured garden tree differs from a great spreading king of the woods. He was not without a strict sense of religion, especially when he had to march men to church; and he never even used a bad word, except when wicked facts compelled him. When properly let alone, and allowed to nurse his own opinions, he had a respectable idea that all things were certain to be ordered for the best; but nothing enraged him so much as to tell him that when things went against him, or even against his predictions.
It was lucky for me, then, that Major Hockin had taken a most adverse view of my case. He formed his opinions with the greatest haste, and with the greatest perseverance stuck to them; for he was the most generous of mankind, if generous means one quite full of his genus. And in my little case he had made up his mind that the whole of the facts were against me. “Fact” was his favorite word, and one which he always used with great effect, for nobody knows very well what it means, as it does not belong to our language. And so when he said that the facts were against me, who was there to answer that facts are not truth?
This fast-set conclusion of his was known to me not through himself, but through his wife. For I could not yet bring myself to speak of the things that lay close at my heart to him, though I knew that he must be aware of them. And he, like a gentleman, left me to begin. I could often see that he was ready and quite eager to give me the benefit of his opinion, which would only have turned me against him, and irritated him, perhaps, with me. And having no home in England, or, indeed, I might say, any where, I was to live with the Major and his wife, supposing that they could arrange it so, until I should discover relatives.
We had a long and stormy voyage, although we set sail so fairly; and I thought that we never should round Cape Horn in the teeth of the furious northeast winds; and after that we lay becalmed, I have no idea in what latitude, though the passengers now talked quite like seamen, at least till the sea got up again. However, at last we made the English Channel, in the dreary days of November, and after more peril there than any where else, we were safely docked at Southampton. Here the Major was met by two dutiful daughters, bringing their husbands and children, and I saw more of family life (at a distance) than had fallen to my lot to observe before; and although there were many little jars and brawls and cuts at one another, I was sadly inclined to wish sometimes for some brothers and sisters to quarrel with.
But having none to quarrel with, and none to love, except good Mrs. Hockin, who went away by train immediately, I spent such a wretched time in that town that I longed to be back in the Bridal Veil in the very worst of weather. The ooze of the shore and the reek of the water, and the dreary flatness of the land around (after the glorious heaven-clad heights, which made me ashamed of littleness), also the rough, stupid stare of the men, when I went about as an American lady may freely do in America, and the sharpness of every body's voice (instead of the genial tones which those who can not produce them call “nasal,” but which from a higher view are cordial)--taken one after other, or all together, these things made me think, in the first flush of thought, that England was not a nice country. After a little while I found that I had been a great deal too quick, as foreigners are with things which require quiet comprehension. For instance, I was annoyed at having a stupid woman put over me, as if I could not mind myself--a cook, or a nurse, or housekeeper, or something very useful in the Hockin family, but to me a mere incumbrance, and (as I thought in my wrath sometimes) a spy. What was I likely to do, or what was any one likely to do to me, in a thoroughly civilized country, that I could not even stay in private lodgings, where I had a great deal to think of, without this dull creature being forced upon me? But the Major so ordered it, and I gave in.
There I must have staid for the slowest three mouths ever passed without slow starvation finishing my growth, but not knowing how to “form my mind,” as I was told to do. Major Hockin came down once or twice to see me, and though I did not like him, yet it was almost enough to make me do so to see a little liveliness. But I could not and would not put up with a frightful German baron of music, with a polished card like a toast-rack, whom the Major tried to impress on me. As if I could stop to take music lessons!
“Miss Wood,” said Major Hockin, in his strongest manner, the last time he came to see me, “I stand to you in loco parentis. That means, with the duties, relationships, responsibilities, and what not, of the unfortunate--I should say rather of the beloved--parent deceased. I wish to be more careful of you than of a daughter of my own--a great deal more careful, ten times, Miss Wood; I may say a thousand times more careful, because you have not had the discipline which a daughter of mine would have enjoyed. And you are so impulsive when you take an idea! You judge every body by your likings. That leads to error, error, error.”
“My name is not Miss Wood,” I answered; “my name is 'Erema Castlewood.' Whatever need may have been on board ship for nobody knowing who I am, surely I may have my own name now.”
When any body says “surely,” at once up springs a question; nothing being sure, and the word itself at heart quite interrogative. The Major knew all those little things which manage women so manfully. So he took me by the hand and led me to the light and looked at me.
I had not one atom of Russian twist or dyed China grass in my hair, nor even the ubiquitous aid of horse and cow; neither in my face or figure was I conscious of false presentment. The Major was welcome to lead me to the light and to throw up all his spectacles and gaze with all his eyes. My only vexation was with myself, because I could not keep the weakness--which a stranger should not see--out of my eyes, upon sudden remembrance who it was that used to have the right to do such things to me. This it was, and nothing else, that made me drop my eyes, perhaps.
“There, there, my dear!” said Major Hockin, in a softer voice than usual. “Pretty fit you are to combat with the world, and defy the world, and brave the world, and abolish the world--or at least the world's opinion! 'Bo to a goose,' you can say, my dear; but no 'bo' to a gander. No, no; do quietly what I advise--by-the-bye, you have never asked my advice.”
I can not have been hypocritical, for of all things I detest that most; but in good faith I said, being conquered by the Major's relaxation of his eyes, “Oh, why have you never offered it to me? You knew that I never could ask for it.”
For the moment he looked surprised, as if our ideas had gone crosswise; and then he remembered many little symptoms of my faith in his opinions; which was now growing inevitable, with his wife and daughters, and many grandchildren--all certain that he was a Solomon.
“Erema,” he said, “you are a dear good girl, though sadly, sadly romantic. I had no idea that you had so much sense. I will talk with you, Erema, when we both have leisure.”
“I am quite at leisure, Major Hockin,” I replied, “and only too happy to listen to you.”
“Yes, yes, I dare say. You are in lodgings. You can do exactly as you please. But I have a basin of ox-tail soup, a cutlet, and a woodcock waiting for me at the Cosmopolitan Hotel. Bless me! I am five minutes late already. I will come and have a talk with you afterward.”
“Thank you,” I said; “we had better leave it. It seems of no importance, compared--compared with--” “My dinner!” said the Major; but he was offended, and so was I a little, though neither of us meant to vex the other.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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20
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BRUNTSEA
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It would be unfair to Major Hockin to take him for an extravagant man or a self-indulgent one because of the good dinner he had ordered, and his eagerness to sit down to it. Through all the best years of his life he had been most frugal, abstemious, and self-denying, grudging every penny of his own expense, but sparing none for his family. And now, when he found himself so much better off, with more income and less outlay, he could not be blamed for enjoying good things with the wholesome zest of abstinence.
For, coming to the point, and going well into the matter, the Major had discovered that the “little property” left to him, and which he was come to see to, really was quite a fine estate for any one who knew how to manage it, and would not spare courage and diligence. And of these two qualities he had such abundance that, without any outlet, they might have turned him sour.
The property lately devised to him by his cousin, Sir Rufus Hockin, had long been far more plague than profit to that idle baronet. Sir Rufus hated all exertion, yet could not comfortably put up with the only alternative--extortion. Having no knowledge of his cousin Nick (except that he was indefatigable), and knowing his own son to be lazier even than himself had been, longing also to inflict even posthumous justice upon the land agent, with the glad consent of his heir he left this distant, fretful, and naked spur of land to his beloved cousin Major Nicholas Hockin.
The Major first heard of this unexpected increase of his belongings while he was hovering, in the land of gold, between his desire to speculate and his dread of speculation. At once he consulted our Colonel Gundry, who met him by appointment at Sacramento; and Uncle Sam having a vast idea of the value of land in England, which the Major naturally made the most of, now being an English land-owner, they spent a most pleasant evening, and agreed upon the line marked out by Providence.
Thus it was that he came home, bringing (by kind arrangement) me, who was much more trouble than comfort to him, and at first disposed to be cold and curt. And thus it was that I was left so long in that wretched Southampton, under the care of a very kind person who never could understand me. And all this while (as I ought to have known, without any one to tell me) Major Hockin was testing the value and beating the bounds of his new estate, and prolonging his dinner from one to two courses, or three if he had been travelling. His property was large enough to afford him many dinners, and rich enough (when rightly treated) to insure their quality.
Bruntsea is a quiet little village on the southeast coast of England, in Kent or in Sussex, I am not sure which, for it has a constitution of its own, and says that it belongs to neither. It used to be a place of size and valor, furnishing ships, and finding money for patriotic purposes. And great people both embarked and landed, one doing this and the other that, though nobody seems to have ever done both, if history is to be relied upon. The glory of the place is still preserved in a seal and an immemorial stick, each of which is blessed with marks as incomprehensible as could be wished, though both are to be seen for sixpence. The name of the place is written in more than forty different ways, they say; and the oldest inhabitant is less positive than the youngest how to spell it.
This village lies in the mouth, or rather at the eastern end of the mouth, of a long and wide depression among the hills, through which a sluggish river wins its muddy consummation. This river once went far along the sea-brink, without entering (like a child who is afraid to bathe), as the Adur does at Shoreham, and as many other rivers do. And in those days the mouth and harbor were under the cliff at Bruntsea, whence its seal and corporation, stick, and other blessings. But three or four centuries ago the river was drawn by a violent storm, like a badger from his barrel, and forced to come straight out and face the sea, without any three miles of dalliance. The time-serving water made the best of this, forsook its ancient bed (as classic nymphs and fountains used to do), and left poor Bruntsea with a dry bank, and no haven for a cockle-shell. A new port, such as it is, incrusted the fickle jaw of the river; piles were driven and earth-works formed, lest the water should return to its old love; and Bruntsea, as concerned her traffic, became but a mark of memory. Her noble corporation never demanded their old channel, but regarded the whole as the will of the Lord, and had the good sense to insist upon nothing except their time-honored ceremonies.
In spite of all these and their importance, land became of no value there. The owner of the Eastern Manor and of many ancient rights, having no means of getting at them, sold them for an “old song,” which they were; and the buyer was one of the Hockin race, a shipwrecked mariner from Cornwall, who had been kindly treated there, and took a fancy accordingly. He sold his share in some mine to pay for it, settled here, and died here; and his son, getting on in the world, built a house, and took to serious smuggling. In the chalk cliff's eastward he found holes of honest value to him, capable of cheap enlargement (which the Cornish holes were not), and much more accessible from France. Becoming a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant, he had the duty and privilege of inquiring into his own deeds, which enabled him to check those few who otherwise might have competed with him. He flourished, and bought more secure estates; and his son, for activity against smugglers, was made a gentle baronet.
These things now had passed away, and the first fee-simple of the Hockin family became a mere load and incumbrance. Sir George and Sir Robert and Sir Rufus, one after another, did not like the hints about contraband dealings which met them whenever they deigned to come down there, till at last the estate (being left to an agent) cost a great deal more than he ever paid in. And thus--as should have been more briefly told--the owner was our Major Hockin.
No wonder that this gentleman, with so many cares to attend to, had no time at first to send for me. And no wonder that when he came down to see me, he was obliged to have good dinners. For the work done by him in those three months surprised every body except himself, and made in old Bruntsea a stir unknown since the time of the Spanish Armada. For he owned the house under the eastern cliff, and the warren, and the dairy-farm inland, and the slope of the ground where the sea used to come, and fields where the people grew potatoes gratis, and all the eastern village, where the tenants paid their rents whenever they found it rational.
A hot young man, in a place like this, would have done a great deal of mischief. Either he would have accepted large views, and applauded this fine communism (if he could afford it, and had no wife), or else he would have rushed at every body headlong, and batted them back to their abutments. Neither course would have created half the excitement which the Major's did. At least, there might have been more talk at first, but not a quarter so much in sum total. Of those things, however, there is time enough to speak, if I dare to say any thing about them.
The things more to my mind (and therefore more likely to be made plain to another mind) are not the petty flickering phantoms of the shadow we call human, and which alone we realize, and dwell inside it and upon it, as if it were all creation; but the infinitely nobler things of ever-changing but perpetual beauty, and no selfishness. These, without deigning to us even sense to be aware of them, shape our little minds and bodies and our large self-importance, and fail to know when the lord or king who owns is buried under them. To have perception of such mighty truths is good for all of us: and I never had keener perception of them than when I sat down on the Major's camp-stool, and saw all his land around me, and even the sea--where all the fish were his, as soon as he could catch them--and largely reflected that not a square foot of the whole world would ever belong to me.
“Bruntlands,” as the house was called, perhaps from standing well above the sea, was sheltered by the curve of the eastern cliff, which looked down over Bruntsea. The cliff was of chalk, very steep toward the sea, and showing a prominent headland toward the south, but prettily rising in grassy curves from the inland and from the westward. And then, where it suddenly chined away from land-slope into sea-front, a long bar of shingle began at right angles to it, and, as level as a railroad, went to the river's mouth, a league or so now to the westward. And beyond that another line of white cliffs rose, and looked well till they came to their headland. Inside this bank of shingle, from end to end, might be traced the old course of the river, and to landward of that trough at the hither end stood, or lay, the calm old village.
Forsaken as it was by the river, this village stuck to its ancient site and home, and instead of migrating, contracted itself, and cast off needless members. Shrunken Bruntsea clung about the oldest of its churches, while the four others fell to rack and ruin, and settled into cow-yards and barns, and places where old men might sit and sigh. But Bruntsea distinctly and trenchantly kept the old town's division into east and west.
East Bruntsea was wholly in the Major's manor, which had a special charter; and most of the houses belonged to him. This ownership hitherto had meant only that the landlord should do all the tumble-down repairs (when the agent reported that they must be done), but never must enter the door for his rent. The borough had been disfranchised, though the snuggest of the snug for generations; and the freemen, thus being robbed of their rights, had no power to discharge their duties. And to complicate matters yet further, for the few who wished to simplify them, the custom of “borough-English” prevailed, and governed the descent of dilapidations, making nice niceties for clever men of law.
“You see a fine property here, Miss Wood,” Major Hockin said to me, as we sat, on the day after I was allowed to come, enjoying the fresh breeze from the sea and the newness of the February air, and looking abroad very generally: “a very fine property, but neglected--shamefully, horribly, atrociously neglected--but capable of noble things, of grand things, of magnificent, with a trifle of judicious outlay.”
“Oh, please not to talk of outlay, my dear,” said good Mrs. Hockin, gently; “it is such an odious word; and where in the world is it to come from?”
“Leave that to me. When I was a boy my favorite copy in my copy-book was, 'Where there's a will there's a way.' Miss Wood, what is your opinion? But wait, you must have time to understand the subject. First we bring a railway--always the first step; why, the line is already made for it by the course of the old river, and the distance from Newport three miles and a half. It ought not to cost quite 200 pounds a mile--the mere outlay for rails and sleepers. The land is all mine, and--and of course other landed proprietors'. Very well: these would all unite, of course; so that not a farthing need be paid for land, which is the best half of the battle. We have the station here--not too near my house; that would never do; I could not bear the noise--but in a fine central place where nobody on earth could object to it--lively, and close at hand for all of them. Unluckily I was just too late. We have lost a Parliamentary year through that execrable calm--you remember all about it. Otherwise we would have had Billy Puff stabled at Bruntsea by the first of May. But never mind; we shall do it all the better and cheaper by taking our time about it. Very well: we have the railway opened and the trade of the place developed. We build a fine terrace of elegant villas, a crescent also, and a large hotel replete with every luxury; and we form the finest sea-parade in England by simply assisting nature. Half London comes down here to bathe, to catch shrimps, to flirt, and to do the rest of it. We become a select, salubrious, influential, and yet economical place; and then what do we do, Mrs. Hockin?”
“My dear, how can I tell? But I hope that we should rest and be thankful.”
“Not a bit of it. I should hope not, indeed. Erema, what do we do then?”
“It is useless to ask me. Well, then, perhaps you set up a handsome saw-mill!”
“A saw-mill! What a notion of Paradise! No; this is what we do--but remember that I speak in the strictest confidence; dishonest antagonism might arise, if we ventilated our ideas too soon--Mrs. Hockin and Miss Wood, we demand the restoration of our river! --the return of our river to its ancient course.”
“I see,” said his wife; “oh, how grand that would be! and how beautiful from our windows! That really, now, is a noble thought!”
“A just one--simply a just one. Justice ought not to be noble, my dear, however rare it may be. Generosity, magnanimity, heroism, and so on--those are the things we call noble, my dear.”
“And the founding of cities. Oh, my dear, I remember, when I was at school, it was always said, in what we called our histories, that the founders of cities had honors paid them, and altars built, and divinities done, and holidays held in their honor.”
“To that I object,” cried the Major, sternly. “If I founded fifty cities, I would never allow one holiday. The Sabbath is enough; one day in seven--fifteen per cent, of one's whole time; and twenty per cent, of your Sunday goes in church. Very right, of course, and loyal, and truly edifying--Mrs. Hockin's father was a clergyman, Miss Wood; and the last thing I would ever allow on my manor would be a Dissenting chapel; but still I will have no new churches here, and a man who might go against me. They all want to pick their own religious views, instead of reflecting who supports them! It never used to be so; and such things shall never occur on my manor. A good hotel, attendance included, and a sound and moderate table d'hote; but no church, with a popish bag sent round, and money to pay, 'without anything to eat.'”
“My dear! my dear!” cried Mrs. Hockin, “I never like you to talk like that. You quite forget who my father was, and your own second son such a very sound priest!”
“A priest! Don't let him come here,” cried the Major, “or I'll let him know what tonsure is, and read him the order of Melchisedec. A priest! After going round the world three times, to come home and be hailed as the father of a priest! Don't let him come near me, or I'll sacrifice him.”
“Now, Major, you are very proud of him,” his good wife answered, as he shook his stick. “How could he help taking orders when he was under orders to do so? And his views are sound to the last degree, most strictly correct and practical--at least except as to celibacy.”
“He holds that his own mother ought never to have been born! Miss Wood, do you call that practical?”
“I have no acquaintance with such things,” I replied; “we had none of them in California. But is it practical, Major Hockin--of course you know best in your engineering--I mean, would it not require something like a tunnel for the river and the railway to run on the same ground?”
“Why, bless me! That seems to have escaped my notice. You have not been with old Uncle Sam for nothing. We shall have to appoint you our chief engineer.”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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21
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LISTLESS
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It seemed an unfortunate thing for me, and unfavorable to my purpose, that my host, and even my hostess too, should be so engrossed with their new estate, its beauties and capabilities. Mrs. Hockin devoted herself at once to fowls and pigs and the like extravagant economies, having bought, at some ill-starred moment, a book which proved that hens ought to lay eggs in a manner to support themselves, their families, and the family they belonged to, at the price of one penny a dozen. Eggs being two shillings a dozen in Bruntsea, here was a margin for profit--no less than two thousand per cent, to be made, allowing for all accidents. The lady also found another book, divulging for a shilling the author's purely invaluable secret--how to work an acre of ground, pay house rent, supply the house grandly, and give away a barrow-load of vegetables every day to the poor of the parish, by keeping a pig--if that pig were kept properly. And after that, pork and ham and bacon came of him, while another golden pig went on.
Mrs. Hockin was very soft-hearted, and said that she never could make bacon of a pig like that; and I answered that if she ever got him it would be unwise to do so. However, the law was laid down in both books that golden fowls and diamondic pigs must die the death before they begin to overeat production; and the Major said, “To be sure. Yes, yes. Let them come to good meat, and then off with their heads.” And his wife said that she was sure she could do it. When it comes to a question of tare and tret, false sentiment must be excluded.
At the moment, these things went by me as trifles, yet made me more impatient. Being older now, and beholding what happens with tolerance and complacence, I am only surprised that my good friends were so tolerant of me and so complacent. For I must have been a great annoyance to them, with my hurry and my one idea. Happily they made allowance for me, which I was not old enough to make for them.
“Go to London, indeed! Go to London by yourself!” cried the Major, with a red face, and his glasses up, when I told him one morning that I could stop no longer without doing something. “Mary, my dear, when you have done out there, will you come in and reason--if you can--with Miss Wood. She vows that she is going to London, all alone.”
“Oh, Major Hockin--oh, Nicholas dear, such a thing has happened!” Mrs. Hockin had scarcely any breath to tell us, as she came in through the window. “You know that they have only had three bushels, or, at any rate, not more than five, almost ever since they came. Erema, you know as well as I do.”
“Seven and three-quarter bushels of barley, at five and ninepence a bushel, Mary,” said the Major, pulling out a pocket-book; “besides Indian corn, chopped meat, and potatoes.”
“And fourteen pounds of paddy,” I said--which was a paltry thing of me; “not to mention a cake of graves, three sacks of brewers' grains, and then--I forget what next.”
“You are too bad, all of you. Erema, I never thought you would turn against me so. And you made me get nearly all of it. But please to look here. What do you call this? Is this no reward? Is this not enough? Major, if you please, what do you call this? What a pity you have had your breakfast!”
“A blessing--if this was to be my breakfast. I call that, my dear, the very smallest egg I have seen since I took sparrows' nests. No wonder they sell them at twelve a penny. I congratulate you upon your first egg, my dear Mary.”
“Well, I don't care,” replied Mrs. Hockin, who had the sweetest temper in the world. “Small beginnings make large endings; and an egg must be always small at one end. You scorn my first egg, and Erema should have had it if she had been good. But she was very wicked, and I know not what to do with it.”
“Blow it!” cried the Major. “I mean no harm, ladies. I never use low language. What I mean is, make a pinhole at each end, give a puff, and away goes two pennyworth, and you have a cabinet specimen, which your egg is quite fitted by its cost to be. But now, Mary, talk to Miss Wood, if you please. It is useless for me to say any thing, and I have three appointments in the town”--he always called it “the town” now--“three appointments, if not four; yes, I may certainly say four. Talk to Miss Wood, my dear, if you please. She wants to go to London, which would be absurd. Ladies seem to enter into ladies' logic. They seem to be able to appreciate it better, to see all the turns, and the ins and outs, which no man has intellect enough to see, or at least to make head or tail of. Good-by for the present; I had better be off.”
“I should think you had,” exclaimed Mrs. Hockin, as her husband marched off, with his side-lights on, and his short, quick step, and well-satisfied glance at the hill which belonged to him, and the beach, over which he had rights of plunder--or, at least, Uncle Sam would have called them so, strictly as he stood up for his own.
“Now come and talk quietly to me, my dear,” Mrs. Hockin began, most kindly, forgetting all the marvel of her first-born egg. “I have noticed how restless you are, and devoid of all healthy interest in any thing. 'Listless' is the word. 'Listless' is exactly what I mean, Erema. When I was at your time of life, I could never have gone about caring for nothing. I wonder that you knew that I even had a fowl; much more how much they had eaten!”
“I really do try to do all I can, and that is a proof of it,” I said. “I am not quite so listless as you think. But those things do seem so little to me.”
“My dear, if you were happy, they would seem quite large, as, after all the anxieties of my life, I am able now to think them. It is a power to be thankful for, or, at least, I often think so. Look at my husband! He has outlived and outlasted more trouble than any one but myself could reckon up to him; and yet he is as brisk, as full of life, as ready to begin a new thing to-morrow--when, at our age, there may be no to-morrow, except in that better world, my dear, of which it is high time for him and me to think, as I truly hope we may spare the time to do.”
“Oh, don't talk like that,” I cried. “Please, Mrs. Hockin, to talk of your hens and chicks--at least there will be chicks by-and-by. I am almost sure there will, if you only persevere. It seems unfair to set our minds on any other world till justice has been done in this.”
“You are very young, my child, or you would know that in that case we never should think of it at all. But I don't want to preach you a sermon, Erema, even if I could do so. I only just want you to tell me what you think, what good you imagine that you can do.”
“It is no imagination. I am sure that I can right my father's wrongs. And I never shall rest till I do so.”
“Are you sure that there is any wrong to right?” she asked, in the warmth of the moment; and then, seeing perhaps how my color changed, she looked at me sadly, and kissed my forehead.
“Oh, if you had only once seen him,” I said; “without any exaggeration, you would have been satisfied at once. That he could ever have done any harm was impossible--utterly impossible. I am not as I was. I can listen to almost any thing now quite calmly. But never let me hear such a wicked thing again.”
“You must not go on like that, Erema, unless you wish to lose all your friends. No one can help being sorry for you. Very few girls have been placed as you are. I am sure when I think of my own daughters I can never be too thankful. But the very first thing you have to learn, above all things, is to control yourself.”
“I know it--I know it, of course,” I said; “and I keep on trying my very best. I am thoroughly ashamed of what I said, and I hope you will try to forgive me.”
“A very slight exertion is enough for that. But now, my dear, what I want to know is this--and you will excuse me if I ask too much--what good do you expect to get by going thus to London? Have you any friend there, any body to trust, any thing settled as to what you are to do?”
“Yes, every thing is settled in my own mind,” I answered, very bravely: “I have the address of a very good woman, found among my father's papers, who nursed his children and understood his nature, and always kept her faith in him. There must be a great many more who do the same, and she will be sure to know them and introduce me to them; and I shall be guided by their advice.”
“But suppose that this excellent woman is dead, or not to be found, or has changed her opinion?”
“Her opinion she never could change. But if she is not to be found, I shall find her husband, or her children, or somebody; and besides that, I have a hundred things to do. I have the address of the agent through whom my father drew his income, though Uncle Sam let me know as little as he could. And I know who his bankers were (when he had a bank), and he may have left important papers there.”
“Come, that looks a little more sensible, my dear; bankers may always be relied upon. And there may be some valuable plate, Erema. But why not let the Major go with you? His advice is so invaluable.”
“I know that it is, in all ordinary things. But I can not have him now, for a very simple reason. He has made up his mind about my dear father--horribly, horribly; I can't speak of it. And he never changes his mind; and sometimes when I look at him I hate him.”
“Erema, you are quite a violent girl, although you so seldom show it. Is the whole world divided, then, into two camps--those who think as you wish and those who are led by their judgment to think otherwise? And are you to hate all who do not think as you wish?”
“No, because I do not hate you,” I said; “I love you, though you do not think as I wish. But that is only because you think your husband must be right of course. But I can not like those who have made up their minds according to their own coldness.”
“Major Hockin is not cold at all. On the contrary, he is a warm-hearted man--I might almost say hot-hearted.”
“Yes, I know he is. And that makes it ten times worse. He takes up every body's case--but mine.”
“Sad as it is, you almost make me smile,” my hostess answered, gravely; “and yet it must be very bitter for you, knowing how just and kind my husband is. I am sure that you will give him credit for at least desiring to take your part. And doing so, at least you might let him go with you, if only as a good protection.”
“I have no fear of any one; and I might take him into society that he would not like. In a good cause he would go any where, I know. But in my cause, of course he would be scrupulous. Your kindness I always can rely upon, and I hope in the end to earn his as well.”
“My dear, he has never been unkind to you. I am certain that you never can say that of him. Major Hockin unkind to a poor girl like you!”
“The last thing I wish to claim is any body's pity,” I answered, less humbly than I should have spoken, though the pride was only in my tone, perhaps. “If people choose to pity me, they are very good, and I am not at all offended, because--because they can not help it, perhaps, from not knowing any thing about me. I have nothing whatever to be pitied for, except that I have lost my father, and have nobody left to care for me, except Uncle Sam in America.”
“Your Uncle Sam, as you call him, seems to be a very wonderful man, Erema,” said Mrs. Hockin, craftily, so far as there could be any craft in her; “I never saw him--a great loss on my part. But the Major went up to meet him somewhere, and came home with the stock of his best tie broken, and two buttons gone from his waistcoat. Does Uncle Sam make people laugh so much? or is it that he has some extraordinary gift of inducing people to taste whiskey? My husband is a very--most abstemious man, as you must be well aware, Miss Wood, or we never should have been as we are, I am sure. But, for the first time in all my life, I doubted his discretion on the following day, when he had--what shall I say? --when he had been exchanging sentiments with Uncle Sam.”
“Uncle Sam never takes too much in any way,” I replied to this new attack; “he knows what he ought to take, and then he stops. Do you think that it may have been his 'sentiments,' perhaps, that were too strong and large for the Major?”
“Erema!” cried Mrs. Hockin, with amazement, as if I had no right to think or express my thoughts on life so early; “if you can talk politics at eighteen, you are quite fit to go any where. I have heard a great deal of American ladies, and seen not a little of them, as you know. But I thought that you called yourself an English girl, and insisted particularly upon it.”
“Yes, that I do; and I have good reason. I am born of an old English family, and I hope to be no disgrace to it. But being brought up in a number of ways, as I have been without thinking of it, and being quite different from the fashionable girls Major Hockin likes to walk with--” “My dear, he never walks with any body but myself!”
“Oh yes, I remember! I was thinking of the deck. There are no fashionable girls here yet. Till the terrace is built, and the esplanade--” “There shall be neither terrace nor esplanade if the Major is to do such things upon them.”
“I am sure that he never would,” I replied; “it was only their dresses that he liked at all, and that very, to my mind, extraordinary style, as well as unbecoming. You know what I mean, Mrs. Hockin, that wonderful--what shall I call it? --way of looping up.”
“Call me 'Aunt Mary,' my dear, as you did when the waves were so dreadful. You mean that hideous Mexican poncho, as they called it, stuck up here, and going down there. Erema, what observation you have! Nothing ever seems to escape you. Did you ever see any thing so indecorous?”
“It made me feel just as if I ought not to look at them,” I answered, with perfect truth, for so it did; “I have never been accustomed to such things. But seeing how the Major approved of them, and liked to be walking up and down between them, I knew that they must be not only decorous, but attractive. There is no appeal from his judgment, is there?”
“I agree with him upon every point, my dear child; but I have always longed to say a few words about that. For I can not help thinking that he went too far.”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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22
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BETSY BOWEN
|
So far, then, there was nobody found to go into my case, and to think with me, and to give me friendly countenance, with the exception of Firm Gundry. And I feared that he tried to think with me because of his faithful and manly love, more than from balance of evidence. The Sawyer, of course, held my father guiltless, through his own fidelity and simple ways; but he could not enter into my set thought of a stern duty laid upon me, because to his mind the opinion of the world mattered nothing so long as a man did aright. For wisdom like this, if wisdom it is, I was a great deal too young and ardent; and to me fair fame was of almost equal value with clear conscience. And therefore, wise or foolish, rich or poor, beloved or unloved, I must be listless about other things, and restless in all, until I should establish truth and justice.
However, I did my best to be neither ungrateful nor stupidly obstinate, and, beginning more and more to allow for honest though hateful opinions, I yielded to dear Mrs. Hockin's wish that I should not do any thing out of keeping with English ideas and habits. In a word, I accepted the Major's kind offer to see me quite safe in good hands in London, or else bring me straightway back again. And I took only just things enough for a day or two, meaning to come back by the end of the week. And I kissed Mrs. Hockin just enough for that.
It would not be a new thing for me to say that “we never know what is going to happen;” but, new or stale, it was true enough, as old common sayings of common-sense (though spurned when not wanted) show themselves. At first, indeed, it seemed as if I were come for nothing, at least as concerned what I thought the chief business of my journey. The Major had wished to go first to the bank, and appeared to think nothing of any thing else; but I, on the other hand, did not want him there, preferring to keep him out of my money matters, and so he was obliged to let me have my way.
I always am sorry when I have been perverse, and it seemed to serve me right for willfulness when no Betsy Bowen could be discovered either at the place which we tried first, or that to which we were sent thence. Major Hockin looked at me till I could have cried, as much as to hint that the whole of my story was all of a piece, all a wild-goose chase. And being more curious than ever now to go to the bank and ransack, he actually called out to the cabman to drive without delay to Messrs. Shovelin, Wayte, and Shovelin. But I begged him to allow me just one minute while I spoke to the servant-maid alone. Then I showed her a sovereign, at which she opened her mouth in more ways than one, for she told me that “though she had faithfully promised to say nothing about it, because of a dreadful quarrel between her mistress and Mrs. Strouss that was now, and a jealousy between them that was quite beyond belief, she could not refuse such a nice young lady, if I would promise faithfully not to tell.” This promise I gave with fidelity, and returning to the cabman, directed him to drive not to Messrs. Shovelin, Wayte, and Shovelin just yet, but to No. 17 European Square, St. Katharine's.
From a maze of streets and rugged corners, and ins and outs nearly as crooked as those of a narrow human nature, we turned at last into European Square, which was no square at all, but an oblong opening pitched with rough granite, and distinguished with a pump. There were great thoroughfares within a hundred yards, but the place itself seemed unnaturally quiet upon turning suddenly into it, only murmurous with distant London din, as the spires of a shell hold the heavings of the sea. After driving three or four times round the pump, for the houses were numbered anyhow, we found No. 17, and I jumped out.
“Now don't be in such a fierce hurry, Miss Wood,” cried the Major, who was now a little crusty; “English ladies allow themselves to be handed out, without hurrying the gentlemen who have the honor.”
“But I wanted to save you the honor,” I said. “I will come back immediately, if you will kindly wait.” And with this I ran up the old steps, and rang and knocked, while several bearded faces came and gazed through dingy windows.
“Can I see Mrs. Strouss?” I asked, when a queer old man in faded brown livery came to the door with a candle in his hand, though the sun was shining.
“I am the Meesther Strouss; when you see me, you behold the good Meeses Strouss also.”
“Thank you, but that will not do,” I replied; “my business is with Mrs. Strouss alone.”
He did not seem to like this at first sight, but politely put the chain-bolt on the door while he retired to take advice; and the Major looked out of the cab and laughed.
“You had better come back while you can,” he said, “though they seem in no hurry to swallow you.”
This was intended to vex me, and I did not even turn my head to him. The house looked very respectable, and there were railings to the area.
“The house is very respectable,” continued Major Hockin, who always seemed to know what I was thinking of, and now in his quick manner ran up the steps; “just look, the scraper is clean. You never see that, or at least not often, except with respectable people, Erema.”
“Pray what would my scraper be? and who is Erema?” cried a strong, clear voice, as the chain of the door was set free, and a stout, tall woman with a flush in her cheeks confronted us. “I never knew more than one Erema--Good mercy!”
My eyes met hers, and she turned as pale as death, and fell back into a lobby chair. She knew me by my likeness to my father, falling on the memories started by my name; and strong as she was, the surprise overcame her, at the sound of which up rushed the small Herr Strouss.
“Vhat are you doing dere, all of you? vhat have you enterprised with my frau? Explain, Vilhelmina, or I call de policemans, vhat I should say de peelers.”
“Stop!” cried the Major, and he stopped at once, not for the word, which would have had no power, although I knew nothing about it then, but because he had received a sign which assured him that here was a brother Mason. In a moment the infuriated husband vanished into the rational and docile brother.
“Ladies and gentlemans, valk in, if you please,” he said, to my great astonishment; “Vilhelmina and my good self make you velcome to our poor house. Vilhelmina, arise and say so.”
“Go to the back kitchen, Hans,” replied Wilhelmina, whose name was “Betsy,” “and don't come out until I tell you. You will find work to do there, and remember to pump up. I wish to hear things that you are not to hear, mind you. Shut yourself in, and if you soap the door to deceive me, I shall know it.”
“Vere goot, vere goot,” said the philosophical German; “I never meddle with nothing, Vilhelmina, no more than vhat I do for de money and de house.”
Betsy, however, was not quite so sure of that. With no more ceremony she locked him in, and then came back to us, who could not make things out.
“My husband is the bravest of the brave,” she told us, while she put down his key on the table; “and a nobler man never lived; I am sure of that. But every one of them foreigners--excuse me, Sir, you are an Englishman?”
“I am,” replied the Major, pulling up his little whiskers; “I am so, madam, and nothing you can say will in any way hurt my feelings. I am above nationalities.”
“Just so, Sir. Then you will feel with me when I say that they foreigners is dreadful. Oh, the day that I ever married one of 'em--but there, I ought to be ashamed of myself, and my lord's daughter facing me.”
“Do you know me?” I asked, with hot color in my face, and my eyes, I dare say, glistening. “Are you sure that you know me? And then please to tell me how.”
As I spoke I was taking off the close silk bonnet which I had worn for travelling, and my hair, having caught in a pin, fell round me, and before I could put it up, or even think of it, I lay in the great arms of Betsy Bowen, as I used to lie when I was a little baby, and when my father was in his own land, with a home and wife and seven little ones. And to think of this made me keep her company in crying, and it was some time before we did any thing else.
“Well, well,” replied the Major, who detested scenes, except when he had made them; “I shall be off. You are in good hands; and the cabman pulled out his watch when we stopped. So did I. But he is sure to beat me. They draw the minute hand on with a magnet, I am told, while the watch hangs on their badge, and they can swear they never opened it. Wonderful age, very wonderful age, since the time when you and I were young, ma'am.”
“Yes, Sir; to be sure, Sir!” Mrs. Strouss replied, as she wiped her eyes to speak of things; “but the most wonderfulest of all things, don't you think, is the going of the time, Sir? No cabby can make it go faster while he waits, or slower while he is a-driving, than the minds inside of us manage it. Why, Sir, it wore only like yesterday that this here tall, elegant, royal young lady was a-lying on my breast, and what a hand she was to kick! And I said that her hair was sure to grow like this. If I was to tell you only half what comes across me--” “If you did, ma'am, the cabman would make his fortune, and I should lose mine, which is more than I can afford. Erema, after dinner I shall look you up. I know a good woman when I see her, Mrs. Strouss, which does not happen every day. I can trust Miss Castlewood with you. Good-by, good-by for the present.”
It was the first time he had ever called me by my proper name, and that made me all the more pleased with it.
“You see, Sir, why I were obliged to lock him in,” cried the “good woman,” following to the door, to clear every blur from her virtues; “for his own sake I done it, for I felt my cry a-coming, and to see me cry--Lord bless you, the effect upon him is to call out for a walking-stick and a pint of beer.”
“All right, ma'am, all right!” the Major answered, in a tone which appeared to me unfeeling. “Cabman, are you asleep there? Bring the lady's bag this moment.”
As the cab disappeared without my even knowing where to find that good protector again in this vast maze of millions, I could not help letting a little cold fear encroach on the warmth of my outburst. I had heard so much in America of the dark, subtle places of London, and the wicked things that happen all along the Thames, discovered or invented by great writers of their own, that the neighborhood of the docks and the thought of rats (to which I could never grow accustomed) made me look with a flash perhaps of doubt at my new old friend.
“You are not sure of me, Miss Erema,” said Mrs. Strouss, without taking offense. “After all that has happened, who can blame it on you? But your father was not so suspicious, miss. It might have been better for him if he had--according, leastways, to my belief, which a team of wild horses will never drag out.”
“Oh, only let me hear you talk of that!” I exclaimed, forgetting all other things. “You know more about it than any body I have ever met with, except my own father, who would never tell a word.”
“And quite right he was, miss, according to his views. But come to my little room, unless you are afraid. I can tell you some things that your father never knew.”
“Afraid! do you think I am a baby still? But I can not bear that Mr. Strouss should be locked up on my account.”
“Then he shall come out,” said Mrs. Strouss, looking at me very pleasantly. “That was just like your father, Miss Erema. But I fall into the foreign ways, being so much with the foreigners.” Whether she thought it the custom among “foreigners” for wives to lock their husbands in back kitchens was more than she ever took the trouble to explain. But she walked away, in her stout, firm manner, and presently returned with Mr. Strouss, who seemed to be quite contented, and made me a bow with a very placid smile.
“He is harmless; his ideas are most grand and good,” his wife explained to me, with a nod at him. “But I could not have you in with the gentleman, Hans. He always makes mistakes with the gentlemen, miss, but with the ladies he behaves quite well.”
“Yes, yes, with the ladies I am nearly always goot,” Herr Strouss replied, with diffidence. “The ladies comprehend me right, all right, because I am so habitual with my wife. But the gentlemans in London have no comprehension of me.”
“Then the loss is on their side,” I answered, with a smile; and he said, “Yes, yes, they lose vere much by me.”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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23
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BETSY'S TALE
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Now I scarcely know whether it would be more clear to put into narrative what I heard from Betsy Bowen, now Wilhelmina Strouss, or to let her tell the whole in her own words, exactly as she herself told it then to me. The story was so dark and sad--or at least to myself it so appeared--that even the little breaks and turns of lighter thought or livelier manner, which could scarcely fail to vary now and then the speaker's voice, seemed almost to grate and jar upon its sombre monotone. On the other hand, by omitting these, and departing from her homely style, I might do more of harm than good through failing to convey impressions, or even facts, so accurately. Whereas the gist and core and pivot of my father's life and fate are so involved (though not evolved) that I would not miss a single point for want of time or diligence. Therefore let me not deny Mrs. Strouss, my nurse, the right to put her words in her own way. And before she began to do this she took the trouble to have every thing cleared away and the trays brought down, that her boarders (chiefly German) might leave their plates and be driven to their pipes.
“If you please, Miss Castlewood,” Mrs. Strouss said, grandly, “do you or do you not approve of the presence of 'my man,' as he calls himself? --an improper expression, in my opinion; such, however, is their nature. He can hold his tongue as well as any man, though none of them are very sure at that. And he knows pretty nigh as much as I do, so far as his English can put things together, being better accustomed in German. For when we were courting I was fain to tell him all, not to join him under any false pretenses, miss, which might give him grounds against me.”
“Yes, yes, it is all vere goot and true--so goot and true as can be.”
“And you might find him come very handy, my dear, to run of any kind of messages. He can do that very well, I assure you, miss--better than any Englishman.”
Seeing that he wished to stay, and that she desired it, I begged him to stop, though it would have been more to my liking to hear the tale alone.
“Then sit by the door, Hans, and keep off the draught,” said his Wilhelmina, kindly. “He is not very tall, miss, but he has good shoulders; I scarcely know what I should do without him. Well, now, to begin at the very beginning: I am a Welshwoman, as you may have heard. My father was a farmer near Abergavenny, holding land under Sir Watkin Williams, an old friend of your family. My father had too many girls, and my mother scarcely knew what to do with the lot of us. So some of us went out to service, while the boys staid at home to work the land. One of my sisters was lady's-maid to Lady Williams, Sir Watkin's wife, at the time when your father came visiting there for the shooting of the moor-fowl, soon after his marriage with your mother. What a sweet good lady your mother was! I never saw the like before or since. No sooner did I set eyes upon her but she so took my fancy that I would have gone round the world with her. We Welsh are a very hot people, they say--not cold-blooded, as the English are. So, wise or foolish, right, wrong, or what might be, nothing would do for me but to take service, if I could, under Mrs. Castlewood. Your father was called Captain Castlewood then--as fine a young man as ever clinked a spur, but without any boast or conceit about him; and they said that your grandfather, the old lord, kept him very close and spare, although he was the only son. Now this must have been--let me see, how long ago? --about five-and-twenty years, I think. How old are you now, Miss Erema? I can keep the weeks better than the years, miss.”
“I was eighteen on my last birthday. But never mind about the time--go on.”
“But the time makes all the difference, miss, although at the time we may never think so. Well, then, it must have been better than six-and-twenty year agone; for though you came pretty fast, in the Lord's will, there was eight years between you and the first-born babe, who was only just a-thinking of when I begin to tell. But to come back to myself, as was--mother had got too many of us still, and she was glad enough to let me go, however much she might cry over it, as soon as Lady Williams got me the place. My place was to wait upon the lady first, and make myself generally useful, as they say. But it was not very long before I was wanted in other more important ways, and having been brought up among so many children, they found me very handy with the little ones; and being in a poor way, as they were then--for people, I mean, of their birth and place--they were glad enough soon to make head nurse of me, although I was under-two-and-twenty.
“We did not live at the old lord's place, which is under the hills looking on the river Thames, but we had a quiet little house in Hampshire; for the Captain was still with his regiment, and only came to and fro to us. But a happier little place there could not be, with the flowers, and the cow, and the birds all day, and the children running gradually according to their age, and the pretty brook shining in the valley. And as to the paying of their way, it is true that neither of them was a great manager. The Captain could not bear to keep his pretty wife close; and she, poor thing, was trying always to surprise him with other presents besides all the beautiful babies. But they never were in debt all round, as the liars said when the trouble burst; and if they owed two or three hundred pounds, who could justly blame them?
“For the old lord, instead of going on as he should, and widening his purse to the number of the mouths, was niggling at them always for offense or excuse, to take away what little he allowed them. The Captain had his pay, which would go in one hand, and the lady had a little money of her own; but still it was cruel for brought-up people to have nothing better to go on with. Not that the old lord was a miser neither; but it was said, and how far true I know not, that he never would forgive your father for marrying the daughter of a man he hated. And some went so far as to say that if he could have done it, he would have cut your father out of all the old family estates. But such a thing never could I believe of a nobleman having his own flesh and blood.
“But, money or no money, rich or poor, your father and mother, I assure you, my dear, were as happy as the day was long. For they loved one another and their children dearly, and they did not care for any mixing with the world. The Captain had enough of that when put away in quarters; likewise his wife could do without it better and better at every birth, though once she had been the very gayest of the gay, which you never will be, Miss Erema.
“Now, my dear, you look so sad and so 'solid,' as we used to say, that if I can go on at all, I must have something ready. I am quite an old nurse now, remember. Hans, go across the square, and turn on the left hand round the corner, and then three more streets toward the right, and you see one going toward the left, and you go about seven doors down it, and then you see a corner with a lamp-post.”
“Vilhelmina, I do see de lamp-post at de every corner.”
“That will teach you to look more bright, Hans. Then you find a shop window with three blue bottles, and a green one in the middle.”
“How can be any middle to three, without it is one of them?”
“Then let it be two of them. How you contradict me! Take this little bottle, and the man with a gold braid round a cap, and a tassel with a tail to it, will fill it for four-pence when you tell him who you are.”
“Yes, yes; I do now comprehend. You send me vhere I never find de vay, because I am in de vay, Vilhelmina!”
I was most thankful to Mrs. Strouss for sending her husband (however good and kind-hearted he might be) to wander among many shops of chemists, rather than to keep his eyes on me, while I listened to things that were almost sure to make me want my eyes my own. My nurse had seen, as any good nurse must, that, grown and formed as I might be, the nature of the little child that cries for its mother was in me still.
“It is very sad now,” Mrs. Strouss began again, without replying to my grateful glance; “Miss Erema, it is so sad that I wish I had never begun with it. But I see by your eyes--so like your father's, but softer, my dear, and less troublesome--that you will have the whole of it out, as he would with me once when I told him a story for the sake of another servant. It was just about a month before you were born, when the trouble began to break on us. And when once it began, it never stopped until all that were left ran away from it. I have read in the newspapers many and many sad things coming over whole families, such as they call 'shocking tragedies;' but none of them, to my mind, could be more galling than what I had to see with my very own eyes.
“It must have been close upon the middle of September when old Lord Castlewood came himself to see his son's house and family at Shoxford. We heard that he came down a little on the sudden to see to the truth of some rumors which had reached him about our style of living. It was the first time he had ever been there; for although he had very often been invited, he could not bear to be under the roof of the daughter, as he said, of his enemy. The Captain, just happening to come home on leave for his autumn holiday, met his father quite at his own door--the very last place to expect him. He afterward acknowledged that he was not pleased for his father to come 'like a thief in the night.' However, they took him in and made him welcome, and covered up their feelings nicely, as high-bred people do.
“What passed among them was unknown to any but themselves, except so far as now I tell you. A better dinner than usual for two was ready, to celebrate the master's return and the beginning of his holiday; and the old lord, having travelled far that day, was persuaded to sit down with them. The five eldest children (making all except the baby, for you was not born, miss, if you please) they were to have sat up at table, as pretty as could be--three with their high cushioned stools, and two in their arm-chairs screwed on mahogany, stuffed with horsehair, and with rods in front, that the little dears might not tumble out in feeding, which they did--it was a sight to see them! And how they would give to one another, with their fingers wet and shining, and saying, 'Oo, dat for oo.' Oh dear, Miss Erema, you were never born to see it! What a blessing for you! All those six dear darlings laid in their little graves within six weeks, with their mother planted under them; and the only wonder is that you yourself was not upon her breast.
“Pay you no heed to me, Miss Erema, when you see me a-whimpering in and out while I am about it. It makes my chest go easy, miss, I do assure you, though not at the time of life to understand it. All they children was to have sat up for the sake of their dear father, as I said just now; but because of their grandfather all was ordered back. And back they come, as good as gold, with Master George at the head of them, and asked me what milk-teeth was. Grandpa had said that 'a dinner was no dinner if milk-teeth were allowed at it.' The hard old man, with his own teeth false! He deserved to sit down to no other dinner--and he never did, miss.
“You may be sure that I had enough to do to manage all the little ones and answer all their questions; but never having seen a live lord before, and wanting to know if the children would be like him before so very long, I went quietly down stairs, and the biggest of my dears peeped after me. And then, by favor of the parlor-maid--for they kept neither butler nor footman now--I saw the Lord Castlewood, sitting at his ease, with a glass of port-wine before him, and my sweet mistress (the Captain's wife, and your mother, if you understand, miss) doing her very best, thinking of her children, to please him and make the polite to him. To me he seemed very much to be thawing to her--if you can understand, miss, what my meaning is--and the Captain was looking at them with a smile, as if it were just what he had hoped for. From my own eyesight I can contradict the lies put about by nobody knows who, that the father and the son were at hot words even then.
“And I even heard my master, when they went out at the door, vainly persuading his father to take such a bed as they could offer him. And good enough it would have been for ten lords; for I saw nothing wonderful in him, nor fit to compare any way with the Captain. But he would not have it, for no other reason of ill-will or temper, but only because he had ordered his bed at the Moonstock Inn, where his coach and four were resting.
“'I expect you to call me in the morning, George,' I heard him say, as clear as could be, while his son was helping his coat on. 'I am glad I have seen you. There are worse than you. And when the times get better, I will see what I can do.'
“With him this meant more than it might have done; for he was not a man of much promises, as you might tell by his face almost, with his nose so stern, and his mouth screwed down, and the wrinkles the wrong way for smiling. I could not tell what the Captain answered, for the door banged on them, and it woke the baby, who was dreaming, perhaps, about his lordship's face, and his little teeth gave him the wind on his chest, and his lungs was like bellows--bless him!
“Well, that stopped me, Miss Erema, from being truly accurate in my testimony. What with walking the floor, and thumping his back, and rattling of the rings to please him--when they put me on the Testament, cruel as they did, with the lawyers' eyes eating into me, and both my ears buzzing with sorrow and fright, I may have gone too far, with my heart in my mouth, for my mind to keep out of contradiction, wishful as I was to tell the whole truth in a manner to hurt nobody. And without any single lie or glaze of mine, I do assure you, miss, that I did more harm than good; every body in the room--a court they called it, and no bigger than my best parlor--one and all they were convinced that I would swear black was white to save my master and mistress! And certainly I would have done so, and the Lord in heaven thought the better of me, for the sake of all they children, if I could have made it stick together, as they do with practice.”
At thought of the little good she had done, and perhaps the great mischief, through excess of zeal, Mrs. Strouss was obliged to stop, and put her hand to her side, and sigh. And eager as I was for every word of this miserable tale, no selfish eagerness could deny her need of refreshment, and even of rest; for her round cheeks were white, and her full breast trembled. And now she was beginning to make snatches at my hand, as if she saw things she could only tell thus.
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{
"id": "7112"
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24
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None
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BETSY'S TALE--(Continued.)
“I am only astonished, my dear,” said my nurse, as soon as she had had some tea and toast, and scarcely the soft roe of a red herring, “that you can put up so well, and abide with my instincts in the way you do. None of your family could have done it, to my knowledge of their dispositions, much less the baby that was next above you. But it often comes about to go in turns like that; 'one, three, five, and seven is sweet, while two, four, and six is a-squalling with their feet.' But the Lord forgive me for an ill word of them, with their precious little bodies washed, and laying in their patterns till the judgment-day.
“But putting by the words I said in the dirty little room they pleased to call a 'court,' and the Testament so filthy that no lips could have a hold of it, my meaning is to tell you, miss, the very things that happened, so that you may fairly judge of them. The Captain came back from going with his father, I am sure, in less than twenty minutes, and smoking a cigar in his elegant way, quite happy and contented, for I saw him down the staircase. As for sign of any haste about him, or wiping of his forehead, or fumbling with his handkerchief, or being in a stew in any sort of way--as the stupid cook who let him in declared, by reason of her own having been at the beer-barrel--solemnly, miss, as I hope to go to heaven, there was nothing of the sort about him.
“He went into the dining-room, and mistress, who had been up stairs to see about the baby, went down to him; and there I heard them talking as pleasant and as natural as they always were together. Not one of them had the smallest sense of trouble hanging over them; and they put away both the decanters and cruets, and came up to bed in their proper order, the master stopping down just to finish his cigar and see to the doors and the bringing up the silver, because there was no man-servant now. And I heard him laughing at some little joke he made as he went into the bedroom. A happier household never went to bed, nor one with better hopes of a happy time to come. And the baby slept beside his parents in his little cot, as his mother liked to have him, with his blessed mouth wide open.
“Now we three (cook and Susan and myself) were accustomed to have a good time of it whenever the master first came home and the mistress was taken up with him. We used to count half an hour more in bed, without any of that wicked bell-clack, and then go on to things according to their order, without any body to say any thing. Accordingly we were all snug in bed, and turning over for another tuck of sleep, when there came a most vicious ringing of the outer bell. 'You get up, Susan,' I heard the cook say, for there only was a door between us; and Susan said, 'Blest if I will! Only Tuesday you put me down about it when the baker came.' Not a peg would either of them stir, no more than to call names on one another; so I slipped on my things, with the bell going clatter all the while, like the day of judgment. I felt it to be hard upon me, and I went down cross a little--just enough to give it well to a body I were not afraid of.
“But the Lord in His mercy remember me, miss! When I opened the door, I had no blood left. There stood two men, with a hurdle on their shoulders, and on the hurdle a body, with the head hanging down, and the front of it slouching, like a sack that has been stolen from; and behind it there was an authority with two buttons on his back, and he waited for me to say something; but to do so was beyond me. Not a bit of caution or of fear about my sham dress-up, as the bad folk put it afterward; the whole of such thoughts was beyond me outright, and no thought of any thing came inside me, only to wait and wonder.
“'This corpse belongeth here, as I am informed,' said the man, who seemed to be the master of it, and was proud to be so. 'Young woman, don't you please to stand like that, or every duffer in the parish will be here, and the boys that come hankering after it. You be off!' he cried out to a boy who was calling some more round the corner. 'Now, young woman, we must come in if you please, and the least said the soonest mended.'
“'Oh, but my mistress, my mistress!' I cried; 'and her time up, as nigh as may be, any day or night before new moon. 'Oh, Mr. Constable, Mr. Rural Polishman, take it to the tool shed, if you ever had a wife, Sir.' Now even this was turned against us as if I had expected it. They said that I must have known who it was, and to a certain length so I did, miss, but only by the dress and the manner of the corpse, and lying with an attitude there was no contradicting.
“I can not tell you now, my dear, exactly how things followed. My mind was gone all hollow with the sudden shock upon it. However, I had thought enough to make no noise immediate, nor tell the other foolish girls, who would have set up bellowing. Having years to deal with little ones brings knowledge of the rest to us. I think that I must have gone to master's door, where Susan's orders were to put his shaving water in a tin, and fetched him out, with no disturbance, only in his dressing-gown. And when I told him what it was, his rosy color turned like sheets, and he just said, 'Hush!' and nothing more. And guessing what he meant, I ran and put my things on properly.
“But having time to think, the shock began to work upon me, and I was fit for nothing when I saw the children smiling up with their tongues out for their bread and milk, as they used to begin the day with. And I do assure you, Miss Erema, my bitterest thought was of your coming, though unknown whether male or female, but both most inconvenient then, with things in such a state of things. You have much to answer for, miss, about it; but how was you to help it, though?
“The tool-shed door was too narrow to let the hurdle and the body in, and finding some large sea-kale pots standing out of use against the door, the two men (who were tired with the weight and fright, I dare say) set down their burden upon these, under a row of hollyhocks, at the end of the row of bee-hives. And here they wiped their foreheads with some rags they had for handkerchiefs, or one of them with his own sleeve, I should say, and, gaining their breath, they began to talk with the boldness of the sunrise over them. But Mr. Rural Polishman, as he was called in those parts, was walking up and down on guard, and despising of their foolish words.
“My master, the Captain, your father, miss, came out of a window and down the cross-walk, while I was at the green door peeping, for I thought that I might be wanted, if only to take orders what was to be done inside. The constable stiffly touched his hat, and marched to the head of the hurdle, and said, “'Do you know this gentleman?'
“Your father took no more notice of him than if he had been a stiff hollyhock, which he might have resembled if he had been good-looking. The Captain thought highly of discipline always, and no kinder gentleman could there be to those who gave his dues to him. But that man's voice had a low and dirty impertinent sort of a twang with it. Nothing could have been more unlucky. Every thing depended on that fellow in an ignorant neighborhood like that; and his lordship, for such he was now, of course, would not even deign to answer him. He stood over his head in his upright way by a good foot, and ordered him here and there, as the fellow had been expecting, I do believe, to order his lordship. And that made the bitterest enemy of him, being newly sent into these parts, and puffed up with authority. And the two miller's men could not help grinning, for he had waved them about like a pair of dogs.
“But to suppose that my master 'was unmoved, and took it brutally' (as that wretch of a fellow swore afterward), only shows what a stuck-up dolt he was. For when my master had examined his father, and made his poor body be brought in and spread on the couch in the dining-room, and sent me hot-foot for old Dr. Diggory down at the bottom of Shoxford, Susan peeped in through the crack of the door, with the cook to hold her hand behind, and there she saw the Captain on his knees at the side of his father's corpse, not saying a word, only with his head down. And when the doctor came back with me, with his night-gown positive under his coat, the first thing he said was, 'My dear Sir--my lord, I mean--don't take on so; such things will always happen in this world;' which shows that my master was no brute.
“Then the Captain stood up in his strength and height, without any pride and without any shame, only in the power of a simple heart, and he said words fit to hang him: “'This is my doing! There is no one else to blame. If my father is dead, I have killed him!'
“Several of us now were looking in, and the news going out like a winnowing woman with no one to shut the door after her; our passage was crowding with people that should have had a tar-brush in their faces. And of course a good score of them ran away to tell that the Captain had murdered his father. The milk-man stood there with his yoke and cans, and his naily boots on our new oil-cloth, and, not being able to hide himself plainly, he pulled out his slate and began to make his bill.
“'Away with you all!' your father said, coming suddenly out of the dining-room, while the doctor was unbuttoning my lord, who was dead with all his day clothes on; and every body brushed away like flies at the depth of his voice and his stature. Then he bolted the door, with only our own people and the doctor and the constable inside. Your mother was sleeping like a lamb, as I could swear, having had a very tiring day the day before, and being well away from the noise of the passage, as well as at a time when they must sleep whenever sleep will come, miss. Bless her gentle heart, what a blessing to be out of all that scare of it!
“All this time, you must understand, there was no sign yet what had happened to his lordship, over and above his being dead. All of us thought, if our minds made bold to think, that it must have pleased the Lord to take his lordship either with an appleplexy or a sudden heart-stroke, or, at any rate, some other gracious way not having any flow of blood in it. But now, while your father was gone up stairs--for he knew that his father was dead enough--to be sure that your mother was quiet, and perhaps to smooth her down for trouble, and while I was run away to stop the ranting of the children, old Dr. Diggory and that rural officer were handling poor Lord Castlewood. They set him to their liking, and they cut his clothes off--so Susan told me afterward--and then they found why they were forced to do so, which I need not try to tell you, miss. Only they found that he was not dead from any wise visitation, but because he had been shot with a bullet through his heart.
“Old Dr. Diggory came out shaking, and without any wholesome sense to meet what had arisen, after all his practice with dead men, and he called out 'Murder!' with a long thing in his hand, till my master leaped down the stairs, twelve at a time, and laid his strong hand on the old fool's mouth.
“'Would you kill my wife?' he said; 'you shall not kill my wife.'
“'Captain Castlewood,' the constable answered, pulling out his staff importantly, 'consider yourself my prisoner.'
“The Captain could have throttled him with one hand, and Susan thought he would have done it. But, instead of that, he said, 'Very well; do your duty. But let me see what you mean by it.' Then he walked back again to the body of his father, and saw that he had been murdered.
“But, oh, Miss Erema, you are so pale! Not a bit of food have you had for hours. I ought not to have told you such a deal of it to once. Let me undo all your things, my dear, and give you something cordial; and then lie down and sleep a bit.”
“No, thank you, nurse,” I answered, calling all my little courage back. “No sleep for me until I know every word. And to think of all my father had to see and bear! I am not fit to be his daughter.”
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{
"id": "7112"
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25
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None
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BETSY'S TALE--(Concluded.)
“Well, now,” continued Mrs. Strouss, as soon as I could persuade her to go on, “if I were to tell you every little thing that went on among them, miss, I should go on from this to this day week, or I might say this day fortnight, and then not half be done with it. And the worst of it is that those little things make all the odds in a case of that sort, showing what the great things were. But only a counselor at the Old Bailey could make head or tail of the goings on that followed.
“For some reason of his own, unknown to any living being but himself, whether it were pride (as I always said) or something deeper (as other people thought), he refused to have any one on earth to help him, when he ought to have had the deepest lawyer to be found. The constable cautioned him to say nothing, as it seems is laid down in their orders, for fear of crimination. And he smiled at this, with a high contempt, very fine to see, but not bodily wise. But even that jack-in-office could perceive that the poor Captain thought of his sick wife up stairs, and his little children, ten times for one thought he ever gave to his own position. And yet I must tell you that he would have no denial, but to know what it was that had killed his parent. When old Dr. Diggory's hands were shaking so that his instrument would not bite on the thing lodged in his lordship's back, after passing through and through him, and he was calling for somebody to run for his assistant, who do you think did it for him, Miss Erema? As sure as I sit here, the Captain! His face was like a rock, and his hands no less; and he said, 'Allow me, doctor. I have been in action.' And he fetched out the bullet--which showed awful nerve, according to my way of thinking--as if he had been a man with three rows of teeth.
“'This bullet is just like those of my own pistol!' he cried, and he sat down hard with amazement. You may suppose how this went against him, when all he desired was to know and tell the truth; and people said that of course he got it out, after a bottleful of doctors failed, because he knew best how it was put in.'
“'I shall now go and see the place, if you please, or whether you please or not,' my master said. 'Constable, you may come and point it out, unless you prefer going to your breakfast. My word is enough that I shall not run away. Otherwise, as you have acted on your own authority, I shall act on mine, and tie you until you have obtained a warrant. Take your choice, my man; and make it quickly, while I offer it.'
“The rural polishman stared at this, being used on the other hand to be made much of. But seeing how capable the Captain was of acting up to any thing, he made a sulky scrape, and said, 'Sir, as you please for the present,' weighting his voice on those last three words, as much as to say, 'Pretty soon you will be handcuffed.' 'Then,' said my master, 'I shall also insist on the presence of two persons, simply to use their eyes without any fear or favor. One is my gardener, a very honest man, but apt to be late in the morning. The other is a faithful servant, who has been with us for several years. Their names are Jacob Rigg and Betsy Bowen. You may also bring two witnesses, if you choose. And the miller's men, of course, will come. But order back all others.'
“'That is perfectly fair and straightforward, my lord,' the constable answered, falling naturally into abeyance to orders. 'I am sure that all of us wishes your lordship kindly out of this rum scrape. But my duty is my duty.'
“With a few more words we all set forth, six in number, and no more; for the constable said that the miller's men, who had first found the late Lord Castlewood, were witnesses enough for him. And Jacob Rigg, whose legs were far apart (as he said) from trenching celery, took us through the kitchen-garden, and out at a gap, which saved every body knowing.
“Then we passed through a copse or two, and across a meadow, and then along the turnpike-road, as far as now I can remember. And along that we went to a stile on the right, without any house for a long way off. And from that stile a foot-path led down a slope of grass land to the little river, and over a hand-bridge, and up another meadow full of trees and bushes, to a gate which came out into the road again a little to this side of the Moonstock Inn, saving a quarter of a mile of road, which ran straight up the valley and turned square at the stone bridge to get to the same inn.
“I can not expect to be clear to you, miss, though I see it all now as I saw it then, every tree, and hump, and hedge of it; only about the distances from this to that, and that to the other, they would be beyond me. You must be on the place itself; and I never could carry distances--no, nor even clever men, I have heard my master say. But when he came to that stile he stopped and turned upon all of us clearly, and as straight as any man of men could be. 'Here I saw my father last, at a quarter past ten o'clock last night, or within a few minutes of that time.' I wished to see him to his inn, but he would not let me do so, and he never bore contradiction. He said that he knew the way well, having fished more than thirty years ago up and down this stream. He crossed this stile, and we shook hands over it, and the moon being bright, I looked into his face, and he said, 'My boy, God bless you!' Knowing his short ways, I did not even look after him, but turned away, and went straight home along this road. Upon my word as an Englishman, and as an officer of her Majesty, that is all I know of it. Now let us go on to the--to the other place.
“We all of us knew in our hearts, I am sure, that the Captain spoke the simple truth, and his face was grand as he looked at us. But the constable thought it his duty to ask, “'Did you hear no sound of a shot, my lord? For he fell within a hundred yards of this.'
“'I heard no sound of any shot whatever. I heard an owl hooting as I went home, and then the rattle of a heavy wagon, and the bells of horses. I have said enough. Let us go forward.'
“We obeyed him at once; and even the constable looked right and left, as if he had been wrong. He signed to the miller's man to lead the way, and my lord walked proudly after him. The path was only a little narrow track, with the grass, like a front of hair, falling over it on the upper side and on the under, dropping away like side curls; such a little path that I was wondering how a great lord could walk over it. Then we came down a steep place to a narrow bridge across a shallow river--abridge made of only two planks and a rail, with a prop or two to carry them. And one end of the handrail was fastened into a hollow and stubby old hawthorn-tree, overhanging the bridge and the water a good way. And just above this tree, and under its shadow, there came a dry cut into the little river, not more than a yard or two above the wooden bridge, a water-trough such as we have in Wales, miss, for the water to run in, when the farmer pleases; but now there was no water in it, only gravel.
“The cleverest of the miller's men, though, neither of them had much intellect, stepped down at a beck from the constable, right beneath the old ancient tree, and showed us the marks on the grass and the gravel made by his lordship where he fell and lay. And it seemed that he must have fallen off the bridge, yet not into the water, but so as to have room for his body, if you see, miss, partly on the bank, and partly in the hollow of the meadow trough.
“'Have you searched the place well?' the Captain asked. 'Have you found any weapon or implement?'
“'We have found nothing but the corpse, so far,' the constable answered, in a surly voice, not liking to be taught his business. 'My first duty was to save life, if I could. These men, upon finding the body, ran for me, and knowing who it was, I came with it to your house.'
“'You acted for the best, my man. Now search the place carefully, while I stand here. I am on my parole, I shall not run away. Jacob, go down and help them.'
“Whether from being in the army, or what, your father always spoke in such a way that the most stiff-neckedest people began without thinking to obey him. So the constable and the rest went down, while the Captain and I stood upon the plank, looking at the four of them.
“For a long time they looked about, according to their attitudes, without finding any thing more than the signs of the manner in which the poor lord fell, and of these the constable pulled out a book and made a pencil memorial. But presently Jacob, a spry sort of man, cried, 'Hulloa! whatever have I got hold of here? Many a good craw-fish have I pulled out from this bank when the water comes down the gully, but never one exactly like this here afore.'
“'Name of the Lord!' cried the constable, jumping behind the hawthorn stump; 'don't point it at me, you looby! It's loaded, loaded one barrel, don't you see? Put it down, with the muzzle away from me.'
“'Hand it to me, Jacob,' the Captain said. 'You understand a gun, and this goes off just the same.' Constable Jobbins have no fear. 'Yes, it is exactly as I thought. This pistol is one of the double-barreled pair which I bought to take to India. The barrels are rifled; it shoots as true as any rifle, and almost as hard up to fifty yards. The right barrel has been fired, the other is still loaded. The bullet I took from my father's body most certainly came from this pistol.'
“'Can 'e say, can 'e say then, who done it, master?' asked Jacob, a man very sparing of speech, but ready at a beck to jump at constable and miller's men, if only law was with him. 'Can 'e give a clear account, and let me chuck 'un in the river?'
“'No, Jacob, I can do nothing of the kind,' your father answered; while the rural man came up and faced things, not being afraid of a fight half so much as he was of an accident; by reason of his own mother having been blown up by a gunpowder start at Dartford, yet came down all right, miss, and had him three months afterward, according to his own confession; nevertheless, he came up now as if he had always been upright, in the world, and he said, 'My lord, can you explain all this?'
“Your father looked at him with one of his strange gazes, as if he were measuring the man while trying his own inward doing of his own mind. Proud as your father was, as proud as ever can be without cruelty, it is my firm belief, Miss Erema, going on a woman's judgment, that if the man's eyes had come up to my master's sense of what was virtuous, my master would have up and told him the depth and contents of his mind and heart, although totally gone beyond him.
“But Jobbins looked back at my lord with a grin, and his little eyes, hard to put up with. 'Have you nothing to say, my lord? Then I am afeared I must ask you just to come along of me.' And my master went with him, miss, as quiet as a lamb; which Jobbins said, and even Jacob fancied, was a conscience sign of guilt.
“Now after I have told you all this, Miss Erema, you know very nearly as much as I do. To tell how the grief was broken to your mother, and what her state of mind was, and how she sat up on the pillows and cried, while things went on from bad to worse, and a verdict of 'willful murder' was brought against your father by the crowner's men, and you come headlong, without so much as the birds in the ivy to chirp about you, right into the thick of the worst of it. I do assure you, Miss Erema, when I look at your bright eyes and clear figure, the Lord in heaven, who has made many cripples, must have looked down special to have brought you as you are. For trouble upon trouble fell in heaps, faster than I can wipe my eyes to think. To begin with, all the servants but myself and gardener Jacob ran away. They said that the old lord haunted the house, and walked with his hand in the middle of his heart, pulling out a bullet if he met any body, and sighing 'murder' three times, till every hair was crawling. I took it on myself to fetch the Vicar of the parish to lay the evil spirit, as they do in Wales. A nice kind gentleman he was as you could see, and wore a velvet skull-cap, and waited with his legs up. But whether he felt that the power was not in him, or whether his old lordship was frightened of the Church, they never made any opportunity between them to meet and have it out, miss.
“Then it seemed as if Heaven, to avenge his lordship, rained down pestilence upon that house. A horrible disease, the worst I ever met, broke out upon the little harmless dears, the pride of my heart and of every body's eyes, for lovelier or better ones never came from heaven. They was all gone to heaven in a fortnight and three days, and laid in the church-yard at one another's side, with little beds of mould to the measure of their stature, and their little carts and drums, as they made me promise, ready for the judgment-day. Oh, my heart was broken, miss, my heart was broken! I cried so, I thought I could never cry more.
“But when your dear mother, who knew nothing of all this (for we put all their illness, by the doctor's orders, away at the further end of the house), when she was a little better of grievous pain and misery (for being so upset her time was hard), when she sat up on the pillow, looking like a bride almost, except that she had what brides hasn't--a little red thing in white flannel at her side--then she says to me, 'I am ready, Betsy; it is high time for all of them to see their little sister. They always love the baby so, whenever there is a new one. And they are such men and women to it. They have been so good this time that I have never heard them once. And I am sure that I can trust them, Betsy, not to make the baby cry. I do so long to see the darlings. Now do not even whisper to them not to make a noise. They are too good to require it; and it would hurt their little feelings.'
“I had better have been shot, my dear, according as the old lord was, than have the pain that went through all my heart, to see the mother so. She sat up, leaning on one arm, with the hand of the other round your little head, and her beautiful hair was come out of its loops, and the color in her cheeks was like a shell. Past the fringe of the curtain, and behind it too, her soft bright eyes were a-looking here and there for the first to come in of her children. The Lord only knows what lies I told her, so as to be satisfied without them. First I said they were all gone for a walk; and then that the doctor had ordered them away; and then that they had got the measles. That last she believed, because it was worse than what I had said before of them; and she begged to see Dr. Diggory about it, and I promised that she should as soon as he had done his dinner. And then, with a little sigh, being very weak, she went down into her nest again, with only you to keep her company.
“Well, that was bad enough, as any mortal sufferer might have said; enough for one day at any rate. But there was almost worse to come. For when I was having a little sit down stairs, with my supper and half pint of ale (that comes like drawing a long breath to us when spared out of sickrooms, miss), and having no nursery now on my mind, was thinking of all the sad business, with only a little girl in the back kitchen come in to muck up the dishes, there appeared a good knock at the garden door, and I knew it for the thumb of the Captain. I locked the young girl up, by knowing what their tongues are, and then I let your father in, and the candle-sight of him made my heart go low.
“He had come out of prison; and although not being tried, his clothes were still in decency, they had great holes in them, and the gloss all gone to a smell of mere hedges and ditches. The hat on his head was quite out of the fashion, even if it could be called a hat at all, and his beautiful beard had no sign of a comb, and he looked as old again as he had looked a month ago.
