This blow was so sharp and heavy that I lost for the moment all power to go on. The sense of ill fortune fell upon me, as it falls upon stronger people, when a sudden gleam of hope, breaking through long troubles, mysteriously fades away.
Even the pleasure of indulging in the gloom of evil luck was a thing to be ashamed of now, when I thought of that good man's family thus, without a moment's warning, robbed of love and hope and happiness. But Mrs. Strouss, who often brooded on predestination, imbittered all my thoughts by saying, or rather conveying without words, that my poor fathers taint of some Divine ill-will had re-appeared, and even killed his banker.
Betsy held most Low-Church views, by nature being a Dissenter. She called herself a Baptist, and in some strange way had stopped me thus from ever having been baptized. I do not understand these things, and the battles fought about them; but knowing that my father was a member of the English Church, I resolved to be the same, and told Betsy that she ought not to set up against her master's doctrine. Then she herself became ashamed of trying to convert me, not only because of my ignorance (which made argument like shooting into the sea), but chiefly because she could mention no one of title with such theology.
This settled the question at once; and remembering (to my shame) what opinions I had held even of Suan Isco, while being in the very same predicament myself, reflecting also what Uncle Sam and Firm would have thought of me, had they known it, I anticipated the Major and his dinner party by going to a quiet ancient clergyman, who examined me, and being satisfied with little, took me to an old City church of deep and damp retirement. And here, with a great din of traffic outside, and a mildewy depth of repose within, I was presented by certain sponsors (the clerk and his wife and his wife's sister), and heard good words, and hope to keep the impression, both outward and inward, gently made upon me.
I need not say that I kept, and now received with authority, my old name; though the clerk prefixed an aspirate to it, and indulged in two syllables only. But the ancient parson knew its meaning, and looked at me with curiosity; yet, being a gentleman of the old school, put never a question about it.
Now this being done, and full tidings thereof sent off to Mrs. Hockin, to save trouble to the butcher, or other disappointment, I scarcely knew how to be moving next, though move I must before very long. For it cost me a great deal of money to stay in European Square like this, albeit Herr Strouss was of all men the most generous, by his own avowal, and his wife (by the same test) noble-hearted among women. Yet each of them spoke of the other's pecuniary views in such a desponding tone (when the other was out of the way), and so lamented to have any thing at all to say about cash—by compulsion of the other—also both, when met together, were so large and reckless, and not to be insulted by a thought of payment, that it came to pass that my money did nothing but run away between them.
This was not their fault at all, but all my own, for being unable to keep my secret about the great nugget. The Major had told me not to speak of this, according to wise experience; and I had not the smallest intention of doing an atom of mischief in that way; but somehow or other it came out one night when I was being pitied for my desolation. And all the charges against me began to be doubled from that moment.
If this had been all, I should not have cared so much, being quite content that my money should go as fast as it came in to me. But there was another thing here which cost me as much as my board and lodgings and all the rest of my expenses. And that was the iron pump in European Square. For this pump stood in the very centre of a huddled district of famine, filth, and fever. When once I had seen from the leads of our house the quag of reeking life around, the stubs and snags of chimney-pots, the gashes among them entitled streets, and the broken blains called houses, I was quite ashamed of paying any thing to become a Christian.
Betsy, who stood by me, said that it was better than it used to be, and that all these people lived in comfort of their own ideas, fiercely resented all interference, and were good to one another in their own rough way. It was more than three years since there had been a single murder among them, and even then the man who was killed confessed that he deserved it. She told me, also, that in some mining district of Wales, well known to her, things were a great deal worse than here, although the people were not half so poor. And finally, looking at a ruby ring which I had begged her to wear always, for the sake of her truth to me, she begged me to be wiser than to fret about things that I could not change. “All these people, whose hovels I saw, had the means of grace before them, and if they would not stretch forth their hands, it was only because they were vessels of wrath. Her pity was rather for our poor black brethren who had never enjoyed no opportunities, and therefore must be castaways.”
