CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XII.But Pomona Island, now and then, had its own little cares and anxieties. How much longer was Cradock Nowell to live upon fruit, and fish, and turtle, with ship–biscuit for dessert? When would the trader come for his goods, or had he quite forgotten them? What would Amy and Uncle John think, if theTaprobanewent home without him? And the snakes, the snakes, that cared not a rap for the enmity of man, since the rainy season set in, but came almost up to be roasted! And worst of all and most terrible thing, Crad was obliged to go about barefooted, while the thorns were of natureʼs invention, and went every way all at once, like a hedgehog upon a frying–pan.For that last evil he found a cure before he had hopped many hundred yards. He discovered a pumpkin about a foot long, pointed, and with a horny rind, and contracted towards the middle. He sliced this lengthwise, and took out the seeds,and planted his naked foot there. The coolness was most delicious, and a few strips of baobab bark made a first–rate shoe of it. He wore out one pair every day, and two when he went exploring; but what did that matter, unless the supply failed? and he kept some hung up for emergency.As to the snakes, though he did not find out the snake–wood, or the snake–stone, or the fungoid substance, like a morel, which pumices up the venom; he invented something much better, as prevention is better than cure. He discovered a species of aspalathus, perfectly smooth near the root, and not very hard to pull up, yet so barbed, and toothed, and fanged upon all except the seed–leaves, that even a python—whereof he had none—could scarcely have got through it. Of this he strewed a ring all round his great mowana–tree, and then a fenced path down the valley toward his bathing–place, and then he defied the whole of that genus so closely akin to the devil.But Wena had saved his life ere this from one of those slimy demons. Of course we know how hateful it is to hate anything at all, except sin and crime in the abstract; but I do hope a fellow may be forgiven for hating snakes and scorpions. At any rate, if he cannot be, he ought to be able to help it. While Cradock was making his fence aspalathine, and before he had finished the ring yet, a little snake about two feet long, semi–transparent, and jellified, of a dirty bottle–green colour, like the caterpillar known asthe pear–leech (Selandria Æthiops), only some hundreds of sizes bigger, that loathsome reptile sneaked in through and crouched in a corner, while Cradock thought that he smelled something very nasty, as he smoked a pipe of the traderʼs tobacco, before turning into his locker.He had cut himself a good broad coving from the inside of the mowana–tree, about three feet from the ground, fitted up with a flap and a pillow–place, and strewn with fresh plantain–leaves. Across the niche he had fastened a new mosquito net, borrowed from his friend the trader, whose goods he began to look upon now as placed under his trusteeship. And in that rude couch he slept as snugly, after a hard dayʼs work, as the pupa does of the goat moth, or of the giant sirex. Under his feet was Wenaʼs hole, wherein she crouched like a rabbit, and pricked her ears every now and then, and barked if ever the wind moaned.Fortunatos nimium; there was nobody to rogue them.And yet no sooner was Craddy asleep, upon the night I am telling of, than that dirty bottle–green snake, flat–headed, and with a yearʼs supply of venom in its tooth–bag, came wriggling on its dappled belly around the hollow ring, while the dying embers of the fire—for the night was rather chilly and wet, and Cradock had cooked some fish—showed the mean sneak, poking its head up, feeling the temper of the time, ready to wriggle to anything. Then it came to the bedposts of Cradockʼs couch, which he had cut, in a dry sort ofhumour, from the soft baobab wood. It lifted its head, and heard him snoring, and tapped its tail, and listened again. Very likely it was warm up there, and the snake was a little chilly, in this depth of the winter. So without any evil forethought—for I must be just, even to a snake—though ready to bite, at a move or a turn, of the animal known as “man,” up went that little serpent, cleverly and elegantly, as on a Bohemian vase. Cradock would have died in two hours after that snake had bitten him. But before that lissom coil of death had got all its tail off the ground, fangs as keen as its own, though not poisonous, had it by the nape of the neck. Wena knew a snake by this time, and could treat them aright. She gave the devilish miscreant not a chance to twist upon her, but tore him from his belly–hold, and walked pleasantly to the fire, and with a spit of execration threw him into it, and ran back, and then ran to again, and barked at the noise he made in fizzing. Therewith Cradock awoke, and got out of bed, and saw the past danger, and coaxed the little dog, and kissed her, and talked to her about Amy, whose name she knew quite as well as her own.After all his works were finished, and when he hardly knew what great public improvement he should next attempt, Cradock received visitors, unexpected and unfashionable. In fact, they were all stark naked; although that proves very little. Climbing his tree, one beautiful morning, he saw four or fivelittle marks on the sea, as of so many housemaidsʼ thumbs, when the cheek of the grate has been polished. Staring thereat with all his eyes—as we loosely express it—he found that the thumb–marks got bigger and bigger, until they became long canoes, paddling, like good ones, towards him.This was not not by any means the sort of thing he had bargained for; and he became, to state the matter mildly, most decidedly nervous. He saw that there were invading him five great double canoes, each containing ten or twelve men; and he had no gun, nor a pinch of powder. Very likely they were cannibals, and would roast him slowly, to brown him nicely, and then serve up Wena for garnish. He shook so up there among the rough branches—for he did not so very much mind, being killed, but he could not bear to be eaten—that Wena began to howl down below, and he was obliged to come down to quiet her.Then he tied up black Wena, and muzzled her, to her immense indignation, with a capistrum of mowana bark, which quite foreclosed her own, and then he crept warily through the woods to observe his black brethrenʼs proceedings. They were very near the shore by this time, and making straight for the traderʼs hut, of which they had doubtless received some account. Cradock felt his courage rising, and therewith some indignation, for he knew that the goods could not be theirs, and by this time he considered himself in commission as supercargo. So he resolved to save the store frompillage, if it were possible, even at the risk of his life.For this purpose he lay down in a hollow place by the water–side, where he could just see over the tide–bank without much fear of discovery, at least, till the robbers had passed the shed, which, of course, was their principal object. It was evidently a king of men who stood at the prow of the foremost canoe, with a javelin in his great black hand, poised and ready for casting. His apparel consisted of two great ear–drops, two rings upon his right wrist, and one below either knee; also a chain of teeth was dangling down his brawny bosom. He was painted red, and polished highly, which had to be done every morning; and he looked as dignified and more powerful than a don or dean. One man in each boat was painted and polished—doubtless the sign of high rank and great birth.When the bottom of the double canoe grated upon the beach, the negro king flung back his strong arm, and cast at the shed his javelin. It passed through the roof and buried itself in the body of the fetich, which swung horribly to and fro, while the crinoline moved round it. Hereupon a yell arose from the invading flotilla, and every man trembled, waiting to see what would come of such an impiety. Finding that nothing at all ensued, for Cradock had not the presence of mind to advance at the moment, they gave another yell and landed, washing a great deal of red fromtheir legs. But the king was brought ashore, dry and bright, sitting on some officers’ shoulders. Then they came up the bank, without any order, but each with his javelin ready, and his eyes intent on the idol. How Cradock longed for a piece of packthread, to have set the dried codfish dancing!At last they came quite up to the shed, and held a consultation, in which it seemed the better counsel to allow the god, who looked ever so much more awful now they were near him, a certain time to vindicate himself, if he possessed the power to do so. Cradock was watching them closely, through a tussock of long sea–grass, and, in spite of their powerful frames and elastic carriage, he began to despise them in the wholesale Britannic manner. They should not stealhisproperty, that he was quite resolved upon, although there were fifty of them. They were so near to him now that he could see their great white teeth, and hear them snapping as they talked.When the time allowed, which their Agamemnon was telling upon his fingers, had quite expired, and Olympian Jove had sent as yet no lightnings, the king, who was clearly in front of his age, cast another javelin through the frame of crinoline, and leaped boldly, like Patroclus, following his dart. Suddenly he fell back, howling and yelling, cured for ever of scepticism, and with both his great eyes quite slewed up, and all his virtue in his heels. Away went every nigger, drowning the royal screams with their own, pell–mell down the beach,anyhow, only caring to cut hawser. Words like these came back to Cradock, as they rolled over one another—“Mbongo, pongo; warakai, urelwäi;” which mean, as interpreted afterwards by the Yankee trader,“He is a God, a great God; he maketh rain, yea, very great rain!”Headlong they tumbled into their boats, not stopping to carry the king even, for which he kicked them heartily, as soon as he got on board, and every son of a woman of them plied his knotted arms at the paddle, as if grim Death was behind him.Cradock laughed so heartily, that he rolled over with the hydropult on him, and threw his heels up in the air, and if they had not yelled so, they would have been sure to hear him. Very skilfully he had brought the nose of that noble engine to bear full upon the royal countenance, and the jet of water from the little stream passed through the ribs of the fetich. That god had asserted himself to such purpose, that henceforth you might hang him with beads, and give him a wig of tobacco, and no black man would dare to look at them.Cradock Nowell felt almost too proud of his mighty volunteer movement, and began to think more than ever that the whole of the island was his. These things show, more than anything else can, his return to human reason; for of the rational human being—as discovered ordinarily—the veryfirst instinct and ambition is the ownership of a peculium. What man cannot sympathize with that feeling who has got three fields and six children? Therefore when a beautiful schooner, of the true American rig, which made such lagging neddies of our yachts a few years since, came into view one afternoon, and fetched up, with the sails all shaking in the wind, abreast of the shed, ere sun–down, Cradock felt like the owner of a house who sees a man at his gate. Then he came down quietly with Wena, and sat upon a barrel, with a pipe of Cavendish in his mouth, and Wena crouched, like a chrysalis, between his pumpkinʼd feet.Even the Yankee, who had not been surprised at any incident of life since his nurse dropped him down an oil–well, when he was two years old, even he experienced some sensation, when he saw a white man sitting and smoking upon his barrel of knowingest notions, with a black dog at his feet. But Recklesome Young was not the man to be long taken aback.“Darn me, but yoo are a cool hand. Britisher, for ten dollars. Never see none like ‘em, I donʼt.”“You are right,” answered Cradock, “I am an Englishman. Very much at your service. What is your business upon my island?”“Waal,” said the Yankee, turning round to the four men who had rowed him ashore; “Zebedee, this is just what I likes, and no mistark about it. One of them old islanders come to dispute possession.And perhaps a cannon up the hill, and a company of sojers. Ainʼt it good, Zeb, ainʼt it? Lor, how I do love them!”“Now, donʼt be too premature,” said Cradock, “it is the fault of your nation, as the opposite is ours.”“Darned well said, young Britisher, give us your hand’ upon it; for, arter all, I likes yoo.”Cradock shook hands with him heartily, for there was something in the manʼs face and manner, when you let his chaff drift by, which an Englishman recognises, as kindly, strong, and sincere, although now and then contemptuous. The contempt alone is not genuine, but assumed to meet ours or anybodyʼs. The active, for fear of the passive voice.“You are welcome to all the island,” said Cradock, “and all my improvements, if you will only take me home again. The whole of it belongs to me, no doubt; but I will make it all over to you, for a passage to Southampton.”“Canʼt take you that way, young Boss, and donʼt want your legal writings. How come you here, to begin with?”Cradock told him all his story, while the men were busy; and the keen American saw at once that every word was true.“Strikes me,” he said, with a serious drawl, which the fun in his eyes contradicted, “that yoo, after the way of the British, have made a trifle free, young man, with some of my goods andchattels he–ar; and even yoor encro–aching country canʼt prove tittle to them.”“Yes,” replied Cradock; “and I will pay you, if I have not done so already. I will give you the thing which has saved the whole from plunder, and perhaps fire afterwards.”Then he fetched the little machine, which the Yankee recognised at once as an American invention, and he laughed till his yellow cheeks were reeking at the description of the “darned naygursʼ retreat.”“Rip me up, young man,” he said, “but yooʼd be a credit to us aʼmost. Darnʼd if I thought as any Britisher wud ever be up to so cute a dodge. Shake hands agin, young chap, I likes yoo. And yooʼve airned your ticket anywhor, and a hunderd dollars to back of it. Weʼll take yoo to the centre of the univarsal world, and make yoo open your eyes a bit. Ship aboard of us for Noo Yerk, and if that donʼt make a man of yoo, call me small pumpkins arterwards.”“But I want to get to England,” said Cradock, looking very black; “and I have no money for passage from New York to Southampton.”“Thur now, yoo be all over a Britisher agin, and reck–wirin enlightʼment. Yoo allays spies out fifty raisons agin a thin’ smarter than one in itʼs favior. Harken, now, Iʼll have yoo sot down in the docks of Suthanton, free, and with fifty dollars to trade upon, sure as my name is RecklesomeYoung. Thur, now! Bet, I donʼt, will yoo, and pay me out o’ my spisshy?”Not to dwell too long upon these little side–paths, it is enough to record that Captain Recklesome Young, of New York, and the schooner,Donʼt you wish you may catch me, made sail two days afterwards, with half of his best cabin allotted to Cradock and to Wena. And, keen as he was to the shave of a girlʼs lip, in striking a contract or cutting it, upon a large scale, he came down as nobly as the angels on Jacobʼs ladder. No English duke or prince of the blood could or would have behaved to Cradock more grandly than Recklesome Young did, when once he understood him. In such things the Yankees are far ahead of us. Keen as they are, and for that same reason, they have far more trust than we have, in large and good human nature. Of the best of them I have heard many a true tale, such as I never could hope to hear of our noblest London merchants. Proofs of grand faith, and Godlike confidence in a man once approved, which enlarge the heart of him who hears them, and makes him hate small satire.CHAPTER XIII.Bob Garnet, with his trowel, and box, and net, and many other impediments, was going along very merrily, in a quiet path of the Forest, thinking sometimes of Amy and her fundamental errors, and sometimes of Eoa, and the way she could catch a butterfly, but for the most part busy with the display of life around him, and the prospects of a great boring family, which he had found in a willow–tree. Suddenly, near the stag–headed oak, he chanced upon Miss Nowell, tripping along the footpath lightly, smiling and blushing rosily, and oh! so surprised to see him! She darted aside, like a trout at a shadow, then, finding it too late for that game, she tried to pass him rapidly, with her long eyelashes drooping.“Oh, please to stop a minute, if you can spare the time,” said Bob; “what have I done to offend you?”She stopped in a moment at his voice, and lifted her radiant eyes to him, and shyly tried to cloud away the sparkling night of hair, through which her white and slender throat gleamed like the Milky Way. The sprays of the wood and the winds of May had romped with her glorious tresses; and now she had been lectured so, that she doubted her right to exhibit her hair.“Miss Nowell,” said Bob, as she had not answered, but only been thinking about him, “only please to stop and tell me what I have done to offend you; and you do love beetles so—and you never saw such beauties—what have I done to offend you?”An English maiden would have said, “Oh, nothing at all, Mr. Garnet;” and then swept on, with her crinoline embracing a thousand brambles.But Eoa stood just where she was, with her bright lips pouting slightly, and her gaze absorbed by a tuft of moss.“Only because you are not at all good–natured to me, Bob. But it doesnʼt make much difference.”Then she turned away from him, and began to sing a little song, and then called, “Amy, Amy!”“Donʼt call Amy. I donʼt want her.”“Oh, I beg your pardon, Iʼm sure I rather thought you did.”“Eoa,” said Bob; and she looked at him, and the tears were in her eyes. And then she whispered, “Yes, Bob.”“You have got on the very prettiest dress I ever saw in all my life.”Here Bob was alarmed at his own audacity, and durst not watch the effect of his speech.“Oh, is that all?” she answered. “But I am very glad indeed that you like—my frock, Bob.” Here she looked down at it, with much interest.“And, to tell you the truth,” continued he, “I think, if you will please not to be offended, that you look very well in it.”“Oh yes, I am very well. I wish I was ill, sometimes.”“Now, I donʼt mean that. What I mean is, very nice.”“Well, I always try to be nice. But how can I, out butterfly–hunting?”“Now, you wonʼt understand me. You are as bad as a weevil that wonʼt take chloroform. What I mean is, very pretty.”“I donʼt know anything about that,” said Eoa, drawing back; “and I donʼt see that you have any right even to talk about it. Oh, there goes a lovely butterfly!”“Where, where? What eyes you have got! I do wish I was married to you. What a collection we would have! And you would never let my traps off. I am sure that you are a great deal better and prettier than Amy. And I like you more than anybody I have ever seen.”“Do you, Bob? Are you sure of that?”She fixed her large eyes upon his; and in onemoment her beauty went to the bottom of his heart. It changed him from a boy to a man, from play to passion, from dreams to thought. And happy for him that it was so, with the trouble impending over him.She saw the change; herself too young, too pure (in spite of all the evil that ever had drifted by her) to know or ask what it meant. She only felt that Bob liked her now better than he liked Amy. She had no idea of the deep anticipation of her eyes.“Eoa, wonʼt you answer me?” He had been talking some nonsense. “Why are you crying so dreadfully? Do you hate me so much as all that?”“Oh no, no, Bob. I am sure I donʼt hate you at all. I only wish I did. No, I donʼt, Bob. I am so glad that I donʼt. I donʼt care a quarter so much, Bob, for all the rest of the world put together.”“Then only look up at me, Eoa. I canʼt tell what I am saying. Only look up. You are so nice. And you have got such eyes.”“Have I?” said Eoa, throwing all their splendour on him; “oh, I am so glad you like them.”“Do you think that you could give me just a sort of a kiss, Eoa? People always do, you know. And, indeed, I feel that you ought.”“I scarcely know what is right, Bob, after all the things they have told me. But now, you know, you must guide me.”“Then, Iʼll tell you what. Just let me give you one. The leaves are coming out so.”“Well, thatʼs a different thing,” said Eoa. “Amy canʼt see us, can she?”Sir Cradock Nowell was very angry when his niece came home, and told him, with an air of triumph, all that Bob had said to her.“That butterfly–hunting boy, Eoa! To think of his presuming so! A mere boy! A boy like that!”“Thatʼs the very thing, uncle. Perhaps if he had been a girl, you know, I should not have liked him half so much. And as for his hunting butterflies, I like him all the better for that. And weʼll hunt them all day long.”“Oh!” exclaimed Uncle Cradock, smiling at the young girlʼs earnestness in spite of all his wrath; “that is your idea of married life then, is it? But I never will allow it, Eoa: he is not your equal.”“Of course not, uncle. He is my superior in every possible way.”“Scarcely so, in the matter of birth; nor yet, my child, I fear, in a pecuniary sense.”“For both of those I donʼt care two pice. You know it is all very nice, Uncle Cradock, to live in large rooms, where you can put three chairs together, and jump over them all without knocking your head, and to have beautiful books, and prawns for breakfast, and flowers all the year round; and to be able to scold people withouttheir daring to answer. But I could do without all that very well, but I never could do without Bob.”“I fear you must, indeed, my dear. As other people have had to do.”“Well, I donʼt see why, unless God takes him; and then He should take me too. And, indeed, I had better tell you once for all, Uncle Cradock, that I do not mean to try. It would be so shabby of me, after what I told him just now, and after his saving my life; and you yourself said yesterday that no Nowell had ever been shabby. You have been very kind to me and good, and I love you very much, I am sure. But in spite of all that, I wish you clearly to understand, Uncle Cradock, that if you try any nonsense with me, I shall get my darling fatherʼs money, and go and live away from you.”“My dear,” said the old man, smiling at the manner and tone of her menace, which she delivered as if her departure must at least annihilate him, “you are laying your plans too rapidly. You are not seventeen until next July; and you cannot touch your poor fatherʼs money until you are twenty–one.”“I donʼt care,” she replied; “he is sure to have been right about it. But I will tell you another thing. Everybody says that I could earn ten thousand a year as an opera–dancer in London. And I should like it very much,—that is to say, if Bob did. And I would not think of changingmy name, as I have heard that most of them do. I should be ‘Miss Eoa Nowell, the celebrated dancer.’”“God forbid!” said Sir Cradock. “My only brotherʼs only child! I will not trouble you about him, dear. Only I beg you to consider.”“To be sure I will, Uncle Cradock, I have been considering ever since how long it must be till I marry him. Now give me a kiss, dear, and I wonʼt dance, except for your amusement. And I donʼt think I can dance for a long time, after what I have been told about poor Cousin Cradock. I am sure he was very nice, uncle, from what everybody says of him, and I am almost certain that you behaved very badly to him.”“My dear, you are allowed to say what you like, because nobody can stop you. But your own good feeling should make you spare me the pain of that sad subject.”“Not if you deserve the pain for having been hard–hearted. And much you cared for my pain, when you spoke of Bob so. Besides, you are quite sure to hear of it; and it had better come from me, dear uncle, who am so considerate.”“Something new? What is it, my child? I can bear almost anything now.”“It is that some vile wretches are trying to get what they call a warrant against him, and so to put him in jail.”“Put him in jail? My unfortunate son! What more has he been doing?”“Nothing at all. And I donʼt believe that he ever did any harm. But what the brutes say is that he did that terrible thing on purpose. Oh, uncle, donʼt look at me like that. How I wish I had never told you!”Poor Sir Cradockʼs mind was not so clear and strong as it had been, although the rumours scattered by Georgie were shameful exaggerations. The habit of brooding over his grief, whenever he was alone—a habit more and more indulged, as it became a morbid pleasure—the loss moreover of his accustomed exercise, for he never would go out riding now, having no son to ride with him; these, and the ever–present dread of some inevitable inquiry, began to disturb, though not destroy, the delicate fibres of reason, which had not too much room in his brain.He fell into the depths of an easy–chair, and wondered what it was he had heard. The lids of his mindʼs eye had taken a blink, as will happen sometimes to old people, and to young ones too for that matter; neither was it the first time this thing had befallen him.Then Eoa told him again what it was, because he made her tell it; and again it shocked him dreadfully; but that time he remembered it.“And I have no doubt,” continued his niece, with bright tears on her cheeks, “that Mrs. Corklemore herself is at the bottom of it.”“Georgie! What, my niece Georgie!”“She is not your niece, Uncle Cradock. I amyour niece, and nobody else; and you had better not think of wronging me. If you call her your niece any more, I know I will never call you my uncle. Nasty limy slimy thing! If you would only give me leave to choke her!”“My darling child,” cried her uncle, who loved her the more (though he knew it not) for siding with his son so, “you are so very hot and hasty. I am sure Mrs. Corklemore speaks of you with the warmest pity and affection.”“Shall I tell you why she does, Uncle Crad? Shall I tell you in plain English? Most likely you will be shocked, you know.”“My dear, I am so used to you, that I am never shocked now at anything.”“Then it is because she issuch a jolly liar.”“Eoa, I really must send you to a ‘nice institution for young ladies.’ You get worse and worse.”“If you do, Iʼll jump over the wall the first night, and Bob shall come to catch me. But now without any nonsense, uncle, for you do talk a good deal of nonsense, will you promise me one thing?”“A dozen, if you like, my darling. Anything in reason. You did look so like your poor father then.”“Oh, I am so glad of that. But it is not a thing of reason, uncle; it is simply a thing of justice. Now will you promise solemnly to send away Mrs. Corklemore, and never speak to heragain, if she vows that she knows nothing of this, and if I prove from her own handwriting that it is her plot altogether, and also another plot against us, every bit as bad, if not worse?”“Of course, Eoa, I will promise you that, as solemnly as you please. What a deluded child you are!”“Am I? Now let her come in, and deny it. Thatʼs the first part of the business.”Without waiting for an answer, she ran to fetch Mrs. Corklemore, whom she well knew where to find, that time of the afternoon. Dear Georgie had just had her cup of tea with the darling Flore, in her private audience–chamber—”oratory” she called it, though all her few prayers were public; and now she was meditating what dress she should wear at dinner. Those dinners were so dreadfully dull, unless she could put Eoa into a vehement passion—which was not very hard to do—and so exhibit her in a pleasant light before the serving–men. Yet, strange to say, although the young lady observed little moderation, when she was baited thus, and sunk irony in invective, the sympathies of the audience were far more often on her side than on that of the soft tormentor.