"Nothing can be easier than to promise that. My dear, you always do act for the best; and what is more, the best always comes of it."
"Very well, you promise that; also, you must pledge yourself to conceal from every one, and most of all from Christopher, everything I am about to tell you, and to act under my directions."
"To be sure, my dear; to be sure, I will. Nothing is more reasonable than that I should keep your secrets."
"I know that you will try, Miranda; and I know that you have much self-command. Also, you will see the importance of acting as I direct you. All I fear is that when you see poor Kit moping, or sighing, and groaning, it may be almost beyond your power to refrain your motherly heart."
"Have no fear, Luke; have no fear whatever. When I know that it is for his true interest, as of course it will be, I shall be exceedingly sorry for him; but still he may go on as much as he pleases; and of course, he has not behaved well at all, in being so mysterious to his own mother."
Luke Sharp looked at his wife, to ask whether any offshoot of this reproach was intended at all to come home to him. If he had discovered any sign of that, the wife of his bosom would have waited long without getting another word from him. For seldom as Mr. Sharp showed temper, he held back, with the chain-curb of expedience, as quick a temper as ever threatened to bolt with any man's fair repute. But now he received no irritation. His wife looked back at him kindly and sweetly, with moist expressive eyes; and he saw that she still was in her duty.
"Miranda," he said, being touched by this, for he had a great deal of conscience, "my darling, I will tell you something such as you never heard before. I have made a bold stroke, a very bold one; but I think it must succeed. And justice is with me, as you will own, after all the attempts to rob us. Perhaps you never heard a stranger story; but still I am sure you will agree with me, that in every step I have taken I am most completely and perfectly justified."
It is only fair towards Mr. Sharp to acquit him of all intention to trust his wife with a very important secret, as long as he could help it. He was well aware of the risk he ran in taking such a desperate step; but the risk was forced upon him now by several circumstances. Also, he wanted her aid just now, in a matter in which he could not possibly have it without trusting her. Hence he resolved to make a virtue of necessity, as the saying is, and at the same time get the great relief which even a strong mind, in long scheming, obtains, by having its burden shared.
This resolve of his was no sudden one. For several days he had made up his mind, that when he should be questioned upon the subject—which he foresaw must happen—he would earn the credit of candour, and the grace of womanly gratitude, by making a clean breast of it. There could be no better season than this. The house was quiet; his son was away; the shadows of the coming evening softly fell before her step; Cross Duck Lane looked very touching in the calm of twilight; and Mrs. Sharp was in the melting mood. Therefore the learned and conscientious lawyer perceived that the client's affairs, about which he was going to busy himself, might safely wait for another day, while he was sweeping his own hearth clean. So he locked the door, and looked out of the window, where sparrows were swarming to their ivy roost; and then he drew in the old lattice, and turned the iron tongue that fastened it. Mrs. Sharp looked on, while some little suggestion of fear came to qualify eagerness.
"Luke, I declare you quite make me nervous. I shall be afraid to go to bed to-night. Really, a stranger, or a timid person, would think you were going to confess a murder!"
"My dear, if you feel at all inclined to give way," Mr. Sharp answered, as if glad to escape, "we will have out our talk to-morrow—or, no—to-morrow I have an appointment at Woodstock. The day after that we will recur to it. I see that it will be better so."
"Luke, is your mind astray? I quite fear so. Can you imagine that I could wait for two days, after what you have told me?"
"My dear, I was only considering yourself. If you wish it, I will begin at once. Only for your own sake, I must insist on your sitting calmly down. There, my dear! Now, do not agitate yourself. There is nothing to frighten anybody. It is the most simple thing; and you will laugh, when you have heard it."
"Then I wish I had heard it, Luke. For I feel more inclined to cry than laugh."
"Miranda, you must not be foolish. Such a thing is not at all like you. Very well, now you are quite sedate. Now please not to interrupt me once; but ask your questions afterwards. If you ask me a question I shall stop, and go to the office with my papers." Mr. Sharp looked at his wife; and she bowed her head in obedience. "To begin at the very beginning," he said, with a smile to re-assure her, "you will do me the justice to remember that I have worked very hard for my living. And I have prospered well, Miranda, having you as both the foundation and the crown of my prosperity. I was perfectly satisfied, as you know, living quite up to my wishes, and putting a little cash by every year of our lives, and paying on a heavy life-insurance, in case of my own life dropping—for the sake of you and Christopher. You know all that?"
"Darling Luke, I do. But you make me cry, when you talk like that."
"Very well. That is as it should be. We were as happy as need be expected, until the great wrong befell us—the fierce injustice of losing every farthing to which we were clearly entitled. You were the proper successor to all the property of old Fermitage. That old curmudgeon, and wholesale poisoner of the University, made a fool of himself, towards his latter end, by marrying Miss Oglander. Old Black-Strap, as of course we know, had no other motive for doing such a thing, except his low ambition to be connected with a good old family. Ever since he began life as a bottleboy, in the cellars of old Jerry Pigaud——"
"He never did that, Luke. How can you speak so of my father's own first cousin? He was an extremely respectable young man; my father always said so."
"While he was making his money, Miranda, of course he was respectable. And everybody respected him, as soon as he had made it. However, I have not the smallest intention of reproaching the poor old villain. He acted according to his lights, and they led him very badly. A foolish ambition induced him to marry that pompous old maid, Joan Oglander, who had been jilted by Commodore Patch, the son of the famous captain. We all know what followed; the old man was but a doll in the hands of his lady-wife. He left all the scrapings and screwings of his life, for her to do what she pleased with—at least, everybody supposes so."
"What do you mean, Luke?" asked Mrs. Sharp, having inkling of legal surprises. "Do you mean that there is a later will? Has he done justice to me, after all?"
"No, my dear. He never saved his soul by attending to his own kindred. But he just had the sense to make a little change at last, when his wife would not come near him. You know what he died of. It was coming on for weeks; though at last it struck him suddenly. The port-wine fungus of his old vaults grew into his lungs, and stopped them. It had shown for some time in his face and throat; and his wife was afraid of catching it. She took it to be some infectious fever, of which she is always so terribly afraid. The old man knew that his time was short; but take to his bed he would not. Of all born men the most stubborn he was; as any man must be, to get on well. 'If I am to die of the fungus,' he said, 'I will have a little more of it.' And he went, and with his own hands hunted up a magnum of port, which had been laid by, from the vintage of 1745, in the first days of Jerry Pigaud. But before that, he had sent for me; and I was there when he opened it."
"Luke, you take my breath away. Such wonderful things I have never heard. At least, not in our own family."