“'I know all about it. You need not be afraid,' he said, as I took him to the breakfast-room, where no one up stairs could hear us. 'I know that my children are all dead and buried, except the one that was not born yet. Ill news flies quick. I know all about it. George, Henrietta, Jack, Alf, little Vi, and Tiny. I have seen their graves and counted them, while the fool of a policeman beat his gloves through the hedge within a rod of me. Oh yes, I have much to be thankful for. My life is in my own hand now.'
“'Oh, master; oh, Captain; oh, my lord!' I cried; 'for the sake of God in heaven, don't talk like that. Think of your sweet wife, your dear lady.'
“'Betsy,' he answered, with his eyes full upon me, noble, yet frightful to look at, 'I am come to see my wife. Go and let her know it, according to your own discretion.'
“My discretion would have been not to let him see her, but go on and write to her from foreign countries, with the salt sea between them; but I give you my word that I had no discretion, but from pity and majesty obeyed him. I knew that he must have broken prison, and by good rights ought to be starving. But I could no more offer him the cold ham and pullet than take him by his beard and shake him.
“'Is he come, at last, at last?' my poor mistress said, whose wits were wandering after her children. 'At last, at last! Then he will find them all.'
“'Yes, ma'am, at last, at the last he will,' I answered, while I thought of the burial service, which I had heard three times in a week--for the little ones went to their graves in pairs to save ceremony; likewise of the Epistle of Saint Paul, which is not like our Lord's way of talking at all, but arguing instead of comforting. And not to catch her up in that weak state, I said, 'He will find every one of them, ma'am.'
“'Oh, but I want him for himself, for himself, as much as all the rest put together,' my dear lady said, without listening to me, but putting her hand to her ear to hearken for even so much as a mouse on the stairs. 'Do bring him, Betsy; only bring him, Betsy, and then let me go where my children are.'
“I was surprised at her manner of speaking, which I would not have allowed to her, but more than all about her children, which she could only have been dreaming yet, for nobody else came nigh her except only me, miss, and you, miss, and for you to breathe words was impossible. All you did was to lie very quiet, tucked up into your mother's side; and as regular as the time-piece went, wide came your eyes and your mouth to be fed. If your nature had been cross or squally, 'baby's coffin No. 7' would have come after all the other six, which the thief of a carpenter put down on his bill as if it was so many shavings.
“Well, now, to tell you the downright truth, I have a lot of work to do to-morrow, miss, with three basketfuls of washing coming home, and a man about a tap that leaks and floods the inside of the fender; and if I were to try to put before you the way that those two for the last time of their lives went on to one another--the one like a man and the other like a woman, full of sobs and choking--my eyes would be in such a state to-morrow that the whole of them would pity and cheat me. And I ought to think of you as well, miss, who has been sadly harrowed listening when you was not born yet. And to hear what went on, full of weeping, when yourself was in the world, and able to cry for yourself, and all done over your own little self, would leave you red eyes and no spirit for the night, and no appetite in the morning; and so I will pass it all over, if you please, and let him go out of the backdoor again.
“This he was obliged to do quick, and no mistake, glad as he might have been to say more words, because the fellows who call themselves officers, without any commission, were after him. False it was to say, as was said, that he got out of Winchester jail through money. That story was quite of a piece with the rest. His own strength and skill it was that brought him out triumphantly, as the scratches on his hands and cheeks might show. He did it for the sake of his wife, no doubt. When he heard that the children were all in their graves, and their mother in the way to follow them, madness was better than his state of mind, as the officers told me when they could not catch him--and sorry they would have been to do it, I believe.
“To overhear my betters is the thing of all things most against my nature; and my poor lady being unfit to get up, there was nothing said on the landing, which is the weakest part of gentlefolks. They must have said 'Good-by' to one another quite in silence, and the Captain, as firm a man as ever lived, had lines on his face that were waiting for tears, if nature should overcome bringing up. Then I heard the words, 'for my sake,' and the other said, 'for your sake,' a pledge that passed between them, making breath more long than life is. But when your poor father was by the back-door, going out toward the woods and coppices, he turned sharp round, and he said, 'Betsy Bowen!' and I answered, 'Yes, at your service, Sir.' 'You have been the best woman in the world,' he said--'the bravest, best, and kindest. I leave my wife and my last child to you. The Lord has been hard on me, but He will spare me those two. I do hope and believe He will.'
“We heard a noise of horses in the valley, and the clank of swords--no doubt the mounted police from Winchester a-crossing of the Moonstock Bridge to search our house for the runaway. And the Captain took my hand, and said, 'I trust them to you. Hide the clothes I took off, that they may not know I have been here. I trust my wife and little babe to you, and may God bless you, Betsy!'
“He had changed all his clothes, and he looked very nice, but a sadder face was never seen. As he slipped through the hollyhocks I said to myself, 'There goes a broken-hearted man, and he leaves a broken heart behind.' And your dear mother died on the Saturday night. Oh my! oh my! how sad it was!”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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26
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AT THE BANK
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In telling that sad tale my faithful and soft-hearted nurse had often proved her own mistake in saying, as she did, that tears can ever be exhausted. And I, for my part, though I could scarcely cry for eager listening, was worse off perhaps than if I had wetted each sad fact as it went by. At any rate, be it this way or that, a heavy and sore heart was left me, too distracted for asking questions, and almost too depressed to grieve.
In the morning Mrs. Strouss was bustling here and there and every where, and to look at her nice Welsh cheeks and aprons, and to hear how she scolded the butcher's boy, nobody would for a moment believe that her heart was deeper than her skin, as the saying of the west country is. Major Hockin had been to see me last night, for he never forgot a promise, and had left me in good hands, and now he came again in the morning. According to his usual way of taking up an opinion, he would not see how distracted I was, and full of what I had heard overnight, but insisted on dragging me off to the bank, that being in his opinion of more importance than old stories. I longed to ask Betsy some questions which had been crowding into my mind as she spoke, and while I lay awake at night; however, I was obliged to yield to the business of the morning, and the good Major's zeal and keen knowledge of the world; and he really gave me no time to think.
“Yes, I understand all that as well as if I had heard every word of it,” he said, when he had led me helpless into the Hansom cab he came in, and had slammed down the flood-gates in front of us. “You must never think twice of what old women say” (Mrs. Strouss was some twenty years younger than himself); “they always go prating and finding mares'-nests, and then they always cry. Now did she cry, Erema?”
I would have given a hundred dollars to be able to say, “No, not one drop;” but the truth was against me, and I said, “How could she help it?”
“Exactly!” the Major exclaimed, so loudly that the cabman thought he was ordered to stop. “No, go on, cabby, if your horse can do it. My dear, I beg your pardon, but you are so very simple! You have not been among the eye-openers of the west. This comes of the obsolete Uncle Sam.”
“I would rather be simple than 'cute!'” I replied; “and my own Uncle Sam will be never obsolete.”
Silly as I was, I could never speak of the true Uncle Sam in this far country without the bright shame of a glimmer in my eyes; and with this, which I cared not to hide, I took my companion's hand and stood upon the footway of a narrow and crowded lane.
“Move on! move on!” cried a man with a high-crowned hat japanned at intervals, and, wondering at his rudeness to a lady, I looked at him. But he only said, “Now move on, will you?” without any wrath, and as if he were vexed at our littleness of mind in standing still. Nobody heeded him any more than if he had said, “I am starving,” but it seemed a rude thing among ladies. Before I had time to think more about this--for I always like to think of things--I was led through a pair of narrow swinging doors, and down a close alley between two counters full of people paying and receiving money. The Major, who always knew how to get on, found a white-haired gentleman in a very dingy corner, and whispered to him in a confidential way, though neither had ever seen the other before, and the white-haired gentleman gazed at me as sternly as if I were a bank-note for at least a thousand pounds; and then he said, “Step this way, young lady. Major Hockin, step this way, Sir.”
The young lady “stepped that way” in wonder as to what English English is, and then we were shown into a sacred little room, where the daylight had glass reflectors for it, if it ever came to use them. But as it cared very little to do this, from angular disabilities, three bright gas-lights were burning in soft covers, and fed the little room with a rich, sweet glow. And here shone one of the partners of the bank, a very pleasant-looking gentleman, and very nicely dressed.
“Major Hockin,” he said, after looking at the card, “will you kindly sit down, while I make one memorandum? I had the pleasure of knowing your uncle well--at least I believe that the late Sir Rufus was your uncle.”
“Not so,” replied the Major, well pleased, however. “I fear that I am too old to have had any uncle lately. Sir Rufus Hockin was my first cousin.”
“Oh, indeed! To be sure, I should have known it, but Sir Rufus being much your senior, the mistake was only natural. Now what can I do to serve you, or perhaps this young lady--Miss Hockin, I presume?”
“No,” said his visitor, “not Miss Hockin. I ought to have introduced her, but for having to make my own introduction. Mr. Shovelin, this lady is Miss Erema Castlewood, the only surviving child of the late Captain George Castlewood, properly speaking, Lord Castlewood.”
Mr. Shovelin had been looking at me with as much curiosity as good manners and his own particular courtesy allowed. And I fancied that he felt that I could not be a Hockin.
“Oh, dear, dear me!” was all he said, though he wanted to say, “God bless me!” or something more sudden and stronger. “Lord Castlewood's daughter--poor George Castlewood! My dear young lady, is it possible?”
“Yes, I am my father's child,” I said; “and I am proud to hear that I am like him.”
“That you well may be,” he answered, putting on his spectacles. “You are astonished at my freedom, perhaps; you will allow for it, or at least, you will not be angry with me, when you know that your father was my dearest friend at Harrow; and that when his great trouble fell upon him--” Here Mr. Shovelin stopped, as behooves a man who begins to outrun himself. He could not tell me that it was himself who had found all the money for my father's escape, which cost much cash as well as much good feeling. Neither did I, at the time, suspect it, being all in the dark upon such points. Not knowing what to say, I looked from the banker to the Major, and back again.
“Can you tell me the exact time?” the latter asked. “I am due in the Temple at 12.30, and I never am a minute late, whatever happens.”
“You will want a swift horse,” Mr. Shovelin answered, “or else this will be an exception to your rule. It is twenty-one minutes past twelve now.”
“May I leave my charge to you, then, for a while? She will be very quiet; she is always so. Erema, will you wait for me?”
I was not quick enough then to see that this was arranged between them. Major Hockin perceived that Mr. Shovelin wished to have a talk with me about dearer matters than money, having children of his own, and being (as his eyes and forehead showed) a man of peculiar views, perhaps, but clearly of general good-will.
“In an hour, in an hour, in less than an hour”--the Major intensified his intentions always--“in three-quarters of an hour I shall be back. Meanwhile, my dear, you will sit upon a stool, and not say a word, nor make any attempt to do any thing every body is not used to.”
This vexed me, as if I were a savage here; and I only replied with a very gentle bow, being glad to see his departure; for Major Hockin was one of those people, so often to be met with, whom any one likes or dislikes according to the changes of their behavior. But Mr. Shovelin was different from that.
“Miss Castlewood, take this chair,” he said; “a hard one, but better than a stool, perhaps. Now how am I to talk to you--as an inquirer upon business matters, or as the daughter of my old friend? Your smile is enough. Well, and you must talk to me in the same unreasonable manner. That being clearly established between us, let us proceed to the next point. Your father, my old friend, wandered from the track, and unfortunately lost his life in a desolate part of America.”
“No; oh no. It was nothing like that. He might have been alive, and here at this moment, if I had not drunk and eaten every bit and drop of his.”
“Now don't, my dear child, don't be so romantic--I mean, look at things more soberly. You did as you were ordered, I have no doubt; George Castlewood always would have that. He was a most commanding man. You do not quite resemble him in that respect, I think.”
“Oh, but did he do it, did he do it?” I cried out. “You were at school with him, and knew his nature. Was it possible for him to do it, Sir?”
“As possible as it is for me to go down to Sevenoaks and shoot my dear old father, who is spending a green and agreeable old age there. Not that your grandfather, if I may say it without causing pain to you, was either green or agreeable. He was an uncommonly sharp old man; I might even say a hard one. As you never saw him, you will not think me rude in saying that much. Your love, of course, is for your father; and if your father had had a father of larger spirit about money, he might have been talking to me pleasantly now, instead of--instead of all these sad things.”
“Please not to slip away from me,” I said, bluntly, having so often met with that. “You believe, as every good person does, that my father was wholly innocent. But do tell me who could have done it instead. Somebody must have done it; that seems clear.”
“Yes,” replied Mr. Shovelin, with a look of calm consideration; “somebody did it, undoubtedly; and that makes the difficulty of the whole affair. 'Cui bono,' as the lawyers say. Two persons only could have had any motive, so far as wealth and fortune go. The first and most prominent, your father, who, of course, would come into every thing (which made the suspicion so hot and strong); and the other, a very nice gentleman, whom it is wholly impossible to suspect.”
“Are you sure of that? People have more than suspected--they have condemned--my father. After that, I can suspect any body. Who is it? Please to tell me.”
“It is the present Lord Castlewood, as he is beginning to be called. He would not claim the title, or even put forward his right in any way, until he had proof of your dear father's death; and even then he behaved so well--” “He did it! he did it!” I cried, in hot triumph. “My father's name shall be clear of it. Can there be any doubt that he did it? How very simple the whole of it becomes! Nothing astonishes me, except the stupidity of people. He had every thing to gain, and nothing to lose--a bad man, no doubt--though I never heard of him. And putting it all on my father, of course, to come in himself, and abide his time, till the misery killed my father. How simple, how horribly simple, it becomes!”
“You are much too quick, too hot, too sudden. Excuse me a minute”--as a silver bell struck--“I am wanted in the next room. But before I go, let me give you a glass of cold water, and beg you to dismiss that new idea from your mind.”
I could see, as I took with a trembling hand the water he poured out for me, that Mr. Shovelin was displeased. His kind and handsome face grew hard. He had taken me for a nice young lady, never much above the freezing-point, and he had found me boil over in a moment. I was sorry to have grieved him; but if he had heard Betsy Bowen's story, and seen her tell it, perhaps he would have allowed for me. I sat down again, having risen in my warmth, and tried to quiet and command myself by thinking of the sad points only. Of these there were plenty to make pictures of, the like of which had kept me awake all night; and I knew by this time, from finding so much more of pity than real sympathy, that men think a woman may well be all tears, but has no right to even the shadow of a frown. That is their own prerogative.
And so, when Mr. Shovelin returned, with a bundle of papers which had also vexed him--to judge by the way in which he threw them down--I spoke very mildly, and said that I was very sorry for my display of violence, but that if he knew all, he would pardon me; and he pardoned me in a moment.
“I was going to tell you, my dear Miss Castlewood,” he continued, gently, “that your sudden idea must be dismissed, for reasons which I think will content you. In the first place, the present Lord Castlewood is, and always has been, an exemplary man, of great piety and true gentleness; in the next place, he is an invalid, who can not walk a mile with a crutch to help him, and so he has been for a great many years; and lastly, if you have no faith in the rest, he was in Italy at the time, and remained there for some years afterward. There he received and sheltered your poor father after his sad calamity, and was better than a brother to him, as your father, in a letter to me, declared. So you see that you must acquit him.”
“That is not enough. I would beg his pardon on my knees, since he helped my father, for he must have thought him innocent. Now, Mr. Shovelin, you were my father's friend, and you are such a clever man--” “How do you know that, young lady? What a hurry you are always in!”
“Oh, there can be no doubt about it. But you must not ask reasons, if I am so quick. Now please to tell me what your own conclusion is. I can talk of it calmly now; yes, quite calmly, because I never think of any thing else. Only tell me what you really believe, and I will keep it most strictly to myself.”
“I am sure you will do that,” he answered, smiling, “not only from the power of your will, my dear, but also because I have nothing to say. At first I was strongly inclined to believe (knowing, from my certainty of your father, that the universal opinion must be wrong) that the old lord had done it himself; for he always had been of a headstrong and violent nature, which I am sure will never re-appear in you. But the whole of the evidence went against this, and little as I think of evidence, especially at an inquest, your father's behavior confirmed what was sworn to. Your father knew that his father had not made away with himself in a moment of passion, otherwise he was not the man to break prison and fly trial. He would have said, boldly, 'I am guiltless; there are many things that I can not explain; I can not help that; I will face it out. Condemn me, if you like, and I will suffer.' From your own remembrance of your father's nature, is not that certainly the course he would have taken?”
“I have not an atom of doubt about it. His flight and persistent dread of trial puzzle me beyond imagination. Of his life he was perfectly reckless, except, at least, for my sake.”
“I know that he was,” Mr. Shovelin replied; “as a boy he was wonderfully fearless. As a man, with a sweet wife and a lot of children, he might have begun to be otherwise. But when all those were gone, and only a poor little baby left--” “Yes, I suppose I was all that.”
“Forgive me. I am looking back at you. Who could dream that you would ever even live, without kith or kin to care for you? Your life was saved by some good woman who took you away to Wales. But when you were such a poor little relic, and your father could scarcely have seen you, to have such a mite left must have been almost a mockery of happiness. That motive could not have been strong enough to prevent a man of proud honor from doing what honor at once demanded. Your father would have returned and surrendered as soon as he heard of his dear wife's death, if in the balance there had been only you.”
“Yes, Mr. Shovelin, perhaps he would. I was never very much as a counter-balance. Yet my father loved me.” I could have told him of the pledge exchanged--“For my sake,” and, “Yes, for your sake,” with love and wedded honor set to fight cold desolate repute--but I did not say a word about it.
“He loved you afterward, of course. But a man who has had seven children is not enthusiastic about a baby. There must have been a larger motive.”
“But when I was the only one left alive. Surely I became valuable then. I can not have been such a cipher.”
“Yes, for a long time you would have been,” replied the Saturnian banker. “I do not wish to disparage your attractions when you were a fortnight old. They may have begun already to be irresistible. Excuse me; you have led me into the light vein, when speaking of a most sad matter. You must blame your self-assertion for it. All I wish to convey to you is my belief that something wholly unknown to us, some dark mystery of which we have no inkling, lies at the bottom of this terrible affair. Some strange motive there must have been, strong enough even to overcome all ordinary sense of honor, and an Englishman's pride in submitting to the law, whatever may be the consequence. Consider that his 'flight from justice,' as it was called, of course, by every one, condemned his case and ruined his repute. Even for that he would not have cared so much as for his own sense of right. And though he was a very lively fellow, as I first remember him, full of tricks and jokes, and so on, which in this busy age are out of date, I am certain that he always had a stern sense of right. One never knows how love affairs and weakness about children may alter almost any man; but my firm conviction is that my dear old school-fellow, George Castlewood, even with a wife and lovely children hanging altogether upon his life, not only would not have broken jail, but would calmly have given up his body to be hanged--pardon me, my dear, for putting it so coarsely--if there had not been something paramount to override even apparent honor. What it can have been I have no idea, and I presume you have none.”
“None whatever,” I said at once, in answer to his inquiring gaze. “I am quite taken by surprise; I never even thought of such a thing. It has always seemed to me so natural that my dear father, being shamefully condemned, because appearances were against him, and nobody could enter into him, should, for the sake of his wife and children, or even of one child like me, depart or banish himself, or emigrate, or, as they might call it, run away. Knowing that he never could have a fair trial, it was the only straightforward and good and affectionate thing for him to do.”
“You can not see things as men see them. We must not expect it of you,” Mr. Shovelin answered, with a kind but rather too superior smile, which reminded me a little of dear Uncle Sam when he listened to what, in his opinion, was only female reason; “but, dear me, here is Major Hockin come! Punctuality is the soul of business.”
“So I always declare,” cried the Major, who was more than three-quarters of an hour late, for which in my heart I thanked him. “My watch keeps time to a minute, Sir, and its master to a second. Well, I hope you have settled all questions of finance, and endowed my young maid with a fortune.”
“So far from that,” Mr. Shovelin replied, in a tone very different from that he used to me, “we have not even said one word of business; all that has been left for your return. Am I to understand that you are by appointment or relationship the guardian of this young lady?”
“God forbid!” cried Major Hockin, shortly. I thought it very rude of him, yet I could not help smiling to see how he threw his glasses up and lifted his wiry crest of hair. “Not that she is bad, I mean, but good, very good; indeed, I may say the very best girl ever known outside of my own family. My cousin, Colonel Gundry, who owns an immense estate in the most auriferous district of all California, but will not spoil his splendid property by mining, he will--he will tell you the very same thing, Sir.”
“I am very glad to hear it,” said the banker, smiling at me, while I wondered what it was, but hoped that it meant my praises. “Now I really fear that I must be very brief, though the daughter of my oldest friend may well be preferred to business. But now we will turn at once to business, if you please.”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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27
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COUSIN MONTAGUE
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Mr. Shovelin went to a corner of the room, which might be called his signal-box, having a little row of port-holes like a toy frigate or accordion, and there he made sounds which brought steps very promptly, one clerk carrying a mighty ledger, and the other a small strong-box.
“No plate,” Major Hockin whispered to me, shaking his gray crest with sorrow; “but there may be diamonds, you know, Erema. One ounce of diamonds is worth a ton of plate.”
“No,” said Mr. Shovelin, whose ears were very keen, “I fear that you will find nothing of mercantile value. Thank you, Mr. Robinson; by-and-by perhaps we shall trouble you. Strictly speaking, perhaps I should require the presence of your father's lawyer, or of some one producing probate, ere I open this box, Miss Castlewood. But having you here, and Major Hockin, and knowing what I do about the matter (which is one of personal confidence), I will dispense with formalities. We have given your father's solicitor notice of this deposit, and requested his attention, but he never has deigned to attend to it; so now we will dispense with him. You see that the seal is unbroken; you know your father's favorite seal, no doubt. The key is nothing; it was left to my charge. You wish that I should open this?”
Certainly I did, and the banker split the seal with an ebony-handled paper-knife, and very soon unlocked the steel-ribbed box, whose weight was chiefly of itself. Some cotton-wool lay on the top to keep the all-penetrative dust away, and then a sheet of blue foolscap paper, partly covered with clear but crooked writing, and under that some little twists of silver paper, screwed as if there had been no time to tie them, and a packet of letters held together by a glittering bracelet.
“Poor fellow!” Mr. Shovelin said, softly, while I held my breath, and the Major had the courtesy to be silent. “This is his will; of no value, I fear, in a pecuniary point of view, but of interest to you his daughter. Shall I open it, Miss Castlewood, or send it to his lawyers?”
“Open it, and never think of them,” said I. “Like the rest, they have forsaken him. Please to read it to yourself, and then tell us.”
“Oh, I wish I had known this before!” cried the banker, after a rapid glance or two. “Very kind, very flattering, I am sure! Yes, I will do my duty by him; I wish there was more to be done in the case. He has left me sole executor, and trustee of all his property, for the benefit of his surviving child. Yet he never gave me the smallest idea of expecting me to do this for him. Otherwise, of course, I should have had this old box opened years ago.”
“We must look at things as they are,” said Major Hockin, for I could say nothing. “The question is, what do you mean to do now?”
“Nothing whatever,” said the banker, crisply, being displeased at the other's tone; and then, seeing my surprise, he addressed himself to me: “Nothing at present, but congratulate myself upon my old friend's confidence, and, as Abernethy said, 'take advice.' A banker must never encroach upon the province of the lawyer. But so far as a layman may judge, Major Hockin, I think you will have to transfer to me the care of this young lady.”
“I shall be only too happy, I assure you,” the Major answered, truthfully. “My wife has a great regard for her, and so have I--the very greatest, the strongest regard, and warm parental feelings; as you know, Erema. But--but, I am not so young as I was; and I have to develop my property.”
“Of which she no longer forms a part,” Mr. Shovelin answered, with a smile at me, which turned into pleasure my momentary pain at the other's calm abandonment. “You will find me prompt and proud to claim her, as soon as I am advised that this will is valid; and that I shall learn to-morrow.”
In spite of pride, or by its aid, my foolish eyes were full of tears, and I gave him a look of gratitude which reminded him of my father, as he said in so many words.
“Oh, I hope it is valid! How I hope it is!” I exclaimed, turning round to the Major, who smiled rather grimly, and said he hoped so too.
“But surely,” he continued, “as we are all here, we should not neglect the opportunity of inspecting the other contents of this box. To me it appears that we are bound to do so; that it is our plain duty to ascertain--Why, there might even be a later will. Erema, my dear, you must be most anxious to get to the bottom of it.”
So I was, but desired even more that his curiosity should be foiled. “We must leave that to Mr. Shovelin,” I said.
“Then for the present we will seal it down again,” the banker answered, quietly; “we can see that there is no other will, and a later one would scarcely be put under this. The other little packets, whatever they may be, are objects of curiosity, perhaps, rather than of importance. They will keep till we have more leisure.”
“We have taken up a great deal of your time, Sir, I am sure,” said the Major, finding that he could take no more. “We ought to be, and we are, most grateful.”
“Well,” the banker answered, as we began to move, “such things do not happen every day. But there is no friend like an old friend, Erema, as I mean to call you now. I was to have been your godfather; but I fear that you never have been baptized.”
“What!” cried the Major, staring at us both. “Is such a thing possible in a Christian land? Oh, how I have neglected my duty to the Church! Come back with me to Bruntsea, and my son shall do it. The church there is under my orders, I should hope; and we will have a dinner party afterward. What a horrible neglect of duty!”
“But how could I help it?” I exclaimed, with some terror at Major Hockin's bristling hair. “I can not remember--I am sure I can not say. It may have been done in France, or somewhere, if there was no time in England. At any rate, my father is not to be blamed.”
“Papistical baptism is worse than none,” the Major said, impressively. “Never mind, my dear, we will make that all right. You shall not be a savage always. We will take the opportunity to change your name. Erema is popish and outlandish; one scarcely knows how to pronounce it. You shall have a good English Christian name--Jemima, Jane, or Sophy. Trust me to know a good name. Trust me.”
“Jemima!” I cried. “Oh, Mr. Shovelin, save me from ever being called Jemima! Rather would I never be baptized at all.”
“I am no judge of names,” he answered, smiling, as he shook hands with us; “but, unless I am a very bad judge of faces, you will be called just what you please.”
“And I please to be called what my father called me. It may be unlucky, as a gentleman told me, who did not know how to pronounce it. However, it will do very well for me. You wish to see me, then, to-morrow, Mr. Shovelin?”
“If you please; but later in the day, when I am more at leisure. I do not run away very early. Come at half past four to this door, and knock. I hear every sound at this door in my room; and the place will be growing quiet then.”
He showed us out into a narrow alley through a heavy door sheathed with iron, and soon we recovered the fair light of day, and the brawl and roar of a London street.
“Now where shall we go?” the Major asked, as soon as he had found a cab again; for he was very polite in that way. “You kept early hours with your 'uncle Sam,' as you call Colonel Gundry, a slow-witted man, but most amusing when he likes, as slow-witted men very often are. Now will you come and dine with me? I can generally dine, as you, with virtuous indignation, found out at Southampton. But we are better friends now, Miss Heathen.”
“Yes, I have more than I can ever thank you for,” I answered, very gravely, for I never could become jocose to order, and sadness still was uppermost. “I will go where you like. I am quite at your orders, because Betsy Bowen is busy now. She will not have done her work till six o'clock.”
“Well done!” he cried. “Bravo, Young America! Frankness is the finest of all good manners. And what a lot of clumsy deception it saves! Then let us go and dine. I will imitate your truthfulness. It was two words for myself, and one for you. The air of London always makes me hungry after too much country air. It is wrong altogether, but I can not help it. And going along, I smell hungry smells coming out of deep holes with a plate at the top. Hungry I mean to a man who has known what absolute starvation is--when a man would thank God for a blue-bottle fly who had taken his own nip any where. When I see the young fellows at the clubs pick this, and poke that, and push away the other, may I be d----d--my dear, I beg your pardon. Cabby, to the 'Grilled Bone and Scolloped Cockle,' at the bottom of St. Ventricle Lane, you know.”
This place seemed, from what the Major said, to have earned repute for something special, something esteemed by the very clever people, and only to be found in true virtue here. And he told me that luxury and self-indulgence were the greatest sins of the present age, and how he admired a man who came here to protest against Epicureans, by dining (liquors not included) for the sum of three and sixpence.
All this, no doubt, was wise and right; but I could not attend to it properly now, and he might take me where he would, and have all the talking to himself, according to his practice. And I might not even have been able to say what this temple of bones and cockles was like, except for a little thing which happened there. The room, at the head of a twisting staircase, was low and dark, and furnished almost like a farmhouse kitchen. It had no carpet, nor even a mat, but a floor of black timber, and a ceiling colored blue, with stars and comets, and a full moon near the fire-place. On either side of the room stood narrow tables endwise to the walls, inclosed with high-backed seats like settles, forming thus a double set of little stalls or boxes, with scarcely space enough between for waiters, more urgent than New York firemen, to push their steaming and breathless way.
“Square or round, miss?” said one of them to me as soon as the Major had set me on a bench, and before my mind had time to rally toward criticism of the knives and forks, which deprecated any such ordeal; and he cleverly whipped a stand for something dirty, over something still dirtier, on the cloth.
“I don't understand what you mean,” I replied to his highly zealous aspect, while the Major sat smiling dryly at my ignorance, which vexed me. “I have never received such a question before. Major Hockin, will you kindly answer him?”
“Square,” said the Major; “square for both.” And the waiter, with a glance of pity at me, hurried off to carry out his order.
“Erema, your mind is all up in the sky,” my companion began to remonstrate. “You ought to know better after all your travels.”
“Then the sky should not fall and confuse me so,” I said, pointing to the Milky Way, not more than a yard above me; “but do tell me what he meant, if you can. Is it about the formation of the soup?”
“Hush, my dear. Soup is high treason here until night, when they make it of the leavings. His honest desire was to know whether you would have a grilled bone of mutton, which is naturally round, you know, or of beef, which, by the same law of nature, seems always to be square, you know.”
“Oh, I see,” I replied, with some confusion, not at his osteology, but at the gaze of a pair of living and lively eyes fastened upon me. A gentleman, waiting for his bill, had risen in the next low box, and stood calmly (as if he had done all his duty to himself) gazing over the wooden back at me, who thus sat facing him. And Major Hockin, following my glance, stood up and turned round to see to it.
“What! Cousin Montague! Bless my heart, who could have dreamed of lighting on you here? Come in, my dear follow; there is plenty of room. Let me introduce you to my new ward, Miss Erema Castlewood. Miss Castlewood, this is Sir Montague Hockin, the son of my lamented first cousin Sir Rufus, of whom you have heard so much. Well, to be sure! I have not seen you for an age. My dear fellow, now how are you?”
“Miss Castlewood, please not to move; I sit any where. Major, I am most delighted to see you. Over and over again I have been at the point of starting for Bruntsea Island--it is an island now, isn't it? My father would never believe that it was till I proved it from the number of rabbits that came up. However, not a desolate island now, if it contains you and all your energies, and Miss Castlewood, as well as Mrs. Hockin.”
“It is not an island, and it never shall be,” the Major cried, knocking a blue plate over, and spilling the salt inauspiciously. “It never was an island, and it never shall be. My intention is to reclaim it altogether. Oh, here come the squares. Well done! well done! I quite forget the proper thing to have to drink. Are the cockles in the pan, Mr. Waiter? Quite right, then; ten minutes is the proper time; but they know that better than I do. I am very sorry, Montague, that you have dined.”
“Surely you would not call this a dinner; I take my true luncheon afterward. But lately my appetite has been so bad that it must be fed up at short intervals. You can understand that, perhaps, Miss Castlewood. It makes the confectioners' fortunes, you know. The ladies once came only twice to feed, but now they come three times, I am assured by a young man who knows all about it. And cherry brandy is the mildest form of tipple.”
“Shocking scandal! abominable talk!” cried the Major, who took every thing at its word. “I have heard all that sort of stuff ever since I was as high as this table. Waiter, show me this gentleman's bill. Oh well, oh well! you have not done so very badly. Two squares and a round, with a jug of Steinberg, and a pint of British stout with your Stilton. If this is your ante-lunch, what will you do when you come to your real luncheon? But I must not talk now; you may have it as you please.”
“The truth of it is, Miss Castlewood,” said the young man, while I looked with some curiosity at my frizzling bone, with the cover just whisked off, and drops of its juice (like the rays of a lustre) shaking with soft inner wealth--“the truth of it is just this, and no more: we fix our minds and our thoughts, and all the rest of our higher intelligence, a great deal too much upon our mere food.”
“No doubt we do,” I was obliged to answer. “It is very sad to think of, as soon as one has dined. But does that reflection occur, as it should, at the proper time to be useful--I mean when we are hungry?”
“I fear not; I fear that it is rather praeterite than practical.”
“No big words now, my dear fellow,” cried the Major. “You have had your turn; let us have ours. But, Erema, you are eating nothing. Take a knife and fork, Montague, and help her. The beauty of these things consists entirely, absolutely, essentially, I may say, in their having the smoke rushing out of them. A gush of steam like this should follow every turn of the knife. But there! I am spoiling every bit by talking so.”
“Is that any fault of mine?” asked Sir Montague, in a tone which made me look at him. The voice was not harsh, nor rough, nor unpleasant, yet it gave me the idea that it could be all three, and worse than all three, upon occasion. So I looked at him, which I had refrained from doing, to see whether his face confirmed that idea. To the best of my perception, it did not. Sir Montague Hockin was rather good-looking, so far as form and color go, having regular features, and clear blue eyes, very beautiful teeth, and a golden beard. His appearance was grave, but not morose, as if he were always examining things and people without condemning them. It was evident that he expected to take the upper hand in general, to play the first fiddle, to hold the top saw, to “be helped to all the stuffing of the pumpkin,” as dear Uncle Sam was fond of saying. Of moderate stature, almost of middle age, and dressed nicely, without any gewgaws, which look so common upon a gentleman's front, he was likely to please more people than he displeased at first on-sight.
The Major was now in the flush of goodwill, having found his dinner genial; and being a good man, he yielded to a little sympathetic anger with those who had done less justice to themselves. And in this state of mind he begged us to take note of one thing--that his ward should be christened in Bruntsea Church, as sure as all the bells were his, according to their inscriptions, no later than next Thursday week, that being the day for a good sirloin; and if Sir Montague failed to come to see how they could manage things under proper administration, he might be sure of one thing, if no more--that Major Hockin would never speak to him again.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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28
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A CHECK
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So many things now began to open upon me, to do and to think of, that I scarcely knew which to begin with. I used to be told how much wiser it was not to interfere with any thing--to let by-gones be by-gones, and consider my own self only. But this advice never came home to my case, and it always seemed an unworthy thing even to be listening to it. And now I saw reason to be glad for thanking people who advised me, and letting them go on to advise themselves. For if I had listened to Major Hockin, or even Uncle Sam for that part, where must I have been now? Why, simply knowing no more than as a child I knew, and feeling miserable about it. Whereas I had now at least something to go upon, and enough for a long time to occupy my mind. The difficulty was to know what to do first, and what to resolve to leave undone, or at least to put off for the present. One of my special desires had been to discover that man, that Mr. Goad, who had frightened me so about two years back, and was said to be lost in the snow-drifts. But nobody like him had ever been found, to the sorrow of the neighborhood; and Sylvester himself had been disappointed, not even to know what to do with his clothes.
His card, however, before he went off, had been left to the care of Uncle Sam for security of the 15,000 dollars; and on it was printed, with a glazing and much flourish, “Vypan, Goad, and Terryer: Private Inquiry Office, Little England Polygon, W.C.” Uncle Sam, with a grunt and a rise of his foot, had sent this low card flying to the fire, after I had kissed him so for all his truth and loveliness; but I had caught it and made him give it to me, as was only natural. And having this now, I had been quite prepared to go and present it at its mean address, and ask what they wanted me for in America, and what they would like to do with me now, taking care to have either the Major close at hand, or else a policeman well recommended.
But now I determined to wait a little while (if Betsy Bowen's opinion should be at all the same as mine was), and to ask Mr. Shovelin what he thought about it, before doing any thing that might arouse a set of ideas quite opposite to mine, and so cause trouble afterward. And being unable to think any better for the time than to wait and be talked to, I got Major Hockin to take me back again to the right number in European Square.
Here I found Mrs. Strouss (born Betsy Bowen) ready and eager to hear a great deal more than I myself had heard that day. On the other hand, I had many questions, arising from things said to me, to which I required clear answers; and it never would do for her to suppose that because she had known me come into this world, she must govern the whole of my course therein. But it cost many words and a great deal of demeanor to teach her that, good and faithful as she was, I could not be always under her. Yet I promised to take her advice whenever it agreed with my own opinions.
This pleased her, and she promised to offer it always, knowing how well it would be received, and she told all her lodgers that they might ring and ring, for she did not mean to answer any of their bells; but if they wanted any thing, they must go and fetch it. Being Germans, who are the most docile of men in England, whatever they may be at home, they made no complaint, but retired to their pipes in a pleasant condition of surprise at London habits.
Mrs. Strouss, being from her earliest years of a thrifty and reputable turn of mind, had managed, in a large yet honest way, to put by many things which must prove useful in the long-run, if kept long enough. And I did hear--most careful as I am to pay no attention to petty rumors--that the first thing that moved the heart of Herr Strouss, and called forth his finest feelings, was a winding-up chair, which came out to make legs, with a pocket for tobacco, and a flat place for a glass.
This was certainly a paltry thought; and to think of such low things grieved me. And now, when I looked at Mr. Strouss himself, having heard of none of these things yet, I felt that my nurse might not have done her best, yet might have done worse, when she married him. For he seemed to have taken a liking toward me, and an interest in my affairs, which redounded to his credit, if he would not be too inquisitive. And now I gladly allowed him to be present, and to rest in the chair which had captivated him, although last night I could scarcely have borne to have heard in his presence what I had to hear. To-night there was nothing distressful to be said, compared, at least, with last night's tale; whereas there were several questions to be put, in some of which (while scouting altogether Uncle Sam's low estimate) two females might, with advantage perhaps, obtain an opinion from the stronger sex.
And now, as soon as I had told my two friends as well as I could what had happened at the bank (with which they were pleased, as I had been), those questions arose, and were, I believe, chiefly to the following purport--setting aside the main puzzle of all.
Why did my father say, on that dreadful morning, that if his father was dead, he himself had killed or murdered him? Betsy believed, when she came to think, that he had even used the worse word of these two.
How could the fatal shot have been discharged from his pistol--as clearly it had been--a pistol, moreover, which, by his own account, as Betsy now remembered, he had left in his quarters near Chichester?
What was that horrible disease which had carried off all my poor little brothers and sisters, and frightened kind neighbors and servants away? Betsy said it was called “Differeria,” as differing so much from all other complaints. I had never yet heard of this, but discovered, without asking further than of Mr. Strouss, that she meant that urgent mandate for a levy of small angels which is called on earth “diphtheria.”
Who had directed those private inquirers, Vypan, Goad, and Terryer, to send to the far West a member of their firm to get legal proof of my dear father's death, and to bring me back, if possible? The present Lord Castlewood never would have done so, according to what Mr. Shovelin said; it was far more likely that (but for weak health) he would have come forth himself to seek me, upon any probable tidings. At once a religious and chivalrous man, he would never employ mean agency. And while thinking of that, another thought occurred--What had induced that low man Goad to give Uncle Sam a date wrong altogether for the crime which began all our misery? He had put it at ten, now twelve, years back, and dated it in November, whereas it had happened in September month, six years and two months before the date he gave. This question was out of all answer to me, and also to Mrs. Strouss herself; but Herr Strouss, being of a legal turn, believed that the law was to blame for it. He thought that proceedings might be bound to begin, under the Extradition Act, within ten years of the date of the crime; or there might be some other stipulation compelling Mr. Goad to add one to all his falsehoods; and not knowing any thing about it, both of us thought it very likely.
Again, what could have been that last pledge which passed between my father and mother, when they said “good-by” to one another, and perhaps knew that it was forever, so far as this bodily world is concerned? Was it any thing about a poor little sleeping and whimpering creature like myself, who could not yet make any difference to any living being except the mother? Or was it concerning far more important things, justice, clear honor, good-will, and duty, such as in the crush of time come upward with high natures? And if so, was it not a promise from my mother, knowing every thing, to say nothing, even at the quivering moment of lying beneath the point of death?
This was a new idea for Betsy, who had concluded from the very first that the pledge must be on my father's part--to wit, that he had vowed not to surrender, or hurt himself in any way, for the sake of his dear wife. And to my suggestion she could only say that she never had seen it in that light; but the landings were so narrow and the walls so soft that, with all her duty staring in her face, neither she, nor the best servant ever in an apron, could be held responsible to repeat their very words. And her husband said that this was good--very good--so good as ever could be; and what was to show now from the mouth of any one, after fifteen, sixteen, eighteen, the years?
After this I had no other word to say, being still too young to contradict people duly married and of one accord. No other word, I mean, upon that point; though still I had to ask, upon matters more immediate, what was the next thing for me, perhaps, to do. And first of all it was settled among us that for me to present myself at the head-quarters of Vypau, Goad, and Terryer would be a very clumsy and stupid proceeding, and perhaps even dangerous. Of course they would not reveal to me the author of those kind inquiries about myself, which perhaps had cost the firm a very valuable life, the life of Mr. Goad himself. And while I should learn less than nothing from them, they would most easily extract from me, or at any rate find out afterward, where I was living, and what I was doing, and how I could most quietly be met and baffled, and perhaps even made away with, so as to save all further trouble.
Neither was that the only point upon which I resolved to do nothing. Herr Strouss was a very simple-minded man, yet full of true sagacity, and he warmly advised, in his very worst English, that none but my few trusty friends should be told of my visit to this country.
“Why for make to know your enemies?” he asked, with one finger on his forehead, which was his mode of indicating caution. “Enemies find out vere soon, too soon, soon enough. Begin to plot--no, no, young lady begin first. Vilhelmina, your man say the right. Is it good, or is it bad?”
It appeared to us both to be good, so far as might be judged for the present; and therefore I made up my mind to abstain from calling even on my father's agent, unless Mr. Shovelin should think it needful. In that and other matters I would act by his advice; and so with better spirits than I long had owned, at finding so much kindness, and with good hopes of the morrow, I went to the snug little bedroom which my good nurse had provided.
Alas! What was my little grief on the morrow, compared to the deep and abiding loss of many by a good man's death? When I went to the door at which I had been told to knock, it was long before I got an answer. And even when somebody came at last, so far from being my guardian, it was only a poor old clerk, who said, “Hush, miss!” and then prayed that the will of the Lord might be done. “Couldn't you see the half-shutters up?” he continued, rather roughly. “'Tis a bad job for many a poor man to-day. And it seems no more than yesterday I was carrying him about!”
“Do you mean Mr. Shovelin?” I asked. “Is he poorly? Has any thing happened? I can wait, or come again.”
“The Lord has taken him to the mansions of the just, from his private address at Sydenham Hill. A burning and a shining light! May we like him be found watching in that day, with our lamps trimmed and our loins girded!”
For the moment I was too surprised to speak, and the kind old man led me into the passage, seeing how pale and faint I was. He belonged, like his master, and a great part of their business, to a simple religious persuasion, or faith, which now is very seldom heard of.
“It was just in this way,” he said, as soon as tears had enabled me to speak--for even at the first sight I had felt affection toward my new guardian. “Our master is a very punctual man, for five-and-thirty years never late--never late once till this morning. Excuse me, miss, I ought to be ashamed. The Lord knoweth what is best for us. Well, you threw him out a good bit yesterday, and there was other troubles. And he had to work late last night, I hear; for through his work he would go, be it anyhow--diligent in business, husbanding the time--and when he came down to breakfast this morning, he prayed with his household as usual, but they noticed his voice rather weak and queer; and the mistress looked at him when he got up from his knees; but he drank his cup of tea and he ate his bit of toast, which was all he ever took for breakfast. But presently when his cob came up to the door--for he always rode in to business, miss, no matter what the weather was--he went to kiss his wife and his daughters all round, according to their ages; and he got through them all, when away he fell down, with the riding-whip in one hand, and expired on a piece of Indian matting.”
“How terrible!” I exclaimed, with a sob. And the poor old man, in spite of all his piety, was sobbing.
“No, miss; not a bit of terror about it, to a man prepared as he was. He had had some warning just a year ago; and the doctors all told him he must leave off work. He could no more do without his proper work than he could without air or victuals. What this old established concern will do without him, our Divine Master only knows. And a pinch coming on in Threadneedle Street, I hear--but I scarcely know what I am saying, miss; I was thinking of the camel and the needle.”
“I will not repeat what you have not meant to tell,” I answered, seeing his confusion, and the clumsy turn he had made of it. “Only tell me what dear Mr. Shovelin died of.”
“Heart-disease, miss. You might know in a moment. Nothing kills like that. His poor father died of it, thirty years agone. And the better people are, the more they get it.”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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29
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AT THE PUMP
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This blow was so sharp and heavy that I lost for the moment all power to go on. The sense of ill fortune fell upon me, as it falls upon stronger people, when a sudden gleam of hope, breaking through long troubles, mysteriously fades away.
Even the pleasure of indulging in the gloom of evil luck was a thing to be ashamed of now, when I thought of that good man's family thus, without a moment's warning, robbed of love and hope and happiness. But Mrs. Strouss, who often brooded on predestination, imbittered all my thoughts by saying, or rather conveying without words, that my poor fathers taint of some Divine ill-will had re-appeared, and even killed his banker.
Betsy held most Low-Church views, by nature being a Dissenter. She called herself a Baptist, and in some strange way had stopped me thus from ever having been baptized. I do not understand these things, and the battles fought about them; but knowing that my father was a member of the English Church, I resolved to be the same, and told Betsy that she ought not to set up against her master's doctrine. Then she herself became ashamed of trying to convert me, not only because of my ignorance (which made argument like shooting into the sea), but chiefly because she could mention no one of title with such theology.
This settled the question at once; and remembering (to my shame) what opinions I had held even of Suan Isco, while being in the very same predicament myself, reflecting also what Uncle Sam and Firm would have thought of me, had they known it, I anticipated the Major and his dinner party by going to a quiet ancient clergyman, who examined me, and being satisfied with little, took me to an old City church of deep and damp retirement. And here, with a great din of traffic outside, and a mildewy depth of repose within, I was presented by certain sponsors (the clerk and his wife and his wife's sister), and heard good words, and hope to keep the impression, both outward and inward, gently made upon me.
I need not say that I kept, and now received with authority, my old name; though the clerk prefixed an aspirate to it, and indulged in two syllables only. But the ancient parson knew its meaning, and looked at me with curiosity; yet, being a gentleman of the old school, put never a question about it.
Now this being done, and full tidings thereof sent off to Mrs. Hockin, to save trouble to the butcher, or other disappointment, I scarcely knew how to be moving next, though move I must before very long. For it cost me a great deal of money to stay in European Square like this, albeit Herr Strouss was of all men the most generous, by his own avowal, and his wife (by the same test) noble-hearted among women. Yet each of them spoke of the other's pecuniary views in such a desponding tone (when the other was out of the way), and so lamented to have any thing at all to say about cash--by compulsion of the other--also both, when met together, were so large and reckless, and not to be insulted by a thought of payment, that it came to pass that my money did nothing but run away between them.
This was not their fault at all, but all my own, for being unable to keep my secret about the great nugget. The Major had told me not to speak of this, according to wise experience; and I had not the smallest intention of doing an atom of mischief in that way; but somehow or other it came out one night when I was being pitied for my desolation. And all the charges against me began to be doubled from that moment.
If this had been all, I should not have cared so much, being quite content that my money should go as fast as it came in to me. But there was another thing here which cost me as much as my board and lodgings and all the rest of my expenses. And that was the iron pump in European Square. For this pump stood in the very centre of a huddled district of famine, filth, and fever. When once I had seen from the leads of our house the quag of reeking life around, the stubs and snags of chimney-pots, the gashes among them entitled streets, and the broken blains called houses, I was quite ashamed of paying any thing to become a Christian.
Betsy, who stood by me, said that it was better than it used to be, and that all these people lived in comfort of their own ideas, fiercely resented all interference, and were good to one another in their own rough way. It was more than three years since there had been a single murder among them, and even then the man who was killed confessed that he deserved it. She told me, also, that in some mining district of Wales, well known to her, things were a great deal worse than here, although the people were not half so poor. And finally, looking at a ruby ring which I had begged her to wear always, for the sake of her truth to me, she begged me to be wiser than to fret about things that I could not change. “All these people, whose hovels I saw, had the means of grace before them, and if they would not stretch forth their hands, it was only because they were vessels of wrath. Her pity was rather for our poor black brethren who had never enjoyed no opportunities, and therefore must be castaways.”
Being a stranger, and so young, and accustomed to receive my doctrine (since first I went to America), I dropped all intention of attempting any good in places where I might be murdered. But I could not help looking at the pump which was in front, and the poor things who came there for water, and, most of all, the children. With these it was almost the joy of the day, and perhaps the only joy, to come into this little open space and stand, and put their backs up stiffly, and stare about, ready for some good luck to turn up--such as a horse to hold, or a man coming out of the docks with a half-penny to spare--and then, in failure of such golden hope, to dash about, in and out, after one another, splashing, and kicking over their own cans, kettles, jars, or buckets, and stretching their dirty little naked legs, and showing very often fine white chests, and bright teeth wet with laughter. And then, when this chivy was done, and their quick little hearts beat aloud with glory, it was pretty to see them all rally round the pump, as crafty as their betters, and watching with sly humor each other's readiness to begin again.
Then suddenly a sense of neglected duty would seize some little body with a hand to its side, nine times out of ten a girl, whose mother, perhaps, lay sick at home, and a stern idea of responsibility began to make the buckets clank. Then might you see, if you cared to do so, orderly management have its turn--a demand for pins and a tucking up of skirts (which scarcely seemed worthy of the great young fuss), large children scolding little ones not a bit more muddy than themselves, the while the very least child of all, too young as yet for chivying, and only come for company, would smooth her comparatively clean frock down, and look up at her sisters with condemnatory eyes.
Trivial as they were, these things amused me much, and made a little checker of reflected light upon the cloud of selfish gloom, especially when the real work began, and the children, vying with one another, set to at the iron handle. This was too large for their little hands to grasp, and by means of some grievance inside, or perhaps through a cruel trick of the plumber, up went the long handle every time small fingers were too confiding, and there it stood up like the tail of a rampant cow, or a branch inaccessible, until an old shawl or the cord of a peg-top could be cast up on high to reduce it. But some engineering boy, “highly gifted,” like Uncle Sam's self, “with machinery,” had discovered an ingenious cure for this. With the help of the girls he used to fasten a fat little thing, about twelve months old, in the bend at the middle of the handle, and there (like a ham on the steelyard) hung this baby and enjoyed seesaw, and laughed at its own utility.
I never saw this, and the splashing and dribbling and play and bright revelry of water, without forgetting all sad counsel and discretion, and rushing out as if the dingy pump were my own delicious Blue River. People used to look at me from the windows with pity and astonishment, supposing me to be crazed or frantic, especially the Germans. For to run out like this, without a pocket full of money, would have been insanity; and to run out with it, to their minds, was even clearer proof of that condition. For the money went as quickly as the water of the pump; on this side and on that it flew, each child in succession making deeper drain upon it, in virtue of still deeper woes. They were dreadful little story-tellers, I am very much afraid; and the long faces pulled, as soon as I came out, in contrast with all the recent glee and frolic, suggested to even the youngest charity suspicions of some inconsistency. However, they were so ingenious and clever that they worked my pockets like the pump itself, only with this unhappy difference, that the former had no inexhaustible spring of silver, or even of copper.
And thus, by a reason (as cogent as any of more exalted nature), was I driven back to my head-quarters, there to abide till a fresh supply should come. For Uncle Sam, generous and noble as he was, did not mean to let me melt all away at once my share of the great Blue River nugget, any more than to make ducks and drakes of his own. Indeed, that rock of gold was still untouched, and healthily reposing in a banker's cellar in the good town of Sacramento. People were allowed to go in and see it upon payment of a dollar, and they came out so thirsty from feasting upon it that a bar was set up, and a pile of money made--all the gentlemen, and ladies even worse than they, taking a reckless turn about small money after seeing that. But dear Uncle Sam refused every cent of the profit of all this excitable work. It was wholly against his wish that any thing so artificial should be done at all, and his sense of religion condemned it. He said, in his very first letter to me, that even a heathen must acknowledge this champion nugget as the grandest work of the Lord yet discovered in America--a country more full of all works of the Lord than the rest of the world put together. And to keep it in a cellar, without any air or sun, grated harshly upon his ideas of right.
However, he did not expect every body to think exactly as he did, and if they could turn a few dollars upon it, they were welcome, as having large families. And the balance might go to his credit against the interest on any cash advanced to him. Not that he meant to be very fast with this, never having run into debt in all his life.
This, put shortly, was the reason why I could not run to the pump any longer. I had come into England with money enough to last me (according to the Sawyer's calculations) for a year and a half of every needful work; whereas, in less than half that time, I was arriving at my last penny. This reminded me of my dear father, who was nearly always in trouble about money (although so strictly upright); and at first I was proud to be like him about this, till I came to find the disadvantages.
It must not even for a moment be imagined that this made any difference in the behavior of any one toward me. Mrs. Strouss, Herr Strouss, the lady on the stairs, and a very clever woman who had got no rooms, but was kindly accommodated every where, as well as the baron on the first floor front, and the gentleman from a hotel at Hanover, who looked out the other way, and even the children at the pump--not one made any difference toward me (as an enemy might, perhaps, suppose) because my last half crown was gone. It was admitted upon every side that I ought to be forgiven for my random cast of money, because I knew no better, and was sure to have more in a very little time. And the children of the pump came to see me go away, through streets of a mile and a half, I should think; and they carried my things, looking after one another, so that none could run away. And being forbidden at the platform gate, for want of respectability, they set up a cheer, and I waved my hat, and promised, amidst great applause, to come back with it full of sixpences.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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30
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COCKS AND COXCOMBS
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Major Hockin brought the only fly as yet to be found in Bruntsea, to meet me at Newport, where the railway ended at present, for want of further encouragement.
“Very soon you go,” he cried out to the bulkheads, or buffers, or whatever are the things that close the career of a land-engine. “Station-master, you are very wise in putting in your very best cabbage plants there. You understand your own company. Well done! If I were to offer you a shilling apiece for those young early Yorks, what would you say, now?”
“Weel, a think I should say nah, Sir,” the Scotch station-master made answer, with a grin, while he pulled off his cap of office and put on a dissolute Glengary. “They are a veery fine young kail, that always pays for planting.”
“The villain!” said the Major, as I jumped into the fly. “However, I suppose he does quite right. Set a thief to watch a thief. The company are big rogues, and he tries to be a bigger. We shall cut through his garden in about three months, just when his cabbages are getting firm, and their value will exceed that of pine-apples. The surveyor will come down and certify, and the 'damage to crops' will be at least five pounds, when they have no right to sow even mustard and cress, and a saucepan would hold all the victuals on the land.”
From this I perceived that my host was as full of his speculative schemes as ever; and soon he made the driver of the one-horse fly turn aside from the unfenced road and take the turf. “Coachman,” he cried, “just drive along the railway; you won't have the chance much longer.”
There was no sod turned yet and no rod set up; but the driver seemed to know what was meant, and took us over the springy turf where once had run the river. And the salt breath of the sea came over the pebble ridge, full of appetite and briskness, after so much London.
“It is one of the saddest things I ever heard of,” Major Hockin began to say to me. “Poor Shovelin! poor Shovelin! A man of large capital--the very thing we want. It might have been the making of this place. I have very little doubt that I must have brought him to see our great natural advantages--the beauty of the situation, the salubrity of the air, the absence of all clay, or marsh, or noxious deposit, the bright crisp turf, and the noble underlay of chalk, which (if you perceive my meaning) can not retain any damp, but transmits it into sweet natural wells. Why, driver, where the devil are you driving us?”
“No fear, your honor. I know every trick of it. It won't come over the wheels, I do believe, and it does all the good in the world to his sand-cracks. Whoa-ho, my boy, then! And the young lady's feet might go up upon the cushion, if her boots is thin, Sir; and Mr. Rasper will excuse of it.”
“What the”--something hot--“do you mean, Sir?” the Major roared over the water, which seemed to be deepening as we went on. “Pull out this instant; pull out, I tell you, or you shall have three months' hard labor. May I be d----d now--my dear, I beg your pardon for speaking with such sincerity--I simply mean, may I go straightway to the devil, if I don't put this fellow on the tread-mill. Oh, you can pull out now, then, can you?”
“If your honor pleases, I never did pull in,” the poor driver answered, being frightened at the excitement of the lord of the manor. “My orders was, miss, to drive along the line coming on now just to Bruntsea, and keep in the middle of that same I did, and this here little wet is a haxident--a haxident of the full moon, I do assure you, and the wind coming over the sea, as you might say. These pebbles is too round, miss, to stick to one another; you couldn't expect it of them; and sometimes the water here and there comes a-leaking like through the bottom. I have seed it so, ever since I can remember.”
“I don't believe a word of it,” the Major said, as we waited a little for the vehicle to drain, and I made a nosegay of the bright sea flowers. “Tell me no lies, Sir; you belong to the West Bruntseyans, and you have driven us into a vile bog to scare me. They have bribed you. I see the whole of it. Tell me the truth, and you shall have five shillings.”
The driver looked over the marshes as if he had never received such an offer before. Five shillings for a falsehood would have seemed the proper thing, and have called for a balance of considerations, and made a demand upon his energies. But to earn five shillings by the truth had never fallen to his luck before; and he turned to me, because I smiled, and he said, “Will you taste the water, miss?”
“Bless me!” cried the Major, “now I never thought of that. Common people have such ways about things they are used to! I might have stood here for a month, and never have thought of that way to settle it. Ridiculously simple. Give me a taste, Erema. Ah, that is the real beauty of our coast, my dear! The strongest proportion of the saline element--I should know the taste of it any where. No sea-weed, no fishy particles, no sludge, no beards of oysters. The pure, uncontaminated, perfect brine, that sets every male and female on his legs, varicose, orthopedic--I forget their scientifics, but I know the smack of it.”
“Certainly,” I said, “it is beautifully salt. It will give you an appetite for dinner, Major Hockin. I could drink a pint of it, after all that smoke. But don't you think it is a serious thing for the sea itself to come pouring through the bottom of this pebble bank in this way?”
“Not at all. No, I rather like it. It opens up many strictly practical ideas. It adds very much to the value of the land. For instance, a 'salt-lick,' as your sweet Yankees call it--and set up an infirmary for foot and mouth disease. And better still, the baths, the baths, my dear. No expense for piping, or pumping, or any thing. Only place your marble at the proper level, and twice a day you have the grand salubrious sparkling influx of ocean's self, self-filtered, and by its own operation permeated with a fine siliceous element. What foreign mud could compete with such a bath?”
“But supposing there should come too much of it,” I said, “and wash both the baths and the bathers away?”
“Such an idea is ridiculous. It can be adjusted to a nicety. I am very glad I happened to observe this thing, this--this noble phenomenon. I shall speak to Montague about it at once, before I am half an hour older. My dear, you have made a conquest; I quite forgot to tell you; but never mind that for the present. Driver, here is half a crown for you. Your master will put down the fly to my account. He owes me a heriot. I shall claim his best beast, the moment he gets one without a broken wind.”
As the Major spoke, he got out at his own door with all his wonted alacrity; but instead of offering me his hand, as he always had done in London, he skipped up his nine steps, on purpose (as I saw) that somebody else might come down for me. And this was Sir Montague Hockin, as I feared was only too likely from what had been said. If I had even suspected that this gentleman was at Bruntlands, I would have done my utmost to stay where I was, in spite of all absence of money. Betsy would gladly have allowed me to remain, without paying even a farthing, until it should become convenient. Pride had forbidden me to speak of this; but I would have got over that pride much rather than meet this Sir Montague Hockin thus. Some instinct told me to avoid him altogether; and having so little now of any other guidance, I attached, perhaps, foolish importance to that.
However, it was not the part of a lady to be rude to any one through instinct; and I knew already that in England young women are not quite such masters of their own behavior as in the far West they are allowed to be. And so I did my best that, even in my eyes, he should not see how vexed I was at meeting him. And soon it appeared that this behavior, however painful to me, was no less wise than good, because both with my host and hostess this new visitor was already at the summit of all good graces. He had conquered the Major by admiration of all his schemes and upshots, and even offering glimmers of the needful money in the distance; and Mrs. Hockin lay quite at his feet ever since he had opened a hamper and produced a pair of frizzled fowls, creatures of an extraordinary aspect, toothed all over like a dandelion plant, with every feather sticking inside out. When I saw them, I tried for my life not to laugh, and biting my lips very hard, quite succeeded, until the cock opened up a pair of sleepy eyes, covered with comb and very sad inversions, and glancing with complacency at his wife (who stood beneath him, even more turned inside out), capered with his twiggy legs, and gave a long, sad crow. Mrs. Hockin looked at him with intense delight.
“Erema, is it possible that you laugh? I thought that you never laughed, Erema. At any rate, if you ever do indulge, you might choose a fitter opportunity, I think. You have spoiled his demonstration altogether--see, he does not understand such unkindness--and it is the very first he has uttered since he came. Oh, poor Fluffsky!”
“I am very, very sorry. But how was I to help it? I would not, on any account, have stopped him if I had known he was so sensitive. Fluffsky, do please to begin again.”
“These beggars are nothing at all, I can assure you,” said Sir Montague, coming to my aid, when Fluffsky spurned all our prayers for one more crow. “Mrs. Hockin, if you really would like to have a fowl that even Lady Clara Crowcombe has not got, you shall have it in a week, or a fortnight, or, at any rate, a month, if I can manage it. They are not to be had except through certain channels, and the fellows who write the poultry books have never even heard of them.”
“Oh, how delighted I shall be! Lady Clara despises all her neighbors so. But do they lay eggs? Half the use of keeping poultry, when you never kill them, is to get an egg for breakfast; and Major Hockin looks round and says, 'Now is this our own?' and I can not say that it is; and I am vexed with the books, and he begins to laugh at me. People said it was for want of chalk, but they walk upon nothing but chalk, as you can see.”
“And their food, Mrs. Hockin. They are walking upon that. Starve them for a week, and forty eggs at least will reward you for stern discipline.”
But all this little talk I only tell to show how good and soft Mrs. Hockin was; and her husband, in spite of all his self-opinion, and resolute talk about money and manorial dues, in his way, perhaps, was even less to be trusted to get his cash out of any poor and honest man.
On the very day after my return from London I received a letter from “Colonel Gundry” (as we always called the Sawyer now, through his kinship to the Major), and, as it can not easily be put into less compass, I may as well give his very words: “DEAR MISS REMA,--Your last favor to hand, with thanks. Every thing is going on all right with us. The mill is built up, and goes better than ever; more orders on hand than we can get through. We have not cracked the big nugget yet. Expect the government to take him at a trifle below value, for Washington Museum. Must have your consent; but, for my part, would rather let him go there than break him. Am ready to lose a few dollars upon him, particularly as he might crack up all quartzy in the middle. They offer to take him by weight at three dollars and a half per pound below standard. Please say if agreeable.
“I fear, my dear, that there are bad times coming for all of us here in this part. Not about money, but a long sight worse; bad will, and contention, and rebellion, perhaps. What we hear concerning it is not much here; but even here thoughts are very much divided. Ephraim takes a different view from mine; which is not a right thing for a grandson to do; and neighbor Sylvester goes with him. The Lord send agreement and concord among us; but, if He doeth so, He must change his mind first, for every man is borrowing his neighbor's gun.
“If there is any thing that you can do to turn Ephraim back to his duty, my dear, I am sure that, for love of us, you will do it. If Firm was to run away from me now, and go fighting on behalf of slavery, I never should care more for naught upon this side of Jordan; and the new mill might go to Jericho; though it does look uncommon handsome now, I can assure you, and tears through its work like a tiger.
“Noting symptoms in your last of the price of things in England, and having carried over some to your account, inclosed please to find a bill for five hundred dollars, though not likely to be wanted yet. Save a care of your money, my dear; but pay your way handsome, as a Castlewood should do. Jowler goes his rounds twice a day looking for you; and somebody else never hangs his hat up without casting one eye at the corner you know. Sylvester's girl was over here last week, dashing about as usual. If Firm goes South, he may have her, for aught I care, and never see saw-mill again. But I hope that the Lord will spare my old days such disgrace and tribulation.
“About you know what, my dear, be not overanxious. I have been young, and now am old, as the holy Psalmist says; and the more I see of the ways of men, the less I verily think of them. Their good esteem, their cap in hand, their fair fame, as they call it, goes by accident, and fortune, the whim of the moment, and the way the clever ones have of tickling them. A great man laughs at the flimsy of it, and a good one goes to his conscience. Your father saw these things at their value. I have often grieved that you can not see them so; but perhaps I have liked you none the worse, my dear.
“Don't forget about going South. A word from you may stop him. It is almost the only hope I have, and even that may be too late. Suan Isco and Martin send messages. The flowers are on your father's grave. I have got a large order for pine cradles in great haste, but have time to be, “Truly yours, “SAMPSON GUNDRY.”
That letter, while it relieved me in one way, from the want of money, cost me more than ten times five hundred dollars' worth of anxiety. The Sawyer had written to me twice ere this--kind, simple letters, but of no importance, except for their goodness and affection. But now it was clear that when he wrote this letter he must have been sadly put out and upset. His advice to me was beyond all value; but he seemed to have kept none at home for himself. He was carried quite out of his large, staid ways when he wrote those bitter words about poor Firm--the very apple of his eye, as the holy Psalmist says. And, knowing the obstinacy of them both, I dreaded clash between them.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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31
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ADRIFT
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Having got money enough to last long with one brought up to simplicity, and resolved to have nothing to do for a while with charity or furnished lodgings (what though kept by one's own nurse), I cast about now for good reason to be off from all the busy works at Bruntsea. So soon after such a tremendous blow, it was impossible for me to push my own little troubles and concerns upon good Mr. Shovelin's family, much as I longed to know what was to become of my father's will, if any thing. But my desire to be doing something, or, at least, to get away for a time from Bruntsea, was largely increased by Sir Montague Hockin's strange behavior toward me.
That young man, if still he could be called young--which, at my age, scarcely seemed to be his right, for he must have been ten years older than poor Firm--began more and more every day to come after me, just when I wanted to be quite alone. There was nothing more soothing to my thoughts and mind (the latter getting quiet from the former, I suppose) than for the whole of me to rest a while in such a little scollop of the shingle as a new-moon tide, in little crescents, leaves just below high-water mark. And now it was new-moon tide again, a fortnight after the flooding of our fly by the activity of the full moon; and, feeling how I longed to understand these things--which seem to be denied to all who are of the same sex as the moon herself--I sat in a very nice nick, where no wind could make me look worse than nature willed. But of my own looks I never did think twice, unless there was any one to speak of such a subject.
Here I was sitting in the afternoon of a gentle July day, wondering by what energy of nature all these countless pebbles were produced, and not even a couple to be found among them fit to lie side by side and purely tally with each other. Right and left, for miles and miles, millions multiplied into millions; yet I might hold any one in my palm and be sure that it never had been there before. And of the quiet wavelets even, taking their own time and manner, in default of will of wind, all to come and call attention to their doom by arching over, and endeavoring to make froth, were any two in sound and size, much more in shape and shade, alike? Every one had its own little business, of floating pop-weed or foam bubbles or of blistered light, to do; and every one, having done it, died and subsided into its successor.
“A trifle sentimental, are we?” cried a lively voice behind me, and the waves of my soft reflections fell, and instead of them stood Sir Montague Hockin, with a hideous parasol.
I never received him with worse grace, often as I had repulsed him; but he was one of those people who think that women are all whims and ways.
“I grieve to intrude upon large ideas,” he said, as I rose and looked at him, “but I act under positive orders now. A lady knows what is best for a lady. Mrs. Hockin has been looking from the window, and she thinks that you ought not to be sitting in the sun like this. There has been a case of sun-stroke at Southbourne--a young lady meditating under the cliff--and she begs you to accept this palm leaf.”
I thought of the many miles I had wandered under the fierce Californian sun; but I would not speak to him of that. “Thank you,” I said; “it was very kind of her to think of it, and of you to do it. But will it be safe for you to go back without it?”
“Oh, why should I do so?” he answered, with a tone of mock pathos which provoked me always, though I never could believe it to be meant in ridicule of me, for that would have been too low a thing; and, besides, I never spoke so. “Could you bear to see me slain by the shafts of the sun? Miss Castlewood, this parasol is amply large for both of us.”
I would not answer him in his own vein, because I never liked his vein at all; though I was not so entirely possessed as to want every body to be like myself.
“Thank you; I mean to stay here,” I said; “you may either leave the parasol or take it, whichever will be less troublesome. At any rate, I shall not use it.”
A gentleman, according to my ideas, would have bowed and gone upon his way; but Sir Montague Hockin would have no rebuff. He seemed to look upon me as a child, such as average English girls, fresh from little schools, would be. Nothing more annoyed me, after all my thoughts and dream of some power in myself, than this.
“Perhaps I might tell you a thing or two,” he said, while I kept gazing at some fishing-boats, and sat down again, as a sign for him to go--“a little thing or two of which you have no idea, even in your most lonely musings, which might have a very deep interest for you. Do you think that I came to this hole to see the sea? Or that fussy old muff of a Major's doings?”
“Perhaps you would like me to tell him your opinion of his intellect and great plans,” I answered. “And after all his kindness to you!”
“You never will do that,” he said; “because you are a lady, and will not repeat what is said in confidence. I could help you materially in your great object, if you would only make a friend of me.”
“And what would your own object be? The pure anxiety to do right?”
“Partly, and I might say mainly, that; also an ambition for your good opinion, which seems so inaccessible. But you will think me selfish if I even hint at any condition of any kind. Every body I have ever met with likes me, except Miss Castlewood.”
As he spoke he glanced down his fine amber-colored beard, shining in the sun, and even in the sun showing no gray hair (for a reason which Mrs. Hockin told me afterward), and he seemed to think it hard that a man with such a beard should be valued lightly.
“I do not see why we should talk,” I said, “about either likes or dislikes. Only, if you have any thing to tell, I shall be very much obliged to you.”
This gentleman looked at me in a way which I have often observed in England. A general idea there prevails that the free and enlightened natives of the West are in front of those here in intelligence, and to some extent, therefore, in dishonesty. But there must be many cases where the two are not the same.
“No,” I replied, while he was looking at his buttons, which had every British animal upon them; “I mean nothing more than the simple thing I say. If you ought to tell me any thing, tell it. I am accustomed to straightforward people. But they disappoint one by their never knowing any thing.”
“But I know something,” he answered, with a nod of grave, mysterious import; “and perhaps I will tell you some day, when admitted, if ever I have such an honor, to some little degree of friendship.”
“Oh, please not to think of yourself,” I exclaimed, in a manner which must have amused him. “In such a case, the last thing that you should do is that. Think only of what is right and honorable, and your duty toward a lady. Also your duty to the laws of your country. I am not at all sure that you ought not to be arrested. But perhaps it is nothing at all, after all; only something invented to provoke me.”
“In that case, I can only drop the subject,” he answered, with that stern gleam of the eyes which I had observed before, and detested. “I was also to tell you that we dine to-day an hour before the usual time, that my cousin may go out in the boat for whiting. The sea will be as smooth as glass. Perhaps you will come with us.”
With these words, he lifted his hat and went off, leaving me in a most uncomfortable state, as he must have known if he had even tried to think. For I could not get the smallest idea what he meant; and, much as I tried to believe that he must be only pretending, for reasons of his own, to have something important to tell me, scarcely was it possible to be contented so. A thousand absurd imaginations began to torment me as to what he meant. He lived in London so much, for instance, that he had much quicker chance of knowing whatever there was to know; again, he was a man of the world, full of short, sharp sagacity, and able to penetrate what I could not; then, again, he kept a large account with Shovelin, Wayte, and Shovelin, as Major Hockin chanced to say; and I knew not that a banker's reserve is much deeper than his deposit; moreover--which, to my mind, was almost stronger proof than any thing--Sir Montague Hockin was of smuggling pedigree, and likely to be skillful in illicit runs of knowledge.
However, in spite of all this uneasiness, not another word would I say to him about it, waiting rather for him to begin again upon it. But, though I waited and waited, as, perhaps, with any other person I scarcely could have done, he would not condescend to give me even another look about it.
Disliking that gentleman more and more for his supercilious conduct and certainty of subduing me, I naturally turned again to my good host and hostess. But here there was very little help or support to be obtained at present. Major Hockin was laying the foundations of “The Bruntsea Assembly-Rooms, Literary Institute, Mutual Improvement Association, Lyceum, and Baths, from sixpence upward;” while Mrs. Hockin had a hatch of “White Sultans,” or, rather, a prolonged sitting of eggs, fondly hoped to hatch at last, from having cost so much, like a chicken-hearted Conference. Much as I sorrowed at her disappointment--for the sitting cost twelve guineas--I could not feel quite guiltless of a petty and ignoble smile, when, after hoping against hope, upon the thirtieth day she placed her beautifully sound eggs in a large bowl of warm water, in which they floated as calmly as if their price was a penny a dozen. The poor lady tried to believe that they were spinning with vitality; but at last she allowed me to break one, and lo! it had been half boiled by the advertiser. “This is very sad,” cried Mrs. Hockin; and the patient old hen, who was come in a basket of hay to see the end of it, echoed with a cluck that sentiment.