“Come, now, Sugar–plums,” said Eoa, who often addressed her so, “we want you down–stairs, if you please, for a minute.”“Tum, pease, Oh Ah,” cried little Flore, running up; “pease tum, and tell Fore a tory.”“Canʼt now, you good little child. And yourmamma tells stories so cleverly, oh, so very cleverly, it quite takes away oneʼs breath.”“Iʼll have my change out of you at dinner–time,” said Georgie to herself most viciously, as she followed down the passage.Eoa led her along at a pace which made her breath quite short, for she was not wont to hurry so, and she dropped right gladly into the chair which Sir Cradock politely set for her. Then, as he himself sat down, facing her with a heavy sigh, Georgie felt rather uncomfortable. She was not quite ready for the crisis, but feared that it was coming. And she saw at a glimpse that her hated foe, “Never–spot–the–dust,” was quite ready, burning indeed to begin, only wanting to make the most of it. Thereupon Mrs. Corklemore, knowing the value of the weather–gage, and being unable to bear a slow silence, was the first to speak.“Something has occurred, I see, to one of you two dear ones. Oh, Uncle Cradock, what can I do to prove the depth of my regard for you? Or——”“To be sure,the depthof your regard,” Eoa interrupted.“Or is it for you, you poor wild thing? We all make such allowance for you, because of your great disadvantages. If you have done anything very wrong indeed, poor darling, anything which hard people would call not only thoughtless but unprincipled, I can feel for you so truly, because of your hot temperament and most unhappy circumstances.”“You had better not go too far!” cried Eoa, grinding her little teeth.“Thank Heaven! I see, dear, it is nothing so very disgraceful after all, because it has nothing to do with you, or you would not smile so prettily. You take it so lightly, it must be something about dear Uncle Cradock. Oh, Uncle Cradock, tell me all about it; my whole heart will be with you.”“Black–spangled hen has broken her eggs. Nothing more,” said Eoa. “De–ar, oh we do love you so!” She made two syllables of that word, as Mrs. Corklemore used to do, in her many gushing moments. Georgie looked at Eoa with wonder. She had stupidly thought her a stupid.Then Sir Cradock Nowell rose, in a stately manner, to put an end to all this little nonsense.“My niece, Eoa, declares, Mrs. Corklemore, that you, in some underhand manner, have promoted a horrible charge against my poor son Cradock, a charge which no person in any way connected with our family should ever dare to utter, even if he or she believed its justice, far less dare to promulgate, and even force into the courts of law. Is this so, or is it not?”“Oh, Uncle Cradock, how can you speak so? What charge should I ever dream of?”“See how her hands are trembling, and how white her lips are; not with telling black lies, Uncle Cradock, but with being found out.”“Eoa, have the kindness not to interrupt again.”“Very well, Uncle Cradock; I wonʼt, unless you make me.”“Then, as I understand, madam, you deny entirely the truth of this accusation?”“Of course I do, most emphatically. What can you all be dreaming about?”“Now, Eoa, it is your turn to establish what you have said.”“I canʼt establish anything, though I know it, Uncle Cradock.”“Knowit indeed, you poor wild nautch–girl!Dreamedit you mean, I suppose.”“I mean,” continued Eoa, not even looking at her, but bending her fingers in a manner which Georgie quite understood, “that I cannot prove anything, Uncle Cradock, without your permission. But here I have a letter, with the seal unbroken, and which I promised some one not to open without her leave, and now she has given me leave to open it with your consent and in the presence of the writer. Why, how pale you are, Mrs. Corklemore!”“My Heavens! And this is England! Stealing letters, and forging them——”“Which of the two do you mean, madam?” asked Sir Cradock, looking at her in his old magisterial manner, after examining the envelope; “either involves a heavy charge against a member of my family. Is this letter yours, or not?”“Yes, it is,” replied Georgie, after a momentʼs debate, for if she called it a forgery, it must ofcourse be opened; “have the kindness to give me my property. I thought there was among well–bred people a delicacy as to scrutinizing even the directions of one anotherʼs letters.”“So there is, madam; you are quite right—except, indeed, under circumstances altogether exceptional, and of which this is one. Now for your own exculpation, and to prove that my niece deserves heavy punishment (which I will take care to inflict), allow me to open this letter. I see it is merely a business letter, or I would not ask even that; although you have so often assured me that you have no secret in the world from me. You can have nothing confidential to say to ‘Simon Chope, Esq.;’ and if you had, it should remain sacred and secure with me, unless it involved the life and honour of my son. Shall I open this letter?”“Certainly not, Sir Cradock Nowell. How dare you to think of such a thing, so mean, so low, so prying?”“After those words, madam, you cannot continue to be a guest of mine; or be ever received in this house again, unless you prove that I have wronged you, by allowing me to send for your husband, and to place this letter in his hands, before you have in any way communicated with him.”“Give me my letter, Sir Cradock Nowell, unless your niece inherits the thieving art from you. As for you, wretched little Dacoit,” hereshe bent upon Eoa flashing eyes quite pale from wrath, for sweet Georgie had her temper, “bitterly you shall rue the day when you presumed to match yourself with me. You would like to do a little murder, I see. No doubt it runs in the family; and the Thugs and Dacoits are first cousins, of course.”Never had Eoa fought so desperate a battle with herself, as now to keep her hands off Georgie. Without looking at her again, she very wisely ran away, for it was the only chance of abstaining. Mrs. Corklemore laughed aloud; then she took the letter, which the old man had placed upon the table, and said to him, with a kind look of pity:“What a fuss you have made about nothing! It is only a question upon the meaning of a clause in my marriage–settlement; but I do not choose to have my business affairs exposed, even to my husband. Now do you believe me, Uncle Cradock?”“No, I cannot say that I do, madam. And it does not matter whether I do or not. You have used language about my family which I can never forget. A carriage will be at your service at any moment you please.”“Thanks for your hospitable hint. You will soon find your mistake, I think, in having made me your enemy; though your rudeness is partly excused, no doubt, by your growing hallucinations. Farewell for the present, poor dear Uncle Cradock.”With these words, Mrs. Corklemore made him an elegant curtsey, and swept away from the room, without even the glisten of a tear to mar her gallant bearing, although she had been so outraged. But when she got little Floreʼs head on her lap, she cried over it very vehemently, and felt the depth of her injury.When she had closed the door behind her (not with any vulgar bang, but firmly and significantly), the master of the house walked over to a panelled mirror, and inspected himself uncomfortably. It was a piece of ancient glass, purchased from an Italian chapel by some former Cradock Nowell, and bearing a mystic name and fame among the maids who dusted it. By them it was supposed to have a weird prophetic power, partly, no doubt, from its deep dark lustre, and partly because it was circular, and ever so slightly, and quite imperceptibly, concave. As upon so broad a surface no concavity could be, in the early ages of mechanism, made absolutely true—and for that matter it cannot be donead unguem, even now—there were, of course, many founts of error in this Italian mirror. Nevertheless, all young ladies who ever beheld it were charmed with it, so sweetly deeply beautiful, like Galatea watching herself and finding Polypheme over her shoulder, in the glass of the blue Sicilian sea.To this glass Sir Cradock Nowell went to examine his faded eyes, time–worn, trouble–worn, stranded by the ebbing of the brain. He knewtoo well what Mrs. Corklemore meant by her last thrust; and the word “hallucination” happened, through a great lawsuit then in progress, to be invested with an especial prominence and significance. While he was sadly gazing into the convergence of grey light, and feebly reassuring himself, yet like his image wavering, a heavy step was heard behind him, and beside his flowing silvery locks appeared the close–cropped massive brow and the gloomy eyes of Bull Garnet.CHAPTER XIV.As the brothers confronted one another, the legitimate and the base–born, the man of tact and the man of force, the luxurious and the labourer, strangely unlike in many respects, more strangely alike in others; each felt kindly and tenderly, yet timidly, for the other.The old man thought of the lying wrong inflicted upon the stronger one by their common father; the other felt the worse wrong—if possible—done by himself to his brother. The measure of such things is not for us. God knows, and visits, and forgives them.Even by the failing light—for the sun was westering, and a cloud flowed over him—each could see that the otherʼs face was not as it should be, that the flight of weeks was drawing age on, more than the lapse of years should.“Garnet, you do a great deal too much. I shall recall my urgent request, if you look soharassed and haggard. Take a holiday now for a month, before the midsummer rents fall due. I will try to do without you; though I may want you any day.”“I will do nothing of the sort; work is needful for me—without it I should die. But you also look very unwell. You must not attempt to prescribe for me.”“I have not been happy lately. By–and–by things will be better. What is your impression of Mrs. Nowell Corklemore?”“That she is an arrant hypocrite, unscrupulous, foul, and deadly.”“Well, that is plain speaking; by no means complimentary. Poor Georgie, I hope you misjudge her, as she says bad people do. But for the present she is gone. There has been a great fight, all along, between her and Eoa; they could not bear one another. And now my niece has discovered a thing which brings me to her side in the matter, for she at least is genuine.”“That she is indeed, and genuinely passionate; you may trust her with anything. She has been very rude indeed to me; and yet I like her wonderfully. What has she discovered?”“That Mrs. Corklemore is at the bottom of this horrible application for a warrant against my son.”“I can well believe it. It struck me in a moment; though I cannot see her object. I never understand plotting.”“Neither do I, Garnet; I only know she has made me insult the dearest friend I had on earth.”“Yes, Mr. Rosedew; I heard of it, and wondered at your weakness. But it did not become me to interfere.”“Certainly not: most certainly not. You could not expect me to bear it. And the Rosedews never liked you.”“That has nothing to do with it. Very probably they are right; for I do not like myself. And you will not dislike, but hate me, when you know what I have to say.”Bull Garnetʼs mind was now made up. For months he had been thinking, forecasting, doubting, wavering—a condition of mind so strange to him, so adrift from all his landmarks, that this alone, without sense of guilt, must have kept him in wretchedness.Sir Cradock Nowell only said, “Keep it for another time. I cannot bear any more excitement; I have had so much to–day.”Bull Garnet looked at him sorrowfully. He could not bear to see his brother beaten so by trouble, and to feel his own hard hand in it.“Donʼt you know what they say of me? Oh, you know what they say of me; and nothing of the kind in the family!” The old man seemed to prove that there was, by the vague flashing of his eyes: “Garnet, you are my brother; after all, you are my brother. And they say I am going mad;and I know they will try to shut me up, without a horse, or a book, or a boy to brush my trousers. Oh, Garnet, you have been bitterly wronged, shamefully wronged, detestably; but you will not let your own brother—brother, who has no sons now to protect him,—be shut up, and made nothing of? Bull Garnet, promise me this, although we have so wronged you.”Garnet knew not what to do. Even he was taken aback, shocked by this sudden outburst, which partly proved what it denied. And this altogether changed the form of the confession he was come to make—and changed it for the better.“My brother”—it was the first time he had ever so addressed him; not from diffidence, but from pride—”my brother, let us look at things, if possible, as God made them. I have been injured no doubt, and so my mother was; blasted, both of us, for life, according to the little ideas of this creeping world. In many cases, the thief is the rogue; in even more, the robbed one is the only villain. Now can you take the large view of things which is forced upon us outsiders when we dare to think at all?”“I cannot think now of such abstract things. My mind is astray with trouble. Did I ever tell you your motherʼs words, when she came here ten or twelve years ago, and demanded a share of the property? Not for her own sake, but for yours, to get you into some business.”“No, I never heard of it. How it must have hurt her!” Bull Garnet was astonished; because it had long been understood that his mother should not be spoken of.“And me as well. I gave her a cheque for a liberal sum, as I thought. She tore it, and threw it at me. What more could I do? Did I deserve her curse, Garnet? Is all this trouble come upon me because I did not obey her?”“I believe that you meant to do exactly what was right.”“I hope—I believe, I did. And see how wrong she was in one part of her prediction. She said that I and my father also should be punished through you, through you, her only son. What a mistake that has proved! You, who are my right arm and brain; my only hope and comfort!”The old man came up, and looked with the deepest trust and admiration at his unacknowledged brother. A few months ago, Bull Garnet would have taken such a look as his truest and best revenge for the cruel wrong to his mother. But now he fell away from it, and muttered something, in a manner quite unlike his own. His mind was made up, he was come to tell all; but how could he do it now, and wrench the old manʼs latest hope away?Then suddenly he remembered, or knew from his own feelings, that an old manʼs last hope in earthly matters should rest upon no friend orbrother, not even upon a wife, but upon his own begotten, his successors in the world. And what he had to say, while tearing all reliance from himself, would replace it where it should be.Meanwhile Sir Cradock Nowell, thinking that Garnet was too grateful for a few kind words, followed him, and placed his slender tremulous and pure–bred hand in the useful cross–bred palm which had sent Mr. Jupp down the coal–shaft.“Bull, you are my very best friend. After all, we are brothers. Promise to defend me.”But Garnet only withdrew his hand, and sighed, and could not look at him.“Oh, then, even you believe it; I see you do! It must be true. God have mercy upon me!”“Cradock, it is a cursed lie; you must not dwell upon it. Such thoughts are spawn of madness; turn to another subject. Just tell me what is the greatest thing one man can do to another?”“To love him, I suppose, Garnet. But I donʼt care much for that sort of thing, since I lost my children.”“Yes, it is a grand thing to love; but far grander to forgive.”“Is it? I am glad to hear it. I always could forgive.”“Little things, you mean, no doubt. Slights and slurs—and so forth?”“Yes, and great things also. But I am not what I was, Bull. You know what I have been through.”“Can you forgive as deep a wrong as one man ever did to another?”“Yes, I dare say. I am sure I donʼt know. What makes you look at me like that?”“Because I shot your son Clayton; and because I did it on purpose.”“Viley! my boy Viley! Oh, I had forgotten. What a stupid thing of me! I thought he was dead somehow. Now, I will open the door for him, because his hands are full. And let him put his game on the table—never mind the papers—he always likes me to see it. Oh, Viley, how long you have been away! What a bag you must have made! Come in, my boy; come in.”Bull Garnetʼs heart cleaved to his side, as the old man opened the door, and looked, with the leaping joy of a fatherʼs love, for his pet, his beloved, his treasured one. But nothing except cold air came in.“The passage is empty. Perhaps he is waiting, because his boots are dirty. Tell him not to think twice about that. I am fidgety sometimes, I know; and I scolded him last Friday. But now he may come anyhow, if he will only come to me. I am so dull without him.”“You will never see him more”—Bull Garnet whispered through a flood of tears, like grass waving out of water—”until it pleases God to take you home, where son and father go alike; sometimes one first, sometimes other, as His holywill is. He came to an unholy end. I tell you again—I shot him.”“Excuse me; I donʼt quite understand. There was a grey hare, with a nick in her ear, who came to the breakfast–room window all through the hard weather last winter, and he promised me not to shoot her; and I am sure that he cannot have done it, because he is so soft–hearted, and that is why I love him so. Talk of Cradock—talk of Cradock! Perhaps he is cleverer than Viley—though I never will believe it—but is he half so soft and sweet? Will the pigeons sit on his shoulder so, and the dogs nuzzle under his coat–lap? Tell me that—tell me that—Bull Garnet.”He leaned on the strong arm of his steward, and looked eagerly for his answer; then trembled with an exceeding great fear, to see that he was weeping. That such a man should weep! But Garnet forced himself to speak.“You cannot listen to me now; I will come again, and talk to you. God knows the agony to me; and worst of all that it is for nothing. Yet all of it not a thousandth part of the anguish I have caused. Perhaps it is wisest so. Perhaps it is for my childrenʼs sake that I, who have killed your pet child, cannot make you know it. Yet it adds to my despair, that I have killed the father too.”Scarcely knowing voice from silence, dazed himself, and blurred, and giddy—so strong is contagion of the mind—Bull Garnet went to the stables,saddled a horse without calling groom, and rode off at full gallop to Dr. Buller. By the time he got there his business habits and wonted fashion of thought had returned, and he put what he came for in lucid form, tersely, crisply, dryly, as if in the world there were no such thing as ill–regulated emotion—except on the part of other people.“Not a bit of it,” said Dr. Buller; “his mind is as sound as yours or mine, and his constitution excellent. He has been troubled a good deal; but bless me—I know a man who lost his three children in a month, and could scarcely pay for their coffins, sir. And his wife only six weeks afterwards. That is what I call trouble, sir!”Bull Garnet knew, from his glistening eyes, and the quivering of his grey locks, that the man he spoke of was himself. Reassured about Sir Cradock, yet fearing to try him further at present, Mr. Garnet went heavily homewards, after begging Dr. Buller to call, as if by chance, at the Hall, observe, and attend to the master.Heavily and wearily Bull Garnet went to the home which once had been so sweet to him, and was now beloved so painfully. The storms of earth were closing round him, only the stars of heaven were bright. Myriad as the forest leaves, and darkly moving in like manner, fears, and doubts, and miseries sprang and trembled through him.No young maid at his door to meet him lovingly and gaily. None to say, “Oh, darling father, howhungry you must be, dear!” Only Pearl, so wan and cold, and scared of soft affection. And as she timidly approached, then dropped her eyes before his gaze, and took his hat submissively, as if she had no lips to kiss, no hand to lay on his shoulder, he saw with one quick glance that still some new grief had befallen her, that still another trouble was come to make its home with her.“What is it, Pearl?” he asked her, sadly; “come in here and tell me.” He never called her his Pearly now, his little native, or pretty pet, as he used to do in the old days. They had dropped those little endearments.“You will be sorry to hear it—sorry, I mean, that it happened; but I could not have done otherwise.”“I never hear anything, now, Pearl, but what I am sorry to hear. This will make little difference.”“So I suppose,” she answered. “Mr. Pell has been here to–day, and—and—oh, father, you know what.”“Indeed I have not been informed of anything. What do I know of Mr. Pell?”“More than he does of you, sir. He asked me to be his wife.”“He is a good man. But of course you said ‘No.’”“Of course I did. Of course, of course. What else can I ever say?”She leaned her white cheek on the high oak mantel, and a little deep sob came from her heart.“Would you have liked to say ‘Yes,’ Pearl?” her father asked very softly, going to put his arm round her waist, and then afraid to do it.“Oh no! oh no! At least, not yet, though I respect him very highly. But I told him that I never could, and never could tell him the reason. And oh, I was so sorry for him—he looked so hurt and disappointed.”“You shall tell him the reason very soon, or rather the newspapers shall.”“Father, donʼt say that; dear father, you are bound for our sake. I donʼt care for him one atom, father, compared with—compared with you, I mean. Only I thought I must tell you, because—oh, you know what I mean. And even if I did like him, what would it matter about me? Oh, father, I often think that I have been too hard upon you, and all of it through me, and my vile concealment!”“My daughter, I am not worthy of you. Would God that you could forgive me!”“I have done it long ago, father. Do you think a child of yours could help it, after all your sorrow?”“My child, look kindly at me; try to look as if you loved me.”She turned to him with such a look as a man only gets once in his life, and then she fell uponhis neck, and forgot the world and all it held, except her own dear father. Wrong he might have done, wrong (no doubt) he had done; but who was she, his little child, to remember it against him? She lay for a moment in his arms, overcome with passion, leaning back, as she had done there, when a weanling infant. For him it was the grandest moment of his passionate life—a fatherʼs powerful love, ennobled by the presence of his God. Such a moment teaches us the grandeur of our race, the traces of a higher world stamped on us indelibly. Then we feel, and try to own, that in spite of satire, cynicism, and the exquisite refinements of the purest selfishness, there is, in even the sharpest and the shallowest of us, something kind and solid, some abiding element of the all–pervading goodness.“Now I will go through with it”—Bull Garnet was recovering—”my own child; go and fetch your brother, if it will not be too much for you. If you think it will, only send him.”“Father, I will fetch him. I may be able to help you both. And now I am so much better.”Presently she returned with Bob, who looked rather plagued and uncomfortable, with a great slice of cork in one hand and a bottle of gum in the other, and a regular housewife of needles in the lappet of his coat. He was going to mount a specimen of a variety of “devilʼs coach–horse,” which he had never seen before, and whose tail was forked like a trident.“Never can let me alone,” said Bob; “just ready to begin I was; and I am sure to spoil his thorax. He is getting stiff every moment.”Bull Garnet looked at him brightly and gladly, even at such a time. Little as he knew or cared about the things that crawl and hop—as he ignorantly put it—skilled no more in natural history than our early painters were, yet from his own strong sense he perceived that his son had a special gift; and a special gift is genius, and may (with good luck) climb eminence. Then he thought of what he had to tell him, and the power of his heart was gone.It was the terror of this moment which had dwelt with him night and day, more than the fear of public shame, of the gallows, or of hell. To be loathed and scorned by his only son! Oh that Pearl had not been so true; oh that Bob suspected something, or had even found it out for himself! Then the father felt that now came part of his expiation.Bob looked at him quite innocently with wonder and some fear. To him “the governor” long had been the strangest of all puzzles, sometimes so soft and loving, sometimes so hard and terrible. Perhaps poor Bob would catch it now for his doings with Eoa.“Sit down there, my son. Not there, but further from me. Donʼt be at all afraid, my boy. I have no fault to find with you. I am far luckier in my son, than you are in your father. You musttry to bear terrible news, Bob. Your sister long has borne it.”Pearl, who was ghastly pale and trembling, stole a glance at each of them from the dark end of the room, then came up bravely into the lamplight, took Bobʼs hand and kissed him, and sat close by to comfort him.Bull Garnet sighed from the depths of his heart. His children seemed to be driven from him, and to crouch together in fear of him.“It serves me right. I know that, of course. That only makes it the worse to bear.”“Father, what is it?” cried Bob, leaping up, and dropping his cork–slice and gum–bottle; “whatever the matter is, father, tell me, that I may stand by you.”“You cannot stand by me in this. When you know what it is, you will fly from me.”“Will I, indeed! A likely thing. Oh, father, you think I am such a soft, because I am fond of little things.”“Would you stand by your father, Bob, if you knew that he was a murderer?”“Oh come,” said Bob, “you are drawing it a little too strong, dad. You never could be that, you know.”“I not only can be, but am, my son.”Father and son looked at one another. The governor standing square and broad, with his shoulders thrown well back, and no trace of emotion in form or face, except that his quick wide nostrils quivered, and his lips were white. Thestripling gazing up at him, seeking for some sign of jest, seeking for a ray of laughter in his fatherʼs eyes; too young to comprehend the power and fury of large passion.Ere either spoke another word—for the father was hurt at the sonʼs delay, and the son felt all abroad in his head—between them glided Pearl, the daughter, the sister, the gentle woman—the one most wronged of all, and yet the quickest to forgive it.“Darling, he did it for my sake,” she whispered to her brother, though it cut through her heart to say it. “Father, oh father, Bob is so slow; donʼt be angry with him. Come to me a moment, father. Oh, how I love and honour you!”Those last few words to the passionate man were like heaven poured into hell. That a child of his should still honour him! He kissed her with tenfold the love young man has for maiden; then he turned away and wept, as if the earth was water.Very little more was said. Pearl went away to Bob, and whispered how the fatal grief befell; and Bob wept great tears for the sake of all, and most of all for his fatherʼs sake. Then, as the father lay cramped up upon the little sofa, wrestling with the power of life and the promise of death, Bob came up, and kissed him dearly on his rugged forehead.“Is that you, my own dear son? God is far too good to me.”