"Of course, my dear. We all accept wonders with quietude, till they come home to us. Well, when he fetched out this old bottle, it was fungus inside from heel to neck. He held it up against the light, and the glass being whiter than now they make, and the wine gone almost white with age, there you could see this extraordinary growth, like cords in the bottle, and valves across it, and a long yellow sheath like a crocus-flower. I had never seen anything like it before; but he knew all about it. 'Ah, I know a genleman,' he grunted in his throat—he never could say 'gentleman,' as you remember—'a genleman as would give a hundred guineas for this here bottle! Quibbles, he shouldn't have it for a thousand! My boy, you and I will drink it. Say no, and I'll cut off your wife with a half-penny!' Miranda, what could I do but try to humour him to the utmost? If I had had the smallest inkling of the iniquitous will he had made, of course, I never would have sat on the head of the cask, down in his dingy and reeking vaults, by the hour together, to please him. But never mind that—in a moment he took a long-handled knife, or chopper, and holding the bottle upright, struck off the neck and a part of the shoulder, as straight as a line, at the level of the wine. 'Not many men could do that,' he said; 'none of your clumsy cork-screwers for me! Now, Quibbles, here's a real treat for you! Talk of beeswing, my boy, here's a beehive!' And really it was more like eating than drinking wine; for all the body was gone into the fungus. Nastier stuff I never tasted; but, luckily, he took the lion's share. 'Now, Quibbles, I'll tell you a secret,' he said, after swallowing at least a quart; 'a very pretty girl came and kissed me t'other day, in among these very bottles. Such a little duck—not a bit ashamed or afeared of my fungus, as my missus is. And her breath was as sweet as the violets of '20! "Well now, my little dear," thinks I, as I stood back and looked at her, "that was kind of you to kiss an old man a-dying of port wine fungus! And if he only lives another day, you shall have the right to kiss the Royal family, if you cares to do it." Quibbles, I wouldn't call in you, nor any other thief of a lawyer. Lawyers are very well over a glass; but keep 'em outside of the cellar, say I. Very good company, in their way; but the only company I put trust in is the one I have dealt with all my life,—and many a thousand pounds I have paid them—The Royal Wine Company of Oporto. So now, if anything happens to me—though I am not in such a hurry to be binned away, and walled up for the resurrection—Quibbles, wait six months; and then you go to the Royal Oporto Company, and ask for a genleman of the name of Jolly Fellows.'"
"Now, Luke, I am all anxiety to hear," exclaimed Mrs. Sharp, with a sudden interruption, "what was the end of this very strange affair. I perceive now that I have foreseen the whole of it. But it is not right that you should speak so long, without one morsel of refreshment. It is many hours since you dined, my dear, and a very poor dinner you had of it. You shall have a glass of white wine, and a slice of tongue, between a little cold roll and butter. It will not in any way interrupt you. I can get it all for you, without ringing the bell. Only let me ask you one thing first—why have you never told me this till now?"
"Because, Miranda, it would disturb your mind. And I know that you cannot endure suspense. Moreover, I scarcely knew what to think of it. Poor old Fermitage (what with the fungus already in his tubes, and what he was taking down) might be talking sheer nonsense for all that I knew. And indeed, for a long time I treated it so; and I had no stomach for a voyage to Oporto, upon mere speculation, and for the benefit only of some pretty girl. Then I found out, by the purest chance, that no voyage to Oporto was needful, that old 'Port-wine' (who departed on his cask to a better world, the day after his magnum) meant nothing more than the London stores and agency of the Oporto Company. And even after that I made one expedition to the Minories, all for nothing. Two or three very polite young dons stared at me, and thought I was come to chaff them, or perhaps had turned up from their vaults top-heavy, when I asked for 'Senhor Jolly Fellows.' And so I came away, and lost some months, and might never have thought it worth while to go again, except for another mere accident."
"My dear, what a chapter of accidents!" cried Mrs. Sharp, while feeding him. "I thought that you were a great deal too clever to allow any room for accidents."
"Women think so. Men know better," the lawyer replied sententiously; his ability was too well-known to need his vindication. "And, Miranda, you forget that I had as yet no personal interest in the question. But when I happened to have a Portuguese gentleman as a client—a man who had spent many years in England—and happened to be talking of our language to him, I told him one part of the story, and asked if he could throw any light on it. He told me at once that the name which had so puzzled me must be Gelofilos—a Portuguese surname, by no means common. And the next time I was in town, I had occasion to call in St. John's Street, and found myself, almost by accident again, not far from the Company's offices."
"Mr. Sharp, you left such a thing to chance, when you knew that it might pull down that dreadful woman's insolence!"
"My dear, it is not the duty of my life to mitigate feminine arrogance. And to undertake such a crusade, gratis! I am equal to a bold stroke, as you will see, if your patience lasts—but never to such a vast undertaking. When it comes before me, in the way of business, naturally I take it up. But this was no business of my own; and the will was proved, and assets called in; for the old rogue did not owe one penny. Well, I went again, and this time I got hold of the right man—— Miranda, I hear the bell!"
The new office-bell, the successor to the one that succumbed to Russel Overshute, rang as hard as ring it could. A special messenger was come from London, and in half an hour Mr. Luke Sharp was sitting on the box of the night up mail.
This sudden departure of Mr. Luke Sharp, in the very marrow of his story, left his good wife in a trying and altogether discontented state of mind. She knew that she could have no more particulars until he came back again; for Sharp had even less faith in the post than the post of that period deserved. She might have to wait for days and days, with a double anxiety urging her.
In the first place, although she felt nothing but pity for poor old Mrs. Fermitage, and would have been really sorry to hear of anything likely to vex her, she could not help being desirous to know if there were any danger of a thing so sad. But her second anxiety was a great deal keener, being sharpened by the ever moving grit of love; in the dreadful state of mind her son was in, how would all this act upon him? His father had been forced, by some urgency of things, to put on his box-coat, and make off, without even time for a hurried whisper as to the residue of his tale. Mrs. Sharp felt that there might be something which her husband feared to spread before her, without plenty of time to lead up to it; and having for many years been visited (whenever she was not quite herself) with poignant doubts whether Mr. Sharp was anchored upon Scriptural principles, she almost persuaded herself for the moment that he meant to put up with the loss of the money.
However, a little reflection sufficed to clear away this sadly awful cloud of scepticism, and to assure her that Mr. Sharp, however he might swerve in theory, would be orthodox enough in practice to follow the straight path towards the money. And then she began to think of nothing except her own beloved Kit.
The last hurried words of her husband had been—"Not one word to Kit, or you ruin all; let him groan as he likes; only watch him closely. I shall be back by Saturday night. God bless you, my dear! Keep up your spirits. I have the whip-hand of the lot of them."
Herein lay her faith and hope. She never had known her husband fail, when he really made up his mind to succeed; and therefore in the bottom of her heart she doubted the genuine loss of Grace Oglander. Sharp had discovered, and traced to their end, clues of the finest gossamer, when his interest led him to do so. That he should be baffled, and own himself to be so, was beyond her experience. Therefore, although as yet she had no more than a guess at her husband's schemes, she could not help fancying, after his words, that they might have to do with Grace Oglander.