Being a stranger, and so young, and accustomed to receive my doctrine (since first I went to America), I dropped all intention of attempting any good in places where I might be murdered. But I could not help looking at the pump which was in front, and the poor things who came there for water, and, most of all, the children. With these it was almost the joy of the day, and perhaps the only joy, to come into this little open space and stand, and put their backs up stiffly, and stare about, ready for some good luck to turn up—such as a horse to hold, or a man coming out of the docks with a half-penny to spare—and then, in failure of such golden hope, to dash about, in and out, after one another, splashing, and kicking over their own cans, kettles, jars, or buckets, and stretching their dirty little naked legs, and showing very often fine white chests, and bright teeth wet with laughter. And then, when this chivy was done, and their quick little hearts beat aloud with glory, it was pretty to see them all rally round the pump, as crafty as their betters, and watching with sly humor each other's readiness to begin again.
Then suddenly a sense of neglected duty would seize some little body with a hand to its side, nine times out of ten a girl, whose mother, perhaps, lay sick at home, and a stern idea of responsibility began to make the buckets clank. Then might you see, if you cared to do so, orderly management have its turn—a demand for pins and a tucking up of skirts (which scarcely seemed worthy of the great young fuss), large children scolding little ones not a bit more muddy than themselves, the while the very least child of all, too young as yet for chivying, and only come for company, would smooth her comparatively clean frock down, and look up at her sisters with condemnatory eyes.
Trivial as they were, these things amused me much, and made a little checker of reflected light upon the cloud of selfish gloom, especially when the real work began, and the children, vying with one another, set to at the iron handle. This was too large for their little hands to grasp, and by means of some grievance inside, or perhaps through a cruel trick of the plumber, up went the long handle every time small fingers were too confiding, and there it stood up like the tail of a rampant cow, or a branch inaccessible, until an old shawl or the cord of a peg-top could be cast up on high to reduce it. But some engineering boy, “highly gifted,” like Uncle Sam's self, “with machinery,” had discovered an ingenious cure for this. With the help of the girls he used to fasten a fat little thing, about twelve months old, in the bend at the middle of the handle, and there (like a ham on the steelyard) hung this baby and enjoyed seesaw, and laughed at its own utility.
I never saw this, and the splashing and dribbling and play and bright revelry of water, without forgetting all sad counsel and discretion, and rushing out as if the dingy pump were my own delicious Blue River. People used to look at me from the windows with pity and astonishment, supposing me to be crazed or frantic, especially the Germans. For to run out like this, without a pocket full of money, would have been insanity; and to run out with it, to their minds, was even clearer proof of that condition. For the money went as quickly as the water of the pump; on this side and on that it flew, each child in succession making deeper drain upon it, in virtue of still deeper woes. They were dreadful little story-tellers, I am very much afraid; and the long faces pulled, as soon as I came out, in contrast with all the recent glee and frolic, suggested to even the youngest charity suspicions of some inconsistency. However, they were so ingenious and clever that they worked my pockets like the pump itself, only with this unhappy difference, that the former had no inexhaustible spring of silver, or even of copper.
And thus, by a reason (as cogent as any of more exalted nature), was I driven back to my head-quarters, there to abide till a fresh supply should come. For Uncle Sam, generous and noble as he was, did not mean to let me melt all away at once my share of the great Blue River nugget, any more than to make ducks and drakes of his own. Indeed, that rock of gold was still untouched, and healthily reposing in a banker's cellar in the good town of Sacramento. People were allowed to go in and see it upon payment of a dollar, and they came out so thirsty from feasting upon it that a bar was set up, and a pile of money made—all the gentlemen, and ladies even worse than they, taking a reckless turn about small money after seeing that. But dear Uncle Sam refused every cent of the profit of all this excitable work. It was wholly against his wish that any thing so artificial should be done at all, and his sense of religion condemned it. He said, in his very first letter to me, that even a heathen must acknowledge this champion nugget as the grandest work of the Lord yet discovered in America—a country more full of all works of the Lord than the rest of the world put together. And to keep it in a cellar, without any air or sun, grated harshly upon his ideas of right.