CHAPTER XII.But Pomona Island, now and then, had its own little cares and anxieties. How much longer was Cradock Nowell to live upon fruit, and fish, and turtle, with ship–biscuit for dessert? When would the trader come for his goods, or had he quite forgotten them? What would Amy and Uncle John think, if theTaprobanewent home without him? And the snakes, the snakes, that cared not a rap for the enmity of man, since the rainy season set in, but came almost up to be roasted! And worst of all and most terrible thing, Crad was obliged to go about barefooted, while the thorns were of natureʼs invention, and went every way all at once, like a hedgehog upon a frying–pan.For that last evil he found a cure before he had hopped many hundred yards. He discovered a pumpkin about a foot long, pointed, and with a horny rind, and contracted towards the middle. He sliced this lengthwise, and took out the seeds,and planted his naked foot there. The coolness was most delicious, and a few strips of baobab bark made a first–rate shoe of it. He wore out one pair every day, and two when he went exploring; but what did that matter, unless the supply failed? and he kept some hung up for emergency.As to the snakes, though he did not find out the snake–wood, or the snake–stone, or the fungoid substance, like a morel, which pumices up the venom; he invented something much better, as prevention is better than cure. He discovered a species of aspalathus, perfectly smooth near the root, and not very hard to pull up, yet so barbed, and toothed, and fanged upon all except the seed–leaves, that even a python—whereof he had none—could scarcely have got through it. Of this he strewed a ring all round his great mowana–tree, and then a fenced path down the valley toward his bathing–place, and then he defied the whole of that genus so closely akin to the devil.But Wena had saved his life ere this from one of those slimy demons. Of course we know how hateful it is to hate anything at all, except sin and crime in the abstract; but I do hope a fellow may be forgiven for hating snakes and scorpions. At any rate, if he cannot be, he ought to be able to help it. While Cradock was making his fence aspalathine, and before he had finished the ring yet, a little snake about two feet long, semi–transparent, and jellified, of a dirty bottle–green colour, like the caterpillar known asthe pear–leech (Selandria Æthiops), only some hundreds of sizes bigger, that loathsome reptile sneaked in through and crouched in a corner, while Cradock thought that he smelled something very nasty, as he smoked a pipe of the traderʼs tobacco, before turning into his locker.He had cut himself a good broad coving from the inside of the mowana–tree, about three feet from the ground, fitted up with a flap and a pillow–place, and strewn with fresh plantain–leaves. Across the niche he had fastened a new mosquito net, borrowed from his friend the trader, whose goods he began to look upon now as placed under his trusteeship. And in that rude couch he slept as snugly, after a hard dayʼs work, as the pupa does of the goat moth, or of the giant sirex. Under his feet was Wenaʼs hole, wherein she crouched like a rabbit, and pricked her ears every now and then, and barked if ever the wind moaned.Fortunatos nimium; there was nobody to rogue them.And yet no sooner was Craddy asleep, upon the night I am telling of, than that dirty bottle–green snake, flat–headed, and with a yearʼs supply of venom in its tooth–bag, came wriggling on its dappled belly around the hollow ring, while the dying embers of the fire—for the night was rather chilly and wet, and Cradock had cooked some fish—showed the mean sneak, poking its head up, feeling the temper of the time, ready to wriggle to anything. Then it came to the bedposts of Cradockʼs couch, which he had cut, in a dry sort ofhumour, from the soft baobab wood. It lifted its head, and heard him snoring, and tapped its tail, and listened again. Very likely it was warm up there, and the snake was a little chilly, in this depth of the winter. So without any evil forethought—for I must be just, even to a snake—though ready to bite, at a move or a turn, of the animal known as “man,” up went that little serpent, cleverly and elegantly, as on a Bohemian vase. Cradock would have died in two hours after that snake had bitten him. But before that lissom coil of death had got all its tail off the ground, fangs as keen as its own, though not poisonous, had it by the nape of the neck. Wena knew a snake by this time, and could treat them aright. She gave the devilish miscreant not a chance to twist upon her, but tore him from his belly–hold, and walked pleasantly to the fire, and with a spit of execration threw him into it, and ran back, and then ran to again, and barked at the noise he made in fizzing. Therewith Cradock awoke, and got out of bed, and saw the past danger, and coaxed the little dog, and kissed her, and talked to her about Amy, whose name she knew quite as well as her own.After all his works were finished, and when he hardly knew what great public improvement he should next attempt, Cradock received visitors, unexpected and unfashionable. In fact, they were all stark naked; although that proves very little. Climbing his tree, one beautiful morning, he saw four or fivelittle marks on the sea, as of so many housemaidsʼ thumbs, when the cheek of the grate has been polished. Staring thereat with all his eyes—as we loosely express it—he found that the thumb–marks got bigger and bigger, until they became long canoes, paddling, like good ones, towards him.This was not not by any means the sort of thing he had bargained for; and he became, to state the matter mildly, most decidedly nervous. He saw that there were invading him five great double canoes, each containing ten or twelve men; and he had no gun, nor a pinch of powder. Very likely they were cannibals, and would roast him slowly, to brown him nicely, and then serve up Wena for garnish. He shook so up there among the rough branches—for he did not so very much mind, being killed, but he could not bear to be eaten—that Wena began to howl down below, and he was obliged to come down to quiet her.Then he tied up black Wena, and muzzled her, to her immense indignation, with a capistrum of mowana bark, which quite foreclosed her own, and then he crept warily through the woods to observe his black brethrenʼs proceedings. They were very near the shore by this time, and making straight for the traderʼs hut, of which they had doubtless received some account. Cradock felt his courage rising, and therewith some indignation, for he knew that the goods could not be theirs, and by this time he considered himself in commission as supercargo. So he resolved to save the store frompillage, if it were possible, even at the risk of his life.For this purpose he lay down in a hollow place by the water–side, where he could just see over the tide–bank without much fear of discovery, at least, till the robbers had passed the shed, which, of course, was their principal object. It was evidently a king of men who stood at the prow of the foremost canoe, with a javelin in his great black hand, poised and ready for casting. His apparel consisted of two great ear–drops, two rings upon his right wrist, and one below either knee; also a chain of teeth was dangling down his brawny bosom. He was painted red, and polished highly, which had to be done every morning; and he looked as dignified and more powerful than a don or dean. One man in each boat was painted and polished—doubtless the sign of high rank and great birth.When the bottom of the double canoe grated upon the beach, the negro king flung back his strong arm, and cast at the shed his javelin. It passed through the roof and buried itself in the body of the fetich, which swung horribly to and fro, while the crinoline moved round it. Hereupon a yell arose from the invading flotilla, and every man trembled, waiting to see what would come of such an impiety. Finding that nothing at all ensued, for Cradock had not the presence of mind to advance at the moment, they gave another yell and landed, washing a great deal of red fromtheir legs. But the king was brought ashore, dry and bright, sitting on some officers’ shoulders. Then they came up the bank, without any order, but each with his javelin ready, and his eyes intent on the idol. How Cradock longed for a piece of packthread, to have set the dried codfish dancing!At last they came quite up to the shed, and held a consultation, in which it seemed the better counsel to allow the god, who looked ever so much more awful now they were near him, a certain time to vindicate himself, if he possessed the power to do so. Cradock was watching them closely, through a tussock of long sea–grass, and, in spite of their powerful frames and elastic carriage, he began to despise them in the wholesale Britannic manner. They should not stealhisproperty, that he was quite resolved upon, although there were fifty of them. They were so near to him now that he could see their great white teeth, and hear them snapping as they talked.When the time allowed, which their Agamemnon was telling upon his fingers, had quite expired, and Olympian Jove had sent as yet no lightnings, the king, who was clearly in front of his age, cast another javelin through the frame of crinoline, and leaped boldly, like Patroclus, following his dart. Suddenly he fell back, howling and yelling, cured for ever of scepticism, and with both his great eyes quite slewed up, and all his virtue in his heels. Away went every nigger, drowning the royal screams with their own, pell–mell down the beach,anyhow, only caring to cut hawser. Words like these came back to Cradock, as they rolled over one another—“Mbongo, pongo; warakai, urelwäi;” which mean, as interpreted afterwards by the Yankee trader,“He is a God, a great God; he maketh rain, yea, very great rain!”Headlong they tumbled into their boats, not stopping to carry the king even, for which he kicked them heartily, as soon as he got on board, and every son of a woman of them plied his knotted arms at the paddle, as if grim Death was behind him.Cradock laughed so heartily, that he rolled over with the hydropult on him, and threw his heels up in the air, and if they had not yelled so, they would have been sure to hear him. Very skilfully he had brought the nose of that noble engine to bear full upon the royal countenance, and the jet of water from the little stream passed through the ribs of the fetich. That god had asserted himself to such purpose, that henceforth you might hang him with beads, and give him a wig of tobacco, and no black man would dare to look at them.Cradock Nowell felt almost too proud of his mighty volunteer movement, and began to think more than ever that the whole of the island was his. These things show, more than anything else can, his return to human reason; for of the rational human being—as discovered ordinarily—the veryfirst instinct and ambition is the ownership of a peculium. What man cannot sympathize with that feeling who has got three fields and six children? Therefore when a beautiful schooner, of the true American rig, which made such lagging neddies of our yachts a few years since, came into view one afternoon, and fetched up, with the sails all shaking in the wind, abreast of the shed, ere sun–down, Cradock felt like the owner of a house who sees a man at his gate. Then he came down quietly with Wena, and sat upon a barrel, with a pipe of Cavendish in his mouth, and Wena crouched, like a chrysalis, between his pumpkinʼd feet.Even the Yankee, who had not been surprised at any incident of life since his nurse dropped him down an oil–well, when he was two years old, even he experienced some sensation, when he saw a white man sitting and smoking upon his barrel of knowingest notions, with a black dog at his feet. But Recklesome Young was not the man to be long taken aback.“Darn me, but yoo are a cool hand. Britisher, for ten dollars. Never see none like ‘em, I donʼt.”“You are right,” answered Cradock, “I am an Englishman. Very much at your service. What is your business upon my island?”“Waal,” said the Yankee, turning round to the four men who had rowed him ashore; “Zebedee, this is just what I likes, and no mistark about it. One of them old islanders come to dispute possession.And perhaps a cannon up the hill, and a company of sojers. Ainʼt it good, Zeb, ainʼt it? Lor, how I do love them!”“Now, donʼt be too premature,” said Cradock, “it is the fault of your nation, as the opposite is ours.”“Darned well said, young Britisher, give us your hand’ upon it; for, arter all, I likes yoo.”Cradock shook hands with him heartily, for there was something in the manʼs face and manner, when you let his chaff drift by, which an Englishman recognises, as kindly, strong, and sincere, although now and then contemptuous. The contempt alone is not genuine, but assumed to meet ours or anybodyʼs. The active, for fear of the passive voice.“You are welcome to all the island,” said Cradock, “and all my improvements, if you will only take me home again. The whole of it belongs to me, no doubt; but I will make it all over to you, for a passage to Southampton.”“Canʼt take you that way, young Boss, and donʼt want your legal writings. How come you here, to begin with?”Cradock told him all his story, while the men were busy; and the keen American saw at once that every word was true.“Strikes me,” he said, with a serious drawl, which the fun in his eyes contradicted, “that yoo, after the way of the British, have made a trifle free, young man, with some of my goods andchattels he–ar; and even yoor encro–aching country canʼt prove tittle to them.”“Yes,” replied Cradock; “and I will pay you, if I have not done so already. I will give you the thing which has saved the whole from plunder, and perhaps fire afterwards.”Then he fetched the little machine, which the Yankee recognised at once as an American invention, and he laughed till his yellow cheeks were reeking at the description of the “darned naygursʼ retreat.”“Rip me up, young man,” he said, “but yooʼd be a credit to us aʼmost. Darnʼd if I thought as any Britisher wud ever be up to so cute a dodge. Shake hands agin, young chap, I likes yoo. And yooʼve airned your ticket anywhor, and a hunderd dollars to back of it. Weʼll take yoo to the centre of the univarsal world, and make yoo open your eyes a bit. Ship aboard of us for Noo Yerk, and if that donʼt make a man of yoo, call me small pumpkins arterwards.”“But I want to get to England,” said Cradock, looking very black; “and I have no money for passage from New York to Southampton.”“Thur now, yoo be all over a Britisher agin, and reck–wirin enlightʼment. Yoo allays spies out fifty raisons agin a thin’ smarter than one in itʼs favior. Harken, now, Iʼll have yoo sot down in the docks of Suthanton, free, and with fifty dollars to trade upon, sure as my name is RecklesomeYoung. Thur, now! Bet, I donʼt, will yoo, and pay me out o’ my spisshy?”Not to dwell too long upon these little side–paths, it is enough to record that Captain Recklesome Young, of New York, and the schooner,Donʼt you wish you may catch me, made sail two days afterwards, with half of his best cabin allotted to Cradock and to Wena. And, keen as he was to the shave of a girlʼs lip, in striking a contract or cutting it, upon a large scale, he came down as nobly as the angels on Jacobʼs ladder. No English duke or prince of the blood could or would have behaved to Cradock more grandly than Recklesome Young did, when once he understood him. In such things the Yankees are far ahead of us. Keen as they are, and for that same reason, they have far more trust than we have, in large and good human nature. Of the best of them I have heard many a true tale, such as I never could hope to hear of our noblest London merchants. Proofs of grand faith, and Godlike confidence in a man once approved, which enlarge the heart of him who hears them, and makes him hate small satire.