Before she had time to think out her thoughts, Christopher, their main subject, returned from Wytham Wood, after holding long rivalry of woe with nightingales. He still carried on, and well-carried off, the style of the love-lorn Romeo. He swung his cloak quite as well as could be expected of an Englishman—who is born to hate fly-away apparel, all of which is womanish; but the necessities of his position had driven him now to a very short pipe. His favourite meerschaum had fallen into sorrow as terrible as his own. In a highly poetical moment he had sucked it so hard that the oil arose, and took him with a hot spot upon a white tongue, impregnated then with a sonnet. All sonnets are of the tongue and ear; but Kit misliked having his split up, just when it was coming to the final kick. Therefore he gave his pipe a thump, beyond such a pipe's endurance; and being as sensitive as himself, and of equally fine material, it simply refused to draw any more, as long as he breathed poetry. Still breathing poetry, he marched home, with the stump of a farthing clay, newly baked in the Summertown Road, to console him.
Now, if this young man had failed of one of the triple human combination—weed, and clay, and fire—where and how might he have ended not only that one evening, but all the rest of the evenings of his young life? His appearance and manner had at first imported to any one whom he came across—and he truly did come across them in his wide and loose march out of Oxford city—that he might be sought for in a few hours' time, and only the inferior portion found. His mother worried him, so did his father, so did all humanity, save one—who worried him more than any, or all of it put together. The trees and the road, and the singing of the birds, and the gladness of the green world worried him. Luckily for himself he had bought a good box of German tinder, and from ash to ash his spirit glowed slowly into a more philosophic state. Gradually the beauty of the trees and hedges and the sloping fields began to steal around him; the warbled pleasure of the little birds made overture to his sympathy, and the lustrous calm of shadowed waters spread its picture through his mind.
His body also responded to the influences of the time of day, and the love of nature freshened into the natural love of cupboard. Hunger awoke in his system somewhere, and spread sweet pictures in a tasteful part. For a "moment of supreme agony" he wrestled with the coarse material instinct, then turned on his heel, as our novelists say, and made off for his father's kitchen.
His poor mother caught him the moment he came in, and pulled off his hat and his opera-cloak, and frizzled up his curls for him. She seemed to think that he must have been for a journey of at least a hundred leagues; that the fault of his going was hers, and the virtue of his ever coming back was all his own. Then she looked at him slyly, and with some sadness, and yet a considerable touch of pride, by the light of a three-wicked cocoa-candle; and feeling quite sure that she had him to herself, trembled at the boldness of the shot she made:
"Oh, Kit, why have you never told me? I have found it all out. You have fallen in love!"
Christopher Fermitage Sharp, Esquire—as he always entitled himself, upon the collar of spaniel or terrier—had nothing to say for a moment, but softly withdrew, to have his blush in shadow. Of all the world, best he loved his mother—before, or after, somebody else—and his simple, unpractised, and uncored heart, was shy of the job it was carrying on. Therefore he turned from his mother's face, and her eager eyes, and expectant arms.
"Come and tell me, my darling," she whispered, trying to get a good look at his reluctant eyes, and wholly oblivious of her promise to his father. "I will not be angry at all, Kit, although you never should have left me to find it out in this way."
"There is nothing to find out," he answered, making a turn towards the kitchen stairs. "I just want my supper, if there is anything to eat."
"To eat, Kit! And I thought so much better of you. After all, I must have been quite wrong. What a shame to invent such stories!"
"You must have invented them, yourself, dear mother," said Kit with recovered bravery. "Let me hear it all out when I have had my supper."
"I will go down this moment, and see what there is," replied his good mother eagerly. "Is there anything, now, that can coax your appetite?"
"Yes, mother, oysters will be over to-morrow. I should like two dozen fried with butter, and a pound and a quarter of rump-steak, cut thick, and not overdone."
"You shall have them, my darling, in twenty minutes. Now, be sure that you put your fur slippers on; I saw quite a fog coming over Port Meadow, as much as half an hour ago. This is the worst time of year to take cold. 'A May cold is a thirty-day cold.' What a stupe I must be," she continued to herself, "to imagine that the boy could be in love! I will take care to say not another word, or I might break my promise to his father. What a pity! He has a noble moustache coming, and only his mother to admire it!"
In spite of all disappointment, this good mother paid the warmest heed to the ordering, ay, and the cooking, of the supper of her only child. A juicier steak never sat on a gridiron; fatter oysters never frizzled with the pure bubble of goodness. Kit sat up, and made short work of all that came before him.
"Now, mother, what is it you want to say?" His tone was not defiant, but nicely self-possessed, and softly rich with triumph of digestion. And a silver tankard of Morel's ale helped him to express himself.
"My dear boy, I have nothing to say, except that you have lifted a great weight off my mind, a very great weight beyond description, by leaving behind you not even a trace of the existence of that fine rump-steak."
It was the morn when the tall and shapely tower of Magdalen is crowned with a fillet of shining white, awaiting the first step of sunrise. Once a year, for generations, this has been the sign of it—eager eyes, and gaping mouths, little knuckles blue with cold, and clumsy little feet inclined to slide upon the slippery lead. All are bound to keep together for the radiant moment; all are a little elated at their height above all other boys; all have a strong idea that the sun, when he comes, will be full of them; and every one of them longs to be back beneath his mother's blankets.
It is a tradition with this choir (handed, or chanted, down from very ancient choral ancestry) that the sun never rises on May-day without iced dew to glance upon. Scientific record here comes in to prop tradition. The icy saints may be going by, but they leave their breath behind them. And the poets, who have sent forth their maids to "gather the dews of May," knew, and meant, that dew must freeze to stand that operation.
But though the sky was bright, and the dew lay sparkling for the maidens, the frost on this particular morning was not so keen as usual. The trees that took the early light (more chaste without the yellow ray) glistened rather with soft moisture than with stiff encrustment; and sprays, that kept their sally into fickle air half latent, showing only little scolloped crinkles with a knob in them, held in every downy quillet liquid, rather than solid, gem.
Christopher Sharp, looking none the worse for his excellent supper of last night, laid his fattish elbow on the parapet of the bridge, and mused. Poetical feeling had fetched him out, thus early in the morning, to hear the choir salute the sun, and to be moved with sympathy. The moon is the proper deity of all true lovers, and has them under good command when she pleases. But for half the weeks of a month, she declines to sit in the court of lunacy; at least, as regards this earth, having her own men and women to attend to. This young man knew that she could not be found, with a view to meditation, now; and his mind relapsed to the sun—a coarse power, poetical only when he sets and rises.
With strength and command of the work of men, and leaving their dreams to his sister, the sun leaped up, with a shake of his brow and a scattering of the dew-clouds. The gates of the east swung right and left; so that tall trees on a hill seemed less than reeds in the rush of glory; and lines (like the spread of a crystal fan) trembled along the lowland. Inlets now, and lanes of vision (scarcely opened yesterday, and closed perhaps to-morrow) guided shafts of light along the level widening ways they love. Tree and tower, hill and wall, and water and broad meadow, stood, or lay, or leaned (according to the stamp set on them), one and all receiving, sharing, and rejoicing in the day.