However, he did not expect every body to think exactly as he did, and if they could turn a few dollars upon it, they were welcome, as having large families. And the balance might go to his credit against the interest on any cash advanced to him. Not that he meant to be very fast with this, never having run into debt in all his life.
This, put shortly, was the reason why I could not run to the pump any longer. I had come into England with money enough to last me (according to the Sawyer's calculations) for a year and a half of every needful work; whereas, in less than half that time, I was arriving at my last penny. This reminded me of my dear father, who was nearly always in trouble about money (although so strictly upright); and at first I was proud to be like him about this, till I came to find the disadvantages.
It must not even for a moment be imagined that this made any difference in the behavior of any one toward me. Mrs. Strouss, Herr Strouss, the lady on the stairs, and a very clever woman who had got no rooms, but was kindly accommodated every where, as well as the baron on the first floor front, and the gentleman from a hotel at Hanover, who looked out the other way, and even the children at the pump—not one made any difference toward me (as an enemy might, perhaps, suppose) because my last half crown was gone. It was admitted upon every side that I ought to be forgiven for my random cast of money, because I knew no better, and was sure to have more in a very little time. And the children of the pump came to see me go away, through streets of a mile and a half, I should think; and they carried my things, looking after one another, so that none could run away. And being forbidden at the platform gate, for want of respectability, they set up a cheer, and I waved my hat, and promised, amidst great applause, to come back with it full of sixpences.
Major Hockin brought the only fly as yet to be found in Bruntsea, to meet me at Newport, where the railway ended at present, for want of further encouragement.
“Very soon you go,” he cried out to the bulkheads, or buffers, or whatever are the things that close the career of a land-engine. “Station-master, you are very wise in putting in your very best cabbage plants there. You understand your own company. Well done! If I were to offer you a shilling apiece for those young early Yorks, what would you say, now?”
“Weel, a think I should say nah, Sir,” the Scotch station-master made answer, with a grin, while he pulled off his cap of office and put on a dissolute Glengary. “They are a veery fine young kail, that always pays for planting.”
“The villain!” said the Major, as I jumped into the fly. “However, I suppose he does quite right. Set a thief to watch a thief. The company are big rogues, and he tries to be a bigger. We shall cut through his garden in about three months, just when his cabbages are getting firm, and their value will exceed that of pine-apples. The surveyor will come down and certify, and the 'damage to crops' will be at least five pounds, when they have no right to sow even mustard and cress, and a saucepan would hold all the victuals on the land.”
From this I perceived that my host was as full of his speculative schemes as ever; and soon he made the driver of the one-horse fly turn aside from the unfenced road and take the turf. “Coachman,” he cried, “just drive along the railway; you won't have the chance much longer.”
There was no sod turned yet and no rod set up; but the driver seemed to know what was meant, and took us over the springy turf where once had run the river. And the salt breath of the sea came over the pebble ridge, full of appetite and briskness, after so much London.
“It is one of the saddest things I ever heard of,” Major Hockin began to say to me. “Poor Shovelin! poor Shovelin! A man of large capital—the very thing we want. It might have been the making of this place. I have very little doubt that I must have brought him to see our great natural advantages—the beauty of the situation, the salubrity of the air, the absence of all clay, or marsh, or noxious deposit, the bright crisp turf, and the noble underlay of chalk, which (if you perceive my meaning) can not retain any damp, but transmits it into sweet natural wells. Why, driver, where the devil are you driving us?”
“No fear, your honor. I know every trick of it. It won't come over the wheels, I do believe, and it does all the good in the world to his sand-cracks. Whoa-ho, my boy, then! And the young lady's feet might go up upon the cushion, if her boots is thin, Sir; and Mr. Rasper will excuse of it.”