But Pomona Island, now and then, had its own little cares and anxieties. How much longer was Cradock Nowell to live upon fruit, and fish, and turtle, with ship–biscuit for dessert? When would the trader come for his goods, or had he quite forgotten them? What would Amy and Uncle John think, if theTaprobanewent home without him? And the snakes, the snakes, that cared not a rap for the enmity of man, since the rainy season set in, but came almost up to be roasted! And worst of all and most terrible thing, Crad was obliged to go about barefooted, while the thorns were of natureʼs invention, and went every way all at once, like a hedgehog upon a frying–pan.

For that last evil he found a cure before he had hopped many hundred yards. He discovered a pumpkin about a foot long, pointed, and with a horny rind, and contracted towards the middle. He sliced this lengthwise, and took out the seeds,and planted his naked foot there. The coolness was most delicious, and a few strips of baobab bark made a first–rate shoe of it. He wore out one pair every day, and two when he went exploring; but what did that matter, unless the supply failed? and he kept some hung up for emergency.

As to the snakes, though he did not find out the snake–wood, or the snake–stone, or the fungoid substance, like a morel, which pumices up the venom; he invented something much better, as prevention is better than cure. He discovered a species of aspalathus, perfectly smooth near the root, and not very hard to pull up, yet so barbed, and toothed, and fanged upon all except the seed–leaves, that even a python—whereof he had none—could scarcely have got through it. Of this he strewed a ring all round his great mowana–tree, and then a fenced path down the valley toward his bathing–place, and then he defied the whole of that genus so closely akin to the devil.

But Wena had saved his life ere this from one of those slimy demons. Of course we know how hateful it is to hate anything at all, except sin and crime in the abstract; but I do hope a fellow may be forgiven for hating snakes and scorpions. At any rate, if he cannot be, he ought to be able to help it. While Cradock was making his fence aspalathine, and before he had finished the ring yet, a little snake about two feet long, semi–transparent, and jellified, of a dirty bottle–green colour, like the caterpillar known asthe pear–leech (Selandria Æthiops), only some hundreds of sizes bigger, that loathsome reptile sneaked in through and crouched in a corner, while Cradock thought that he smelled something very nasty, as he smoked a pipe of the traderʼs tobacco, before turning into his locker.

He had cut himself a good broad coving from the inside of the mowana–tree, about three feet from the ground, fitted up with a flap and a pillow–place, and strewn with fresh plantain–leaves. Across the niche he had fastened a new mosquito net, borrowed from his friend the trader, whose goods he began to look upon now as placed under his trusteeship. And in that rude couch he slept as snugly, after a hard dayʼs work, as the pupa does of the goat moth, or of the giant sirex. Under his feet was Wenaʼs hole, wherein she crouched like a rabbit, and pricked her ears every now and then, and barked if ever the wind moaned.Fortunatos nimium; there was nobody to rogue them.

And yet no sooner was Craddy asleep, upon the night I am telling of, than that dirty bottle–green snake, flat–headed, and with a yearʼs supply of venom in its tooth–bag, came wriggling on its dappled belly around the hollow ring, while the dying embers of the fire—for the night was rather chilly and wet, and Cradock had cooked some fish—showed the mean sneak, poking its head up, feeling the temper of the time, ready to wriggle to anything. Then it came to the bedposts of Cradockʼs couch, which he had cut, in a dry sort ofhumour, from the soft baobab wood. It lifted its head, and heard him snoring, and tapped its tail, and listened again. Very likely it was warm up there, and the snake was a little chilly, in this depth of the winter. So without any evil forethought—for I must be just, even to a snake—though ready to bite, at a move or a turn, of the animal known as “man,” up went that little serpent, cleverly and elegantly, as on a Bohemian vase. Cradock would have died in two hours after that snake had bitten him. But before that lissom coil of death had got all its tail off the ground, fangs as keen as its own, though not poisonous, had it by the nape of the neck. Wena knew a snake by this time, and could treat them aright. She gave the devilish miscreant not a chance to twist upon her, but tore him from his belly–hold, and walked pleasantly to the fire, and with a spit of execration threw him into it, and ran back, and then ran to again, and barked at the noise he made in fizzing. Therewith Cradock awoke, and got out of bed, and saw the past danger, and coaxed the little dog, and kissed her, and talked to her about Amy, whose name she knew quite as well as her own.

After all his works were finished, and when he hardly knew what great public improvement he should next attempt, Cradock received visitors, unexpected and unfashionable. In fact, they were all stark naked; although that proves very little. Climbing his tree, one beautiful morning, he saw four or fivelittle marks on the sea, as of so many housemaidsʼ thumbs, when the cheek of the grate has been polished. Staring thereat with all his eyes—as we loosely express it—he found that the thumb–marks got bigger and bigger, until they became long canoes, paddling, like good ones, towards him.

This was not not by any means the sort of thing he had bargained for; and he became, to state the matter mildly, most decidedly nervous. He saw that there were invading him five great double canoes, each containing ten or twelve men; and he had no gun, nor a pinch of powder. Very likely they were cannibals, and would roast him slowly, to brown him nicely, and then serve up Wena for garnish. He shook so up there among the rough branches—for he did not so very much mind, being killed, but he could not bear to be eaten—that Wena began to howl down below, and he was obliged to come down to quiet her.

Then he tied up black Wena, and muzzled her, to her immense indignation, with a capistrum of mowana bark, which quite foreclosed her own, and then he crept warily through the woods to observe his black brethrenʼs proceedings. They were very near the shore by this time, and making straight for the traderʼs hut, of which they had doubtless received some account. Cradock felt his courage rising, and therewith some indignation, for he knew that the goods could not be theirs, and by this time he considered himself in commission as supercargo. So he resolved to save the store frompillage, if it were possible, even at the risk of his life.

For this purpose he lay down in a hollow place by the water–side, where he could just see over the tide–bank without much fear of discovery, at least, till the robbers had passed the shed, which, of course, was their principal object. It was evidently a king of men who stood at the prow of the foremost canoe, with a javelin in his great black hand, poised and ready for casting. His apparel consisted of two great ear–drops, two rings upon his right wrist, and one below either knee; also a chain of teeth was dangling down his brawny bosom. He was painted red, and polished highly, which had to be done every morning; and he looked as dignified and more powerful than a don or dean. One man in each boat was painted and polished—doubtless the sign of high rank and great birth.

When the bottom of the double canoe grated upon the beach, the negro king flung back his strong arm, and cast at the shed his javelin. It passed through the roof and buried itself in the body of the fetich, which swung horribly to and fro, while the crinoline moved round it. Hereupon a yell arose from the invading flotilla, and every man trembled, waiting to see what would come of such an impiety. Finding that nothing at all ensued, for Cradock had not the presence of mind to advance at the moment, they gave another yell and landed, washing a great deal of red fromtheir legs. But the king was brought ashore, dry and bright, sitting on some officers’ shoulders. Then they came up the bank, without any order, but each with his javelin ready, and his eyes intent on the idol. How Cradock longed for a piece of packthread, to have set the dried codfish dancing!

At last they came quite up to the shed, and held a consultation, in which it seemed the better counsel to allow the god, who looked ever so much more awful now they were near him, a certain time to vindicate himself, if he possessed the power to do so. Cradock was watching them closely, through a tussock of long sea–grass, and, in spite of their powerful frames and elastic carriage, he began to despise them in the wholesale Britannic manner. They should not stealhisproperty, that he was quite resolved upon, although there were fifty of them. They were so near to him now that he could see their great white teeth, and hear them snapping as they talked.

When the time allowed, which their Agamemnon was telling upon his fingers, had quite expired, and Olympian Jove had sent as yet no lightnings, the king, who was clearly in front of his age, cast another javelin through the frame of crinoline, and leaped boldly, like Patroclus, following his dart. Suddenly he fell back, howling and yelling, cured for ever of scepticism, and with both his great eyes quite slewed up, and all his virtue in his heels. Away went every nigger, drowning the royal screams with their own, pell–mell down the beach,anyhow, only caring to cut hawser. Words like these came back to Cradock, as they rolled over one another—

“Mbongo, pongo; warakai, urelwäi;” which mean, as interpreted afterwards by the Yankee trader,

“He is a God, a great God; he maketh rain, yea, very great rain!”

Headlong they tumbled into their boats, not stopping to carry the king even, for which he kicked them heartily, as soon as he got on board, and every son of a woman of them plied his knotted arms at the paddle, as if grim Death was behind him.

Cradock laughed so heartily, that he rolled over with the hydropult on him, and threw his heels up in the air, and if they had not yelled so, they would have been sure to hear him. Very skilfully he had brought the nose of that noble engine to bear full upon the royal countenance, and the jet of water from the little stream passed through the ribs of the fetich. That god had asserted himself to such purpose, that henceforth you might hang him with beads, and give him a wig of tobacco, and no black man would dare to look at them.

Cradock Nowell felt almost too proud of his mighty volunteer movement, and began to think more than ever that the whole of the island was his. These things show, more than anything else can, his return to human reason; for of the rational human being—as discovered ordinarily—the veryfirst instinct and ambition is the ownership of a peculium. What man cannot sympathize with that feeling who has got three fields and six children? Therefore when a beautiful schooner, of the true American rig, which made such lagging neddies of our yachts a few years since, came into view one afternoon, and fetched up, with the sails all shaking in the wind, abreast of the shed, ere sun–down, Cradock felt like the owner of a house who sees a man at his gate. Then he came down quietly with Wena, and sat upon a barrel, with a pipe of Cavendish in his mouth, and Wena crouched, like a chrysalis, between his pumpkinʼd feet.

Even the Yankee, who had not been surprised at any incident of life since his nurse dropped him down an oil–well, when he was two years old, even he experienced some sensation, when he saw a white man sitting and smoking upon his barrel of knowingest notions, with a black dog at his feet. But Recklesome Young was not the man to be long taken aback.

“Darn me, but yoo are a cool hand. Britisher, for ten dollars. Never see none like ‘em, I donʼt.”

“You are right,” answered Cradock, “I am an Englishman. Very much at your service. What is your business upon my island?”

“Waal,” said the Yankee, turning round to the four men who had rowed him ashore; “Zebedee, this is just what I likes, and no mistark about it. One of them old islanders come to dispute possession.And perhaps a cannon up the hill, and a company of sojers. Ainʼt it good, Zeb, ainʼt it? Lor, how I do love them!”

“Now, donʼt be too premature,” said Cradock, “it is the fault of your nation, as the opposite is ours.”

“Darned well said, young Britisher, give us your hand’ upon it; for, arter all, I likes yoo.”