Between the battlements, and above them, burst and rose the choral hymn; and as the laws of sound compelled it to go upward mainly, the part that came down was pleasing. Christopher, seeing but little of the boys, and not hearing very much, was almost enabled to regard the whole as a vocal effort of the angels: and thus in solemn thought he wandered as far as the high-tolled turnpike gate.
"I will hie me to Cowley," said he to himself, instead of turning back again; "there will I probe the hidden import of impending destiny. This long and dark suspense is more than can be brooked by human power. I know a jolly gipsy-woman; and if I went home I should have to wait three hours for my breakfast."
With these words he felt in the pockets of his coat, to be sure that oracular cash was there, and found a silk purse with more money than usual, stored for the purchase of a dog called "Pablo," a hero among badgers.
"What is Pablo to me, or I to Pablo?" he muttered with a smothered sigh. "She told me she thought it a cruel and cowardly thing to kill fifty rats in five minutes. Never more—alas, never more!" With a resolute step, but a clouded brow, he buttoned his coat, and strode onward.
Now, if he had been in a fit state of mind for looking about him, he might have found a thousand things worth looking at. But none of them, in his present hurry, won from him either glimpse or thought. He trudged along the broad London road at a good brisk rate, while the sun glanced over the highlands, and the dewy ridges, away on the left towards Shotover. The noble city behind him, stretched its rising sweep of tower, and spire, and dome, and serried battlement, stately among ancient trees, and rich with more than mere external glory to an Englishman. And away to the right hand sloped broad meadows, green with spring, and fluttered with the pearly hyaline of dew, lifting pillars of dark willow in the distance, where the Isis ran.
But what are these things to a lover, unless they hit the moment's mood? The fair, unfenced, free-landscaped road for him might just as well have been wattled, like a skittle-alley, and roofed with Croggon's patent felt. At certain—or rather uncertain—moments, he might have rejoiced in the wide glad heart of nature spread to welcome him; and must have felt, as lovers feel, the ravishment of beauty. It happened, however, that his eyes were open to nothing above, or around, or before him, unless it should present itself in the image of a gipsy's tent.
He turned to the left, before the road entered the new enclosures towards Iffley, and trod his own track towards Cowley Marsh. The crisp dew, brushed by his hasty feet, ran into large globes behind him; and jerks of dust, brought up by pressure, fell and curdled on them. In the haze of the morning, he looked much larger than he had any right to seem, and the shadow of his arms and hat stretched into hollow places. There was no other moving figure to be seen, except from time to time, of a creature, the colonist of commons, whose mental frame was not so unlike his own just now, as bodily form and style of walking might in misty grandeur seem. Though Kit was not such a stupid fellow, when free from his present bewitchment.
Scant of patience he came to a place where the elbow of a hedge jutted forth upon the common. A mighty hedge of beetling brows, and over-hanging shagginess, and shelfy curves, and brambly depths, and true Devonian amplitude. High farming would have swept it down, and out of its long course ploughed an acre. Young Sharp had not traced its windings far, before he came upon a tidy-looking tent, pitched, with the judgment of experience, in a snug and sheltered spot. The rest of the camp might be seen in the distance, glistening in the sunrise. This tent seemed to have crept away, for the sake of peace and privacy.
Christopher quickened his steps, expecting to be met by a host of children, rushing forth with outstretched hands, and shaggy hair, and wild black eyes. But there was not so much as a child to be seen, nor the curling smoke of a hedge-trough fire, nor even the scattered ash betokening cookery of the night before. The canvas of the tent was down; no head peeped forth, no naked leg or grimy foot protruded, to show that the inner world was sleeping; even the dog, so rarely absent, seemed to be really absent now.
The young man knew that the tent was not very likely to be unoccupied; but naturally he did not like to peep into it uninvited; and he turned away to visit the chief community of rovers, when the sound of a low soft moan recalled him. Still for a moment he hesitated, until he heard the like sound again, low, and clear, and musical from the deepest chords of sorrow. Kit felt sure that it must be a woman, in storms of trouble helpless; and full as he was of his own affairs he was impelled to interfere. So he lifted back the canvas drawn across the opening, and looked in.
There lay a woman on the sandy ground, with her back turned towards the light, her neck and shoulders a little raised by the short support of one elbow, and her head, and all that therein was, fixed in a rigour of gazing. Although her face was not to be seen, and the hopeless moan of her wail had ceased, Kit Sharp knew that he was in the presence of a grand and long-abiding woe.
He drew back, and he tried to make out what it was, and he sighed for concert—even as a young dog whimpers to a mother who has lost her pups—and, little as he knew of women, from his own mother, or whether or no, he judged that this woman had lost a child. That it was her only one, was more than he could tell or guess. The woman, disturbed by the change of light, turned round and steadily gazed at him, or rather at the opening which he filled; for her eyes had no perception of him. Kit was so scared that he jerked his head back, and nearly knocked his hat off. He never had seen such a thing before; and, if he had his choice he never would see such a thing again. The great dark, hollow eyes had lost similitude of human eyes: hope and fear and thought were gone; nothing remained but desolation and bare, reckless misery.
Christopher's gaze fell under hers. It would be a sheer impertinence to lay his small troubles before such woe.
"What is it? Oh! what is it?" asked the woman, at last having some idea that somebody was near her.
"I am very sorry; I assure you, ma'am, that I never felt more sorry in all my life," said Kit, who was a very kind-hearted fellow, and had now espied a small boy lying dead. "I give you my word of honour, ma'am, that if I could have guessed it, I would never have looked in."
Without any answer, the gipsy-woman turned again to her dead child, and took two little hands in hers, and rubbed them, and sat up, imagining that she felt some sign of life. She drew the little body to her breast, and laid the face to hers, and breathed into pale open lips (scarcely fallen into death), and lifted little eyelids with her tongue, and would not be convinced that no light came from under them; and then she rubbed again at every place where any warmth or polish of the skin yet lingered. She fancied that she felt the little fellow coming back to her, and she kept the whole of her own body moving to encourage him.
There was nothing to encourage. He had breathed his latest breath. His mother might go on with kisses, friction, and caresses, with every power she possessed of muscle, and lungs, and brain, and heart. There he lay, as dead as a stone—one stone more on the earth; and the whole earth could not bring him back again.
Cinnaminta bowed her head. She laid the little bit of all she ever loved upon her lap, and fetched the small arms so that she could hold them both together, and spread the careless face upon the breast where once it had felt its way; and then she looked up in search of Kit, or any one to say something to.
"It is a just thing. I have earned it. I have robbed an old man of his only child; and I am robbed of mine."
These words she spoke not in her own language, but in plain good English; and then she lay down in her quiet scoop of sand, and folded her little boy in with her. Christopher saw that there was nothing to be done. He cared to go no further in search of fortune-tellers; and, being too young to dare to offer worthless consolation, he wisely resolved to go home and have fried bacon; wherein he succeeded.