These things being so, I was left once more to follow my own guidance, which had seemed, in the main, to be my fortune ever since my father died. For one day Mr. Shovelin had appeared, to my great joy and comfort, as a guide and guardian; but, alas! for one day only. And, except for his good advice and kind paternal conduct to me, it seemed at present an unlucky thing that I had ever discovered him. Not only through deep sense of loss and real sorrow for him, but also because Major Hockin, however good and great and generous, took it unreasonably into his head that I threw him over, and threw myself (as with want of fine taste he expressed it) into the arms of the banker. This hurt me very much, and I felt that Major Hockin could never have spoken so hastily unless his hair had been originally red; and so it might be detected, even now, where it survived itself, though blanched where he brushed it into that pretentious ridge. Sometimes I liked that man, when his thoughts were large and liberal; but no sooner had he said a fine brave thing than he seemed to have an after-thought not to go too far with it; just as he had done about the poor robbed woman from the steerage and the young man who pulled out his guinea. I paid him for my board and lodging, upon a scale settled by Uncle Sam himself, at California prices; therefore I am under no obligation to conceal his foibles. But, take him altogether, he was good and brave and just, though unable, from absence of inner light, to be to me what Uncle Sam had been.
When I perceived that the Major condemned my simple behavior in London, and (if I may speak it, as I said it to myself) “blew hot and cold” in half a minute--hot when I thought of any good things to be done, and cold as soon as he became the man to do them--also, when I remembered what a chronic plague was now at Bruntsea, in the shape of Sir Montague, who went to and fro, but could never be trusted to be far off, I resolved to do what I had long been thinking of, and believed that my guardian, if he had lived another day, would have recommended. I resolved to go and see Lord Castlewood, my father's first cousin and friend in need.
When I asked my host and hostess what they thought of this, they both declared that it was the very thing they were at the point of advising, which, however, they had forborne from doing because I never took advice. At this, as being such a great exaggeration, I could not help smiling seriously; but I could not accept their sage opinion that, before I went to see my kinsman, I ought to write and ask his leave to do so. For that would have made it quite a rude thing to call, as I must still have done, if he should decline beforehand to receive me. Moreover, it would look as if I sought an invitation, while only wanting an interview. Therefore, being now full of money again, I hired the flyman who had made us taste the water, and taking train at Newport, and changing at two or three places as ordered, crossed many little streams, and came to a fair river, which proved to be the Thames itself, a few miles above Reading.
In spite of all the larger lessons of travel, adventure, and tribulation, my heart was throbbing with some rather small feelings, as for the first time I drew near to the home of my forefathers. I should have been sorry to find it ugly or mean, or lying in a hole, or even modern or insignificant; and when none of these charges could be brought against it, I was filled with highly discreditable pain that Providence had not seen fit to issue me into this world in the masculine form; in which case this fine property would, according to the rules of mankind, have been mine. However, I was very soon ashamed of such ideas, and sat down on a bank to dispel them with the free and fair view around me.
The builder of that house knew well both where to place and how to shape it, so as not to spoil the site. It stood near the brow of a bosoming hill, which sheltered it, both with wood and clevice, from the rigor and fury of the north and east; while in front the sloping foreground widened its soft lap of green. In bays and waves of rolling grass, promontoried, here and there, by jutting copse or massive tree, and jotted now and then with cattle as calm as boats at anchor, the range of sunny upland fell to the reedy fringe and clustered silence of deep river meadows. Here the Thames, in pleasant bends of gentleness and courtesy, yet with will of its own ways, being now a plenteous river, spreads low music, and holds mirror to the woods and hills and fields, casting afar a broad still gleam, and on the banks presenting tremulous infinitude of flash.
Now these things touched me all the more because none of them belonged to me; and, after thus trying to enlarge my views, I got up with much better heart, and hurried on to have it over, whatever it might be. A girl brought up in the real English way would have spent her last shilling to drive up to the door in the fly at the station--a most sad machine--but I thought it no disgrace to go in a more becoming manner.
One scarcely ever acts up to the force of situation; and I went as quietly into that house as if it were Betsy Bowen's. If any body had been rude to me, or asked who I was, or a little thing of that sort, my spirit might have been up at once, and found, as usually happens then, good reason to go down afterward. But happily there was nothing of the kind. An elderly man, without any gaudy badges, opened the door very quietly, and begged my pardon, before I spoke, for asking me to speak softly. It was one of his lordship's very worst days, and when he was so, every sound seemed to reach him. I took the hint, and did not speak at all, but followed him over deep matting into a little room to which he showed me. And then I gave him a little note, written before I left Bruntsea, and asked him whether he thought that his master was well enough to attend to it.
He looked at me in a peculiar manner, for he had known my father well, having served from his youth in the family; but he only asked whether my message was important. I answered that it was, but that I would wait for another time rather than do any harm. But he said that, however ill his master was, nothing provoked him more than to find that any thing was neglected through it. And before I could speak again he was gone with my letter to Lord Castlewood.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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32
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AT HOME
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Some of the miserable, and I might say strange, things which had befallen me from time to time unseasonably, now began to force their remembrance upon me. Such dark figures always seem to make the most of a nervous moment, when solid reason yields to fluttering fear and small misgivings. There any body seems to lie, as a stranded sailor lies, at the foot of perpendicular cliffs of most inhuman humanity, with all the world frowning down over the crest, and no one to throw a rope down. Often and often had I felt this want of any one to help me, but the only way out of it seemed to be to do my best to help myself.
Even, now I had little hope, having been so often dashed, and knowing that my father's cousin possessed no share of my father's strength. He might, at the utmost, give good advice, and help me with kind feeling; but if he wanted to do more, surely he might have tried ere now. But my thoughts about this were cut short by a message that he would be glad to see me, and I followed the servant to the library.
Here I found Lord Castlewood sitting in a high-backed chair, uncushioned and uncomfortable. When he saw me near him he got up and took my hand, and looked at me, and I was pleased to find his face well-meaning, brave, and generous. But even to rise from his chair was plainly no small effort to him, and he leaned upon a staff or crutch as he offered me a small white hand.
“Miss Castlewood,” he said, with a very weak yet clear and silvery voice, “for many years I have longed in vain and sought in vain to hear of you. I have not escaped all self-reproach through my sense of want of energy; yet, such as I am, I have done my best, or I do my best to think so.”
“I am sure you have,” I replied, without thinking, knowing his kindness to my father, and feeling the shame of my own hot words to Mr. Shovelin about him. “I owe you more gratitude than I can tell, for your goodness to my dear father. I am not come now to trouble you, but because it was my duty.”
While I was speaking he managed to lead me, feebly as himself could walk, to a deep chair for reading, or some such use, whereof I have had few chances. And in every step and word and gesture I recognized that foreign grace which true-born Britons are proud to despise on both sides of the Atlantic. And, being in the light, I watched him well, because I am not a foreigner.
In the clear summer light of the westering sun (which is better for accurate uses than the radiance of the morning) I saw a firm, calm face, which might in good health have been powerful--a face which might be called the moonlight image of my father's. I could not help turning away to cry, and suspicion fled forever.
“My dear young cousin,” he said, as soon as I was fit to speak to, “your father trusted me, and so must you. You may think that I have forgotten you, or done very little to find you out. It was no indifference, no forgetfulness: I have not been able to work myself, and I have had very deep trouble of my own.”
He leaned on his staff, and looked down at me, for I had sat down when thus overcome, and I knew that the forehead and eyes were those of a learned and intellectual man. How I knew this it is impossible to say, for I never had met with such a character as this, unless it were the Abbe of Flechon, when I was only fourteen years old, and valued his great skill in spinning a top tenfold more than all his deep learning. Lord Castlewood had long, silky hair, falling in curls of silver gray upon either side of his beautiful forehead, and the gaze of his soft dark eyes was sad, gentle, yet penetrating. Weak health and almost constant pain had chastened his delicate features to an expression almost feminine, though firm thin lips and rigid lines showed masculine will and fortitude. And when he spoke of his own trouble (which, perhaps, he would not have done except for consolation's sake), I knew that he meant something even more grievous than bodily anguish.
“It is hard,” he said, “that you, so young and healthy and full of high spirit as you are (unless your face belies you), should begin the best years of your life, as common opinion puts such things, in such a cloud of gloom and shame.”
“There is no shame at all,” I answered; “and if there is gloom, I am used to that; and so was my father for years and years. What is my trouble compared with his?”
“Your trouble is nothing when compared with his, so far as regards the mere weight of it; but he was a strong man to carry his load; you are a young and a sensitive woman. The burden may even be worse for you. Now tell me all about yourself, and what has brought you to me.”
His voice was so quiet and soothing that I seemed to rest beneath it. He had not spoken once of religion or the will of God, nor plied me at all with those pious allusions, which even to the reverent mind are like illusions when so urged. Lord Castlewood had too deep a sense of the will of God to know what it is; and he looked at me wistfully as at one who might have worse experience of it.
Falling happily under his influence, as his clear, kind eyes met mine, I told him every thing I could think of about my father and myself, and all I wanted to do next, and how my heart and soul were set upon getting to the bottom of every thing. And while I spoke with spirit, or softness, or, I fear, sometimes with hate, I could not help seeing that he was surprised, but not wholly displeased, with my energy. And then, when all was exhausted, came the old question I had heard so often, and found so hard to answer-- “And what do you propose to do next, Erema?”
“To go to the very place itself,” I said, speaking strongly under challenge, though quite unresolved about such a thing before; “to live in the house where my father lived, and my mother and all of the family died; and from day to day to search every corner and fish up every bit of evidence, until I get hold of the true man at last, of the villain who did it--who did it, and left my father and all the rest of us to be condemned and die for it.”
“Erema,” replied my cousin, as he had told me now to call him, “you are too impetuous for such work, and it is wholly unfit for you. For such a task, persons of trained sagacity and keen observation are needed. And after all these eighteen years, or nearly nineteen now it must be, there can not be any thing to discover there.”
“But if I like, may I go there, cousin, if only to satisfy my own mind? I am miserable now at Bruntsea, and Sir Montague Hockin wears me out.”
“Sir Montague Hockin!” Lord Castlewood exclaimed; “why, you did not tell me that he was there. Wherever he is, you should not be.”
“I forgot to speak of him. He does not live there, but is continually to and fro for bathing, or fishing, or rabbit-shooting, or any other pretext. And he makes the place very unpleasant to me, kind as the Major and Mrs. Hockin are, because I can never make him out at all.”
“Do not try to do so,” my cousin answered, looking at me earnestly; “be content to know nothing of him, my dear. If you can put up with a very dull house, and a host who is even duller, come here and live with me, as your father would have wished, and as I, your nearest relative, now ask and beg of you.”
This was wonderfully kind, and for a moment I felt tempted. Lord Castlewood being an elderly man, and, as the head of our family, my natural protector, there could be nothing wrong, and there might be much that was good, in such an easy arrangement. But, on the other hand, it seemed to me that after this my work would languish. Living in comfort and prosperity under the roof of my forefathers, beyond any doubt I should begin to fall into habits of luxury, to take to the love of literature, which I knew to be latent within me, to lose the clear, strong, practical sense of the duty for which I, the last of seven, was spared, and in some measure, perhaps, by wanderings and by hardships, fitted. And then I thought of my host's weak health, continual pain (the signs of which were hardly repressed even while he was speaking), and probably also his secluded life. Was it fair to force him, by virtue of his inborn kindness and courtesy, to come out of his privileges and deal with me, who could not altogether be in any place a mere nobody? And so I refused his offer.
“I am very much obliged to you indeed,” I said, “but I think you might be sorry for it. I will come and stop with you every now and then, when your health is better, and you ask me. But to live here altogether would not do; I should like it too well, and do nothing else.”
“Perhaps you are right,” he replied, with the air of one who cares little for any thing, which is to me the most melancholy thing, and worse than any distress almost; “you are very young, my dear, and years should be allowed to pass before you know what full-grown sorrow is. You have had enough, for your age, of it. You had better not live in this house; it is not a house for cheerfulness.”
“Then if I must neither live here nor at Bruntsea,” I asked, with sudden remonstrance, feeling as if every body desired to be quit of me or to worry me, “to what place in all the world am I to go, unless it is back to America? I will go at once to Shoxford, and take lodgings of my own.”
“Perhaps you had better wait a little while,” Lord Castlewood answered, gently, “although I would much rather have you at Shoxford than where you are at present. But please to remember, my good Erema, that you can not go to Shoxford all alone. I have a most faithful and trusty man--the one who opened the door to you. He has been here before his remembrance. He disdains me still as compared with your father. Will you have him to superintend you? I scarcely see how you can do any good, but if you do go, you must go openly, and as your father's daughter.”
“I have no intention whatever of going in any other way, Lord Castlewood; but perhaps,” I continued, “it would be as well to make as little stir as possible. Of an English village I know nothing but the little I have seen at Bruntsea, but there they make a very great fuss about any one who comes down with a man-servant.”
“To be sure,” replied my cousin, with a smile; “they would not be true Britons otherwise. Perhaps you would do better without Stixon; but of course you must not go alone. Could you by any means persuade your old nurse Betsy to go with you?”
“How good of you to think of it! --how wise you are!” I really could not help saying, as I gazed at his delicate and noble face. “I am sure that if Betsy can come, she will; though of course she must be compensated well for the waste all her lodgers will make of it. They are very wicked, and eat most dreadfully if she even takes one day's holiday. What do you think they even do? She has told me with tears in her eyes of it. They are all allowed a pat of butter, a penny roll, and two sardines for breakfast. No sooner do they know that her back is turned--” “Erema!” cried my cousin, with some surprise; and being so recalled, I was ashamed. But I never could help taking interest in very little things indeed, until my own common-sense, or somebody else, came to tell me what a child I was. However, I do believe that Uncle Sam liked me all the better for this fault.
“My dear, I did not mean to blame you,” Lord Castlewood said, most kindly; “it must be a great relief for you to look on at other people. But tell me--or rather, since you have told me almost every thing you know--let me, if only in one way I can help you, help you at least in that way.”
Knowing that he must mean money, I declined, from no false pride, but a set resolve to work out my work, if possible, through my own resources. But I promised to apply to him at once if scarcity should again befall me, as had happened lately. And then I longed to ask him why he seemed to have so low an opinion of Sir Montague Hockin. That question, however, I feared to put, because it might not be a proper one, and also because my cousin had spoken in a very strange tone, as if of some private dislike or reserve on that subject. Moreover, it was too evident that I had tried his courtesy long enough. From time to time pale shades of bodily pain, and then hot flushes, had flitted across his face, like clouds on a windy summer evening. And more than once he had glanced at the time-piece, not to hurry me, but as if he dreaded its announcements. It was a beautiful clock, and struck with a silvery sound every quarter of an hour. And now, as I rose to say good-by, to catch my evening train, it struck a quarter to five, and my cousin stood up, with his weight upon his staff, and looked at me with an inexpressible depth of weary misery.
“I have only a few minutes left,” he said, “during which I can say any thing. My time is divided into two sad parts: the time when I am capable of very little, and the time when I am capable of nothing; and the latter part is twice the length of the other. For sixteen hours of every day, far better had I be dead than living, so far as our own little insolence may judge. But I speak of it only to excuse bad manners, and perhaps I show worse by doing so. I shall not be able to see you again until to-morrow morning. Do not go; they will arrange all that. Send a note to Major Hockin by Stixon's boy. Stixon and Mrs. Price will see to your comfort, if those who are free from pain require any other comfort. Forgive me; I did not mean to be rude. Sometimes I can not help giving way.”
Less enviable than the poorest slave, Lord Castlewood sank upon his hard stiff chair, and straightened his long narrow hands upon his knees, and set his thin lips in straight blue lines. Each hand was as rigid as the ivory handle of an umbrella or walking-stick, and his lips were like clamped wire. This was his regular way of preparing for the onset of the night, so that no grimace, no cry, no moan, or other token of fierce agony should be wrung from him.
“My lord will catch it stiff to-night,” said Mr. Stixon, who came as I rang, and then led me away to the drawing-room; “he always have it ten times worse after any talking or any thing to upset him like. And so, then, miss--excuse a humble servant--did I understand from him that you was the Captain's own daughter?”
“Yes; but surely your master wants you--he is in such dreadful pain. Do please to go to him, and do something.”
“There is nothing to be done, miss,” Stixon answered, with calm resignation; “he is bound to stay so for sixteen hours, and then he eases off again. But bless my heart, miss--excuse me in your presence--his lordship is thoroughly used to it. It is my certain knowledge that for seven years now he has never had seven minutes free from pain--seven minutes all of a heap, I mean. Some do say, miss, as the Lord doeth every thing according to His righteousness, that the reason is not very far to seek.”
I asked him what he meant, though I ought, perhaps, to have put a stop to his loquacity; and he pretended not to hear, which made me ask him all the more.
“A better man never lived than my lord,” he answered, with a little shock at my misprision; “but it has been said among censoorous persons that nobody ever had no luck as came in suddenly to a property and a high state of life on the top of the heads of a family of seven.”
“What a poor superstition!” I cried, though I was not quite sure of its being a wicked one. “But what is your master's malady, Stixon? Surely there might be something done to relieve his violent pain, even if there is no real cure for it?”
“No, miss, nothing can be done. The doctors have exorced themselves. They tried this, that, and the other, but nature only flew worse against them. 'Tis a thing as was never heard of till the Constitooshon was knocked on the head and to pieces by the Reform Bill. And though they couldn't cure it, they done what they could do, miss. They discovered a very good name for it--they christened it the 'New-rager!'”
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{
"id": "7112"
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33
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LORD CASTLEWOOD
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In the morning, when I was called again to see my afflicted cousin--Stixon junior having gladly gone to explain things for me at Bruntsea--little as I knew of any bodily pain (except hunger, or thirst, or weariness, and once in my life a headache), I stood before Lord Castlewood with a deference and humility such as I had never felt before toward any human being. Not only because he bore perpetual pain in the two degrees of night and day--the day being dark and the night jet-black--without a murmur or an evil word; not only because through the whole of this he had kept his mind clear and his love of knowledge bright; not even because he had managed, like Job, to love God through the whole of it. All these were good reasons for very great and very high respect of any man; and when there was no claim whatever on his part to any such feeling, it needs must come. But when I learned another thing, high respect at once became what might be called deep reverence. And this came to pass in a simple and, as any one must confess, quite inevitable way.
It was not to be supposed that I could sit the whole of my first evening in that house without a soul to speak to. So far as my dignity and sense of right permitted, I wore out Mr. Stixon, so far as he would go, not asking him any thing that the very worst-minded person could call “inquisitive,” but allowing him to talk, as he seemed to like to do, while he waited upon me, and alternately lamented my hapless history and my hopeless want of taste.
“Ah, your father, the Captain, now, he would have knowed what this is! You've no right to his eyes, Miss Erma, without his tongue and palate. No more of this, miss! and done for you a-purpose! Well, cook will be put out, and no mistake! I better not let her see it go down, anyhow.” And the worthy man tearfully put some dainty by, perhaps without any view to his own supper.
“Lord Castlewood spoke to me about a Mrs. Price--the housekeeper, is she not?” I asked at last, being so accustomed to like what I could get, that the number of dishes wearied me.
“Oh yes, miss,” said Stixon, very shortly, as if that description exhausted Mrs. Price.
“If she is not too busy, I should like to see her as soon as these things are all taken away. I mean if she is not a stranger, and if she would like to see me.”
“No new-comers here,” Mr. Stixon replied; “we all works our way up regular, the same as my lad is beginning for to do. New-fangled ways is not accepted here. We puts the reforming spirits scrubbing of the steps till their knuckles is cracked and their knees like a bean. The old lord was the man for discipline--your grandfather, if you please, miss. He catched me when I were about that high--” “Excuse me, Mr. Stixon; but would he have encouraged you to talk as you so very kindly talk to me, instead of answering a question?”
I thought that poor Stixon would have been upset by this, and was angry with myself for saying it; but instead of being hurt, he only smiled and touched his forehead.
“Well, now, you did remind me uncommon of him then, miss. I could have heard the old lord speak almost, though he were always harsh and distant. And as I was going for to say, he catched me fifty years agone next Lammas-tide; a pear-tree of an early sort it was; you may see the very tree if you please to stand here, miss, though the pears is quite altered now, and scarcely fit to eat. Well, I was running off with my cap chock-full, miss--” “Please to keep that story for another time,” I said; “I shall be most happy to hear it then. But I have a particular wish, if you please, to see Mrs. Price before dark, unless there is any good reason why I should not.”
“Oh no, Miss Erma, no reason at all. Only please to bear in mind, miss, that she is a coorous woman. She is that jealous, and I might say forward--” “Then she is capable of speaking for herself.”
“You are right, miss, there, and no mistake. She can speak for herself and for fifty others--words enough, I mean, for all of them. But I would not have her know for all the world that I said it.”
“Then if you do not send her to me at once, the first thing I shall do will be to tell her.”
“Oh no, miss, none of your family would do that; that never has been done anonymous.”
I assured him that my threat was not in earnest, but of pure impatience. And having no motive but downright jealousy for keeping Mrs. Price from me, he made up his mind at last to let her come. But he told me to be careful what I said; I must not expect it to be at all like talking to himself, for instance.
The housekeeper came up at last, by dint of my persistence, and she stopped in the doorway and made me a courtesy, which put me out of countenance, for nobody ever does that in America, and scarcely any one in England now, except in country-dancing. Instead of being as described by Stixon, Mrs. Price was of a very quiet, sensible, and respectful kind. She was rather short, but looked rather tall, from her even walk and way of carrying her head. Her figure was neat, and her face clear-spoken, with straight pretty eyebrows, and calm bright eyes. I felt that I could tell her almost any thing, and she would think before she talked of it. And in my strong want of some woman to advise with--Betsy Bowen being very good but very narrow, and Mrs. Hockin a mere echo of the Major until he contradicted her, and Suan Isco, with her fine, large views, five thousand miles out of sight just now--this was a state of things to enhance the value of any good countenance feminine.
At any rate, I was so glad to see her that, being still ungraduated in the steps of rank (though beginning to like a good footing there), I ran up and took her by both hands, and fetched her out of her grand courtesy and into a low chair. At this she was surprised, as one quick glance showed; and she thought me, perhaps, what is called in England “an impulsive creature.” This put me again upon my dignity, for I never have been in any way like that, and I clearly perceived that she ought to understand a little more distinctly my character.
It is easy to begin with this intention, but very hard indeed to keep it up when any body of nice ways and looks is sitting with a proper deferential power of listening, and liking one's young ideas, which multiply and magnify themselves at each demand. So after some general talk about the weather, the country, the house, and so on, we came to the people of the house, or at any rate the chief person. And I asked her a few quiet questions about Lord Castlewood's health and habits, and any thing else she might like to tell me. For many things had seemed to me a little strange and out of the usual course, and on that account worthy to be spoken of without common curiosity. Mrs. Price told me that there were many things generally divulged and credited, which therefore lay in her power to communicate without any derogation from her office. Being pleased with these larger words (which I always have trouble in pronouncing), I asked her whether there was any thing else. And she answered yes, but unhappily of a nature to which it was scarcely desirable to allude in my presence. I told her that this was not satisfactory, and I might say quite the opposite; that having “alluded” to whatever it might be, she was bound to tell me all about it. That I had lived in very many countries, in all of which wrong things continually went on, of which I continually heard just in that sort of way and no more. Enough to make one uncomfortable, but not enough to keep one instructed and vigilant as to things that ought to be avoided. Upon this she yielded either to my arguments or to her own dislike of unreasonable silence, and gave me the following account of the misfortunes of Lord Castlewood: Herbert William Castlewood was the third son of Dean Castlewood, a younger brother of my grandfather, and was born in the year 1806. He was older, therefore, than my father, but still (even before my father's birth, which provided a direct heir) there were many lives betwixt him and the family estates. And his father, having as yet no promotion in the Church, found it hard to bring up his children. The eldest son got a commission in the army, and the second entered the navy, while Herbert was placed in a bank at Bristol--not at all the sort of life which he would have chosen. But being of a gentle, unselfish nature, as well as a weak constitution, he put up with his state in life, and did his best to give satisfaction.
This calm courage generally has its reward, and in the year 1842, not very long before the death of my grandfather at Shoxford, Mr. Herbert Castlewood, being well-connected, well-behaved, diligent, and pleasing, obtained a partnership in the firm, which was, perhaps, the foremost in the west of England. His two elder brothers happened then to be at home, Major and Commander Castlewood, each of whom had seen very hard service, and found it still harder slavery to make both ends meet, although bachelors. But, returning full of glory, they found one thing harder still, and that was to extract any cash from their father, the highly venerated Dean, who in that respect, if in no other, very closely resembled the head of the family. Therefore these brave men resolved to go and see their Bristol brother, to whom they were tenderly attached, and who now must have money enough and to spare. So they wrote to their brother to meet them on the platform, scarcely believing that they could be there in so short a time from London; for they never had travelled by rail before; and they set forth in wonderful spirits, and laughed at the strange, giddy rush of the travelling, and made bets with each other about punctual time (for trains kept much better time while new), and, as long as they could time it, they kept time to a second. But, sad to relate, they wanted no chronometers when they arrived at Bristol, both being killed at a blow, with their watches still going, and a smile on their faces. For the train had run into a wall of Bath stone, and several of the passengers were killed.
The sight of his two brothers carried out like this, after so many years of not seeing them, was too much for Mr. Herbert Castlewood's nerves, which always had been delicate. And he shivered all the more from reproach of conscience, having made up his mind not to lend them any money, as a practical banker was compelled to do. And from that very moment he began to feel great pain.
Mrs. Price assured me that the doctors all agreed that nothing but change of climate could restore Mr. Castlewood's tone and system, and being full of art (though so simple, as she said, which she could not entirely reconcile), he set off for Italy, and there he stopped, with the good leave of his partners, being now valued highly as heir to the Dean, who was known to have put a good trifle together. And in Italy my father must have found him, as related by Mr. Shovelin, and there received kindness and comfort in his trouble, if trouble so deep could be comforted.
Now I wondered and eagerly yearned to know whether my father, at such a time, and in such a state of loneliness, might not have been led to impart to his cousin and host and protector the dark mystery which lay at the bottom of his own conduct. Knowing how resolute and stern he was, and doubtless then imbittered by the wreck of love and life, I thought it more probable that he had kept silence even toward so near a relative, especially as he had seen very little of his cousin Herbert till he had found him thus. Moreover, my grandfather and the Dean had spent little brotherly love on each other, having had a life-long feud about a copy-hold furze brake of nearly three-quarters of an acre, as Betsy remembered to have heard her master say.
To go on, however, with what Mrs. Price was saying. She knew scarcely any thing about my father, because she was too young at that time to be called into the counsels of the servants' hall, for she scarcely was thirty-five yet, as she declared, and she certainly did not look forty. But all about the present Lord Castlewood she knew better than any body else, perhaps, because she had been in the service of his wife, and, indeed, her chief attendant. Then, having spoken of her master's wife, Mrs. Price caught herself up, and thenceforth called her only his “lady.”
Mr. Herbert Castlewood, who had minded his business for so many years, and kept himself aloof from ladies, spending all his leisure in good literature, at this time of life and in this state of health (for the shock he had received struck inward), fell into an accident tenfold worse--the fatal accident of love. And this malady raged the more powerfully with him on account of breaking out so late in life. In one of the picture-galleries at Florence, or some such place, Mrs. Price declared, he met with a lady who made all the pictures look cold and dull and dead to him. A lovely young creature she must have been (as even Mrs. Price, who detested her, acknowledged), and to the eyes of a learned but not keen man as good as lovely. My father was gone to look after me, and fetch me out of England, but even if he had been there, perhaps he scarcely could have stopped it; for this Mr. Castlewood, although so quiet, had the family fault of tenacity.
Mrs. Price, being a very steady person, with a limited income, and enough to do, was inclined to look down upon the state of mind in which Mr. Castlewood became involved. She was not there at the moment, of course, but suddenly sent for when all was settled; nevertheless, she found out afterward how it began from her master's man, through what he had for dinner. And in the kitchen-garden at Castlewood no rampion would she allow while she lived. I asked her whether she had no pity, no sympathy, no fine feeling, and how she could have become Mrs. Price if she never had known such sentiments. But she said that they only called her “Mistress” on account of her authority, and she never had been drawn to the opposite sex, though many times asked in marriage. And what she had seen of matrimony led her far away from it. I was sorry to hear her say this, and felt damped, till I thought that the world was not all alike.
Then she told me, just as if it were no more than a bargain for a pound of tallow candles, how Mr. Herbert Castlewood, patient and persistent, was kept off and on for at least two years by the mother of his sweet idol. How the old lady held a balance in her mind as to the likelihood of his succession, trying, through English friends, to find the value and the course of property. Of what nation she was, Mrs. Price could not say, and only knew that it must be a bad one. She called herself the Countess of Ixorism, as truly pronounced in English; and she really was of good family too, so far as any foreigner can be. And her daughter's name was Flittamore, not according to the right spelling, perhaps, but pronounced with the proper accent.
Flittamore herself did not seem to care, according to what Mrs. Price had been told, but left herself wholly in her mother's hands, being sure of her beauty still growing upon her, and desiring to have it admired and praised. And the number of foreigners she always had about her sometimes made her real lover nearly give her up. But, alas! he was not quite wise enough for this, with all that he had read and learned and seen. Therefore, when it was reported from Spain that my father had been killed by bandits--the truth being that he was then in Greece--the Countess at last consented to the marriage of her daughter with Herbert Castlewood, and even seemed to press it forward for some reasons of her own. And the happy couple set forth upon their travels, and Mrs. Price was sent abroad to wait upon the lady.
For a few months they seemed to get on very well, Flittamore showing much affection for her husband, whose age was a trifle more than her own doubled, while he was entirely wrapped up in her, and labored that the graces of her mind might be worthy to compare with those more visible. But her spiritual face and most sweet poetic eyes were vivid with bodily brilliance alone. She had neither mind enough to learn, nor heart enough to pretend to learn.
It is out of my power to describe such things, even if it were my duty to do so, which, happily, it has never been; moreover, Mrs. Price, in what she told me, exercised a just and strict reserve. Enough that Mr. Castlewood's wedded life was done with in six months and three days. Lady Castlewood, as she would be called, though my father still was living and his cousin disclaimed the title--away she ran from some dull German place, after a very stiff lesson in poetry, and with her ran off a young Englishman, the present Sir Montague Hockin. He was Mr. Hockin then, and had not a half-penny of his own; but Flittamore met that difficulty by robbing her husband to his last farthing.
This had happened about twelve years back, soon after I was placed at the school in Languedoc, to which I was taken so early in life that I almost forget all about it. But it might have been better for poor Flittamore if she had been brought up at a steady place like that, with sisters and ladies of retreat, to teach her the proper description of her duties to mankind. I seemed now in my own mind to condemn her quite enough, feeling how superior her husband must have been; but Mrs. Price went even further, and became quite indignant that any one should pity her.
“A hussy! a hussy! a poppet of a hussy!” she exclaimed, with greater power than her quiet face could indicate; “never would I look at her. Speak never so, Miss Castlewood. My lord is the very best of all men, and she has made him what he is. The pity she deserves is to be trodden under foot, as I saw them do in Naples.”
After all the passion I had seen among rough people, I scarcely could help trembling at the depth of wrath dissembled and firmly controlled in calm clear eyes under very steadfast eyebrows. It was plain that Lord Castlewood had, at any rate, the gift of being loved by his dependents.
“I hope that he took it aright!” I cried, catching some of her indignation; “I hope that he cast her to the winds, without even a sigh for such a cruel creature!”
“He was not strong enough,” she answered, sadly; “his bodily health was not equal to it. From childhood he had been partly crippled and spoiled in his nerves by an accident. And the shock of that sight at Bristol flew to his weakness, and was too much for him. And now this third and worst disaster, coming upon him where his best hope lay, and at such a time of life, took him altogether off his legs. And off his head too, I might almost say, miss; for, instead of blaming her, he put the fault entirely upon himself. At his time of life, and in such poor health, he should not have married a bright young girl: how could he ever hope to make her happy? That was how he looked at it, when he should have sent constables after her.”
“And what became of her--the mindless animal, to forsake so good and great a man! I do hope she was punished, and that vile man too.”
“She was, Miss Castlewood; but he was not; at least he has not received justice yet. But he will, he will, he will, miss. The treacherous thief! And my lord received him as a young fellow-countryman under a cloud, and lent him money, and saved him from starving; for he had broken with his father and was running from his creditors.”
“Tell me no more,” I said; “not another word. It is my fate to meet that--well, that gentleman--almost every day. And he, and he--oh, how thankful I am to have found out all this about him!”
The above will show why, when I met my father's cousin on the following morning--with his grand, calm face, as benevolent as if he had passed a night of luxurious rest instead of sleepless agony--I knew myself to be of a lower order in mind and soul and heart than his; a small, narrow, passionate girl, in the presence of a large, broad-sighted, and compassionate man.
I threw myself altogether on his will; for, when I trust, I trust wholly. And, under his advice, I did not return with any rash haste to Bruntsea, but wrote in discharge of all duty there; while Mrs. Price, a clear and steadfast woman, was sent to London to see Wilhelmina Strouss. These two must have had very great talks together, and, both being zealous and faithful, they came to many misunderstandings. However, on the whole, they became very honest friends, and sworn allies at last, discovering more, the more they talked, people against whom they felt a common and just enmity.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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34
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SHOXFORD
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Are there people who have never, in the course of anxious life, felt desire to be away, to fly away, from every thing, however good and dear to them, and rest a little, and think new thought, or let new thought flow into them, from the gentle air of some new place, where nobody has heard of them--a place whose cares, being felt by proxy, almost seem romantic, and where the eyes spare brain and heart with a critic's self-complacence? If any such place yet remains, the happy soul may seek it in an inland English village.
A village where no billows are to stun or to confound it, no crag or precipice to trouble it with giddiness, and where no hurry of restless tide makes time, its own father, uneasy. But in the quiet, at the bottom of the valley, a beautiful rivulet, belonging to the place, hastens or lingers, according to its mood; hankering here and there, not to be away yet; and then, by the doing of its own work, led to a swift perplexity of ripples. Here along its side, and there softly leaning over it, fresh green meadows lie reposing in the settled meaning of the summer day. For this is a safer time of year than the flourish of the spring-tide, when the impulse of young warmth awaking was suddenly smitten by the bleak east wind, and cowslip and cuckoo-flower and speedwell got their bright lips browned with cold. Then, moreover, must the meads have felt the worry of scarcely knowing yet what would be demanded of them; whether to carry an exacting load of hay, or only to feed a few sauntering cows.
But now every trouble has been settled for the best; the long grass is mown, and the short grass browsed, and capers of the fairies and caprices of the cows have dappled worn texture with a deeper green. Therefore let eyes that are satisfied here--as any but a very bad eye must be, with so many changes of softness--follow the sweet lead of the valley; and there, in a bend of the gently brawling river, stands the never-brawling church.
A church less troubled with the gift of tongues is not to be found in England: a church of gray stone that crumbles just enough to entice frail mortal sympathy, and confesses to the storms it has undergone in a tone that conciliates the human sigh. The tower is large, and high enough to tell what the way of the wind is without any potato-bury on the top, and the simple roof is not cruciated with tiles of misguided fancy. But gray rest, and peace of ages, and content of lying calmly six feet deeper than the bustle of the quick; memory also, and oblivion, following each other slowly, like the shadows of the church-yard trees--for all of these no better place can be, nor softer comfort.
For the village of Shoxford runs up on the rise, and straggles away from its burial-place, as a child from his school goes mitching. There are some few little ups and downs in the manner of its building, as well as in other particulars about it; but still it keeps as parallel with the crooked river as the far more crooked ways of men permit. But the whole of the little road of houses runs down the valley from the church-yard gate; and above the church, looking up the pretty valley, stands nothing but the mill and the plank bridge below it; and a furlong above that again the stone bridge, where the main road crosses the stream, and is consoled by leading to a big house--the Moonstock Inn.
The house in which my father lived so long--or rather, I should say, my mother, while he was away with his regiment--and where we unfortunate seven saw the light, stands about half-way down the little village, being on the right-hand side of the road as you come down the valley from the Moonstock bridge. Therefore it is on the further and upper side of the street--if it can be called a street--from the valley and the river and the meads below the mill, inasmuch as every bit of Shoxford, and every particle of the parish also, has existence--of no mean sort, as compared with other parishes, in its own esteem--on the right side of the river Moon.
My father's house, in this good village, standing endwise to the street, was higher at one end than at the other. That is to say, the ground came sloping, or even falling, as fairly might be said, from one end to the other of it, so that it looked like a Noah's ark tilted by Behemoth under the stern-post. And a little lane, from a finely wooded hill, here fell steeply into the “High Street” (as the grocer and the butcher loved to call it), and made my father's house most distinct, by obeying a good deal of its outline, and discharging in heavy rain a free supply of water under the weather-board of our front-door. This front-door opened on the little steep triangle formed by the meeting of lane and road, while the back-door led into a long but narrow garden running along the road, but raised some feet above it; the bank was kept up by a rough stone wall crested with stuck-up snap-dragon and valerian, and faced with rosettes and disks and dills of houseleek, pennywort, and hart's-tongue.
Betsy and I were only just in time to see the old house as it used to be; for the owner had died about half a year ago, and his grandson, having proved his will, was resolved to make short work with it. The poor house was blamed for the sorrows it had sheltered, and had the repute of two spectres, as well as the pale shadow of misfortune. For my dear father was now believed by the superstitious villagers to haunt the old home of his happiness and love, and roam from room to room in search of his wife and all his children. But his phantom was most careful not to face that of his father, which stalked along haughtily, as behooved a lord, and pointed forever to a red wound in its breast. No wonder, therefore, that the house would never let; and it would have been pulled down long ago if the owner had not felt a liking for it, through memories tender and peculiar to himself. His grandson, having none of these to contend with, resolved to make a mere stable of it, and build a public-house at the bottom of the garden, and turn the space between them into skittle-ground, and so forth.
To me this seemed such a very low idea, and such a desecration of a sacred spot, that if I had owned any money to be sure of, I would have offered hundreds to prevent it. But I found myself now in a delicate state of mind concerning money, having little of my own, and doubting how much other people might intend for me. So that I durst not offer to buy land and a house without any means to pay.
And it was not for that reason only that Betsy and I kept ourselves quiet. We knew that any stir in this little place about us--such as my name might at once set going--would once for all destroy all hope of doing good by coming. Betsy knew more of such matters than I did, besides all her knowledge of the place itself, and her great superiority of age; therefore I left to her all little management, as was in every way fair and wise. For Mrs. Strouss had forsaken a large and good company of lodgers, with only Herr Strouss to look after them--and who was he among them? If she trod on one side of her foot, or felt a tingling in her hand, or a buzzing in her ear, she knew in a moment what it was--of pounds and pounds was she being cheated, a hundred miles off, by foreigners!
For this reason it had cost much persuasion and many appeals to her faithfulness, as well as considerable weekly payment, ere ever my good nurse could be brought away from London; and perhaps even so she never would have come if I had not written myself to Mrs. Price, then visiting Betsy in European Square, that if the landlady was too busy to be spared by her lodgers, I must try to get Lord Castlewood to spare me his housekeeper. Upon this Mrs. Strouss at once declared that Mrs. Price would ruin every thing; and rather than that--no matter what she lost--she herself would go with me. And so she did, and she managed very well, keeping my name out of sight (for, happen what might, I would have no false one); and she got quiet lodgings in her present name, which sounded nicely foreign; and the village being more agitated now about my father's material house, and the work they were promised in pulling it down, than about his shattered household, we had a very favorable time for coming in, and were pronounced to be foreigners who must not be allowed to run up bills.
This rustic conclusion suited us quite well, and we soon confirmed it unwittingly, Betsy offering a German thaler and I an American dollar at the shop of the village chandler and baker, so that we were looked upon with some pity, and yet a kind desire for our custom. Thus, without any attempt of ours at either delusion or mystery, Mrs. Strouss was hailed throughout the place as “Madam Straw,” while I, through the sagacity of a deeply read shoe-maker, obtained a foreign name, as will by-and-by appear.
We lodged at the post-office, not through any wisdom or even any thought on our part, but simply because we happened there to find the cleanest and prettiest rooms in the place. For the sun being now in the height of August, and having much harvest to ripen, at middle day came ramping down the little street of Shoxford like the chairman of the guild of bakers. Every house having lately brightened up its whitewash--which they always do there when the frosts are over, soon after the feast of St. Barnabas--and the weeds of the way having fared amiss in the absence of any water-cart, it was not in the strong, sharp character of the sun to miss such an opportunity. After the red Californian glare, I had no fear of any English sun; but Betsy was frightened, and both of us were glad to get into a little place sheltered by green blinds. This chanced to be the post-office, and there we found nice lodgings.
By an equal chance this proved to be the wisest thing we could possibly have done, if we had set about it carefully. For why, that nobody ever would impute any desire of secrecy to people who straightway unpacked their boxes at the very head-quarters of all the village news. And the mistress of the post was a sharp-tongued woman, pleased to speak freely of her neighbors' doings, and prompt with good advice that they should heed their own business, if any of them durst say a word about her own. She kept a tidy little shop, showing something of almost every thing; but we had a side door, quite of our own, where Betsy met the baker's wife and the veritable milkman; and neither of them knew her, which was just what she had hoped; and yet it made her speak amiss of them.
But if all things must be brought to the harsh test of dry reason, I myself might be hard pushed to say what good I hoped to do by coming thus to Shoxford. I knew of a great many things, for certain, that never had been thoroughly examined here; also I naturally wished to see, being a native, what the natives were; and, much more than that, it was always on my mind that here lay my mother and the other six of us.
Therefore it was an impatient thing for me to hear Betsy working out the afternoon with perpetual chatter and challenge of prices, combating now as a lodger all those points which as a landlady she never would allow even to be moot questions. If any applicant in European Square had dared so much as hint at any of all the requirements which she now expected gratis, she would simply have whisked her duster, and said that the lodgings for such people must be looked for down the alley. However, Mrs. Busk, our new landlady, although she had a temper of her own (as any one keeping a post-office must have) was forced by the rarity of lodgers here to yield many points, which Mrs. Strouss, on her own boards, would not even have allowed to be debated. All this was entirely against my wish; for when I have money, I spend it, finding really no other good in it; but Betsy told me that the purest principle of all was--not to be cheated.
So I left her to have these little matters out, and took that occasion for stealing away (as the hours grew on toward evening) to a place where I wished to be quite alone. And the shadow of the western hills shed peace upon the valley, when I crossed a little stile leading into Shoxford church-yard.
For a minute or two I was quite afraid, seeing nobody any where about, nor even hearing any sound in the distance to keep me company. For the church lay apart from the village, and was thickly planted out from it, the living folk being full of superstition, and deeply believing in the dead people's ghosts. And even if this were a wife to a husband, or even a husband reappearing to his wife, there was not a man or a woman in the village that would not run away from it.
This I did not know at present, not having been there long enough; neither had I any terror of that sort, not being quite such a coward, I should hope. But still, as the mantles of the cold trees darkened, and the stony remembrance of the dead grew pale, and of the living there was not even the whistle of a grave-digger--my heart got the better of my mind for a moment, and made me long to be across that stile again. Because (as I said to myself) if there had been a hill to go up, that would be so different and so easy; but going down into a place like this, whence the only escape must be by steps, and where any flight must be along channels that run in and out of graves and tombstones, I tried not to be afraid, yet could not altogether help it.
But lo! when I came to the north side of the tower, scarcely thinking what to look for, I found myself in the middle of a place which made me stop and wonder. Here were six little grassy tuffets, according to the length of children, all laid east and west, without any stint of room, harmoniously.
From the eldest to the youngest, one could almost tell the age at which their lowly stature stopped, and took its final measurement.
And in the middle was a larger grave, to comfort and encourage them, as a hen lies down among her chicks and waits for them to shelter. Without a name to any of them, all these seven graves lay together, as in a fairy ring of rest, and kind compassion had prevented any stranger from coming to be buried there.
I would not sit on my mother's grave for fear of crushing the pretty grass, which some one tended carefully; but I stood at its foot, and bent my head, and counted all the little ones. Then I thought of my father in the grove of peaches, more than six thousand miles away, on the banks of the soft Blue River. And a sense of desolate sorrow and of the blessing of death overwhelmed me.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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35
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THE SEXTON
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With such things in my mind, it took me long to come back to my work again. It even seemed a wicked thing, so near to all these proofs of God's great visitation over us, to walk about and say, “I will do this,” or even to think, “I will try to do that.” My own poor helplessness, and loss of living love to guide me, laid upon my heart a weight from which it scarcely cared to move. All was buried, all was done with, all had passed from out the world, and left no mark but graves behind. What good to stir anew such sadness, even if a poor weak thing like me could move its mystery?
Time, however, and my nurse Betsy, and Jacob Rigg the gardener, brought me back to a better state of mind, and renewed the right courage within me. But, first of all, Jacob Rigg aroused my terror and interest vividly. It may be remembered that this good man had been my father's gardener at the time of our great calamity, and almost alone of the Shoxford people had shown himself true and faithful. Not that the natives had turned against us, or been at all unfriendly; so far from this was the case, that every one felt for our troubles, and pitied us, my father being of a cheerful and affable turn, until misery hardened him; but what I mean is that only one or two had the courage to go against the popular conclusion and the convictions of authority.
But Jacob was a very upright man, and had a strong liking for his master, who many and many a time--as he told me--had taken a spade and dug along with him, just as if he were a jobbing gardener born, instead of a fine young nobleman; “and nobody gifted with that turn of mind, likewise very clever in white-spine cowcumbers, could ever be relied upon to go and shoot his father.” Thus reasoned old Jacob, and he always had done so, and meant evermore to abide by it; and the graves which he had tended now for nigh a score of years, and meant to tend till he called for his own, were--as sure as he stood there in Shoxford church-yard a-talking to me, who was the very image of my father, God bless me, though not of course so big like--the graves of slaughtered innocents, and a mother who was always an angel. And the parson might preach forever to him about the resurrection, and the right coming uppermost when you got to heaven, but to his mind that was scarcely any count at all; and if you came to that, we ought to hang Jack Ketch, as might come to pass in the Revelations. But while a man had got his own bread to earn, till his honor would let him go to the work-house, and his duty to the rate-payers, there was nothing that vexed him more than to be told any texts of Holy Scripture. Whatever God Almighty had put down there was meant for ancient people, the Jews being long the most ancient people, though none the more for that did he like them; and so it was mainly the ancient folk, who could not do a day's work worth eighteenpence, that could enter into Bible promises. Not that he was at all behindhand about interpretation; but as long as he could fetch and earn, at planting box and doing borders, two shillings and ninepence a day and his beer, he was not going to be on for kingdom come.
I told him that I scarcely thought his view of our condition here would be approved by wise men who had found time to study the subject. But he answered that whatever their words might be, their doings showed that they knew what was the first thing to attend to. And if it ever happened him to come across a parson who was as full of heaven outside as he was inside his surplice, he would keep his garden in order for nothing better than his blessing.
I knew of no answer to be made to this. And indeed he seemed to be aware that his conversation was too deep for me; so he leaned upon his spade, and rubbed his long blue chin in the shadow of the church tower, holding as he did the position of sexton, and preparing even now to dig a grave.
“I keeps them well away from you,” he said, as he began to chop out a new oblong in the turf; “many a shilling have I been offered by mothers about their little ones, to put 'em inside of the 'holy ring,' as we calls this little cluster; but not for five golden guineas would I do it, and have to face the Captain, dead or alive, about it. We heard that he was dead, because it was put in all the papers; and a pleasant place I keeps for him, to come home alongside of his family. A nicer gravelly bit of ground there couldn't be in all the county; and if no chance of him occupying it, I can drive down a peg with your mark, miss.”
“Thank you,” I answered; “you are certainly most kind; but, Mr. Rigg, I would rather wait a little. I have had a very troublesome life thus far, and nothing to bind me to it much; but still I would rather not have my peg driven down just--just at present.”
“Ah, you be like all the young folk that think the tree for their coffins ain't come to the size of this spade handle yet. Lord bless you for not knowing what He hath in hand! Now this one you see me a-raising of the turf for, stood as upright as you do, a fortnight back, and as good about the chest and shoulders, and three times the color in her cheeks, and her eyes a'most as bright as yourn be. Not aristocratic, you must understand me, miss, being only the miller's daughter, nor instructed to throw her voice the same as you do, which is better than gallery music; but setting these haxidents to one side, a farmer would have said she was more preferable, because more come-at-able, though not in my opinion to be compared--excuse me for making so free, miss, but when it comes to death we has a kind of right to do it--and many a young farmer, coming to the mill, was disturbed in his heart about her, and far and wide she was known, being proud, as the Beauty of the Moonshine, from the name of our little river. She used to call me 'Jacob Diggs,' because of my porochial office, with a meaning of a joke on my parenshal name. Ah, what a merry one she were! And now this is what I has to do for her! And sooner would I 'a doed it a'most for my own old ooman!”
“Oh, Jacob!” I cried, being horrified at the way in which he tore up the ground, as if his wife was waiting, “the things you say are quite wrong, I am sure, for a man in your position. You are connected with this church almost as much as the clerk is.”
“More, miss, ten times more! He don't do nothing but lounge on the front of his desk, and be too lazy to keep up 'Amen,' while I at my time of life go about, from Absolution to the fifth Lord's prayer, with a stick that makes my rheumatics worse, for the sake of the boys with their pocket full of nuts. When I was a boy there was no nuts, except at the proper time of year, a month or two on from this time of speaking; and we used to crack they in the husk, and make no noise to disturb the congregation; but now it is nuts, nuts, round nuts, flat nuts, nuts with three corners to them--all the year round nuts to crack, and me to find out who did it!”
“But, Mr. Rigg,” I replied, as he stopped, looking hotter in mind than in body, “is it not Mrs. Rigg, your good wife, who sells all the nuts on a Saturday for the boys to crack on a Sunday?”
“My missus do sell some, to be sure; yes, just a few. But not of a Saturday more than any other day.”
“Then surely, Mr. Rigg, you might stop it, by not permitting any sale of nuts except to good boys of high principles. And has it not happened sometimes, Mr. Rigg, that boys have made marks on their nuts, and bought them again at your shop on a Monday? I mean, of course, when your duty has compelled you to empty the pockets of a boy in church.”
Now this was a particle of shamefully small gossip, picked up naturally by my Betsy, but pledged to go no further; and as soon as I had spoken I became a little nervous, having it suddenly brought to my mind that I had promised not even to whisper it; and now I had told it to the man of all men! But Jacob appeared to have been quite deaf, and diligently went on digging. And I said “good-evening,” for the grave was for the morrow; and he let me go nearly to the stile before he stuck his spade into the ground and followed.
“Excoose of my making use,” he said, “of a kind of a personal reference, miss; but you be that pat with your answers, it maketh me believe you must be sharp inside--more than your father, the poor Captain, were, as all them little grass buttons argueth. Now, miss, if I thought you had head-piece enough to keep good counsel and ensue it, maybe I could tell you a thing as would make your hair creep out of them coorous hitch-ups, and your heart a'most bust them there braids of fallallies.”
“Why, what in the world do you mean?” I asked, being startled by the old man's voice and face.
“Nothing, miss, nothing. I was only a-joking. If you bain't come to no more discretion than that--to turn as white as the clerk's smock-frock of a Easter-Sunday--why, the more of a joke one has, the better, to bring your purty color back to you. Ah! Polly of the mill was the maid for color--as good for the eyesight as a chaney-rose in April. Well, well, I must get on with her grave; they're a-coming to speak the good word over un on sundown.”
He might have known how this would vex and perplex me. I could not bear to hinder him in his work--as important as any to be done by man for man--and yet it was beyond my power to go home and leave him there, and wonder what it was that he had been so afraid to tell. So I quietly said, “Then I will wish you a very good evening again, Mr. Rigg, as you are too busy to be spoken with.” And I walked off a little way, having met with men who, having begun a thing, needs must have it out, and fully expecting him to call me back. But Jacob only touched his hat, and said, “A pleasant evening to you, ma'am.”
Nothing could have made me feel more resolute than this did. I did not hesitate one moment in running back over the stile again, and demanding of Jacob Rigg that he should tell me whether he meant any thing or nothing; for I was not to be played with about important matters, like the boys in the church who were cracking nuts.
“Lord! Lord, now!” he said, with his treddled heel scraping the shoulder of his shining spade; “the longer I live in this world, the fitter I grow to get into the ways of the Lord. His ways are past finding out, saith King David: but a man of war, from his youth upward, hath no chance such as a gardening man hath. What a many of them have I found out!”
“What has that got to do with it!” I cried. “Just tell me what it was you were speaking of just now.”
“I was just a-thinking, when I looked at you, miss,” he answered, in the prime of leisure, and wiping his forehead from habit only, not because he wanted it, “how little us knows of the times and seasons and the generations of the sons of men. There you stand, miss, and here stand I, as haven't seen your father for a score of years a'most; and yet there comes out of your eyes into mine the very same look as the Captain used to send, when snakes in the grass had been telling lies about me coming late, or having my half pint or so on. Not that the Captain was a hard man, miss--far otherwise, and capable of allowance, more than any of the women be. But only the Lord, who doeth all things aright, could 'a made you come, with a score of years atween, and the twinkle in your eyes like--Selah!”
“You know what you mean, perhaps, but I do not,” I answered, quite gently, being troubled by his words and the fear of having tried to hurry him; “but you should not say what you have said, Jacob Rigg, to me, your master's daughter, if you only meant to be joking. Is this the place to joke with me?”
I pointed to all that lay around me, where I could not plant a foot without stepping over my brothers or sisters; and the old man, callous as he might be, could not help feeling for--a pinch of snuff. This he found in the right-hand pocket of his waistcoat, and took it very carefully, and made a little noise of comfort; and thus, being fully self-assured again, he stood, with his feet far apart and his head on one side, regarding me warily. And I took good care not to say another word.
“You be young,” he said at last; “and in these latter days no wisdom is ordained in the mouths of babes and sucklings, nor always in the mouths of them as is themselves ordained. But you have a way of keeping your chin up, miss, as if you was gifted with a stiff tongue likewise. And whatever may hap, I has as good mind to tell 'e.” “That you are absolutely bound to do,” I answered, as forcibly as I could. “Duty to your former master and to me, his only child--and to yourself, and your Maker too--compel you, Jacob Rigg, to tell me every thing you know.”
“Then, miss,” he answered, coming nearer to me, and speaking in a low, hoarse voice, “as sure as I stand here in God's churchyard, by all this murdered family, I knows the man who done it!”
He looked at me, with a trembling finger upon his hard-set lips, and the spade in his other hand quivered like a wind vane; but I became as firm as the monument beside me, and my heart, instead of fluttering, grew as steadfast as a glacier. Then, for the first time, I knew that God had not kept me living, when all the others died, without fitting me also for the work there was to do.
“Come here to the corner of the tower, miss,” old Jacob went on, in his excitement catching hold of the sleeve of my black silk jacket. “Where we stand is a queer sort of echo, which goeth in and out of them big tombstones. And for aught I can say to contrairy, he may be a-watching of us while here we stand.”
I glanced around, as if he were most welcome to be watching me, if only I could see him once. But the place was as silent as its graves; and I followed the sexton to the shadow of a buttress. Here he went into a deep gray corner, lichened and mossed by a drip from the roof; and being, both in his clothes and self, pretty much of that same color, he was not very easy to discern from stone when the light of day was declining.
“This is where I catches all the boys,” he whispered; “and this is where I caught him, one evening when I were tired, and gone to nurse my knees a bit. Let me see--why, let me see! Don't you speak till I do, miss. Were it the last but one I dug? Or could un 'a been the last but two? Never mind; I can't call to mind quite justly. We puts down about one a month in this parish, without any distemper or haxident. Well, it must 'a been the one afore last--to be sure, no call to scratch my head about un. Old Sally Mock, as sure as I stand here--done handsome by the rate-payers. Over there, miss, if you please to look--about two land-yard and a half away. Can you see un with the grass peeking up a'ready?”
“Never mind that, Jacob. Do please to go on.”
“So I be, miss. So I be doing to the best of the power granted me. Well, I were in this little knuckle of a squat, where old Sally used to say as I went to sleep, and charged the parish for it--a spiteful old ooman, and I done her grave with pleasure, only wishing her had to pay for it; and to prove to her mind that I never goed asleep here, I was just making ready to set fire to my pipe, having cocked my shovel in to ease my legs, like this, when from round you corner of the chancel-foot, and over again that there old tree, I seed a something movin' along--movin' along, without any noise or declarance of solid feet walking. You may see the track burnt in the sod, if you let your eyes go along this here finger.”
“Oh, Jacob, how could you have waited to see it?”
“I did, miss, I did; being used to a-many antics in this dead-yard, such as a man who hadn't buried them might up foot to run away from. But they no right, after the service of the Church, to come up for more than one change of the moon, unless they been great malefactors. And then they be ashamed of it; and I reminds them of it. 'Amen,' I say, in the very same voice as I used at the tail of their funerals; and then they knows well that I covered them up, and the most uneasy goes back again. Lor' bless you, miss, I no fear of the dead. At both ends of life us be harmless. It is in the life, and mostways in the middle of it, we makes all the death for one another.”
This was true enough; and I only nodded to him, fearing to interject any new ideas from which he might go rambling.
“Well, that there figure were no joke, mind you,” the old man continued, as soon as he had freshened his narrative powers with another pinch of snuff, “being tall and grim, and white in the face, and very onpleasant for to look at, and its eyes seemed a'most to burn holes in the air. No sooner did I see that it were not a ghostie, but a living man the same as I be, than my knees begins to shake and my stumps of teeth to chatter. And what do you think it was stopped me, miss, from slipping round this corner, and away by belfry? Nort but the hoddest idea you ever heared on. For all of a suddint it was borne unto my mind that the Lord had been pleased to send us back the Captain; not so handsome as he used to be, but in the living flesh, however, in spite of they newspapers. And I were just at the pint of coming forrard, out of this here dark cornder, knowing as I had done my duty by them graves that his honor, to my mind, must 'a come looking after, when, lucky for me, I see summat in his walk, and then in his countenance, and then in all his features, unnateral on the Captain's part, whatever his time of life might be. And sure enough, miss, it were no Captain more nor I myself be.”
“Of course not. How could it be? But who was it, Jacob?”
“You bide a bit, miss, and you shall hear the whole. Well, by that time 'twas too late for me to slip away, and I was bound to scrooge up into the elbow of this nick here, and try not to breathe, as nigh as might be, and keep my Lammas cough down; for I never see a face more full of malice and uncharity. However, he come on as straight as a arrow, holding his long chin out, like this, as if he gotten crutches under it, as the folk does with bad water. A tall man, as tall as the Captain a'most, but not gifted with any kind aspect. He trampsed over the general graves, like the devil come to fetch their souls out; but when he come here to the 'holy ring,' he stopped short, and stood with his back to me. I could hear him count the seven graves, as pat as the shells of oysters to pay for, and then he said all their names, as true, from the biggest to the leastest one, as Betsy Bowen could 'a done it, though none of 'em got no mark to 'em. Oh, the poor little hearts, it was cruel hard upon them! And then my lady in the middle, making seven. So far as I could catch over his shoulder, he seemed to be quite a-talking with her--not as you and I be, miss, but a sort of a manner of a way, like.”
“And what did he seem to say? Oh, Jacob, how long you do take over it!”
“Well, he did not, miss; that you may say for sartain. And glad I was to have him quick about it; for he might have redooced me to such a condition--ay, and I believe a' would, too, if onst a' had caught sight of me--as the parish might 'a had to fight over the appintment of another sexton. And so at last a' went away. And I were that stiff with scrooging in this cornder--” “Is that all? Oh, that comes to nothing. Surely you must have more to tell me? It may have been some one who knew our names. It may have been some old friend of the family.”
“No, miss, no! No familiar friend; or if he was, he were like King David's. He bore a tyrannous hate against 'e, and the poison of asps were under his lips. In this here hattitude he stood, with his back toward me, and his reins more upright than I be capable of putting it. And this was how he held up his elbow and his head. Look 'e see, miss, and then 'e know as much as I do.”
Mr. Rigg marched with a long smooth step--a most difficult strain for his short bowed legs--as far as the place he had been pointing out; and there he stood with his back to me, painfully doing what the tall man had done, so far as the difference of size allowed.
It was not possible for me to laugh in a matter of such sadness; and yet Jacob stood, with his back to me, spreading and stretching himself in such a way, to be up to the dimensions of the stranger, that--low as it was--I was compelled to cough, for fear of fatally offending him.
“That warn't quite right, miss. Now you look again,” he exclaimed, with a little readjustment. “Only he had a thing over one shoulder, the like of what the Scotchmen wear; and his features was beyond me, because of the back of his head, like. For God's sake keep out of his way, miss.”
The sexton stood in a musing and yet a stern and defiant attitude, with the right elbow clasped in the left-hand palm, the right hand resting half-clinched upon the forehead, and the shoulders thrown back, as if ready for a blow.
“What a very odd way to stand!” I said.
“Yes, miss. And what he said was odder. 'Six, and the mother!' I heared un say; 'no cure for it, till I have all seven.' But stop, miss. Not a breath to any one! Here comes the poor father and mother to speak the blessing across their daughter's grave--and the grave not two foot down yet!”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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36
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A SIMPLE QUESTION
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Now this account of what Jacob Rigg had seen and heard threw me into a state of mind extremely unsatisfactory. To be in eager search of some unknown person who had injured me inexpressibly, without any longing for revenge on my part, but simply with a view to justice--this was a very different thing from feeling that an unknown person was in quest of me, with the horrible purpose of destroying me to insure his own wicked safety.
At first I almost thought that he was welcome to do this; that such a life as mine (if looked at from an outer point of view) was better to be died than lived out. Also that there was nobody left to get any good out of all that I could do; and even if I ever should succeed, truth would come out of her tomb too late. And this began to make me cry, which I had long given over doing, with no one to feel for the heart of it.
But a thing of this kind could not long endure; and as soon as the sun of the morrow arose (or at least as soon as I was fit to see him), my view of the world was quite different. Here was the merry brook, playing with the morning, spread around with ample depth and rich retreat of meadows, and often, after maze of leisure, hastening with a tinkle into shadowy delight of trees. Here, as well, were happy lanes, and footpaths of a soft content, unworn with any pressure of the price of time or business. None of them knew (in spite, at flurried spots, of their own direction posts) whence they were coming or whither going--only that here they lay, between the fields or through them, like idle veins of earth, with sometimes company of a man or boy, whistling to his footfall, or a singing maid with a milking pail. And how ungrateful it would be to forget the pleasant copses, in waves of deep green leafage flowing down and up the channeled hills, waving at the wind to tints and tones of new refreshment, and tempting idle folk to come and hear the hush, and see the twinkled texture of pellucid gloom.
Much, however, as I loved to sit in places of this kind alone, for some little time I feared to do so, after hearing the sexton's tale; for Jacob's terror was so unfeigned (though his own life had not been threatened) that, knowing as I did from Betsy's account, as well as his own appearance, that he was not at all a nervous man, I could not help sharing his vague alarm. It seemed so terrible that any one should come to the graves of my sweet mother and her six harmless children, and, instead of showing pity, as even a monster might have tried to do, should stand, if not with threatening gestures, yet with a most hostile mien, and thirst for the life of the only survivor--my poor self.
But terrible or not, the truth was so; and neither Betsy nor myself could shake Mr. Rigg's conclusion. Indeed, he became more and more emphatic, in reply to our doubts and mild suggestions, perhaps that his eyes had deceived him, or perhaps that, taking a nap in the corner of the buttress, he had dreamed at least a part of it. And Betsy, on the score of ancient friendship and kind remembrance of his likings, put it to him in a gentle way whether his knowledge of what Sally Mock had been, and the calumnies she might have spoken of his beer (when herself, in the work-house, deprived of it), might not have induced him to take a little more than usual in going down so deep for her. But he answered, “No; it was nothing of the sort. Deep he had gone, to the tiptoe of his fling; not from any feeling of a wish to keep her down, but just because the parish paid, and the parish would have measurement. And when that was on, he never brought down more than the quart tin from the public; and never had none down afterward. Otherwise the ground was so ticklish, that a man, working too free, might stay down there. No, no! That idea was like one of Sally's own. He just had his quart of Persfield ale--short measure, of course, with a woman at the bar--and if that were enough to make a man dream dreams, the sooner he dug his own grave, the better for all connected with him.”
We saw that we had gone too far in thinking of such a possibility; and if Mr. Rigg had not been large-minded, as well as notoriously sober, Betsy might have lost me all the benefit of his evidence by her London-bred clumsiness with him. For it takes quite a different handling, and a different mode of outset, to get on with the London working class and the laboring kind of the country; or at least it seemed to me so.
Now my knowledge of Jacob Rigg was owing, as might be supposed, to Betsy Strouss, who had taken the lead of me in almost every thing ever since I brought her down from London. And now I was glad that, in one point at least, her judgment had overruled mine--to wit, that my name and parentage were as yet not generally known in the village. Indeed, only Betsy herself and Jacob and a faithful old washer-woman, with no roof to her mouth, were aware of me as Miss Castlewood. Not that I had taken any other name--to that I would not stoop--but because the public, of its own accord, paying attention to Betsy's style of addressing me, followed her lead (with some little improvement), and was pleased to entitle me “Miss Raumur.”
Some question had been raised as to spelling me aright, till a man of advanced intelligence proved to many eyes, and even several pairs of spectacles (assembled in front of the blacksmith's shop), that no other way could be right except that. For there it was in print, as any one able might see, on the side of an instrument whose name and qualities were even more mysterious than those in debate. Therefore I became “Miss Raumur;” and a protest would have gone for nothing unless printed also. But it did not behoove me to go to that expense, while it suited me very well to be considered and pitied as a harmless foreigner--a being who on English land may find some cause to doubt whether, even in his own country, a prophet could be less thought of. And this large pity for me, as an outlandish person, in the very spot where I was born, endowed me with tenfold the privilege of the proudest native. For the natives of this valley are declared to be of a different stock from those around them, not of the common Wessex strain, but of Jutish or Danish origin. How that may be I do not know; at any rate, they think well of themselves, and no doubt they have cause to do so.
Moreover, they all were very kind to me, and their primitive ways amused me, as soon as they had settled that I was a foreigner, equally beyond and below inquiry. They told me that I was kindly welcome to stay there as long as it pleased me; and knowing how fond I was of making pictures, after beholding my drawing-book, every farmer among them gave me leave to come into his fields, though he never had heard there was any thing there worth painting.
When once there has been a deposit of idea in the calm deep eocene of British rural mind, the impression will outlast any shallow deluge of the noblest education. Shoxford had settled two points forever, without troubling reason to come out of her way--first, that I was a foreign young lady of good birth, manners, and money; second, and far more important, I was here to write and paint a book about Shoxford. Not for the money, of that I had no need (according to the congress at the “Silver-edged Holly”), but for the praise and the knowledge of it, like, and to make a talk among high people. But the elders shook their heads--as I heard from Mr. Rigg, who hugged his knowledge proudly, and uttered dim sayings of wisdom let forth at large usury: he did not mind telling me that the old men shook their heads, for fear of my being a deal too young, and a long sight too well favored (as any man might tell without his specs on), for to write any book upon any subject yet, leave alone an old, ancient town like theirs. However, there might be no harm in my trying, and perhaps the school-master would cross out the bad language.
Thus for once fortune now was giving me good help, enabling me to go about freely, and preventing (so far as I could see, at least) all danger of discovery by my unknown foe. So here I resolved to keep my head-quarters, dispensing, if it must be so, with Betsy's presence, and not even having Mrs. Price to succeed her, unless my cousin should insist upon it. And partly to dissuade him from that, and partly to hear his opinion of the sexton's tale, I paid a flying visit to Lord Castlewood; while “Madam Straw,” as Betsy now was called throughout the village, remained behind at Shoxford. For I long had desired to know a thing which I had not ventured to ask my cousin--though I did ask Mr. Shovelin--whether my father had intrusted him with the key of his own mysterious acts. I scarcely knew whether it was proper even now to put this question to Lord Castlewood; but even without doing so, I might get at the answer by watching him closely while I told my tale. Not a letter had reached me since I came to Shoxford, neither had I written any, except one to Uncle Sam; and keeping to this excellent rule, I arrived at Castlewood without notice.
In doing this I took no liberty, because full permission had been given me about it; and indeed I had been expected there, as Stixon told me, some days before. He added that his master was about as usual, but had shown some uneasiness on my account, though the butler was all in the dark about it, and felt it very hard after all these years, “particular, when he could hardly help thinking that Mrs. Price--a new hand compared to himself, not to speak of being a female--knowed all about it, and were very aggravating. But there, he would say no more; he knew his place, and he always had been valued in it, long afore Mrs. Price come up to the bottom of his waistcoat.”
My cousin received me with kindly warmth, and kissed me gently on the forehead. “My dear, how very well you look!” he said. “Your native air has agreed with you. I was getting, in my quiet way, rather sedulous and self-reproachful about you. But you would have your own way, like a young American; and it seems that you were right.”
“It was quite right,” I answered, with a hearty kiss, for I never could be cold-natured; and this was my only one of near kin, so far, at least, as my knowledge went. “I was quite right in going; and I have done good. At any rate, I have found out something--something that may not be of any kind of use; but still it makes me hope things.”
With that, in as few words as ever I could use, I told Lord Castlewood the whole of Jacob's tale, particularly looking at him all the while I spoke, to settle in my own mind whether the idea of such a thing was new to him. Concerning that, however, I could make out nothing. My cousin, at his time of life, and after so much travelling, had much too large a share of mind and long skill of experience for me to make any thing out of his face beyond his own intention. And whether he had suspicion or not of any thing at all like what I was describing, or any body having to do with it, was more than I ever might have known, if I had not gathered up my courage and put the question outright to him. I told him that if I was wrong in asking, he was not to answer; but, right or wrong, ask him I must.
“The question is natural, and not at all improper,” replied Lord Castlewood, standing a moment for change of pain, which was all his relief. “Indeed, I expected you to ask me that before. But, Erema, I have also had to ask myself about it, whether I have any right to answer you. And I have decided not to do so, unless you will pledge yourself to one thing.”
“I will pledge myself to any thing,” I answered, rashly; “I do not care what it is, if only to get at the bottom of this mystery.”
“I scarcely think you will hold good to your words when you hear what you have to promise. The condition upon which I tell you what I believe to be the cause of all is, that you let things remain as they are, and keep silence forever about them.”
“Oh, you can not be so cruel, so atrocious!” I cried, in my bitter disappointment. “What good would it be for me to know things thus, and let the vile wrong continue? Surely you are not bound to lay on me a condition so impossible?”
“After much consideration and strong wish to have it otherwise, I have concluded that I am so bound.”
“In duty to my father, or the family, or what? Forgive me for asking, but it does seem so hard.”
“It seems hard, my dear, and it is hard as well,” he answered, very gently, yet showing in his eyes and lips no chance of any yielding. “But remember that I do not know, I only guess, the secret; and if you give the pledge I speak of, you merely follow in your father's steps.”
“Never,” I replied, with as firm a face as his. “It may have been my father's duty, or no doubt he thought it so; but it can not be mine, unless I make it so by laying it on my honor. And I will not do that.”
“Perhaps you are right; but, at any rate, remember that I have not tried to persuade you. I wish to do what is for your happiness, Erema. And I think that, on the whole, with your vigor and high spirit, you are better as you are than if you had a knowledge which you could only brood over and not use.”
“I will find out the whole of it myself,” I cried, for I could not repress all excitement; “and then I need not brood over it, but may have it out and get justice. In the wildest parts of America justice comes with perseverance: am I to abjure it in the heart of England? Lord Castlewood, which is first--justice or honor?”
“My cousin, you are fond of asking questions difficult to answer. Justice and honor nearly always go together. When they do otherwise, honor stands foremost, with people of good birth, at least.”
“Then I will be a person of very bad birth. If they come into conflict in my life, as almost every thing seems to do, my first thought shall be of justice; and honor shall come in as its ornament afterward.”
“Erema,” said my cousin, “your meaning is good, and at your time of life you can scarcely be expected to take a dispassionate view of things.”