Cradock shook hands with him heartily, for there was something in the manʼs face and manner, when you let his chaff drift by, which an Englishman recognises, as kindly, strong, and sincere, although now and then contemptuous. The contempt alone is not genuine, but assumed to meet ours or anybodyʼs. The active, for fear of the passive voice.

“You are welcome to all the island,” said Cradock, “and all my improvements, if you will only take me home again. The whole of it belongs to me, no doubt; but I will make it all over to you, for a passage to Southampton.”

“Canʼt take you that way, young Boss, and donʼt want your legal writings. How come you here, to begin with?”

Cradock told him all his story, while the men were busy; and the keen American saw at once that every word was true.

“Strikes me,” he said, with a serious drawl, which the fun in his eyes contradicted, “that yoo, after the way of the British, have made a trifle free, young man, with some of my goods andchattels he–ar; and even yoor encro–aching country canʼt prove tittle to them.”

“Yes,” replied Cradock; “and I will pay you, if I have not done so already. I will give you the thing which has saved the whole from plunder, and perhaps fire afterwards.”

Then he fetched the little machine, which the Yankee recognised at once as an American invention, and he laughed till his yellow cheeks were reeking at the description of the “darned naygursʼ retreat.”

“Rip me up, young man,” he said, “but yooʼd be a credit to us aʼmost. Darnʼd if I thought as any Britisher wud ever be up to so cute a dodge. Shake hands agin, young chap, I likes yoo. And yooʼve airned your ticket anywhor, and a hunderd dollars to back of it. Weʼll take yoo to the centre of the univarsal world, and make yoo open your eyes a bit. Ship aboard of us for Noo Yerk, and if that donʼt make a man of yoo, call me small pumpkins arterwards.”

“But I want to get to England,” said Cradock, looking very black; “and I have no money for passage from New York to Southampton.”

“Thur now, yoo be all over a Britisher agin, and reck–wirin enlightʼment. Yoo allays spies out fifty raisons agin a thin’ smarter than one in itʼs favior. Harken, now, Iʼll have yoo sot down in the docks of Suthanton, free, and with fifty dollars to trade upon, sure as my name is RecklesomeYoung. Thur, now! Bet, I donʼt, will yoo, and pay me out o’ my spisshy?”

Not to dwell too long upon these little side–paths, it is enough to record that Captain Recklesome Young, of New York, and the schooner,Donʼt you wish you may catch me, made sail two days afterwards, with half of his best cabin allotted to Cradock and to Wena. And, keen as he was to the shave of a girlʼs lip, in striking a contract or cutting it, upon a large scale, he came down as nobly as the angels on Jacobʼs ladder. No English duke or prince of the blood could or would have behaved to Cradock more grandly than Recklesome Young did, when once he understood him. In such things the Yankees are far ahead of us. Keen as they are, and for that same reason, they have far more trust than we have, in large and good human nature. Of the best of them I have heard many a true tale, such as I never could hope to hear of our noblest London merchants. Proofs of grand faith, and Godlike confidence in a man once approved, which enlarge the heart of him who hears them, and makes him hate small satire.

CHAPTER XIII.Bob Garnet, with his trowel, and box, and net, and many other impediments, was going along very merrily, in a quiet path of the Forest, thinking sometimes of Amy and her fundamental errors, and sometimes of Eoa, and the way she could catch a butterfly, but for the most part busy with the display of life around him, and the prospects of a great boring family, which he had found in a willow–tree. Suddenly, near the stag–headed oak, he chanced upon Miss Nowell, tripping along the footpath lightly, smiling and blushing rosily, and oh! so surprised to see him! She darted aside, like a trout at a shadow, then, finding it too late for that game, she tried to pass him rapidly, with her long eyelashes drooping.“Oh, please to stop a minute, if you can spare the time,” said Bob; “what have I done to offend you?”She stopped in a moment at his voice, and lifted her radiant eyes to him, and shyly tried to cloud away the sparkling night of hair, through which her white and slender throat gleamed like the Milky Way. The sprays of the wood and the winds of May had romped with her glorious tresses; and now she had been lectured so, that she doubted her right to exhibit her hair.“Miss Nowell,” said Bob, as she had not answered, but only been thinking about him, “only please to stop and tell me what I have done to offend you; and you do love beetles so—and you never saw such beauties—what have I done to offend you?”An English maiden would have said, “Oh, nothing at all, Mr. Garnet;” and then swept on, with her crinoline embracing a thousand brambles.But Eoa stood just where she was, with her bright lips pouting slightly, and her gaze absorbed by a tuft of moss.“Only because you are not at all good–natured to me, Bob. But it doesnʼt make much difference.”Then she turned away from him, and began to sing a little song, and then called, “Amy, Amy!”“Donʼt call Amy. I donʼt want her.”“Oh, I beg your pardon, Iʼm sure I rather thought you did.”“Eoa,” said Bob; and she looked at him, and the tears were in her eyes. And then she whispered, “Yes, Bob.”“You have got on the very prettiest dress I ever saw in all my life.”Here Bob was alarmed at his own audacity, and durst not watch the effect of his speech.“Oh, is that all?” she answered. “But I am very glad indeed that you like—my frock, Bob.” Here she looked down at it, with much interest.“And, to tell you the truth,” continued he, “I think, if you will please not to be offended, that you look very well in it.”“Oh yes, I am very well. I wish I was ill, sometimes.”“Now, I donʼt mean that. What I mean is, very nice.”“Well, I always try to be nice. But how can I, out butterfly–hunting?”“Now, you wonʼt understand me. You are as bad as a weevil that wonʼt take chloroform. What I mean is, very pretty.”“I donʼt know anything about that,” said Eoa, drawing back; “and I donʼt see that you have any right even to talk about it. Oh, there goes a lovely butterfly!”“Where, where? What eyes you have got! I do wish I was married to you. What a collection we would have! And you would never let my traps off. I am sure that you are a great deal better and prettier than Amy. And I like you more than anybody I have ever seen.”“Do you, Bob? Are you sure of that?”She fixed her large eyes upon his; and in onemoment her beauty went to the bottom of his heart. It changed him from a boy to a man, from play to passion, from dreams to thought. And happy for him that it was so, with the trouble impending over him.She saw the change; herself too young, too pure (in spite of all the evil that ever had drifted by her) to know or ask what it meant. She only felt that Bob liked her now better than he liked Amy. She had no idea of the deep anticipation of her eyes.“Eoa, wonʼt you answer me?” He had been talking some nonsense. “Why are you crying so dreadfully? Do you hate me so much as all that?”“Oh no, no, Bob. I am sure I donʼt hate you at all. I only wish I did. No, I donʼt, Bob. I am so glad that I donʼt. I donʼt care a quarter so much, Bob, for all the rest of the world put together.”“Then only look up at me, Eoa. I canʼt tell what I am saying. Only look up. You are so nice. And you have got such eyes.”“Have I?” said Eoa, throwing all their splendour on him; “oh, I am so glad you like them.”“Do you think that you could give me just a sort of a kiss, Eoa? People always do, you know. And, indeed, I feel that you ought.”“I scarcely know what is right, Bob, after all the things they have told me. But now, you know, you must guide me.”“Then, Iʼll tell you what. Just let me give you one. The leaves are coming out so.”“Well, thatʼs a different thing,” said Eoa. “Amy canʼt see us, can she?”Sir Cradock Nowell was very angry when his niece came home, and told him, with an air of triumph, all that Bob had said to her.“That butterfly–hunting boy, Eoa! To think of his presuming so! A mere boy! A boy like that!”“Thatʼs the very thing, uncle. Perhaps if he had been a girl, you know, I should not have liked him half so much. And as for his hunting butterflies, I like him all the better for that. And weʼll hunt them all day long.”“Oh!” exclaimed Uncle Cradock, smiling at the young girlʼs earnestness in spite of all his wrath; “that is your idea of married life then, is it? But I never will allow it, Eoa: he is not your equal.”“Of course not, uncle. He is my superior in every possible way.”“Scarcely so, in the matter of birth; nor yet, my child, I fear, in a pecuniary sense.”“For both of those I donʼt care two pice. You know it is all very nice, Uncle Cradock, to live in large rooms, where you can put three chairs together, and jump over them all without knocking your head, and to have beautiful books, and prawns for breakfast, and flowers all the year round; and to be able to scold people withouttheir daring to answer. But I could do without all that very well, but I never could do without Bob.”“I fear you must, indeed, my dear. As other people have had to do.”“Well, I donʼt see why, unless God takes him; and then He should take me too. And, indeed, I had better tell you once for all, Uncle Cradock, that I do not mean to try. It would be so shabby of me, after what I told him just now, and after his saving my life; and you yourself said yesterday that no Nowell had ever been shabby. You have been very kind to me and good, and I love you very much, I am sure. But in spite of all that, I wish you clearly to understand, Uncle Cradock, that if you try any nonsense with me, I shall get my darling fatherʼs money, and go and live away from you.”“My dear,” said the old man, smiling at the manner and tone of her menace, which she delivered as if her departure must at least annihilate him, “you are laying your plans too rapidly. You are not seventeen until next July; and you cannot touch your poor fatherʼs money until you are twenty–one.”“I donʼt care,” she replied; “he is sure to have been right about it. But I will tell you another thing. Everybody says that I could earn ten thousand a year as an opera–dancer in London. And I should like it very much,—that is to say, if Bob did. And I would not think of changingmy name, as I have heard that most of them do. I should be ‘Miss Eoa Nowell, the celebrated dancer.’”“God forbid!” said Sir Cradock. “My only brotherʼs only child! I will not trouble you about him, dear. Only I beg you to consider.”“To be sure I will, Uncle Cradock, I have been considering ever since how long it must be till I marry him. Now give me a kiss, dear, and I wonʼt dance, except for your amusement. And I donʼt think I can dance for a long time, after what I have been told about poor Cousin Cradock. I am sure he was very nice, uncle, from what everybody says of him, and I am almost certain that you behaved very badly to him.”“My dear, you are allowed to say what you like, because nobody can stop you. But your own good feeling should make you spare me the pain of that sad subject.”“Not if you deserve the pain for having been hard–hearted. And much you cared for my pain, when you spoke of Bob so. Besides, you are quite sure to hear of it; and it had better come from me, dear uncle, who am so considerate.”“Something new? What is it, my child? I can bear almost anything now.”“It is that some vile wretches are trying to get what they call a warrant against him, and so to put him in jail.”“Put him in jail? My unfortunate son! What more has he been doing?”“Nothing at all. And I donʼt believe that he ever did any harm. But what the brutes say is that he did that terrible thing on purpose. Oh, uncle, donʼt look at me like that. How I wish I had never told you!”Poor Sir Cradockʼs mind was not so clear and strong as it had been, although the rumours scattered by Georgie were shameful exaggerations. The habit of brooding over his grief, whenever he was alone—a habit more and more indulged, as it became a morbid pleasure—the loss moreover of his accustomed exercise, for he never would go out riding now, having no son to ride with him; these, and the ever–present dread of some inevitable inquiry, began to disturb, though not destroy, the delicate fibres of reason, which had not too much room in his brain.He fell into the depths of an easy–chair, and wondered what it was he had heard. The lids of his mindʼs eye had taken a blink, as will happen sometimes to old people, and to young ones too for that matter; neither was it the first time this thing had befallen him.Then Eoa told him again what it was, because he made her tell it; and again it shocked him dreadfully; but that time he remembered it.“And I have no doubt,” continued his niece, with bright tears on her cheeks, “that Mrs. Corklemore herself is at the bottom of it.”“Georgie! What, my niece Georgie!”“She is not your niece, Uncle Cradock. I amyour niece, and nobody else; and you had better not think of wronging me. If you call her your niece any more, I know I will never call you my uncle. Nasty limy slimy thing! If you would only give me leave to choke her!”“My darling child,” cried her uncle, who loved her the more (though he knew it not) for siding with his son so, “you are so very hot and hasty. I am sure Mrs. Corklemore speaks of you with the warmest pity and affection.”“Shall I tell you why she does, Uncle Crad? Shall I tell you in plain English? Most likely you will be shocked, you know.”“My dear, I am so used to you, that I am never shocked now at anything.”“Then it is because she issuch a jolly liar.”“Eoa, I really must send you to a ‘nice institution for young ladies.’ You get worse and worse.”“If you do, Iʼll jump over the wall the first night, and Bob shall come to catch me. But now without any nonsense, uncle, for you do talk a good deal of nonsense, will you promise me one thing?”“A dozen, if you like, my darling. Anything in reason. You did look so like your poor father then.”“Oh, I am so glad of that. But it is not a thing of reason, uncle; it is simply a thing of justice. Now will you promise solemnly to send away Mrs. Corklemore, and never speak to heragain, if she vows that she knows nothing of this, and if I prove from her own handwriting that it is her plot altogether, and also another plot against us, every bit as bad, if not worse?”“Of course, Eoa, I will promise you that, as solemnly as you please. What a deluded child you are!”“Am I? Now let her come in, and deny it. Thatʼs the first part of the business.”Without waiting for an answer, she ran to fetch Mrs. Corklemore, whom she well knew where to find, that time of the afternoon. Dear Georgie had just had her cup of tea with the darling Flore, in her private audience–chamber—”oratory” she called it, though all her few prayers were public; and now she was meditating what dress she should wear at dinner. Those dinners were so dreadfully dull, unless she could put Eoa into a vehement passion—which was not very hard to do—and so exhibit her in a pleasant light before the serving–men. Yet, strange to say, although the young lady observed little moderation, when she was baited thus, and sunk irony in invective, the sympathies of the audience were far more often on her side than on that of the soft tormentor.“Come, now, Sugar–plums,” said Eoa, who often addressed her so, “we want you down–stairs, if you please, for a minute.”“Tum, pease, Oh Ah,” cried little Flore, running up; “pease tum, and tell Fore a tory.”“Canʼt now, you good little child. And yourmamma tells stories so cleverly, oh, so very cleverly, it quite takes away oneʼs breath.”“Iʼll have my change out of you at dinner–time,” said Georgie to herself most viciously, as she followed down the passage.Eoa led her along at a pace which made her breath quite short, for she was not wont to hurry so, and she dropped right gladly into the chair which Sir Cradock politely set for her. Then, as he himself sat down, facing her with a heavy sigh, Georgie felt rather uncomfortable. She was not quite ready for the crisis, but feared that it was coming. And she saw at a glimpse that her hated foe, “Never–spot–the–dust,” was quite ready, burning indeed to begin, only wanting to make the most of it. Thereupon Mrs. Corklemore, knowing the value of the weather–gage, and being unable to bear a slow silence, was the first to speak.“Something has occurred, I see, to one of you two dear ones. Oh, Uncle Cradock, what can I do to prove the depth of my regard for you? Or——”“To be sure,the depthof your regard,” Eoa interrupted.“Or is it for you, you poor wild thing? We all make such allowance for you, because of your great disadvantages. If you have done anything very wrong indeed, poor darling, anything which hard people would call not only thoughtless but unprincipled, I can feel for you so truly, because of your hot temperament and most unhappy circumstances.”“You had better not go too far!” cried Eoa, grinding her little teeth.“Thank Heaven! I see, dear, it is nothing so very disgraceful after all, because it has nothing to do with you, or you would not smile so prettily. You take it so lightly, it must be something about dear Uncle Cradock. Oh, Uncle Cradock, tell me all about it; my whole heart will be with you.”“Black–spangled hen has broken her eggs. Nothing more,” said Eoa. “De–ar, oh we do love you so!” She made two syllables of that word, as Mrs. Corklemore used to do, in her many gushing moments. Georgie looked at Eoa with wonder. She had stupidly thought her a stupid.Then Sir Cradock Nowell rose, in a stately manner, to put an end to all this little nonsense.“My niece, Eoa, declares, Mrs. Corklemore, that you, in some underhand manner, have promoted a horrible charge against my poor son Cradock, a charge which no person in any way connected with our family should ever dare to utter, even if he or she believed its justice, far less dare to promulgate, and even force into the courts of law. Is this so, or is it not?”“Oh, Uncle Cradock, how can you speak so? What charge should I ever dream of?”“See how her hands are trembling, and how white her lips are; not with telling black lies, Uncle Cradock, but with being found out.”“Eoa, have the kindness not to interrupt again.”“Very well, Uncle Cradock; I wonʼt, unless you make me.”“Then, as I understand, madam, you deny entirely the truth of this accusation?”“Of course I do, most emphatically. What can you all be dreaming about?”“Now, Eoa, it is your turn to establish what you have said.”“I canʼt establish anything, though I know it, Uncle Cradock.”“Knowit indeed, you poor wild nautch–girl!Dreamedit you mean, I suppose.”“I mean,” continued Eoa, not even looking at her, but bending her fingers in a manner which Georgie quite understood, “that I cannot prove anything, Uncle Cradock, without your permission. But here I have a letter, with the seal unbroken, and which I promised some one not to open without her leave, and now she has given me leave to open it with your consent and in the presence of the writer. Why, how pale you are, Mrs. Corklemore!”“My Heavens! And this is England! Stealing letters, and forging them——”“Which of the two do you mean, madam?” asked Sir Cradock, looking at her in his old magisterial manner, after examining the envelope; “either involves a heavy charge against a member of my family. Is this letter yours, or not?”“Yes, it is,” replied Georgie, after a momentʼs debate, for if she called it a forgery, it must ofcourse be opened; “have the kindness to give me my property. I thought there was among well–bred people a delicacy as to scrutinizing even the directions of one anotherʼs letters.”“So there is, madam; you are quite right—except, indeed, under circumstances altogether exceptional, and of which this is one. Now for your own exculpation, and to prove that my niece deserves heavy punishment (which I will take care to inflict), allow me to open this letter. I see it is merely a business letter, or I would not ask even that; although you have so often assured me that you have no secret in the world from me. You can have nothing confidential to say to ‘Simon Chope, Esq.;’ and if you had, it should remain sacred and secure with me, unless it involved the life and honour of my son. Shall I open this letter?”“Certainly not, Sir Cradock Nowell. How dare you to think of such a thing, so mean, so low, so prying?”“After those words, madam, you cannot continue to be a guest of mine; or be ever received in this house again, unless you prove that I have wronged you, by allowing me to send for your husband, and to place this letter in his hands, before you have in any way communicated with him.”“Give me my letter, Sir Cradock Nowell, unless your niece inherits the thieving art from you. As for you, wretched little Dacoit,” hereshe bent upon Eoa flashing eyes quite pale from wrath, for sweet Georgie had her temper, “bitterly you shall rue the day when you presumed to match yourself with me. You would like to do a little murder, I see. No doubt it runs in the family; and the Thugs and Dacoits are first cousins, of course.”Never had Eoa fought so desperate a battle with herself, as now to keep her hands off Georgie. Without looking at her again, she very wisely ran away, for it was the only chance of abstaining. Mrs. Corklemore laughed aloud; then she took the letter, which the old man had placed upon the table, and said to him, with a kind look of pity:“What a fuss you have made about nothing! It is only a question upon the meaning of a clause in my marriage–settlement; but I do not choose to have my business affairs exposed, even to my husband. Now do you believe me, Uncle Cradock?”“No, I cannot say that I do, madam. And it does not matter whether I do or not. You have used language about my family which I can never forget. A carriage will be at your service at any moment you please.”“Thanks for your hospitable hint. You will soon find your mistake, I think, in having made me your enemy; though your rudeness is partly excused, no doubt, by your growing hallucinations. Farewell for the present, poor dear Uncle Cradock.”With these words, Mrs. Corklemore made him an elegant curtsey, and swept away from the room, without even the glisten of a tear to mar her gallant bearing, although she had been so outraged. But when she got little Floreʼs head on her lap, she cried over it very vehemently, and felt the depth of her injury.When she had closed the door behind her (not with any vulgar bang, but firmly and significantly), the master of the house walked over to a panelled mirror, and inspected himself uncomfortably. It was a piece of ancient glass, purchased from an Italian chapel by some former Cradock Nowell, and bearing a mystic name and fame among the maids who dusted it. By them it was supposed to have a weird prophetic power, partly, no doubt, from its deep dark lustre, and partly because it was circular, and ever so slightly, and quite imperceptibly, concave. As upon so broad a surface no concavity could be, in the early ages of mechanism, made absolutely true—and for that matter it cannot be donead unguem, even now—there were, of course, many founts of error in this Italian mirror. Nevertheless, all young ladies who ever beheld it were charmed with it, so sweetly deeply beautiful, like Galatea watching herself and finding Polypheme over her shoulder, in the glass of the blue Sicilian sea.To this glass Sir Cradock Nowell went to examine his faded eyes, time–worn, trouble–worn, stranded by the ebbing of the brain. He knewtoo well what Mrs. Corklemore meant by her last thrust; and the word “hallucination” happened, through a great lawsuit then in progress, to be invested with an especial prominence and significance. While he was sadly gazing into the convergence of grey light, and feebly reassuring himself, yet like his image wavering, a heavy step was heard behind him, and beside his flowing silvery locks appeared the close–cropped massive brow and the gloomy eyes of Bull Garnet.