Ere yet it was noon of that same day, to the great delight of Mrs. Sharp, a strong desire to fish arose in the candid bosom of Christopher.
"Mother," he said, "I shall have a bit of early grub, and take my rod, and try whether I can't manage to bring you a few perch home for supper. Or, if the perch are not taking yet, I may have a chance of a trout or two."
"Oh, that will be delightful, Kit! We can dine whenever we please, you know, as your dear father is from home. We will have the cold lamb at one o'clock. I can easily make my dinner then; and then, Kit, if you are very good, what do you think I will try to do? Such a treat as you hardly ever had!"
"What, mother?—what? I must be off to get my tackle ready."
"My dear, I will send to Mr. Squeaker Smith, and order a nice light vehicle, with a very steady pony. And, Kit, I will put on my very worst cloak, and a bonnet not worth six-pence, and stout india-rubber overshoes. And so you shall drive me wherever you please; and I will see you catch all the fish. And you will enjoy every fish twice as much, because your dear mother is looking at you. I will bring some sandwiches, my pet, and your father's flask of sherry; and we can stay out till it is quite dark. Why, Kit, you don't look pleased about it!"
"Mother, how can I be pleased to hear you speak of such things, at this time of year? The spring is scarcely beginning yet, and the edges of the water are all swampy. You would be up to your knees, in no time, in the most horrible yellow slime. I should be most delighted to have your company, my dearest mother; but it will not do."
"Very well, Kit; you know best. But, at least, I can have the ride with you, and wait somewhere while you go fishing?"
"If I were going anywhere else, perhaps we might have contrived it so. But while the wind stays in its present quarter, it is worse than useless to think of fishing, except in the most outlandish places. There would not be even a public-house, if you could stop at such a place, within miles of the water I am going to. And the roads are beyond conception. No wheels can get along them, except in the very height of summer, or a dry black-frost. My dear mother, I am truly grieved to lose your company; but I must ride the old cob Sam, and tie him to a tree or gate; and over and over again you have told me how long you have been waiting for the chance of a good long afternoon to do a little shopping. And the London fashions, for the summer season, arrived by the coach only yesterday."
"Did they, indeed? Are you sure of that? Well, Kit, I would rather have come with you than seen the whole world of fashions, although you can judge, and a lady cannot. But I do not care about that, my dear, if only you enjoy yourself. Ring the bell, my darling, and I will see about your dinner."
Kit's heart burned within him sadly, and his cheeks kept it well in countenance, as the shocking fraud thus practised by him upon his good, unselfish mother. However, there was no help for it; and, after all, mothers must be made to be cheated; or why do they love it so?
Thus well-balanced with his conscience, Kit put all his smartest clothes on, as soon as the early dinner was done, and he felt quite sure in his own mind that his mother was safely embarked upon her grand expedition of shopping. He saw her as clean as possible off the premises and round the utmost corner of the lane; and then he waited for a minute and a half, to be sure that she had not forgotten her purse, or something else most essential. At last, he became sure as sure could be, that his admirable mother must now be sitting on a high chair in a fashionable shop; and with that he ran up to his own room, and kicked off his every-day breeches, and with great caution and vast study drew a brand-new pair of noble pantaloons, with a military stripe, up his well-nourished and established legs. He gazed at the result, and found that on the whole it was not bad; and then he put on his best velvet waistcoat, of a chaste sprig-pattern, not too gaudy. A waterfall tie with a turquoise pin, and a cutaway coat of a soft bottle-green, completed him for the eyes of the public, and—for which he cared far more—certain especially private eyes.
Christopher, feeling himself thus attired, and receiving the silent approval of his glass, stole downstairs in a very clever way, and took from his own private cupboard a whip of white pellucid whalebone, silver-mounted, and set with a large and radiant Cairngorm pebble. His mother had given him this on his very last birth-day, and he had never used it, wisely fearing to be laughed at. But now he tucked it under his arm, and swaggering as he had seen hussars do, turned into a passage leading to his private outlet.
Hugging himself upon all his skill, and feeling assured of grand success, Kit allowed his heels to clank, and carried his head with an arrogant twist. And so, near a window, where good light came in large quantity from the garden, he marched into his mother's arms.
"Kit!" cried his mother; and he said, "Yes," being unable to deny that truth. His mother looked at him, and his jaunty whip, and particularly lively suit of clothes; and she knew that he had been telling lies to her by the hundred or the bushel; and she would have been very glad to scorn him, if she could have helped being proud of him. Kit was unable to carry on any more in the way of falsehood. He tried to look fierce, but his mother laughed; and he saw that he must knock under.
"My dear boy," she said, for the moment daring to follow up her triumph, "is this the costume in which you go forth to fish in the most outlandish places, with the yellow ooze above your knees? And is that your fishing-rod? Oh, Kit!—come, Kit, now you are caught at last!"
"My dear mother, I have told you stories; but I will leave off at last. Now there is not one instant to explain. I have not so much as a moment to spare. If you only could guess how important it is, you would draw in your cloak in a moment. You never shall know another single word, unless you have the manners, mother, to pull in your cloak and let me go by."
"Kit, you may go. When you look at me like that, you may as well do anything. You have gone by your mother for ever so long; or at any rate gone away from her."
With these words, Mrs. Sharp made way for her son to pass her; and Kit, in a reckless manner, was going to take advantage of it; then he turned back his face, to say goodbye, and his mother's eyes were away from him. She could not look at him, because she knew that her look would pain him; but she held out her hand; and he took it and kissed it; and then he made off as hard as he could go.
Mrs. Sharp turned back, and showed some hankering to run after him; and then she remembered what a laugh would arise in Cross Duck Lane to see such sport; and so she sighed a heavy sigh—knowing how long she must have to wait—and retired to her own thoughtful corner, with no heart left for shopping.
But Kit saw that now it was "neck or nothing;" with best foot foremost he made his way through back lanes leading towards the conscientious obscurity of Worcester College—for Beaumont Street still abode in the future—and skirting the coasts of Jericho, dangerously hospitable, he emerged at last in broad St. Giles', without a stone to prate of his whereabouts. Here he went into livery stables, where he was well known, and found the cob Sam at his service; for no university man would ride him (even upon Hobson's choice) because of his ignominious aspect. But Kit knew his value, and his lasting powers, and sagacious gratitude; and whenever he wanted a horse trustworthy in patience, obedience, and wit, he always took brown Sam. To Sam it was a treat to carry Kit, because of the victuals ordered at almost every lenient stage; and the grand largesse of oats and beans was more than he could get for a week in stable. And so he set forth, with a spirited neigh, on the Kidlington road, to cross the Cherwell, and make his way towards Weston. The heart of Christopher burned within him whenever he thought of his mother; but a man is a man for all that, and cannot be tied to apron-strings. So Kit shook his whip, and the Cairngorm flashed in the sun, and the spirit of youth did the same. He was certain to see the sweet maid to-day, knowing her manners and customs, and when she was ordered forth for her mossy walk upon the margin of the wood.