At first I felt almost as if I could hate a “dispassionate view of things.” Things are made to arouse our passion, so long as meanness and villainy prevail; and if old men, knowing the balance of the world, can contemplate them all “dispassionately,” more clearly than any thing else, to my mind, that proves the beauty of being young. I am sure that I never was hot or violent--qualities which I especially dislike--but still I would rather almost have those than be too philosophical. And now, while I revered my father's cousin for his gentleness, wisdom, and long-suffering, I almost longed to fly back to the Major, prejudiced, peppery, and red-hot for justice, at any rate in all things that concerned himself.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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37
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SOME ANSWER TO IT
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Hasty indignation did not drive me to hot action. A quiet talk with Mrs. Price, as soon as my cousin's bad hour arrived, was quite enough to bring me back to a sense of my own misgovernment. Moreover, the evening clouds were darkening for a night of thunder, while the silver Thames looked nothing more than a leaden pipe down the valleys. Calm words fall at such times on quick temper like the drip of trees on people who have been dancing. I shivered, as my spirit fell, to think of my weak excitement, and poor petulance to a kind, wise friend, a man of many sorrows and perpetual affliction. And then I recalled what I had observed, but in my haste forgotten--Lord Castlewood was greatly changed even in the short time since I had left his house for Shoxford. Pale he had always been, and his features (calm as they were, and finely cut) seemed almost bleached by in-door life and continual endurance. But now they showed worse sign than this--a delicate transparence of faint color, and a waxen surface, such as I had seen at a time I can not bear to think of. Also he had tottered forward, while he tried for steadfast footing, quite as if his worried members were almost worn out at last.
Mrs. Price took me up quite sharply--at least for one of her well-trained style--when I ventured to ask if she had noticed this, which made me feel uneasy. “Oh dear, no!” she said, looking up from the lace-frilled pockets of her silk apron, which appeared to my mind perhaps a little too smart, and almost of a vulgar tincture; and I think that she saw in my eyes that much, and was vexed with herself for not changing it--“oh dear, no, Miss Castlewood! We who know and watch him should detect any difference of that nature at the moment of its occurrence. His lordship's health goes vacillating; a little up now, and then a little down, like a needle that is mounted to show the dip of compass; and it varies according to the electricity, as well as the magnetic influence.”
“What doctor told you that?” I asked, seeing in a moment that this housekeeper was dealing in quotation.
“You are very”--she was going to say “rude,” but knew better when she saw me waiting for it--“well, you are rather brusque, as we used to call it abroad, Miss Castlewood; but am I incapable of observing for myself?”
“I never implied that,” was my answer. “I believe that you are most intelligent, and fit to nurse my cousin, as you are to keep his house. And what you have said shows the clearness of your memory and expression.”
“You are very good to speak so,” she answered, recovering her temper beautifully, but, like a true woman, resolved not to let me know any thing more about it. “Oh, what a clap of thunder! Are you timid? This house has been struck three times, they say. It stands so prominently. It is this that has made my lord look so.”
“Let us hope, then to see him much better to-morrow,” I said, very bravely, though frightened at heart, being always a coward of thunder. “What are these storms you get in England compared to the tropical outbursts? Let us open the window, if you please, and watch it.”
“I hear myself called,” Mrs. Price exclaimed. “I am sorry to leave you, miss. You know best. But please not to sit by an open window; nothing is more dangerous.”
“Except a great bunch of steel keys,” I replied; and gazing at her nice retreating figure, saw it quickened, as a flash of lightning passed, with the effort of both hands to be quit of something.
The storm was dreadful; and I kept the window shut, but could not help watching, with a fearful joy, the many-fingered hazy pale vibrations, the reflections of the levin in the hollow of the land. And sadly I began to think of Uncle Sam and all his goodness; and how in a storm, a thousandfold of this, he went down his valley in the torrent of the waves, and must have been drowned, and perhaps never found again, if he had not been wearing his leathern apron.
This made me humble, as all great thoughts do, and the sidelong drizzle in among the heavy rain (from the big drops jostling each other in the air, and dashing out splashes of difference) gave me an idea of the sort of thing I was--and how very little more. And feeling rather lonely in the turn that things had taken, I rang the bell for somebody; and up came Stixon.
“Lor', miss! Lor', what a burning shame of Prick! --'Prick' we call her, in our genial moments, hearing as the 'k' is hard in Celtic language; and all abroad about her husband. My very first saying to you was, not to be too much okkipied with her. Look at the pinafore on her! Lord be with me! If his lordship, as caught me, that day of this very same month fifty years, in the gooseberry bush--” “To be sure!” I said, knowing that story by heart, together with all its embellishments; “but things are altered since that day. Nothing can be more to your credit, I am sure, than to be able to tell such a tale in the very place where it happened.”
“But, Miss--Miss Erma, I ain't begun to tell it.”
“Because you remember that I am acquainted with it. A thing so remarkable is not to be forgotten. Now let me ask you a question of importance; and I beg you, as an old servant of this family, to answer it carefully and truly. Do you remember any one, either here or elsewhere, so like my father, Captain Castlewood, as to be taken for him at first sight, until a difference of expression and of walk was noticed?”
Mr. Stixon looked at me with some surprise, and then began to think profoundly, and in doing so he supported his chin with one hand.
“Let me see--like the Captain?” He reflected slowly: “Did I ever see a gentleman like poor Master George, as was? A gentleman, of course, it must have been--and a very tall, handsome, straight gentleman, to be taken anyhow for young Master George. And he must have been very like him, too, to be taken for him by resemblance. Well then, miss, to the best of my judgment, I never did see such a gentleman.”
“I don't know whether it was a gentleman or not,” I answered, with some impatience at his tantalizing slowness; “but he carried his chin stretched forth--like this.”
For Stixon's own attitude had reminded me of a little point in Jacob Rigg's description, which otherwise might have escaped me.
“Lor', now, and he carried his chin like that!” resumed the butler, with an increase of intelligence by no means superfluous. “Why, let me see, now, let me see. Something do come across my mind when you puts out your purty chin, miss; but there, it must have been a score of years agone, or more--perhaps five-and-twenty. What a daft old codger I be getting, surely! No wonder them new lights puts a bushel over me.”
“No,” I replied; “you are simply showing great power of memory, Stixon. And now please to tell me, as soon as you can, who it was--a tall man, remember, and a handsome one, with dark hair, perhaps, or at any rate dark eyes--who resembled (perhaps not very closely, but still enough to mislead at a distance) my dear father--Master George, as you call him, for whose sake you are bound to tell me every thing you know. Now try to think--do please try your very best, for my sake.”
“That I will, miss; that I will, with all my heart, with all my mind, with all my soul, and with all my strength, as I used to have to say with my hands behind my back, afore education were invented. Only please you to stand with your chin put out, miss, and your profield towards me. That is what brings it up, and nothing else at all, miss. Only, not to say a word of any sort to hurry me. A tracherous and a deep thing is the memory and the remembrance.”
Mr. Stixon's memory was so deep that there seemed to be no bottom to it, or, at any rate, what lay there took a very long time to get at. And I waited, with more impatience than hope, the utterance of his researches.
“I got it now; I got it all, miss, clear as any pictur'!” the old man cried out, at the very moment when I was about to say, “Please to leave off; I am sure it is too much for you.” “Not a pictur' in all of our gallery, miss, two-and-fifty of 'em, so clear as I see that there man, dark as it was, and a heavy wind a-blowing. What you call them things, miss, if you please, as comes with the sun, like a face upon the water? Wicked things done again the will of the Lord, and He makes them fade out afterwards.”
“Perhaps you mean photographs. Is that the word?”
“The very word, and no mistake. A sinful trespass on the works of God, to tickle the vanity of gals. But he never spread himself abroad like them. They shows all their ear-rings, and their necks, and smiles. But he never would have shown his nose, if he could help it, that stormy night when I come to do my duty. He come into this house without so much as a 'by your leave' to nobody, and vexed me terrible accordingly. It was in the old lord's time, you know, miss, a one of the true sort, as would have things respectful, and knock down any man as soon as look. And it put me quite upon the touch-and-go, being responsible for all the footman's works, and a young boy promoted in the face of my opinion, having my own son worth a dozen of him. This made me look at the nature of things, miss, and find it on my conscience to be after every body.”
“Yes, Stixon, yes! Now do go on. You must always have been, not only after, but a very long way after, every body.”
“Miss Erma, if you throw me out, every word goes promiscuous. In a heffort of the mind like this it is every word, or no word. Now, did I see him come along the big passage? --a 'currydoor' they call it now, though no more curry in it than there is door. No, I never seed him come along the passage, and that made it more reproachful. He come out of a green-baize door--the very place I can point out to you, and the selfsame door, miss, though false to the accuracy of the mind that knows it, by reason of having been covered up red, and all the brass buttons lost to it in them new-fangled upholsteries. Not that I see him come through, if you please, but the sway of the door, being double-jointed, was enough to show legs, had been there. And knowing that my lord's private room was there, made me put out my legs quite wonderful.”
“Oh, do please to put out your words half as quickly.”
“No, miss, no. I were lissome in those days, though not so very stiff at this time of speaking, and bound to be guarded in the guidance of the tongue. And now, miss, I think if you please to hear the rest to-morrow, I could tell it better.”
A more outrageous idea than this was never presented to me. Even if I could have tried to wait, this dreadful old man might have made up his mind not to open his lips in the morning, or, if he would speak, there might be nothing left to say. His memory was nursed up now, and my only chance was to keep it so. Therefore I begged him to please to go on, and no more would I interrupt him. And I longed to be ten years older, so as not to speak when needless.
“So then, Miss Erma, if I must go on,” resumed the well-coaxed Stixon, “if my duty to the family driveth me to an 'arrowing subjeck, no words can more justly tell what come to pass than my language to my wife. She were alive then, the poor dear hangel, and the mother of seven children, which made me, by your leave comparing humble roofs with grandeur, a little stiff to him up stairs, as come in on the top of seven. For I said to my wife when I went home--sleeping out of the house, you see, miss, till the Lord was pleased to dissolve matrimony--'Polly,' I said, when I took home my supper, 'you may take my word for it there is something queer.' Not another word did I mean to tell her, as behooved my dooty. Howsoever, no peace was my lot till I made a clean bosom of it, only putting her first on the Testament, and even that not safe with most of them. And from that night not a soul has heard a word till it comes to you, miss. He come striding along, with his face muffled up, for all the world like a bugglar, and no more heed did he pay to me than if I was one of the pedestals. But I were in front of him at the door, and to slip out so was against all orders. So in front of him I stands, with my hand upon the handles, and meaning to have a word with him, to know who he was, and such like, and how he comes there, and what he had been seeking, with the spoons and the forks and the gravies on my mind. And right I would have been in a court of law (if the lawyers was put out of it) for my hefforts in that situation. And then, what do you think he done, miss? So far from entering into any conversation with me, or hitting at me, like a man--which would have done good to think of--he send out one hand to the bottom of my vest--as they call it now in all the best livery tailors--and afore I could reason on it, there I was a-lying on a star in six colors of marble. When I come to think on it, it was but a push directed to a part of my system, and not a hit under the belt, the like of which no Briton would think of delivering. Nevertheless, there was no differ in what came to me, miss, and my spirit was roused, as if I had been hit foul by one of the prizemen. No time to get up, but I let out one foot at his long legs as a' was slipping through the door, and so nearly did I fetch him over that he let go his muffle to balance himself with the jamb, and same moment a strong rush of wind laid bare the whole of his wicked face to me. For a bad wicked face it was, as ever I did see; whether by reason of the kick I gave, and a splinter in the shin, or by habit of the mind, a proud and 'aughty and owdacious face, and, as I said to my poor wife, reminded me a little of our Master George; not in his ordinary aspect, to be sure, but as Master George might look if he was going to the devil. Pray excoose me, miss, for bad words, but no good ones will do justice. And so off he goes, after one look at me on the ground, not worth considering, with his chin stuck up, as if the air was not good enough to be breathed perpendiklar like.”
“And of course you followed him,” I exclaimed, perceiving that Stixon would allow me now to speak. “Without any delay you went after him.”
“Miss Erma, you forget what my dooty was. My dooty was to stay by the door and make it fast, as custodian of all this mansion. No little coorosity, or private resentment, could 'a borne me out in doing so. As an outraged man I was up for rushing out, but as a trusted official, and responsible head footman, miss--for I were not butler till nine months after that--my dooty was to put the big bolt in.”
“And you did it, without even looking out to see if he tried to set the house on fire! Oh, Stixon, I fear that you were frightened.”
“Now, Miss Erma, I calls it ungrateful, after all my hefforts to obleege you, to put a bad construction upon me. You hurts me, miss, in my tenderest parts, as I never thought Master George's darter would 'a doed. But there, they be none of them as they used to be! Master George would 'a said, if he ever had heard it. 'Stixon, my man, you have acted for the best, and showed a sound discretion. Stixon,' he would have said, 'here's a George and Dragon in reward of your gallant conduck.' Ah, that sort of manliness is died out now.”
This grated at first upon my feelings, because it seemed tainted with selfishness, and it did not entirely agree with my own recollections of my father. But still Mr. Stixon must have suffered severely in that conflict, and to blame him for not showing rashness was to misunderstand his position. And so, before putting any other questions to him, I felt in my pocket for a new half sovereign, which I hoped would answer.
Mr. Stixon received it in an absent manner, as if he were still in the struggle of his story, and too full of duty to be thankful. Yet I saw that he did not quite realize the truth of a nobly philosophic proverb--“the half is more than the whole.” Nevertheless, he stowed away his half, in harmony with a good old English saying.
“Now, when you were able to get up at last,” I inquired, with tender interest, “what did you see, and what did you do, and what conclusion did you come to?”
“I came to the conclusion, miss, that I were hurt considerable. Coorosity on my part were quenched by the way as I had to rub myself. But a man is a man, and the last thing to complain of is the exercise of his functions. And when I come round I went off to his lordship, as if I had heared his bell ring. All of us knew better than to speak till him beginning, for he were not what they now call 'halfable,' but very much to the contrary. So he says, 'You door-skulker, what do you want there?' And I see that he got his hot leg up, certain to fly to bad language. According, I asked, with my breath in my hand, if he pleased to see any young man there just now, by reason that such likes had been observated going out in some direction. But his lordship roared to me to go in another direction, not fit for young ladies. My old lord was up to every word of English; but his present lordship is the hopposite extreme.”
“Is that all you have to tell me, Stixon? Did you never see that fearful man again? Did you never even hear of him?”
“Never, miss, never! And to nobody but you have I ever told all as I told now. But you seems to be born to hear it all.”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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38
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A WITCH
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It was true enough that Stixon now had nothing more to tell, but what he had told already seemed of very great importance, confirming strongly, as it did, the description given me by Jacob Rigg. And even the butler's concluding words--that I seemed born to hear it all--comforted me like some good omen, and cheered me forward to make them true. Not that I could, in my sad and dangerous enterprise, always be confident. Some little spirit I must have had, and some resolve to be faithful, according to the power of a very common mind, admiring but never claiming courage. For I never did feel in any kind of way any gift of inspiration, or even the fitness of a quick, strong mind for working out deeds of justice. There were many good ladies in America then, and now there are some in England, perceiving so clearly their own superiority as to run about largely proclaiming it. How often I longed to be a little more like these, equal to men in achievements of the body, and very far beyond them in questions of the mind!
However, it was useless to regret my lacks, and foolish, perhaps, to think of them. To do my very best with what little gifts I had was more to the purpose and more sensible. Taking in lonely perplexity now this dim yet exciting view of things, I resolved, right or wrong, to abide at the place where the only chance was of pursuing my search. I was pledged, as perhaps has been said before, to keep from every one excepting faithful Betsy, and above all from Lord Castlewood, the unexpected little tale wrung out of Mr. Stixon. That promise had been given without any thought, in my eagerness to hear every thing, and probably some people would have thought of it no more. But the trusty butler was so scared when I asked him to release me from it, so penitent also at his own indiscretion, which never would have overcome him (as he said in the morning) only for the thunder-storm, that instead of getting off, I was quite obliged to renew and confirm my assurances.
Therefore, in truth, I had no chance left but to go back to Shoxford and do my best, meeting all dark perils with the shield of right spread over me. And a great thing now in my favor was to feel some confidence again in the guidance of kind Wisdom. The sense of this never had abandoned me so much as to make me miserable about it; but still I had never tried to shelter under it, and stay there faithfully, as the best of people do. And even now I was not brought to such a happy attitude, although delivered by these little gleams of light from the dark void of fatalism, into which so many bitter blows had once been driving me.
However, before setting off again, I made one more attempt upon Lord Castlewood, longing to know whether his suspicions would help me at all to identify the figure which had frightened both the sexton and the butler. That the person was one and the same, I did not for a moment call in question, any more than I doubted that he was the man upon whose head rested the blood of us. But why he should be allowed to go scot-free while another bore his brand, and many others died for him, and why all my most just and righteous efforts to discover him should receive, if not discouragement, at any rate most lukewarm aid--these and several other questions were as dark as ever.
“You must not return to Shoxford, my cousin,” Lord Castlewood said to me that day, after a plain though courteous refusal to enlighten me even with a mere surmise, except upon the condition before rejected. “I can not allow you to be there without strict supervision and protection. You will not, perhaps, be aware of it, as perhaps you have not been before; but a careful watch will be kept on you. I merely tell you this that you may not make mistakes, and confound friendly vigilance with the spying of an enemy. Erema, you will be looked after.”
I could not help being grateful for his kindness, and really, try as I might to be fearless, it would be a great comfort to have some one to protect me. On the other hand, how would this bear upon my own freedom of looking about, my desire to make my own occasions, and the need of going every where? Could these be kept to my liking at all while an unknown power lay in kind regard of me? Considering these things, I begged my cousin to leave me to my own devices, for that I was afraid of nobody on earth, while only seeking justice, and that England must be worse than the worst parts of America if any harm to me could be apprehended at quiet times and in such a quiet place.
My cousin said no more upon that point, though I felt that he was not in any way convinced; but he told me that he thought I should pay a little visit, if only for a day, such as I treated him with, to my good friends at Bruntsea, before I returned to Shoxford. There was no one now at Bruntsea whom I might not wish to meet, as he knew by a trifling accident; and after all the kind services rendered by Major and Mrs. Hockin, it was hardly right to let them begin to feel themselves neglected. Now the very same thing had occurred to me, and I was going to propose it; and many things which I found it hard to do without were left in my little chest of locked-up drawers there. But of that, to my knowledge, I scarcely thought twice; whereas I longed to see and have a talk with dear “Aunt Mary.” Now, since my affairs had been growing so strange, and Lord Castlewood had come forward--not strongly, but still quite enough to speak of--there had been a kind-hearted and genuine wish at Bruntsea to recover me. And this desire had unreasonably grown while starved with disappointment. The less they heard of me, the more they imagined in their rich good-will, and the surer they became that, after all, there was something in my ideas.
But how could I know this, without any letters from them, since letters were a luxury forbidden me at Shoxford? I knew it through one of the simplest and commonest of all nature's arrangements. Stixon's boy, as every body called him (though he must have been close upon five-and-twenty, and carried a cane out of sight of the windows), being so considered, and treated boyishly by the maids of Castlewood, asserted his dignity, and rose above his value as much as he had lain below it, by showing that he owned a tender heart, and them that did not despise it. For he chanced to be walking with his cane upon the beach (the very morning after he first went to Bruntsea, too late for any train back again), and casting glances of interior wonder over the unaccustomed sea--when from the sea itself out-leaped a wondrous rosy deity.
“You there, Mr. Stixon! Oh my! How long?” exclaimed Mrs. Hockin's new parlormaid, ready to drop, though in full print now, on the landward steps of the bathing-machine set up by the reckless Major.
“Come this very hinstant, miss, honor bright!” replied the junior Stixon, who had moved in good society; “and just in the hackmy of time, miss, if I may offer you my 'umble hand.”
The fair nymph fixed him with a penetrating gaze through tresses full of salt curliness, while her cheeks were conscious of an unclad dip. But William Stixon's eyes were firm with pure truth, gently toning into shy reproach and tenderness. He had met her at supper last night, and done his best; but (as he said to the Castlewood maids) it was only feeling then, whereas now it was emoshun.
“Then you are a gentleman!” Polly Hopkins cried; “and indeed, Mr. Stixon, these are slippery things.” She was speaking of the steps, as she came down them, and they had no hand-rails; and the young man felt himself to be no more Stixon's boy, but a gentleman under sweet refining pressure.
From that hour forth it was pronounced, and they left the world to its own opinion, that they were keeping company; and although they were sixty miles apart by air, and eighty-two by railway, at every post their hearts were one, with considerable benefit to the United Kingdom's revenue. Also they met by the sad sea waves, when the bathing-machines had been hauled up--for the Major now had three of them--as often as Stixon senior smiled--which he did whenever he was not put out--on the bygone ways of these children. For Polly Hopkins had a hundred pounds, as well as being the only child of the man who kept the only shop for pickled pork in Bruntsea. And my Mr. Stixon could always contrive to get orders from his lordship to send the boy away, with his carriage paid, when his health demanded bathing. Hence it is manifest that the deeds and thoughts of Bruntsea House, otherwise called “Bruntlands,” were known quite as well, and discussed even better--because dispassionately--at Castlewood than and as they were at home.
Now I won forever the heart of Stixon's boy, and that of Polly Hopkins, by recoiling with horror from the thought of going to Bruntsea unattended. After all my solitary journeys, this might have been called hypocrisy, if it had been inconvenient; but coming as it did, it was pronounced, by all who desired either news or love, to be another proof of the goodness of my heart.
Escorted thus by William Stixon (armed with a brilliant cane bought for this occasion), and knowing that Sir Montague Hockin was not there, I arrived at Bruntlands in the afternoon, and received a kindly welcome from my dear friend Mrs. Hockin. Her husband was from home, and she grieved to say that now he was generally doing this; but nobody else could have any idea what his avocations were! Then she paid me some compliments on my appearance--a thing that I never thought of, except when I came to a question of likeness, or chanced to be thinking of things, coming up as they will, at a looking-glass.
That the Major was out was a truth established in my mind some time ago; because I had seen him, as our fly crawled by, expressly and emphatically at work on a rampart of his own designing. The work was quite new to me, but not so his figure. Though I could not see people three miles off, as Firm Gundry was said to do, I had pretty clear sight, and could not mistake the Major within a furlong. And there he was, going about in a row of square notches against the sea-line, with his coat off, and brandishing some tool, vehemently carrying on to spirits less active than his own. I burned with desire to go and join him, for I love to see activity; but Mrs. Hockin thought that I had better stay away, because it was impossible to get on there without language too strong for young ladies.
This closed the question, and I stopped with her, and found the best comfort that I ever could have dreamed of. “Aunt Mary” was so steadfast, and so built up with, or rather built of, the very faith itself, that to talk with her was as good as reading the noblest chapter of the Bible. She put by all possibility of doubt as to the modern interference of the Lord, with such a sweet pity and the seasoned smile of age, and so much feeling (which would have been contempt if she had not been softened by her own escapes), that really I, who had come expecting to set her beautiful white hair on end, became like a little child put into the corner, but too young yet for any other punishment at school, except to be looked at. Nevertheless, though I did look small, it made me all the happier. I seemed to become less an individual, and more a member of a large kind race under paternal management. From a practical point of view this may have been amiss, but it helped to support me afterward. And before I began to get weary or rebel against her gentle teaching, in came her husband; and she stopped at once, because he had never any time for it.
“My geological hammer!” cried the Major, being in a rush as usual. “Oh, Miss Castlewood! I did not see you. Pardon me! It is the want of practice only; so wholly have you deserted us. Fallen into better hands, of course. Well, how are you? But I need not ask. If ever there was a young lady who looked well--don't tell me of troubles, or worries, or nerves--I put up my glasses, and simply say, 'Pretty young ladies are above all pity!' My hammer, dear Mary; my hammer I must have. The geological one, you know; we have come on a bit of old Roman work; the bricklayer's hammers go flat, like lead. I have just one minute and a half to spare. What fine fellows those Romans were! I will build like a Roman. See to every bit of it myself, Erema. No contractor's jobs for me. Mary, you know where to find it.”
“Well, dear, I think that you had it last, to get the bung out of the beer barrel, when the stool broke down in the corner, you know, because you would--” “Never mind about that. The drayman made a fool of himself. I proceeded upon true principles. That fellow knew nothing of leverage.”
“Well, dear, of course you understand it best. But he told cook that it was quite a mercy that you got off without a broken leg; and compared with that, two gallons of spilled ale--” Mrs. Hockin made off, without finishing her sentence.
“What a woman she is!” cried the Major; “she takes such a lofty view of things, and she can always find my tools. Erema, after dinner I must have a talk with you. There is something going on here--on my manor--which I can not at all get a clew to, except by connecting you with it, the Lord knows how. Of course you have nothing to do with it; but still my life has been so free from mystery that, that--you know what I mean--” “That you naturally think I must be at the bottom of every thing mysterious. Now is there any thing dark about me? Do I not labor to get at the light? Have I kept from your knowledge any single thing? But you never cared to go into them.”
“It is hardly fair of you to say that. The fact is that you, of your own accord, have chosen other counselors. Have you heard any more of your late guardian, Mr. Shovelin? I suppose that his executor, or some one appointed by him, is now your legal guardian.”
“I have not even asked what the law is,” I replied. “Lord Castlewood is my proper guardian, according to all common-sense, and I mean to have him so. He has inquired through his solicitors as to Mr. Shovelin, and I am quite free there. My father's will is quite good, they say; but it never has been proved, and none of them care to do it. My cousin thinks that I could compel them to prove it, or to renounce in proper form; but Mr. Shovelin's sons are not nice people--as different from him as night from day, careless and wild and dashing.”
“Then do you mean to do nothing about it? What a time she is finding that hammer!”
“I leave it entirely to my cousin, and he is waiting for legal advice. I wish to have the will, of course, for the sake of my dear father; but with or without any will, my mother's little property comes to me. And if my dear father had nothing to leave, why should we run up a great lawyer's bill?”
“To be sure not! I see. That makes all the difference. I admire your common-sense,” said the Major--“but there! Come and look, and just exercise it here. There is that very strange woman again, just at the end of my new road. She stands quite still, and then stares about, sometimes for an hour together. Nobody knows who she is, or why she came. She has taken a tumble-down house on my manor, from a wretch of a fellow who denies my title; and what she lives on is more than any one can tell, for she never spends sixpence in Bruntsea. Some think that she walks in the dark to Newport, and gets all her food at some ship stores there. And one of our fishermen vows that he met her walking on the sea, as he rowed home one night, and she had a long red bag on her shoulder. She is a witch, that is certain; for she won't answer me, however politely I accost her. But the oddest thing of all is the name she gave to the fellow she took the house from. What do you think she called herself? Of all things in the world--'Mrs. Castlewood!' I congratulate you on your relative.”
“How very strange!” I answered. “Oh, now I see why you connect me with it; and I beg your pardon for having been vexed. But let me go and see her. Oh, may I go at once, if you please, and speak to her?”
“The very thing I wish--if you are not afraid. I will come with you, when I get my hammer. Oh, here it is! Mary, how clever you are! Now look out of the window, and you shall see Erema make up to her grandmamma.”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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39
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NOT AT HOME
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Mrs. Hockin, however, had not the pleasure promised her by the facetious Major of seeing me “make up to my grandmamma.” For although we set off at once to catch the strange woman who had roused so much curiosity, and though, as we passed the door of Bruntlands, we saw her still at her post in the valley, like Major Hockin's new letter-box, for some reason best known to herself we could not see any more of her. For, hurry as he might upon other occasions, nothing would make the Major cut a corner of his winding “drive” when descending it with a visitor. He enjoyed every yard of its length, because it was his own at every step, and he counted his paces in an under-tone, to be sure of the length, for perhaps the thousandth time. It was long enough in a straight line, one would have thought, but he was not the one who thought so; and therefore he had doubled it by judicious windings, as if for the purpose of breaking the descent.
“Three hundred and twenty-one,” he said, as he came to a post, where he meant to have a lodge as soon as his wife would let him; “now the old woman stands fifty-five yards on, at a spot where I mean to have an ornamental bridge, because our fine saline element runs up there when the new moon is perigee. My dear, I am a little out of breath, which affects my sight for the moment. Doubtless that is why I do not see her.”
“If I may offer an opinion,” I said, “in my ignorance of all the changes you have made, the reason why we do not see her may be that she is gone out of sight.”
“Impossible!” Major Hockin cried--“simply impossible, Erema! She never moves for an hour and a half. And she was not come, was she, when you came by?”
“I will not be certain,” I answered; “but I think that I must have seen her if she had been there, because I was looking about particularly at all your works as we came by.”
“Then she must be there still; let us tackle her.”
This was easier said than done, for we found no sign of any body at the place where she certainly had been standing less than five minutes ago. We stood at the very end and last corner of the ancient river trough, where a little seam went inland from it, as if some trifle of a brook had stolen down while it found a good river to welcome it. But now there was only a little oozy gloss from the gleam of the sun upon some lees of marshy brine left among the rushes by the last high tide.
“You see my new road and the key to my intentions?” said the Major, forgetting all about his witch, and flourishing his geological hammer, while standing thus at his “nucleus.” “To understand all, you have only to stand here. You see those leveling posts, adjusted with scientific accuracy. You see all those angles, calculated with micrometric precision. You see how the curves are radiated--” “It is very beautiful, I have no doubt; but you can not have Uncle Sam's gift of machinery. And do you understand every bit of it yourself?”
“Erema, not a jot of it. I like to talk about it freely when I can, because I see all its beauties. But as to understanding it, my dear, you might set to, if you were an educated female, and deliver me a lecture upon my own plan. Intellect is, in such matters, a bubble. I know good bricks, good mortar, and good foundations.”
“With your great ability, you must do that,” I answered, very gently, being touched with his humility and allowance of my opinion; “you will make a noble town of it. But when is the railway coming?”
“Not yet. We have first to get our Act; and a miserable-minded wretch, who owns nothing but a rabbit-warren, means to oppose it. Don't let us talk of him. It puts one out of patience when a man can not see his own interest. But come and see our assembly-rooms, literary institute, baths, etc., etc.--that is what we are urging forward now.”
“But may I not go first and look for my strange namesake? Would it be wrong of me to call upon her?”
“No harm whatever,” replied my companion; “likewise no good. Call fifty times, but you will get no answer. However, it is not a very great round, and you will understand my plans more clearly. Step out, my dear, as if you had got a troop of Mexicans after you. Ah, what a fine turn for that lot now!” He was thinking of the war which had broken out, and the battle of Bull's Run.
Without any such headlong speed, we soon came to the dwelling-place of the stranger, and really for once the good Major had not much overdone his description. Truly it was almost tumbling down, though massively built, and a good house long ago; and it looked the more miserable now from being placed in a hollow of the ground, whose slopes were tufted with rushes and thistles and ragwort. The lower windows were blocked up from within, the upper were shattered and crumbling and dangerous, with blocks of cracked stone jutting over them; and the last surviving chimney gave less smoke than a workman's homeward whiff of his pipe to comfort and relieve the air.
The only door that we could see was of heavy black oak, without any knocker; but I clinched my hand, having thick gloves on, and made what I thought a very creditable knock, while the Major stood by, with his blue-lights up, and keenly gazed and gently smiled.
“Knock again, my dear,” he said; “you don't knock half hard enough.”
I knocked again with all my might, and got a bruised hand for a fortnight, but there was not even the momentary content produced by an active echo. The door was as dead as every thing else.
“Now for my hammer,” my companion cried. “This house, in all sound law, is my own. I will have a 'John Doe and Richard Roe'--a fine action of ejectment. Shall I be barred out upon my own manor?”
With hot indignation he swung his hammer, but nothing came of it except more noise. Then the Major grew warm and angry.
“My charter contains the right of burning witches or drowning them, according to their color. The execution is specially imposed upon the bailiff of this ancient town, and he is my own pickled-pork man. His name is Hopkins, and I will have him out with his seal and stick and all the rest. Am I to be laughed at in this way?”
For we thought we heard a little screech of laughter from the loneliness of the deep dark place, but no other answer came, and perhaps it was only our own imagining.
“Is there no other door--perhaps one at the back?” I asked, as the lord of the manor stamped.
“No, that has been walled up long ago. The villain has defied me from the very first. Well, we shall see. This is all very fine. You witness that they deny the owner entrance?”
“Undoubtedly I can depose to that. But we must not waste your valuable time.”
“After all, the poor ruin is worthless,” he went on, calming down as we retired. “It must be leveled, and that hole filled up. It is quite an eye-sore to our new parade. And no doubt it belongs to me--no doubt it does. The fellow who claims it was turned out of the law. Fancy any man turned out of the law! Erema, in all your far West experience, did you ever see a man bad enough to be turned out of the law?”
“Major Hockin, how can I tell? But I fear that their practice was very, very sad--they very nearly always used to hang them.”
“The best use--the best use a rogue can be put to. Some big thief has put it the opposite way, because he was afraid of his own turn. The constitution must be upheld, and, by the Lord! it shall be--at any rate, in East Bruntsea. West Bruntsea is all a small-pox warren out of my control, and a skewer in my flesh. And some of my tenants have gone across the line to snap their dirty hands at me.”
Being once in this cue, Major Hockin went on, not talking to me much, but rather to himself, though expecting me now and then to say “yes;” and this I did when necessary, for his principles of action were beyond all challenge, and the only question was how he carried them out.
He took me to his rampart, which was sure to stop the sea, and at the same time to afford the finest place in all Great Britain for a view of it. Even an invalid might sit here in perfect shelter from the heaviest gale, and watch such billows as were not to be seen except upon the Major's property.
“The reason of that is quite simple,” he said, “and a child may see the force of it. In no other part of the kingdom can you find so steep a beach fronting the southwest winds, which are ten to one of all other winds, without any break of sand or rock outside. Hence we have what you can not have on a shallow shore--grand rollers: straight from the very Atlantic, Erema; you and I have seen them. You may see by the map that they all end here, with the wind in the proper quarter.”
“Oh, please not to talk of such horrors,” I said. “Why, your ramparts would go like pie crust.”
The Major smiled a superior smile, and after more talk we went home to dinner.
From something more than mere curiosity, I waited at Bruntsea for a day or two, hoping to see that strange namesake of mine who had shown so much inhospitality. For she must have been at home when we made that pressing call, inasmuch as there was no other place to hide her within the needful distance of the spot where she had stood. But the longer I waited, the less would she come out--to borrow the good Irishman's expression--and the Major's pillar-box, her favorite resort, was left in conspicuous solitude. And when a letter came from Sir Montague Hockin, asking leave to be at Bruntlands on the following evening, I packed up my goods with all haste, and set off, not an hour too soon, for Shoxford.
But before taking leave of these kind friends, I begged them to do for me one little thing, without asking me to explain my reason, which, indeed, was more than I could do. I begged them, not of course to watch Sir Montague, for that they could not well do to a guest, but simply to keep their eyes open and prepared for any sign of intercourse, if such there were, between this gentleman and that strange interloper. Major Hockin stared, and his wife looked at me as if my poor mind must have gone astray, and even to myself my own thought appeared absurd. Remembering, however, what Sir Montague had said, and other little things as well, I did not laugh as they did. But perhaps one part of my conduct was not right, though the wrong (if any) had been done before that--to wit, I had faithfully promised Mrs. Price not to say a word at Bruntlands about their visitor's low and sinful treachery toward my cousin. To give such a promise had perhaps been wrong, but still without it I should have heard nothing of matters that concerned me nearly. And now it seemed almost worse to keep than to break such a pledge, when I thought of a pious, pure-minded, and holy-hearted woman, like my dear “Aunt Mary,” unwittingly brought into friendly contact with a man of the lowest nature. And as for the Major, instead of sitting down with such a man to dinner, what would he have done but drive him straightway from the door, and chase him to the utmost verge of his manor with the peak end of his “geological hammer?”
However, away I went without a word against that contemptible and base man, toward whom--though he never had injured me--I cherished, for my poor cousin's sake, the implacable hatred of virtuous youth. And a wild idea had occurred to me (as many wild ideas did now in the crowd of things gathering round me) that this strange woman, concealed from the world, yet keenly watching some members of it, might be that fallen and miserable creature who had fled from a good man with a bad one, because he was more like herself--Flittamore, Lady Castlewood. Not that she could be an “old woman” yet, but she might look old, either by disguise, or through her own wickedness; and every body knows how suddenly those southern beauties fall off, alike in face and figure. Mrs. Price had not told me what became of her, or even whether she was dead or alive, but merely said, with a meaning look, that she was “punished” for her sin, and I had not ventured to inquire how, the subject being so distasteful.
To my great surprise, and uneasiness as well, I had found at Bruntlands no letter whatever, either to the Major or myself, from Uncle Sam or any other person at the saw-mills. There had not been time for any answer to my letter of some two months back, yet being alarmed by the Sawyer's last tidings, I longed, with some terror, for later news. And all the United Kingdom was now watching with tender interest the dismemberment, as it almost appeared, of the other mighty Union. Not with malice, or snug satisfaction, as the men of the North in their agony said, but certainly without any proper anguish yet, and rather as a genial and sprightly spectator, whose love of fair play perhaps kindles his applause of the spirit and skill of the weaker side. “'Tis a good fight--let them fight it out!” seemed to be the general sentiment; but in spite of some American vaunt and menace (which of late years had been galling) every true Englishman deeply would have mourned the humiliation of his kindred.
In this anxiety for news I begged that my letters might be forwarded under cover to the postmistress at Shoxford, and bearing my initials. For now I had made up my mind to let Mrs. Busk know whatever I could tell her. I had found her a cross and well-educated woman, far above her neighbors, and determined to remain so. Gossip, that universal leveler, theoretically she despised; and she had that magnificent esteem for rank which works so beautifully in England. And now when my good nurse reasonably said that, much as she loved to be with me, her business would allow that delight no longer, and it also came home to my own mind that money would be running short again, and small hope left in this dreadful civil war of our nugget escaping pillage (which made me shudder horribly at internal discord), I just did this--I dismissed Betsy, or rather I let her dismiss herself, which she might not have altogether meant to do, although she threatened it so often. For here she had nothing to do but live well, and protest against tricks of her own profession which she practiced as necessary laws at home; and so, with much affection, for the time we parted.
Mrs. Busk was delighted at her departure, for she never had liked to be criticised so keenly while she was doing her very best. And as soon as the wheels of Betsy's fly had shown their last spoke at the corner, she told me, with a smile, that her mind had been made up to give us notice that very evening to seek for better lodgings. But she could not wish for a quieter, pleasanter, or more easily pleased young lady than I was without any mischief-maker; and so, on the spur of the moment, I took her into my own room, while her little girl minded the shop, and there and then I told her who I was, and what I wanted.
And now she behaved most admirably. Instead of expressing surprise, she assured me that all along she had felt there was something, and that I must be somebody. Lovely as my paintings were (which I never heard, before or since, from any impartial censor), she had known that it could not be that alone which had kept me so long in their happy valley. And now she did hope I would do her the honor to stay beneath her humble roof, though entitled to one so different. And was the fairy ring in the church-yard made of all my family?
I replied that too surely this was so, and that nothing would please me better than to find, according to my stature, room to sleep inside it as soon as ever I should have solved the mystery of its origin. At the moment this was no exaggeration, so depressing was the sense of fighting against the unknown so long, with scarcely any one to stand by me, or avenge me if I fell. And Betsy's departure, though I tried to take it mildly, had left me with a readiness to catch my breath.
But to dwell upon sadness no more than need be (a need as sure as hunger), it was manifest now to my wondering mind that once more I had chanced upon a good, and warm, and steadfast heart. Every body is said to be born, whether that happens by night or day, with a certain little widowed star, which has lost its previous mortal, concentrating from a billion billion of miles, or leagues, or larger measure, intense, but generally invisible, radiance upon him or her; and to take for the moment this old fable as of serious meaning, my star was to find bad facts at a glance, but no bad folk without long gaze.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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40
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THE MAN AT LAST
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This new alliance with Mrs. Busk not only refreshed my courage, but helped me forward most importantly. In truth, if it had not been for this I never could have borne what I had to bear, and met the perils which I had to meet. For I had the confidence of feeling now that here was some one close at hand, an intelligent person, and well acquainted with the place and neighborhood, upon whom I could rely for warning, succor, and, if the worst should come to the very worst, revenge. It is true that already I had Jacob Rigg, and perhaps the protector promised by my cousin; but the former was as ignorant as he was honest, and of the latter, as he made no sign, how could I tell any thing?
Above all things, Mrs. Busk's position, as mistress of the letters, gave me very great advantage both for offense and defense. For without the smallest breach of duty or of loyal honor she could see that my letters passed direct to me or from me, as the case might be, at the same time that she was bound to observe all epistles addressed to strangers or new-comers in her district, which extended throughout the valley. And by putting my letters in the Portsmouth bag, instead of that for Winchester, I could freely correspond with any of my friends without any one seeing name or postmark in the neighboring villages.
It is needless to say that I had long since explored and examined with great diligence that lonely spot where my grandfather met his terrible and mysterious fate. Not that there seemed to be any hope now, after almost nineteen years, of finding even any token of the crime committed there. Only that it was natural for me, feeling great horror of this place, to seek to know it thoroughly.
For this I had good opportunity, because the timid people of the valley, toward the close of day, would rather trudge another half mile of the homeward road than save brave legs at the thumping cost of hearts not so courageous. For the planks were now called “Murder-bridge;” and every body knew that the red spots on it, which could never be seen by daylight, began to gleam toward the hour of the deed, and glowed (as if they would burn the wood) when the church clock struck eleven.
This phenomenon was beyond my gifts of observation; and knowing that my poor grandfather had scarcely set foot on the bridge, if ever he set foot there at all--which at present was very doubtful--also that he had fallen backward, and only bled internally, I could not reconcile tradition (however recent) with proven truth. And sure of no disturbance from the step of any native, here I often sat in a little bowered shelter of my own, well established up the rise, down which the path made zigzag, and screened from that and the bridge as well by sheaf of twigs and lop of leaves. It was a little forward thicket, quite detached from the upland copse, to which perhaps it had once belonged, and crusted up from the meadow slope with sod and mould in alternate steps. And being quite the elbow of a foreland of the meadow-reach, it yielded almost a “bird's-eye view” of the beautiful glade and the wandering brook.
One evening when I was sitting here, neither drawing, nor working, nor even thinking with any set purpose, but idly allowing my mind to rove, like the rivulet, without any heed, I became aware of a moving figure in the valley. At first it did not appear to me as a thing at all worth notice; it might be a very straightforward cow, or a horse, coming on like a stalking-horse, keeping hind-legs strictly behind, in direct desire of water. I had often seen those sweet things that enjoy four legs walking in the line of distance as if they were no better off than we are, kindly desiring, perhaps, to make the biped spectator content with himself. And I was content to admire this cow or horse, or whatever it might be, without any more than could be helped of that invidious feeling which has driven the human race now to establish its right to a tail, and its hope of four legs. So little, indeed, did I think of what I saw, that when among the hazel twigs, parted carelessly by my hand, a cluster of nuts hung manifest, I gathered it, and began to crack and eat, although they were scarcely ripe yet.
But while employed in this pleasant way, I happened to glance again through my leafy screen, and then I distinguished the figure in the distance as that of a man walking rapidly. He was coming down the mill-stream meadow toward the wooden bridge, carrying a fishing rod, but clearly not intent on angling. For instead of following the course of the stream, he was keeping quite away from it, avoiding also the footpath, or, at any rate, seeming to prefer the long shadows of the trees and the tufted places. This made me look at him, and very soon I shrank into my nest and watched him.
As he came nearer any one could tell that he was no village workman, bolder than the rest, and venturesome to cross the “Murder-bridge” in his haste to be at home. The fishing rod alone was enough to show this when it came into clearer view; for our good people, though they fished sometimes, only used rough rods of their own making, without any varnish or brass thing for the line. And the man was of different height and walk and dress from any of our natives.
“Who can he be?” I whispered to myself, as my heart began to beat heavily, and then seemed almost to stop, as it answered, “This is the man who was in the churchyard.” Ignoble as it was, and contemptible, and vile, and traitorous to all duty, my first thought was about my own escape; for I felt that if this man saw me there he would rush up the hill and murder me. Within pistol-shot of the very place where my grandfather had been murdered--a lonely place, an unholy spot, and I was looking at the hand that did it.
The thought of this made me tremble so, though well aware that my death might ensue from a twig on the rustle, or a leaf upon the flutter, that my chance of making off unseen was gone ere I could seize it. For now the man was taking long strides over the worn-out planks of the bridge, disdaining the hand-rail, and looking upward, as if to shun sight of the footing. Advancing thus, he must have had his gaze point-blank upon my lair of leafage; but, luckily for me, there was gorse upon the ridge, and bracken and rag-thistles, so that none could spy up and through the footing of my lurking-place. But if any person could have spied me, this man was the one to do it. So carefully did he scan the distance and inspect the foreground, as if he were resolved that no eye should be upon him while he was doing what he came to do. And he even drew forth a little double telescope, such as are called “binoculars,” and fixed it on the thicket which hid me from him, and then on some other dark places.
No effort would compose or hush the heavy beating of my heart; my lips were stiffened with dread of loud breath, and all power of motion left me. For even a puff of wind might betray me, the ruffle of a spray, or the lifting of a leaf, or the random bounce of a beetle. Great peril had encompassed me ere now, but never had it grasped me as this did, and paralyzed all the powers of my body. Rather would I have stood in the midst of a score of Mexican rovers than thus in the presence of that one man. And yet was not this the very thing for which I had waited, longed, and labored? I scorned myself for this craven loss of nerve, but that did not enable me to help it. In this benumbed horror I durst not even peep at the doings of my enemy; but presently I became aware that he had moved from the end of the planks (where he stood for some time as calmly as if he had done nothing there), and had passed round the back of the hawthorn-tree, and gone down to the place where the body was found, and was making most narrow and minute search there. And now I could watch him without much danger, standing as I did well above him, while his eyes were steadfastly bent downward. And, not content with eyesight only, he seemed to be feeling every blade of grass or weed, every single stick or stone, craning into each cranny of the ground, and probing every clod with his hands. Then, after vainly searching with the very utmost care all the space from the hawthorn trunk to the meadow-leet (which was dry as usual), he ran, in a fury of impatience, to his rod, which he had stuck into the bank, as now I saw, and drew off the butt end, and removed the wheel, or whatever it is that holds the fishing line; and this butt had a long spike to it, shining like a halberd in a picture.
This made me shudder; but my spirit was returning, and therewith my power of reasoning, and a deep stir of curiosity. After so many years and such a quantity of searching, what could there still be left to seek for in this haunted and horrible place? And who was the man that was looking for it?
The latter question partly solved itself. It must be the murderer, and no other, whoever he might be among the many black spots of humanity. But as to the other point, no light could be thrown upon it, unless the search should be successful, and perhaps not even then. But now this anxiety, and shame of terror, made me so bold--for I can not call it brave--that I could not rest satisfied where I was, and instead of blessing every leaf and twig that hid me from the enemy, nothing would do for me but to creep nearer, in spite of that truculent long bright spike.
I thought of my father, and each fibre of my frame seemed to harden with vigor and fleetness. Every muscle of my body could be trusted now. I had always been remarkably light of foot. Could a man of that age catch me? It was almost as much as Firm Gundry could do, as in childish days I had proved to him. And this man, although his hair was not gray, must be on the slow side of fifty now, and perhaps getting short of his very wicked breath. Then I thought of poor Firm, and of good Uncle Sam, and how they scorned poltroonery; and, better still, I thought of that great Power which always had protected me: in a word, I resolved to risk it.
But I had not reckoned upon fire-arms, which such a scoundrel was pretty sure to have; and that idea struck cold upon my valor. Nevertheless, I would not turn back. With no more sound than a field-mouse makes in the building of its silken nest, and feet as light as the step of the wind upon the scarcely ruffled grass, I quitted my screen, and went gliding down a hedge, or rather the residue of some old hedge, which would shelter me a little toward the hollow of the banks. I passed low places, where the man must have seen me if he had happened to look up; but he was stooping with his back to me, and working in the hollow of the dry water trough. He was digging with the long spike of his rod, and I heard the rattle of each pebble that he struck.
Before he stood up again, to ease his back and to look at the ground which he still had to turn, I was kneeling behind a short, close-branched holly, the very last bush of the hedge-row, scarcely fifteen yards from the hawthorn-tree. It was quite impossible to get nearer without coming face to face with him. And now I began again to tremble, but with a great effort conquered it.
The man was panting with his labor, and seemed to be in a vile temper too. He did not swear, but made low noises full of disappointment. And then he caught up his tool, with a savage self-control, and fell to again.
Now was my time to see what he was like, and engrave him on my memory. But, lo! in a moment I need not do that. The face was the bad image of my father's. A lowered, and vicious, and ill-bred image of a noble countenance--such as it was just possible to dream that my dear father's might have fallen to, if his mind and soul had plunged away from the good inborn and implanted in them. The figure was that of a tall strong man, with shoulders rather slouching, and a habit of keeping his head thrown back, which made a long chin look longer. Altogether he seemed a perilous foe, and perhaps a friend still more perilous.
Be he what he might, he was working very hard. Not one of all Uncle Sam's men, to my knowledge, least of all Martin, would have worked so hard. With his narrow and ill-adapted tool he contrived to turn over, in less than twenty minutes, the entire bed of the meadow-leet, or trough, for a length of about ten yards. Then he came to the mouth, where the water of the main stream lapped back into it, and he turned up the bottom as far as he could reach, and waited for the mud he had raised to clear away. When this had flowed down with the stream, he walked in for some little distance till the pool grew deep; but in spite of all his labor, there was nothing.
Meanwhile the sunset glow was failing, and a gray autumnal haze crept up the tranquil valley. Shadows waned and faded into dimness more diffuse, and light grew soft and vague and vaporous. The gleam of water, and the gloss of grass, and deep relief of trees, began to lose their several phase and mingle into one large twilight blend. And cattle, from their milking sheds, came lowing for more pasture; and the bark of a shepherd's dog rang quick, as if his sheep were drowsy.
In the midst of innocent sights and sounds that murderer's heart misgave him. He left his vain quest off, and gazed, with fear and hate of nature's beauty, at the change from day to night which had not waited for him. Some touch of his childhood moved him perhaps, some thought of times when he played “I spy,” or listened to twilight ghost tales; at any rate, as he rose and faced the evening, he sighed heavily.
Then he strode away; and although he passed me almost within length of his rod, there was little fear of his discovering me, because his mind was elsewhere.
It will, perhaps, be confessed by all who are not as brave as lions that so far I had acquitted myself pretty well in this trying matter. Horribly scared as I was at first, I had not allowed this to conquer me, but had even rushed into new jeopardy. But now the best part of my courage was spent; and when the tall stranger refixed his rod and calmly recrossed those ominous planks, I durst not set forth on the perilous errand of spying out his ways and tracking him. A glance was enough to show the impossibility in those long meadows of following without being seen in this stage of the twilight. Moreover, my nerves had been tried too long, and presence of mind could not last forever. All I could do, therefore, was to creep as far as the trunk of the hawthorn-tree, and thence observe that my enemy did not return by the way he had come, but hastened down the dusky valley.
One part of his labors has not been described, though doubtless a highly needful one. To erase the traces of his work, or at least obscure them to a careless eye, when he had turned as much ground as he thought it worth his while to meddle with, he trod it back again to its level as nearly as might be, and then (with a can out of his fishing basket) sluiced the place well with the water of the stream. This made it look to any heedless person, who would not descend to examine it, as if there had been nothing more than a little reflux from the river, caused by a flush from the mill-pond. This little stratagem increased my fear of a cunning and active villain.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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41
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A STRONG TEMPTATION
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Now it will be said, and I also knew, that there was nothing as yet, except most frail and feeble evidence, to connect that nameless stranger with the crime charged upon my father. Indeed, it might be argued well that there was no evidence at all, only inference and suspicion. That, however, was no fault of mine; and I felt as sure about it as if I had seen him in the very act. And this conclusion was not mine alone; for Mrs. Busk, a most clever woman, and the one who kept the post-office, entirely agreed with me that there could be no doubt on earth about it.
But when she went on to ask me what it was my intention to do next, for the moment I could do nothing more than inquire what her opinion was. And she told me that she must have a good night's rest before advising any thing. For the thought of having such a heinous character in her own delivery district was enough to unhinge her from her postal duties, some of which might be useful to me.
With a significant glance she left me to my own thoughts, which were sad enough, and too sad to be worth recording. For Mrs. Busk had not the art of rousing people and cheering them, such as Betsy Strouss, my old nurse, had, perhaps from her knowledge of the nursery. My present landlady might be the more sagacious and sensible woman of the two, and therefore the better adviser; but for keeping one up to the mark she was not in any way equal to Betsy.
There is no ingratitude in saying this, because she herself admitted it. A clever woman, with a well-balanced mind, knows what she can do, and wherein she fails, better than a man of her own proportion does. And Mrs. Busk often lamented, without much real mortification, that she had not been “born sympathetic.”
All the more perhaps for that, she was born sagacious, which is a less pleasing, but, in a bitter pinch, a more really useful, quality. And before I had time to think much of her defects, in the crowd of more important thought, in she came again, with a letter in her hand, and a sparkle of triumph in her small black eyes. After looking back along the passage, and closing my door, she saw that my little bay-window had its old-fashioned shutters fastened, and then, in a very low whisper, she said, “What you want to know is here, miss.”
“Indeed!” I answered, in my usual voice. “How can you know that? The letter is sealed.”
“Hush! Would you have me ruined for your sake? This was at the bottom of the Nepheton bag. It fell on the floor. That was God's will, to place it in your power.”
“It is not in my power,” I answered, whispering in my turn, and staring at it, in the strong temptation. “I have no right even to look at it. It is meant for some one else, and sealed.”
“The seal is nothing. I can manage that. Another drop of wax--and I strike our stamp by accident over the breakage. I refuse to know any thing about it. I am too busy with the other letters. Five minutes--lock the door--and I will come again.”
This was a desperate conflict for me, worse even than bodily danger. My first impulse was to have nothing to do with it--even to let the letter lie untouched, and, if possible, unglanced at. But already it was too late for the eyes to turn away. The address had flashed upon me before I thought of any thing, and while Mrs. Busk held it up to me. And now that address was staring at me, like a contemptuous challenge, while the seal, the symbol of private rights and deterrent honor, lay undermost. The letter was directed to “H. W. C., Post-office, Newport, Sussex.” The writing was in round hand, and clear, so as not to demand any scrutiny, and to seem like that of a lawyer's clerk, and the envelope was of thin repellent blue.
My second impulse was to break the letter open and read it without shrinking. Public duty must conquer private scruples. Nothing but the hand of Providence itself could have placed this deadly secret in my power so amazingly. Away with all squeamishness, and perhaps prevent more murder.
But that “perhaps” gave me sudden pause. I had caught up the letter, and stood near the candle to soften the wax and lift the cover with a small sharp paper-knife, when it flashed on my mind that my cousin would condemn and scorn what I was doing. Unconsciously I must have made him now my standard of human judgment, or what made me think of him at that moment? I threw down the letter, and then I knew. The image of Lord Castlewood had crossed my mind, because the initials were his own--those of Herbert William Castlewood. This strange coincidence--if it were, indeed, an accident--once more set me thinking. Might not this letter be from his agent, of whom he had spoken as my protector here, but to whom as all unseen I scarcely ever gave a thought? Might not young Stixon, who so often was at Bruntsea, be employed to call at Newport for such letters, and return with them to his master? It was not very likely, for my cousin had the strongest contempt of anonymous doings. Still it was possible, and the bare possibility doubled my reluctance to break the seal.
For one minute longer I stood in doubt, and then honor and candor and truth prevailed. If any other life had been in peril but my own, duty to another might have overridden all. But duty to one's self, if overpushed in such a case, would hold some taint of cowardice. So I threw the letter, with a sense of loathing, on a chair. Whatever it might contain, it should pass, at least for me, inviolate.
Now when Mrs. Busk came to see what I had done, or rather left undone, she flew into a towering passion, until she had no time to go on with it. The rattle of the rickety old mail-cart, on its way to Winchester that night, was heard, and the horn of the driver as he passed the church.
“Give it me. 'A mercy! A young natural, that you are!” the good woman cried, as she flung out of the room to dash her office stamp upon that hateful missive, and to seal the leathern bag. “Seal, indeed! Inviolate! How many seals have I got to make every day of my life?”
I heard a great thump from the corner of the shop where the business of the mails was conducted; and she told me afterward that she was so put out, that broken that seal should be--one way or another. Accordingly she smashed it with the office stamp, which was rather like a woman's act, methought; and then, having broken it, she never looked inside--which, perhaps, was even more so.
When she recovered her leisure and serenity, and came in, to forgive me and be forgiven, we resolved to dismiss the moral aspect of the question, as we never should agree about it, although Mrs. Busk was not so certain as she had been, when she found that the initials were the initials of a lord. And then I asked her how she came to fix upon that letter among so many others, and to feel so sure that it came from my treacherous enemy.
“In the first place, I know every letter from Nepheton,” she answered, very sensibly. “There are only fourteen people that write letters in the place, and twelve of those fourteen buy their paper in my shop--there is no shop at all at Nepheton. In the next place, none of them could write a hand like that, except the parson and the doctor, who are far above disguise. And two other things made me certain as could be. That letter was written at the 'Green Man' ale-house; not on their paper, nor yet with their ink; but being in great hurry, it was dusted with their sand--a sand that turns red upon ink, miss. And the time of dispatch there is just what he would catch, by walking fast after his dig where you saw him, going in that direction too, and then having his materials ready to save time. And if all that is not enough to convince you, miss--you remember that you told me our old sexton's tale?”
“To be sure I do. The first evening I was left alone here. And you have been so kind, there is nothing I would hide from you.”
“Well, miss, the time of old Jacob's tale is fixed by the death of poor old Sally Mock; and the stranger came again after you were here, just before the death of the miller's eldest daughter, and you might almost have seen him. Poor thing! we all called her the 'flower of the Moon,' meaning our little river. What a fine young woman she was, to be sure! Whenever we heard of any strangers about, we thought they were prowling after her. I was invited to her funeral, and I went, and nothing could be done nicer. But they never will be punctual with burials here; they like to dwell on them, and keep the bell going, for the sake of the body, and the souls that must come after it. And so, when it was done, I was twenty minutes late for the up mail and the cross-country post, and had to move my hands pretty sharp, I can assure you. That doesn't matter; I got through it, with the driver of the cart obliging, by means of some beer and cold bacon. But what I feared most was the Nepheton bag, having seen the old man at the funeral, and knowing what they do afterward. I could not return him 'too late' again, or he would lose his place for certain, and a shilling a day made all the difference to him, between wife and no wife. The old pair without it must go to the workhouse, and never see one another. However, when I was despairing quite of him, up he comes with his bag quite correct, but only one letter to sort in it, and that letter was, miss, the very identical of the one you held in your hands just now. And a letter as like it as two peas had come when we buried old Sally. It puzzled me then, but I had no clew to it; only now, you see, putting this and that together, the things we behold must have some meaning for us; and to let them go without it is against the will of God; especially when at the bottom of the bag.”
“If you hear so soon of any stranger in the valley,” I asked, to escape the re-opening of the opening question, “how can that man come and go--a man of remarkable stature and appearance--without any body asking who he is?”
“You scarcely could have put it better, miss, for me to give the answer. They do ask who he is, and they want to know it, and would like any body to tell them. But being of a different breed, as they are, from all outside the long valley, speaking also with a different voice, they fear to talk so freely out of their own ways and places. Any thing they can learn in and out among themselves, they will learn; but any thing out of that they let go, in the sense of outlandish matter. Bless you, miss, if your poor grandfather had been shot any where else in England, how different it would have been for him!”
“For us, you mean, Mrs. Busk. Do you think the man who did it had that in his mind?”
“Not unless he knew the place, as few know it. No, that was an accident of his luck, as many other things have been. But the best luck stops at last, Miss Erema; and unless I am very much mistaken, you will be the stop of his. I shall find out, in a few days, where he came from, where he staid, and when he went away. I suppose you mean to let him go away?”
“What else am I to do?” I asked. “I have no evidence at all against him; only my own ideas. The police would scarcely take it up, even if--” “Oh, don't talk of them. They spoil every thing. And none of our people would say a word, or care to help us, if it came to that. The police are all strangers, and our people hate them. And, indeed, I believe that the worst thing ever done was the meddling of that old Jobbins. The old stupe is still alive at Petersfield, and as pompous-headed as ever. My father would have been the man for your sad affair, miss, if the police had only been invented in his time. Ah, yes, he was sharp! Not a Moonstock man--you may take your oath of that, miss--but a good honest native from Essex. But he married my mother, a Moonstock woman; or they would not put up with me here at all. You quality people have your ideas to hold by, and despise all others, and reasonable in your opinions; but you know nothing--nothing--nothing--of the stiffness of the people under you.”
“How should I know any thing of that?” I answered; “all these things are new to me. I have not been brought up in this country, as you know. I come from a larger land, where your stiffness may have burst out into roughness, from having so much room suddenly. But tell me what you think now your father would have done in such a case as mine is.”
“Miss Erema, he was that long-headed that nobody could play leap-frog with him. None of them ever cleared over his barrel. He walked into this village fifty-five years back, this very month, with his spade upon his shoulder and the knowledge of every body in his eye. They all put up against him, but they never put him down; and in less than three months he went to church, I do assure you, with the only daughter of the only baker. After that he went into the baking line himself; he turned his spade into a shovel, as he said, and he introduced new practices.”
“Oh, Mrs. Busk, not adulteration?”
“No, miss, no! The very last thing he would think of. Only the good use of potatoes in the bread, when flour was frightful bad and painful dear. What is the best meal of the day? he used to reason. Dinner. And why? Why, because of the potatoes. If I can make people take potato for their breakfast, and potato for their supper too, I am giving them three meals a day instead of one. And the health of the village corresponded to it.”
“Oh, but, Mrs. Busk, he might have made them do it by persuasion, or at least with their own knowledge--” “No, miss, no! The whole nature of our people, Moonstock or out of it, is never to take victuals by any sort of persuasion. If St. Paul was to come and preach, 'Eat this or that,' all I had of it in the shop would go rotten. They hate any meddling with their likings, and they suspect doctor's rubbish in all of it.”
“I am quite of their opinion,” I replied; “and I am glad to hear of their independence. I always used to hear that in England none of the poor people dared have a will of their own.”
Mrs. Busk lifted up her hands to express amazement at my ignorance, and said that she “must run away and put the shutters up, or else the policeman would come rapping, and look for a glass of beer, which he had no right to till it came to the bottom of the firkin; and this one was only tapped last Sunday week. Don't you ever think of the police, miss.”
Probably this was good advice, and it quite agreed with the opinions of others, and my own impressions as to the arrogant lethargy of “the force,” as they called themselves, in my father's case. Mrs. Busk had more activity and intelligence in her little head than all the fat sergeants and inspectors of the county, helmet, belt, and staff, and all.
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{
"id": "7112"
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42
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MASTER WITHYPOOL
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At first I was much inclined to run for help, or at least for counsel, either to Lord Castlewood or to Major Hockin; but further consideration kept me from doing any thing of the kind. In the first place, neither of them would do much good; for my cousin's ill health would prevent him from helping me, even if his strange view of the case did not, while the excellent Major was much too hot and hasty for a delicate task like this. And, again, I might lose the most valuable and important of all chances by being away from the spot just now. And so I remained at Shoxford for a while, keeping strict watch upon the stranger's haunt, and asking about him by means of Mrs. Busk.
“I have heard more about him, miss,” she said one day, when the down letters had been dispatched, which happened about middle-day. “He has been here only those three times this summer, upon excuse of fishing always. He stays at old Wellham, about five miles down the river, where the people are not true Moonites. And one thing that puzzles them is, that although he puts up there simply for the angling, he always chooses times when the water is so low that to catch fish is next to impossible. He left his fishing quarters upon the very day after you saw him searching so; and he spoke as if he did not mean to come again this season. And they say that they don't want him neither, he is such a morose, close-fisted man; and drinking nothing but water, there is very little profit with him.”
“And did you find out what his name is? How cleverly you have managed!”
“He passes by the name of 'Captain Brown;' but the landlord of his inn, who has been an old soldier, is sure he was never in the army, nor any other branch of the service. He thinks that he lives by inventing things, for he is always at some experiments, and one of his great points is to make a lamp that will burn and move about under water. To be sure you see the object of that, miss?”
“No, really, Mrs. Busk, I can not. I have not your penetration.”
“Why, of course, to find what he can not find upon land. There is something of great importance there, either for its value or its meaning. Have you ever been told that your poor grandfather wore any diamonds or precious jewels?”
“No. I have asked about that most especially. He had nothing about him to tempt a robber. He was a very strong-willed man, and he hated outward trumpery.”
“Then it must be something that this man himself has dropped, unless it were a document, or any other token, missing from his lordship. And few things of that sort would last for twenty years almost.”
“Nineteen years the day after to-morrow,” I answered, with a glance at my pocket-book. “I determined to be here on that very day. No doubt I am very superstitious. But one thing I can not understand is this--what reason can there have been for his letting so many years pass, and then hunting like this?”
“No one can answer that question, miss, without knowing more than we know. But many reasons might be supposed. He might have been roving abroad, for instance, just as you and your father have been. Or he might not have known that the thing was there; or it might not have been of importance till lately; or he might have been afraid, until something else happened. Does he know that you are now in England?”
“How can I possibly tell, Mrs. Busk? He seems to know a great deal too much. He found me out when I was at Colonel Gundry's. At least I conclude so, from what I know now; but I hope he does not know”--and at such a dreadful idea I shuddered.
“I am almost sure that he can not know it,” the good postmistress answered, “or he would have found means to put an end to you. That would have been his first object.”
“But, Mrs. Busk,” I said, being much disturbed by her calmness, “surely, surely he is not to be allowed to make an end of every one! I came to this country with the full intention of going into every thing. But I did not mean at all, except in my very best moments, to sacrifice myself. It seems too bad--too bad to think of.”
“So it is, Miss Erema,” Mrs. Busk replied, without any congenial excitement. “It does seem hard for them that have the liability on them. But still, miss, you have always shown such a high sense of duty, and of what you were about--” “I can't--I can not. There are times, I do assure you, when I am fit for nothing, Mrs. Busk, and wish myself back in America. And if this man is to have it all his own way--” “Not he, miss--not he. Be you in no hurry. Could he even have his way with our old miller? No; Master Withypool was too many for him.”
“That is a new thing. You never told me that. What did he try to do with the miller?”
“I don't justly know what it was, Miss Erema. I never spoke to miller about it, and, indeed, I have had no time since I heard of it. But those that told me said that the tall strange gentleman was terribly put out, and left the gate with a black cloud upon his face, and the very next day the miller's daughter died, quite sudden and mysterious.”
“How very strange! But now I have got a new idea. Has the miller a strong high dam to his pond, and a good stout sluice-gate at the end!”
“Yes, miss, to be sure he has,” said Mrs. Busk; “otherwise how could he grind at all, when the river is so low as it is sometimes?”
“Then I know what he wanted, and I will take a leaf out of his own book--the miscreant! He wanted the miller to stop back the water and leave the pool dry at the 'Murder-bridge.' Would it be possible for him to do that?”
“I can not tell you, miss; but your thought is very clever. It is likely enough that he did want that, though he never would dare to ask without some pretense--some other cause I mean, to show for it. He may have been thinking that whatever he was wanting was likely to be under water. And that shows another thing, if it is so.”
“Mrs. Busk, my head goes round with such a host of complications. I do my best to think them out--and then there comes another!”
“No, miss; this only clears things up a little. If the man can not be sure whether what he is looking for is on land or under water, it seems to me almost to show that it was lost at the murder time in the dark and flurry. A man would know if he dropped any thing in the water by daylight, from the splash and the ripple, and so on, for the stream is quite slow at that corner. He dropped it, miss, when he did the deed, or else it came away from his lordship.”
“Nothing was lost, as I said before, from the body of my grandfather, so far at least as our knowledge goes. Whatever was lost was the murderer's. Now please to tell me all about the miller, and how I may get round him.”
“You make me laugh in the middle of black things, miss, by the way you have of putting them. But as to the miller--Master Withypool is a wonder, as concerns the ladies. He is one of those men that stand up for every thing when a man tries upper side of them. But let a woman come, and get up under, and there he is--a pie crust lifted. Why, I, at my age, could get round him, as you call it. But you, miss--and more than that, you are something like his daughter; and the old man frets after her terrible. Go you into his yard, and just smile upon him, miss, and if the Moon River can be stopped, he'll stop it for you.”
This seemed a very easy way to do it. But I told Mrs. Busk that I would pay well also, for the loss of a day's work at the mill was more than fifty smiles could make up.
But she told me, above all things, not to do that. For old Master Withypool was of that sort that he would stand for an hour with his hands in his pocket for a half-penny, if not justly owing from him. But nothing more angered him than a bribe to step outside of his duty. He had plenty of money, and was proud of it. But sooner would he lose a day's work to do a kindness, when he was sure of having right behind it, than take a week's profit without earning it. And very likely that was where the dark man failed, from presuming that money would do every thing. However, there was nothing like judging for one's self; and if I would like to be introduced, she could do it for me with the best effect; taking as she did a good hundred-weight of best “households” from him every week, although not herself in the baking line, but always keeping quartern bags, because the new baker did adulterate so.
I thought of her father, and how things work round; but that they would do without remarks of mine. So I said nothing on that point, but asked whether Master Withypool would require any introduction. And to this Mrs. Busk said, “Oh dear, no!” And her throat had been a little rough since Sunday, and the dog was chained tight, even if any dog would bite a sweet young lady; and to her mind the miller would be more taken up and less fit to vapor into obstacles, if I were to hit upon him all alone, just when he came out to the bank of his cabbage garden, not so very long after his dinner, to smoke his pipe and to see his things a-growing.
It was time to get ready if I meant to catch him then, for he always dined at one o'clock, and the mill was some three or four meadows up the stream; therefore as soon as Mrs. Busk had re-assured me that she was quite certain of my enemy's departure, I took my drawing things and set forth to call upon Master Withypool.
Passing through the church-yard, which was my nearest way, and glancing sadly at the “fairy ring,” I began to have some uneasiness about the possible issue of my new scheme. Such a thing required more thinking out than I had given to it. For instance, what reason could I give the miller for asking so strange a thing of him? And how could the whole of the valley be hindered from making the greatest talk about the stoppage of their own beloved Moon, even if the Moon could be stopped without every one of them rushing down to see it? And if it was so talked of, would it not be certain to come to the ears of that awful man? And if so, how long before he found me out, and sent me to rejoin my family?
These thoughts compelled me to be more discreet; and having lately done a most honorable thing, in refusing to read that letter, I felt a certain right to play a little trick now of a purely harmless character. I ran back therefore to my writing-desk, and took from its secret drawer a beautiful golden American eagle, a large coin, larger and handsomer than any in the English coinage. Uncle Sam gave it to me on my birthday, and I would not have taken 50 pounds for it. With this I hurried to that bridge of fear, which I had not yet brought myself to go across; and then, not to tell any story about it, I snipped a little hole in the corner of my pocket, while my hand was still steady ere I had to mount the bridge. Then pinching that hole up with a squeeze, I ran and got upon that wicked bridge, and then let go. The heavy gold coin fell upon the rotten plank, and happily rolled into the water, as if it were glad not to tempt its makers to any more sin for the sake of it.
Shutting up thought, for fear of despising myself for the coinage of such a little trick, I hurried across the long meadow to the mill, and went through the cow-gate into the yard, and the dog began to bark at me. Seeing that he had a strong chain on, I regarded him with lofty indignation. “Do you know what Jowler would do to you?” I said; “Jowler, a dog worth ten of you. He would take you by the neck and drop you into that pond for daring to insult his mistress!” The dog appeared to feel the force of my remarks, for he lay down again, and with one eye watched me in a manner amusing, but insidious. Then, taking good care to keep out of his reach, I went to the mill-pond and examined it.
It looked like a very nice pond indeed, long, and large, and well banked up, not made into any particular shape, but producing little rushy elbows. The water was now rather low, and very bright (though the Moon itself is not a crystal stream), and a school of young minnows, just watching a water-spider with desirous awe, at sight of me broke away, and reunited, with a speed and precision that might shame the whole of our very best modern fighting. Then many other things made a dart away, and furrowed the shadow of the willows, till distance quieted the fear of man--that most mysterious thing in nature--and the shallow pool was at peace again, and bright with unruffled reflections.
“What ails the dog?” said a deep gruff voice; and the poor dog received a contemptuous push, not enough to hurt him, but to wound his feelings for doing his primary duty. “Servant, miss. What can I do for you? Foot-path is t'other side of that there hedge.”
“Yes, but I left the foot-path on purpose. I came to have a talk with you, if you will allow me.”
“Sartain! sartain,” the miller replied, lifting a broad floury hat and showing a large gray head. “Will you come into house, miss, or into gearden?”
I chose the garden, and he led the way, and set me down upon an old oak bench, where the tinkle of the water through the flood-gates could be heard.
“So you be come to paint the mill at last,” he said. “Many a time I've looked out for you. The young leddy down to Mother Busk's, of course. Many's the time we've longed for you to come, you reminds us so of somebody. Why, my old missus can't set eyes on you in church, miss, without being forced to sit down a'most. But we thought it very pretty of you not to come, miss, while the trouble was so new upon us.”