Bob Garnet, with his trowel, and box, and net, and many other impediments, was going along very merrily, in a quiet path of the Forest, thinking sometimes of Amy and her fundamental errors, and sometimes of Eoa, and the way she could catch a butterfly, but for the most part busy with the display of life around him, and the prospects of a great boring family, which he had found in a willow–tree. Suddenly, near the stag–headed oak, he chanced upon Miss Nowell, tripping along the footpath lightly, smiling and blushing rosily, and oh! so surprised to see him! She darted aside, like a trout at a shadow, then, finding it too late for that game, she tried to pass him rapidly, with her long eyelashes drooping.

“Oh, please to stop a minute, if you can spare the time,” said Bob; “what have I done to offend you?”

She stopped in a moment at his voice, and lifted her radiant eyes to him, and shyly tried to cloud away the sparkling night of hair, through which her white and slender throat gleamed like the Milky Way. The sprays of the wood and the winds of May had romped with her glorious tresses; and now she had been lectured so, that she doubted her right to exhibit her hair.

“Miss Nowell,” said Bob, as she had not answered, but only been thinking about him, “only please to stop and tell me what I have done to offend you; and you do love beetles so—and you never saw such beauties—what have I done to offend you?”

An English maiden would have said, “Oh, nothing at all, Mr. Garnet;” and then swept on, with her crinoline embracing a thousand brambles.

But Eoa stood just where she was, with her bright lips pouting slightly, and her gaze absorbed by a tuft of moss.

“Only because you are not at all good–natured to me, Bob. But it doesnʼt make much difference.”

Then she turned away from him, and began to sing a little song, and then called, “Amy, Amy!”

“Donʼt call Amy. I donʼt want her.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon, Iʼm sure I rather thought you did.”

“Eoa,” said Bob; and she looked at him, and the tears were in her eyes. And then she whispered, “Yes, Bob.”

“You have got on the very prettiest dress I ever saw in all my life.”

Here Bob was alarmed at his own audacity, and durst not watch the effect of his speech.

“Oh, is that all?” she answered. “But I am very glad indeed that you like—my frock, Bob.” Here she looked down at it, with much interest.

“And, to tell you the truth,” continued he, “I think, if you will please not to be offended, that you look very well in it.”

“Oh yes, I am very well. I wish I was ill, sometimes.”

“Now, I donʼt mean that. What I mean is, very nice.”

“Well, I always try to be nice. But how can I, out butterfly–hunting?”

“Now, you wonʼt understand me. You are as bad as a weevil that wonʼt take chloroform. What I mean is, very pretty.”

“I donʼt know anything about that,” said Eoa, drawing back; “and I donʼt see that you have any right even to talk about it. Oh, there goes a lovely butterfly!”

“Where, where? What eyes you have got! I do wish I was married to you. What a collection we would have! And you would never let my traps off. I am sure that you are a great deal better and prettier than Amy. And I like you more than anybody I have ever seen.”

“Do you, Bob? Are you sure of that?”

She fixed her large eyes upon his; and in onemoment her beauty went to the bottom of his heart. It changed him from a boy to a man, from play to passion, from dreams to thought. And happy for him that it was so, with the trouble impending over him.

She saw the change; herself too young, too pure (in spite of all the evil that ever had drifted by her) to know or ask what it meant. She only felt that Bob liked her now better than he liked Amy. She had no idea of the deep anticipation of her eyes.

“Eoa, wonʼt you answer me?” He had been talking some nonsense. “Why are you crying so dreadfully? Do you hate me so much as all that?”

“Oh no, no, Bob. I am sure I donʼt hate you at all. I only wish I did. No, I donʼt, Bob. I am so glad that I donʼt. I donʼt care a quarter so much, Bob, for all the rest of the world put together.”

“Then only look up at me, Eoa. I canʼt tell what I am saying. Only look up. You are so nice. And you have got such eyes.”

“Have I?” said Eoa, throwing all their splendour on him; “oh, I am so glad you like them.”

“Do you think that you could give me just a sort of a kiss, Eoa? People always do, you know. And, indeed, I feel that you ought.”

“I scarcely know what is right, Bob, after all the things they have told me. But now, you know, you must guide me.”

“Then, Iʼll tell you what. Just let me give you one. The leaves are coming out so.”

“Well, thatʼs a different thing,” said Eoa. “Amy canʼt see us, can she?”

Sir Cradock Nowell was very angry when his niece came home, and told him, with an air of triumph, all that Bob had said to her.

“That butterfly–hunting boy, Eoa! To think of his presuming so! A mere boy! A boy like that!”

“Thatʼs the very thing, uncle. Perhaps if he had been a girl, you know, I should not have liked him half so much. And as for his hunting butterflies, I like him all the better for that. And weʼll hunt them all day long.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Uncle Cradock, smiling at the young girlʼs earnestness in spite of all his wrath; “that is your idea of married life then, is it? But I never will allow it, Eoa: he is not your equal.”

“Of course not, uncle. He is my superior in every possible way.”

“Scarcely so, in the matter of birth; nor yet, my child, I fear, in a pecuniary sense.”

“For both of those I donʼt care two pice. You know it is all very nice, Uncle Cradock, to live in large rooms, where you can put three chairs together, and jump over them all without knocking your head, and to have beautiful books, and prawns for breakfast, and flowers all the year round; and to be able to scold people withouttheir daring to answer. But I could do without all that very well, but I never could do without Bob.”

“I fear you must, indeed, my dear. As other people have had to do.”

“Well, I donʼt see why, unless God takes him; and then He should take me too. And, indeed, I had better tell you once for all, Uncle Cradock, that I do not mean to try. It would be so shabby of me, after what I told him just now, and after his saving my life; and you yourself said yesterday that no Nowell had ever been shabby. You have been very kind to me and good, and I love you very much, I am sure. But in spite of all that, I wish you clearly to understand, Uncle Cradock, that if you try any nonsense with me, I shall get my darling fatherʼs money, and go and live away from you.”

“My dear,” said the old man, smiling at the manner and tone of her menace, which she delivered as if her departure must at least annihilate him, “you are laying your plans too rapidly. You are not seventeen until next July; and you cannot touch your poor fatherʼs money until you are twenty–one.”

“I donʼt care,” she replied; “he is sure to have been right about it. But I will tell you another thing. Everybody says that I could earn ten thousand a year as an opera–dancer in London. And I should like it very much,—that is to say, if Bob did. And I would not think of changingmy name, as I have heard that most of them do. I should be ‘Miss Eoa Nowell, the celebrated dancer.’”

“God forbid!” said Sir Cradock. “My only brotherʼs only child! I will not trouble you about him, dear. Only I beg you to consider.”

“To be sure I will, Uncle Cradock, I have been considering ever since how long it must be till I marry him. Now give me a kiss, dear, and I wonʼt dance, except for your amusement. And I donʼt think I can dance for a long time, after what I have been told about poor Cousin Cradock. I am sure he was very nice, uncle, from what everybody says of him, and I am almost certain that you behaved very badly to him.”

“My dear, you are allowed to say what you like, because nobody can stop you. But your own good feeling should make you spare me the pain of that sad subject.”

“Not if you deserve the pain for having been hard–hearted. And much you cared for my pain, when you spoke of Bob so. Besides, you are quite sure to hear of it; and it had better come from me, dear uncle, who am so considerate.”

“Something new? What is it, my child? I can bear almost anything now.”

“It is that some vile wretches are trying to get what they call a warrant against him, and so to put him in jail.”

“Put him in jail? My unfortunate son! What more has he been doing?”

“Nothing at all. And I donʼt believe that he ever did any harm. But what the brutes say is that he did that terrible thing on purpose. Oh, uncle, donʼt look at me like that. How I wish I had never told you!”

Poor Sir Cradockʼs mind was not so clear and strong as it had been, although the rumours scattered by Georgie were shameful exaggerations. The habit of brooding over his grief, whenever he was alone—a habit more and more indulged, as it became a morbid pleasure—the loss moreover of his accustomed exercise, for he never would go out riding now, having no son to ride with him; these, and the ever–present dread of some inevitable inquiry, began to disturb, though not destroy, the delicate fibres of reason, which had not too much room in his brain.

He fell into the depths of an easy–chair, and wondered what it was he had heard. The lids of his mindʼs eye had taken a blink, as will happen sometimes to old people, and to young ones too for that matter; neither was it the first time this thing had befallen him.

Then Eoa told him again what it was, because he made her tell it; and again it shocked him dreadfully; but that time he remembered it.

“And I have no doubt,” continued his niece, with bright tears on her cheeks, “that Mrs. Corklemore herself is at the bottom of it.”

“Georgie! What, my niece Georgie!”

“She is not your niece, Uncle Cradock. I amyour niece, and nobody else; and you had better not think of wronging me. If you call her your niece any more, I know I will never call you my uncle. Nasty limy slimy thing! If you would only give me leave to choke her!”

“My darling child,” cried her uncle, who loved her the more (though he knew it not) for siding with his son so, “you are so very hot and hasty. I am sure Mrs. Corklemore speaks of you with the warmest pity and affection.”

“Shall I tell you why she does, Uncle Crad? Shall I tell you in plain English? Most likely you will be shocked, you know.”

“My dear, I am so used to you, that I am never shocked now at anything.”

“Then it is because she issuch a jolly liar.”

“Eoa, I really must send you to a ‘nice institution for young ladies.’ You get worse and worse.”

“If you do, Iʼll jump over the wall the first night, and Bob shall come to catch me. But now without any nonsense, uncle, for you do talk a good deal of nonsense, will you promise me one thing?”

“A dozen, if you like, my darling. Anything in reason. You did look so like your poor father then.”

“Oh, I am so glad of that. But it is not a thing of reason, uncle; it is simply a thing of justice. Now will you promise solemnly to send away Mrs. Corklemore, and never speak to heragain, if she vows that she knows nothing of this, and if I prove from her own handwriting that it is her plot altogether, and also another plot against us, every bit as bad, if not worse?”

“Of course, Eoa, I will promise you that, as solemnly as you please. What a deluded child you are!”

“Am I? Now let her come in, and deny it. Thatʼs the first part of the business.”

Without waiting for an answer, she ran to fetch Mrs. Corklemore, whom she well knew where to find, that time of the afternoon. Dear Georgie had just had her cup of tea with the darling Flore, in her private audience–chamber—”oratory” she called it, though all her few prayers were public; and now she was meditating what dress she should wear at dinner. Those dinners were so dreadfully dull, unless she could put Eoa into a vehement passion—which was not very hard to do—and so exhibit her in a pleasant light before the serving–men. Yet, strange to say, although the young lady observed little moderation, when she was baited thus, and sunk irony in invective, the sympathies of the audience were far more often on her side than on that of the soft tormentor.

“Come, now, Sugar–plums,” said Eoa, who often addressed her so, “we want you down–stairs, if you please, for a minute.”

“Tum, pease, Oh Ah,” cried little Flore, running up; “pease tum, and tell Fore a tory.”

“Canʼt now, you good little child. And yourmamma tells stories so cleverly, oh, so very cleverly, it quite takes away oneʼs breath.”

“Iʼll have my change out of you at dinner–time,” said Georgie to herself most viciously, as she followed down the passage.

Eoa led her along at a pace which made her breath quite short, for she was not wont to hurry so, and she dropped right gladly into the chair which Sir Cradock politely set for her. Then, as he himself sat down, facing her with a heavy sigh, Georgie felt rather uncomfortable. She was not quite ready for the crisis, but feared that it was coming. And she saw at a glimpse that her hated foe, “Never–spot–the–dust,” was quite ready, burning indeed to begin, only wanting to make the most of it. Thereupon Mrs. Corklemore, knowing the value of the weather–gage, and being unable to bear a slow silence, was the first to speak.

“Something has occurred, I see, to one of you two dear ones. Oh, Uncle Cradock, what can I do to prove the depth of my regard for you? Or——”

“To be sure,the depthof your regard,” Eoa interrupted.

“Or is it for you, you poor wild thing? We all make such allowance for you, because of your great disadvantages. If you have done anything very wrong indeed, poor darling, anything which hard people would call not only thoughtless but unprincipled, I can feel for you so truly, because of your hot temperament and most unhappy circumstances.”

“You had better not go too far!” cried Eoa, grinding her little teeth.

“Thank Heaven! I see, dear, it is nothing so very disgraceful after all, because it has nothing to do with you, or you would not smile so prettily. You take it so lightly, it must be something about dear Uncle Cradock. Oh, Uncle Cradock, tell me all about it; my whole heart will be with you.”

“Black–spangled hen has broken her eggs. Nothing more,” said Eoa. “De–ar, oh we do love you so!” She made two syllables of that word, as Mrs. Corklemore used to do, in her many gushing moments. Georgie looked at Eoa with wonder. She had stupidly thought her a stupid.

Then Sir Cradock Nowell rose, in a stately manner, to put an end to all this little nonsense.

“My niece, Eoa, declares, Mrs. Corklemore, that you, in some underhand manner, have promoted a horrible charge against my poor son Cradock, a charge which no person in any way connected with our family should ever dare to utter, even if he or she believed its justice, far less dare to promulgate, and even force into the courts of law. Is this so, or is it not?”

“Oh, Uncle Cradock, how can you speak so? What charge should I ever dream of?”

“See how her hands are trembling, and how white her lips are; not with telling black lies, Uncle Cradock, but with being found out.”

“Eoa, have the kindness not to interrupt again.”

“Very well, Uncle Cradock; I wonʼt, unless you make me.”

“Then, as I understand, madam, you deny entirely the truth of this accusation?”

“Of course I do, most emphatically. What can you all be dreaming about?”

“Now, Eoa, it is your turn to establish what you have said.”

“I canʼt establish anything, though I know it, Uncle Cradock.”

“Knowit indeed, you poor wild nautch–girl!Dreamedit you mean, I suppose.”

“I mean,” continued Eoa, not even looking at her, but bending her fingers in a manner which Georgie quite understood, “that I cannot prove anything, Uncle Cradock, without your permission. But here I have a letter, with the seal unbroken, and which I promised some one not to open without her leave, and now she has given me leave to open it with your consent and in the presence of the writer. Why, how pale you are, Mrs. Corklemore!”

“My Heavens! And this is England! Stealing letters, and forging them——”

“Which of the two do you mean, madam?” asked Sir Cradock, looking at her in his old magisterial manner, after examining the envelope; “either involves a heavy charge against a member of my family. Is this letter yours, or not?”

“Yes, it is,” replied Georgie, after a momentʼs debate, for if she called it a forgery, it must ofcourse be opened; “have the kindness to give me my property. I thought there was among well–bred people a delicacy as to scrutinizing even the directions of one anotherʼs letters.”