The soft sun hung in the light of the wood, as if he were guided by the breeze and air; and gentle warmth flowed through the alleys, where the nesting pheasant ran. Little fluttering, timid things, that meant to be leaves, please God, some day, but had been baffled and beaten about so, that their faith was shrunk to hope; little rifts of cover also keeping beauty coiled inside, and ready to open, like a bivalve shell, to the pulse of the summer-tide, and then to be sweet blossom; and the ground below them pressing upward with ambition of young green; and the sky above them spread with liquid blue behind white pillows.
But these things are not well to be seen without just entering into the wood; and in doing so there can be no harm, with the light so inviting, and the way so clear. Grace had a little idea that perhaps she had better stop outside the wood, but still that walk was within her bounds, and her orders were to take exercise; and she saw some very pretty flowers there; and if they would not come to her, she had nothing to do but to go to them. Still she ought to have known that now things had changed from what they were as little as a week ago; that a dotted veil of innumerable buds would hang between her and the good Miss Patch, while many forward trees were casting quite a shade of mystery. Nevertheless, she had no fear. If anybody did come near her, it would only be somebody thoroughly afraid of her. For now she knew, and was proud to know, that Kit was the prey of her bow and spear.
Whether she cared for him, or not, was a wholly different question. But in her dismal dullness and long, wearisome seclusion, the finest possible chance was offered for any young gentleman to meet her, and make acquaintance of nature's doing. At first she had kept this to herself, in dread of conceit and vanity; but when it outgrew accident, she told "Aunt Patch" the whole affair, and asked what she was to do about it. Thereupon she was told to avoid the snares of childish vanity, to look at the back of her looking-glass, and never dare to dream again that any one could be drawn by her.
Her young mind had been eased by this, although with a good deal of pain about it; and it made her more venturesome to discover whether the whole of that superior estimate of herself was true. Whether she was so entirely vain or stupid, whenever she looked at herself; and whether it was so utterly and bitterly impossible that anybody should come—as he said—miles and miles for the simple pleasure of looking, for one or two minutes, at herself.
Grace was quite certain that she had no desire to meet anybody, when she went into the wood. She hoped to be spared any trial of that sort. She had been told on the highest authority, that nobody could come looking after her—the assertion was less flattering perhaps than reassuring; and, to test its truth, she went a little further than she meant to go.
Suddenly at a corner, where the whole of the ground fell downward, and grass was overhanging grass so early in the season, and sapling shoots from the self-same stool stood a yard above each other, and down in the hollow a little brook sang of its stony troubles to the whispering reeds—here Grace Oglander happened to meet a very fine young man indeed. The astonishment of these two might be seen, at a moment's glance, to be mutual. The maiden, by gift of nature, was the first to express it, with dress, and hand, and eye. She showed a warm eagerness to retire; yet waited half a moment for the sake of proper dignity.
Kit looked at her with a clear intuition that now was his chance of chances to make certain-sure of her. If he could only now be strong, and take her consent for granted, and so induce her to set seal to it, she never would withdraw; and the two might settle the rest at their leisure.
He loved the young lady with all his heart; and beyond that he knew nothing of her, except that she was worthy. But she had not given her heart as yet; and, with natural female common sense, she would like to know a great deal more about him before she said too much to him. Also in her mind—if not in her heart—there was a clearer likeness of a very different man—a man who was a man in earnest, and walked with a stronger and firmer step, and lurked behind no corners.
"This path is so extremely narrow," Miss Oglander said, with a very pretty blush, "and the ground is so steep, that I fear I must put you to some little inconvenience. But if I hold carefully by this branch, perhaps there will be room for you to pass."
"You are most kind and considerate," he answered, as if he were in peril of a precipice; "but I would not for the world give you such trouble. And I don't want to go any further now. It cannot matter in the least, I do assure you."
"But surely you must have been going somewhere. You are most polite. But I cannot think for one moment of turning you back like this."
"Then, may I sit down? I feel a little tired; and the weather has suddenly become so warm. Don't you think it is very trying?"
"To people who are not very strong perhaps it is. But surely it ought not to be so to you."
"Well, I must not put all the blame upon the weather. There are so many other things much worse. If I could only tell you."
"Oh, I am so very sorry, Mr. Sharp. I had no idea you had such troubles. It must be so sad for you, while you are so young."
"Yes, I suppose many people call me young. And perhaps to the outward eye I am so. But no one except myself can dream of the anxieties that prey upon me."
Christopher, by this time, was growing very crafty, as the above speech of his will show. The paternal gift was awaking within him, but softened by maternal goodness; so that it was not likely to be used with much severity. And now, at the end of his speech, he sighed, and without any thought laid his right hand on the rich heart of his velvet waistcoat, where beautiful forget-me-nots were blooming out of willow leaves. Then Grace could not help thinking how that trouble-worn right hand had been uplifted in her cause, and had descended on the rabbit-man. And although she was most anxious to discourage the present vein of thought, she could not suppress one little sigh—sweeter music to the ear of Kit than ever had been played or dreamed.
"Now, would you really like to know?—you are so wonderfully good," he continued, with his eyes cast down, and every possible appearance of excessive misery; "would you, I mean, do your best, not only not to be offended, but to pity and forgive me, if, or rather supposing that, I were to endeavour to explain, what—what it is, who—who she is—no, no, I do not quite mean that. I scarcely know how to express myself. Things are too many for me."
"Oh, but you must not allow them to be so, Mr. Sharp; indeed, you mustn't. I am sure that you must have a very good mother, from what you told me the other day; and if you have done any harm, though I scarcely can think such a thing of you, the best and most straightforward course is to go and tell your mother everything; and then it is so nice afterwards."
"Yes, to be sure. How wise you are! You seem to know almost everything. I never saw any one like you at all. But the fact is that I am a little too old; I am obliged now to steer my own course in life. My mother is as good as gold, and much better; but she never could understand my feelings."
"Then come in, and tell my dear old Aunt Patch. She is so virtuous, and she always never doubts about anything; she sees the right thing to be done in a moment, and she never listens to arguments. If you will only come in and see her, it might be such a relief to you."
"You seem to mistake me altogether," cried the young man, with his patience gone. "What good could any old aunts do to me? Surely you know who it is that I want!"
"How can I imagine that?"
"Why, you, only you, only you, sweet Grace! I should like to see the whole earth swallowed up, if only you and I were left together!"
Grace Oglander blushed at the power of his words, and the pressure of his hand on hers. Then, having plenty of her father's spirit, she fixed her bright sensible eyes on his face, so that he saw that he had better stop. "I am afraid that it is no good," he said.