Something in my look or voice made the old man often turn away, while I told him that I would make the very best drawing of his mill that I could manage, and would beg him to accept it.
“Her ought to 'a been on the plank,” he said, with trouble in getting his words out. “But there! what good? Her never will stand on that plank no more. No, nor any other plank.”
I told him that I would put her on the plank, if he had any portrait of her showing her dress and her attitude. Without saying what he had, he led me to the house, and stood behind me, while I went inside. And then he could not keep his voice as I went from one picture of his darling to another, not thinking (as I should have done) of what his feelings might be, but trying, as no two were at all alike, to extract a general idea of her.
“Nobody knows what her were to me,” the old man said, with a quiet little noise and a sniff behind my shoulder. “And with one day's illness her died--her died.”
“But you have others left. She was not the only one. Please, Mr. Withypool, to try to think of that. And your dear wife still alive to share your trouble. Just think for a moment of what happened to my father. His wife and six children all swept off in a month--and I just born, to be brought up with a bottle!”
I never meant, of course, to have said a word of this, but was carried away by that common old idea of consoling great sorrow with a greater one. And the sense of my imprudence broke vexatiously upon me when the old man came and stood between me and his daughter's portraits.
“Well, I never!” he exclaimed, with his bright eyes steadfast with amazement. “I know you now, miss. Now I knows you. To think what a set of blind newts us must be! And you the very moral of your poor father, in a female kind of way! To be sure, how well I knew the Captain! A nicer man never walked the earth, neither a more unlucky one.”
“I beg you--let me beg you,” I began to say; “since you have found me out like this--” “Hush, miss, hush! Not my own wife shall know, unless your own tongue telleth her. A proud man I shall be, Miss Raumur,” he continued, with emphasis on my local name, “if aught can be found in my power to serve you. Why, Lord bless you, miss,” he whispered, looking round, “your father and I has spent hours together! He were that pleasant in his ways and words, he would drop in from his fishing, when the water was too low, and sit on that very same bench where you sat, and smoke his pipe with me, and tell me about battles, and ask me about bread. And many a time I have slipped up the gate, to give him more water for his flies to play, and the fish not to see him so plainly. Ah, we have had many pleasant spells together; and his eldest boy and girl, Master George and Miss Henrietta, used to come and fetch our eggs. My Polly there was in love with him, we said; she sat upon his lap so, when she were two years old, and played with his beautiful hair, and blubbered--oh, she did blubber, when the Captain went away!”
This invested Polly with new interest for me, and made me determine to spare no pains in putting her pretty figure well upon the plank. Then I said to the miller, “How kind of you to draw up your sluice-gates to oblige my father! Now will you put them down and keep them down, to do a great service both to him and me?”
Without a moment's hesitation, he promised that any thing he could do should be done, if I would only tell him what I wanted. But perhaps it would be better to have our talk outside. Taking this hint, I followed him back to the bench in the open garden, and there explained what I wished to have done, and no longer concealed the true reason. The good miller answered that with all his heart he would do that much to oblige me, and a hundred times more than that; but some little thought and care were needful. With the river so low as it was now, he could easily stop the back-water, and receive the whole of the current in his dam, and keep it from flowing down his wheel trough, and thus dry the lower channel for perhaps half an hour, which would be ample for my purpose. Engineering difficulties there were none; but two or three other things must be heeded. Miller Sims, a mile or so down river, must be settled with, to fill his dam well, and begin to discharge, when the upper water failed, so as not to dry the Moon all down the valley, which would have caused a commotion. Miller Sims being own brother-in-law to Master Withypool, that could be arranged easily enough, after one day's notice. But a harder thing to manage would be to do the business without rousing curiosity, and setting abroad a rumor which would be sure to reach my enemy. And the hardest thing of all, said Master Withypool, smiling as he thought of what himself had once been, would be to keep those blessed boys away, who find out every thing, and go every where. Not a boy of Shoxford but would be in the river, or dancing upon its empty bed, screeching and scolloping up into his cap any poor bewildered trout chased into the puddles, if it were allowed to leak out, however feebly, that the Moon water was to stop running. And then how was I to seek for any thing?
This was a puzzle. But, with counsel, we did solve it. And we quietly stopped the Moon, without man or boy being much the wiser.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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43
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GOING TO THE BOTTOM
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It is not needful to explain every thing, any more than it was for me to tell the miller about my golden eagle, and how I had managed to lose it in the Moon--a trick of which now I was heartily ashamed, in the face of honest kindness. So I need not tell how Master Withypool managed to settle with his men, and to keep the boys unwitting of what was about to come to pass. Enough that I got a note from him to tell me that the little river would be run out, just when all Shoxford was intent upon its dinner, on the second day after I had seen him. And he could not say for certain, but thought it pretty safe, that nobody would come near me, if I managed to be there at a quarter before one, when the stream would begin to run dry, and I could watch it. I sent back a line by the pretty little girl, a sister of poor Polly, to say how much I thanked him, and how much I hoped that he himself would meet me there, if his time allowed. For he had been too delicate to say a word of that; but I felt that he had a good right to be there, and, knowing him now, I was not afraid.
Nearly every thing came about as well as could be wished almost. Master Withypool took the precaution, early in the morning, to set his great fierce bull at large, who always stopped the foot-path. This bull knew well the powers of a valley in conducting sound; and he loved to stand, as if at the mouth of a funnel, and roar down it to another bull a mile below him, belonging to his master's brother-in-law. And when he did this, there was scarcely a boy, much less a man or woman, with any desire to assert against him the public right of thoroughfare. Throughout that forenoon, then, this bull bellowed nobly, still finding many very wicked flies about, so that two mitching boys, who meant to fish for minnows with a pin, were obliged to run away again.
However, I was in the dark about him, and as much afraid of him as any body, when he broke into sight of me round a corner, without any tokens of amity. I had seen a great many great bulls before, including Uncle Sam's good black one, who might not have meant any mischief at all, and atoned for it--if he did--by being washed away so.
And therefore my courage soon returned, when it became quite clear that this animal now had been fastened with a rope, and could come no nearer. For some little time, then, I waited all alone, as near that bridge as I could bring myself to stand, for Mrs. Busk, my landlady, could not leave the house yet, on account of the mid-day letters. Moreover, she thought that she had better stay away, as our object was to do things as quietly as could be.
Much as I had watched this bridge from a distance, or from my sheltering-place, I had never been able to bring myself to make any kind of sketch of it, or even to insert it in a landscape, although it was very well suited and expressive, from its crooked and antique simplicity. The overhanging, also, of the hawthorn-tree (not ruddy yet, but russety with its coloring crop of coral), and the shaggy freaks of ivy above the twisted trunk, and the curve of the meadows and bold elbow of the brook, were such as an artist would have pitched his tent for, and tantalized poor London people with a dream of cool repose.
As yet the little river showed no signs of doing what the rustic--or surely it should have been the cockney--was supposed to stand still and wait for. There was no great rush of headlong water, for that is not the manner of the stream in the very worst of weather; but there was the usual style of coming on, with lips and steps at the sides, and cords of running toward the middle. Quite enough, at any rate, to make the trout jump, without any omen of impending drought, and to keep all the play and the sway of movement going on serenely.
I began to be afraid that the miller must have failed in his stratagem against the water-god, and that, as I had read in Pope's Homer, the liquid deity would beat the hero, when all of a sudden there were signs that man was the master of this little rustic. Broadswords of flag and rapiers of water-grass, which had been quivering merrily, began to hang down and to dip themselves in loops, and the stones of the brink showed dark green stripes on their sides as they stood naked. Then fine little cakes of conglomerated stuff, which only a great man of nature could describe, came floating about, and curdling into corners, and holding on to one another in long-tailed strings. But they might do what they liked, and make their very best of it, as they fell away to nothing upon stones and mud. For now more important things began to open, the like of which never had been yielded up before--plots of slimy gravel, varied with long streaks of yellow mud, dotted with large double shells, and parted into little oozy runs by wriggling water-weeds. And here was great commotion and sad panic of the fish, large fellows splashing and quite jumping out of water, as their favorite hovers and shelves ran dry, and darting away, with their poor backs in the air, to the deepest hole they could think of. Hundreds must have come to flour, lard, and butter if boys had been there to take advantage. But luckily things had been done so well that boys were now in their least injurious moment, destroying nothing worse than their own dinners.
A very little way below the old wooden bridge the little river ran into a deepish pool, as generally happens at or near a corner, especially where there is a confluence sometimes. And seeing nothing, as I began to search intently, stirring with a long-handled spud which I had brought, I concluded that even my golden eagle had been carried into that deep place. However, water or no water, I resolved to have it out with that dark pool as soon as the rest of the channel should be drained, which took a tormenting time to do; and having thick boots on, I pinned up my skirts, and jumping down into the shoals, began to paddle in a fashion which reminded me of childish days passed pleasantly in the Blue River.
Too busy thus to give a thought to any other thing, I did not even see the miller, until he said, “Good-day, miss,” lifting his hat, with a nice kind smile. “Very busy, miss, I see, and right you are to be so. The water will be upon us again in less than half an hour. Now let me clear away they black weeds for you. I brought this little shivel a-purpose. If I may make so bold, miss, what do 'e look to find here?”
“I have not the very smallest notion,” I could only answer; “but if there is any thing, it must be in that hole. I have searched all the shallow part so closely that I doubt whether even a sixpence could escape me, unless it were buried in the mud or pebbles. Oh, how can I manage to search that hole? There must be a yard of water there.”
“One thing I ought to have told 'e for to do,” Master Withypool whispered, as he went on shoveling--“to do what the boys do when they lose a farden--to send another after un. If so be now, afore the water was run out, you had stood on that there bridge, and dropped a bright coin into it, a new half crown or a two-shilling piece, why, the chances would be that the run of the current would 'a taken it nigh to the likeliest spot for holding any other little matter as might 'a dropped, permiskous, you might say, into this same water.”
“I have done so,” I answered; “I have done that very thing, though not at all with that object. The day before yesterday a beautiful coin, a golden eagle of America, fell from my pocket on that upper plank, and rolled into the water. I would not lose it for a great deal, because it was given to me by my dearest friend, the greatest of all millers.”
“And ha'n't you found it yet, miss? Well, that is queer. Perhaps we shall find it now, with something to the back of it. I thought yon hole was too far below the bridge. But there your gold must be, and something else, most likely. Plaise to wait a little bit, and us 'll have the wet out of un. I never should 'a thought of that but for your gold guinea, though.”
With these words Master Withypool pulled his coat off and rolled up his shirt sleeves, displaying arms fit to hold their own even with Uncle Sam's almost; and then he fell to with his shovel and dug, while I ran with my little spud to help.
“Plaise keep out of way, miss; I be afeard of knocking you. Not but what you works very brave indeed, miss.”
Knowing what men are concerning “female efforts,” I got out of the strong man's way, although there was plenty of room for me. What he wanted to do was plain enough--to dig a trench down the empty bed of the Moon River, deep enough to drain that pit before the stream came down again.
“Never thought to run a race against my own old dam,” he said, as he stopped for a moment to recover breath. “Us never knows what us may have to do. Old dam must be a'most busting now. But her's sound enough, till her beginneth to run over.”
I did not say a word, because it might have done some mischief, but I could not help looking rather anxiously up stream, for fear of the water coming down with a rush, as it very soon must do. Master Withypool had been working, not as I myself would have done, from the lips of the dark pit downward, but from a steep run some twenty yards below, where there was almost a little cascade when the river was full flowing; from this he had made his channel upward, cutting deeper as he came along, till now, at the brink of the obstinate pool, his trench was two feet deep almost. I had no idea that any man could work so with a shovel, which seems such a clumsy tool compared with a spade: but a gentleman who knows the country and the people told me that, with their native weapon, Moonites will do as much digging in an hour as other folk get through in an hour and a half with a spade. But this may be only, perhaps, because they are working harder.
“Now,” said Master Withypool at last, standing up, with a very red face, and desiring to keep all that unheeded--“now, miss, to you it belongeth to tap this here little cornder, if desirable. Plaise to excoose of me going up of bank to tell 'e when the wet cometh down again.”
“Please to do nothing of the sort,” I answered, knowing that he offered to stand out of sight from a delicate dread of intrusion. “Please to tap the pool yourself, and stay here, as a witness of what we find in it.”
“As you plaise, miss, as you plaise. Not a moment for to lose in arguing. Harken now, the water is atopping of our dam. Her will be here in five minutes.”
With three or four rapid turns of his shovel, which he spun almost as fast as a house-maid spins a mop, he fetched out the plug of earth severing his channel from the deep, reluctant hole. And then I saw the wisdom of his way of working: for if he had dug downward from the pool itself, the water would have followed him all the way, and even drowned his tool out of its own strokes; whereas now, with a swirl and a curl of ropy mud, away rushed the thick, sluggish, obstinate fluid, and in less than two minutes the hole was almost dry.
The first thing I saw was my golden eagle, lodged about half-way down the slope on a crust of black sludge, from which I caught it up and presented it to Master Withypool, as a small token and record of his kindness; and to this day he carries it upon his Sunday watch chain.
“I always am lucky in finding things,” I exclaimed, while he watched me, and the up stream too, whence a babble of water was approaching. “As sure as I live I have found it!”
“No doubt about your living, miss. And the Captain were always lively. But what have your bright eyes hit upon? I see nort for the life of me.”
“Look there,” I cried, “at the very bottom of it--almost under the water. Here, where I put my spud--a bright blue line! Oh, can I go down, or is it quicksand?”
“No quicksand in our little river, miss. But your father's daughter shannot go into the muck, while John Withypool stands by. I see un now, sure enough; now I see un! But her needeth care, or her may all goo away in mullock. Well, I thought my eyes was sharp enough; but I'm blest if I should have spied that, though. A bit of flint, mebbe, or of blue glass bottle. Anyhow, us will see the bottom of un.”
He was wasting no time while he spoke, but working steadfastly for his purpose, fixing the blade of his shovel below the little blue line I was peering at, so that no slip of the soft yellow slush should bury it down, and plunge over it. If that had once happened, good-by to all chance of ever beholding this thing again, for the river was coming, with fury and foam, to assert its ancient right of way.
With a short laugh the miller jumped down into the pit. “Me to be served so, by my own mill-stream! Lor', if I don't pay you out for this!”
His righteous wrath failed to stop the water from pouring into the pit behind him; and, strong as he was, he nearly lost his footing, having only mud to stand upon. It seemed to me that he was going to be drowned, and I offered him the handle of my spud to help him; but he stopped where he was, and was not going to be hurried.
“I got un now,” he said; “now I don't mind coming out. You see if I don't pay you out for this! Why, I always took you for a reasonable hanimal.”
He shook his fist strongly at the river, which had him well up to the middle by this time; and then he disdainfully waded out, with wrath in all his countenance.
“I've a great mind to stop there, and see what her would do,” he said to me, forgetting altogether what he went for. “And I would, if I had had my dinner. A scat of a thing as I can manage with my thumb! Ah, you have made a bad day of it.”
“But what have you found, Mr. Withypool?” I asked, for I could not enter into his wrath against the water, wet as he was to the shoulders. “You have something in your hand. May I see it, if you please? And then do please to go home and change your clothes.”
“A thing I never did in my life, miss, and should be ashamed to begin at this age. Clothes gets wet, and clothes dries on us, same as un did on the sheep afore us; else they gets stiff and creasy. What this little thing is ne'er a body may tell, in my line of life--but look'th aristocratic.”
The “mullock,” as he called it, from his hands, and from the bed where it had lain so long, so crusted the little thing which he gave me, that I dipped it again in the swelling stream, and rubbed it with both hands, to make out what it was. And then I thought how long it had lain there; and suddenly to my memory it came, that in all likelihood the time of that was nineteen years this very day.
“Will another year pass,” I cried, “before I make out all about it? What are you, and who, now looking at me with such sad, sad eyes?”
For I held in my hand a most handsome locket, of blue enamel and diamonds, with a back of chased gold, and in front the miniature of a beautiful young woman, done as they never seem to do them now. The work was so good, and the fitting so close, that no drop of water had entered, and the face shone through the crystal glass as fresh as the day it was painted. A very lovely face it was, yet touched with a shade of sadness, as the loveliest faces generally are; and the first thought of any beholder would be, “That woman was born for sorrow.”
The miller said as much when I showed it to him.
“Lord bless my heart! I hope the poor craitur' hathn't lasted half so long as her pictur' hath.”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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44
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HERMETICALLY SEALED
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The discovery which I have described above (but not half so well as the miller tells it now) created in my young heart a feeling of really strong curiosity. To begin with, how could this valuable thing have got into the Moon-stream, and lain there so long, unsought for, or at best so unskillfully sought for? What connection could it have with the tragic death of my grandfather? Why was that man so tardily come to search for it, if he might do so without any body near him? Again, what woman was this whose beauty no water or mud could even manage to disguise? That last was a most disturbing question to one's bodily peace of mind. And then came another yet more urgent--what was in the inside of this tight case?
That there was something inside of it seemed almost a certainty. The mere value of the trinket, or even the fear that it ever might turn up as evidence, would scarcely have brought that man so often to stir suspicion by seeking it; though, after so long a time, he well might hope that suspicion was dead and buried. And being unable to open this case--after breaking three good nails over it, and then the point of a penknife--I turned to Master Withypool, who was stamping on the grass to drain himself.
“What sort of a man was that,” I asked, “who wanted you to do what now you have so kindly done for me? About a month or six weeks ago? Do please to tell me, as nearly as you can.”
If Mrs. Withypool had been there, she might have lost all patience with me for putting long questions so selfishly to a man who had done so much for me, and whose clothes were now dripping in a wind which had arisen to test his theory of drying. He must have lost a large quantity of what scientific people call “caloric.” But never a shiver gave he in exchange.
“Well, miss,” he said, “I was thinking a'most of speaking on that very matter. More particular since you found that little thing, with the pretty lady inside of it. It were borne in on my mind that thissom were the very thing he were arter.”
“No doubt of it,” I answered, with far less patience, though being comparatively dry. “But what was he like? Was he like this portrait?”
“This picture of the lady? No; I can't say that he were, so much. The face of a big man he hath, with short black fringes to it. Never showeth to my idea any likeliness of a woman. No, no, miss; think you not at all that you have got him in that blue thing. Though some of their pictures is like men, the way they dress up nowadays.”
“I did not mean that it was meant for him; what I mean is, do you see any sign of family likeness? Any resemblance about the eyes, or mouth, or forehead?”
“Well, now, I don't know but what I might,” replied Master Withypool, gazing very hard; “if I was to look at 'un long enough, a' might find some'at favoring of that tall fellow, I do believe. Indeed, I do believe the more I look, the more I diskivers the image of him.”
The good and kind miller's perception of the likeness strengthened almost too fast, as if the wish were father to the thought, until I saw clearly how selfish I was in keeping him in that state so long; for I knew, from what Mrs. Busk had told me, that in spite of all his large and grand old English sentiments about his clothes, his wife would make him change them all ere ever she gave him a bit of dinner, and would force him then to take a glass of something hot. So I gave him a thousand thanks, though not a thousandth part of what he deserved, and saw him well on his homeward way before I went back to consider things.
As soon as my landlady was at leisure to come in and talk with me, and as soon as I had told her how things happened, and shown her our discovery, we both of us did the very same thing, and said almost the very same words. Our act was, with finger and nail and eye, to rime into every jot of it; and our words were, “I am sure there is something inside. If not, it would open sensibly.”
In the most senseless and obstinate manner it refused not only to open, but to disclose any thing at all about itself. Whether it ever had been meant to open, and if so, where, and by what means; whether, without any gift of opening, it might have a hidden thing inside; whether, when opened by force or skill, it might show something we had no business with, or (which would be far worse) nothing at all--good Mrs. Busk and myself tested, tapped, and felt, and blew, and listened, and tried every possible overture, and became at last quite put out with it.
“It is all of a piece with the villains that owned it,” the postmistress exclaimed at last. “There is no penetrating either it or them. Most likely they have made away with this beautiful lady on the cover. Kill one, kill fifty, I have heard say. I hope Master Withypool will let out nothing, or evil it will be for you, miss. If I was you, I would carry a pistol.”
“Now please not to frighten me, Mrs. Busk. I am not very brave at the best of times, and this has made me so nervous. If I carried a pistol, I should shoot myself the very first hour of wearing it. The mere thought of it makes me tremble. Oh, why was I ever born, to do man's work?”
“Because, miss, a man would not have done it half so well. When you saw that villain digging, a man would have rushed out and spoiled all chance. And now what man could have ever found this? Would Master Withypool ever have emptied the Moon River for a man, do you think? Or could any man have been down among us all this time, in this jealous place, without his business being long ago sifted out and scattered over him? No, no, miss; you must not talk like that--and with me as well to help you. The rogues will have reason to wish, I do believe, that they had only got a man to deal with.”
In this argument there were points which had occurred to me before; but certainly it is a comfort to have one's own ideas in a doubtful matter reproduced, and perhaps put better, by a mind to which one may have lent them, perhaps, with a loan all unacknowledged. However, trouble teaches care, and does it so well that the master and the lesson in usage of words are now the same; therefore I showed no sign of being suggested with my own suggestions, but only asked, quietly, “What am I to do?”
“My dear young lady,” Mrs. Busk replied, after stopping some time to think of it, “my own opinion is, for my part, that you ought to consult somebody.”
“But I am, Mrs. Busk. I am now consulting you.”
“Then I think, miss, that this precious case should be taken at once to a jeweler, who can open it without doing any damage, which is more than we can do.”
“To be sure; I have thought of that,” I replied. “But how can that be done without arousing curiosity? --without the jeweler seeing its contents, if indeed it has any? And in that case the matter would be no longer at our own disposal, as now it is. I have a great mind to split it with a hammer. What are the diamonds to me?”
“It is not the diamonds, but the picture, miss, that may be most important. And more than that, you might ruin the contents, so as not to make head or tale of them. No, no; it is a risk that must be run; we must have a jeweler, but not one of this neighborhood.”
“Then I shall have to go to London again, and perhaps lose something most important here. Can you think of no other way out of it?”
“No, miss, at present I see nothing else. Unless you will place it all in the hands of the police.”
“Constable Jobbins, to wit, or his son! No, thank you, Mrs. Busk, not yet. Surely we are not quite reduced to such a hopeless pass as that. My father knew what the police were worth, and so does Betsy, and so does Major Hockin. 'Pompous noodles,' the Major calls them, who lay hold of every thing by the wrong end.”
“Then if he can lay hold of the right end, miss, what better could you do than consult him?”
I had been thinking of this already, and pride alone debarred me. That gentleman's active nature drove him to interfere with other people's business, even though he had never heard of them; and yet through some strange reasoning of his own, or blind adoption of public unreason, he had made me dislike, or at any rate not like, him, until he began to show signs at last of changing his opinion. And now the question was, had he done that enough for me, without loss of self-respect, to open my heart to him, and seek counsel?
In settling that point the necessity of the case overrode, perhaps, some scruples; in sooth, I had nobody else to go to. What could I do with Lord Castlewood? Nothing; all his desire was to do exactly what my father would have done: and my father had never done any thing more than rove and roam his life out. To my mind this was dreadful now, when every new thing rising round me more and more clearly to my mind established what I never had doubted--his innocence. Again, what good could I do by seeking Betsy's opinion about it, or that of Mrs. Price, or Stixon, or any other person I could think of? None whatever--and perhaps much harm. Taking all in all, as things turn up, I believed myself to be almost equal to the cleverest of those three in sense, and in courage not inferior. Moreover, a sort of pride--perhaps very small, but not contemptible--put me against throwing my affairs so much into the hands of servants.
For this idea Uncle Sam, no doubt the most liberal of men, would perhaps condemn me. But still I was not of the grand New World, whose pedigrees are arithmetic (at least with many of its items, though the true Uncle Sam was the last for that); neither could I come up to the largeness of universal brotherhood. That was not to be expected of a female; and few things make a man more angry than for his wife to aspire to it. No such ideas had ever troubled me; I had more important things to think of, or, at any rate, something to be better carried out. And of all these desultory thoughts it came that I packed up that odious but very lovely locket, without further attempt to unriddle it, and persuaded my very good and clever Mrs. Busk to let me start right early. By so doing I could have three hours with a good gentleman always in a hurry, and yet return for the night to Shoxford, if he should advise me so.
Men and women seem alike to love to have their counsels taken; and the equinox being now gone by, Mrs. Busk was ready to begin before the tardy sun was up, who begins to give you short measure at once when he finds the weights go against him. Mrs. Busk considered not the sun, neither any of his doings. The time of day was more momentous than any of the sun's proceedings. Railway time was what she had to keep (unless a good customer dropped in), and as for the sun--“clock slow, clock fast,” in the almanacs, showed how he managed things; and if that was not enough, who could trust him to keep time after what he had done upon the dial of Ahaz? Reasoning thus--if reason it was--she packed me off in a fly for the nearest railway station, and by midday I found the Major laboring on his ramparts.
After proper salutations, I could not help expressing wonder at the rapid rise of things. Houses here and houses there, springing up like children's teeth, three or four in a row together, and then a long gap, and then some more. And down the slope a grand hotel, open for refreshment, though as yet it had no roof on; for the Major, in virtue of his charter, defied all the magistrates to stop him from selling whatever was salable on or off the premises. But noblest and grandest of all to look at was the “Bruntsea Athenaeum, Lyceum, Assembly-Rooms, Institution for Mutual Instruction, Christian Young Men's Congress, and Sanitary, Saline, Hydropathic Hall, at nominal prices to be had gratis.”
“How you do surprise me!” I said to Major Hockin, after reading all that, which he kindly requested me to do with care; “but where are the people to come from?”
“Erema,” he replied, as if that question had been asked too often, “you have not had time to study the laws of political economy--the noblest of noble sciences. The first of incontrovertible facts is that supply creates demand. Now ask yourself whether there could even be a Yankee if ideas like yours had occurred to Columbus?”
This was beyond me; for I never could argue, and strove to the utmost not to do so. “You understand those things, and I do not,” said I, with a smile, which pleased him. “My dear aunt Mary always says that you are the cleverest man in the world; and she must know most about it.”
“Partiality! partiality!” cried the Major, with a laugh, and pulling his front hair up. “Such things pass by me like the idle wind; or rather, perhaps, they sadden me, from my sense of my own deficiencies. But, bless me! dinner must be waiting. Look at that fellow's trowel--he knows: he turns up the point of it like a spoon. They say that he can smell his dinner two miles off. We all dine at one o'clock now, that I may rout up every man-Jack of them.”
The Major sounded a steam-guard's whistle, and led me off in the rapidly vanishing wake of his hungry workmen.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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45
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CONVICTION
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Sir Montague Hockin, to my great delight, was still away from Bruntsea. If he had been there, it would have been a most awkward thing for me to meet him, or to refuse to do so. The latter course would probably have been the one forced upon me by self-respect and affection toward my cousin; and yet if so, I could scarcely have avoided an explanation with my host. From the nature of the subject, and several other reasons, this would have been most unpleasant; and even now I was haunted with doubts, as I had been from the first, whether I ought not to have told Mrs. Hockin long ago what had been said of him. At first sight that seemed the honest thing to do; but three things made against it. It might seem forward and meddlesome; it must be a grievous thing to my cousin to have his sad story discussed again; and lastly, I had promised Mrs. Price that her words should go no further. So that on the whole perhaps I acted aright in keeping that infamous tale to myself as long as ever it was possible.
But now ere ever I spoke of him--which I was always loath to do--Mrs. Hockin told me that he very seldom came to see them now, and when he did come he seemed to be uneasy and rather strange in his manners. I thought to myself that the cause of this was clear. Sir Montague, knowing that I went to Castlewood, was pricked in his conscience, and afraid of having his vile behavior to my cousin disclosed. However, that idea of mine was wrong, and a faulty conception of simple youth. The wicked forgive themselves so quickly, if even they find any need of it, that every body else is supposed to do the same. With this I have no patience. A wrong unrepented of and unatoned gathers interest, instead of getting discount, from lost time. And so I hated that man tenfold.
Good Mrs. Hockin lamented his absence not only for the sake of her darling fowls, but also because she considered him a check upon the Major's enterprise. Great as her faith was in her husband's ability and keenness, she was often visited with dark misgivings about such heavy outlay. Of economy (as she often said) she certainly ought to know something, having had to practice it as strictly as any body in the kingdom, from an age she could hardly remember. But as for what was now brought forward as a great discovery--economy in politics--Mrs. Hockin had tried to follow great opinions, but could only find, so far, downright extravagance. Supply (as she had observed fifty times with her own butcher and fishmonger), instead of creating demand, produced a lot of people hankering round the corner, till the price came down to nothing. And if it were so with their institutions--as her dear husband called his new public-house--who was to find all the interest due to the building and land societies? Truly she felt that Sir Rufus Hockin, instead of doing any good to them, had behaved very badly in leaving them land, and not even a shilling to work it with.
It relieved her much to tell me this, once for all and in strict confidence; because her fine old-fashioned (and we now may say quite obsolete) idea of duty toward her husband forbade her ever to say to him, or about him, when it could be helped, any thing he might not like, any thing which to an evil mind might convey a desire on her part to meddle with--with-- “Political economy,” I said; and she laughed, and said, Yes, that was just it. The Major of course knew best, and she ought with all her heart to trust him not to burden their old days with debt, after all the children they had brought up and fairly educated upon the professional income of a distinguished British officer, who is not intended by his superiors to provide successors.
“Perhaps it is like the boiled eggs they send me,” the old lady said, with her soft sweet smile, “for my poor hens to sit upon. Their race is too good to be made common. So now they get tinkers' and tailors' boys, after much competition, and the crammed sons of cooks. And in peace-time they do just as well.”
Of such things I knew nothing; but she seemed to speak with bitterness, the last thing to be found in all her nature, yet discoverable--as all bad things (except its own) are--by the British government. I do not speak from my own case, in which they discovered nothing.
By the time these things had been discussed, my host (who was always particular about his dress) came down to dinner, and not until that was over could I speak of the subject which had brought me there. No sooner had I begun my tale than they both perceived that it must neither be flurried nor interrupted, least of all should it be overheard.
“Come into my lock-up,” cried the Major; “or, better still, let us go out of doors. We can sit in my snuggery on the cliff, with only gulls and jackdaws to listen, and mount my telescope and hoist my flag, and the men know better than to skulk their work. I can see every son of a gun of them as clearly as if I had them on parade. You wish Mrs. Hockin to come, I suppose. Very well, let us be off at once. I shall count my fellows coming back from dinner.”
With a short quick step the Major led the way to a beautifully situated outpost at a corner of the cliff, where land and sea for many a fair league rolled below. A niche of the chalk had been cleverly enlarged and scooped into a shell-shaped bower, not, indeed, gloriously overhung, as in the far West might have been, but broken of its white defiant glare by climbing and wandering verdure. Seats and slabs of oak were fixed to check excess of chalkiness, and a parapet of a pattern which the Major called Egyptian saved fear of falling down the cliff, and served to spread a paper on, or to rest a telescope.
“From this point,” said the Major, crossing wiry yet substantial legs, “the whole of my little domain may be comprised as in a bird's-eye view. It is nothing, of course, much less than nothing, compared with the Earl of Crowcombe's, or the estate of Viscount Gamberley; still, such as it is, it carries my ideas, and it has an extent of marine frontage such as they might envy. We are asked 5 pounds per foot for a thread of land fronting on a highway, open to every kind of annoyance, overlooked, without any thing to look at. How much, then, per fathom (or measure, if you please, by cable-lengths) is land worth fronting the noble, silent, uncontaminating, healthful sea? Whence can come no coster-mongers' cries, no agitating skir of bagpipes or the maddening hurdy-gurdy, no German band expecting half a crown for the creation of insanity; only sweet murmur of the wavelets, and the melodious whistle of a boatman catching your breakfast lobster. Where, again, if you love the picturesque--” “My dear,” said Mrs. Hockin, gently, “you always were eloquent from the first day I saw you; and if you reconstitute our borough, as you hope, and enter Parliament for Bruntsea, what a sensation you will create! But I wished to draw your attention to the fact that Erema is waiting to tell her tale.”
“To be sure. I will not stop her. Eloquence is waste of time, and I never yet had half a second to spare. Fear no eloquence from me; facts and logic are my strong points. And now, Erema, show what yours are.”
At first this made me a little timid, for I had never thought that any strong points would be needed for telling a simple tale. To my mind the difficulty was, not to tell the story, but to know what to make of it when told; and soon I forgot all about myself in telling what I had seen, heard, and found.
The Major could not keep himself from stamping great holes through his--something I forget the name of, but people sow it to make turf of chalk--and dear “Aunt Mary's” soft pink cheeks, which her last grandchild might envy, deepened to a tone of rose; while her eyes, so full of heavenly faith when she got upon lofty subjects, took a most human flash and sparkle of hatred not theological.
“Seven!” she cried; “oh, Nicholas, Nicholas, you never told me there were seven!”
“There were not seven graves without the mother,” the Major answered, sternly. “And what odds whether seven or seventy? The criminality is the point, not the accumulation of results. Still, I never heard of so big a blackguard. And what did he do next, my dear?”
The way in which they took my story was a great surprise to me, because, although they were so good, they had never paid any attention to it until it became exciting. They listened with mere politeness until the scent of a very wicked man began to taint my narrative; but from that moment they drew nearer, and tightened their lips, and held their breath, and let no word escape them. It made me almost think that people even of pure excellence, weaned as they are from wicked things by teaching and long practice, must still retain a hankering for them done at other people's cost.
“And now,” cried the Major, “let us see it”--even before I had time to pull it out, though ready to be quick, from a knowledge of his ways. “Show it, and you shall have my opinion. And Mary's is certain to agree with mine. My dear, that makes yours so priceless.”
“Then, Nicholas, if I retain my own, yours is of no value. Never mind that. Now don't catch words, or neither opinion will be worth a thought. My dear, let us see it and then judge.”
“My own idea, but not so well expressed,” Major Hockin answered, as he danced about, while I with stupid haste was tugging at my package of the hateful locket. For I had not allowed that deceitful thing any quarters in my pocket, where dear little relics of my father lay, but had fastened it under my dress in a manner intended in no way for gentlemen to think about. Such little things annoy one's comfort, and destroy one's power of being quite high-minded. However, I got it out at last, and a flash of the sun made the difference.
“Brilliants, Mary!” the Major cried; “brilliants of first water; such as we saw, you know where; and any officer in the British army except myself, I do believe, would have had them at once in his camlet pouch--my dear, you know all about it. Bless my heart, how slow you are! Is it possible you have forgotten it? There came out a fellow, and I cut him down, as my duty was, without ceremony. You know how I used to do it, out of regulation, with a slash like this--” “Oh, Nicholas, you will be over the cliff! You have shown me how you used to do it, a thousand times--but you had no cricks in your back then: and remember how brittle the chalk is.”
“The chalk may be brittle, but I am tough. I insist upon doing every thing as well as I did it forty years ago. Mary, you ought not to speak to me like that. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty brilliants, worth twenty pounds apiece upon an average, I do believe. Four hundred pounds. That would finish our hotel.”
“Nicholas!”
“My dear, I was only in fun. Erema understands me. But who is this beautiful lady?”
“The very point,” I exclaimed, while he held it so that the pensive beauty of the face gleamed in soft relief among bright blue enamel and sparkling gems. “The very thing that I must know--that I would give my life to know--that I have fifty thousand fancies--” “Now don't be excited, Erema, if you please. What will you give me to tell you who it is?”
“All those diamonds, which I hate the sight of, and three-quarters of my half nugget; and if that is not enough--” “It is a thousand times too much; I will tell you for just one smile, and I know it, will be a smile of unbelief.”
“No, no; I will believe it, whoever you say,” with excitement superior to grammar, I cried; “only tell me at once--don't be so long.”
“But then you won't believe me when I do tell you,” the Major replied, in the most provoking way. “I shall tell you the last person you would ever think of, and then you will only laugh at me.”
“I won't laugh; how can I laugh in such a matter? I will believe you if you say it is--Aunt Mary.”
“My dear, you had better say at once that it is I, and have no more mystery about it.” Mrs. Hockin was almost as impatient as myself.
“Mrs. Hockin, you must indeed entertain an exalted idea of your own charms. I knew that you were vain, but certainly did not--Well, then, if you will allow me no peace, this is the lady that lives down in the ruin, and stands like a pillar by my pillar-box.”
“I never thought you would joke like that,” I cried, with vexation and anger. “Oh, is it a subject to be joked about?”
“I never was graver in my life; and you promised implicitly to believe me. At any rate, believe that I speak in earnest.”
“That I must believe, when you tell me so. But what makes you think such a wonderful thing? I should have thought nothing more impossible. I had made up my mind that it was Flittamore who lived down here; but this can not be she. Flittamore was unheard of at the time of my grandfather's death. Moreover, her character was not like this; she was giddy and light and heartless. This lady had a heart--good or bad, a deep one. Most certainly it is not Flittamore.”
“Flittamore! I do not remember that name. You should either tell us all or tell us nothing.” The Major's tone was reproachful, and his eyes from their angular roofs looked fierce.
“I have not told you,” I said, “because it can have nothing to do with it. The subject is a painful one, and belongs to my family only.”
“Enough. I am not inquisitive--on the other hand, too forgetful. I have an appointment at 3.25. It takes me seven minutes and a quarter to get there. I must be two minutes and three-quarters late. Mrs. Hockin, mount the big telescope and point it at the ramparts; keep the flag up also. Those fellows will be certain that I am up here, while I enfilade them from the western end with this fine binocular. Surprises maintain discipline. Good-by, my dear, and, Miss Castlewood, good-by. Tea at 6.30, and not too much water.”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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46
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VAIN ZEAL
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Leaving his telescope leveled at the men, the Major marched off with his opera-glass in a consciously provoking style, and Mrs. Hockin most heartily joined me in condemning such behavior. In a minute or two, however, she would not have one word said against him, and the tide of her mind (as befits a married woman) was beyond all science; so that the drift of all words came back to her husband's extraordinary merits. And certainly these, if at all like her description, deserved to be dwelt upon at very precious periods.
However, I had heard enough of them before; for the Major himself was not mute upon this point, though comparatively modest, and oftentimes deprecating praise ere ever he received it. And so I brought Mrs. Hockin back at last to talk about the lady who was living in the ruin.
“It is not quite a ruin,” she said. “My dear husband is fond of picturesque expressions. However, it is not in very good repair; and being unable to get possession of it, through some legal quibble, possibly he may look at it from a rather unfavorable point of view. And for the same reason--though he is so purely just--he may have formed a bad opinion of the strange individual who lives there. What right has she to be living without his leave upon his own manor? But there she is, and she does not care for us or any body. She fetches all she wants, she speaks to none, and if any body calls for rates or taxes, or any other public intrusion, they may knock and knock, but never get in, and at last they go away again.”
“But surely that can not go on forever. Bruntsea is such an enlightened place.”
“Our part of it is, but the rest quite benighted. As the man says--I forget his name, but the man that misunderstands us so--his contention is that 'Desolate Hole,' as the Major calls it, although in the middle of our land, is entirely distinct from it. My husband never will put up with that--his love of justice is far too strong--and he means to have a lawsuit. But still he has reasons for not beginning yet; and he puts up with a great deal, I am sure. It is too bad for them to tease him so.”
“It does seem a very sad thing,” I replied; “and the poor soul living there all alone! Even in the summer it is bad enough; but whatever will she do when the winter comes? Why, the sea in bad weather must be almost in upon her. And the roar of the pebbles all night! Major Hockin will never allow her to stay there.”
“What can he do, when he can not get in, and they even deny his title? I assure you, Erema, I have sent down cream, and even a dozen of my precious eggs, with the lady of the manor's compliments; but instead of being grateful, they were never taken in; and my Polly--'Miss Polly Hopkins,' you know--very wisely took it all to her grandmother.”
“To her grandmother instead of mine, as the Major facetiously calls her. And now he says this is her portrait; and instead of giving his reasons, runs away! Really you must excuse me, Aunt Mary, for thinking that your good husband has a little too much upon his mind sometimes.”
The old lady laughed, as I loved to see her do. “Well, my dear, after that, I think you had better have it out with him. He comes home to tea at 6.30, which used to be half past six in my days. He is very tired then, though he never will allow it, and it would not be fair to attack him. I give him a mutton-chop, or two poached eggs, or some other trifle of nourishment. And then I make him doze for an hour and a half, to soothe his agitated intellect. And when he wakes he has just one glass of hot water and sugar, with a little Lochnagar. And then he is equal to any thing--backgammon, bezique, or even conversation.”
Impatient as I was, I saw nothing better; and by this time I was becoming used to what all of us must put up with--the long postponement of our heavy cares to the light convenience of others. Major Hockin might just as well have stopped, when he saw how anxious I was. Uncle Sam would have stopped the mill itself, with a dozen customers waiting; but no doubt he had spoiled me; and even that should not make me bitter. Aunt Mary and I understood one another. We gazed away over the breadth of the sea and the gleam of its texture, and we held our peace.
Few things are more surprising than the calm way in which ripe age looks on at things which ought to amaze it. And yet any little one of its own concerns grows more important, perhaps, than ever as the shadow of the future dwindles. Major Hockin had found on the beach a pebble with a streak of agate in it. He took it as the harbinger of countless agates, and resolved to set up a lapidary, with a tent, or even a shop, perhaps--not to pay, but to be advertised, and catch distinguished visitors.
“Erema, you are a mighty finder; you found the biggest nugget yet discovered. You know about stones from the Rocky Mountains, or at least the Sierra Nevada. You did not discover this beautiful agate, but you saw and greatly admired it. We might say that a 'young lady, eminent for great skill in lithology, famed as the discoverer,' etc. Hold it between your eyes and this candle, but wet it in the slop-basin first; now you see the magnificent veins of blue.”
“I see nothing of the kind,” I said; for really it was too bad of him. “It seems to me a dirty bit of the commonest flint you could pick up.”
This vexed him more than I wished to have done, and I could not help being sorry; for he went into a little fit of sulks, and Aunt Mary almost frowned at me. But he could not stay long in that condition, and after his doze and his glass he came forth as lively and meddlesome as ever. And the first thing he did was to ask me for the locket.
“Open it?” he cried; “why, of course I can; there is never any difficulty about that. The finest workmanship in the world is that of the Indian jewelers. I have been among them often; I know all their devices and mechanism, of which the European are bad copies. I have only to look round this thing twice, and then pronounce my Sesame.”
“My dear, then look round it as fast as you can,” said his wife, with a traitorous smile at me, “and we won't breathe a Sess till it flies asunder.”
“Mary, Miss Castlewood makes you pert, although herself so well conducted. However, I do not hesitate to say that I will open this case in two minutes.”
“Of course you will, dear,” Mrs. Hockin replied, with provoking acquiescence. “The Major never fails, Erema, in any thing he is so sure about; and this is a mere child's toy to him. Well, dear, have you done it? But I need not ask. Oh, let us see what is inside of it!”
“I have not done it yet, Mrs. Hockin; and if you talk with such rapidity, of course you throw me out. How can I command my thoughts, or even recall my experience?”
“Hush! now hush, Erema! And I myself will hush most reverently.”
“You have no reverence in you, and no patience. Do you expect me to do such a job in one second? Do you take me for a common jeweler? I beg you to remember--” “Well, my dear, I remember only what you told us. You were to turn it round twice, you know, and then cry Sesame. Erema, was it not so?”
“I never said any thing of the sort. What I said was simply this--However, to reason with ladies is rude; I shall just be off to my study.”
“Where you keep your tools, my darling,” Mrs. Hockin said, softly, after him: “at least, I mean, when you know where they are.”
I was astonished at Aunt Mary's power of being so highly provoking, and still more at her having the heart to employ it. But she knew best what her husband was; and to worship forever is not wise.
“Go and knock at his door in about five minutes,” Mrs. Hockin said to me, with some mischief in her eyes. “If he continues to fail, he may possibly take a shorter way with it. And with his tools so close at hand--” “Oh,” I exclaimed, “his geological hammer--that dreadful crusher! May I go at once? I detest that thing, but I can not have it smashed.”
“He will not break it up, my dear, without your leave. He never would think of such a thing, of course. However, you may as well go after him.”
It was wrong of Mrs. Hockin to make me do this; and I felt quite ashamed of myself when I saw the kind old Major sitting by his lamp, and wrinkling his forehead into locks and keys of puzzle, but using violence to his own mind alone. And I was the more ashamed when, instead of resenting my intrusion, he came to meet me, and led me to his chair, and placed the jeweled trinket in my hand, and said, “My dear, I give it up. I was wrong in taking it away from you. You must consult some one wiser.”
“That odious thing!” I answered, being touched by this unusual humility of his; “you shall not give it up; and I know no wiser person. A lapidary's tricks are below your knowledge. But if you are not tired of me and offended, may I leave it to you to get it opened?”
“I would like nothing better,” he replied, recovering his natural briskness and importance; “but you ought to be there, my dear; you must be there. Are you sure that you ought not rather to take it to your good cousin Lord Castlewood? Now think before you answer.”
“I need not think twice of that, Major Hockin. Good and learned as my father's cousin is, he has distinctly refused to help me, for some mysterious reason of his own, in searching into this question. Indeed, my great hope is to do it without him: for all that I know, he might even wish to thwart me.”
“Enough, my dear; it shall be just as you wish. I brought you to England, and I will stand by you. My cousin, Colonel Gundry, has committed you to me. I have no patience with malefactors. I never took this matter up, for very many reasons; and among them not the least was that Sampson, your beloved 'Uncle Sam,' thought it better not to do so. But if you desire it, and now that I feel certain that an infamous wrong has been done to you--which I heartily beg your pardon for my doubt of--by the Lord of all justice, every thing else may go to the devil, till I see it out. Do you desire it, Erema?”
“I certainly do not wish that any of your great works should be neglected. But if, without that, you can give me your strong help, my only difficulty will be to thank you.”
“I like plain speaking, and you always speak plainly; sometimes too plainly,” he said, recollecting little times when he had the worst of it. “How far do you trust me now?”
“Major Hockin, I trust you altogether. You may make mistakes, as all men do--” “Yes, yes, yes. About my own affairs; but I never do that for other people. I pay a bill for twopence, if it is my own. If I am trustee of it, I pay three half-pence.”
His meaning was a little beyond me now; but it seemed better not to tell him so; for he loved to explain his own figures of speech, even when he had no time to spare for it. And he clearly expected me to ask him to begin; or at least it seemed so from his eyebrows. But that only came home to me afterward.
“Please not to speak of my affairs like that,” I said, as if I were quite stupid; “I mean to pay fourpence for every twopence--both to friends and enemies.”
“You are a queer girl; I have always said so. You turn things to your own ideas so. However, we must put up with that, though none of my daughters have ever done it; for which I am truly thankful. But now there is very little time to lose. The meaning of this thing must be cleared up at once. And there is another thing to be done as well, quite as important, in my opinion. I will go to London with you to-morrow, if you like. My clever little Cornishman will see to things here--the man that sets up all the angles.”
“But why should I hurry you to London so?” I asked. “Surely any good country jeweler could manage it? Or let us break it open.”
“On no account,” he answered; “we might spoil it all; besides the great risk to the diamonds, which are very brittle things. To London we must take it, for this reason--the closure of this case is no jeweler's work; of that I have quite convinced myself. It is the work of a first-rate lapidary, and the same sort of man must undo it.”
To this I agreed quite readily, because of such things I knew nothing; whereas my host spoke just as if he had been brought up to both those walks of art. And then I put a question which had long been burning on my tongue.
“What made you imagine, Major Hockin, that this very beautiful face could have ever been that of the old lady living in the ruin?”
“In Desolate Hole? I will tell you at once; and then call it, if you like, an imagination. Of all the features of the human face there is none more distinctive than the eyebrow. 'Distinctive' is not exactly what I mean--I mean more permanently marked and clear. The eyes change, the nose changes, so does the mouth, and even the shape of the forehead sometimes; but the eyebrows change very little, except in color. This I have noticed, because my own may perhaps be a little peculiar; and they have always been so. At school I received a nickname about it, for boys are much sharper than men about such things; and that name after fifty years fits as well as ever. You may smile, if you like; I shall not tell you what it was, but leave you to re-invent it, if you can. Now look at this first-rate miniature. Do you see an unusual but not uncomely formation of the eyebrows?”
“Certainly I do; though I did not observe it until you drew my attention. I had only regarded the face, as a whole.”
“The face, as a whole, is undoubtedly fine. But the eyebrows have a peculiar arch, and the least little turn at the lower end, as if they designed to rise again. The lady of Desolate Hole has the same.”
“But how can you tell? How very strange! I thought she let nobody see her face.”
“You are perfectly right about that, Erema; so far at least as she has vouchsafed to exhibit her countenance to me. Other people may be more fortunate. But when I met her for the second time, being curious already about her, I ventured to offer my services, with my inborn chivalry, at a place where the tide was running up, and threatened to surround her. My politeness was not appreciated, as too often is the case; for she made me a very stiff bow, and turned away. Her face had been covered by the muffler of her cloak, as if the sea-breeze were too much for her; and she did not even raise her eyes. But before she turned away, I obtained a good glance at her eyebrows--and they were formed like these.”
“But her age, Major Hockin! Her age--what is it?”
“Upon that proverbially delicate point I can tell you but little, Erema. Perhaps, however, I may safely say that she can not be much under twenty.”
“It is not right to provoke me so. You call her 'the old woman,' and compare her to your letter-box. You must have some idea--is she seventy?”
“Certainly not, I should say; though she can not expect me to defend her, when she will not show her face to me; and what is far worse, at my time of life, she won't even pay me a half-penny of rent. Now let us go back to Aunt Mary, my dear; she always insists upon packing overnight.”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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47
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CADMEIAN VICTORY
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Before two o'clock of the following day Major Hockin and myself were in London, and ready to stay there for two or three days, if it should prove needful. Before leaving Bruntsea I had written briefly to Lord Castlewood, telling him that important matters had taken me away from Shoxford, and as soon as I could explain them, I would come and tell him all about it. This was done only through fear of his being annoyed at my independence.
From London Bridge the Major took a cab direct to Clerkenwell; and again I observed that of all his joys one of the keenest was to match his wits against a cabman's. “A regular muff, this time,” he said, as he jerked up and down with his usual delight in displaying great knowledge of London; “no sport to be had out of him. Why, he stared at me when I said 'Rosamond Street,' and made me stick on 'Clerkenwell.' Now here he is taking us down Snow Hill, when he should have been crossing Smithfield. Smithfield, cabby, Smithfield!”
“Certain, Sir, Smiffle, if you gives the order;” and he turned the poor horse again, and took us up the hill, and among a great number of barriers. “No thoroughfare,” “No thoroughfare,” on all hands stretched across us; but the cabman threaded his way between, till he came to the brink of a precipice. The horse seemed quite ready, like a Roman, to leap down it, seeing nothing less desirable than his present mode of life, till a man with a pickaxe stopped him.
“What are you at?” cried the Major, with fury equalled by nothing except his fright. “Erema, untie my big rattan. Quick--quick--” “Captain,” said the cabman, coolly, “I must have another shilling for this job. A hextra mile and a quarter, to your orders. You knows Lunnon so much better. Smiffle stopped--new railway--new meat market--never heered of that now, did you?”
“You scoundrel, drive straight to the nearest police office.”
“Must jump this little ditch, then, Captain. Five pun' fine for you, when we gets there. Hold on inside, old gentleman. Kuck, kuck, Bob, you was a hunter once. It ain't more than fifty feet deep, my boy.”
“Turn round! turn round, I tell you! turn round! If your neck is forfeit, you rogue, mine is not. I never was so taken in in my life!” Major Hockin continued to rave, and amid many jeers we retreated humbly, and the driver looked in at us with a gentle grin. “And I thought he was so soft, you know! Erema, may I swear at him?”
“On no account,” I said. “Why, after all, it is only a shilling, and the loss of time. And then, you can always reflect that you have discharged, as you say, a public duty, by protesting against a vile system.”
“Protesting is very well, when it pays,” the Major answered, gloomily; “but to pay for protesting is another pair of shoes.”
This made him cross, and he grew quite fierce when the cabman smote him for eight-pence more. “Four parcels on the roof, Captain,” he said, looking as only a cabman can look at his money, and spinning his extra shilling. “Twopence each under new hact, you know. Scarcely thought a hofficer would 'a tried evasion.”
“You consummate scoundrel--and you dress yourself like a countryman! I'll have your badge indorsed--I'll have your license marked. Erema, pay the thief; it is more than I can do.”
“Captain, your address, if you please; I shall summon you for scurrilous language, as the hact directs. Ah, you do right to be driven to a pawn shop.”
Triumphantly he drove off, while the Major cried, “Never tie up my rattan again. Oh, it was Mrs. Hockin, was it? What a fool I was not to stop on my own manor!”
“I pray you to disdain such low impudence,” I said, for I could not bear to see him shake like that, and grieved to have brought him into it. “You have beaten fifty of them--a hundred of them--I have heard you say.”
“Certainly I have, my dear; but I had no Bruntsea then, and could not afford to pay the rogues. That makes me feel it so bitterly, so loftily, and so righteously. To be treated like this, when I think of all my labors for the benefit of the rascally human race! my Institute, my Lyceum, my Mutual Improvement Association, and Christian Young Men's something. There is no institution, after all, to be compared to the tread-mill.”
Recovering himself with this fine conclusion, he led me down a little sloping alley, scarcely wide enough for a wheelbarrow, to an old black door, where we set down our parcels; for he had taken his, while I carried mine, and not knowing what might happen yet, like a true peace-maker I stuck to the sheaf of umbrellas and the rattan cane. And thankful I was, and so might be the cabman, to have that weapon nicely sheathed with silk.
Major Hockin's breath was short, through too much talking without action, and he waited for a minute at this door, to come back to his equanimity. And I thought that our female breath falls short for the very opposite reason--when we do too much and talk too little; which happily seldom happens.
He was not long in coming back to his usual sprightliness and decision. And it was no small relief to me, who was looking at him miserably, and longing that his wife was there, through that very sad one-and-eightpence, when he pulled out a key, which he always carried as signer and lord of Bruntsea, the key of the town-hall, which had survived lock, door, and walls by centuries, and therewith struck a door which must have reminded that key of its fine old youth.
Before he had knocked so very many times, the door was opened by a young man wearing an apron and a brown paper cap, who knew Major Hockin at once, and showed us up stairs to a long low workshop. Here were many wheels and plates and cylinders revolving by energy of a strap which came through the floor and went through the ceiling. And the young man told us to be careful how we walked, for fear of getting entangled. Several men, wearing paper caps and aprons of leather or baize, were sitting doing dextrous work, no doubt, and doing it very easily, and the master of them all was hissing over some fine touch of jewel as a groom does at a horse. Then seeing us, he dropped his holders, and threw a leather upon his large lens, and came and took us to a little side room.
“Are you not afraid to leave them?” asked the Major. “They may secrete some gems, Mr. Handkin.”
“Never,” said the lapidary, with some pride. “I could trust these men with the Koh-i-noor; which we could have done better, I believe, than it was done by the Hollanders. But we don't get the chance to do much in diamonds, through the old superstition about Amsterdam, and so on. No, no; the only thing I can't trust my men about is to work as hard when I am away as when I am there. And now, Sir, what can I do for you? Any more Bruntsea pebbles? The last were not worth the cutting.”
“So you said; but I did not think so. We have some agates as good as any from Aberystwith or Perthshire. But what I want now is to open this case. It must be done quite privately, for a most particular reason. It does open, doesn't it? I am sure it does.”
“Certainly it opens,” Mr. Handkin answered, while I trembled with anxiety as he lightly felt it round the edges with fingers engrained with corundum. “I could open it in one instant, but the enamel might fly. Will you risk it?”
The Major looked at me, and I said, “Oh no; please not to risk any thing, if any slower process will do it without risk. We want it done without injury.”
“Then it will cost a good bit,” he replied. “I can open it for five shillings, if you run the risk; if that rests with me, I must charge five pounds.”
“Say three,” cried the Major. “Well, then, say four guineas: I have a lot of work in store for you.”
“I never overcharge, and I never depart from my figures,” the lapidary answered. “There is only one other man in London who knows the secret of this enamel, and he is my brother. They never make such enamel now. The art is lost, like that of the French paste of a hundred years ago, which almost puzzles even me until I go behind it. I will give you my brother's address if you like; but instead of five pounds, he will charge you ten guineas--if it must be done in private. Without that condition, I can do it for two pounds. You wish to know why that should make such a difference. Well, for this simple reason: to make sure of the job, it must be done by daylight; it can be done only in my chief work-room; if no one is to see what I am about (and my men have sharp eyes, I can tell you), all my hands must be sacked for the afternoon, but not without their wages. That alone would go far toward the difference, and then there is the dropping of the jobs in hand, and waste of power, and so on. I have asked you too little, Major Hockin, I assure you; but having said, I will stick to it, although I would much rather you would let me off.”
“I have known you for many years,” the Major answered--“ever since you were a boy, with a flat box, working at our Cornish opals. You would have done a lot of work for five pounds then. But I never knew you overcharge for any thing. We agree to your terms, and are obliged to you. But you guarantee no damage?”
“I will open this locket, take out its contents, whatever they may be, and reclose it so that the maker, if still alive--which is not very probable--should not know that it had been meddled with.”
“Very well; that is exactly what we want; for I have an idea about it which I may try to go on with afterward. And for that it is essential to have no symptom that it ever has been opened. What are these brilliants worth, Mr. Handkin?”
“Well, Sir, in the trade, about a hundred and fifty, though I dare say they cost three hundred. And the portrait is worth another hundred, if I find on the back the marks I expect.”
“You do not mean to say that you know the artist?” I could not help exclaiming, though determined not to speak. “Oh, then, we shall find out every thing!”
“Erema, you are a--well, you are a silly!” Major Hockin exclaimed, and then colored with remembering that rather he should have let my lapse pass. But the lapidary seemed to pay no attention, only to be calling down to some one far below. “Now mind what you say,” the Major whispered to me, just as if he were the essence of discretion.
“The work-room is clear now,” Mr. Handkin said; “the fellows were delighted to get their afternoon. Now you see that I have to take off this hoop, and there lies the difficulty. I could have taken out the gold back, as I said, with very little trouble, by simply cutting it. But the locket would never have been quite the same, though we put a new back; and, more than that, the pressure of the tool might flaw the enamel, or even crack the portrait, for the make of this thing is peculiar. Now first I submit the rim or verge, without touching the brilliants, mind you, to the action of a little preparation of my own--a gentle but penetrative solvent. You are welcome to watch me; you will be none the wiser; you are not in the trade, though the young lady looks as if she would make a good polisher. Very well: if this were an ordinary closure, with two flat surfaces meeting, the solvent would be absorbed into the adhesion, expansion would take place, and there we have it. But this is what we call a cyme-joint, a cohesion of two curved surfaces, formed in a reflex curve which admits the solvent most reluctantly, or, indeed, not at all, without too long application. For that, then, another kind of process is needful, and we find it in frictional heat applied most gradually and judiciously. For that I must have a buff-leather wheel, whose revolutions are timed to a nicety, and that wheel I only have in this room. Now you see why I sent the men away.”
Though I watched his work with great interest, it is out of my power to describe it now, and, moreover, it is not needful. Major Hockin, according to his nature, grew quite restless and impatient, and even went out for a walk, with his cane unpacked and unsheathed against cabmen. But I was content to wait and watch, having always heard and thought that good work will not do itself, but must have time and skill to second it. And Mr. Handkin, moving arms, palms, and fingers beautifully, put the same thought into words.
“Good work takes a deal of time to do; but the man that does it all the time knows well that it will take long to undo. Here it comes undone at last!”
As he spoke, the excitable Major returned.
“Done it, eh? Well, you are a clever fellow. Now don't look inside it; that is no part of your business, nor mine either, unless this young lady desires it. Hand it to her first, my friend.”
“Wait half a minute,” said the lapidary; “it is so far opened that the hoop spins round, but it must not be taken off until it cools. The lady may lift it then with care. I have done this job as a piece of fine art; I have no wish to see any more of it.”
“Handkin, don't you be so touchy to a brother Cornishman. I thought that I was Cornish enough, but you go cliffs beyond me.”
“Well, Major Hockin,” the lapidary answered, “I beg your pardon, if I said harm. But a man doing careful and skilled work--and skilled work it is, at every turn of the hand, as miss can bear witness, while you walked off--he don't care who it is, Major Hockin, he would fight his own brother to maintain it.”
“Very well, very well. Let us come away. I always enter into every body's feelings. I see yours as clearly, Handkin, as if you had laid them open on that blessed wheel. My insight has always been remarkable. Every one, without exception, says that of me. Now come away, come away--will you never see?”
Intent as I was upon what lay in my left palm relaxing itself, I could not help being sorry for the way in which the man of art, after all his care, was ground down by his brother Cornishman. However, he had lived long enough in the world to feel no surprise at ingratitude.
Now I went to one of the windows, as the light (which had been very good) began to pale from its long and labored sufferance of London, and then, with soft and steady touch, I lifted off the loosened hoop. A smell of mustiness--for smells go through what nothing else can--was the first thing to perceive, and then, having moved the disk of gold, I found a piece of vellum. This was doubled, and I opened it, and read, in small clear writing: “May 7, 1809 A.D., George, Lord Castlewood, married Winifred, only child of Thomas Hoyle, as this his signature witnesseth.
“CASTLEWOOD.
“(Witness) THOMAS HOYLE.”
There was nothing more inside this locket, except two little wisps of hair tied with gold thread, and the miniature upon ivory, bearing on the back some anagram, probably that of the artist.
Already had I passed through a great many troubles, changes, chances, and adventures which always seem strange (when I come to look back), but never surprised me at the moment. Indeed, I might almost make bold to pronounce that not many persons of my age and sex have been visited, wholly against their own will, by such a series of incidents, not to say marvelous, but at any rate fairly to be called unusual. And throughout them perhaps it will be acknowledged by all who have cared to consider them, that up to the present time I did not fail more than themselves might have done in patience. And in no description of what came to pass have I colored things at all in my own favor--at least so far as intention goes--neither laid myself out to get sympathy, though it often would have done me a world of good.
But now I am free to confess that my patience broke down very sadly. Why, if what was written on that vellum was true, and Major Hockin correct as well, it came to no less than this, that my own dear father was a base-born son, and I had no right to the name I was so proud of! If, moreover, as I now began to dream, that terrible and mysterious man did not resemble my father so closely without some good reason, it seemed too likely that he might be his elder brother and the proper heir.
This was bad enough to think of, but an idea a thousandfold worse assailed me in the small hours of the night, as I lay on Mrs. Strouss's best bed, which she kept for consuls, or foreign barons, or others whom she loved to call “international notorieties.” Having none of these now, she assigned me that bed after hearing all I had to say, and not making all that she might have done of it, because of the praise that would fall to Mrs. Busk.
However, she acknowledged that she knew nothing of the history of “the poor old lord.” He might have carried on, for all she could tell, with many wives before his true one--a thing she heard too much of; but as for the Captain not being his true son and the proper heir to the peerage, let any one see him walk twice, and then have a shadow of a doubt about it! This logic pleased but convinced me not, and I had to go to bed in a very unhappy, restless, and comfortless state of mind.
I hope that, rather than myself, that bed, full of international confusion, is to blame for the wicked ideas which assailed me while I could not even try to sleep. One of them--and a loyal daughter could scarcely have a worse one--was that my own dear father, knowing Lord Castlewood's bad behavior, and his own sad plight in consequence, and through that knowledge caring little to avenge his death, for wife and children's sake preferred to foil inquiry rather than confront the truth and challenge it. He might not have meant to go so far, at first beginning with it; but, starting once, might be driven on by grievous loss, and bitter sense of recreant friends, and the bleak despair of a homeless world before him. And serving as the scape-goat thus, he might have received from the real culprit a pledge for concealment of the family disgrace.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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48
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A RETURN CALL
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In the morning I labored to dismiss these thoughts, these shameful suspicions, almost as injurious to my father's honor as it was to suspect him of the crime itself. And calling back my memories of him, and dwelling on what Mr. Shovelin said, and Uncle Sam and others, I became quite happy in the firm conviction that I ought to be put upon bread and water for having such vile visions. Then suddenly a thing came to my mind which shattered happy penitence.
Major Hockin had spoken of another purpose which he had in store while bringing me thus to London--another object, that is to say, besides the opening of the trinket. And this his second intention was to “have it out,” as he expressed it, “with that league of curs and serpents, Vypan, Goad, and Terryer.” This was the partnership whose card of business had been delivered at the sawmills under circumstances which, to say the least, required explanation. And the Major, with strong words and tugs of his head-crest, had vowed to get that explanation, or else put the lot of them into a police dock.
Moreover, when, at the opening of the locket, I did not think fit to show the lapidary what I had found inside it, except the painting on ivory (which proved to be as he expected), and when my companion suppressed curiosity at the risk of constitution, and while I could scarcely tell what I was about (through sudden shock and stupidity), I must have been hurried on to tell Major Hockin the whole of the private things I had discovered. For, in truth, there was scarcely any time to think; and I was afraid of giving way, which must have befallen me without relief of words; and being so much disturbed I may, in the cab, have rushed off for comfort to the Major, sitting so close to me. No doubt I did so, from what happened afterward; but in the morning, after such a night, I really could not be certain what I had said to Betsy, and what to him.
A large mind would have been steady throughout, and regarded the question of birth as a thing to which we, who are not consulted about it, should bear ourselves indifferently. And gladly would I have done so, if I could, but the power was not in me. No doubt it served me right for having been proud about such a trifle; but though I could call it a trifle as long as it seemed to be in my favor, my strength of mind was not enough to look at it so when against me.
Betsy told me not to be like that, for I had a great deal to go through yet, and must not be drawing on my spirit so, every atom of which would be needful. For the General--as she called the Major--was coming to fetch me at eleven o'clock to face some abominable rascals, and without any breakfast how could I do it? Then I remembered all about the appointment to go to Messrs. Vypan, Goad, and Terryer, and beginning to think about them, I saw sad confirmation of my bad ideas. My father's wicked elder brother by another mother had left his own rights pending, as long as my father lived, for good reason. For if the latter had turned against him, through a breach of compact, things might go ill in a criminal court; but having him silenced now by death, this man might come forward boldly and claim estates and title. His first point would be to make sure as sure could be of the death of my father, to get hold of his private papers, and of me, who might possess dangerous knowledge. And if this were so, one could understand at once Mr. Goad's attempt upon Uncle Sam.
“Now none of this! none of this, I say, Erema!” Major Hockin exclaimed, as he ran in and saw me scarcely even caring to hold my own with the gentle Maximilian--to which name Mr. Strouss was promoted from the too vernacular “Hans.” “My dear, I never saw you look ill before. Why, bless my heart, you will have crows'-feet! Nurse, what are you doing with her? Look at her eyes, and be ashamed of yourself. Give her goulard, tisane, tiffany--I never know what the proper word is--something, any thing, volatile Sally, hartshorn, ammonia, aromatic vinegar, saline draught, or something strong. Why, I want her to look at her very, very best.”
“As if she was a-going to a ball, poor dear!” Betsy Strouss replied, with some irony. “A young lady full of high spirits by nature, and have never had her first dance yet! The laws and institutions of this kingdom is too bad for me, General. I shall turn foreigner, like my poor husband.”
“It is vere goot, vere goot always,” said the placid Maximilian; “foreigner dis way, foreigner dat way; according to de hills, or de sea, or de fighting, or being born, or someting else.”
“Hold your tongue, Hans,” cried his Wilhelmina; “remember that you are in England now, and must behave constitutionally. None of your loose outlandish ideas will ever get your bread in England. Was I born according to fighting, or hills, or sea, or any thing less than the will of the Lord, that made the whole of them, and made you too? General, I beg you to excuse him, if you can. When he gets upon such things, he never can stop. His goodness is very great; but he must have a firm hand put upon his 'philosophy.' Maximilian, you may go and smoke your pipe for an hour and a quarter, and see where the cheapest greens and oil are, for his Excellence is coming in to-night; and mind you get plenty of stump in them. His Excellence loves them, and they fill the dish, besides coming cheaper. Now, Miss Erema, if you please, come here. Trust you in me, miss, and soon I will make you a credit to the General.”
I allowed her to manage my dress and all that according to her own ideas; but when she entreated to finish me up with the “leastest little touch of red, scarcely up to the usual color, by reason of not sleeping,” I stopped her at once, and she was quite content with the color produced by the thought of it. Meanwhile Major Hockin, of course, was becoming beyond all description impatient. He had made the greatest point of my being adorned, and expected it done in two minutes! And he hurried me so, when I did come down, that I scarcely noticed either cab or horse, and put on my new gloves anyhow.
“My dear, you look very nice,” he said at last, when thoroughly tired of grumbling. “That scoundrel of a Goad will be quite amazed at sight of the child he went to steal.”
“Mr. Goad!” I replied, with a shudder, caused, perhaps, by dark remembrance; “if we go to the office, you surely will not expect me to see Mr. Goad himself?”
“That depends, as the Frenchmen say. It is too late now to shrink back from any thing. If I can spare you, I will. If not, you must not be ashamed to show yourself.”
“I am never ashamed to show myself. But I would rather not go to that place at all. If things should prove to be as I begin to think, I had better withdraw from the whole of it, and only lament that I ever began. My father was right; after all, my father was wise; and I ought to have known it. And perhaps Uncle Sam knew the truth, and would not tell me, for fear of my rushing to the Yosemite. Cabman, please to turn the horse and go in the opposite direction.” But the Major pulled me back, and the driver lifted his elbow and said, “All right.”
“Erema,” the Major began, quite sternly, “things are gone a little too far for this. We are now embarked upon a most important investigation”--even in my misery I could scarce help smiling at his love of big official words--“an investigation of vast importance. A crime of the blackest dye has been committed, and calmly hushed up, for some petty family reason, for a period of almost twenty years. I am not blaming your father, my dear; you need not look so indignant. It is your own course of action, remember, which has led to the present--the present--well, let us say imbroglio. A man of honor and an officer of her Majesty's service stands now committed at your request--mind, at your own request--” “Yes, yes, I know; but I only meant you to--to go as far as I should wish.”
“Confidential instructions, let us say; but there are times when duty to society overrides fine feeling. I have felt that already. The die is cast. No half-and-half measures, no beating about the bush, for me. After what I saw yesterday, and the light that burst upon me, I did not act hastily--I never do, though slow coaches may have said so. I put this and that together carefully, and had my dinner, and made up my mind. And you see the result in that man on the box.”
“The cabman? Oh yes, you resolved to have a cab, and drive to those wicked informers.”
“Where are your eyes? You are generally so quick. This morning you are quite unlike yourself--so weak, so tearful, and timorous. Have you not seen that by side of the cabman there sits another man altogether? One of the most remarkable men of the age, as your dear Yankees say.”
“Not a policeman in disguise, I hope. I saw a very common, insignificant man. I thought he was the driver's groom, perhaps.”
“Hush! he hears every thing, even on this granite. He is not a policeman; if he were, a few things that disgrace the force never would happen. If the policemen of England did their duty as our soldiers do, at once I would have gone to them; my duty would have been to do so. As it is, I go to our private police, who would not exist if the force were worth a rap. Vypan, Goad, and Terryer, in spite of Goad's clumsiness, rank second. I go to the first of all these firms, and I get their very cleverest rascal.”
Major Hockin, speaking in this hoarse whisper--for he could not whisper gently--folded his arms, and then nodded his head, as much as to say, “I have settled it now. You have nothing to do but praise me.” But I was vexed and perplexed too much to trust my voice with an answer.
“The beauty of this arrangement is,” he continued, with vast complacency, “that the two firms hate one another as the devil hates--no, that won't do; there is no holy water to be found among them--well, as a snake hates a slow-worm, let us say. 'Set a thief to catch a thief' is a fine old maxim; still better when the two thieves have robbed one another.”
As he spoke, the noble stranger slipped off the driving seat without troubling the cabman to stop his jerking crawl, and he did it so well that I had no chance of observing his nimble face or form. “You are disappointed,” said the Major, which was the last thing I would have confessed. “You may see that man ten thousand times, and never be able to swear to him. Ha! ha! he is a oner!”
“I disdain such mean tricks beyond all expression,” I exclaimed, as was only natural, “and every thing connected with them. It is so low to talk of such things. But what in the world made him do it? Where does he come from, and what is his name?”
“Like all noble persons, he has got so many names that he does not know which is the right one; only his are short and theirs are long. He likes 'Jack' better than any thing else, because it is not distinctive. 'Cosmopolitan Jack,' some call him, from his combining the manners and customs, features and figures, of nearly all mankind. He gets on with every one, for every one is gratified by seeing himself reflected in him. And he can jump from one frame to another as freely as Proteus or the populace. And yet, with all that, he is perfectly honest to any allegiance he undertakes. He would not betray us to Vypan, Goad, and Terryer for your great nugget and the Castlewood estates.”
“I have heard that there are such people,” I said; “but what can he possibly know about me? And what is he coming to do for us now?”