“So there is, madam; you are quite right—except, indeed, under circumstances altogether exceptional, and of which this is one. Now for your own exculpation, and to prove that my niece deserves heavy punishment (which I will take care to inflict), allow me to open this letter. I see it is merely a business letter, or I would not ask even that; although you have so often assured me that you have no secret in the world from me. You can have nothing confidential to say to ‘Simon Chope, Esq.;’ and if you had, it should remain sacred and secure with me, unless it involved the life and honour of my son. Shall I open this letter?”

“Certainly not, Sir Cradock Nowell. How dare you to think of such a thing, so mean, so low, so prying?”

“After those words, madam, you cannot continue to be a guest of mine; or be ever received in this house again, unless you prove that I have wronged you, by allowing me to send for your husband, and to place this letter in his hands, before you have in any way communicated with him.”

“Give me my letter, Sir Cradock Nowell, unless your niece inherits the thieving art from you. As for you, wretched little Dacoit,” hereshe bent upon Eoa flashing eyes quite pale from wrath, for sweet Georgie had her temper, “bitterly you shall rue the day when you presumed to match yourself with me. You would like to do a little murder, I see. No doubt it runs in the family; and the Thugs and Dacoits are first cousins, of course.”

Never had Eoa fought so desperate a battle with herself, as now to keep her hands off Georgie. Without looking at her again, she very wisely ran away, for it was the only chance of abstaining. Mrs. Corklemore laughed aloud; then she took the letter, which the old man had placed upon the table, and said to him, with a kind look of pity:

“What a fuss you have made about nothing! It is only a question upon the meaning of a clause in my marriage–settlement; but I do not choose to have my business affairs exposed, even to my husband. Now do you believe me, Uncle Cradock?”

“No, I cannot say that I do, madam. And it does not matter whether I do or not. You have used language about my family which I can never forget. A carriage will be at your service at any moment you please.”

“Thanks for your hospitable hint. You will soon find your mistake, I think, in having made me your enemy; though your rudeness is partly excused, no doubt, by your growing hallucinations. Farewell for the present, poor dear Uncle Cradock.”

With these words, Mrs. Corklemore made him an elegant curtsey, and swept away from the room, without even the glisten of a tear to mar her gallant bearing, although she had been so outraged. But when she got little Floreʼs head on her lap, she cried over it very vehemently, and felt the depth of her injury.

When she had closed the door behind her (not with any vulgar bang, but firmly and significantly), the master of the house walked over to a panelled mirror, and inspected himself uncomfortably. It was a piece of ancient glass, purchased from an Italian chapel by some former Cradock Nowell, and bearing a mystic name and fame among the maids who dusted it. By them it was supposed to have a weird prophetic power, partly, no doubt, from its deep dark lustre, and partly because it was circular, and ever so slightly, and quite imperceptibly, concave. As upon so broad a surface no concavity could be, in the early ages of mechanism, made absolutely true—and for that matter it cannot be donead unguem, even now—there were, of course, many founts of error in this Italian mirror. Nevertheless, all young ladies who ever beheld it were charmed with it, so sweetly deeply beautiful, like Galatea watching herself and finding Polypheme over her shoulder, in the glass of the blue Sicilian sea.

To this glass Sir Cradock Nowell went to examine his faded eyes, time–worn, trouble–worn, stranded by the ebbing of the brain. He knewtoo well what Mrs. Corklemore meant by her last thrust; and the word “hallucination” happened, through a great lawsuit then in progress, to be invested with an especial prominence and significance. While he was sadly gazing into the convergence of grey light, and feebly reassuring himself, yet like his image wavering, a heavy step was heard behind him, and beside his flowing silvery locks appeared the close–cropped massive brow and the gloomy eyes of Bull Garnet.

CHAPTER XIV.As the brothers confronted one another, the legitimate and the base–born, the man of tact and the man of force, the luxurious and the labourer, strangely unlike in many respects, more strangely alike in others; each felt kindly and tenderly, yet timidly, for the other.The old man thought of the lying wrong inflicted upon the stronger one by their common father; the other felt the worse wrong—if possible—done by himself to his brother. The measure of such things is not for us. God knows, and visits, and forgives them.Even by the failing light—for the sun was westering, and a cloud flowed over him—each could see that the otherʼs face was not as it should be, that the flight of weeks was drawing age on, more than the lapse of years should.“Garnet, you do a great deal too much. I shall recall my urgent request, if you look soharassed and haggard. Take a holiday now for a month, before the midsummer rents fall due. I will try to do without you; though I may want you any day.”“I will do nothing of the sort; work is needful for me—without it I should die. But you also look very unwell. You must not attempt to prescribe for me.”“I have not been happy lately. By–and–by things will be better. What is your impression of Mrs. Nowell Corklemore?”“That she is an arrant hypocrite, unscrupulous, foul, and deadly.”“Well, that is plain speaking; by no means complimentary. Poor Georgie, I hope you misjudge her, as she says bad people do. But for the present she is gone. There has been a great fight, all along, between her and Eoa; they could not bear one another. And now my niece has discovered a thing which brings me to her side in the matter, for she at least is genuine.”“That she is indeed, and genuinely passionate; you may trust her with anything. She has been very rude indeed to me; and yet I like her wonderfully. What has she discovered?”“That Mrs. Corklemore is at the bottom of this horrible application for a warrant against my son.”“I can well believe it. It struck me in a moment; though I cannot see her object. I never understand plotting.”“Neither do I, Garnet; I only know she has made me insult the dearest friend I had on earth.”“Yes, Mr. Rosedew; I heard of it, and wondered at your weakness. But it did not become me to interfere.”“Certainly not: most certainly not. You could not expect me to bear it. And the Rosedews never liked you.”“That has nothing to do with it. Very probably they are right; for I do not like myself. And you will not dislike, but hate me, when you know what I have to say.”Bull Garnetʼs mind was now made up. For months he had been thinking, forecasting, doubting, wavering—a condition of mind so strange to him, so adrift from all his landmarks, that this alone, without sense of guilt, must have kept him in wretchedness.Sir Cradock Nowell only said, “Keep it for another time. I cannot bear any more excitement; I have had so much to–day.”Bull Garnet looked at him sorrowfully. He could not bear to see his brother beaten so by trouble, and to feel his own hard hand in it.“Donʼt you know what they say of me? Oh, you know what they say of me; and nothing of the kind in the family!” The old man seemed to prove that there was, by the vague flashing of his eyes: “Garnet, you are my brother; after all, you are my brother. And they say I am going mad;and I know they will try to shut me up, without a horse, or a book, or a boy to brush my trousers. Oh, Garnet, you have been bitterly wronged, shamefully wronged, detestably; but you will not let your own brother—brother, who has no sons now to protect him,—be shut up, and made nothing of? Bull Garnet, promise me this, although we have so wronged you.”Garnet knew not what to do. Even he was taken aback, shocked by this sudden outburst, which partly proved what it denied. And this altogether changed the form of the confession he was come to make—and changed it for the better.“My brother”—it was the first time he had ever so addressed him; not from diffidence, but from pride—”my brother, let us look at things, if possible, as God made them. I have been injured no doubt, and so my mother was; blasted, both of us, for life, according to the little ideas of this creeping world. In many cases, the thief is the rogue; in even more, the robbed one is the only villain. Now can you take the large view of things which is forced upon us outsiders when we dare to think at all?”“I cannot think now of such abstract things. My mind is astray with trouble. Did I ever tell you your motherʼs words, when she came here ten or twelve years ago, and demanded a share of the property? Not for her own sake, but for yours, to get you into some business.”“No, I never heard of it. How it must have hurt her!” Bull Garnet was astonished; because it had long been understood that his mother should not be spoken of.“And me as well. I gave her a cheque for a liberal sum, as I thought. She tore it, and threw it at me. What more could I do? Did I deserve her curse, Garnet? Is all this trouble come upon me because I did not obey her?”“I believe that you meant to do exactly what was right.”“I hope—I believe, I did. And see how wrong she was in one part of her prediction. She said that I and my father also should be punished through you, through you, her only son. What a mistake that has proved! You, who are my right arm and brain; my only hope and comfort!”The old man came up, and looked with the deepest trust and admiration at his unacknowledged brother. A few months ago, Bull Garnet would have taken such a look as his truest and best revenge for the cruel wrong to his mother. But now he fell away from it, and muttered something, in a manner quite unlike his own. His mind was made up, he was come to tell all; but how could he do it now, and wrench the old manʼs latest hope away?Then suddenly he remembered, or knew from his own feelings, that an old manʼs last hope in earthly matters should rest upon no friend orbrother, not even upon a wife, but upon his own begotten, his successors in the world. And what he had to say, while tearing all reliance from himself, would replace it where it should be.Meanwhile Sir Cradock Nowell, thinking that Garnet was too grateful for a few kind words, followed him, and placed his slender tremulous and pure–bred hand in the useful cross–bred palm which had sent Mr. Jupp down the coal–shaft.“Bull, you are my very best friend. After all, we are brothers. Promise to defend me.”But Garnet only withdrew his hand, and sighed, and could not look at him.“Oh, then, even you believe it; I see you do! It must be true. God have mercy upon me!”“Cradock, it is a cursed lie; you must not dwell upon it. Such thoughts are spawn of madness; turn to another subject. Just tell me what is the greatest thing one man can do to another?”“To love him, I suppose, Garnet. But I donʼt care much for that sort of thing, since I lost my children.”“Yes, it is a grand thing to love; but far grander to forgive.”“Is it? I am glad to hear it. I always could forgive.”“Little things, you mean, no doubt. Slights and slurs—and so forth?”“Yes, and great things also. But I am not what I was, Bull. You know what I have been through.”“Can you forgive as deep a wrong as one man ever did to another?”“Yes, I dare say. I am sure I donʼt know. What makes you look at me like that?”“Because I shot your son Clayton; and because I did it on purpose.”“Viley! my boy Viley! Oh, I had forgotten. What a stupid thing of me! I thought he was dead somehow. Now, I will open the door for him, because his hands are full. And let him put his game on the table—never mind the papers—he always likes me to see it. Oh, Viley, how long you have been away! What a bag you must have made! Come in, my boy; come in.”Bull Garnetʼs heart cleaved to his side, as the old man opened the door, and looked, with the leaping joy of a fatherʼs love, for his pet, his beloved, his treasured one. But nothing except cold air came in.“The passage is empty. Perhaps he is waiting, because his boots are dirty. Tell him not to think twice about that. I am fidgety sometimes, I know; and I scolded him last Friday. But now he may come anyhow, if he will only come to me. I am so dull without him.”“You will never see him more”—Bull Garnet whispered through a flood of tears, like grass waving out of water—”until it pleases God to take you home, where son and father go alike; sometimes one first, sometimes other, as His holywill is. He came to an unholy end. I tell you again—I shot him.”“Excuse me; I donʼt quite understand. There was a grey hare, with a nick in her ear, who came to the breakfast–room window all through the hard weather last winter, and he promised me not to shoot her; and I am sure that he cannot have done it, because he is so soft–hearted, and that is why I love him so. Talk of Cradock—talk of Cradock! Perhaps he is cleverer than Viley—though I never will believe it—but is he half so soft and sweet? Will the pigeons sit on his shoulder so, and the dogs nuzzle under his coat–lap? Tell me that—tell me that—Bull Garnet.”He leaned on the strong arm of his steward, and looked eagerly for his answer; then trembled with an exceeding great fear, to see that he was weeping. That such a man should weep! But Garnet forced himself to speak.“You cannot listen to me now; I will come again, and talk to you. God knows the agony to me; and worst of all that it is for nothing. Yet all of it not a thousandth part of the anguish I have caused. Perhaps it is wisest so. Perhaps it is for my childrenʼs sake that I, who have killed your pet child, cannot make you know it. Yet it adds to my despair, that I have killed the father too.”Scarcely knowing voice from silence, dazed himself, and blurred, and giddy—so strong is contagion of the mind—Bull Garnet went to the stables,saddled a horse without calling groom, and rode off at full gallop to Dr. Buller. By the time he got there his business habits and wonted fashion of thought had returned, and he put what he came for in lucid form, tersely, crisply, dryly, as if in the world there were no such thing as ill–regulated emotion—except on the part of other people.“Not a bit of it,” said Dr. Buller; “his mind is as sound as yours or mine, and his constitution excellent. He has been troubled a good deal; but bless me—I know a man who lost his three children in a month, and could scarcely pay for their coffins, sir. And his wife only six weeks afterwards. That is what I call trouble, sir!”Bull Garnet knew, from his glistening eyes, and the quivering of his grey locks, that the man he spoke of was himself. Reassured about Sir Cradock, yet fearing to try him further at present, Mr. Garnet went heavily homewards, after begging Dr. Buller to call, as if by chance, at the Hall, observe, and attend to the master.Heavily and wearily Bull Garnet went to the home which once had been so sweet to him, and was now beloved so painfully. The storms of earth were closing round him, only the stars of heaven were bright. Myriad as the forest leaves, and darkly moving in like manner, fears, and doubts, and miseries sprang and trembled through him.No young maid at his door to meet him lovingly and gaily. None to say, “Oh, darling father, howhungry you must be, dear!” Only Pearl, so wan and cold, and scared of soft affection. And as she timidly approached, then dropped her eyes before his gaze, and took his hat submissively, as if she had no lips to kiss, no hand to lay on his shoulder, he saw with one quick glance that still some new grief had befallen her, that still another trouble was come to make its home with her.“What is it, Pearl?” he asked her, sadly; “come in here and tell me.” He never called her his Pearly now, his little native, or pretty pet, as he used to do in the old days. They had dropped those little endearments.“You will be sorry to hear it—sorry, I mean, that it happened; but I could not have done otherwise.”“I never hear anything, now, Pearl, but what I am sorry to hear. This will make little difference.”“So I suppose,” she answered. “Mr. Pell has been here to–day, and—and—oh, father, you know what.”“Indeed I have not been informed of anything. What do I know of Mr. Pell?”“More than he does of you, sir. He asked me to be his wife.”“He is a good man. But of course you said ‘No.’”“Of course I did. Of course, of course. What else can I ever say?”She leaned her white cheek on the high oak mantel, and a little deep sob came from her heart.“Would you have liked to say ‘Yes,’ Pearl?” her father asked very softly, going to put his arm round her waist, and then afraid to do it.“Oh no! oh no! At least, not yet, though I respect him very highly. But I told him that I never could, and never could tell him the reason. And oh, I was so sorry for him—he looked so hurt and disappointed.”“You shall tell him the reason very soon, or rather the newspapers shall.”“Father, donʼt say that; dear father, you are bound for our sake. I donʼt care for him one atom, father, compared with—compared with you, I mean. Only I thought I must tell you, because—oh, you know what I mean. And even if I did like him, what would it matter about me? Oh, father, I often think that I have been too hard upon you, and all of it through me, and my vile concealment!”“My daughter, I am not worthy of you. Would God that you could forgive me!”“I have done it long ago, father. Do you think a child of yours could help it, after all your sorrow?”“My child, look kindly at me; try to look as if you loved me.”She turned to him with such a look as a man only gets once in his life, and then she fell uponhis neck, and forgot the world and all it held, except her own dear father. Wrong he might have done, wrong (no doubt) he had done; but who was she, his little child, to remember it against him? She lay for a moment in his arms, overcome with passion, leaning back, as she had done there, when a weanling infant. For him it was the grandest moment of his passionate life—a fatherʼs powerful love, ennobled by the presence of his God. Such a moment teaches us the grandeur of our race, the traces of a higher world stamped on us indelibly. Then we feel, and try to own, that in spite of satire, cynicism, and the exquisite refinements of the purest selfishness, there is, in even the sharpest and the shallowest of us, something kind and solid, some abiding element of the all–pervading goodness.“Now I will go through with it”—Bull Garnet was recovering—”my own child; go and fetch your brother, if it will not be too much for you. If you think it will, only send him.”“Father, I will fetch him. I may be able to help you both. And now I am so much better.”Presently she returned with Bob, who looked rather plagued and uncomfortable, with a great slice of cork in one hand and a bottle of gum in the other, and a regular housewife of needles in the lappet of his coat. He was going to mount a specimen of a variety of “devilʼs coach–horse,” which he had never seen before, and whose tail was forked like a trident.“Never can let me alone,” said Bob; “just ready to begin I was; and I am sure to spoil his thorax. He is getting stiff every moment.”Bull Garnet looked at him brightly and gladly, even at such a time. Little as he knew or cared about the things that crawl and hop—as he ignorantly put it—skilled no more in natural history than our early painters were, yet from his own strong sense he perceived that his son had a special gift; and a special gift is genius, and may (with good luck) climb eminence. Then he thought of what he had to tell him, and the power of his heart was gone.It was the terror of this moment which had dwelt with him night and day, more than the fear of public shame, of the gallows, or of hell. To be loathed and scorned by his only son! Oh that Pearl had not been so true; oh that Bob suspected something, or had even found it out for himself! Then the father felt that now came part of his expiation.Bob looked at him quite innocently with wonder and some fear. To him “the governor” long had been the strangest of all puzzles, sometimes so soft and loving, sometimes so hard and terrible. Perhaps poor Bob would catch it now for his doings with Eoa.“Sit down there, my son. Not there, but further from me. Donʼt be at all afraid, my boy. I have no fault to find with you. I am far luckier in my son, than you are in your father. You musttry to bear terrible news, Bob. Your sister long has borne it.”Pearl, who was ghastly pale and trembling, stole a glance at each of them from the dark end of the room, then came up bravely into the lamplight, took Bobʼs hand and kissed him, and sat close by to comfort him.Bull Garnet sighed from the depths of his heart. His children seemed to be driven from him, and to crouch together in fear of him.“It serves me right. I know that, of course. That only makes it the worse to bear.”“Father, what is it?” cried Bob, leaping up, and dropping his cork–slice and gum–bottle; “whatever the matter is, father, tell me, that I may stand by you.”“You cannot stand by me in this. When you know what it is, you will fly from me.”“Will I, indeed! A likely thing. Oh, father, you think I am such a soft, because I am fond of little things.”“Would you stand by your father, Bob, if you knew that he was a murderer?”“Oh come,” said Bob, “you are drawing it a little too strong, dad. You never could be that, you know.”“I not only can be, but am, my son.”Father and son looked at one another. The governor standing square and broad, with his shoulders thrown well back, and no trace of emotion in form or face, except that his quick wide nostrils quivered, and his lips were white. Thestripling gazing up at him, seeking for some sign of jest, seeking for a ray of laughter in his fatherʼs eyes; too young to comprehend the power and fury of large passion.Ere either spoke another word—for the father was hurt at the sonʼs delay, and the son felt all abroad in his head—between them glided Pearl, the daughter, the sister, the gentle woman—the one most wronged of all, and yet the quickest to forgive it.“Darling, he did it for my sake,” she whispered to her brother, though it cut through her heart to say it. “Father, oh father, Bob is so slow; donʼt be angry with him. Come to me a moment, father. Oh, how I love and honour you!”Those last few words to the passionate man were like heaven poured into hell. That a child of his should still honour him! He kissed her with tenfold the love young man has for maiden; then he turned away and wept, as if the earth was water.Very little more was said. Pearl went away to Bob, and whispered how the fatal grief befell; and Bob wept great tears for the sake of all, and most of all for his fatherʼs sake. Then, as the father lay cramped up upon the little sofa, wrestling with the power of life and the promise of death, Bob came up, and kissed him dearly on his rugged forehead.“Is that you, my own dear son? God is far too good to me.”