"I am very much obliged to you," answered Grace, with her fair cheeks full of colour, and her hands drawn carefully back to her sides; "but will you be kind enough to stand up, and let me speak for a moment. I believe that you are very good, and I may say very harmless, and you have helped me in the very kindest way, and I never shall forget your goodness. Ever since you came, I am sure, I have been glad to think of you; and your dogs, and your gun, and your fishing-rod reminded me of my father; and I am very, very sorry, that what you have just said will prevent me from thinking any more about you, or coming anywhere, into any kind of places, where there are trees like this, again. I ought to have done it—at least, I mean, I never ought to have done it at all; but I did think that you were so nice; and now you have undeceived me. I know who your father is very well, although I have seldom seen him; and though I dislike the law, I declare that would not have mattered very much to me. But you do not even know my name, as several times you have proved to me; and how you can ride thirty miles from Oxford, in all sorts of weather, without being tired, and your dogs so fresh, has always been a puzzle to me."
"Thirty miles from Oxford!" Christopher Sharp cried, in great amazement; for in the very lowest condition of the heart figures will maintain themselves.
"Yes; thirty miles, or thirty leagues. Sometimes I hear one thing, and sometimes the other."
"Where you are standing now is about seven miles and three-quarters from Summer-town gate!"
"Surely, Mr. Sharp, you are laughing at me! How far am I from Beckley, then, according to your calculation?"
"How did you ever hear of Beckley? It is quite a little village. A miserable little place!"
"Indeed, then, it is not. It is the very finest place in all the world; or at any rate the nicest, and the dearest, and the prettiest!"
"But how can you, just come from America, have such an opinion of such a little hole?"
"A little hole! Why, it stands on a hill! You never can have been near it, if you think of calling it a 'hole!' And as for my coming from America, you seem to have no geography. I have never been further away from darling Beckley, to my knowledge, than I am now."
Kit Sharp looked at her with greater amazement than that with which she looked at him. And then with one accord they spied a fat man coming along the hollow, and trying not to glance at them. With keen young instinct they knew that this villain was purely intent upon watching them.
"Come again, if you please, to-morrow," said Grace, while pretending to gaze at the clouds; "you have told me such things that I never shall sleep. Come earlier, and wait for me. Not that you must think anything; only that now you are bound, as a gentleman, to go on with what you were telling me."
If Grace had only stayed five minutes longer in the place where she was when the fat man came in sight, her eyes and heart would have been delighted by the appearance of a true old friend. But she felt so much terror of that stout person, who always seemed to be watching her afar, that in spite of the extraordinary interest aroused by some of her companion's words, as well as by his manner, she could not help running away abruptly, and taking shelter in the little bowered cottage.
Meanwhile, the stout man in the white frock coat slouched along the furzy valley, with a clownish step. He carried a long pig-whip, and now and then indulged in a crack or flick at some imaginary pig, while a crafty grin, or a wink of one little eye, enlivened his heavy countenance. He was clearly aware of all that had been happening in the wood above him, for the buds as yet rather served to guide the lines of sight than to baffle them; but he showed no desire to interfere, for instead of taking the cross-path, which would have brought him face to face with Kit, he kept down the glade towards the timber-track, which led in another direction. By the side of the little brook he turned the corner of a thick holly-bush, and suddenly met his brother, Master Zacchary Cripps, the Carrier.
The Carrier was in no pleasant mood; his eyes were stern and steadfast, and the colour of his healthy cheeks was deepened into crimson. He bore with a bent arm and set muscle the sceptral whip of the family, bound with spiral brass, and newly fitted with a heavy lash. Moreover, he had come with his Sunday hat on, and his air and walk were menacing. Leviticus started and turned pale, and his cunning eyes glanced for a chance of escape.
"Thou goest not hence, Brother Tickuss," said Cripps, "until thou hast answered what I shall ax, and answered with thine eyes on mine."
"Ax away," said the pigman, sprawling out his fat legs, as if he did not care; "ax away, so long as it be of thy own consarns."
"It is of my own consarns to keep my father's sons from being rogues and liars, and getting into Oxford jail, and into the hands of the hangman."
Leviticus trembled, with fear more than anger. "Thou always was foul-mouthed," he muttered.
"It is a lie!" shouted Zacchary; "as big a lie as ever thou spak'st! I always were that clean of tongue—no odds for that now. Wilt answer me, or will not? Thou liedst to me in Oxford streets the last time as I spake to thee."
"Well, well, maybe a small piece I did; but nothing to lay hold on much. Brother Zak, thou must not be so hard. What man can be always arkerate?"
"A man can spake the truth if he goeth to try, or else a must be a fule. And, Tickuss, thou wast always more rogue than fule. And now here am I, to ax thee spashal what roguery thou beest up to now? Whom hast thou got at the cottage in the wood?"
"Thou'd best way go up there, and see for thyzell. A old lady from Amerikay as wanteth to retaire frout the world. Won't her zend thee a-running down the hill? Ah, and I'd like to see thee, Zak. Her'd lay thy own whip about thee; and her tongue be worse nor a dozen whips!"
Really, while Tickuss was telling this lie, he managed to look at his brother so firmly, in the rally of impudence brought to bay, that Zak for the moment (in spite of all experience) believed him. And the Carrier dreaded—as the lord of swine knew well—nothing so much as a fierce woman's tongue.
"What be the reason, then," he went on, still keeping his eyes on the face of Tickuss, "that thou hast been keeping thyself and thy pigs out o' market, and even thy waife and children to home, same as if 'em had gotten the plague? And what be the reason, Leviticus Cripps, that thou fearest to go to a wholesome public-house, and have thy pint of ale, and see thy neighbours, as behooveth a God-fearing man? To my mind, either thou art gone daft, and the woman should take the lead o' thee, or else thou art screwed out of honest ways."
The Carrier now looked at his brother, with more of pity than suspicion. Tickuss had always been regarded as the weak member of the family, because he laid on more fat than muscle, even in the time of most active growth. And to keep him regularly straight was more than all the set efforts of the brotherhood could, even when he was young, effect. Therefore Zak stood back some little, and the butt of his whip fell down to earth. Leviticus saw his chance, and seized it.
"Consarning of goin' to public-house, I would never be too particular. A man may do it, or a man may not, according to manner of his things at home, or his own little brew, or the temper of his wife. I would not blame him, nor yet praise him, for things as he knoweth best about. To make light of a man for not going to public, is the same as to blame him for stopping from church. A man as careth for good opinion goeth to both, but a cannot always do it. And I ain't a been in church now for more nor a week of Sundays."
The force of this reasoning came home to Cripps. If a man was unable to go to church, there was good room for arguing that his duty towards the public-house must not be too rigidly exacted. Zacchary therefore fetched a sigh. None of the race had broken up at so early an age as that of Tickuss. But still, from his own sad experience, the Carrier knew what pigs were; and he thought that his brother, though younger than himself, might be called away before him.
"Tickuss," he said, "I may a' been too hard. Nobody knows but them that has to do it what the worrit of the roads is. I may a' said a word here and there too much, and a bit outside the Gospel. According to they a man must believe a liar, and forgive un, and forgive un over and over again, the same as I tries to forgive you, Tickuss."