“He knows all about you, for a very simple reason. That you do not know him, is a proof of his ability. For you must have met him times out of number. This is the fellow employed by your good but incapable cousin, Lord Castlewood.”
“He is not incapable; he is a man of great learning, and noble character--” “Well, never mind that; you must not be so hot. What I mean is that he has done nothing for you beyond providing for your safety. And that he certainly did right well, and at considerable expense, for this man can't be had for nothing. You need have been under no terror at all in any of the scenes you have been through. Your safety was watched for continually.”
“Then why did he not come and help me? Why did he not find out that horrible man?”
“Because it was not in his orders, and Jack is the last man to go beyond those. He is so clever that the stupid Moonites took him for a stupid Moonite. You should have employed him yourself, Erema; but you are so proud and independent.”
“I should hope so, indeed. Should I put up with deceit? If the truth is not to be had without falsehood, it is not worth having. But what is this man to do here now?”
“That depends upon circumstances. He has better orders than I could give, for I am no hand at scheming. Here we are; or here we stop. Say nothing till I tell you. Pray allow me the honor. You keep in the background, remember, with your veil, or whatever you call it, down. Nobody stops at the very door. Of course that is humbug--we conform to it.”
With a stiff inclination, the gallant Major handed me out of the cab in a quiet corner of a narrow street, then paid the driver with less fuss than usual, and led me into a queer little place marked in almost illegible letters, “Little England Polygon.” “You have the card, my dear?” he whispered; “keep it till I call you in. But be ready to produce it in a moment. For the rest, I leave you to your own wit. Jack is on the watch, mind.”
There were two doors near together, one a brave door with a plate, and swung on playing hinges, the other of too secluded a turn to even pronounce itself “private.” We passed through the public door, and found only a lobby, with a boy on guard. “Mr. Goad? Yes, Sir. This way, Sir,” cried the boy. “Lady stay? Yes, Sir; waiting-room for ladies. Chair, miss; here, if you please--first right. Mr. Goad, second on the left. Knock twice. Paper, miss? Poker chained at this time of year. Bell A, glass of water. Bell B, cup of tea, if ladies grows impatient.”
If I had been well, I might have reduced this boy to his proper magnitude, for I never could endure young flippancy; but my spirits were so low that the boy banged the door with a fine sense of having vanquished me. And before there was any temptation to ring Bell A, not to mention Bell B, the sound of a wrathful voice began coming. Nearer and nearer it came, till the Major strode into the “ladies' waiting-room,” and used language no ladies should wait for.
“Oh, don't!” I said; “what would Mrs. Hockin say? And consider me too, Major Hockin, if you please.”
“I have considered you, and that makes me do it. Every body knows what I am. Did I ever exaggerate in all my life? Did I ever say any thing without just grounds? Did I ever take any distorted views? Did I ever draw upon my imagination? Erema, answer me this instant!”
“I do not remember a single instance of your drawing upon your imagination,” I answered, gravely, and did not add, “because there is none to draw upon.”
“Very well. I was sure of your concurrence. Then just come with me. Take my arm, if you please, and have the thief's card ready. Now keep your temper and your self-command.”
With this good advice, the Major, whose arm and whole body were jerking with wrath, led me rapidly down the long passage and through a door, and my eyes met the eyes of the very man who had tried to bribe Uncle Sam of me. He never saw me then, and he did not know me now; but his insolent eyes fell under mine. I looked at him quietly, and said nothing.
“Now, Mr. Goad, you still assert that you never were in California--never even crossed the Atlantic. This young lady under my protection--don't you be afraid, my dear--is the Honorable Erema Castlewood, whom you, in the pay of a murderer, went to fetch, and perhaps to murder. Now, do you acknowledge it? You wrote her description, and ought to know her. You double-dyed villain, out with it!”
“Major Hockin,” said Mr. Goad, trying to look altogether at his ease, but failing, and with his bull-dog forehead purple, “if indeed you are an officer--which I doubt for the credit of her Majesty's service--if the lady were not present, I should knock you down.” And the big man got up as if to do it.
“Never mind her,” my companion answered, in a magnanimous manner; “she has seen worse than that, poor thing. Here I am--just come and do it.”
The Major was scarcely more than half the size of Mr. Goad in mere bodily bulk, and yet he defied him in this way. He carefully took his blue lights off, then drew up the crest of his hair, like his wife's most warlike cock a-crowing, and laid down his rattan upon a desk, and doubled his fists, and waited. Then he gave a blink from the corner of his gables, clearly meaning, “Please to stop and see it out.” It was a distressing thing to see, and the Major's courage was so grand that I could not help smiling. Mr. Goad, however, did not advance, but assumed a superior manner.
“Major,” he said, “we are not young men; we must not be so hasty. You carry things with too high a hand, as veteran officers are apt to do. Sir, I make allowance for you; I retract my menace, and apologize. We move in different spheres of life, Sir, or I would offer you my hand.”
“No, thank you!” the Major exclaimed, and then looked sorry for his arrogance. “When a man has threatened me, and that man sees the mistake of doing so, I am pacified, Sir, in a moment; but it takes me some time to get over it. I have served his Gracious Majesty, and now hers, in every quarter of the civilized globe, with distinction, Sir--with distinction, and thanks, and no profit to taint the transaction, Sir. In many battles I have been menaced with personal violence, and have received it, as in such positions is equitable. I am capable, Sir, of receiving it still, and repaying it, not without interest.”
“Hang it, Major, if a man is sorry, a soldier forgives him frankly. You abused me, and I rashly threatened you. I beg your pardon, as a man should do, and that should be an end to it.”
“Very well, very well; say no more about it. But am I to understand that you still deny in that barefaced manner, with my witness here, the fact of your having been at Colonel Gundry's--my cousin, Sir, and a man not to be denied, without an insult to myself--a man who possesses ingots of gold, ingots of gold, enough to break the Bank of England, and a man whose integrity doubles them all. Have you not heard of the monster nugget, transcending the whole of creation, discovered by this young lady looking at you, in the bed of the saw-mill river, and valued at more than half a million?”
“You don't mean to say so? When was it? Sylvester never said a word about it--the papers, I mean, never mentioned it.”
“Try no more--well, I won't say lies, though they are confounded lies--what I mean is, no further evasion, Mr. Goad. Sylvester's name is enough, Sir. Here is the card of your firm, with your own note of delivery on the back, handed by you to my cousin, the Colonel. And here stands the lady who saw you do it.”
“Major, I will do my very best to remember. I am here, there, every where--China one day, Peru the next, Siberia the day after. And this young lady found the nugget, did she? How wonderfully lucky she must be!”
“I am lucky; I find out every thing; and I shall find out you, Mr. Goad.” Thus I spoke on the spur of the moment, and I could not have spoken better after a month of consultation. Rogues are generally superstitious. Mr. Goad glanced at me with a shudder, as I had gazed at him some three years back; and then he dropped his bad, oily-looking eyes.
“I make mistakes sometimes,” he said, “as to where I have been and where I have not. If this young lady saw me there, it stands to reason that I may have been there. I have a brother extremely similar. He goes about a good deal also. Probably you saw my brother.”
“I saw no brother of yours, but yourself. Yourself--your mean and cowardly self--and I shall bring you to justice.”
“Well, well,” he replied, with a poor attempt to turn the matter lightly; “I never contradict ladies; it is an honor to be so observed by them. Now, Major, can you give me any good reason for drawing upon a bad memory? My time is valuable. I can not refer to such by-gone matters for nothing.”
“We will not bribe you, if that is what you mean,” Major Hockin made answer, scornfully. “This is a criminal case, and we have evidence you little dream of. Our only offer is--your own safety, if you make a clean breast of it. We are on the track of a murderer, and your connection with him will ruin you. Unless you wish to stand in the dock at his side, you will tell us every thing.”
“Sir, this is violent language.”
“And violent acts will follow it: if you do not give up your principal, and every word you know about him, you will leave this room in custody. I have Cosmopolitan Jack outside, and the police at a sign from him will come.”
“Is this job already in the hands of the police, then?”
“No, not yet. I resolved to try you first. If you refuse, it will be taken up at once; and away goes your last chance, Sir.”
Mr. Goad's large face became like a field of conflicting passions and low calculations. Terror, fury, cupidity, and doggedness never had a larger battle-field.
“Allow me at least to consult my partners,” he said, in a low voice and almost with a whine; “we may do things irregular sometimes, but we never betray a client.”
“Either betray your client or yourself,” the Major answered, with a downright stamp. “You shall consult no one. You have by this watch forty-five seconds to consider it.”
“You need not trouble yourself to time me,” the other answered, sulkily; “my duty to the firm overrides private feeling. Miss Castlewood, I call you to witness, since Major Hockin is so peppery--” “Peppery, Sir, is the very last word that ever could be applied to me. My wife, my friends, every one that knows me, even my furthest-off correspondents, agree that I am pure patience.”
“It may be so, Major; but you have not shown it. Miss Castlewood, I have done you no harm. If you had been given up to me, you would have been safer than where you were. My honor would have been enlisted. I now learn things which I never dreamed of--or, at least--at least only lately. I always believed the criminality to be on the other side. We never ally ourselves with wrong. But lately things have come to my knowledge which made me doubtful as to facts. I may have been duped--I believe I have been: I am justified, therefore, in turning the tables.”
“If you turn tables,” broke in the Major, who was grumbling to himself at the very idea of having any pepper in his nature--“Goad, if you turn tables, mind you, you must do it better than the mesmerists. Out of this room you do not stir; no darkness--no bamboozling! Show your papers, Sir, without sleight of hand. Surrender, or you get no quarter.”
To me it was quite terrifying to see my comrade thus push his victory. Mr. Goad could have killed him at any moment, and but for me perhaps would have done so. But even in his fury he kept on casting glances of superstitious awe at me, while I stood quite still and gazed at him. Then he crossed the room to a great case of drawers, unlocked something above the Major's head, made a sullen bow, and handed him a packet.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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49
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WANTED, A SAWYER
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To judge Mr. Goad by his own scale of morality and honor, he certainly had behaved very well through a trying and unexpected scene. He fought for his honor a great deal harder than ever it could have deserved of him; and then he strove well to appease it with cash, the mere thought of which must have flattered it. However, it was none the worse for a little disaster of this kind. At the call of duty it coalesced with interest and fine sense of law, and the contact of these must have strengthened it to face any future production.
For the moment he laid it aside in a drawer--and the smallest he possessed would hold it--and being compelled to explain his instructions (partly in short-hand and partly in cipher), he kindly, and for the main of it truly, interpreted them as follows: “July 31, 1858. --Received directions from M. H. to attend without fail, at whatever expense, to any matter laid before us by a tall, dark gentleman bearing his card. M. H. considerably in our debt; but his father can not last long. Understand what he means, having dealt with this matter before, and managed well with it.
“August 2. --Said gentleman called, gave no name, and was very close. Had experienced some great wrong. Said that he was true heir to the C. estates now held by Lord C. Only required a little further evidence to claim them; and some of this was to be got through us. Important papers must be among the effects of the old lord's son, lately dead in California, the same for whom a reward had been offered, and we had been employed about it. Must get possession of those papers, and of the girl, if possible. Yankees to be bribed, at whatever figure, and always stand out for a high one. Asked where funds were to come from; gave good reference, and verified it. To be debited to the account of M. H. Said we would have nothing to do with it without more knowledge of our principal. Replied, with anger, that he himself was Lord C., ousted by usurpers. Had not the necessary proofs as yet, but would get them, and blast all his enemies. Had doubts about his sanity, and still greater about his solvency. Resolved to inquire into both points.
“August 3. --M. H. himself, as cool as ever, but shammed to be indignant. Said we were fools if we did not take it up. Not a farthing would he pay of his old account, and fellows like us could not bring actions. Also a hatful of money was to be made of this job, managed snugly. Emigrants to California were the easiest of all things to square up. A whole train of them disappeared this very year, by Indians or Mormons, and no bones made. The best and most active of us must go--too ticklish for an agent. We must carry on all above-board out there, and as if sent by British government. In the far West no one any wiser. Resolved to go myself, upon having a certain sum in ready.
“August 5. --The money raised. Start for Liverpool to-morrow. Require a change, or would not go. May hit upon a nugget, etc., etc.” Mr. Goad's memoranda of his adventures, and signal defeat by Uncle Sam, have no claim to be copied here, though differing much from my account. With their terse unfeeling strain, they might make people laugh who had not sadder things to think of. And it matters very little how that spy escaped, as such people almost always seem to do.
“Two questions, Goad, if you please,” said Major Hockin, who had smiled sometimes, through some of his own remembrances; “what has happened since your return, and what is the name of the gentleman whom you have called 'M. H.?'”
“Is it possible that you do not know, Sir? Why, he told us quite lately that you were at his back! You must know Sir Montague Hockin.”
“Yes, yes; certainly I do,” the old man said, shortly, with a quick gleam in his eyes; “a highly respected gentleman now, though he may have sown his wild oats like the rest. To be sure; of course I know all about it. His meaning was good, but he was misled.”
In all my little experience of life nothing yet astonished me more than this. I scarcely knew whom to believe, or what. That the Major, most upright of men, should take up his cousin's roguery--all new to him--and speak of him thus! But he gave me a nudge; and being all confusion, I said nothing, and tried to look at neither of them, because my eyes must always tell the truth.
“As to the other point,” Mr. Goad went on; “since my embassy failed, we have not been trusted with the confidence we had the right to expect. Ours is a peculiar business, Sir: 'Trust me in all, or trust me not at all,' as one of our modern poets says, is the very essence of it. And possibly, Major, if that had been done, even your vigor and our sense of law might not have extorted from me what you have heard. Being cashiered, as we are, we act according to the strictest honor in divulging things no longer confided to us.”
“Goad, you have done yourself the utmost credit, legally, intellectually, and--well, I will not quite say morally. If I ever have a nasty job to do--at least I mean a stealthy one--which God, who has ever kept me straight, forbid! --I will take care not to lose your address. I have a very queer thing occurring on my manor--I believe it is bound up with this affair--never mind; I must think--I hate all underhanded work.”
“Major, our charges are strictly moderate. We do in a week what takes lawyers a twelvemonth. Allow me to hand you one of our new cards.”
“No, no. My pockets are all full. And I don't want to have it found among my papers. No offense, Mr. Goad, no offense at all. Society is not as it was when I was young. I condemn no modern institutions, Sir, though the world gets worse every day of its life.”
In terror of committing himself to any connection with such a firm, the Major put on his dark lights again, took up his cane, and let every body know, with a summary rap on the floor, that he might have relaxed, but would not allow any further liberty about it. And as he marched away, not proudly, yet with a very nice firmness, I was almost afraid to say any thing to him to disturb his high mental attitude. For Mrs. Hockin must have exclaimed that here was a noble spectacle.
“But one thing,” I forced myself to suggest; “do ask one thing before we go. That strange man who called himself 'Lord Castlewood' here, and 'Captain Brown' at Soberton--have they any idea where to find him now? And why does he not come forward?”
My comrade turned back, and put these questions; and the private inquirer answered that they had no idea of his whereabouts, but could easily imagine many good reasons for his present reserve of claim. For instance, he might be waiting for discovery of further evidence; or (which was even more likely) for the death of the present Lord Castlewood, which could not be very far distant, and would remove the chief opponent. It grieved me deeply to find that my cousin's condition was so notorious, and treated of in such a cold-blooded way, like a mule fallen lame, or a Chinaman in Frisco.
“My dear, you must grow used to such things,” Major Hockin declared, when he saw that I was vexed, after leaving those selfish premises. “If it were not for death, how could any body live? Right feeling is shown by considering such points, and making for the demise of others even more preparation than for our own. Otherwise there is a selfishness about it by no means Christian-minded. You look at things always from such an intense and even irreligious point of view. But such things are out of my line altogether. Your Aunt Mary understands them best.”
“Would you be able,” I said, “to account to Aunt Mary conscientiously for that dreadful story which I heard you tell? I scarcely knew where I stood, Major Hockin.”
“You mean about Montague? Family honor must be defended at any price. Child, I was greatly pained to go beyond the truth; but in such a case it is imperative. I was shocked and amazed at my cousin's conduct; but how could I let such a fellow know that? And think what I owe to his father, Sir Rufus? No, no; there are times when Bayard himself must stretch a point. Honor and religion alike demand it; and Mrs. Hockin need never hear of it.”
“Certainly I shall not speak of it,” I answered, though a little surprised at his arguments; “but you mean, of course, to find out all about it. It seems to me such a suspicious thing. But I never could bear Sir Montague.”
The Major smiled grimly, and, perceiving that he wished to drop the subject, I said no more. He had many engagements in London always, and I must not attempt to engross his time. However, he would not for a moment hear of leaving me any where but with Betsy, for perhaps he saw how strange I was. And, being alone at last with her, I could keep up my pride no longer.
Through all that had happened, there never had been such a dreadful trial as I had borne this day without a word to any one. Danger and loss and sad dreariness of mind, from want of young companionship; mystery also, and obscurity of life, had always been my fortune. With all of these I had striven, to the best of my very small ability, having from nature no gift except the dull one of persistence. And throughout that struggle I had felt quite sure that a noble yearning for justice and a lofty power of devotion were my two impelling principles. But now, when I saw myself sprung of low birth, and the father of my worship base-born, down fell all my arduous castles, and I craved to go under the earth and die.
For every word of Mr. Goad, and every crooked turn of little things in twist against me--even the Major's last grim smile--all began to work together, and make up a wretched tumult, sounding in my ears like drums. Where was the use of going on, of proving any body's guilt or any body's innocence, if the utmost issue of the whole would be to show my father an impostor? Then, and only then, I knew that love of abstract justice is to little minds impossible, that sense of honor is too prone to hang on chance of birth, and virtue's fountain, self-respect, springs but ill from parental taint.
When I could no longer keep such bitter imaginings to myself, but poured them forth to Betsy, she merely laughed, and asked me how I could be such a simpleton. Only to think of my father in such a light was beyond her patience! Where was my pride, she would like to know, and my birth, and my family manners? However, she did believe there was something in my ideas, if you turned them inside out, and took hold of them by the other end. It was much more likely, to her mind, that the villain, the unknown villain at the bottom of all the misery, was really the son born out of wedlock, if any such there were at all, and therefore a wild harum-scarum fellow like Ishmael in the Book of Genesis. And it would be just of a piece, she thought, with the old lord's character to drive such a man to desperation by refusing to give him a farthing.
“All that might very well be,” I answered; “but it would in no way serve to explain my father's conduct, which was the great mystery of all.” Nevertheless, I was glad to accept almost any view of the case rather than that which had forced itself upon me since the opening of the locket. Any doubt of that most wretched conclusion was a great relief while it lasted; and, after so long a time of hope and self-reliance, should I cast away all courage through a mere suspicion?
While I was thus re-assuring myself, and being re-assured by my faithful nurse, sad news arrived, and drove my thoughts into another crooked channel. Mrs. Hockin, to meet my anxiety for some tidings from California, had promised that if any letter came, she would not even wait for the post, but forward it by special messenger. And thus, that very same evening, I received a grimy epistle, in an unknown hand, with the postmark of Sacramento. Tearing it open, I read as follows: “MISS 'REMA,--No good luck ever came, since you, to this Blue River Station, only to be washed away, and robbed by greasers, and shot through the ribs, and got more work than can do, and find an almighty nugget sent by Satan. And now the very worst luck of all have come, wholly and out of all denial, by you and your faces and graces and French goings on. Not that I do not like you, mind; for you always was very polite to me, and done your best when you found me trying to put up with the trials put on me. But now this trial is the worst of all that ever come to my establishings; and to go away now as I used to think of doing when tyrannized upon is out of my way altogether, and only an action fit for a half-breed. Sawyer Gundry hath cut and run, without a word behind him--no instructions for orders in hand, and pouring in--no directions where to find him, not even 'God bless you' to any one of the many hands that looked up to him. Only a packet of dollars for me to pay the wages for two months to come, and a power of lawyer to receive all debts, and go on anyhow just the same. And to go on just the same is more than the worst of us has the heart for, without the sight of his old red face. He may have been pretty sharp, and too much the master now and then, perhaps; but to do without him is a darned sight worse, and the hands don't take to me like him. Many's the time I have seen his faults, of having his own way, and such likes, and paying a man beyond his time if his wife was out of order. And many's the time I have said myself I was fitter to be at the head of it.
“About that I was right enough, perhaps, if I had started upon my own hook; but to stand in the tracks he has worn to his own foot is to go into crooked compasses. There is never a day without some hand threatening to strike and to better himself, as if they were hogs to come and go according to the acorns; and such low words I can never put up with, and packs them off immediate. No place can be carried on if the master is to shut up his lips to impudence. And now I have only got three hands left, with work enough for thirty, and them three only stopped on, I do believe, to grumble of me if the Sawyer do come home!
“But what we all want to know--and old Suan took a black stick to make marks for you--is why the old man hath run away, and where. Young Firm, who was getting a sight too uppish for me to have long put up with him, he was going about here, there, and every where, from the very first time of your going away, opening his mouth a deal too much, and asking low questions how long I stopped to dinner. Old Suan said he was troubled in his mind, as the pale-faces do about young girls, instead of dragging them to their wigwams; and she would give him a spell to get over it. But nothing came of that; and when the war broke out, he had words with his grandfather, and went off, so they said, to join the rebels.
“Sawyer let him go, as proud as could be, though he would sooner have cut his own head off; and the very same night he sat down by his fire and shammed to eat supper as usual. But I happened to go in to get some orders, and, my heart, I would never wish to see such things again!
“The old man would never waste a bit of victuals, as you know, Miss 'Rema; and, being acquaint with Suan's way of watching, he had slipped all his supper aside from his plate, and put it on a clean pocket-handkerchief to lock it in the press till his appetite should serve; and I caught him in the act, and it vexed him. 'Ha'n't you the manners to knock at the door?' he said; and I said, 'Certainly,' and went back and done it; and, troubled as he was, he grinned a bit. Then he bowed his great head, as he always did when he knew he had gone perhaps a trifle too far with a man in my position. I nodded to forgive him, and he stood across, and saw that he could do no less than liquor me, after such behavior. But he only brought out one glass; and I said, 'Come, Colonel, square is square, you know.' 'Excuse of me, Martin,' he said; 'but no drop of strong drink passes the brim of my mouth till this gallivanting is done with. I might take too much, as the old men do, to sink what they don't want to think on.' 'You mean about bully-cock Firm,' says I; 'rebel Firm--nigger-driver Firm.' 'Hush!' he said; 'no bad words about it. He has gone by his conscience and his heart. What do we know of what come inside of him?'
“This was true enough, for I never did make that boy out to my liking: and the old man now was as stiff as a rock, and pretty nigh as peculiar. He made me a cocktail of his own patent, to show how firm his hand was; but the lines of his face was like wainscot mouldings, and the cords of his arm stood out like cogs. Then he took his long pipe, as he may have done perhaps every blessed night for the last fifty years; but that length of time ought to have learned him better than to go for to fill it upside down. 'Ha, ha!' he said; 'every thing is upside down since I was a man under heaven--countries and nations and kindreds and duties; and why not a old tobacco-pipe? That's the way babies blow bubbles with them. We shall all have to smoke 'em that way if our noble republic is busted up. Fill yours, and try it, Martin.'
“Instead of enjoying my cocktail, Miss 'Rema, I never was so down at mouth; for, to my mind, his old heart was broken while he carried on so. And let every body say what they will, one thing there is no denying of. Never was seen on this side of the big hills a man fit to walk in the tracks of Uncle Sam, so large and good-hearted according to his lights, hard as a grizzly bear for a man to milk him, but soft in the breastbone as a young prairie-hen for all folk down upon their nine-pins.
“You may be surprised, miss, to find me write so long. Fact is, the things won't go out of my mind without it. And it gives me a comfort, after all I may have said, to put good opinions upon paper. If he never should turn up again, my language will be to his credit; whereas if he do come back, with the betting a horse to a duck against it, to his pride he will read this testimonial of yours, faithfully, MARTIN CLOGFAST.
“P.S.--Can't carry on like this much longer. Enough to rip one's heart up. You never would know the old place, miss. The heads of the horses is as long as their tails with the way they carry them; the moss is as big as a Spaniard's beard upon the kitchen door-sill; and the old dog howls all day and night, like fifty thousand scalpers. Suan saith, if you was to come back, the lad might run home after you. 'Tisn't the lad I cares about so much, but poor old Sawyer, at his time of life, swallowed up in the wilderness.”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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50
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THE PANACEA
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As if my own trouble were not enough, so deeply was I grieved by this sad news that I had a great mind to turn back on my own and fly to far-off disasters. To do so appeared for the moment a noble thing, and almost a duty; but now, looking back, I perceive that my instinct was right when it told me to stay where I was, and see out my own sad story first. And Betsy grew hot at the mere idea of my hankering after a miller's affairs, as she very rudely expressed it. To hear about lords and ladies, and their crimes and adventures, was lovely; but to dwell upon people of common birth, and in trade, was most unbeseeming. A man who mended his own mill, and had hands like horn--well, even she was of better blood than that, she hoped.
Before these large and liberal views had fairly been expounded, Major Hockin arrived, with his mind in such a state that he opened his watch every second.
“Erema, I must speak to you alone,” he cried; “no, not even you, Mrs. Strouss, if you please. If my ward likes to tell you, why, of course she can; but nobody shall say that I did. There are things that belong to the family alone. The most loyal retainers--you know what I mean.”
“General, I was not aware that you belonged to the family. But this way, Sir; this way, if you please. There is lath and plaster to that wall, and a crack in the panel of the door, Sir. But here is a room where I keep my jams, with double brick and patent locks, from sweet-toothed lodgers. The 'scutcheon goes over the key-hole, General. Perhaps you will see to that, while I roll up the carpet outside; and then, if any retainers come, you will hear their footsteps.”
“Bless the woman, what a temper she has!” whispered the Major, in dread of her ears. “Is she gone, Erema? She wants discipline.”
“Yes, she is gone,” I said, trying to be lightsome; “but you are enough to frighten any one.”
“So far from that, she has quite frightened me. But never mind such trifles. Erema, since I saw you I have discovered, I may almost say, every thing.”
Coming upon me so suddenly, even with all allowance made for the Major's sanguine opinion of his own deeds, this had such effect upon my flurried brain that practice alone enabled me to stand upright and gaze at him.
“Perhaps you imagined when you placed the matter in my hands, Miss Castlewood,” he went on, with sharp twinkles from the gables of his eyes, but soft caresses to his whiskers, “that you would be left in the hands of a man who encouraged a crop of hay under his feet. Never did you or any body make a greater mistake. That is not my character, Miss Castlewood.”
“Why do you call me 'Miss Castlewood' so? You quite make me doubt my own right to the name.”
Major Hockin looked at me with surprise, which gladdened even more than it shamed me. Clearly his knowledge of all, as he described it, did not comprise the disgrace which I feared.
“You are almost like Mrs. Strouss to-day,” he answered, with some compassion. “What way is the wind? I have often observed that when one female shows asperity, nearly all the others do the same. The weather affects them more than men, because they know nothing about it. But to come back--are you prepared to hear what I have got to tell you?”
I bowed without saying another word. For he should be almost the last of mankind to give a lecture upon irritation.
“Very well; you wish me to go on. Perceiving how sadly you were upset by the result of those interviews, first with Handkin, and then with Goad, after leaving you here I drove at once to the office, studio, place of business, or whatever you please to call it, of the famous fellow in the portrait line, whose anagram, private mark, or whatever it is, was burned into the back of the ivory. Handkin told me the fellow was dead, or, of course, his work would be worth nothing; but the name was carried on, and the register kept, at a little place somewhere in Soho, where, on the strength of his old repute, they keep up a small trade with inferior hands. I gave them a handsome order for a thing that will never be handsome, I fear--my old battered physiognomy. And then I produced the locket which in some queer state of mind you had given me, and made them hunt out their old books, and at last discovered the very entry. But to verify it I must go to Paris, where his son is living.”
“Whose son? Lord Castlewood's?”
“Erema, have you taken leave of your senses? What son has Lord Castlewood? The artist's son, to be sure; the son of the man who did the likeness. Is it the vellum and the stuff upon it that has so upset your mind? I am glad that you showed it to me, because it would have been mean to do otherwise. But show it to no one else, my dear, except your cousin, Lord Castlewood. He has the first right of all to know it, though he will laugh at it as I do. Trumpery of that sort! Let them produce a certified copy of a register. If they could do that, need they ever have shot that raffish old lord--I beg pardon, my dear--your highly respected grandfather? No, no; don't tell me. Nicholas Hockin was never in any way famous for want of brains, my dear, and he tells you to keep your pluck up.”
“I never can thank you enough,” I replied, “for such inspiriting counsel. I have been rather miserable all this day. And I have had such a letter from America!”
Without my intending any offer of the kind, or having such idea at the furthest tip of any radius of mind, I found myself under a weight about the waist, like the things the young girls put on now. And this was the arm of the Major, which had been knocked about in some actions, but was useful still to let other people know, both in this way and that, what he thought of them. And now it let me know that he pitied me.
This kindness from so old a soldier made me partial to him. He had taken an age to understand me, because my father was out of the army almost before I was born, and therefore I had no traditions. Also, from want of drilling, I had been awkward to this officer, and sometimes mutinous, and sometimes a coward. All that, however, he forgave me when he saw me so downhearted; and while I was striving to repress all signs, the quivering of my lips perhaps suggested thoughts of kissing. Whereupon he kissed my forehead with nice dry lips, and told me not to be at all afraid.
“How many times have you been brave?” he inquired, to set me counting, knowing from all his own children, perhaps, that nothing stops futile tears and the waste of sobs like prompt arithmetic. “Six, if not seven, times you have displayed considerable valor. Are you going to fall away through some wretched imagination of your own? Now don't stop to argue--time will not allow it. I have put Cosmopolitan Jack as well upon the track of Captain Brown. I have not told you half of what I could tell, and what I am doing; but never mind, never mind; it is better that you should not know too much, my dear. Young minds, from their want of knowledge of the world, are inclined to become uneasy. Now go to bed and sleep soundly, Erema, for we have lots to do to-morrow, and you have had a most worrying day to-day. To-morrow, of course, you must come with me to Paris. You can parleyvoo better than I can.”
However, as it happened, I did nothing of the kind, for when he came back in the morning, and while he was fidgeting and hurrying me, and vowing that we should lose the tidal train, a letter from Bruntsea was put into my hand. I saw Mrs. Price's clear writing, followed by good Aunt Mary's crooked lines, and knew that the latter must have received it too late to be sent by her messenger. In few words it told me that if I wished to see my cousin alive, the only chance was to start immediately.
Shock and self-reproach and wonder came (as usual) before grief, which always means to stay, and waits to get its mourning ready. I loved and respected my cousin more deeply than any one living, save Uncle Sam; and now to lose them both at once seemed much too dreadful to be true. There was no time to think. I took the Major's cab, and hurried off to Paddington, leaving him to catch his tidal train.
Alas! when I got to Castlewood, there was but a house of mourning! Faithful Stixon's eyes were dim, and he pointed upward and said, “Hush!” I entered with great awe, and asked, “How long?” And he said, “Four-and-twenty hours now; and a more peacefuller end was never seen, and to lament was sinful; but he was blessed if he could help it.” I told him, through my tears, that this was greatly to his credit, and he must not crush fine feelings, which are an honor to our nature. And he said that I was mistress now, and must order him to my liking.
I asked him to send Mrs. Price to me, if she was not too busy; and he answered that he believed her to be a very good soul, and handy. And if he ever had been thought to speak in a sense disparishing of her, such things should not be borne in mind, with great afflictions over us. Mrs. Price, hearing that I was come, already was on her way to me, and now glanced at the door for Mr. Stixon to depart, in a manner past misunderstanding.
“He gives himself such airs!” she said; “sometimes one would think--but I will not trouble you now with that, Miss Castlewood, or Lady Castlewood--which do you please to be called, miss? They say that the barony goes on, when there is no more Viscount.”
“I please to be called 'Miss Castlewood,' even if I have any right to be called that. But don't let us talk of such trifles now. I wish to hear only of my cousin.”
“Well, you know, ma'am, what a sufferer he has been for years. If ever an angel had pains all over, and one leg compulsory of a walking-stick, that angel was his late lordship. He would stand up and look at one, and give orders in that beautiful silvery voice of his, just as if he was lying on a bed of down. And never a twitch, nor a hitch in his face, nor his words, nor any other part of him. I assure you, miss, that I have been quite amazed and overwhelmed with interest while looking at his poor legs, and thinking--” “I can quite enter into it. I have felt the same. But please to come to what has happened lately.”
“The very thing I was at the point of doing. Then last Sunday, God alone knows why, the pain did not come on at all. For the first time for seven years or more the pain forgot the time-piece. His lordship thought that the clock was wrong; but waited with his usual patience, though missing it from the length of custom, instead of being happy. But when it was come to an hour too late for the proper attack of the enemy, his lordship sent orders for Stixon's boy to take a good horse and ride to Pangbourne for a highly respectable lawyer. There was no time to fetch Mr. Spines, you see, miss, the proper solicitor, who lives in London. The gentleman from Pangbourne was here by eight o'clock; and then and there his lordship made his will, to supersede all other wills. He put it more clearly, the lawyer said, than he himself could have put it, but not, of course, in such legal words, but doubtless far more beautiful. Nobody in the house was forgotten; and the rule of law being, it seems, that those with best cause to remember must not witness, two of the tenants were sent for, and wrote down their names legitimate. And then his lordship lay back and smiled, and said, 'I shall have no more pain.'
“All that night and three days more he slept as sound as a little child, to make up for so many years. We called two doctors in; but they only whispered and looked dismal, and told us to have hot water ready at any hour of the day or night. Nobody loved him as I did, miss, from seeing so much of his troubles and miraculous way of bearing them; and I sat by the hour and hour, and watched him, trusting no paid nurses.
“It must have been eight o'clock on Wednesday morning--what is to-day? Oh, Friday--then Thursday morning it must have been, when the clouds opened up in the east, and the light of the sun was on the window-sill, not glaring or staring, but playing about, with patterns of leaves between it; and I went to screen it from his poor white face; but he opened his eyes, as if he had been half awake, half dreaming, and he tried to lift one of his thin, thin hands to tell me not to do it. So I let the curtain stay as it was, and crept back, and asked, very softly, 'Will your lordship have some breakfast?'
“He did not seem to comprehend me, but only watched the window; and if ever a blessed face there was, looking toward heaven's glory, his lordship had it, so that I could scarcely keep from sobbing. For I never had seen any living body die, but knew that it must be so. He heard me catching my breath, perhaps, or at any rate he looked at me; and the poor angel knew that I was a woman; and being full of high respect, as he always was for females--in spite of the way they had served him--it became apparent to his mind that the pearl button of his neck was open, as ordered by the doctors. And he tried to lift his hand to do it; and then he tried to turn away, but could not manage either. Poor dear! the only movement he could make was to a better world.
“Then I drew the sheet across his chest, and he gave me a little smile of thanks, and perhaps he knew whose hand it was. But the look of his kind soft eyes was flickering--not steady, I mean, miss--but glancing and stopping and going astray, as drops of rain do on the window-glass. But I could not endure to examine him much; at such a holy time I felt that to watch death was unholy.
“Perhaps I ought to have rung the bell for others to be present. But his lordship was always shy, you know, miss; and with none of his kindred left, and no wife to say 'good-by' to him, right or wrong I resolved alone to see him depart to his everlasting rest. And people may talk about hirelings, but I think nobody loved him as I did.”
Here Mrs. Price broke fairly down, and I could not help admiring her. To a faithful servant's humility and duty she had added a woman's pure attachment to one more gifted than herself, and ruined for life by her own sex. But she fell away frightened and ashamed beneath my look, as if I had caught her in sacrilege.
“Well, miss, we all must come and go,” she began again, rather clumsily; “and, good and great as he was, his lordship has left few to mourn for him. Only the birds and beasts and animals that he was so good to; they will miss him, if men don't. There came one of his favorite pigeons, white as snow all over, and sat on the sill of the window, and cooed, and arched up its neck for his fingers. And he tried to put his fingers out, but they were ice already. Whether that or something else brought home his thoughts, who knows, miss? but he seemed to mix the pigeon up with some of his own experience.
“'Say that I have forgiven her, if ever she did harm to me,' he whispered, without moving lips. 'Times and times, when I was young, I was not always steady;' and then he seemed to wander in his mind among old places; and he would have laughed at something if his voice had been sufficient.
“'Bitter grief and pain shall never come again,' he seemed to breathe, with a calm, soft smile, like a child with its rhyme about the rain when the sun breaks out; and sure enough, the sun upon the quilt above his heart was shining, as if there could be no more clouds. Then he whispered a few short words to the Lord, more in the way of thanks than prayer, and his eyes seemed to close of their own accord, or with some good spirit soothing them. And when or how his sleep passed from this world into the other there was scarcely the flutter of a nerve to show. There he lies, like an image of happiness. Will you come and see him?”
I followed her to the bedroom, and am very glad that I did so; for it showed me the bliss of a good man's rest, and took away my fear of death.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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51
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LIFE SINISTER
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When business and the little cares of earthly life awoke again, every one told me (to my great surprise and no small terror at first, but soon to increasing acquiescence) that I was now the mistress of the fair estates of Castlewood, and, the male line being extinct, might claim the barony, if so pleased me; for that, upon default of male heirs, descended by the spindle. And as to the property, with or without any will of the late Lord Castlewood, the greater part would descend to me under unbarred settlement, which he was not known to have meddled with. On the contrary, he confirmed by his last will the settlement--which they told me was quite needless--and left me all that he had to leave, except about a thousand pounds distributed in legacies. A private letter to me was sealed up with his will, which, of course, it would not behoove me to make public. But thus much--since our family history is, alas! so notorious--in duty to him I should declare. He begged me, if his poor lost wife--of whom he had never spoken to me--should re-appear and need it, to pay her a certain yearly sum, which I thought a great deal too much for her, but resolved to obey him exactly.
Neither the will nor the letter contained any reference to my grandfather, or the possibility of an adverse claim. I could not, however, be quit of deep uneasiness and anxiety, but stanchly determined that every acre should vanish in folds of “the long robe” rather than pass to a crafty villain who had robbed me of all my kindred. My hatred of that man deepened vastly, as he became less abstract, while my terror decreased in proportion. I began to think that, instead of being the reckless fiend I had taken him for, he was only a low, plotting, cold-blooded rogue, without even courage to save him. By this time he must have heard all about me, my pursuit of him, and my presence here--then why not come and shoot me, just as he shot my grandfather?
The idea of this was unwelcome; still, I felt no sort of gratitude, but rather a lofty contempt toward him for not having spirit to try it. In Shoxford church-yard he had expressed (if Sexton Rigg was not then deceived) an unholy wish to have me there, at the feet of my brothers and sisters. Also he had tried to get hold of me--doubtless with a view to my quietude--when I was too young to defend myself, and left at haphazard in a lawless land. What was the reason, if his mind was still the same, for ceasing to follow me now? Was I to be treated with contempt as one who had tried her best and could do nothing, as a feeble creature whose movements were not even worth inquiry? Anger at such an idea began to supersede fear, as my spirits returned.
Meanwhile Major Hockin was making no sign as to what had befallen him in Paris, or what Cosmopolitan Jack was about. But, strangely enough, he had sent me a letter from Bruntsea instead of Paris, and addressed in grand style to no less a person than “The right honorable Baroness Castlewood”--a title which I had resolved, for the present, neither to claim nor acknowledge. In that letter the Major mingled a pennyweight of condolence with more congratulation than the post could carry for the largest stamp yet invented. His habit of mind was to magnify things; and he magnified my small grandeur, and seemed to think nothing else worthy of mention.
Through love of the good kind cousin I had lost, even more than through common and comely respect toward the late head of the family, I felt it impossible to proceed, for the present, with any inquiries, but left the next move to the other side. And the other side made it, in a manner such as I never even dreamed of.
About three weeks after I became, in that sad way, the mistress, escaping one day from lawyers and agents, who held me in dreary interview, with long computations of this and of that, and formalities almost endless, I went, for a breath of good earnest fresh air, beyond precinct of garden or shrubbery. To me these seemed in mild weather to temper and humanize the wind too strictly, and take the wild spirit out of it; and now, for the turn of the moment, no wind could be too rough to tumble in. After long months of hard trouble, and worry, and fear, and sad shame, and deep sorrow, the natural spring of clear youth into air and freedom set me upward. For the nonce there was nothing upon my selfish self to keep it downward; troubles were bubbles, and grief a low thief, and reason almost treason. I drank the fine fountain of air unsullied, and the golden light stamped with the royalty of sun.
Hilarious moments are but short, and soon cold sense comes back again. Already I began to feel ashamed of young life's selfish outburst, and the vehement spring of mere bodily health. On this account I sat down sadly in a little cove of hill, whereto the soft breeze from the river came up, with a tone of wavelets, and a sprightly water-gleam. And here, in fern and yellow grass and tufted bights of bottom growth, the wind made entry for the sun, and they played with one another.
Besting here, and thinking, with my face between my hands, I wondered what would be the end. Nothing seemed secure or certain, nothing even steady or amenable to foresight. Even guess-work or the wider cast of dreams was always wrong. To-day the hills and valleys, and the glorious woods of wreathen gold, bright garnet, and deep amethyst, even that blue river yet unvexed by autumn's turbulence, and bordered with green pasture of a thousand sheep and cattle--to-day they all were mine (so far as mortal can hold ownership)--to-morrow, not a stick, or twig, or blade of grass, or fallen leaf, but might call me a trespasser. To see them while they still were mine, and to regard them humbly, I rose and took my black hat off--a black hat trimmed with mourning gray. Then turning round, I met a gaze, the wildest, darkest, and most awful ever fixed on human face.
“Who are you? What do you want here?” I faltered forth, while shrinking back for flight, yet dreading or unable to withdraw my gaze from his. The hollow ground barred all escape; my own land was a pit for me, and I must face this horror out. Here, afar from house or refuge, hand of help, or eye of witness, front to front I must encounter this atrocious murderer.
For moments, which were ages to me, he stood there without a word; and daring not to take my eyes from his, lest he should leap at me, I had no power (except of instinct), and could form no thought of him, for mortal fear fell over me. If he would only speak, would only move his lips, or any thing!
“The Baroness is not brave,” he said at last, as if reproachfully; “but she need have no fear now of me. Does her ladyship happen to know who I am?”
“The man who murdered my grandfather.”
“Yes, if you put a false color on events. The man who punished a miscreant, according to the truer light. But I am not here to argue points. I intend to propose a bargain. Once for all, I will not harm you. Try to listen calmly. Your father behaved like a man to me, and I will be no worse to you. The state of the law in this country is such that I am forced to carry fire-arms. Will it conduce to your peace of mind if I place myself at your mercy?”
I tried to answer; but my heart was beating so that no voice came, only a flutter in my trembling throat. Wrath with myself for want of courage wrestled in vain with pale, abject fear. The hand which offered me the pistol seemed to my dazed eyes crimson still with the blood of my grandfather.
“You will not take it? Very well; it lies here at your service. If your father's daughter likes to shoot me, from one point of view it will be just; and but for one reason, I care not. Don't look at me with pity, if you please. For what I have done I feel no remorse, no shadow of repentance. It was the best action of my life. But time will fail, unless you call upon your courage speedily. None of your family lack that; and I know that you possess it. Call your spirit up, my dear.”
“Oh, please not to call me that! How dare you call me that?”
“That is right. I did it on purpose. And yet I am your uncle. Not by the laws of men, but by the laws of God--if there are such things. Now, have you the strength to hear me?”
“Yes; I am quite recovered now. I can follow every word you say. But--but I must sit down again.”
“Certainly. Sit there, and I will stand. I will not touch or come nearer to you than a story such as mine requires. You know your own side of it; now hear mine.
“More than fifty years ago there was a brave young nobleman, handsome, rich, accomplished, strong, not given to drink or gambling, or any fashionable vices. His faults were few, and chiefly three--he had a headstrong will, loved money, and possessed no heart at all. With chances in his favor, this man might have done as most men do who have such gifts from fortune. But he happened to meet with a maiden far beneath him in this noble world, and he set his affections--such as they were--upon that poor young damsel.
“This was Winifred Hoyle, the daughter of Thomas Hoyle, a farmer, in a lonely part of Hampshire, and among the moors of Rambledon. The nobleman lost his way, while fishing, and being thirsty, went to ask for milk. What matter how it came about? He managed to win her heart before she heard of his rank and title. He persuaded her even to come and meet him in the valley far from her father's house, where he was wont to angle; and there, on a lonely wooden bridge across a little river, he knelt down (as men used to do) and pledged his solemn truth to her. His solemn lie--his solemn lie!
“Such love as his could not overleap the bars of rank or the pale of wealth--are you listening to me carefully? --or, at any rate, not both of them. If the poor farmer could only have given his Winifred 50,000 pounds, the peer would have dropped his pride, perhaps, so far as to be honest. But farmers in that land are poor, and Mr. Hoyle could give his only child his blessing only. And this he did in London, where his simple mind was all abroad, and he knew not church from chapel. He took his daughter for the wife of a lord, and so she took herself, poor thing! when she was but his concubine. In 1809 such tricks were easily played by villains upon young girls so simple.
“But he gave her attestation and certificate under his own hand; and her poor father signed it, and saw it secured in a costly case, and then went home as proud as need be for the father of a peer, but sworn to keep it three years secret, till the king should give consent. Such foul lies it was the pride of a lord to tell to a farmer.
“You do not exclaim--of course you do not. The instincts of your race are in you, because you are legitimate. Those of the robbed side are in me, because I am of the robbed. I am your father's elder brother. Which is the worse, you proud young womam, the dastard or the bastard?”
“You have wrongs, most bitter wrongs,” I answered, meeting fierce eyes mildly; “but you should remember that I am guiltless of those wrongs, and so was my father. And I think that if you talk of birth so, you must know that gentlemen speak quietly to ladies.”
“What concern is that of mine? A gentleman is some one's son. I am the son of nobody. But to you I will speak quietly, for the sake of your poor father. And you must listen quietly. I am not famous for sweet temper. Well, this great lord took his toy to Paris, where he had her at his mercy. She could not speak a word of French; she did not know a single soul. In vain she prayed him to take her to his English home; or, if not that, to restore her to her father. Not to be too long about it--any more than he was--a few months were enough for him. He found fault with her manners, with her speech, her dress, her every thing--all which he had right, perhaps, to do, but should have used it earlier. And she, although not born to the noble privilege of weariness, had been an old man's darling, and could not put up with harshness. From words they came to worse, until he struck her, told her of her shame, or rather his own infamy, and left her among strangers, helpless, penniless, and brokenhearted, to endure the consequence.
“There and thus I saw the light beneath most noble auspices. But I need not go on with all that. As long as human rules remain, this happy tale will always be repeated with immense applause. My mother's love was turned to bitter hatred of his lordship, and, when her father died from grief, to eager thirst for vengeance. And for this purpose I was born.
“You see that--for a bastard--I have been fairly educated; but not a farthing did his lordship ever pay for that, or even to support his casual. My grandfather Hoyle left his little all to his daughter Winifred; and upon that, and my mother's toil and mine, we have kept alive. Losing sight of my mother gladly--for she was full of pride, and hoped no more to trouble him, after getting her father's property--he married again, or rather he married for the first time without perjury, which enables the man to escape from it. She was of his own rank--as you know--the daughter of an earl, and not of a farmer. It would not have been safe to mock her, would it? And there was no temptation.
“The history of my mother and myself does not concern you. Such people are of no account until they grow dangerous to the great. We lived in cheap places and wandered about, caring for no one, and cared for by the same. Mrs. Hoyle and Thomas Hoyle we called ourselves when we wanted names; and I did not even know the story of our wrongs till the heat and fury of youth were past. Both for her own sake and mine my mother concealed it from me. Pride and habit, perhaps, had dulled her just desire for vengeance; and, knowing what I was, she feared--the thing which has befallen me. But when I was close upon thirty years old, and my mother eight-and-forty--for she was betrayed in her teens--a sudden illness seized her. Believing her death to be near, she told me, as calmly as possible, every thing, with all those large, quiet views of the past, which at such a time seem the regular thing, but make the wrong tenfold blacker. She did not die; if she had, it might have been better both for her and me, and many other people. Are you tired of my tale? Or do you want to hear the rest?”
“You can not be asking me in earnest,” I replied, while I watched his wild eyes carefully. “Tell me the rest, if you are not afraid.”
“Afraid, indeed! Then, for want of that proper tendance and comfort which a few pounds would have brought her, although she survived, she survived as a wreck, the mere relic and ruin of her poor unhappy self. I sank my pride for her sake, and even deigned to write to him, in rank and wealth so far above me, in every thing else such a clot below my heel. He did the most arrogant thing a snob can do--he never answered my letter.
“I scraped together a little money, and made my way to England, and came to that house--which you now call yours--and bearded that noble nobleman--that father to be so proud of! He was getting on now in years, and growing, perhaps, a little nervous, and my first appearance scared him. He got no obeisance from me, you may be certain, but still I did not revile him. I told him of my mother's state of mind, and the great care she required, and demanded that, in common justice, he, having brought her to this, should help her. But nothing would he promise, not a sixpence even, in the way of regular allowance. Any thing of that sort could only be arranged by means of his solicitors. He had so expensive a son, with a very large and growing family, that he could not be pledged to any yearly sum. But if I would take a draft for 100 pounds, and sign an acquittance in full of all claims, I might have it, upon proving my identity.
“What identity had I to prove? He had taken good care of that. I turned my back on him and left the house, without even asking for his curse, though as precious as a good man's blessing.
“It was a wild and windy night, but with a bright moon rising, and going across this park--or whatever it is called--I met my brother. At a crest of the road we met face to face, with the moon across our foreheads. We had never met till now, nor even heard of one another; at least he had never heard of me. He started back as if at his own ghost; but I had nothing to be startled at, in this world or the other.
“I made his acquaintance, with deference, of course, and we got on very well together. At one time it seemed good luck for him to have illegitimate kindred; for I saved his life when he was tangled in the weeds of this river while bathing. You owe me no thanks. I thought twice about it, and if the name would have ended with him, I would never have used my basket-knife. By trade I am a basket-maker, like many another 'love-child.'
“However, he was grateful, if ever any body was, for I ran some risk in doing it; and he always did his very best for me, and encouraged me to visit him. Not at his home--of course that would never do--but when he was with his regiment. Short of money as he always was, through his father's nature and his own, which in some points were the very opposite, he was even desirous to give me some of that; but I never took a farthing from him. If I had it at all, I would have it from the proper one. And from him I resolved to have it.
“How terrified you look! I am coming to it now. Are you sure that you can bear it? It is nothing very harrowing; but still, young ladies--” “I feel a little faint,” I could not help saying; “but that is nothing. I must hear the whole of it. Please to go on without minding me.”
“For my own sake I will not, as well as for yours. I can not have you fainting, and bringing people here. Go to the house and take food, and recover your strength, and then come here again. I promise to be here, and your father's daughter will not take advantage of my kindness.”
Though his eyes were fierce (instead of being sad) and full of strange tempestuous light, they bore some likeness to my father's, and asserted power over me. Reluctant as I was, I obeyed this man, and left him there, and went slowly to the house, walking as if in a troubled dream.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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52
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FOR LIFE, DEATH
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Upon my return, I saw nothing for a time but fans and feathers of browning fern, dark shags of ling, and podded spurs of broom and furze, and wisps of grass. With great relief (of which I felt ashamed while even breathing it), I thought that the man was afraid to tell the rest of his story, and had fled; but ere my cowardice had much time for self-congratulation a tall figure rose from the ground, and fear compelled me into courage. For throughout this long interview more and more I felt an extremely unpleasant conviction. That stranger might not be a downright madman, nor even what is called a lunatic; but still it was clear that upon certain points--the laws of this country, for instance, and the value of rank and station--his opinions were so outrageous that his reason must be affected. And, even without such proofs as these, his eyes and his manner were quite enough. Therefore I had need of no small caution, not only concerning my words and gestures, but as to my looks and even thoughts, for he seemed to divine these last as quickly as they flashed across me. I never had learned to conceal my thoughts, and this first lesson was an awkward one.
“I hope you are better,” he said, as kindly as it was possible for him to speak. “Now have no fear of me, once more I tell you. I will not sham any admiration, affection, or any thing of that kind; but as for harming you--why, your father was almost the only kind heart I ever met!”
“Then why did you send a most vile man to fetch me, when my father was dead in the desert?”
“I never did any thing of the sort. It was done in my name, but not by me; I never even heard of it until long after, and I have a score to settle with the man who did it.”
“But Mr. Goad told me himself that you came and said you were the true Lord Castlewood, and ordered him at once to America. I never saw truth more plainly stamped on a new situation--the face of a rogue--than I saw it then on the face of Mr. Goad.”
“You are quite right; he spoke the truth--to the utmost of his knowledge. I never saw Goad, and he never saw me. I never even dreamed of pretending to the title. I was personated by a mean, low friend of Sir Montague Hockin; base-born as I am, I would never stoop to such a trick. You will find out the meaning of that by-and-by. I have taken the law into my own hands--it is the only way to work such laws--I have committed what is called a crime. But, compared with Sir Montague Hockin, I am whiter than yonder shearling on his way to the river for his evening drink.”
I gazed at his face, and could well believe it. The setting sun shone upon his chin and forehead--good, resolute, well-marked features; his nose and mouth were keen and clear, his cheeks curt and pale (though they would have been better for being a trifle cleaner). There was nothing suggestive of falsehood or fraud, and but for the wildness of the eyes and flashes of cold ferocity, it might have been called a handsome face.
“Very well,” he began again, with one of those jerks which had frightened me, “your father was kind to me, very kind indeed; but he knew the old lord too well to attempt to interpose on my behalf. On the other hand, he gave no warning of my manifest resolve; perhaps he thought it a woman's threat, and me no better than a woman! And partly for his sake, no doubt, though mainly for my mother's, I made the short work which I made; for he was horribly straitened--and in his free, light way he told me so--by his hard curmudgeon of a father.
“To that man, hopeless as he was, I gave fair grace, however, and plenty of openings for repentance. None of them would he embrace, and he thought scorn of my lenity. And I might have gone on with such weakness longer, if I had not heard that his coach-and-four was ordered for the Moonstock Inn.
“That he should dare thus to pollute the spot where he had so forsworn himself! I resolved that there he should pay justice, either with his life or death. And I went to your father's place to tell him to prepare for disturbances; but he was gone to see his wife, and I simply borrowed a pistol.
“Now you need not be at all afraid nor shrink away from me like that. I was bound upon stricter justice than any judge that sets forth on circuit; and I meant to give, and did give, what no judge affords to the guilty--the chance of leading a better life. I had brought my mother to England, and she was in a poor place in London; her mind was failing more and more, and reverting to her love-time, the one short happiness of her life. 'If I could but see him, if I could but see him, and show him his tall and clever son, he would forgive me all my sin in thinking ever to be his wife. Oh, Thomas! I was too young to know it. If I could but see him once, just once!'
“How all this drove me no tongue can tell. But I never let her know it; I only said, 'Mother, he shall come and see you if he ever sees any body more!' And she trusted me and was satisfied. She only said, 'Take my picture, Thomas, to remind him of the happy time, and his pledge to me inside of it.' And she gave me what she had kept for years in a bag of chamois leather, the case of which I spoke before, which even in our hardest times she would never send to the pawn-shop.
“The rest is simple enough. I swore by the God, or the Devil, who made me, that this black-hearted man should yield either his arrogance or his life. I followed him to the Moon valley, and fate ordained that I should meet him where he forswore himself to my mother; on that very plank where he had breathed his deadly lies he breathed his last. Would you like to hear all about it?”
For answer I only bowed my head. His calm, methodical way of telling his tale, like a common adventure with a dog, was more shocking than any fury.
“Then it was this. I watched him from the Moonstock Inn to a house in the village, where he dined with company; and I did not even know that it was the house of his son, your father--so great a gulf is fixed between the legitimate and the bastard! He had crossed the wooden bridge in going, and was sure to cross it in coming back. How he could tread those planks without contrition and horror--but never mind. I resolved to bring him to a quiet parley there, and I waited in the valley.
“The night was soft, and dark in patches where the land or wood closed in; and the stream was brown and threw no light, though the moon was on the uplands. Time and place alike were fit for our little explanation. The path wound down the meadow toward me, and I knew that he must come. My firm intention was to spare him, if he gave me a chance of it; but he never had the manners to do that.
“Here I waited, with the cold leaves fluttering around me, until I heard a firm, slow step coming down the narrow path. Then a figure appeared in a stripe of moonlight, and stopped, and rested on a staff. Perhaps his lordship's mind went back some five-and-thirty years, to times when he told pretty stories here; and perhaps he laughed to himself to think how well he had got out of it. Whatever his meditations were, I let him have them out, and waited.
“If he had even sighed, I might have felt more kindness toward him; but he only gave something between a cough and a grunt, and I clearly heard him say, 'Gout to-morrow morning! what the devil did I drink port-wine for!' He struck the ground with his stick and came onward, thinking far more of his feet than heart.
“Then, as he planted one foot gingerly on the timber and stayed himself, I leaped along the bridge and met him, and without a word looked at him. The moon was topping the crest of the hills and threw my shadow upon him, the last that ever fell upon his body to its knowledge.
“'Fellow, out of the way!' he cried, with a most commanding voice and air, though only too well he knew me; and my wrath against him began to rise.
“'You pass not here, and you never make another live step on this earth,' I said, as calmly as now I speak, 'unless you obey my orders.'
“He saw his peril, but he had courage--perhaps his only virtue. 'Fool! whoever you are,' he shouted, that his voice might fetch him help; 'none of these moon-struck ways with me! If you want to rob me, try it!'
“'You know too well who I am,' I answered, as he made to push me back. 'Lord Castlewood, here you have the choice--to lick the dust, or be dust! Here you forswore yourself; here you pay for perjury. On this plank you knelt to poor Winifred Hoyle, whom you ruined and cast by; and now on this plank you shall kneel to her son and swear to obey him--or else you die!'
“In spite of all his pride, he trembled as if I had been Death himself, instead of his own dear eldest son.
“'What do you want!' As he asked, he laid one hand on the rickety rail and shook it, and the dark old tree behind him shook. 'How much will satisfy you?'
“'Miser, none of your money for us! it is too late for your half crowns! We must have a little of what you have grudged--having none to spare--your honor. My demands are simple, and only two. My mother is fool enough to yearn for one more sight of your false face; you will come with me and see her.'
“'And if I yield to that, what next?'
“'The next thing is a trifle to a nobleman like you. Here I have, in this blue trinket (false gems and false gold, of course), your solemn signature to a lie. At the foot of that you will have the truth to write, “I am a perjured liar!” and proudly sign it “Castlewood,” in the presence of two witnesses. This can not hurt your feelings much, and it need not be expensive.'
“Fury flashed in his bright old eyes, but he strove to check its outbreak. The gleaning of life, after threescore years, was better, in such lordly fields, than the whole of the harvest we got. He knew that I had him all to myself, to indulge my filial affection.
“'You have been misled; you have never heard the truth; you have only heard your mother's story. Allow me to go back and to sit in a dry place; I am tired, and no longer young; you are bound to hear my tale as well. I passed a dry stump just now; I will go back: there is no fear of interruption.' My lord was talking against time.
“'From this bridge you do not budge until you have gone on your knees and sworn what I shall dictate to you; this time it shall be no perjury. Here I hold your cursed pledge--' “He struck at me, or at the locket--no matter which--but it flew away. My right arm was crippled by his heavy stick; but I am left-handed, as a bastard should be. From my left hand he took his death, and I threw the pistol after him: such love had he earned from his love-child!”
Thomas Castlewood, or Hoyle, or whatever else his name was, here broke off from his miserable words, and, forgetting all about my presence, set his gloomy eyes on the ground. Lightly he might try to speak, but there was no lightness in his mind, and no spark of light in his poor dead soul. Being so young, and unacquainted with the turns of life-worn mind, I was afraid to say a word except to myself, and to myself I only said, “The man is mad, poor fellow; and no wonder!”
The sun was setting, not upon the vast Pacific from desert heights, but over the quiet hills and through the soft valleys of tame England; and, different as the whole scene was, a certain other sad and fearful sunset lay before me: the fall of night upon my dying father and his helpless child, the hour of anguish and despair! Here at last was the cause of all laid horribly before me; and the pity deeply moving me passed into cold abhorrence. But the man was lost in his own visions.
“So in your savage wrath,” I said, “you killed your own father, and in your fright left mine to bear the brunt of it.”
He raised his dark eyes heavily, and his thoughts were far astray from mine. He did not know what I had said, though he knew that I had spoken. The labor of calling to mind and telling his treatment of his father had worked upon him so much that he could not freely shift attention.
“I came for something, something that can be only had from you,” he said, “and only since your cousin's death, and something most important. But will you believe me? it is wholly gone, gone from mind and memory!”
“I am not surprised at that,” I answered, looking at his large wan face, and while I did so, losing half my horror in strange sadness. “Whatever it is, I will do it for you; only let me know by post.”
“I see what you mean--not to come any more. You are right about that, for certain. But your father was good to me, and I loved him, though I had no right to love any one. My letter will show that I wronged him never. The weight of the world is off my mind since I have told you every thing; you can send me to the gallows, if you think fit, but leave it till my mother dies. Good-by, poor child. I have spoiled your life, but only by chance consequence, not in murder-birth--as I was born.”
Before I could answer or call him back, if I even wished to do so, he was far away, with his long, quiet stride; and, like his life, his shadow fell, chilling, sombre, cast away.
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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53
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BRUNTSEA DEFIANT
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Thus at last--by no direct exertion of my own, but by turn after turn of things to which I blindly gave my little help--the mystery of my life was solved. Many things yet remained to be fetched up to focus and seen round; but the point of points was settled.
Of all concerned, my father alone stood blameless and heroic. What tears of shame and pride I shed, for ever having doubted him! --not doubting his innocence of the crime itself, but his motives for taking it upon him. I had been mean enough to dream that my dear father outraged justice to conceal his own base birth!
That ever such thought should have entered my mind may not make me charitable to the wicked thoughts of the world at large, but, at any rate, it ought to do so. And the man in question, my own father, who had starved himself to save me! Better had I been the most illegal child ever issued into this cold world, than dare to think so of my father, and then find him the model of every thing.
To hide the perjury, avarice, and cowardice of his father, and to appease the bitter wrong, he had even bowed to take the dark suspicion on himself, until his wronged and half-sane brother (to whom, moreover, he owed his life) should have time to fly from England. No doubt he blamed himself as much as he condemned the wretched criminal, because he had left his father so long unwarned and so unguarded, and had thoughtlessly used light words about him, which fell not lightly on a stern, distempered mind. Hence, perhaps, the exclamation which had told against him so.
And then when he broke jail--which also told against him terribly--to revisit his shattered home, it is likely enough that he meant after that to declare the truth, and stand his trial as a man should do. But his wife, perhaps, in her poor weak state, could not endure the thought of it, knowing how often jury is injury, and seeing all the weight against him. She naturally pledged him to pursue his flight, “for her sake,” until she should be better able to endure his trial, and until he should have more than his own pure word and character to show. And probably if he had then been tried, with so many things against him, and no production of that poor brother, his tale would have seemed but a flimsy invention, and “Guilty” would have been the verdict. And they could not know that, in such case, the guilty man would have come forward, as we shall see that he meant to do.
When my father heard of his dear wife's death, and believed, no doubt, that I was buried with the rest, the gloom of a broken and fated man, like polar night, settled down on him. What matter to him about public opinion or any thing else in the world just now? The sins of his father were on his head; let them rest there, rather than be trumpeted by him. He had nothing to care for; let him wander about. And so he did for several years, until I became a treasure to him--for parental is not intrinsic value--and then, for my sake, as now appeared, he betook us both to a large kind land.
Revolving these things sadly, and a great many more which need not be told, I thought it my duty to go as soon as possible to Bruntsea, and tell my good and faithful friends what I was loath to write about. There, moreover, I could obtain what I wanted to confirm me--the opinion of an upright, law-abiding, honorable man about the course I proposed to take. And there I might hear something more as to a thing which had troubled me much in the deepest of my own troubles--the melancholy plight of dear Uncle Sam. Wild, and absurd as it may appear to people of no gratitude, my heart was set upon faring forth in search of the noble Sawyer, if only it could be reconciled with my duty here in England. That such a proceeding would avail but little, seemed now, alas! too manifest; but a plea of that kind generally means that we have no mind to do a thing.
Be that as it will, I made what my dear Yankees--to use the Major's impertinent phrase--call “straight tracks” for that ancient and obsolete town, rejuvenized now by its Signor. The cause of my good friend's silence--not to use that affected word “reticence”--was quite unknown to me, and disturbed my spirit with futile guesses.
Resolute, therefore, to pierce the bottom of every surviving mystery, I made claim upon “Mr. Stixon, junior”--as “Stixon's boy” had now vindicated his right to be called, up to supper-time--and he with high chivalry responded. Not yet was he wedded to Miss Polly Hopkins, the daughter of the pickled-pork man; otherwise would he or could he have made telegraphic blush at the word “Bruntsea?” And would he have been quite so eager to come?
Such things are trifling, compared to our own, which naturally fill the universe. I was bound to be a great lady now, and patronize and regulate and drill all the doings of nature. So I durst not even ask, though desiring much to do so, how young Mr. Stixon was getting on with his delightful Polly. And his father, as soon as he found me turned into the mistress, and “his lady” (as he would have me called thenceforth, whether or no on my part), not another word would he tell me of the household sentiments, politics, or romances. It would have been thought a thing beneath me to put any nice little questions now, and I was obliged to take up the tone which others used toward me. But all the while I longed for freedom, Uncle Sam, Suan Isco, and even Martin of the Mill.
Law business, however, and other hinderances, kept me from starting at once for Bruntsea, impatient as I was to do so. Indeed, it was not until the morning of the last Saturday in November that I was able to get away. The weather had turned to much rain, I remember, with two or three tempestuous nights, and the woods were almost bare of leaves, and the Thames looked brown and violent.
In the fly from Newport to Bruntsea I heard great rollers thundering heavily upon the steep bar of shingle, and such a lake of water shone in the old bed of the river that I quite believed at first that the Major had carried out his grand idea, and brought the river back again. But the flyman shook his head, and looked very serious, and told me that he feared bad times were coming. What I saw was the work of the Lord in heaven, and no man could prevail against it. He had always said, though no concern of his--for he belonged to Newport--that even a British officer could not fly in the face of the Almighty. He himself had a brother on the works, regular employed, and drawing good money, and proud enough about it; and the times he had told him across a pint of ale--howsomever, our place was to hope for the best; but the top of the springs was not come yet, and a pilot out of Newport told him the water was making uncommon strong; but he did hope the wind had nigh blowed itself out; if not, they would have to look blessed sharp tomorrow. He had heard say that in time of Queen Elizabeth sixscore of houses was washed clean away, and the river itself knocked right into the sea; and a thing as had been once might just come to pass again, though folk was all so clever now they thought they wor above it. But, for all that, their grandfathers' goggles might fit them. But here we was in Bruntsea town, and, bless his old eyes--yes! If I pleased to look along his whip, I might see ancient pilot come, he did believe, to warn of them!
Following his guidance, I descried a stout old man, in a sailor's dress, weather-proof hat, and long boots, standing on a low seawall, and holding vehement converse with some Bruntsea boatmen and fishermen who were sprawling on the stones as usual.
“Driver, you know him. Take the lower road,” I said, “and ask what his opinion is.”
“No need to ask him,” the flyman answered; “old Banks would never be here, miss, if he was of two opinions. He hath come to fetch his daughter out of harm, I doubt, the wife of that there Bishop Jim, they call him--the chap with two nails to his thumb, you know. Would you like to hear how they all take it, miss?”
With these words he turned to the right, and drove into Major Hockin's “Sea Parade.” There we stopped to hear what was going on, and it proved to be well worth our attention. The old pilot perhaps had exhausted reason, and now was beginning to give way to wrath. The afternoon was deepening fast, with heavy gray clouds lowering, showing no definite edge, but streaked with hazy lines, and spotted by some little murky blurs or blots, like tar pots, carried slowly.
“Hath Noah's Ark ever told a lie?” the ancient pilot shouted, pointing with one hand at these, and with a clinched fist at the sea, whence came puffs of sullen air, and turned his gray locks backward. “Mackerel sky when the sun got up, mermaiden's eggs at noon, and now afore sunset Noah's Arks! Any of them breweth a gale of wind, and the three of them bodes a tempest. And the top of the springs of the year to-morrow. Are ye daft, or all gone upon the spree, my men? Your fathers would 'a knowed what the new moon meant. Is this all that cometh out of larning to read?”
“Have a pinch of 'bacco, old man,” said one, “to help you off with that stiff reel. What consarn can he be of yourn?”
“Don't you be put out, mate,” cried another. “Never came sea as could top that bar, and never will in our time. Go and calk your old leaky craft, Master Banks.”
“We have rode out a good many gales without seeking prophet from Newport--a place never heerd on when this old town was made.”
“Come and wet your old whistle at the 'Hockin Arms,' Banks. You must want it, after that long pipe.”
“'Hockin Arms,' indeed!” the pilot answered, turning away in a rage from them. “What Hockin Arms will there be this time to-morrow? Hockin legs wanted, more likely, and Hockin wings. And you poor grinning ninnies, as ought to have four legs, ye'll be praying that ye had them to-morrow. However, ye've had warning, and ye can't blame me. The power of the Lord is in the air and sea. Is this the sort of stuff ye trust in?”
He set one foot against our Major's wall--an action scarcely honest while it was so green--and, coming from a hale and very thickset man, the contemptuous push sent a fathom of it outward. Rattle, rattle went the new patent concrete, starting up the lazy-pated fellows down below.
“You'll try the walls of a jail,” cried one. “You go to Noah's Ark,” shouted another. The rest bade him go to a place much worse; but he buttoned his jacket in disdain, and marched away, without spoiling the effect by any more weak words.
“Right you are,” cried my flyman--“right you are, Master Banks. Them lubbers will sing another song to-morrow. Gee up, old hoss, then!”
All this, and the ominous scowl of the sky and menacing roar of the sea (already crowding with black rollers), disturbed me so that I could say nothing, until, at the corner of the grand new hotel, we met Major Hockin himself, attired in a workman's loose jacket, and carrying a shovel. He was covered with mud and dried flakes of froth, and even his short white whiskers were incrusted with sparkles of brine; but his face was ruddy and smiling, and his manner as hearty as ever.
“You here, Erema! Oh, I beg pardon--Baroness Castlewood, if you please. My dear, again I congratulate you.”
“You have as little cause to do that as I fear I can find in your case. You have no news for me from America? How sad! But what a poor plight you yourself are in!”
“Not a bit of it. At first sight you might think so; and we certainly have had a very busy time. Send back the fly. Leave your bag at our hotel. Porter, be quick with Lady Castlewood's luggage. One piece of luck befalls me--to receive so often this beautiful hand. What a lot of young fellows now would die of envy--” “I am glad that you still can talk nonsense,” I said; “for I truly was frightened at this great lake, and so many of your houses even standing in the water.”
“It will do them good. It will settle the foundations and crystallize the mortar. They will look twice as well when they come out again, and never have rats or black beetles. We were foolish enough to be frightened at first; and there may have been danger a fortnight ago. But since that tide we have worked day and night, and every thing is now so stable that fear is simply ridiculous. On the whole, it has been a most excellent thing--quite the making, in fact, of Bruntsea.”
“Then Bruntsea must be made of water,” I replied, gazing sadly at the gulf which parted us from the Sea Parade, the Lyceum, and Baths, the Bastion Promenade, and so on; beyond all which the streaky turmoil and misty scud of the waves were seen.
“Made of beer, more likely,” he retorted, with a laugh. “If my fellows worked like horses--which they did--they also drank like fishes. Their mouths were so dry with the pickle, they said. But the total abstainers were the worst, being out of practice with the can. However, let us make no complaints. We ought to be truly thankful; and I shall miss the exercise. That is why you have heard so little from me. You see the position at a glance. I have never been to Paris at all, Erema. I have not rubbed up my parleywoo, with a blast from Mr. Bellows. I was stopped by a telegram about this job--acrior illum. I had some Latin once, quite enough for the House of Commons, but it all oozed out at my elbows; and to ladies (by some superstition) it is rude--though they treat us to bad French enough. Never mind. What I want to say is this, that I have done nothing, but respected your sad trouble; for you took a wild fancy to that poor bedridden, who never did you a stroke of good except about Cosmopolitan Jack, and whose removal has come at the very nick of time. For what could you have done for money, with the Yankees cutting each other's throats, and your nugget quite sure to be annexed, or, at the very best, squared up in greenbacks?”