As the brothers confronted one another, the legitimate and the base–born, the man of tact and the man of force, the luxurious and the labourer, strangely unlike in many respects, more strangely alike in others; each felt kindly and tenderly, yet timidly, for the other.

The old man thought of the lying wrong inflicted upon the stronger one by their common father; the other felt the worse wrong—if possible—done by himself to his brother. The measure of such things is not for us. God knows, and visits, and forgives them.

Even by the failing light—for the sun was westering, and a cloud flowed over him—each could see that the otherʼs face was not as it should be, that the flight of weeks was drawing age on, more than the lapse of years should.

“Garnet, you do a great deal too much. I shall recall my urgent request, if you look soharassed and haggard. Take a holiday now for a month, before the midsummer rents fall due. I will try to do without you; though I may want you any day.”

“I will do nothing of the sort; work is needful for me—without it I should die. But you also look very unwell. You must not attempt to prescribe for me.”

“I have not been happy lately. By–and–by things will be better. What is your impression of Mrs. Nowell Corklemore?”

“That she is an arrant hypocrite, unscrupulous, foul, and deadly.”

“Well, that is plain speaking; by no means complimentary. Poor Georgie, I hope you misjudge her, as she says bad people do. But for the present she is gone. There has been a great fight, all along, between her and Eoa; they could not bear one another. And now my niece has discovered a thing which brings me to her side in the matter, for she at least is genuine.”

“That she is indeed, and genuinely passionate; you may trust her with anything. She has been very rude indeed to me; and yet I like her wonderfully. What has she discovered?”

“That Mrs. Corklemore is at the bottom of this horrible application for a warrant against my son.”

“I can well believe it. It struck me in a moment; though I cannot see her object. I never understand plotting.”

“Neither do I, Garnet; I only know she has made me insult the dearest friend I had on earth.”

“Yes, Mr. Rosedew; I heard of it, and wondered at your weakness. But it did not become me to interfere.”

“Certainly not: most certainly not. You could not expect me to bear it. And the Rosedews never liked you.”

“That has nothing to do with it. Very probably they are right; for I do not like myself. And you will not dislike, but hate me, when you know what I have to say.”

Bull Garnetʼs mind was now made up. For months he had been thinking, forecasting, doubting, wavering—a condition of mind so strange to him, so adrift from all his landmarks, that this alone, without sense of guilt, must have kept him in wretchedness.

Sir Cradock Nowell only said, “Keep it for another time. I cannot bear any more excitement; I have had so much to–day.”

Bull Garnet looked at him sorrowfully. He could not bear to see his brother beaten so by trouble, and to feel his own hard hand in it.

“Donʼt you know what they say of me? Oh, you know what they say of me; and nothing of the kind in the family!” The old man seemed to prove that there was, by the vague flashing of his eyes: “Garnet, you are my brother; after all, you are my brother. And they say I am going mad;and I know they will try to shut me up, without a horse, or a book, or a boy to brush my trousers. Oh, Garnet, you have been bitterly wronged, shamefully wronged, detestably; but you will not let your own brother—brother, who has no sons now to protect him,—be shut up, and made nothing of? Bull Garnet, promise me this, although we have so wronged you.”

Garnet knew not what to do. Even he was taken aback, shocked by this sudden outburst, which partly proved what it denied. And this altogether changed the form of the confession he was come to make—and changed it for the better.

“My brother”—it was the first time he had ever so addressed him; not from diffidence, but from pride—”my brother, let us look at things, if possible, as God made them. I have been injured no doubt, and so my mother was; blasted, both of us, for life, according to the little ideas of this creeping world. In many cases, the thief is the rogue; in even more, the robbed one is the only villain. Now can you take the large view of things which is forced upon us outsiders when we dare to think at all?”

“I cannot think now of such abstract things. My mind is astray with trouble. Did I ever tell you your motherʼs words, when she came here ten or twelve years ago, and demanded a share of the property? Not for her own sake, but for yours, to get you into some business.”

“No, I never heard of it. How it must have hurt her!” Bull Garnet was astonished; because it had long been understood that his mother should not be spoken of.

“And me as well. I gave her a cheque for a liberal sum, as I thought. She tore it, and threw it at me. What more could I do? Did I deserve her curse, Garnet? Is all this trouble come upon me because I did not obey her?”

“I believe that you meant to do exactly what was right.”

“I hope—I believe, I did. And see how wrong she was in one part of her prediction. She said that I and my father also should be punished through you, through you, her only son. What a mistake that has proved! You, who are my right arm and brain; my only hope and comfort!”

The old man came up, and looked with the deepest trust and admiration at his unacknowledged brother. A few months ago, Bull Garnet would have taken such a look as his truest and best revenge for the cruel wrong to his mother. But now he fell away from it, and muttered something, in a manner quite unlike his own. His mind was made up, he was come to tell all; but how could he do it now, and wrench the old manʼs latest hope away?

Then suddenly he remembered, or knew from his own feelings, that an old manʼs last hope in earthly matters should rest upon no friend orbrother, not even upon a wife, but upon his own begotten, his successors in the world. And what he had to say, while tearing all reliance from himself, would replace it where it should be.

Meanwhile Sir Cradock Nowell, thinking that Garnet was too grateful for a few kind words, followed him, and placed his slender tremulous and pure–bred hand in the useful cross–bred palm which had sent Mr. Jupp down the coal–shaft.

“Bull, you are my very best friend. After all, we are brothers. Promise to defend me.”

But Garnet only withdrew his hand, and sighed, and could not look at him.

“Oh, then, even you believe it; I see you do! It must be true. God have mercy upon me!”

“Cradock, it is a cursed lie; you must not dwell upon it. Such thoughts are spawn of madness; turn to another subject. Just tell me what is the greatest thing one man can do to another?”

“To love him, I suppose, Garnet. But I donʼt care much for that sort of thing, since I lost my children.”

“Yes, it is a grand thing to love; but far grander to forgive.”

“Is it? I am glad to hear it. I always could forgive.”

“Little things, you mean, no doubt. Slights and slurs—and so forth?”

“Yes, and great things also. But I am not what I was, Bull. You know what I have been through.”

“Can you forgive as deep a wrong as one man ever did to another?”

“Yes, I dare say. I am sure I donʼt know. What makes you look at me like that?”

“Because I shot your son Clayton; and because I did it on purpose.”

“Viley! my boy Viley! Oh, I had forgotten. What a stupid thing of me! I thought he was dead somehow. Now, I will open the door for him, because his hands are full. And let him put his game on the table—never mind the papers—he always likes me to see it. Oh, Viley, how long you have been away! What a bag you must have made! Come in, my boy; come in.”

Bull Garnetʼs heart cleaved to his side, as the old man opened the door, and looked, with the leaping joy of a fatherʼs love, for his pet, his beloved, his treasured one. But nothing except cold air came in.

“The passage is empty. Perhaps he is waiting, because his boots are dirty. Tell him not to think twice about that. I am fidgety sometimes, I know; and I scolded him last Friday. But now he may come anyhow, if he will only come to me. I am so dull without him.”

“You will never see him more”—Bull Garnet whispered through a flood of tears, like grass waving out of water—”until it pleases God to take you home, where son and father go alike; sometimes one first, sometimes other, as His holywill is. He came to an unholy end. I tell you again—I shot him.”

“Excuse me; I donʼt quite understand. There was a grey hare, with a nick in her ear, who came to the breakfast–room window all through the hard weather last winter, and he promised me not to shoot her; and I am sure that he cannot have done it, because he is so soft–hearted, and that is why I love him so. Talk of Cradock—talk of Cradock! Perhaps he is cleverer than Viley—though I never will believe it—but is he half so soft and sweet? Will the pigeons sit on his shoulder so, and the dogs nuzzle under his coat–lap? Tell me that—tell me that—Bull Garnet.”

He leaned on the strong arm of his steward, and looked eagerly for his answer; then trembled with an exceeding great fear, to see that he was weeping. That such a man should weep! But Garnet forced himself to speak.

“You cannot listen to me now; I will come again, and talk to you. God knows the agony to me; and worst of all that it is for nothing. Yet all of it not a thousandth part of the anguish I have caused. Perhaps it is wisest so. Perhaps it is for my childrenʼs sake that I, who have killed your pet child, cannot make you know it. Yet it adds to my despair, that I have killed the father too.”

Scarcely knowing voice from silence, dazed himself, and blurred, and giddy—so strong is contagion of the mind—Bull Garnet went to the stables,saddled a horse without calling groom, and rode off at full gallop to Dr. Buller. By the time he got there his business habits and wonted fashion of thought had returned, and he put what he came for in lucid form, tersely, crisply, dryly, as if in the world there were no such thing as ill–regulated emotion—except on the part of other people.

“Not a bit of it,” said Dr. Buller; “his mind is as sound as yours or mine, and his constitution excellent. He has been troubled a good deal; but bless me—I know a man who lost his three children in a month, and could scarcely pay for their coffins, sir. And his wife only six weeks afterwards. That is what I call trouble, sir!”

Bull Garnet knew, from his glistening eyes, and the quivering of his grey locks, that the man he spoke of was himself. Reassured about Sir Cradock, yet fearing to try him further at present, Mr. Garnet went heavily homewards, after begging Dr. Buller to call, as if by chance, at the Hall, observe, and attend to the master.

Heavily and wearily Bull Garnet went to the home which once had been so sweet to him, and was now beloved so painfully. The storms of earth were closing round him, only the stars of heaven were bright. Myriad as the forest leaves, and darkly moving in like manner, fears, and doubts, and miseries sprang and trembled through him.

No young maid at his door to meet him lovingly and gaily. None to say, “Oh, darling father, howhungry you must be, dear!” Only Pearl, so wan and cold, and scared of soft affection. And as she timidly approached, then dropped her eyes before his gaze, and took his hat submissively, as if she had no lips to kiss, no hand to lay on his shoulder, he saw with one quick glance that still some new grief had befallen her, that still another trouble was come to make its home with her.

“What is it, Pearl?” he asked her, sadly; “come in here and tell me.” He never called her his Pearly now, his little native, or pretty pet, as he used to do in the old days. They had dropped those little endearments.

“You will be sorry to hear it—sorry, I mean, that it happened; but I could not have done otherwise.”

“I never hear anything, now, Pearl, but what I am sorry to hear. This will make little difference.”

“So I suppose,” she answered. “Mr. Pell has been here to–day, and—and—oh, father, you know what.”

“Indeed I have not been informed of anything. What do I know of Mr. Pell?”

“More than he does of you, sir. He asked me to be his wife.”

“He is a good man. But of course you said ‘No.’”

“Of course I did. Of course, of course. What else can I ever say?”

She leaned her white cheek on the high oak mantel, and a little deep sob came from her heart.

“Would you have liked to say ‘Yes,’ Pearl?” her father asked very softly, going to put his arm round her waist, and then afraid to do it.

“Oh no! oh no! At least, not yet, though I respect him very highly. But I told him that I never could, and never could tell him the reason. And oh, I was so sorry for him—he looked so hurt and disappointed.”

“You shall tell him the reason very soon, or rather the newspapers shall.”

“Father, donʼt say that; dear father, you are bound for our sake. I donʼt care for him one atom, father, compared with—compared with you, I mean. Only I thought I must tell you, because—oh, you know what I mean. And even if I did like him, what would it matter about me? Oh, father, I often think that I have been too hard upon you, and all of it through me, and my vile concealment!”

“My daughter, I am not worthy of you. Would God that you could forgive me!”

“I have done it long ago, father. Do you think a child of yours could help it, after all your sorrow?”

“My child, look kindly at me; try to look as if you loved me.”

She turned to him with such a look as a man only gets once in his life, and then she fell uponhis neck, and forgot the world and all it held, except her own dear father. Wrong he might have done, wrong (no doubt) he had done; but who was she, his little child, to remember it against him? She lay for a moment in his arms, overcome with passion, leaning back, as she had done there, when a weanling infant. For him it was the grandest moment of his passionate life—a fatherʼs powerful love, ennobled by the presence of his God. Such a moment teaches us the grandeur of our race, the traces of a higher world stamped on us indelibly. Then we feel, and try to own, that in spite of satire, cynicism, and the exquisite refinements of the purest selfishness, there is, in even the sharpest and the shallowest of us, something kind and solid, some abiding element of the all–pervading goodness.

“Now I will go through with it”—Bull Garnet was recovering—”my own child; go and fetch your brother, if it will not be too much for you. If you think it will, only send him.”

“Father, I will fetch him. I may be able to help you both. And now I am so much better.”

Presently she returned with Bob, who looked rather plagued and uncomfortable, with a great slice of cork in one hand and a bottle of gum in the other, and a regular housewife of needles in the lappet of his coat. He was going to mount a specimen of a variety of “devilʼs coach–horse,” which he had never seen before, and whose tail was forked like a trident.

“Never can let me alone,” said Bob; “just ready to begin I was; and I am sure to spoil his thorax. He is getting stiff every moment.”

Bull Garnet looked at him brightly and gladly, even at such a time. Little as he knew or cared about the things that crawl and hop—as he ignorantly put it—skilled no more in natural history than our early painters were, yet from his own strong sense he perceived that his son had a special gift; and a special gift is genius, and may (with good luck) climb eminence. Then he thought of what he had to tell him, and the power of his heart was gone.

It was the terror of this moment which had dwelt with him night and day, more than the fear of public shame, of the gallows, or of hell. To be loathed and scorned by his only son! Oh that Pearl had not been so true; oh that Bob suspected something, or had even found it out for himself! Then the father felt that now came part of his expiation.

Bob looked at him quite innocently with wonder and some fear. To him “the governor” long had been the strangest of all puzzles, sometimes so soft and loving, sometimes so hard and terrible. Perhaps poor Bob would catch it now for his doings with Eoa.

“Sit down there, my son. Not there, but further from me. Donʼt be at all afraid, my boy. I have no fault to find with you. I am far luckier in my son, than you are in your father. You musttry to bear terrible news, Bob. Your sister long has borne it.”

Pearl, who was ghastly pale and trembling, stole a glance at each of them from the dark end of the room, then came up bravely into the lamplight, took Bobʼs hand and kissed him, and sat close by to comfort him.

Bull Garnet sighed from the depths of his heart. His children seemed to be driven from him, and to crouch together in fear of him.

“It serves me right. I know that, of course. That only makes it the worse to bear.”

“Father, what is it?” cried Bob, leaping up, and dropping his cork–slice and gum–bottle; “whatever the matter is, father, tell me, that I may stand by you.”

“You cannot stand by me in this. When you know what it is, you will fly from me.”

“Will I, indeed! A likely thing. Oh, father, you think I am such a soft, because I am fond of little things.”

“Would you stand by your father, Bob, if you knew that he was a murderer?”

“Oh come,” said Bob, “you are drawing it a little too strong, dad. You never could be that, you know.”

“I not only can be, but am, my son.”

Father and son looked at one another. The governor standing square and broad, with his shoulders thrown well back, and no trace of emotion in form or face, except that his quick wide nostrils quivered, and his lips were white. Thestripling gazing up at him, seeking for some sign of jest, seeking for a ray of laughter in his fatherʼs eyes; too young to comprehend the power and fury of large passion.

Ere either spoke another word—for the father was hurt at the sonʼs delay, and the son felt all abroad in his head—between them glided Pearl, the daughter, the sister, the gentle woman—the one most wronged of all, and yet the quickest to forgive it.

“Darling, he did it for my sake,” she whispered to her brother, though it cut through her heart to say it. “Father, oh father, Bob is so slow; donʼt be angry with him. Come to me a moment, father. Oh, how I love and honour you!”

Those last few words to the passionate man were like heaven poured into hell. That a child of his should still honour him! He kissed her with tenfold the love young man has for maiden; then he turned away and wept, as if the earth was water.

Very little more was said. Pearl went away to Bob, and whispered how the fatal grief befell; and Bob wept great tears for the sake of all, and most of all for his fatherʼs sake. Then, as the father lay cramped up upon the little sofa, wrestling with the power of life and the promise of death, Bob came up, and kissed him dearly on his rugged forehead.

“Is that you, my own dear son? God is far too good to me.”

Back to IndexNext