Zacchary offered his hand to his brother, but Leviticus was ashamed to take it. With the load now weighing upon his mind, and the sense in his heart of what Zacchary was, Tickuss—whatever his roguery was—could not make believe to have none of it. So he turned away, with his feelings hurt too much for the clasp fraternal.
"When a man hath no more respect for hiszell," he muttered over his puckered shoulder, "and no more respect for his father and mother avore un, than to call his very next brother but one a rogue and a liar, and a schemer against publics, to my mind he have gone too far, and not shown the manners relied upon."
"Very well," replied Cripps; "just as you like, Tickuss; though I never did hear as I were short of manners; and there's twelve mailes of road as knows better than that. Now, since you go on like that, and there seemeth no chance of supper 'long of 'ee, I shall just walk up to cottage, and ax any orders for the Carrier. Good evening, brother Tickuss."
With these words Zak set off, and Tickuss repented sadly of the evil temper which had forbidden him to shake hands. But now to oppose the Carrier's purpose would be a little too suspicious. He must go his way and take his chance; he was worse than a pig when his mind was made up.
"Go thy way, and be danged to thee!" thought Leviticus, looking after him. "Little thou wilt take, however, but to knock thy thick head again' a wall. Old lady looketh out too sharp for any of they danged old Beckley carcases. Come thee down to our ouze," he shouted in irony after his brother, "and tell us the noos thou hast picked up, and what 'em be doing in Amerikay! A vine time o' life for thee to turn spy!"
It was lucky for him that he made off briskly among thick brushwood and tangled swamps, for Zacchary Cripps at the last word turned round, with his face of a fine plum-colour, and a stamp of rage which made his stiff knees tingle worse than a dozen turnpikes.
"Spy, didst thou say?" he shouted, staring, with his honest, wrathful eyes, through every glimpse of thicket near the spot where his brother had disappeared—"Spy! if thou beest a man come out, and say it again to the face of me! I'll show thee how to spell 'spy' pretty quick. Leviticus Cripps, thou art a coward, to the back of a thief and a sneaking skulk, unless thou comest out of they thick places, to stand to the word thou hast spoken."
Zacchary stood in a wide bay of copse, and he knew that his voice went through the wood; for he spoke with the whole power of his lungs; and the tender leaves above him quivered like a little breath of fringe, and the birds flew out of their ivy castles, and a piece of bare-faced rock in the distance answered him—but nothing else.
"Thou art a bigger man than I be," shouted the Carrier, being carried beyond himself by the state of things; "come out if thou art a man, and hast any blood of Cripps in thee!" But this appeal received no answer, except from the quiet rock again, and a peaceful thrush sitting over his nest, and well accustomed to the woodman's call.
Zacchary had always felt scorn of Tickuss, but now he almost disdained himself for springing of one wedlock with him. He stood in the place where he must be seen if Tickuss wished to see him, until he was quite sure that no such longing existed on his brother's part. Then the family seemed to be lowered so by this behaviour of a leading member, that when the Carrier moved his legs, he had not the spirit to crack his whip.
"What shall us do? Whatever shall us do?" he said to himself more reasonably, with the anger dying out of his kind blue eyes. "A hath insulted of me, but a hath a big family of little uns to kape up. I harn't had no knowledge how that zort o' thing may drive a man out of his proper ways. Like enough it maketh them careful to tell lies, and shun the thrashing."
Taking this view of the case, Master Cripps turned away from the path towards his brother's house, to which, in the flush of first anger, he meant to go, and there to wait for him; and being rather slow of resolution, he naturally set forth again on the track of the one last interrupted. He would go to this cottage in the wood of which he had heard through one of his washerwomen—though none of them had any washing thence—and then he would satisfy his own mind concerning an ugly rumour, which had unsettled that mind since Tuesday. For in his own hearing it had been said—by a woman, it is true, but still a woman who came of a truthful family, and was married now into the like—that Master Leviticus Cripps was harbouring pirates and conspirators, believed to have come from America, in a little place out of the way of all honest people, where the deaf old woman was. Nobody ever had leave to the house; never a butcher, nor baker, nor tea-grocer, nor a milkman, nor even a respectable washerwoman—there was nothing except a great dog to rush out and bite without even barking.
Zacchary had no easy task to find the little cottage of which he had heard, for it lay well back from all thoroughfares, and so embedded among ivied trees, that he passed and re-passed several times before he descried it; and even then he would not have done so if it had not chanced that Miss Patch, who loved good things when she could get them, was about to dine on a juicy roaster, supplied by the wary Leviticus. Grace herself had prepared the currant sauce, before she went forth for her daily walk, and deaf old Margery Daw was stooping over the fierce wood fire on the ground, and basting with a short iron spoon. The double result was a wreath of blue smoke rising from the crooked chimney, and a very rich odour streaming forth from door and window on the vernal air. The eyes and the nose of the Carrier at once presented him with clear impressions.
"Amerikayans understands good living." Giving utterance to this profound and incontrovertible reflection, Cripps came to a halt and sagely considered the situation. The first thing he asked, as usual, was—"How would the law of the land lie?" Here was a lonely, unprotected cottage, inhabited by an elderly foreign lady, who especially sought retirement. Had he any legal right to insist on knowing who she was, and all about her? Would he not rather be a trespasser, and liable to a fine, and perhaps the jail, if he forced himself in, without invitation and wilfully, against the inhabitants' wish? And even if that came to nothing—as it might—could he say that it was a manly and straightforward action on his part? He had no enemy that he knew of, unless it was Black George, the poacher; but there were always plenty of people ready to say ill-natured things about a prosperous neighbour; and like enough they would set it afoot that he had gone spying on a helpless lady, because she had never employed him. And then his brother's reproach, which had so fiercely aroused him, came back to his mind.
Neither was it wholly absent from his thoughts, that a great dog was said to reside on these premises, whose manner was the peculiarly unattractive one of rushing out to bite without a bark. The Carrier had suffered in his time from dogs, as was natural to his calling; and although his flesh was so wholesome that the result had never been serious, he was conscious of a definite desire to defer all increase of experience in that line.
"Spy!" he exclaimed, as he sat down rather to rest his stiff knee than to watch the hut. "That never hath been said of me, and never shall without a lie. But one on 'em might come out, mayhap, and give me some zatisfaction."
Before his words were cool, Miss Patch herself appeared in the doorway. She saw not Cripps, who had happened to put himself in a knowing corner; and being in a quietly savage mood (from desire of pig, and dread that stupid old Margery was murdering pig, by revolving him too near the fire), she cast such a glance at the young leaves around her, as seemed enough to nip them in the bud. Then she threw away something with a scornful sweep, and Cripps believed almost every word his brother had been saying.
"I'll be blessed if I don't scuttle off," he said to himself and the moss he was sitting on. "In my time I have a seen all zorts of womans, but none to come nigh this sample as be come over from Amerikay! Sarveth me right for cooriosity. Amend me if ever I come anigh of any Amerikayans again!"