“You ought not to speak so, Major Hockin. If all your plans were not under water, I should be quite put out with you. My cousin was not bedridden; neither was he at all incapable, as you have called him once or twice. He was an infinitely superior man to--to what one generally sees; and when you have heard what I have to tell, in his place you would have done just as he did. And as for money, and 'happy release'--as the people who never want it for themselves express it--such words simply sicken me; at great times they are so sordid.”
“What is there in this world that is not sordid--to the young in one sense, and to the old in another?”
Major Hockin so seldom spoke in this didactic way, and I was so unable to make it out, that, having expected some tiff on his part at my juvenile arrogance, I was just in the mould for a deep impression from sudden stamp of philosophy. I had nothing to say in reply, and he went up in my opinion greatly.
He knew it; and he said, with touching kindness, “Erema, come and see your dear aunt Mary. She has had an attack of rheumatic gout in her thimble-finger, and her maids have worried her out of her life, and by far the most brilliant of her cocks (worth 20 pounds they tell me) breathed his last on Sunday night, with gapes, or croup, or something. This is why you have not heard again from her. I have been in the trenches day and night, stoning out the sea with his own stones, by a new form of concrete discovered by myself. And unless I am very much mistaken--in fact, I do not hesitate to say--But such things are not in your line at all. Let us go up to the house. Our job is done, and I think Master Neptune may pound away in vain. I have got a new range in the kitchen now, partly of my own invention; you can roast, or bake, or steam, or stew, or frizzle kabobs--all by turning a screw. And not only that, but you can keep things hot, piping hot, and ripening, as it were, better than when they first were done. Instead of any burned iron taste, or scum on the gravy, or clottiness, they mellow by waiting, and make their own sauce. If I ever have time I shall patent this invention; why, you may burn brick-dust in it, Bath-brick, hearth-stone, or potsherds! At any hour of the day or night, while the sea is in this condition, I may want my dinner; and there we have it. We say grace immediately, and down we sit. Let us take it by surprise, if it can be taken so. Up through my chief drive, instanter! I think that I scarcely ever felt more hungry. The thought of that range always sets me off. And one of its countless beauties is the noble juicy fragrance.”
Major Hockin certainly possessed the art--so meritorious in a host--of making people hungry; and we mounted the hill with alacrity, after passing his letter-box, which reminded me of the mysterious lady. He pointed to “Desolate Hole,” as he called it, and said that he believed she was there still, though she never came out now to watch their house. And a man of dark and repelling aspect had been seen once or twice by his workmen, during the time of their night relays, rapidly walking toward Desolate Hole. How any one could live in such a place, with the roar and the spray of the sea, as it had been, at the very door, and through the windows, some people might understand, but not the Major.
Good Mrs. Hockin received me with her usual warmth and kindness, and scolded me for having failed to write more to her, as all people seem to do when conscious of having neglected that duty themselves. Then she showed me her thimble-finger, which certainly was a little swollen; and then she poured forth her gratitude for her many blessings, as she always did after any little piece of grumbling. And I told her that if at her age I were only a quarter as pleasant and sweet of temper, I should consider myself a blessing to any man.
After dinner my host produced the locket, which he had kept for the purpose of showing it to the artist's son in Paris, and which he admired so intensely that I wished it were mine to bestow on him. Then I told him that, through a thing wholly unexpected--the confession of the criminal himself--no journey to Paris was needful now. I repeated that strange and gloomy tale, to the loud accompaniment of a rising wind and roaring sea, while both my friends listened intently.
“Now what can have led him so to come to you?” they asked; “and what do you mean to do about it?”
“He came to me, no doubt, to propose some bargain, which could not be made in my cousin's lifetime. But the telling of his tale made him feel so strange that he really could not remember what it was. As to what I am to do, I must beg for your opinion; such a case is beyond my decision.” Mrs. Hockin began to reply, but stopped, looking dutifully at her lord.
“There is no doubt what you are bound to do, at least in one way,” the Major said. “You are a British subject, I suppose, and you must obey the laws of the country. A man has confessed to you a murder--no matter whether it was committed twenty years ago or two minutes; no matter whether it was a savage, cold-blooded, premeditated crime, or whether there were things to palliate it. Your course is the same; you must hand him over. In fact, you ought never to have let him go.”
“How could I help it?” I pleaded, with surprise. “It was impossible for me to hold him.”
“Then you should have shot him with his own pistol. He offered it to you. You should have grasped it, pointed it at his heart, and told him that he was a dead man if he stirred.”
“Aunt Mary, would you have done that?” I asked. “It is so easy to talk of fine things! But in the first place, I had no wish to stop him; and in the next, I could not if I had.”
“My dear,” Mrs. Hockin replied, perceiving my distress at this view of the subject, “I should have done exactly what you did. If the laws of this country ordain that women are to carry them out against great strong men, who, after all, have been sadly injured, why, it proves that women ought to make the laws, which to my mind is simply ridiculous.”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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54
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BRUNTSEA DEFEATED
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Little sleep had I that night. Such conflict was in my mind about the proper thing to be done next, and such a war of the wind outside, above and between the distant uproar of the long tumultuous sea. Of that sound much was intercepted by the dead bulk of the cliff, but the wind swung fiercely over this, and rattled through all shelter. In the morning the storm was furious; but the Major declared that his weather-glass had turned, which proved that the gale was breaking. The top of the tide would be at one o'clock, and after church we should behold a sight he was rather proud of--the impotent wrath of the wind and tide against his patent concrete.
“My dear, I scarcely like such talk,” Mrs. Hockin gently interposed. “To me it seems almost defiant of the power of the Lord. Remember what happened to poor Smeaton--at least I think his name was Smeaton, or Stanley, was it? But I dare say you know best. He defied the strength of the Lord, like the people at the mouth of their tent, and he was swallowed up.”
“Mary, my dear, get your prayer-book. Rasper's fly is waiting for us, and the parson has no manners. When he drops off, I present to the living; and I am not at all sure that I shall let George have it. He is fond of processions, and all that stuff. The only procession in the Church of England is that of the lord of the manor to his pew. I will be the master in my own church.”
“Of course, dear, of course; so you ought to be. It always was so in my father's parish. But you must not speak so of our poor George. He may be 'High-Church,' as they call it; but he knows what is due to his family, and he has a large one coming.”
We set off hastily for the church, through blasts of rain and buffets of wind, which threatened to overturn the cab, and the seaward window was white, as in a snowstorm, with pellets of froth, and the drift of sea-scud. I tried to look out, but the blur and the dash obscured the sight of every thing. And though in this lower road we were partly sheltered by the pebble ridge, the driver was several times obliged to pull his poor horse up and face the wind, for fear of our being blown over.
That ancient church, with its red-tiled spire, stands well up in the good old town, at the head of a street whose principal object now certainly is to lead to it. Three hundred years ago that street had business of its own to think of, and was brave perhaps with fine men and maids at the time of the Spanish Armada. Its only bravery now was the good old church, and some queer gables, and a crypt (which was true to itself by being buried up to the spandrels), and one or two corners where saints used to stand, until they were pelted out of them, and where fisher-like men, in the lodging season, stand selling fish caught at Billingsgate. But to Bruntsea itself the great glory of that street was rather of hope than of memory. Bailiff Hopkins had taken out three latticed windows, and put in one grand one of plate-glass, with “finishing” blinds all varnished. And even on a Sunday morning Bruntsea wanted to know what ever the bailiff was at behind them. Some said that he did all his pickling on a Sunday; and by putting up “spectacle glass” he had challenged the oldest inhabitant to come and try his focus.
Despite all the rattle and roar of the wind, we went on in church as usual. The vicar had a stout young curate from Durham, who could outshout any tempest, with a good stone wall between them; and the Bruntsea folk were of thicker constitution than to care an old hat for the weather. Whatever was “sent by the Lord” they took with a grumble, but no excitement. The clock in front of the gallery told the time of the day as five minutes to twelve, when the vicar, a pleasant old-fashioned man, pronounced his text, which he always did thrice over to make us sure of it. And then he hitched up his old black gown, and directed his gaze at the lord of the manor, to impress the whole church with authority. Major Hockin acknowledged in a proper manner this courtesy of the minister by rubbing up his crest, and looking even more wide-awake than usual; whereas Aunt Mary, whose kind heart longed to see her own son in that pulpit, calmly settled back her shoulders, and arranged her head and eyes so well as to seem at a distance in rapt attention, while having a nice little dream of her own. But suddenly all was broken up. The sexton (whose license as warden of the church, and even whose duty it was to hear the sermon only fitfully, from the tower arch, where he watched the boys, and sniffed the bakehouse of his own dinner)--to the consternation of every body, this faithful man ran up the nave, with his hands above his head, and shouted, “All Brownzee be awash, awash”--sounding it so as to rhyme with “lash”--“the zea, the zea be all over us!”
The clergyman in the pulpit turned and looked through a window behind him, while all the congregation rose.
“It is too true,” the preacher cried; “the sea is in over the bank, my friends. Every man must rush to his own home. The blessing of the Lord be on you through His fearful visitation!”
He had no time to say more; and we thought it very brave of him to say that, for his own house was in the lower village, and there he had a wife and children sick. In half a minute the church was empty, and the street below it full of people, striving and struggling against the blast, and breasting it at an incline like swimmers, but beaten back ever and anon and hurled against one another, with tattered umbrellas, hats gone, and bonnets hanging. And among them, like gulls before the wind, blew dollops of spray and chunks of froth, with every now and then a slate or pantile.
All this was so bad that scarcely any body found power to speak, or think, or see. The Major did his very best to lead us, but could by no means manage it. And I screamed into his soundest ear to pull Aunt Mary into some dry house--for she could not face such buffeting--and to let me fare for myself as I might. So we left Mrs. Hockin in the bailiff's house, though she wanted sadly to come with us, and on we went to behold the worst. And thus, by running the byes of the wind, and craftily hugging the corners, we got to the foot of the street at last, and then could go no further.
For here was the very sea itself, with furious billows panting. Before us rolled and ran a fearful surf of crested whiteness, torn by the screeching squalls, and tossed in clashing tufts and pinnacles. And into these came, sweeping over the shattered chine of shingle, gigantic surges from the outer deep, towering as they crossed the bar, and combing against the sky-line, then rushing onward, and driving the huddle of the ponded waves before them.
The tide was yet rising, and at every blow the wreck and the havoc grew worse and worse. That long sweep of brick-work, the “Grand Promenade,” bowed and bulged, with wall and window knuckled in and out, like wattles; the “Sea Parade” was a parade of sea; and a bathing-machine wheels upward lay, like a wrecked Noah's Ark, on the top of the “Saline-Silico-Calcareous Baths.”
The Major stood by me, while all his constructions “went by the board,” as they say at sea; and verily every thing was at sea. I grieved for him so that it was not the spray alone that put salt drops on my cheeks. And I could not bear to turn and look at his good old weather-beaten face. But he was not the man to brood upon his woes in silence. He might have used nicer language, perhaps, but his inner sense was manful.
“I don't care a damn,” he shouted, so that all the women heard him. “I can only say I am devilish glad that I never let one of those houses.”
There was a little band of seamen, under the shelter of a garden wall, crouching, or sitting, or standing (or whatever may be the attitude, acquired by much voyaging and experience of bad weather, which can not be solved, as to centre of gravity, even by the man who does it), and these men were so taken with the Major's manifesto, clinched at once and clarified to them by strong, short language, that they gave him a loud “hurrah,” which flew on the wings of the wind over house-tops. So queer and sound is English feeling that now Major Hockin became in truth what hitherto he was in title only--the lord and master of Bruntsea.
“A boat! a boat!” he called out again. “We know not who are drowning. The bank still breaks the waves; a stout boat surely could live inside it.”
“Yes, a boat could live well enough in this cockle, though never among them breakers,” old Barnes, the fisherman, answered, who used to take us out for whiting; “but Lord bless your honor, all the boats are thumped to pieces, except yonner one, and who can get at her?”
Before restoring his hands to their proper dwelling-place--his pockets--he jerked his thumb toward a long white boat, which we had not seen through the blinding scud. Bereft of its brethren, or sisters--for all fluctuating things are feminine--that boat survived, in virtue of standing a few feet higher than the rest. But even so, and mounted on the last hump of the pebble ridge, it was rolling and reeling with stress of the wind and the wash of wild water under it.
“How nobly our Lyceum stands!” the Major shouted, for any thing less than a shout was dumb. “This is the time to try institutions. I am proud of my foundations.”
In answer to his words appeared a huge brown surge, a mountain ridge, seething backward at the crest with the spread and weight of onset. This great wave smote all other waves away, or else embodied them, and gathered its height against the poor worn pebble bank, and descended. A roar distinct above the universal roar proclaimed it; a crash of conflict shook the earth, and the shattered bank was swallowed in a world of leaping whiteness. When this wild mass dashed onward into the swelling flood before us, there was no sign of Lyceum left, but stubs of foundation, and a mangled roof rolling over and over, like a hen-coop.
“Well, that beats every thing I ever saw,” exclaimed the gallant Major. “What noble timber! What mortise-work! No London scamping there, my lads. But what comes here? Why, the very thing we wanted! Barnes, look alive, my man. Run to your house, and get a pair of oars and a bucket.”
It was the boat, the last surviving boat of all that hailed from Bruntsea. That monstrous billow had tossed it up like a school-boy's kite, and dropped it whole, with an upright keel, in the inland sea, though nearly half full of water. Driven on by wind and wave, it labored heavily toward us; and more than once it seemed certain to sink as it broached to and shipped seas again. But half a dozen bold fishermen rushed with a rope into the short angry surf--to which the polled shingle bank still acted as a powerful breakwater, else all Bruntsea had collapsed--and they hauled up the boat with a hearty cheer, and ran her up straight with, “Yo--heave--oh!” and turned her on her side to drain, and then launched her again, with a bucket and a man to bail out the rest of the water, and a pair of heavy oars brought down by Barnes, and nobody knows what other things.
“Naught to steer with. Rudder gone!” cried one of the men, as the furious gale drove the boat, athwart the street, back again.
“Wants another oar,” said Barnes. “What a fool I were to bring only two!”
“Here you are!” shouted Major Hockin. “One of you help me to pull up this pole.”
Through a shattered gate they waded into a little garden, which had been the pride of the season at Bruntsea; and there from the ground they tore up a pole, with a board at the top nailed across it, and the following not rare legend: “Lodgings to let. Inquire within. First floor front, and back parlors.”
“Fust-rate thing to steer with! Would never have believed you had the sense!” So shouted Barnes--a rough man, roughened by the stress of storm and fright. “Get into starn-sheets if so liketh. Ye know, ye may be useful.”
“I defy you to push off without my sanction. Useful, indeed! I am the captain of this boat. All the ground under it is mine. Did you think, you set of salted radicals, that I meant to let you go without me? And all among my own houses!”
“Look sharp, governor, if you has the pluck, then. Mind, we are more like to be swamped than not.”
As the boat swung about, Major Hockin jumped in, and so, on the spur of the moment, did I. We staggered all about with the heave and roll, and both would have fallen on the planks, or out over, if we had not tumbled, with opposite impetus, into the arms of each other. Then a great wave burst and soaked us both, and we fell into sitting on a slippery seat.
Meanwhile two men were tugging at each oar, and Barnes himself steering with the sign-board; and the head of the boat was kept against the wind and the billows from our breakwater. Some of these seemed resolved (though shorn of depth and height in crossing) to rush all over us and drown us in the washer-women's drying ground. By skill and presence of mind, our captain, Barnes, foiled all their violence, till we got a little shelter from the ruins of the “Young Men's Christian Institute.”
“Hold all!” cried Barnes; “only keep her head up, while I look about what there is to do.”
The sight was a thing to remember; and being on the better side now of the scud, because it was flying away from us, we could make out a great deal more of the trouble which had befallen Bruntsea. The stormy fiord which had usurped the ancient track of the river was about a furlong in width, and troughed with white waves vaulting over. And the sea rushed through at the bottom as well, through scores of yards of pebbles, as it did in quiet weather even, when the tide was brimming. We in the tossing boat, with her head to the inrush of the outer sea, were just like people sitting upon the floats or rafts of a furious weir; and if any such surge had topped the ridge as the one which flung our boat to us, there could be no doubt that we must go down as badly as the Major's houses. However, we hoped for the best, and gazed at the desolation inland.
Not only the Major's great plan, but all the lower line of old Bruntsea, was knocked to pieces, and lost to knowledge in freaks of wind-lashed waters. Men and women were running about with favorite bits of furniture, or feather-beds, or babies' cradles, or whatever they had caught hold of. The butt ends of the three old streets that led down toward the sea-ground were dipped, as if playing seesaw in the surf, and the storm made gangways of them and lighthouses of the lamp-posts. The old public-house at the corner was down, and the waves leaping in at the post-office door, and wrecking the globes of the chemist.
“Drift and dash, and roar and rush, and the devil let loose in the thick of it. My eyes are worn out with it. Take the glass, Erema, and tell us who is next to be washed away. A new set of clothes-props for Mrs. Mangles I paid for the very day I came back from town.”
With these words, the lord of the submarine manor (whose strength of spirit amazed me) offered his pet binocular, which he never went without upon his own domain. And fisherman Barnes, as we rose and fell, once more saved us from being “swamped” by his clever way of paddling through a scallop in the stern, with the board about the first floor front to let.
The seamen, just keeping way on the boat, sheltered their eyes with their left hands, and fixed them on the tumultuous scene.
I also gazed through the double glass, which was a very clear one; but none of us saw any human being at present in any peril.
“Old pilot was right, after all,” said one; “but what a good job as it come o' middle day, and best of all of a Sunday!”
“I have heered say,” replied another, “that the like thing come to pass nigh upon three hunder years agone. How did you get your things out, Jem Bishop?”
Jem, the only one of them whose house was in the havoc, regarded with a sailor's calmness the entry of the sea through his bedroom window, and was going to favor us with a narrative, when one of his mates exclaimed, “What do I see yonner, lads? Away beyond town altogether. Seemeth to me like a fellow swimming. Miss, will you lend me spy-glass? Never seed a double-barreled one before. Can use him with one eye shut, I s'pose?”
“No good that way, Joe,” cried Barnes, with a wink of superior knowledge, for he often had used this binocular. “Shut one eye for one barrel--stands to reason, then, you shut both for two, my son.”
“Stow that,” said the quick-eyed sailor, as he brought the glass to bear in a moment. “It is a man in the water, lads, and swimming to save the witch, I do believe.”
“Bless me!” cried the Major; “how stupid of us! I never thought once of that poor woman. She must be washed out long ago. Pull for your lives, my friends. A guinea apiece if you save her.”
“And another from me,” I cried. Whereupon the boat swept round, and the tough ash bent, and we rushed into no small danger. For nearly half a mile had we to pass of raging and boisterous water, almost as wild as the open sea itself at the breaches of the pebble ridge. And the risk of a heavy sea boarding us was fearfully multiplied by having thus to cross the storm instead of breasting it. Useless and helpless, and only in the way, and battered about by wind and sea, so that my Sunday dress was become a drag, what folly, what fatuity, what frenzy, I might call it, could ever have led me to jump into that boat? “I don't know. I only know that I always do it,” said my sensible self to its mad sister, as they both shut their eyes at a great white wave. “If I possibly survive, I will try to know better. But ever from my childhood I am getting into scrapes.”
The boat labored on, with a good many grunts, but not a word from any one. More than once we were obliged to fetch up as a great billow topped the poor shingle bank; and we took so much water on board that the men said afterward that I saved them. I only remember sitting down and working at the bucket with both hands, till much of the skin was gone, and my arms and many other places ached. But what was that to be compared with drowning?
At length we were opposite “Desolate Hole,” which was a hole no longer, but filled and flooded with the churning whirl and reckless dominance of water. Tufts and tussocks of shattered brush and rolling wreck played round it, and the old gray stone of mullioned windows split the wash like mooring-posts. We passed and gazed; but the only sound was the whistling of the tempest, and the only living sight a sea-gull, weary of his wings, and drowning.
“No living creature can be there,” the Major broke our long silence. “Land, my friends, if land we may. We risk our own lives for nothing.”
The men lay back on their oars to fetch the gallant boat to the wind again, when through a great gap in the ruins they saw a sight that startled manhood. At the back of that ruin, on the landward side, on a wall which, tottered under them, there were two figures standing. One a tall man, urging on, the other a woman shrinking. At a glance, or with a thought, I knew them both. One was Lord Castlewood's first love, the other his son and murderer.
Our men shouted with the whole power of their hearts to tell that miserable pair to wait till succor should be brought to them. And the Major stood up and waved his hat, and in doing so tumbled back again. I can not tell--how could I tell in the thick of it? --but an idea or a flit of fancy touched me (and afterward became conviction) that while the man heard us not at all, and had no knowledge of us, his mother turned round and saw us all, and faced the storm in preference.
Whatever the cause may have been, at least she suddenly changed her attitude. The man had been pointing to the roof, which threatened to fall in a mass upon them, while she had been shuddering back from the depth of eddying waves below her. But now she drew up her poor bent figure, and leaned on her son to obey him.
Our boat, with strong arms laboring for life, swept round the old gable of the ruin; but we were compelled to “give it wide berth,” as Captain Barnes shouted; and then a black squall of terrific wind and hail burst forth. We bowed our heads and drew our bodies to their tightest compass, and every rib of our boat vibrated as a violin does; and the oars were beaten flat, and dashed their drip into fringes like a small-toothed comb.
That great squall was either a whirlwind or the crowning blast of a hurricane. It beat the high waves hollow, as if it fell from the sky upon them; and it snapped off one of our oars at the hilt, so that two of our men rolled backward. And when we were able to look about again the whole roof of “Desolate Hole” was gone, and little of the walls left standing. And how we should guide our course, or even save our lives, we knew not.
We were compelled to bring up--as best we might--with the boat's head to the sea, and so to keep it by using the steering gear against the surviving oar. As for the people we were come to save, there was no chance whatever of approaching them. Even without the mishap to the oar, we never could have reached them.
And indeed when first we saw them again they seemed better off than ourselves were. For they were not far from dry land, and the man (a skillful and powerful swimmer) had a short piece of plank, which he knew how to use to support his weak companion.
“Brave fellow! fine fellow!” the Major cried, little knowing whom he was admiring. “See how he keeps up his presence of mind! Such a man as that is worth any thing. And he cares more for her than he does for himself. He shall have the Society's medal. One more long and strong stroke, my noble friend. Oh, great God! what has befallen him?”
In horror and pity we gazed. The man had been dashed against something headlong. He whirled round and round in white water, his legs were thrown up, and we saw no more of him. The woman cast off the plank, and tossed her helpless arms in search of him. A shriek, ringing far on the billowy shore, declared that she had lost him; and then, without a struggle, she clasped her hands, and the merciless water swallowed her.
“It is all over,” cried Major Hockin, lifting his drenched hat solemnly. “The Lord knoweth best. He has taken them home.”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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55
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A DEAD LETTER
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With that great tornado, the wind took a leap of more points of the compass than I can tell. Barnes, the fisherman, said how many; but I might be quite wrong in repeating it. One thing, at any rate, was within my compass--it had been blowing to the top of its capacity, direct from the sea, but now it began to blow quite as hard along the shore. This rough ingratitude of wind to waves, which had followed each breath of its orders, produced extraordinary passion, and raked them into pointed wind-cocks.
“Captain, we can't live this out,” cried Barnes; “we must run her ashore at once; tide has turned; we might be blown out to sea, with one oar, and then the Lord Himself couldn't save us.”
Crippled as we were, we contrived to get into a creek, or backwater, near the Major's gate. Here the men ran the boat up, and we all climbed out, stiff, battered, and terrified, but doing our best to be most truly thankful.
“Go home, Captain, as fast as you can, and take the young lady along of you,” said Mr. Barnes, as we stood and gazed at the weltering breadth of disaster. “We are born to the drip, but not you, Sir; and you are not so young as you was, you know.”
“I am younger than ever I was,” the lord of the manor answered, sternly, yet glancing back to make sure of no interruption from his better half--who had not even heard of his danger. “None of that nonsense to me, Barnes. You know your position, and I know mine. On board of that boat you took the lead, and that may have misled you. I am very much obliged to you, I am sure, for all your skill and courage, which have saved the lives of all of us. But on land you will just obey me.”
“Sartinly, Captain. What's your orders?”
“Nothing at all. I give no orders. I only make suggestions. But if your experience sees a way to recover those two poor bodies, let us try it at once--at once, Barnes. Erema, run home. This is no scene for you. And tell Margaret to put on the double-bottomed boiler, with the stock she made on Friday, and a peck of patent pease. There is nothing to beat pea soup; and truly one never knows what may happen.”
This was only too evident now, and nobody disobeyed him.
Running up his “drive” to deliver that message, at one of the many bends I saw people from Bruntsea hurrying along a footpath through the dairy-farm. While the flood continued this was their only way to meet the boat's crew. On the steps of “Smuggler's Castle” (as Bruntlands House was still called by the wicked) I turned again, and the new sea-line was fringed with active searchers. I knew what they were looking for, but, scared and drenched and shivering as I was, no more would I go near them. My duty was rather to go in and comfort dear Aunt Mary and myself. In that melancholy quest I could do no good, but a great deal of harm, perhaps, if any thing was found, by breaking forth about it.
Mrs. Hockin had not the least idea of the danger we had encountered. Bailiff Hopkins had sent her home in Rasper's fly by an inland road, and she kept a good scolding quite ready for her husband, to distract his mind from disaster. That trouble had happened she could not look out of her window without knowing; but could it be right, at their time of life, to stand in the wet so, and challenge Providence, and spoil the first turkey-poult of the season?
But when she heard of her husband's peril, in the midst of all his losses, his self-command, and noble impulse first of all to rescue life, she burst into tears, and hugged and kissed me, and said the same thing nearly fifty times.
“Just like him. Just like my Nicholas. You thought him a speculative, selfish man. Now you see your mistake, Erema.”
When her veteran husband came home at last (thoroughly jaded, and bringing his fishermen to gulp the pea soup and to gollop the turkey), a small share of mind, but a large one of heart, is required to imagine her doings. Enough that the Major kept saying, “Pooh-pooh!” and the more he said, the less he got of it.
When feelings calmed down, and we returned to facts, our host and hero (who, in plain truth, had not so wholly eclipsed me in courage, though of course I expected no praise, and got none, for people hate courage in a lady), to put it more simply, the Major himself, making a considerable fuss, as usual--for to my mind he never could be Uncle Sam--produced from the case of his little “Church Service,” to which he had stuck like a Briton, a sealed and stamped letter, addressed to me at Castlewood, in Berkshire--“stamped,” not with any post-office tool, but merely with the red thing which pays the English post.
Sodden and blurred as the writing was, I knew the clear, firm hand, the same which on the envelope at Shoxford had tempted me to meanness. This letter was from Thomas Hoyle; the Major had taken it from the pocket of his corpse; all doubt about his death was gone. When he felt his feet on the very shore, and turned to support his mother, a violent wave struck the back of his head upon Major Hockin's pillar-box.
Such sadness came into my heart--though sternly it should have been gladness--that I begged their pardon, and went away, as if with a private message. And wicked as it may have been, to read was more than once to cry. The letter began abruptly: “You know nearly all my story now. I have only to tell you what brought me to you, and what my present offer is. But to make it clear, I must enlarge a little.
“There was no compact of any kind between your father and myself. He forbore at first to tell what he must have known, partly, perhaps, to secure my escape, and partly for other reasons. If he had been brought to trial, his duty to his family and himself would have led him, no doubt, to explain things. And if that had failed, I would have returned and surrendered myself. As things happened, there was no need.
“Through bad luck, with which I had nothing to do, though doubtless the whole has been piled on my head, your father's home was destroyed, and he seems to have lost all care for every thing. Yet how much better off was he than I! Upon me the curse fell at birth; upon him, after thirty years of ease and happiness. However, for that very reason, perhaps, he bore it worse than I did. He grew imbittered against the world, which had in no way ill-treated him; whereas its very first principle is to scorn all such as I am. He seems to have become a misanthrope, and a fatalist like myself. Though it might almost make one believe the existence of such a thing as justice to see pride pay for its wickedness thus--the injury to the outcast son recoil upon the pampered one, and the family arrogance crown itself with the ignominy of the family.
“In any case, there was no necessity for my interference; and being denied by fate all sense of duty to a father, I was naturally driven to double my duty to my mother, whose life was left hanging upon mine. So we two for many years wandered about, shunning islands and insular prejudice. I also shunned your father, though (so far as I know) he neither sought me nor took any trouble to clear himself. If the one child now left him had been a son, heir to the family property and so on, he might have behaved quite otherwise, and he would have been bound to do so. But having only a female child, who might never grow up, and, if she did, was very unlikely to succeed, he must have resolved at least to wait. And perhaps he confirmed himself with the reflection that even if people believed his tale (so long after date and so unvouched), so far as family annals were concerned, the remedy would be as bad as the disease. Moreover, he owed his life to me, at great risk of my own; and to pay such a debt with the hangman's rope would scarcely appear quite honorable, even in the best society.
“It is not for me to pretend to give his motives, although from my knowledge of his character I can guess them pretty well, perhaps. We went our several ways in the world, neither of us very fortunate.
“One summer, in the Black Forest, I fell in with an outcast Englishman, almost as great a vagabond as myself. He was under the ban of the law for writing his father's name without license. He did not tell me that, or perhaps even I might have despised him, for I never was dishonest. But one great bond there was between us--we both detested laws and men. My intimacy with him is the one thing in life which I am ashamed of. He passed by a false name then, of course. But his true name was Montague Hockin. My mother was in very weak health then, and her mind for the most part clouded; and I need not say that she knew nothing of what I had done for her sake. That man pretended to take the greatest interest in her condition, and to know a doctor at Baden who could cure her.
“We avoided all cities (as he knew well), and lived in simple villages, subsisting partly upon my work, and partly upon the little income left by my grandfather, Thomas Hoyle. But, compared with Hockin, we were well off; and he did his best to swindle us. Luckily all my faith in mankind was confined to the feminine gender, and not much even of that survived. In a very little time I saw that people may repudiate law as well from being below as from being above it.
“Then he came one night, with the finest style and noblest contempt of every thing. We must prepare ourselves for great news, and all our kindness to him would be repaid tenfold in a week or two. Let me go into Freyburg that time to-morrow night, and listen. I asked him nothing as to what he meant, for I was beginning to weary of him, as of every body. However, I thought it just worth while, having some one who bought my wicker-work, to enter the outskirts of the town on the following evening, and wait to be told if any news was stirring. And the people were amazed at my not knowing that last night the wife of an English lord--for so they called him, though no lord yet--had run away with a golden-bearded man, believed to be also English.
“About that you know more, perhaps, than I do. But I wish you to know what that Hockin was, and to clear myself of complicity. Of Herbert Castlewood I knew nothing, and I never even saw the lady. And to say (as Sir Montague Hockin has said) that I plotted all that wickedness, from spite toward all of the Castlewood name, is to tell as foul a lie as even he can well indulge in.
“It need not be said that he does not know my story from any word of mine. To such a fellow I was not likely to commit my mother's fate. But he seems to have guessed at once that there was something strange in my history; and then, after spying and low prying at my mother, to have shaped his own conclusion. Then, having entirely under his power that young fool who left a kind husband for him, he conceived a most audacious scheme. This was no less than to rob your cousin, the last Lord Castlewood, not of his wife and jewels and ready money only, but also of all the disposable portion of the Castlewood estates. For the lady's mother had taken good care, like a true Hungarian, to have all the lands settled upon her daughter, so far as the husband could deal with them. And though, at the date of the marriage, he could not really deal at all with them--your father being still alive--it appears that his succession (when it afterward took place) was bound, at any rate, as against himself. A divorce might have canceled this--I can not say--but your late cousin was the last man in the world to incur the needful exposure. Upon this they naturally counted.
“The new 'Lady Hockin' (as she called herself, with as much right as 'Lady Castlewood') flirted about while her beauty lasted; but even then found her master in a man of deeper wickedness. But if her poor husband desired revenge--which he does not seem to have done, perhaps--he could not have had it better. She was seized with a loathsome disease, which devoured her beauty, like Herod and his glory. I believe that she still lives, but no one can go near her; least of all, the fastidious Montague.”
At this part of the letter I drew a deep breath, and exclaimed, “Thank God!” I know not how many times; and perhaps it was a crime of me to do it even once.
“Finding his nice prospective game destroyed by this little accident--for he meant to have married the lady after her husband's death, and set you at defiance; but even he could not do that now, little as he cares for opinion--what did he do but shift hands altogether? He made up his mind to confer the honor of his hand on you, having seen you somewhere in London, and his tactics became the very opposite of what they had been hitherto. Your father's innocence now must be maintained instead of his guiltiness.
“With this in view, he was fool enough to set the detective police after me--me, who could snap all their noses off! For he saw how your heart was all set on one thing, and expected to have you his serf forever, by the simple expedient of hanging me. The detectives failed, as they always do. He also failed in his overtures to you.
“You did your utmost against me also, for which I bear you no ill-will, but rather admire your courage. You acted in a straightforward way, and employed no dirty agency. Of your simple devices I had no fear. However, I thought it as well to keep an eye upon that Hockin, and a worthy old fool, some relation of his, who had brought you back from America. To this end I kept my head-quarters near him, and established my mother comfortably. She was ordered sea air, and has had enough. To-morrow I shall remove her. By the time you receive this letter we shall both be far away, and come back no more; but first I shall punish that Hockin. Without personal violence this will be done.
“Now what I propose to you is simple, moderate, and most strictly just. My mother's little residue of life must pass in ease and comfort. She has wronged no one, but ever been wronged. Allow her 300 pounds a year, to be paid as I shall direct you. For myself I will not take a farthing. You will also restore, as I shall direct, the trinket upon which she sets great value, and for which I sought vainly when we came back to England. I happen to know that you have it now.
“In return for these just acts, you have the right to set forth the whole truth publicly, to proclaim your father's innocence, and (as people will say) his chivalry; and, which will perhaps rejoice you also, to hear no more of “THOMAS HOYLE.
“P.S.--Of course I am trusting your honor in this. But your father's daughter can be no sneak; as indeed I have already proved.”
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{
"id": "7112"
}
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56
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WITH HIS OWN SWORD
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“What a most wonderful letter!” cried the Major, when, after several careful perusals, I thought it my duty to show it to him. “He calls me a 'worthy old fool,' does he? Well, I call him something a great deal worse--an unworthy skulk, a lunatic, a subverter of rank, and a Radical! And because he was a bastard, is the whole world base? And to come and live like that in a house of mine, and pay me no rent, and never even let me see him! Your grandfather was quite right, my dear, in giving him the cold shoulder. Of course you won't pay him a farthing.”
“You forget that he is dead,” I answered, “and his poor mother with him. At least he behaved well to his mother. You called him a hero--when you knew not who he was. Poor fellow, he is dead! And, in spite of all, I can not help being very sorry for him.”
“Yes, I dare say. Women always are. But you must show a little common-sense, Erema. Your grandfather seems to have had too much, and your father far too little. We must keep this matter quiet. Neither the man nor the woman must we know, or a nice stir we shall have in all the county papers. There must be an inquest, of course, upon them both; but none of the fellows read this direction, for the admirable reason that they can not read. Our coming forward could do no good, and just now Bruntsea has other things to think of; and, first and foremost, my ruin, as they say.”
“Please not to talk of that,” I exclaimed. “I can raise any quantity of money now, and you shall have it without paying interest. You wanted the course of the river restored, and now you have more--you have got the very sea. You could float the Bridal Veil itself, I do believe, at Bruntsea.”
“You have suggested a fine idea,” the Major exclaimed, with emphasis. “You certainly should have been an engineer. It is a thousand times easier--as every body knows--to keep water in than to keep it out. Having burst my barricade, the sea shall stop inside and pay for it. Far less capital will be required. By Jove, what a fool I must have been not to see the hand of Providence in all this! Mary, can you spare me a minute, my dear? The noblest idea has occurred to me. Well, never mind, if you are busy; perhaps I had better not state it crudely, though it is not true that it happens every hour. I shall turn it over in my mind throughout the evening service. I mean to be there, just to let them see. They think that I am crushed, of course. They will see their mistake; and, Erema, you may come. The gale is over, and the evening bright. You sit by the fire, Mary, my dear; I shall not let you out again; keep the silver kettle boiling. In church I always think more clearly than where people talk so much. But when I come home I require something. I see, I see. Instead of an idle, fashionable lounging-place for nincompoops from London, instead of flirtation and novel-reading, vulgarity, show, and indecent attire, and positively immoral bathing, we will now have industry, commerce, wealth, triumph of mechanism, lofty enterprise, and international good-will. A harbor has been the great want of this coast; see what a thing it is at Newport! We will now have a harbor and floating docks, without any muddy, malarious river--all blue water from the sea; and our fine cliff range shall be studded with good houses. And the whole shall be called 'Erema-port.'”
Well, Erema must be getting very near her port, although it was not at Bruntsea. Enough for this excellent man and that still more excellent woman that there they are, as busy and as happy as the day is long--which imposes some limit upon happiness, perhaps, inasmuch as to the busy every day is short. But Mrs. Hockin, though as full of fowls as ever, gets no White Sultans nor any other rarity now from Sir Montague Hockin. That gentleman still is alive--so far, at least, as we have heard of; but no people owning any self-respect ever deal with him, to their knowledge. He gambled away all his father's estates, and the Major bought the last of them for his youngest son, a very noble Captain Hockin (according to his mother's judgment), whom I never had the honor of seeing. Sir Montague lives in a sad plight somewhere, and his cousin still hopes that he may turn honest.
But as to myself and far greater persons, still there are a few words to be said. As soon as all necessary things were done at Bruntsea and at Castlewood, and my father's memory cleared from all stain, and by simple truth ennobled, in a manner strictly legal and consistent with heavy expenses, myself having made a long deposition and received congratulations--as soon as it was possible, I left them all, and set sail for America.
The rashness of such a plan it is more easy for one to establish than two to deny. But what was there in it of peril or of enterprise compared with what I had been through already? I could not keep myself now from going, and reasoned but little about it.
Meanwhile there had been no further tidings of Colonel Gundry or Firm, or even Martin of the Mill himself. But one thing I did which showed some little foresight. As soon as my mind was made up, and long before ever I could get away, I wrote to Martin Clogfast, telling him of my intention, and begging him, if he had any idea of the armies, or the Sawyer, or even Firm, or any thing whatever of interest, to write (without losing a day) to me, directing his letter to a house in New York whose address Major Hockin gave me.
So many things had to be done, and I listened so foolishly to the Major (who did his very best to stop me), that it came to be May, 1862 (nearly four years after my father's death), before I could settle all my plans and start. For every body said that I was much too young to take such a journey all by myself, and “what every body says must be right,” whenever there is no exception to prove the rule. “Aunt Marys” are not to be found every day, nor even Major Hockins; and this again helped to throw me back in getting away from England. And but for his vast engineering ideas, and another slight touch of rheumatic gout (brought upon herself by Mrs. Hockin through setting seven hens in one evening), the Major himself might have come with me, “to observe the new military tactics,” as well as to look for his cousin Sampson.
In recounting this I seem to be as long as the thing itself was in accomplishing. But at last it was done, and most kindly was I offered the very thing to suit me--permission to join the party of a well-known British officer, Colonel Cheriton, of the Engineers. This gentleman, being of the highest repute as a writer upon military subjects, had leave from the Federal government to observe the course of this tremendous war. And perhaps he will publish some day what seems as yet to be wholly wanting--a calm and impartial narrative of that unparalleled conflict. At any rate, he meant to spare no trouble in a matter so instructive, and he took his wife and two daughters--very nice girls, who did me a world of good--to establish them in Washington, or wherever the case might require.
Lucky as this was for me, I could not leave my dear and faithful friends without deep sorrow; but we all agreed that it should be only for a very little time. We landed first at New York, and there I found two letters from Martin of the Mill. In the first he grumbled much, and told me that nothing was yet known about Uncle Sam; in the second he grumbled (if possible) more, but gave me some important news. To wit, he had received a few lines from the Sawyer, who had failed as yet to find his grandson, and sadly lamented the misery he saw, and the shocking destruction of God's good works. He said that he could not bring himself to fight (even if he were young enough) against his own dear countrymen, one of whom was his own grandson; at the same time he felt that they must be put down for trying to have things too much their own way. About slavery, he had seen too much of niggers to take them at all for his equals, and no white man with any self-respect would desire to be their brother. The children of Ham were put down at the bottom, as their noses and their lips pronounced, according to Divine revelation; and for sons of Japheth to break up the noblest nation in the world, on their account, was like rushing in to inherit their curse. As sure as his name was Sampson Gundry, those who had done it would get the worst, though as yet they were doing wonders. And there could be no doubt about one thing--which party it was that began it. But come what would of it, here he was; and never would Saw-mills see him again unless he brought Firm Gundry. But he wanted news of poor Miss 'Rema; and if any came to the house, they must please to send it to the care of Colonel Baker, headquarters of the Army of the Potomac.
This was the very thing I wished to know, and I saw now how stupid I must have been not to have thought of it long ago. For Colonel Baker was, to my knowledge, an ancient friend of Uncle Sam, and had joined the national army at the very outbreak of the war. Well known not only in California, but throughout the States, for gallantry and conduct, this officer had been a great accession to the Federal cause, when so many wavered, and so he was appointed to a good command. But, alas! when I told Colonel Cheriton my news, I learned from him (who had carefully watched all the incidents of the struggle) that Uncle Sam's noble friend had fallen in the battle of Ball's Bluff, while charging at the head of his regiment.
Still, there was hope that some of the officers might know where to find Uncle Sam, who was not at all a man to be mislaid; and being allowed to accompany my English friends, I went on to Washington. We found that city in a highly nervous state, and from time to time ready to be captured. General Jackson was almost at the gates, and the President every day was calling out for men. The Army of Virginia had been beaten back to intrenchments before the capital, and General Lee was invading Maryland. Battle followed battle, thick as blows upon a threshing-floor, and though we were always said to be victorious, the enemy seemed none the more to run away. In this confusion, what chance had I of discovering even the Sawyer?
Colonel Cheriton (who must have found me a dreadful thorn in the flank of his strategy) missed no opportunity of inquiry, as he went from one valley to another. For the war seemed to run along the course of rivers, though it also passed through the forests and lakes, and went up into the mountains. Our wonderfully clever and kind member of the British army was delighted with the movements of General Lee, who alone showed scientific elegance in slaying his fellow-countrymen; and the worst of it was that instead of going after my dear Uncle Sam, Colonel Cheriton was always rushing about with maps, plans, and telescopes, to follow the tracery of Lee's campaign. To treat of such matters is far beyond me, as I am most thankful to confess. Neither will I dare to be sorry for a great man doing what became his duty. My only complaint against him is that he kept us in a continual fright.
However, this went by, and so did many other things, though heavily laden with grief and death; and the one thing we learned was to disbelieve ninety-nine out of every hundred. Letters for the Sawyer were dispatched by me to every likely place for him, and advertisements put into countless newspapers, but none of them seemed to go near him. Old as he was, he avoided feather-beds, and roamed like a true Californian. But at last I found him, in a sad, sad way.
It was after the battle of Chancellorsville, and our army had been driven back across the Rappahannock. “Our army,” I call it, because (although we belonged to neither party) fortune had brought us into contact with these, and knowing more about them, we were bound to take their side. And not only that, but to me it appeared altogether beyond controversy that a man of large mind and long experience (such as Uncle Sam had) should know much better than his grandson which cause was the one to fight for. At the same time Firm was not at all to be condemned. And if it was true, as Martin Clogfast said, that trouble of mind at my absence had driven him into a prejudiced view, nothing could possibly be more ungracious than for me to make light of his judgment.
Being twenty years old by this time, I was wiser than I used to be, and now made a practice of thinking twice before rushing into peril, as I used to do in California, and to some extent also in England. For though my adventures might not have been as strange as many I myself have heard of (especially from Suan Isco), nevertheless they had comprised enough of teaching and suffering also to make me careful about having any more. And so for a long time I kept at the furthest distance possible, in such a war, from the vexing of the air with cannons, till even Colonel Cheriton's daughters--perfectly soft and peaceful girls--began to despise me as a coward. Knowing what I had been through, I indulged their young opinions.
Therefore they were the more startled when I set forth under a sudden impulse, or perhaps impatience, for a town very near the head-quarters of the defeated General Hooker. As they were so brave, I asked them whether they would come with me; but although their father was known to be there, they turned pale at the thought of it. This pleased me, and made me more resolute to go; and in three days' time I was at Falmouth, a town on our side of the Rappahannock.
Here I saw most miserable sights that made me ashamed of all trifling fear. When hundreds and thousands of gallant men were dying in crippled agony, who or what was I to make any fuss about my paltry self? Clumsy as I was, some kind and noble ladies taught me how to give help among the sufferers.
At first I cried so at every body's pain, while asking why ever they should have it, that I did some good by putting them up to bear it rather than distress me so. And when I began to command myself (as custom soon enabled me), I did some little good again by showing them how I cared for them. Their poor weak eyes, perhaps never expecting to see a nice thing in the world again, used to follow me about with a faint, slow roll, and a feeble spark of jealousy.
That I should have had such a chance of doing good, onefold to others and a thousandfold to self, at this turn of life, when I was full of little me, is another of the many most clear indications of a kind hand over me. Every day there was better than a year of ordinary life in breaking the mind from its little selfish turns, and opening the heart to a larger power. And all this discipline was needed.
For one afternoon, when we all were tired, with great heat upon us suddenly, and the flies beginning to be dreadful, our chief being rather unwell and fast asleep, the surgeons away, and our beds as full as they could be, I was called down to reason with an applicant who would take no denial. “A rough man, a very rough old man, and in a most terrible state of mind,” said the girl who brought the message; “and room he would have, or he would know the reason.”
“The reason is not far to seek,” I answered, more to myself than her, as I ran down the stairs to discomfit that old man. At the open door, with the hot wind tossing worn white curls and parching shriveled cheeks, now wearily raising his battered hat, stood my dear Uncle Sam, the Sawyer.
“Lor' a massy! young lady, be you altogether daft? In my best of days, never was I lips for kissing. And the bootifulest creatur--Come now, I ain't saved your life, have I now?”
“Yes, fifty times over--fifty thousand times. Uncle Sam, don't you know Erema?”
“My eyes be dashed! And dashed they be, to forget the look of yours, my dearie. Seven days have I marched without thanking the Lord; and hot coals of fire has He poured upon me now, for His mercy endureth forever. To think of you--to think of you--as like my own child as could be--only of more finer breed--here standing in front of me, like this here! There! I never dreamed to do that again, and would scorn a young man at the sight of it.”
The Sawyer was too honest to conceal that he was weeping. He simply turned his tanned and weathered face toward the door-post, not to hide his tears, but reconcile his pride by feigning it. I felt that he must be at very low ebb, and all that I had seen of other people's sorrow had no power to assuage me. Inside the door, to keep the hot wind out and hide my eyes from the old man's face, I had some little quiet sobs, until we could both express ourselves.
“It is poor Firm, the poor, poor lad! --oh, what hath happened him? That I should see the day!”
Uncle Sam's deep voice broke into a moan, and he bowed his rough forehead on his arm, and shook. Then I took him by the sleeve and brought him in.
“Not dead--poor Firm, your only one--not dead?” as soon as words would come, I asked, and trembled for the opening of his lips.
“Not dead--not quite; but ten times worse. He hath flown into the face of the Lord, like Saul and his armor-bearer; he hath fallen on his own sword; and the worst of it is that the darned thing won't come out again.”
“Firm--the last person in the world to do it! Oh, Uncle Sam, surely they have told you--” “No lies--no lie at all, my dear. And not only that, but he wanteth now to die--and won't be long first, I reckon. But no time to lose, my dear. The Lord hath sent you to make him happy in his leaving of the world. Can 'e raise a bed and a doctor here? If he would but groan, I could bear it a bit, instead of bleeding inward. And for sartin sure, a' would groan nicely, if only by force of habit, at first sight of a real doctor.”
“There are half a dozen here,” I said; “or at least close by. He shall have my own bed. But where is he?”
“We have laid 'un in the sand,” he answered, simply, “for to dry his perspiration. That weak the poor chap is that he streameth night and day, miss. Never would you know him for our Firm now, any more than me for Sampson Gundry. Ah me! but the Lord is hard on us!”
Slowly and heavily he went his way to fetch poor Firm to the hospital; while, with light feet but a heavy heart, I returned to arouse our managers. Speedily and well were all things done; and in half an hour Finn lay upon my bed, with two of the cleverest surgeons of New York most carefully examining his wasted frame. These whispered and shook their heads, as in such a case was indispensable; and listening eagerly, I heard the senior surgeon say, “No, he could never bear it.” The younger man seemed to think otherwise, but to give way to the longer experience. Then dear Uncle Sam, having bought a new hat at the corner of the street, came forward. Knowing too well what excitement is, and how it changes every one, I lifted my hand for him to go back; but he only put his great hot web of fingers into mine, and drew me to him softly, and covered me up with his side. “He heareth nort, nort, nort,” he whispered to me; and then spoke aloud: “Gentlemen and ladies--or ladies and gentlemen, is the more correct form nowadays--have I leave to say a word or two? Then if I have, as your manner to me showeth, and heartily thanking you for that same, my words shall go into an acorn-cup. This lad, laid out at your mercy here, was as fine a young fellow as the West hath ever raised--straight and nimble, and could tell no lie. Family reasons, as you will excoose of, drew him to the arms of rebellion. I may have done, and overdone it myself, in arguing cantrips and convictions, whereof to my knowledge good never came yet. At any rate, off he went anyhow, and the force of nature drew me after him. No matter that to you, I dare say; but it would be, if you was in it.
“Ladies and gentlemen, here he is, and no harm can you make out of him. Although he hath fought for the wrong side to our thinking, bravely hath he fought, and made his way to a colonelship, worth five thousand dollars, if ever they pay their wages. Never did I think that he would earn so much, having never owned gifts of machinery; and concerning the handling of the dollars, perhaps, will carry my opinion out. But where was I wandering of a little thing like that?
“It hath pleased the Lord, who doeth all things well, when finally come to look back upon--the Lord hath seen fit to be down on this young man for going agin his grandfather. From Californy--a free State, mind you--he come away to fight for slavery. And how hath he magnified his office? By shooting the biggest man on that side, the almighty foe of the Union, the foremost captain of Midian--the general in whom they trusted. No bullets of ours could touch him; but by his own weapons he hath fallen. And soon as Ephraim Gundry heard it, he did what you see done to him.”
Uncle Sam having said his say--which must have cost him dearly--withdrew from the bed where his grandson's body lay shrunken, lax, and grimy. To be sure that it was Firm, I gave one glance--for Firm had always been straight, tall, and large--and then, in a miserable mood, I stole to the Sawyer's side to stand with him. “Am I to blame? Is this my fault? For even this am I to blame?” I whispered; but he did not heed me, and his hands were like hard stone.
After a long, hot, heavy time, while I was laboring vainly, the Sawyer also (through exhaustion of excitement) weary, and afraid to begin again with new bad news, as beaten people expect to do, the younger surgeon came up to him, and said, “Will you authorize it?”
“To cut 'un up? To show your museums what a Western lad is? Never. By the Blue River he shall have a good grave. So help me God, to my own, my man!”
“You misunderstand me. We have more subjects now than we should want for fifty years. War knocks the whole of their value on the head. We have fifty bodies as good as this, and are simply obliged to bury them. What I mean is, shall we pull the blade out?”
“Can he do any thing with that there blade in him? I have heard of a man in Kentucky once--” “Yes, yes; we know all those stories, Colonel--suit the newspapers, not the journals. This fellow has what must kill him inside; he is worn to a shadow already. If there it is left, die he must, and quick stick; inflammation is set up already. If we extract it, his chance of surviving is scarcely one in a hundred.”
“Let him have the one, then, the one in the hundred, like the ninety and nine lost sheep. The Lord can multiply a hundredfold--some threescore, and some an hundredfold. I will speak to Him, gentlemen, while you try the job.”
|
{
"id": "7112"
}
|
57
|
FEMALE SUFFRAGE
|
All that could be done by skill and care and love, was done for Firm. Our lady manager and head nurse never left him when she could be spared, and all the other ladies vied in zeal for this young soldier, so that I could scarcely get near him. His grandfather's sad and extraordinary tale was confirmed by a wounded prisoner. Poor Ephraim Gundry's rare power of sight had been fatal perhaps to the cause he fought for, or at least to its greatest captain. Returning from desperate victory, the general, wrapped in the folds of night, and perhaps in the gloom of his own stern thoughts, while it seemed quite impossible that he should be seen, encountered the fire of his own troops; and the order to fire was given by his favorite officer, Colonel Firm Gundry. When the young man learned that he had destroyed, by a lingering death, the chief idol of his heart, he called for a rifle, but all refused him, knowing too well what his purpose was. Then under the trees, without a word or sigh, he set the hilt of his sword upon the earth, and the point to his heart--as well as he could find it. The blade passed through him, and then snapped off--But I can not bear to speak of it.
And now, few people might suppose it, but the substance of which he was made will be clear, when not only his own knowledge of his case but also the purest scientific reasoning established a truth more frankly acknowledged in the New World than in the Old one. It was proved that, with a good constitution, it is safer to receive two wounds than one, even though they may not be at the same time taken. Firm had been shot by the captain of Mexican robbers, as long ago related. He was dreadfully pulled down at the time, and few people could have survived it. But now that stood him in the very best stead, not only as a lesson of patience, but also in the question of cartilage. But not being certain what cartilage is, I can only refer inquirers to the note-book of the hospital, which has been printed.
For us it was enough to know that (shattered as he was and must be) this brave and single-minded warrior struggled for the time successfully with that great enemy of the human race, to whom the human race so largely consign one another and themselves. But some did say, and emphatically Uncle Sam, that Colonel Firm Gundry--for a colonel he was now, not by courtesy, but commission--would never have held up his head to do it, but must have gone on with his ravings for death, if somebody had not arrived in the nick of time, and cried over him--a female somebody from old England.
And, even after that, they say that he never would have cared to be a man again, never would have calmed his conscience with the reflection, so commonplace and yet so high--that having done our best according to our lights, we must not dwell always on our darkness--if once again, and for the residue of life, there had not been some one to console him--a consolation that need not have, and is better without, pure reason, coming, as that would come, from a quarter whence it is never quite welcome. Enough for me that he never laid hand to a weapon of war again, and never shall unless our own home is invaded.
For after many months--each equal to a year of teaching and of humbling--there seemed to be a good time for me to get away and attend to my duties in England. Of these I had been reminded often by letters, and once by a messenger; but all money matters seemed dust in the balance where life and death were swinging. But now Uncle Sam and his grandson, having their love knit afresh by disaster, were eager to start for the Saw-mill, and trust all except their own business to Providence.
I had told them that, when they went westward, my time would be come for starting eastward; and being unlikely to see them again, I should hope for good news frequently. And then I got dear Uncle Sam by himself, and begged him, for the sake of Firm's happiness, to keep him as far as he could from Pennsylvania Sylvester. At the same time I thought that the very nice young lady who jumped upon his nose from the window, Miss Annie--I forgot her name, or at any rate I told him so--would make him a good straightforward wife, so far as one could tell from having seen her. And that seemed to have been settled in their infancy. And if he would let me know when it was to be, I had seen a thing in London I should like to give them.
When I asked the Sawyer to see to this, instead of being sorry, he seemed quite pleased, and nodded sagaciously, and put his hat on, as he generally did, to calculate.
“Both of them gals have married long ago,” he said, looking at me with a fine soft gaze; “and bad handfuls their mates have got of them. But what made you talk of them, missy--or 'my lady,' as now you are in old country, I hear--what made you think of them like that, my dearie?”
“I can't tell what made me think of them. How can I tell why I think of every thing?”
“Still, it was an odd thing for your ladyship to say.”
“Uncle Sam, I am nobody's ladyship, least of all yours. What makes you speak so? I am your own little wandering child, whose life you saved, and whose father you loved, and who loses all who love her. Even from you I am forced to go away. Oh, why is it always my fate--my fate?”
“Hush!” said the old man; and I stopped my outburst at his whisper. “To talk of fate, my dearie, shows either one thing or the other--that we have no will of our own, or else that we know not how to guide it. I never knew a good man talk of fate. The heathens and the pagans made it. The Lord in heaven is enough for me; and He always hath allowed me my own free-will, though I may not have handled 'un cleverly. And He giveth you your own will now, my missy--to go from us or to stop with us. And being as you are a very grand young woman now, owning English land and income paid in gold instead of greenbacks--the same as our nugget seems likely--to my ideas it would be wrong if we was so much as to ask you.”
“Is that what you are full of, then, and what makes you so mysterious? I did think that you knew me better, and I had a right to hope so.”
“Concerning of yourself alone is not what we must think of. You might do this, or you might do that, according to what you was told, or, even more, according to what was denied you. For poor honest people, like Firm and me, to deal with such a case is out of knowledge. For us it is--go by the will of the Lord, and dead agin your own desires.”
“But, dear Uncle Sam,” I cried, feeling that now I had him upon his own tenterhooks, “you rebuked me as sharply as lies in your nature for daring to talk about fate just now; but to what else comes your own conduct, if you are bound to go against your own desire? If you have such a lot of freewill, why must you do what you do not like to do?”
“Well, well, perhaps I was talking rather large. The will of the world is upon us as well. And we must have respect for its settlements.”
“Now let me,” I said, with a trembling wish to have every thing right and maidenly. “I have seen so much harm from misunderstandings, and they are so simple when it is too late--let me ask you one or two questions, Uncle Sam. You always answer every body. And to you a crooked answer is impossible.”
“Business is business,” the Sawyer said. “My dear, I contract accordingly.”
“Very well. Then, in the first place, what do you wish to have done with me? Putting aside all the gossip, I mean, of people who have never even heard of me.”
“Why, to take you back to Saw-mill with us, where you always was so natural.”
“In the next place, what does your grandson wish?”
“To take you back to Saw-mill with him, and keep you there till death do you part, as chanceth to all mortal pairs.”
“And now, Uncle Sam, what do I wish? You say we all have so much free-will.”
“It is natural that you should wish, my dear, to go and be a great lady, and marry a nobleman of your own rank, and have a lot of little noblemen.”
“Then I fly against nature; and the fault is yours for filling me so with machinery.”
The Sawyer was beaten, and he never said again that a woman can not argue.
|
{
"id": "7112"
}
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58
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BEYOND DESERT, AND DESERTS
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From all the carnage, havoc, ruin, hatred, and fury of that wicked war we set our little convoy forth, with passes procured from either side. According to all rules of war, Firm was no doubt a prisoner; but having saved his life, and taken his word to serve no more against them, remembering also that he had done them more service than ten regiments, the Federal authorities were not sorry to be quit of him.
He, for his part, being of a deep, retentive nature, bore in his wounded breast a sorrow which would last his lifetime. To me he said not a single word about his bitter fortune, and he could not bring himself to ask me whether I would share it. Only from his eyes sometimes I knew what he was thinking; and having passed through so much grief, I was moved with deep compassion. Poor Firm had been trained by his grandfather to a strong, earnest faith in Providence, and now this compelled him almost to believe that he had been specially visited. For flying in the face of his good grandfather, and selfishly indulging his own stiff neck, his punishment had been hard, and almost heavier than he could bear. Whatever might happen to him now, the spring and the flower of his life were gone; he still might have some calm existence, but never win another day of cloudless joy. And if he had only said this, or thought about it, we might have looked at him with less sadness of our own.
But he never said any thing about himself, nor gave any opening for our comfort to come to him. Only from day to day he behaved gently and lovingly to both of us, as if his own trouble must be fought out by himself, and should dim no other happiness. And this kept us thinking of his sorrow all the more, so that I could not even look at him without a flutter of the heart, which was afraid to be a sigh.
At last, upon the great mountain range, through which we now were toiling, with the snow little more than a mantle for the peaks, and a sparkling veil for sunrise, dear Uncle Sam, who had often shown signs of impatience, drew me apart from the rest. Straightforward and blunt as he generally was, he did not seem altogether ready to begin, but pulled off his hat, and then put it on again, the weather being now cold and hot by turns. And while he did this he was thinking at his utmost, as every full vein of his forehead declared. And being at home with his ways, I waited.
“Think you got ahead of me? No, not you,” he exclaimed at last, in reply to some version of his own of my ideas, which I carefully made a nonentity under the scrutiny of his keen blue eyes. “No, no, missy; you wait a bit. Uncle Sam was not hatched yesterday, and it takes fifty young ladies to go round him.”
“Is that from your size, Uncle Sam, or your depth?”
“Well, a mixture of both, I do believe. Now the last thing you ever would think of, if you lived to be older than Washington's nurse, is the very thing I mean to put to you. Only you must please to take it well, according to my meaning. You see our Firm going to a shadow, don't you? Very well; the fault of that is all yourn. Why not up and speak to him?”
“I speak to him every day, Uncle Sam, and I spare no efforts to fatten him. I am sure I never dreamed of becoming such a cook. But soon he will have Suan Isco.”
“Old Injun be darned! It's not the stomach, it's the heart as wants nourishment with yon poor lad. He looketh that pitiful at you sometimes, my faith, I can hardly tell whether to laugh at his newings or cry at the lean face that does it.”
“You are not talking like yourself, Uncle Sam. And he never does any thing of the kind. I am sure there is nothing to laugh at.”
“No, no; to be sure not. I made a mistake. Heroic is the word, of course--every thing is heroic.”
“It is heroic,” I answered, with some vexation at his lightness. “If you can not see it, I am sorry for you. I like large things; and I know of nothing larger than the way poor Firm is going on.”
“You to stand up for him!” Colonel Gundry answered, as if he could scarcely look at me. “You to talk large of him, my Lady Castlewood, while you are doing of his heart into small wittles! Well, I did believe, if no one else, that you were a straightforward one.”
“And what am I doing that is crooked now?”
“Well, not to say crooked, Miss 'Rema; no, no. Only onconsistent, when squared up.”
“Uncle Sam, you're a puzzle to me to-day. What is inconsistent? What is there to square up?”
He fetched a long breath, and looked wondrous wise. Then, as if his main object was to irritate me, he made a long stride, and said, “Soup's a-bilin now.”
“Let it boil over, then. You must say what you mean. Oh, Uncle Sam, I only want to do the right!”
“I dessay. I dessay. But have you got the pluck, miss? Our little missy would 'a done more than that. But come to be great lady--why, they take another tune. With much mind, of course it might be otherwise. But none of 'em have any much of that to spare.”
“Your view is a narrow one,” I replied, knowing how that would astonish him. “You judge by your own experience only; and to do that shows a sad want of breadth, as the ladies in England express it.”
The Sawyer stared, and then took off his hat, and then felt all about for his spectacles. The idea of being regarded by a “female” from a larger and loftier point of view, made a new sensation in his system.
“Yes,” I continued, with some enjoyment, “let us try to look largely at all things, Uncle Sam. And supposing me capable of that, what is the proper and the lofty course to take?”
He looked at me with a strange twinkle in his eyes, and with three words discomfited me--“Pop the question.”
Much as I had heard of woman's rights, equality of body and mind with man, and superiority in morals, it did not appear to me that her privilege could be driven to this extent. But I shook my head till all my hair came down; and so if our constitutional right of voting by color was exercised, on this occasion it claimed the timid benefit of ballot.
With us a suggestion, for the time discarded, has often double effect by-and-by; and though it was out of my power to dream of acting up to such directions, there could be no possible harm in reviewing such a theory theoretically.
Now nothing beyond this was in my thoughts, nor even so much as that (safely may I say), when Firm and myself met face to face on the third day after Uncle Sam's ideas. Our little caravan, of which the Sawyer was the captain, being bound for Blue River and its neighborhood, had quitted the Sacramento track by a fork on the left not a league from the spot where my father had bidden adieu to mankind. And knowing every twist and turn of rock, our drivers brought us at the camping-time almost to the verge of chaparral.
I knew not exactly how far we were come, but the dust-cloud of memory was stirring, and though mountains looked smaller than they used to look, the things done among them seemed larger. And wandering forth from the camp to think, when the evening meal was over, lo! there I stood in that selfsame breach or portal of the desert in which I stood once by my father's side, with scared and weary eyes, vainly seeking safety's shattered landmark. The time of year was different, being the ripe end of October now; but though the view was changed in tint, it was even more impressive. Sombre memories, and deep sense of grandeur, which is always sad, and solemn lights, and stealing shadows, compassed me with thoughtfulness. In the mouth of the gorge was a gray block of granite, whereupon I sat down to think.
Old thoughts, dull thoughts, thoughts as common as the clouds that cross the distant plain, and as vague as the wind that moves them--they please and they pass, and they may have shed kindly influence, but what are they? The life that lies before us is, in some way, too, below us, like yon vast amplitude of plain; but it must be traversed foot by foot, and laboriously travailed, without the cloudy vaporing or the high-flown meditation. And all that must be done by me, alone, with none to love me, and (which for a woman is so much worse) nobody ever to have for my own, to cherish, love, and cling to.
Tier upon tier, and peak over peak, the finest mountains of the world are soaring into the purple firmament. Like northern lights, they flash, or flush, or fade into a reclining gleam; like ladders of heaven, they bar themselves with cloudy air; and like heaven itself, they rank their white procession. Lonely, feeble, puny, I look up with awe and reverence; the mind pronounces all things small compared with this magnificence. Yet what will all such grandeur do--the self-defensive heart inquires--for puny, feeble, lonely me?
Before another shadow deepened or another light grew pale, a slow, uncertain step drew near, and by the merest chance it happened to be Ephraim Gundry's. I was quite surprised, and told him so; and he said that he also was surprised at meeting me in this way. Remembering how long I had been here, I thought this most irrational, but checked myself from saying so, because he looked so poorly. And more than that, I asked him kindly how he was this evening, and smoothed my dress to please his eye, and offered him a chair of rock. But he took no notice of all these things.
I thought of the time when he would have behaved so very differently from this, and nothing but downright pride enabled me to repress vexation. However, I resolved to behave as kindly as if he were his own grandfather.
“How grand these mountains are!” I said. “It must do you good to see them again. Even to me it is such a delight. And what must it be to you, a native?”
“Yes, I shall wander from them no more. How I wish that I had never done so?”
“Have men less courage than women?” I asked, with one glance at his pale worn face. “I owe you the debt of life; and this is the place to think and speak of it. I used to talk freely of that, you know. You used to like to hear me speak; but now you are tired of that, and tired of all the world as well, I fear.”
“No, I am tired of nothing, except my own vile degradation. I am tired of my want of spirit, that I can not cast my load. I am tired of my lack of reason, which should always guide a man. What is the use of mind or intellect, reasoning power, or whatever it is called, if the whole of them can not enable a man to hold out against a stupid heart?”
“I think you should be proud,” I said, while trembling to approach the subject which never had been touched between us, “at having a nature so sensitive. Your evil chance might have been any body's, and must of course have been somebody's. But nobody else would have taken it so--so delightfully as you have done!”
“Delightfully! Is that the word you use? May I ask who gets any delight from it?”
“Why, all who hate the Southern cause,” I replied, with a sudden turn of thought, though I never had meant to use the word. “Surely that needs no explanation.”
“They are delighted, are they? Yes, I can very well believe it. Narrow-minded bigots! Yes, they are sure to be delighted. They call it a just visitation, of course, a righteous retribution. And they hope I may never get over it.”
“I pray you to take it more gently,” I said; “they are very good men, and wish you no harm. But they must have their own opinions; and naturally they think them just.”
“Then all their opinions are just wrong. They hope to see me go down, to my grave. They shall not have that pleasure. I will outlive every old John Brown of them. I did not care two cents to live just now. Henceforth I will make a point of it. If I cannot fight for true freedom any more, having ruined it perhaps already, the least I can do is to give no more triumph to its bitter enemies. I will eat and drink, and begin this very night. I suppose you are one of them, as you put their arguments so neatly. I suppose you consider me a vile slave-driver?”
“You are very ill,” I said, with my heart so full of pity that anger could not enter; “you are very ill, and very weak. How could you drive the very best slave now--even such a marvel as Uncle Tom?”
Firm Gundry smiled; on his lean dry face there shone a little flicker, which made me think of the time when he bought a jest-book, published at Cincinnati, to make himself agreeable to my mind. And little as I meant it, I smiled also, thinking of the way he used to come out with his hard-fought jokes, and expect it.
“I wish you were at all as you used to be,” he said, looking at me softly through the courage of his smile, “instead of being such a grand lady.”
“And I wish you were a little more like yourself,” I answered, without thinking; “you used to think always there was nobody like me.”
“Suppose that I am of the same opinion still? Tenfold, fiftyfold, a millionfold?”
“To suppose a thing of that sort is a little too absurd, when you have shown no sign of it.”
“For your own dear sake I have shown no sign. The reason of that is too clear to explain.”
“Then how stupid I must be not to see an atom of it!”
“Why, who would have any thing to say to me--a broken-down man, a fellow marked out for curses, one who hates even the sight of himself? The lowest of the low would shun me.”
He turned away from me, and gazed back toward the dismal, miserable, spectral desert; while I stood facing the fruitful, delicious, flowery Paradise of all the world. I thought of the difference in our lots, and my heart was in misery about him. Then I conquered my pride and my littleness and trumpery, and did what the gentle sweet Eve might have done. And never have I grieved for that action since.
With tears on my cheeks quite undissembled, and a breast not ashamed of fluttering, I ran to Firm Gundry, and took his right hand, and allowed him no refuge from tender wet eyes. Then before he could come to see the meaning of this haste--because of his very high discipline--I was out of his distance, and sitting on a rock, and I lifted my eyes, full of eloquence, to his; then I dropped them, and pulled my hat forward, and said, as calmly as was possible, “I have done enough. The rest remains with you, Firm Gundry.”
The rest remained with him. Enough that I was part of that rest; and if not the foundation or crown of it, something desirous to be both, and failing (if fail it ever does) from no want of trial. Uncle Sam says that I never fail at all, and never did fail in any thing, unless it was when I found that blamed nugget, for which we got three wagon-loads of greenbacks; which (when prosperity at last revives) will pay perhaps for greasing all twelve wheels.
Jowler admits not that failure even. As soon as he recovered from canine dementia, approaching very closely to rabies, at seeing me in the flesh once more (so that the Sierra Nevada rang with avalanches of barking), he tugged me to the place where his teeth were set in gold, and proved that he had no hydrophobia. His teeth are scanty now, but he still can catch a salmon, and the bright zeal and loyalty of his soft brown eyes and the sprightly elevation of his tail are still among dogs as pre-eminent as they are to mankind inimitable.
Now the war is past, and here we sit by the banks of the soft Blue River. The early storm and young conflict of a clouded life are over. Still out of sight there may be yet a sea of troubles to buffet with; but it is not merely a selfish thought that others will face it with me. Dark mysteries have been cleared away by being confronted bravely; and the lesson has been learned that life (like California flowers) is of infinite variety. This little river, ten steps wide, on one side has all lupins, on the other side all larkspurs. Can I tell why? Can any body? Can even itself, so full of voice and light, unroll the reason?
Behind us tower the stormy crags, before us spread soft tapestry of earth and sweep of ocean. Below us lies my father's grave, whose sin was not his own, but fell on him, and found him loyal. To him was I loyal also, as a daughter should be; and in my lap lies my reward--for I am no more Erema.
|
{
"id": "7112"
}
|
1
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THE STABLE YARD
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It was one of those exquisite days that come in every winter, in which it seems no longer the dead body, but the lovely ghost of summer. Such a day bears to its sister of the happier time something of the relation the marble statue bears to the living form; the sense it awakes of beauty is more abstract, more ethereal; it lifts the soul into a higher region than will summer day of lordliest splendour. It is like the love that loss has purified.
Such, however, were not the thoughts that at the moment occupied the mind of Malcolm Colonsay. Indeed, the loveliness of the morning was but partially visible from the spot where he stood--the stable yard of Lossie House, ancient and roughly paved. It was a hundred years since the stones had been last relaid and levelled: none of the horses of the late Marquis minded it but one--her whom the young man in Highland dress was now grooming--and she would have fidgeted had it been an oak floor. The yard was a long and wide space, with two storied buildings on all sides of it. In the centre of one of them rose the clock, and the morning sun shone red on its tarnished gold. It was an ancient clock, but still capable of keeping good time--good enough, at least, for all the requirements of the house, even when the family was at home, seeing it never stopped, and the church clock was always ordered by it.
It not only set the time, but seemed also to set the fashion of the place, for the whole aspect of it was one of wholesome, weather beaten, time worn existence. One of the good things that accompany good blood is that its possessor does not much mind a shabby coat. Tarnish and lichens and water wearing, a wavy house ridge, and a few families of worms in the wainscot do not annoy the marquis as they do the city man who has just bought a little place in the country. When an old family ceases to go lovingly with nature, I see no reason why it should go any longer. An old tree is venerable, and an old picture precious to the soul, but an old house, on which has been laid none but loving and respectful hands, is dear to the very heart. Even an old barn door, with the carved initials of hinds and maidens of vanished centuries, has a place of honour in the cabinet of the poet's brain. It was centuries since Lossie House had begun to grow shabby--and beautiful; and he to whom it now belonged was not one to discard the reverend for the neat, or let the vanity of possession interfere with the grandeur of inheritance.
Beneath the tarnished gold of the clock, flushed with the red winter sun, he was at this moment grooming the coat of a powerful black mare. That he had not been brought up a groom was pretty evident from the fact that he was not hissing; but that he was Marquis of Lossie there was nothing about him to show. The mare looked dangerous. Every now and then she cast back a white glance of the one visible eye. But the youth was on his guard, and as wary as fearless in his handling of her. When at length he had finished the toilet which her restlessness--for her four feet were never all still at once upon the stones--had considerably protracted, he took from his pocket a lump of sugar, and held it for her to bite at with her angry looking teeth.
It was a keen frost, but in the sun the icicles had begun to drop. The roofs in the shadow were covered with hoar frost; wherever there was shadow there was whiteness. But for all the cold, there was keen life in the air, and yet keener life in the two animals, biped and quadruped.
As they thus stood, the one trying to sweeten the other's relation to himself, if he could not hope much for her general temper, a man, who looked half farmer, half lawyer, appeared on the opposite side of the court in the shadow.
"You are spoiling that mare, MacPhail," he cried.
"I canna weel du that, sir; she canna be muckle waur," said the youth.
"It's whip and spur she wants, not sugar."
"She has had, and sail have baith, time aboot (in turn); and I houp they'll du something for her in time, sir."
"Her time shall be short here, anyhow. She's not worth the sugar you give her."
"Eh, sir! luik at her," said Malcolm, in a tone of expostulation, as he stepped back a few paces and regarded her with admiring eyes. "Saw ye ever sic legs? an' sic a neck? an' sic a heid? an' sic fore an' hin' quarters? She's a' bonny but the temper o' her, an' that she canna help like the likes o' you an me."
"She'll be the death o' somebody some day. The sooner we get rid of her the better. Just look at that," he added, as the mare laid back her ears and made a vicious snap at nothing in particular.
"She was a favourite o' my--maister, the marquis," returned the youth, "an' I wad ill like to pairt wi' her."
"I'll take any offer in reason for her," said the factor. "You'll just ride her to Forres market next week, and see what you can get for her. I do think she's quieter since you took her in hand."
"I'm sure she is--but it winna laist a day. The moment I lea' her, she'll be as ill's ever," said the youth. "She has a kin' a likin' to me, 'cause I gi'e her sugar, an' she canna cast me; but she's no a bit better i' the hert o' her yet. She's an oonsanctifeed brute. I cudna think o' sellin' her like this."
"Lat them 'at buys tak' tent (beware)," said the factor.
"Ow ay! lat them; I dinna objec'; gien only they ken what she's like afore they buy her," rejoined Malcolm.
The factor burst out laughing. To his judgment the youth had spoken like an idiot.
"We'll not send you to sell," he said. "Stoat shall go with you, and you shall have nothing to do but hold the mare and your own tongue."
"Sir," said Malcolm, seriously, "ye dinna mean what ye say? Ye said yersel' she wad be the deith o' somebody, an' to sell her ohn tell't what she's like wad be to caw the saxt comman'ment clean to shivers."
"That may be good doctrine i' the kirk, my lad, but it's pure heresy i' the horse market. No, no! You buy a horse as you take a wife-- for better for worse, as the case may be. A woman's not bound to tell her faults when a man wants to marry her. If she keeps off the worst of them afterwards, it's all he has a right to look for."
"Hoot, sir! there's no a pair o' parallel lines in a' the compairison," returned Malcolm. "Mistress Kelpie here 's e'en ower ready to confess her fauts, an' that by giein' a taste o' them; she winna bide to be speired; but for haudin' aff o' them efter the bargain's made--ye ken she's no even responsible for the bargain. An' gien ye expec' me to haud my tongue aboot them--faith, Maister Crathie, I wad as sune think o' sellin' a rotten boat to Blue Peter. Gien the man 'at has her to see tilt dinna ken to luik oot for a storm o' iron shune or lang teeth ony moment, his wife may be a widow that same market nicht: An' forbye, it's again' the aucht comman'ment as weel's the saxt. There's nae exception there in regaird o' horse flesh. We maun be honest i' that as weel's i' corn or herrin', or onything ither 'at 's coft an' sell't atween man an' his neibor."
"There's one commandment, my lad," said Mr Crathie, with the dignity of intended rebuke, "you seem to find hard to learn, and that is, to mind your own business."
"Gien ye mean catchin' the herrin', maybe ye're richt," said the youth. "I ken muir aboot that nor the horse coupin', and it's full cleaner."
"None of your impudence!" returned the factor. "The marquis is not here to uphold you in your follies. That they amused him is no reason why I should put up with them. So keep your tongue between your teeth, or you'll find it the worse for you."
The youth smiled a little oddly, and held his peace.
"You're here to do what I tell you, and make no remarks," added the factor.
"I'm awaur o' that, sir--within certain leemits," returned Malcolm.
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean within the leemits o' duin' by yer neibor as ye wad ha'e yer neibor du by you--that's what I mean, sir."
"I've told you already that doesn't apply in horse dealing. Every man has to take care of himself in the horse market: that's understood. If you had been brought up amongst horses instead of herring, you would have known that as well as any other man."
"I doobt I'll ha'e to gang back to the herrin' than, sir, for they're like to pruv' the honester o' the twa; But there's nae hypocrisy in Kelpie, an' she maun ha'e her day's denner, come o' the morn's what may."
At the word hypocrisy, Mr Crathie's face grew red as the sun in a fog. He was an elder of the kirk, and had family worship every night as regularly as his toddy. So the word was as offensive and insolent as it was foolish and inapplicable. He would have turned Malcolm adrift on the spot, but that he remembered--not the favour of the late marquis for the lad--that was nothing to the factor now: his lord under the mould was to him as if he had never been above it--but the favour of the present marchioness, for all in the house knew that she was interested in him. Choking down therefore his rage and indignation, he said sternly; "Malcolm, you have two enemies--a long tongue, and a strong conceit. You have little enough to be proud of, my man, and the less said the better. I advise you to mind what you're about, and show suitable respect to your superiors, or as sure as judgment you'll go back to fish guts."
While he spoke, Malcolm had been smoothing Kelpie all over with his palms; the moment the factor ceased talking, he ceased stroking, and with one arm thrown over the mare's back, looked him full in the face.
"Gien ye imaigine, Maister Crathie," he said, "'at I coont it ony rise i' the warl' 'at brings me un'er the orders o' a man less honest than he micht be, ye're mista'en. I dinna think it's pride this time; I wad ile Blue Peter's lang butes till him, but I winna lee for ony factor atween this an' Davy Jones."
It was too much. Mr Crathie's feelings overcame him, and he was a wrathful man to see, as he strode up to the youth with clenched fist.
"Haud frae the mere, for God's sake, Maister Crathie," cried Malcolm. But even as he spoke, two reversed Moorish arches of gleaming iron opened on the terror quickened imagination of the factor a threatened descent from which his most potent instinct, that of self preservation, shrank in horror. He started back white with dismay, having by a bare inch of space and a bare moment of time, escaped what he called Eternity. Dazed with fear he turned and had staggered halfway across the yard, as if going home, before he recovered himself. Then he turned again, and with what dignity he could scrape together said--"MacPhail, you go about your business."
In his foolish heart he believed Malcolm had made the brute strike out.
"I canna weel gang till Stoat comes hame," answered Malcolm.
"If I see you about the place after sunset, I'll horsewhip you," said the factor, and walked away, showing the crown of his hat.
Malcolm again smiled oddly, but made no reply. He undid the mare's halter, and took her into the stable. There he fed her, standing by her all the time she ate, and not once taking his eyes off her. His father, the late marquis, had bought her at the sale of the stud of a neighbouring laird, whose whole being had been devoted to horses, till the pale one came to fetch himself: the men about the stable had drugged her, and, taken with the splendid lines of the animal, nor seeing cause to doubt her temper as she quietly obeyed the halter, he had bid for her, and, as he thought, had her a great bargain. The accident that finally caused his death followed immediately after, and while he was ill no one cared to vex him by saying what she had turned out. But Malcolm had even then taken her in hand in the hope of taming her a little before his master, who often spoke of his latest purchase, should see her again. In this he had very partially succeeded; but if only for the sake of him whom he now knew for his father, nothing would have made him part with the animal. Besides, he had been compelled to use her with so much severity at times that he had grown attached to her from the reaction of pity as well as from admiration of her physical qualities, and the habitude of ministering to her wants and comforts. The factor, who knew Malcolm only as a servant, had afterwards allowed her to remain in his charge, merely in the hope, through his treatment, of by and by selling her, as she had been bought, for a faultless animal, but at a far better price.
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{
"id": "7174"
}
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2
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THE LIBRARY
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When she had finished her oats, Malcolm left her busy with her hay, for she was a huge eater, and went into the house, passing through the kitchen and ascending a spiral stone stair to the library--the only room not now dismantled. As he went along the narrow passage on the second floor leading to it from the head of the stair, the housekeeper, Mrs Courthope, peeped after him from one of the many bedrooms opening upon it, and watched him as he went, nodding her head two or three times with decision: he reminded her so strongly --not of his father, the last marquis, but the brother who had preceded him, that she felt all but certain, whoever might be his mother, he had as much of the Colonsay blood in his veins as any marquis of them all. It was in consideration of this likeness that Mr Crathie had permitted the youth, when his services were not required, to read in the library.
Malcolm went straight to a certain corner, and from amongst a dingy set of old classics took down a small Greek book, in large type. It was the manual of that slave among slaves, that noble among the free, Epictetus. He was no great Greek scholar, but, with the help of the Latin translation, and the gloss of his own rath experience, he could lay hold of the mind of that slave of a slave, whose very slavery was his slave to carry him to the heights of freedom. It was not Greek he cared for, but Epictetus. It was but little he read, however, for the occurrence of the morning demanded, compelled thought. Mr Crathie's behaviour caused him neither anger nor uneasiness, but it rendered necessary some decision with regard to the ordering of his future.
I can hardly say he recalled how, on his deathbed, the late marquis, about three months before, having, with all needful observances, acknowledged him his son, had committed to his trust the welfare of his sister; for the memory of this charge was never absent from his feeling even when not immediately present to his thought. But although a charge which he would have taken upon him all the same had his father not committed it to him, it was none the less a source of perplexity upon which as yet all his thinking had let in but little light. For to appear as Marquis of Lossie was not merely to take from his sister the title she supposed her own, but to declare her illegitimate, seeing that, unknown to the marquis, the youth's mother, his first wife, was still alive when Florimel was born. How to act so that as little evil as possible might befall the favourite of his father, and one whom he had himself loved with the devotion almost of a dog, before he knew she was his sister, was the main problem.
For himself, he had had a rough education, and had enjoyed it: his thoughts were not troubled about his own prospects. Mysteriously committed to the care of a poor blind Highland piper, a stranger from inland regions, settled amongst a fishing people, he had, as he grew up, naturally fallen into their ways of life and labour, and but lately abandoned the calling of a fisherman to take charge of the marquis's yacht, whence, by degrees, he had, in his helpfulness, grown indispensable to him and his daughter, and had come to live in the house of Lossie as a privileged servant. His book education, which he owed mainly to the friendship of the parish schoolmaster, although nothing marvellous, or in Scotland very peculiar, had opened for him in all directions doors of thought and inquiry, but the desire of knowledge was in his case, again through the influences of Mr Graham, subservient to an almost restless yearning after the truth of things, a passion so rare that the ordinary mind can hardly master even the fact of its existence.
The Marchioness of Lossie, as she was now called, for the family was one of the two or three in Scotland in which the title descends to an heiress, had left Lossie House almost immediately upon her father's death, under the guardianship of a certain dowager countess. Lady Bellair had taken her first to Edinburgh, and then to London. Tidings of her Malcolm occasionally received through Mr Soutar of Duff Harbour, the lawyer the marquis had employed to draw up the papers substantiating the youth's claim. The last amounted to this, that, as rapidly as the proprieties of mourning would permit, she was circling the vortex of the London season; and Malcolm was now almost in despair of ever being of the least service to her as a brother to whom as a servant he had seemed at one time of daily necessity. If he might but once be her skipper, her groom, her attendant, he might then at least learn how to discover to her the bond between them, without breaking it in the very act, and so ruining the hope of service to follow.
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{
"id": "7174"
}
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3
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MISS HORN
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The door opened, and in walked a tall, gaunt, hard featured woman, in a huge bonnet, trimmed with black ribbons, and a long black net veil, worked over with sprigs, coming down almost to her waist. She looked stern, determined, almost fierce, shook hands with a sort of loose dissatisfaction, and dropped into one of the easy chairs in which the library abounded. With the act the question seemed shot from her--"Duv ye ca' yersel' an honest man, noo, Ma'colm?"
"I ca' myself naething," answered the youth; "but I wad fain be what ye say, Miss Horn."
"Ow! I dinna doobt ye wadna steal, nor yet tell lees aboot a horse: I ha'e jist come frae a sair waggin' o' tongues about ye. Mistress Crathie tells me her man's in a sair vex 'at ye winna tell a wordless lee aboot the black mere: that's what I ca't--no her. But lee it wad be, an' dinna ye aither wag or haud a leein' tongue. A gentleman maunna lee, no even by sayin' naething--na, no gien 't war to win intill the kingdom. But, Guid be thankit, that's whaur leears never come. Maybe ye're thinkin' I ha'e sma' occasion to say sic like to yersel'. An' yet what's yer life but a lee, Ma'colm? You 'at's the honest Marquis o' Lossie to waur yer time an' the stren'th o' yer boady an' the micht o' yer sowl tyauvin' (wrestling) wi' a deevil o' a she horse, whan there's that half sister o' yer' ain gauin' to the verra deevil o' perdition himsel' amang the godless gentry o' Lon'on!"
"What wad ye ha'e me un'erstan' by that, Miss Horn?" returned Malcolm. "I hear no ill o' her. I daursay she's no jist a sa'nt yet, but that's no to be luiked for in ane o' the breed: they maun a' try the warl' first ony gait. There's a heap o' fowk--an' no aye the warst, maybe," continued Malcolm, thinking of his father, "'at wull ha'e their bite o' the aipple afore they spite it oot. But for my leddy sister, she's owre prood ever to disgrace hersel'."
"Weel, maybe, gien she bena misguidit by them she's wi'. But I'm no sae muckle concernt aboot her. Only it's plain 'at ye ha'e no richt to lead her intill temptation."
"Hoo am I temptin' at her, mem?"
"That's plain to half an e'e. Ir ye no lattin' her live believin' a lee? Ir ye no allooin' her to gang on as gien she was somebody mair nor mortal, when ye ken she's nae mair Marchioness o' Lossie nor ye're the son o' auld Duncan MacPhail? Faith, ye ha'e lost trowth gien ye ha'e gaint the warl' i' the cheenge o' forbeirs!"
"Mint at naething again the deid, mem. My father's gane till's accoont; an it's weel for him he has his father an' no his sister to pronoonce upo' him." " 'Deed ye're right there, laddie," said Miss Horn, in a subdued tone.
"He's made it up wi' my mither afore noo, I'm thinkin'; an' ony gait he confesst her his wife an' me her son afore he dee'd, an' what mair had he time to du?"
"It's fac'," returned Miss Horn. "An' noo luik at yersel': what yer father confesst wi' the verra deid thraw o' a labourin' speerit, to the whilk naething cud ha'e broucht him but the deid thraws (death struggles) o' the bodily natur' an' the fear o' hell, that same confession ye row up again i' the cloot o' secrecy, in place o' dightin' wi' 't the blot frae the memory o' ane wha I believe I lo'ed mair as my third cousin nor ye du as yer ain mither!"
"There's no blot upo' her memory, mem," returned the youth, "or I wad be markis the morn. There's never a sowl kens she was mither but kens she was wife--ay, an' whase wife, tu."
Miss Horn had neither wish nor power to reply, and changed her front.
"An' sae, Ma'colm Colonsay," she said, "ye ha'e no less nor made up yer min' to pass yer days in yer ain stable, neither better nor waur than an ostler at the Lossie Airms, an' that efter a' 'at I ha'e borne an' dune to mak a gentleman o' ye, bairdin' yer father here like a verra lion in 's den, an' garrin' him confess the thing again' ilka hair upon the stiff neck o' 'im? Losh, laddie! it was a pictur' to see him stan'in wi' 's back to the door like a camstairy (obstinate) bullock!"
"Haud yer tongue, mem, gien ye please. I canna bide to hear my father spoken o' like that. For ye see I lo'ed him afore I kent he was ony drap 's blude to me."
"Weel, that's verra weel; but father an' mither's man and wife, an' ye camna o' a father alane."
"That's true, mem, an' it canna be I sud ever forget yon face ye shawed me i' the coffin, the bonniest, sairest sicht I ever saw," returned Malcolm, with a quaver in his voice.
"But what for cairry yer thouchts to the deid face o' her? Ye kent the leevin' ane weel," objected Miss Horn.
"That's true, mem; but the deid face maist blottit the leevin' oot o' my brain."
"I'm sorry for that. --Eh, laddie, but she was bonny to see!"
"I aye thoucht her the bonniest leddy I ever set e'e upo'. An' dinna think, mem, I'm gaein to forget the deid, 'cause I'm mair concemt aboot the leevin'. I tell ye I jist dinna ken what to du. What wi' my father's deein' words committin' her to my chairge, an' the more than regaird I ha'e to Leddy Florimel hersel', I'm jist whiles driven to ane mair. Hoo can I tak the verra sunsheen oot o' her life 'at I lo'ed afore I kent she was my ain sister, an' jist thoucht lang to win near eneuch till to du her ony guid turn worth duin? An' here I am, her ane half brither, wi' naething i' my pooer but to scaud the hert o' her, or else lee! Supposin' she was weel merried first, hoo wad she stan' wi' her man whan he cam to ken 'at she was nae marchioness--hed no lawfu' richt to ony name but her mither's? An' afore that, what richt cud I ha'e to alloo ony man to merry her ohn kent the trowth aboot her? Faith, it wad be a fine chance though for the fin'in' oot whether or no the man was worthy o' her! But, ye see that micht be to make a playock o' her hert. Puir thing, she luiks doon upo' me frae the tap o' her bonny neck, as frae a h'avenly heicht; but I s' lat her ken yet, gien only I can win at the gait o' 't, that I ha'ena come nigh her for naething."
He gave a sigh with the words, and a pause followed.
"The trowth's the trowth," resumed Miss Horn, "neither mair nor less."
"Ay," responded Malcolm; "but there's a richt an' a wrang time for the telling' o' 't. It's no as gien I had had han' or tongue in ony foregane lee. It was naething o' my duin', as ye ken, mem. To mysel', I was never onything but a fisherman born. I confess 'at whiles, when we wad be lyin' i' the lee o' the nets, tethered to them like, wi' the win' blawin' strong 'an steady, I ha'e thocht wi' mysel' 'at I kent naething aboot my father, an' what gien it sud turn oot 'at I was the son o' somebody--what wad I du wi' my siller?"
"An' what thoucht ye ye wad du, laddie?" asked Miss Horn gently.
"What but bigg a harbour at Scaurnose for the puir fisher fowk 'at was like my ain flesh and blude!"
"Weel," rejoined Miss Horn eagerly, "div ye no look upo' that as a voo to the Almichty--a voo 'at ye're bun' to pay, noo 'at ye ha'e yer wuss? An' it's no merely 'at ye ha'e the means, but there's no anither that has the richt; for they're yer ain fowk, 'at ye gaither rent frae, an 'at's been for mony a generation sattlet upo' yer lan'--though for the maitter o' the lan', they ha'e had little mair o' that than the birds o' the rock ha'e ohn feued--an' them honest fowks wi' wives an' sowls o' their ain! Hoo upo' airth are ye to du yer duty by them, an' render yer accoont at the last, gien ye dinna tak till ye yer pooer an' reign? Ilk man 'at 's in ony sense a king o' men is bun' to reign ower them in that sense. I ken little aboot things mysel', an' I ha'e no feelin's to guide me, but I ha'e a wheen cowmon sense, an' that maun jist stan' for the lave."
A silence followed.
"What for speak na ye, Ma'colm?" said Miss Horn, at length.
"I was jist tryin'," he answered, "to min' upon a twa lines 'at I cam' upo' the ither day in a buik 'at Maister Graham gied me afore he gaed awa--'cause I reckon he kent them a' by hert. They say jist sic like's ye been sayin', mem--gien I cud but min' upo' them. They're aboot a man 'at aye does the richt gait--made by ane they ca' Wordsworth."
"I ken naething aboot him," said Miss Horn, with emphasized indifference.
"An' I ken but little: I s' ken mair or lang though. This is hoo the piece begins: Who is the happy warrior? Who is he That every Man in arms should wish to be? -- It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought Upon the plan that pleased his childish thought.
--There! that's what ye wad hae o' me, mem!"
"Hear till him!" cried Miss Horn. "The man's i' the richt, though naebody never h'ard o' 'im. Haud ye by that, Ma'colm, an' dinna ye rist till ye ha'e biggit a harbour to the men an' women o' Scaurnose. Wha kens hoo mony may gang to the boddom afore it be dune, jist for the want o' 't?"
"The fundation maun be laid in richteousness, though, mem, else-- what gien 't war to save lives better lost?"
"That belangs to the Michty," said Miss Horn.
"Ay, but the layin' o' the fundation belangs to me. An' I'll no du't till I can du't ohn ruint my sister."
"Weel, there's ae thing clear: ye'll never ken what to do sae lang's ye hing on aboot a stable, fu' o' fower fittet animals wantin' sense--an' some twa fittet 'at has less."
"I doobt ye're richt there, mem; and gien I cud but tak puir Kelpie awa' wi' me--" "Hoots! I'm affrontit wi ye. Kelpie--quo he! Preserve's a'! The laad 'ill lat his ain sister gang, an' bide at hame wi' a mere!"
Malcolm held his peace.
"Ay, I'm thinkin' I maun gang," he said at length.
"Whaur till, than?" asked Miss Horn.
"Ow! to Lon'on--whaur ither?"
"And what'll yer lordship du there?"
"Dinna say lordship to me, mem, or I'll think ye're jeerin' at me. What wad the caterpillar say," he added, with a laugh, "gien ye ca'd her my leddie Psyche?"
Malcolm of course pronounced the Greek word in Scotch fashion.
"I ken naething aboot yer Seechies or yer Sukies," rejoined Miss Horn. "I ken 'at ye're bun' to be a lord and no a stableman, an' I s' no lat ye rist till ye up an' say what neist?"
"It's what I ha'e been sayin' for the last three month," said Malcolm.
"Ay, I daursay; but ye ha'e been sayin' 't upo' the braid o' yer back, and I wad ha'e ye up an' sayin' 't." "Gien I but kent what to du!" said Malcolm, for the thousandth time.
"Ye can at least gang whaur ye ha'e a chance o' learnin'," returned his friend. --"Come an' tak yer supper wi' me the nicht--a rizzart haddie an' an egg, an' I'll tell ye mair aboot yer mither."
But Malcolm avoided a promise, lest it should interfere with what he might find best to do.
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{
"id": "7174"
}
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4
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KELPIE'S AIRING
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When Miss Horn left him--with a farewell kindlier than her greeting--rendered yet more restless by her talk, he went back to the stable, saddled Kelpie, and took her out for an airing.
As he passed the factor's house, Mrs Crathie saw him from the window. Her colour rose. She arose herself also, and looked after him from the door--a proud and peevish woman, jealous of her husband's dignity, still more jealous of her own.
"The verra image o' the auld markis!" she said to herself; for in the recesses of her bosom she spoke the Scotch she scorned to utter aloud; "and sits jist like himsel', wi' a wee stoop i' the saiddle, and ilka noo an' than a swing o' his haill boady back, as gien some thoucht had set him straught. --Gien the fractious brute wad but brak a bane or twa o' him!" she went on in growing anger. "The impidence o' the fallow! He has his leave: what for disna he tak' it an' gang? But oot o' this gang he sail. To ca' a man like mine a heepocreet 'cause he wadna procleem till a haul market ilka secret fau't o' the horse he had to sell! Haith, he cam' upo' the wrang side o' the sheet to play the lord and maister here! and that I can tell him!"
The mare was fresh, and the roads through the policy hard both by nature and by frost, so that he could not let her go, and had enough to do with her. He turned, therefore, towards the sea gate, and soon reached the shore. There, westward of the Seaton, where the fisher folk lived, the sand lay smooth, flat, and wet along the edge of the receding tide: he gave Kelpie the rein, and she sprang into a wild gallop, every now and then flinging her heels as high as her rider's head. But finding, as they approached the stony part from which rose the great rock called the Bored Craig, that he could not pull her up in time, he turned her head towards the long dune of sand which, a little beyond the tide, ran parallel with the shore. It was dry and loose, and the ascent steep. Kelpie's hoofs sank at every step, and when she reached the top, with wide spread struggling haunches, and "nostrils like pits full of blood to the brim," he had her in hand. She stood panting, yet pawing and dancing, and making the sand fly in all directions.
Suddenly a woman with a child in her arms rose, as it seemed to Malcolm, under Kelpie's very head. She wheeled and reared, and, in wrath or in terror, strained every nerve to unseat her rider, while, whether from faith or despair, the woman stood still as a statue, staring at the struggle.
"Haud awa' a bit, Lizzy," cried Malcolm. "She's a mad brute, an' I mayna be able to haud her. Ye ha'e the bairnie, ye see!"
She was a young woman, with a sad white face. To what Malcolm said she paid no heed, but stood with her child in her arms and gazed at Kelpie as she went on plunging and kicking about on the top of the dune.
"I reckon ye wadna care though the she deevil knockit oot yer harns; but ye ha'e the bairn, woman! Ha'e mercy on the bairn, an' rin to the boddom."
"I want to speak to ye, Ma'colm MacPhail," she said, in a tone whose very stillness revealed a depth of trouble.
"I doobt I canna hearken to ye richt the noo," said Malcolm. "But bide a wee." He swung himself from Kelpie's back, and, hanging hard on the bit with one hand, searched with the other in the pocket of his coat, saying, as he did so--"Sugar, Kelpie! sugar!"
The animal gave an eager snort, settled on her feet, and began snuffing about him. He made haste, for, if her eagerness should turn to impatience, she would do her endeavour to bite him. After crunching three or four lumps, she stood pretty quiet, and Malcolm must make the best of what time she would give him.
"Noo, Lizzy!" he said hurriedly. "Speyk while ye can."
"Ma'colm," said the girl, and looked him full in the face for a moment, for agony had overcome shame; then her gaze sought the far horizon, which to seafaring people is as the hills whence cometh their aid to the people who dwell among mountains; "--Ma'colm, he's gaein' to merry Leddy Florimel."
Malcolm started. Could the girl have learned more concerning his sister than had yet reached himself? A fine watching over her was his, truly! But who was this he?
Lizzy had never uttered the name of the father of her child, and all her people knew was that he could not be a fisherman, for then he would have married her before the child was born. But Malcolm had had a suspicion from the first, and now her words all but confirmed it. --And was that fellow going to marry his sister? He turned white with dismay--then red with anger, and stood speechless.
But he was quickly brought to himself by a sharp pinch under the shoulder blade from Kelpie's long teeth: he had forgotten her, and she had taken the advantage.
"Wha tellt ye that, Lizzy?" he said.
"I'm no at leeberty to say, Ma'colm, but I'm sure it's true, an' my hert's like to brak."
"Puir lassie!" said Malcolm, whose own trouble had never at any time rendered him insensible to that of others. "But is't onybody 'at kens what he says?" he pursued.
"Weel, I dinna jist richtly ken gien she kens, but I think she maun ha'e gude rizzon, or she wadna say as she says. Oh me! me! my bairnie 'ill be scornin' me sair whan he comes to ken. Ma'colm, ye're the only ane 'at disna luik doon upo' me, an whan ye cam' ower the tap o' the Boar's Tail, it was like an angel in a fire flaucht, an' something inside me said--Tell 'im; tell 'im; an' sae I bude to tell ye."
Malcolm was even too simple to feel flattered by the girl's confidence, though to be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.
"Hearken, Lizzy!" he said. "I canna e'en think, wi' this brute ready ilka meenute to ate me up. I maun tak' her hame. Efter that, gien ye wad like to tell me onything, I s' be at yer service. Bide aboot here--or, luik ye: here's the key o' yon door; come throu' that intil the park--throu' aneth the toll ro'd, ye ken. There ye'll get into the lythe (lee) wi' the bairnie; an' I'll be wi' ye in a quarter o' an hoor. It'll tak' me but twa meenutes to gang hame. Stoat 'ill put up the mere, and I'll be back--I can du't in ten meenutes."
"Eh! dinna hurry for me, Ma'colm: I'm no worth it," said Lizzy.
But Malcolm was already at full speed along the top of the dune.
"Lord preserve 's!" cried Lizzy, when she saw him clear the brass swivel. "Sic a laad as that is! Eh, he maun ha'e a richt lass to lo'e him some day! It's a' ane to him, boat or beast. He wadna turn frae the deil himsel'. An syne he's jist as saft's a deuk's neck when he speyks till a wuman or a bairn--ay, or an auld man aither!"
And full of trouble as it was about another, Lizzy's heart yet ached at the thought that she should be so unworthy of one like him.
|
{
"id": "7174"
}
|
5
|
LIZZY FINDLAY
|
From the sands she saw him gain the turnpike road with a bound and a scramble. Crossing it he entered the park by the sea gate; she had to enter it by the tunnel that passed under the same road. She approached the grated door, unlocked it, and looked in with a shudder. It was dark, the other end of it being obscured by trees, and the roots of the hill on whose top stood the temple of the winds. Through the tunnel blew what seemed quite another wind --one of death, from regions beneath. She drew her shawl, one end of which was rolled about her baby, closer around them both ere she entered. Never before had she set foot within the place, and a strange horror of it filled her: she did not know that by that passage, on a certain lovely summer night, Lord Meikleham had issued to meet her on the sands under the moon. The sea was not terrible to her; she knew all its ways nearly as well as Malcolm knew the moods of Kelpie; but the earth and its ways were less known to her, and to turn her face towards it and enter by a little door into its bosom was like a visit to her grave. But she gathered her strength, entered with a shudder, passed in growing hope and final safety through it, and at the other end came out again into the light, only the cold of its death seemed to cling to her still. But the day had grown colder; the clouds that, seen or unseen, ever haunt the winter sun, had at length caught and shrouded him, and through the gathering vapours he looked ghastly. The wind blew from the sea. The tide was going down. There was snow in the air. The thin leafless trees were all bending away from the shore, and the wind went sighing, hissing, and almost wailing through their bare boughs and budless twigs. There would be a storm, she thought, ere the morning, but none of their people were out.
Had there been--well, she had almost ceased to care about anything, and her own life was so little to her now, that she had become less able to value that of other people. To this had the ignis fatuus of a false love brought her! She had dreamed heedlessly, to awake sorrowfully. But not until she heard he was going to be married, had she come right awake, and now she could dream no more. Alas! alas! what claim had she upon him? How could she tell, since such he was, what poor girl like herself she might not have robbed of her part in him?
Yet even in the midst of her misery and despair, it was some consolation to think that Malcolm was her friend.
Not knowing that he had already suffered from the blame of her fault, or the risk at which he met her, she would have gone. towards the house to meet him the sooner, had not this been a part of the grounds where she knew Mr Crathie tolerated no one without express leave given. The fisher folk in particular must keep to the road by the other side of the burn, to which the sea gate admitted them. Lizzy therefore lingered near the tunnel, afraid of being seen.
Mr Crathie was a man who did well under authority, but upon the top of it was consequential, overbearing, and far more exacting than the marquis. Full of his employer's importance when he was present, and of his own when he was absent, he was yet in the latter circumstances so doubtful of its adequate recognition by those under him, that he had grown very imperious, and resented with indignation the slightest breach of his orders. Hence he was in no great favour with the fishers.
Now all the day he had been fuming over Malcolm's behaviour to him in the morning, and when he went home and learned that his wife had seen him upon Kelpie, as if nothing had happened, he became furious, and, in this possession of the devil, was at the present moment wandering about the grounds, brooding on the words Malcolm had spoken. He could not get rid of them. They caused an acrid burning in his bosom, for they had in them truth, like which no poison stings.
Malcolm, having crossed by the great bridge at the house, hurried down the western side of the burn to find Lizzy, and soon came upon her, walking up and down.
"Eh, lassie, ye maun be cauld!" he said.
"No that cauld," she answered, and with the words burst into tears: "But naebody says a kin' word to me noo," she said in excuse, "an' I canna weel bide the soun' o' ane when it comes; I'm no used till 't." "Naebody?" exclaimed Malcolm.
"Na, naebody," she answered. "My mither winna, my father daurna, an' the bairnie canna, an I gang near naebody forbye."
"Weel, we maunna stan' oot here i' the cauld: come this gait," said Malcolm. "The bairnie 'll get its deid."
"There wadna be mony to greit at that," returned Lizzy, and pressed the child closer to her bosom.
Malcolm led the way to the little chamber contrived under the temple in the heart of the hill, and unlocking the door made her enter. There he seated her in a comfortable chair, and wrapped her in the plaid he had brought for the purpose. It was all he could do to keep from taking her in his arms for very pity, for, both body and soul, she seemed too frozen to shiver. He shut the door, sat down on the table near her, and said: "There's naebody to disturb 's here, Lizzy: what wad ye say to me noo?"
The sun was nearly down, and its light already almost smothered in clouds, so that the little chamber, whose door and window were in the deep shadow of the hill, was nearly dark.
"I wadna hae ye tell me onything ye promised no to tell," resumed Malcolm, finding she did not reply, "but I wad like to hear as muckle as ye can say."
"I hae naething to tell ye, Ma'colm, but jist 'at my leddy Florimel's gauin' to be merried upo' Lord Meikleham--Lord Liftore, they ca' him noo. Hech me!"
"God forbid she sud be merried upon ony sic a bla'guard!" cried Malcolm.
"Dinna ca' 'im ill names, Ma'colm. I canna bide it, though I hae no richt to tak up the stick for him."
"I wadna say a word 'at micht fa' sair on a sair hert," he returned; "but gien ye kent a', ye wad ken I hed a gey sized craw to pluck wi' 's lordship mysel'."
The girl gave a low cry.
"Ye wadna hurt 'im, Ma'colm?" she said, in terror at the thought of the elegant youth in the clutches of an angry fisherman, even if he were the generous Malcolm MacPhail himself.
"I wad raither not," he replied, "but we maun see hoo he cairries himsel'."
"Du naething till 'im for my sake, Ma'colm. Ye can hae naething again' him yersel'."
It was too dark for Malcolm to see the keen look of wistful regret with which Lizzy tried to pierce the gloom and read his face: for a moment the poor girl thought he meant he had loved her himself. But far other thoughts were in Malcolm's mind: one was that her whom, as a scarce approachable goddess, he had loved before he knew her of his own blood, he would rather see married to an honest fisherman in the Seaton of Portlossie, than to such a lord as Meikleham. He had seen enough of him at Lossie House to know what he was, and puritanical fish catching Malcolm had ideas above those of most marquises of his day: the thought of the alliance was horrible to him. It was possibly not inevitable, however; only what could he do, and at the same time avoid grievous hurt?
"I dinna think he'll ever merry my leddy," he said.
"What gars ye say that, Ma'colm?" returned Lizzy, with eagerness.
"I canna tell ye jist i' the noo; but ye ken a body canna weel be aye aboot a place ohn seein things. I'll tell ye something o' mair consequence hooever," he continued. . "Some fowk say there's a God, an' some say there's nane, an' I ha'e no richt to preach to ye, Lizzy; but I maun jist tell ye this--'at gien God dinna help them 'at cry till 'im i' the warst o' tribles, they micht jist as weel ha'e nae God at a'. For my ain pairt I ha'e been helpit, an' I think it was him intil 't. Wi' his help, a man may warstle throu' onything. I say I think it was himsel' tuik me throu' 't, an' here I stan' afore ye, ready for the neist trible, an' the help 'at 'll come wi' 't. What it may be, God only knows!"
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{
"id": "7174"
}
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6
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MR CRATHIE
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He was interrupted by the sudden opening of the door, and the voice of the factor in exultant wrath.
"MacPhail!" it cried. "Come out with you. Don't think to sneak there. I know you. What right have you to be on the premises? Didn't I send you about your business this morning?"
"Ay, sir, but ye didna pay me my wages," said Malcolm, who had sprung to the door and now stood holding it half shut, while Mr Crathie pushed it half open.
"No matter. You're nothing better than a housebreaker if you enter any building about the place."
"I brak nae lock," returned Malcolm. "I ha'e the key my lord gae me to ilka place 'ithin the wa's excep' the strong room."
"Give it me directly. I'm master here now." " 'Deed, I s' du nae sic thing, sir. What he gae me I'll keep."
"Give up that key, or I'll go at once and get a warrant against you for theft."
"Weel, we s' refar't to Maister Soutar."
"Damn your impudence--'at I sud say't! --what has he to do with my affairs? Come out of that directly."
"Huly, huly, sir!" returned Malcolm, in terror lest he should discover who was with him.
"You low bred rascal! Who have you there with you?"
As he spoke Mr Crathie would have forced his way into the dusky chamber, where he could just perceive a motionless undefined form. But stiff as a statue Malcolm kept his stand, and the door was immovable. Mr Crathie gave a second and angrier push, but the youth's corporeal as well as his mental equilibrium was hard to upset, and his enemy drew back in mounting fury.
"Get out of there," he cried, "or I'll horsewhip you for a damned blackguard."
"Whup awa'," said Malcolm, "but in here ye s' no come the nicht."
The factor rushed at him, his heavy whip upheaved--and the same moment found himself, not in the room, but lying on the flower bed in front of it. Malcolm instantly stepped out, locked the door, put the key in his pocket, and turned to assist him. But he was up already, and busy with words unbefitting the mouth of an elder of the kirk.
"Didna I say 'at ye sudna come in, sir? What for wull fowk no tak' a tellin'?" expostulated Malcolm.
But the factor was far beyond force of logic or illumination of reason. He raved and swore.
"Get oot o' my sicht," he cried, "or I'll shot ye like a tyke."
"Gang an' fess yer gun," said Malcolm, "an' gien ye fin' me waitin' for ye, ye can lat at me."
The factor uttered a horrible imprecation on himself if he did not make him pay dearly for his behaviour.
"Hoots, sir! Be asham't o' yersel'. Gang hame to the mistress, an' I s' be up the morn's mornin' for my wages."
"If ye set foot on the grounds again, I'll set every dog in the place upon you."
Malcolm laughed.
"Gien I was to turn the order the ither gait, wad they min' you or me, div ye think, Maister Crathie?"
"Give me that key, and go about your business."
"Na, na, sir! What my lord gae me I s' keep--for a' the factors atween this an' the Land's En'," returned Malcolm. "An' for lea'in' the place, gien I be na in your service, Maister Crathie, I'm nae un'er your orders. I'll gang whan it shuits me. An' mair yet, ye s' gang oot o' this first, or I s' gar ye, an that ye'll see."
It was a violent proceeding, but for a matter of manners he was not going to risk what of her good name poor Lizzy had left: like the books of the Sibyl, that grew in value. He made, however, but one threatful stride towards the factor, for the great man turned and fled.
The moment he was out of sight, Malcolm unlocked the door, led Lizzy out, and brought her through the tunnel to the sands. There he left her, and set out for Scaurnose.
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{
"id": "7174"
}
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7
|
BLUE PETER
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The door of Blue Peter's cottage was opened by his sister. Not much at home in the summer, when she carried fish to the country, she was very little absent in the winter, and as there was but one room for all uses, except the closet bedroom and the garret at the top of the ladder, Malcolm, instead of going in, called to his friend, whom he saw by the fire with his little Phemy upon his knee, to come out and speak to him.
Blue Peter at once obeyed the summons.
"There's naething wrang, I houp, Ma'colm?" he said, as he closed the door behind him.
"Maister Graham wad say," returned Malcolm, "naething ever was wrang but what ye did wrang yersel', or wadna pit richt whan ye had a chance. I ha'e him nae mair to gang till, Joseph, an' sae I'm come to you. Come doon by, an' i' the scoug o' a rock, I'll tell ye a' aboot it."
"Ye wadna ha'e the mistress no ken o' 't?" said his friend. "I dinna jist like haein' secrets frae her."
"Ye sall jeedge for yersel', man, an' tell her or no just as ye like. Only she maun haud her tongue, or the black dog 'll ha'e a' the butter."
"She can haud her tongue like the tae stane o' a grave," said Peter.
As they spoke they reached the cliff that hung over the shattered shore. It was a clear, cold night. Snow, the remnants of the last storm, which frost had preserved in every shadowy spot, lay all about them. The sky was clear, and full of stars, for the wind that blew cold from the northwest had dispelled the snowy clouds. The waves rushed into countless gulfs and crannies and straits on the ruggedest of shores, and the sounds of waves and wind kept calling like voices from the unseen. By a path, seemingly fitter for goats than men, they descended halfway to the beach, and under a great projection of rock stood sheltered from the wind. Then Malcolm turned to Joseph Mair, commonly called Blue Peter, because he had been a man of war's man, and laying his hand on his arm said: "Blue Peter, did ever I tell ye a lee?"
"No, never," answered Peter. "What gars ye speir sic a thing?"
"Cause I want ye to believe me noo, an' it winna be easy."
"I'll believe onything ye tell me--'at can be believed."
"Weel, I ha'e come to the knowledge 'at my name's no MacPhail: it's Colonsay. Man, I'm the Markis o' Lossie."
Without a moment's hesitation, without a single stare of unbelief or even astonishment, Blue Peter pulled off his bonnet, and stood bareheaded before the companion of his toils.
"Peter!" cried Malcolm, "dinna brak my hert: put on yer bonnet."
"The Lord o' lords be thankit, my lord!" said Blue Peter: "the puir man has a freen' this day."
Then replacing his bonnet he said--"An' what'll be yer lordship's wull?"
"First and foremost, Peter, that my best freen', efter my auld daddy and the schulemaister, 's no to turn again' me 'cause I hed a markis an' neither piper nor fisher to my father."
"It's no like it, my lord," returned Blue Peter, "whan the first thing I say is--what wad ye ha'e o' me? Here I am--no speirin' a queston!"
"Weel, I wad ha'e ye hear the story o' 't a'."
"Say on, my lord," said Peter.
But Malcolm was silent for a few moments.
"I was thinkin', Peter," he said at last, "whether I cud bide to hear you say my lord to me. Dootless, as it 'll ha'e to come to that, it wad be better to grow used till 't while we're thegither, sae 'at whan it maun be, it mayna ha'e the luik o' cheenge until it, for cheenge is jist the thing I canna bide. I' the meantime, hooever, we canna gi'e in till 't, 'cause it wad set fowk jaloosin'. But I wad be obleeged till ye, Peter, gien you wad say my lord whiles, whan we're oor lanes, for I wad fain grow sae used till't 'at I never kent ye said it, for 'atween you an' me I dinna like it. An' noo I s' tell ye a' 'at I ken."
When he had ended the tale of what had come to his knowledge, and how it had come, and paused: "Gie's a grup o' yer han', my lord," said Blue Peter, "an' may God haud ye lang in life an' honour to reule ower us. Noo, gien ye please, what are ye gauin' to du?"
"Tell ye me, Peter, what ye think I oucht to du."
"That wad tak a heap o' thinkin'," returned the fisherman; "but ae thing seems aboot plain: ye ha'e no richt to lat yer sister gang exposed to temptations ye cud haud frae her. That's no, as ye promised, to be kin' till her. I canna believe that's hoo yer father expeckit o' ye. I ken weel 'at fowk in his poseetion ha'ena the preevileeges o' the like o' hiz--they ha'ena the win, an' the watter, an' whiles a lee shore to gar them know they are but men, an' sen' them rattling at the wicket of h'aven; but still I dinna think, by yer ain accoont, specially noo 'at I houp he's forgi'en an' latten in--God grant it! --I div not think he wad like my leddy Florimel to be oon'er the influences o' sic a ane as that Leddy Bellair. Ye maun gang till her. Ye ha'e nae ch'ice, my lord."
"But what am I to do, whan I div gang?"
"That's what ye hev to gang an' see."
"An' that's what I ha'e been tellin' mysel', an' what Miss Horn's been tellin' me tu. But it's a gran' thing to get yer ain thouchts corroborat. Ye see I'm feart for wrangin' her for pride, and bringin' her doon to set mysel' up."
"My lord," said Blue Peter, solemnly, "ye ken the life o' puir fisher fowk; ye ken hoo it micht be lichtened, sae lang as it laists, an' mony a hole steikit 'at the cauld deith creeps in at the noo: coont ye them naething, my lord? Coont ye the wull o' Providence, 'at sets ye ower them, naething? What for could the Lord ha'e gie ye sic an upbringin' as no markis' son ever hed afore ye, or maybe ever wull ha'e efter ye, gien it bena 'at ye sud tak them in han' to du yer pairt by them? Gien ye forsak them noo, ye'll be forgettin' him 'at made them an' you, an' the sea, an' the herrin' to be taen intil 't. Gien ye forget them, there's nae houp for them, but the same deith 'ill keep on swallowin' at them upo' sea an' shore."
"Ye speyk the trowth as I ha'e spoken't till mysel', Peter. Noo, hearken: will ye sail wi' me the nicht for Lon'on toon?" The fisherman was silent a moment--then answered, "I wull, my lord; but I maun tell my wife."
"Rin, an' fess her here than, for I'm fleyed at yer sister, honest wuman, an' little Phemy. It wad blaud a' thing gien I was hurried to du something afore I kenned what."
"I s' ha'e her oot in a meenute," said Joseph, and scrambled up the cliff.
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{
"id": "7174"
}
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8
|
VOYAGE TO LONDON
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For a few minutes Malcolm stood alone in the dim starlight of winter, looking out on the dusky sea, dark as his own future, into which the wind now blowing behind him would soon begin to carry him. He anticipated its difficulties, but never thought of perils: it was seldom anything oppressed him but the doubt of what he ought to do. This was ever the cold mist that swallowed the airy castles he built and peopled with all the friends and acquaintances of his youth. But the very first step towards action is the death warrant of doubt, and the tide of Malcolm's being ran higher that night, as he stood thus alone under the stars, than he had ever yet known it run. With all his common sense, and the abundance of his philosophy, which the much leisure belonging to certain phases of his life had combined with the slow strength of his intellect to render somewhat long winded in utterance, there was yet room in Malcolm's bonnet for a bee above the ordinary size, and if it buzzed a little too romantically for the taste of the nineteenth century, about disguises and surprises and bounty and plots and rescues and such like, something must be pardoned to one whose experience had already been so greatly out of the common, and whose nature was far too childlike and poetic, and developed in far too simple a surrounding of labour and success, difficulty and conquest, danger and deliverance, not to have more than the usual amount of what is called the romantic in its composition.
The buzzing of his bee was for the present interrupted by the return of Blue Peter with his wife. She threw her arms round Malcolm's neck, and burst into tears.
"Hoots, my woman!" said her husband, "what are ye greitin' at?"
"Eh, Peter!" she answered, "I canna help it. It's jist like a deith. He's gauin' to lea' us a', an' gang hame till 's ain, an' I canna bide 'at he sud grow strange-like to hiz 'at ha'e kenned him sae lang."
"It'll be an ill day," returned Malcolm, "whan I grow strange to ony freen'. I'll ha'e to gang far down the laich (low) ro'd afore that be poassible. I mayna aye be able to du jist what ye wad like; but lippen ye to me: I s' be fair to ye. An' noo I want Blue Peter to gang wi' me, an' help me to what I ha'e to du--gien ye ha'e nae objection to lat him."
"Na, nane ha'e I. I wad gang mysel' gien I cud be ony use," answered Mrs Mair; "but women are i' the gait whiles."
"Weel, I'll no even say thank ye; I'll be awin' ye that as weel's the lave. But gien I dinna du weel, it winna be the fau't o' ane or the ither o' you twa freen's. Noo, Peter, we maun be aff." "No the nicht, surely?" said Mrs Mair, a little taken by surprise.
"The suner the better, lass," replied her husband. "An' we cudna ha'e a better win'. Jist rin ye hame, an' get some vicktooals thegither, an' come efter hiz to Portlossie."
"But hoo 'ill ye get the boat to the watter ohn mair han's? I'll need to come mysel' an' fess Jean."
"Na, na; let Jean sit. There's plenty i' the Seaton to help. We're gauin' to tak' the markis's cutter. She's a heap easier to lainch, an' she'll sail a heap fester."
"But what'll Maister Crathie say?"
"We maun tak' oor chance o' that," answered her husband, with a smile of confidence; and thereupon he and Malcolm set out for the Seaton, while Mrs Mair went home to get ready some provisions for the voyage, consisting chiefly of oatcakes.
The prejudice against Malcolm from his imagined behaviour to Lizzy Findlay, had by this time, partly through the assurances of Peter, partly through the power of the youth's innocent presence, almost died out, and when the two men reached the Seaton, they found plenty of hands ready to help them to reach the little sloop. Malcolm said he was going to take her to Peterhead, and they asked no questions but such as he contrived to answer with truth, or to leave unanswered. Once afloat, there was very little to be done to her, for she had been laid up in perfect condition, and as soon as Mrs Mair appeared with her basket, and they had put that, a keg of water, some fishing lines, and a pan of mussels for bait, on board, they were ready to sail, and wished their friends a light goodbye, leaving them to imagine they were gone but for a day or two, probably on some business of Mr Crathie's.
With the wind from the northwest, they soon reached Duff Harbour, where Malcolm went on shore and saw Mr Soutar. He, with a landsman's prejudice, made strenuous objections to such a mad prank as sailing to London at that time of the year, but in vain. Malcolm saw nothing mad in it, and the lawyer had to admit he ought to know best. He brought on board with him a lad of Peter's acquaintance, and now fully manned, they set sail again, and by the time the sun appeared were not far from Peterhead.
Malcolm's spirits kept rising as they bowled along over the bright cold waters. He never felt so capable as when at sea. His energies had been first called out in combat with the elements, and hence he always felt strongest, most at home, and surest of himself on the water. Young as he was, however, such had been his training under Mr Graham, that a large part of this elevation of spirit was owing to an unreasoned sense of being there more immediately in the hands of God. Later in life, he interpreted the mental condition thus--that of course he was always and in every place equally in God's hands, but that at sea he felt the truth more keenly. Where a man has nothing firm under him, where his life depends on winds invisible and waters unstable, where a single movement may be death, he learns to feel what is at the same time just as true every night he spends asleep in the bed in which generations have slept before him, or any sunny hour he spends walking over ancestral acres.
They put in at Peterhead, purchased a few provisions, and again set sail.
And now it seemed to Malcolm that he must soon come to a conclusion as to the steps he must take when he reached London. But think as he would, he could plan nothing beyond finding out where his sister lived, going to look at the house, and getting into it if he might. Nor could his companion help him with any suggestions, and indeed he could not talk much with him because of the presence of Davy, a rough, round eyed, red haired young Scot, of the dull invaluable class that can only do what they are told, but do that to the extent of their faculty.
They knew all the coast as far as the Frith of Forth; after that they had to be more careful. They had no charts on board, nor could have made much use of any. But the wind continued favourable, and the weather cold, bright, and full of life. They spoke many coasters on their way, and received many directions.
Off the Nore they had rough weather, and had to stand off and on for a day and a night till it moderated. Then they spoke a fishing boat, took a pilot on board, and were soon in smooth water. More and more they wondered as the channel narrowed, and ended their voyage at length below London Bridge, in a very jungle of masts.
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{
"id": "7174"
}
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9
|
LONDON STREETS
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Leaving Davy to keep the sloop, the two fishermen went on shore. Passing from the narrow precincts of the river, they found themselves at once in the roar of London city. Stunned at first, then excited, then bewildered, then dazed, without plan to guide their steps, they wandered about until, unused to the hard stones, their feet ached. It was a dull day in March. A keen wind blew round the corners of the streets. They wished themselves at sea again.
"Sic a sicht o' fowk!" said Blue Peter.
"It's hard to think," rejoined Malcolm, "what w'y the God 'at made them can luik efter them a' in sic a tumult. But they say even the sheep dog kens ilk sheep i' the flock 'at 's gien him in chairge."
"Ay, but ye see," said Blue Peter, "they're mair like a shoal o' herrin' nor a flock o' sheep."
"It's no the num'er o' them 'at plagues me," said Malcolm. "The gran' diffeeculty is hoo He can lat ilk ane tak' his ain gait an' yet luik efter them a'. But gien He does't, it stan's to rizzon it maun be in some w'y 'at them 'at's sae luikit efter canna by ony possibeelity un'erstan'."
"That's trowth, I'm thinkin'. We maun jist gi'e up an' confess there's things abune a' human comprehension."
"Wha kens but that maybe 'cause i' their verra natur' they're ower semple for cr'aturs like hiz 'at's made sae mixed-like, an' see sae little intill the hert o' things?"
"Ye're ayont me there," said Blue Peter, and a silence followed.
It was a conversation very unsuitable to London Streets--but then these were raw Scotch fisherman, who had not yet learned how absurd it is to suppose ourselves come from anything greater than ourselves, and had no conception of the liberty it confers on a man to know that he is the child of a protoplasm, or something still more beautifully small.
At length a policeman directed them to a Scotch eating house, where they fared after their country's fashions, and from the landlady gathered directions by which to guide themselves towards Curzon Street, a certain number in which Mr Soutar had given Malcolm as Lady Bellair's address.
The door was opened to Malcolm's knock by a slatternly charwoman, who, unable to understand a word he said, would, but for its fine frank expression, have shut the door in his face. From the expression of hers, however, Malcolm suddenly remembered that he must speak English, and having a plentiful store of the book sort, he at once made himself intelligible in spite of tone and accent. It was, however, only a shifting of the difficulty, for he now found it nearly impossible to understand her. But by repeated questioning and hard listening he learnt at last that Lady Bellair had removed her establishment to Lady Lossie's house in Portland Place.
After many curious perplexities, odd blunders, and vain endeavours to understand shop signs and notices in the windows; after they had again and again imagined themselves back at a place they had left miles away; after many a useless effort to lay hold of directions given so rapidly that the very sense could not gather the sounds, they at length stood--not in Portland Place, but in front of Westminster Abbey. Inquiring what it was, and finding they could go in, they entered.
For some moments not a word was spoken between them, but when they had walked slowly halfway up the nave Malcolm turned and said, "Eh, Peter! sic a blessin'!" and Peter replied, "There canna be muckle o' this i' the warl'!"
Comparing impressions afterwards, Peter said that the moment he stepped in, he heard the rush of the tide on the rocks of Scaurnose; and Malcolm declared he felt as if he had stepped out of the world into the regions of eternal silence.
"What a mercy it maun be," he went on, "to mony a cratur', in sic a whummle an' a rum'le an' a remish as this Lon'on, to ken 'at there is sic a cave howkit oot o' the din, 'at he can gang intill an' say his prayers intill! Man, Peter! I'm jist some feared whiles 'at the verra din i' my lugs mayna 'maist drive the thoucht o' God oot o' me."
At length they found their way into Regent Street, and leaving its mean assertion behind, reached the stately modesty of Portland Place; and Malcolm was pleased to think the house he sought was one of those he now saw.
It was one of the largest in the Place. He would not, however, yield to the temptation to have a good look at it, for fear of attracting attention from its windows and being recognised. They turned therefore aside into some of the smaller thoroughfares lying between Portland Place and Great Portland Street, where searching about, they came upon a decent looking public house and inquired after lodgings. They were directed to a woman in the neighbourhood, who kept a dingy little curiosity shop. On payment of a week's rent in advance, she allowed them a small bedroom. But Malcolm did not want Peter with him that night; he wished to be perfectly free; and besides it was more than desirable that Peter should go and look after the boat and the boy.
Left alone he fell once more to his hitherto futile scheming: How was he to get near his sister? To the whitest of lies he had insuperable objection, and if he appeared before her with no reason to give, would she not be far too offended with his presumption to retain him in her service? And except he could be near her as her servant, he did not see a chance of doing anything for her without disclosing facts which might make all such service as he would most gladly render her impossible, by causing her to hate the very sight of him. Plan after plan rose and passed from his mind rejected, and the only resolution he could come to was to write to Mr Soutar, to whom he had committed the protection of Kelpie, to send her up by the first smack from Aberdeen. He did so, and wrote also to Miss Horn, telling her where he was, then went out, and made his way back to Portland Place.
Night had closed in, and thick vapours hid the moon, but lamps and lighted windows illuminated the wide street. Presently it began to snow. But through the snow and the night went carriages in all directions, with great lamps that turned the flakes into white stars for a moment as they gleamed past. The hoofs of the horses echoed hard from the firm road.
Could that house really belong to him? It did, yet he dared not enter it. That which was dear and precious to him was in the house, and just because of that he could not call it his own. There was less light in it than in any other within his range. He walked up and down the opposite side of the street its whole length some fifty times, but saw no sign of vitality about the house. At length a brougham stopped at the door, and a man got out and knocked. Malcolm instantly crossed, but could not see his face. The door opened, and he entered. The brougham waited. After about a quarter of an hour he came out again, accompanied by two ladies, one of whom he judged by her figure to be Florimel. They all got into the carriage, and Malcolm braced himself for a terrible run. But the coachman drove carefully, the snow lay a few inches deep, and he found no difficulty in keeping near them, following with fleet foot and husbanded breath.
They stopped at the doors of a large dark looking building in a narrow street He thought it was a church, and wondered that so his sister should be going there on a week night. Nor did the aspect of the entrance hall, into which he followed them, undeceive him. It was more showy, certainly, than the vestibule of any church he had ever been in before, but what might not churches be in London? They went up a great flight of stairs--to reach the gallery, as he thought, and still he went after them. When he reached the top, they were just vanishing round a curve, and his advance was checked: a man came up to him, said he could not come there, and gruffly requested him to show his ticket.
"I haven't got one. What is this place?" said Malcolm, whom the aspect of the man had suddenly rendered doubtful, mouthing his English with Scotch deliberation. The man gave him a look of contemptuous surprise, and turning to another who lounged behind him with his hands in his pockets, said--"Tom, here's a gentleman as wants to know where he is: can you tell him?" The person addressed laughed, and gave Malcolm a queer look.
"Every cock crows on his own midden," said Malcolm, "but if I were on mine, I would try to be civil."
"You go down there, and pay for a pit ticket, and you'll soon know where you are, mate," said Tom.
He obeyed, and after a few inquiries, and the outlay of two shillings, found himself in the pit of one of the largest of the London theatres.
|
{
"id": "7174"
}
|
10
|
THE TEMPEST
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The play was begun, and the stage was the centre of light. Thither Malcolm's eyes were drawn the instant he entered. He was all but unaware of the multitude of faces about him, and his attention was at once fascinated by the lovely show revealed in soft radiance. But surely he had seen the vision before! One long moment its effect upon him was as real as if he had been actually deceived as to its nature: was it not the shore between Scaurnose and Portlossie, betwixt the Boar's Tail and the sea? and was not that the marquis, his father, in his dressing gown, pacing to and fro upon the sands? He yielded himself to illusion--abandoned himself to the wonderful, and looked only for what would come next.
A lovely lady entered: to his excited fancy it was Florimel. A moment more and she spoke.
If by your art, my dearest father, you have Put the wild waters in this roar, allay them.
Then first he understood that before him rose in wondrous realization the play of Shakspere he knew best--the first he had ever read: The Tempest, hitherto a lovely phantom for the mind's eye, now embodied to the enraptured sense. During the whole of the first act he never thought either of Miranda or Florimel apart. At the same time so taken was he with the princely carriage and utterance of Ferdinand that, though with a sigh, he consented he should have his sister.
The drop scene had fallen for a minute or two before he began to look around him. A moment more and he had commenced a thorough search for his sister amongst the ladies in the boxes. But when at length he found her, he dared not fix his eyes upon her lest his gaze should make her look at him, and she should recognise him. Alas, her eyes might have rested on him twenty times without his face once rousing in her mind the thought of the fisher lad of Portlossie! All that had passed between them in the days already old was virtually forgotten.
By degrees he gathered courage, and soon began to feel that there was small chance indeed of her eyes alighting upon him for the briefest of moments. Then he looked more closely, and felt through rather than saw with his eyes that some sort of change had already passed upon her. It was Florimel, yet not the very Florimel he had known. Already something had begun to supplant the girl freedom that had formerly in every look and motion asserted itself. She was more beautiful, but not so lovely in his eyes; much of what had charmed him had vanished. She was more stately, but the stateliness had a little hardness mingled with it: and could it be that the first of a cloud had already gathered on her forehead? Surely she was not so happy as she had been at Lossie House. She was dressed in black, with a white flower in her hair.
Beside her sat the bold faced countess, and behind them her nephew, Lord Meikleham that was now Lord Liftore. A fierce indignation seized the heart of Malcolm at the sight. Behind the form of the earl, his mind's eye saw that of Lizzy, out in the wind on the Boar's Tail, her old shawl wrapped about herself and the child of the man who sat there so composed and comfortable. His features were fine and clear cut, his shoulders broad, and his head well set: he had much improved since Malcolm offered to fight him with one hand in the dining room of Lossie House. Every now and then he leaned forward between his aunt and Florimel, and spoke to the latter. To Malcolm's eyes she seemed to listen with some haughtiness. Now and then she cast him an indifferent glance. Malcolm was pleased: Lord Liftore was anything but the Ferdinand to whom he could consent to yield his Miranda. They would make a fine couple certainly, but for any other fitness, knowing what he did, Malcolm was glad to perceive none. The more annoyed was he when once or twice he fancied he caught a look between them that indicated more than acquaintanceship-- some sort of intimacy at least. But he reflected that in the relation in which they stood to Lady Bellair it could hardly be otherwise.
The play was tolerably well put upon the stage, and free of the absurdities attendant upon too ambitious an endeavour to represent to the sense things which Shakspere and the dramatists of his period freely committed to their best and most powerful ally, the willing imagination of the spectators. The opening of the last scene, where Ferdinand and Miranda are discovered at chess, was none the less effective for its simplicity, and Malcolm was turning from a delighted gaze at its loveliness to glance at his sister and her companions, when his eyes fell on a face near him in the pit which had fixed an absorbed regard in the same direction. It was that of a man a few years older than himself, with irregular features, but a fine mouth, large chin; and great forehead. Under the peculiarly prominent eyebrows shone dark eyes of wondrous brilliancy and seeming penetration. Malcolm could not but suspect that his gaze was upon his sister, but as they were a long way from the boxes, he could not be certain. Once he thought he saw her look at him, but of that also he could be in no wise certain.
He knew the play so well that he rose just in time to reach the pit door ere exit should be impeded with the outcomers, and thence with some difficulty he found his way to the foot of the stair up which those he watched had gone. There he had stood but a little while, when he saw in front of him, almost within reach of an outstretched hand, the same young man waiting also. After what seemed a long time, he saw his sister and her two companions come slowly down the stair in the descending crowd. Her eyes seemed searching amongst the multitude that filled the lobby. Presently an indubitable glance of still recognition passed between them, and by a slight movement the young man placed himself so that she must pass next him in the crowd. Malcolm got one place nearer in the change, and thought they grasped hands. She turned her head slightly back, and seemed to put a question--with her lips only. He replied in the same manner. A light rushed into her face and vanished. But not a feature moved and not a word had been spoken. Neither of her companions had seen the dumb show, and her friend stood where he was till they had left the house. Malcolm stood also, much inclined to follow him when he went, but, his attention having been attracted for a moment in another direction, when he looked again he had disappeared. He sought him where he fancied he saw the movement of his vanishing, but was soon convinced of the uselessness of the attempt, and walked home.
Before he reached his lodging, he had resolved on making trial of a plan which had more than once occurred to him, but had as often been rejected as too full of the risk of repulse.
|
{
"id": "7174"
}
|
11
|
DEMON AND THE PIPES
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His plan was to watch the house until he saw some entertainment going on, then present himself as if he had but just arrived from her ladyship's country seat. At such a time no one would acquaint her with his appearance, and he would, as if it were but a matter of course, at once take his share in waiting on the guests. By this means he might perhaps get her a little accustomed to his presence before she could be at leisure to challenge it.
When he put Kelpie in her stall the last time for a season, and ran into the house to get his plaid for Lizzy, who was waiting him near the tunnel, he bethought himself that he had better take with him also what other of his personal requirements he could carry. He looked about therefore, and finding a large carpet bag in one of the garret rooms, hurried into it some of his clothes--amongst them the Highland dress he had worn as henchman to the marquis, and added the great Lossie pipes his father had given to old Duncan as well, but which the piper had not taken with him when he left Lossie House. The said Highland dress he now resolved to put on, as that in which latterly Florimel had been most used to see him: in it he would watch his opportunity of gaining admission to the house.
The next morning Blue Peter made his appearance early. They went out together, spent the day in sightseeing, and, on Malcolm's part chiefly, in learning the topography of London.
In Hyde Park Malcolm told his friend that he had sent for Kelpie.
"She'll be the deid o' ye i' thae streets, as fu' o' wheels as the sea o' fish: twize I've been 'maist gr'un to poother o' my ro'd here," said Peter.
"Ay, but ye see, oot here amo' the gentry it's no freely sae ill, an' the ro'ds are no a' stane; an' here, ye see, 's the place whaur they come, leddies an' a', to ha'e their rides thegither. What I'm fleyt for is 'at she'll be brackin' legs wi' her deevilich kickin'."
"Haud her upo' dry strae an' watter for a whilie, till her banes begin to cry oot for something to hap them frae the cauld: that'll quaiet her a bit," said Peter.
"It's a' ye ken!" returned Malcolm. "She's aye the wau natur'd, the less she has to ate. Na, na; she maun be weel lined. The deevil in her maun lie warm, or she'll be neither to haud nor bin'. There's nae doobt she's waur to haud in whan she's in guid condeetion; but she's nane sae like to tak' a body by the sma' o' the back, an' shak the inside oot o' 'im, as she maist did ae day to the herd laddie at the ferm, only he had an auld girth aboot the mids o' 'im for a belt, an' he tuik the less scaith."
"Cudna we gang an' see the maister the day?" said Blue Peter, changing the subject.
He meant Mr Graham, the late schoolmaster of Portlossie, whom the charge of heretical teaching had driven from the place.
"We canna weel du that till we hear whaur he is. The last time Miss Horn h'ard frae him, he was changin' his lodgin's, an' ye see the kin' o' a place this Lon'on is," answered Malcolm.
As soon as Peter was gone, to return to the boat, Malcolm dressed himself in his kilt and its belongings, and when it was fairly dusk, took his pipes under his arm, and set out for Portland Place. He had the better hope of speedy success to his plan, that he fancied he had read on his sister's lips, in the silent communication that passed between her and her friend in the crowd, the words come and tomorrow. It might have been the merest imagination, yet it was something: how often have we not to be grateful for shadows! Up and down the street he walked a long time, without seeing a sign of life about the house. But at length the hall was lighted. Then the door opened, and a servant rolled out a carpet over the wide pavement, which the snow had left wet and miry--a signal for the street children, ever on the outlook for sights, to gather. Before the first carriage arrived, there was already a little crowd of humble watchers and waiters about the gutter and curb stone. But they were not destined to much amusement that evening, the visitors amounting only to a small dinner party. Still they had the pleasure of seeing a few grand ladies issue from their carriages, cross the stage of their Epiphany, the pavement, and vanish in the paradise of the shining hall, with its ascent of gorgeous stairs. No broken steps, no missing balusters there! And they have the show all for nothing! It is one of the perquisites of street service. What one would give to see the shapes glide over the field of those camerae obscurae, the hearts of the street Arabs! once to gaze on the jewelled beauties through the eyes of those shocked haired girls! I fancy they do not often begrudge them what they possess, except perhaps when feature or hair or motion chances to remind them of some one of their own people, and they feel wronged and indignant that size should flaunt in such splendour, "when our Sally would set off grand clothes so much better!" It is neither the wealth nor the general consequence it confers that they envy, but, as I imagine, the power of making a show--of living in the eyes and knowledge of neighbours for a few radiant moments: nothing is so pleasant to ordinary human nature as to know itself by its reflection from others. When it turns from these warped and broken mirrors to seek its reflection in the divine thought, then it is redeemed; then it beholds itself in the perfect law of liberty.
Before he became himself an object of curious interest to the crowd he was watching, Malcolm had come to the same conclusion with many a philosopher and observer of humanity before him--that on the whole the rags are inhabited by the easier hearts; and he would have arrived at the conclusion with more certainty but for the high training that cuts off intercourse between heart and face.
When some time had elapsed, and no more carriages appeared, Malcolm, judging the dinner must now be in full vortex, rang the bell of the front door. It was opened by a huge footman, whose head was so small in proportion that his body seemed to have absorbed it. Malcolm would have stepped in at once, and told what of his tale he chose at his leisure; but the servant, who had never seen the dress Malcolm wore, except on street beggars, with the instinct his class shares with watchdogs, quickly closed the door. Ere it reached the post, however, it found Malcolm's foot between.
"Go along, Scotchy. You're not wanted here," said the man, pushing the door hard. "Police is round the corner."
Now one of the weaknesses Malcolm owed to his Celtic blood was an utter impatience of rudeness. In his own nature entirely courteous, he was wrathful even to absurdity at the slightest suspicion of insult. But that, in part through the influence of Mr Graham, the schoolmaster, he had learned to keep a firm hold on the reins of action, this foolish feeling would not unfrequently have hurried him into conduct undignified. On the present occasion, I fear the main part of his answer, but for the shield of the door, would have been a blow to fell a bigger man than the one that now glared at him through the shoe broad opening. As it was, his words were fierce with suppressed wrath.
"Open the door, an' lat me in," was, however, all he said.
"What's your business?" asked the man, on whom his tone had its effect.
"My business is with my Lady Lossie," said Malcolm, recovering his English, which was one step towards mastering, if not recovering, his temper.
"You can't see her. She's at dinner."
"Let me in, and I'll wait. I come from Lossie House."
"Take away your foot and I'll go and see," said the man.
"No. You open the door," returned Malcolm.
The man's answer was an attempt to kick his foot out of the doorway. If he were to let in a tramp, what would the butler say?
But thereupon Malcolm set his port vent to his mouth, rapidly filled his bag, while the man stared as if it were a petard with which he was about to blow the door to shivers, and then sent from the instrument such a shriek, as it galloped off into the Lossie Gathering, that involuntarily his adversary pressed both hands to his ears. With a sudden application of his knee Malcolm sent the door wide, and entered the hall, with his pipes in full cry. The house resounded with their yell--but only for one moment. For down the stair, like bolt from catapult, came Demon, Florimel's huge Irish staghound, and springing on Malcolm, put an instant end to his music. The footman laughed with exultation, expecting to see him torn to pieces. But when instead he saw the fierce animal, a foot on each of his shoulders, licking Malcolm's face with long fiery tongue, he began to doubt.
"The dog knows you," he said sulkily.
"So shall you, before long," returned Malcolm. "Was it my fault that I made the mistake of looking for civility from you? One word to the dog, and he has you by the throat."
"I'll go and fetch Wallis," said the man, and closing the door, left the hall.
Now this Wallis had been a fellow servant of Malcolm's at Lossie House, but he did not know that he had gone with Lady Bellair when she took Florimel away: almost everyone had left at the same time. He was now glad indeed to learn that there was one amongst the servants who knew him.
Wallis presently made his appearance, with a dish in his hands, on his way to the dining room, from which came the confused noises of the feast.
"You'll be come up to wait on Lady Lossie," he said. "I haven't a moment to speak to you now, for we're at dinner, and there's a party."
"Never mind me. Give me that dish; I'll take it in: you can go for another," said Malcolm, laying his pipes in a safe spot.
"You can't go into the dining room that figure," said Wallis, who was in the Bellair livery.
"This is how I waited on my lord," returned Malcolm, "and this is how I'll wait on my lady."
Wallis hesitated. But there was that about the fisher fellow was too much for him. As he spoke, Malcolm took the dish from his hands, and with it walked into the dining room.
There one reconnoitring glance was sufficient. The butler was at the sideboard opening a champagne bottle. He had cut wire and strings, and had his hand on the cork as Malcolm walked up to him. It was a critical moment, yet he stopped in the very article, and stared at the apparition.
"I'm Lady Lossie's man from Lossie House. I'll help you to wait," said Malcolm.
To the eyes of the butler he looked a savage. But there he was in the room with the dish in his hands, and speaking at least intelligibly; the cork of the champagne bottle was pushing hard against his palm, and he had no time to question. He peeped into Malcolm's dish.
"Take it round, then," he said. So Malcolm settled into the business of the hour.
It was some time, after he knew where she was, before he ventured to look at his sister: he would have her already familiarised with his presence before their eyes met. That crisis did not arrive during dinner.
Lord Liftore was one of the company, and so, to Malcolm's pleasure, for he felt in him an ally against the earl, was Florimel's mysterious friend.
|
{
"id": "7174"
}
|
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