“What the”—something hot—“do you mean, Sir?” the Major roared over the water, which seemed to be deepening as we went on. “Pull out this instant; pull out, I tell you, or you shall have three months' hard labor. May I be d——d now—my dear, I beg your pardon for speaking with such sincerity—I simply mean, may I go straightway to the devil, if I don't put this fellow on the tread-mill. Oh, you can pull out now, then, can you?”
“If your honor pleases, I never did pull in,” the poor driver answered, being frightened at the excitement of the lord of the manor. “My orders was, miss, to drive along the line coming on now just to Bruntsea, and keep in the middle of that same I did, and this here little wet is a haxident—a haxident of the full moon, I do assure you, and the wind coming over the sea, as you might say. These pebbles is too round, miss, to stick to one another; you couldn't expect it of them; and sometimes the water here and there comes a-leaking like through the bottom. I have seed it so, ever since I can remember.”
“I don't believe a word of it,” the Major said, as we waited a little for the vehicle to drain, and I made a nosegay of the bright sea flowers. “Tell me no lies, Sir; you belong to the West Bruntseyans, and you have driven us into a vile bog to scare me. They have bribed you. I see the whole of it. Tell me the truth, and you shall have five shillings.”
The driver looked over the marshes as if he had never received such an offer before. Five shillings for a falsehood would have seemed the proper thing, and have called for a balance of considerations, and made a demand upon his energies. But to earn five shillings by the truth had never fallen to his luck before; and he turned to me, because I smiled, and he said, “Will you taste the water, miss?”
“Bless me!” cried the Major, “now I never thought of that. Common people have such ways about things they are used to! I might have stood here for a month, and never have thought of that way to settle it. Ridiculously simple. Give me a taste, Erema. Ah, that is the real beauty of our coast, my dear! The strongest proportion of the saline element—I should know the taste of it any where. No sea-weed, no fishy particles, no sludge, no beards of oysters. The pure, uncontaminated, perfect brine, that sets every male and female on his legs, varicose, orthopedic—I forget their scientifics, but I know the smack of it.”
“Certainly,” I said, “it is beautifully salt. It will give you an appetite for dinner, Major Hockin. I could drink a pint of it, after all that smoke. But don't you think it is a serious thing for the sea itself to come pouring through the bottom of this pebble bank in this way?”
“Not at all. No, I rather like it. It opens up many strictly practical ideas. It adds very much to the value of the land. For instance, a 'salt-lick,' as your sweet Yankees call it—and set up an infirmary for foot and mouth disease. And better still, the baths, the baths, my dear. No expense for piping, or pumping, or any thing. Only place your marble at the proper level, and twice a day you have the grand salubrious sparkling influx of ocean's self, self-filtered, and by its own operation permeated with a fine siliceous element. What foreign mud could compete with such a bath?”
“But supposing there should come too much of it,” I said, “and wash both the baths and the bathers away?”
“Such an idea is ridiculous. It can be adjusted to a nicety. I am very glad I happened to observe this thing, this—this noble phenomenon. I shall speak to Montague about it at once, before I am half an hour older. My dear, you have made a conquest; I quite forgot to tell you; but never mind that for the present. Driver, here is half a crown for you. Your master will put down the fly to my account. He owes me a heriot. I shall claim his best beast, the moment he gets one without a broken wind.”
As the Major spoke, he got out at his own door with all his wonted alacrity; but instead of offering me his hand, as he always had done in London, he skipped up his nine steps, on purpose (as I saw) that somebody else might come down for me. And this was Sir Montague Hockin, as I feared was only too likely from what had been said. If I had even suspected that this gentleman was at Bruntlands, I would have done my utmost to stay where I was, in spite of all absence of money. Betsy would gladly have allowed me to remain, without paying even a farthing, until it should become convenient. Pride had forbidden me to speak of this; but I would have got over that pride much rather than meet this Sir Montague Hockin thus. Some instinct told me to avoid him altogether; and having so little now of any other guidance, I attached, perhaps, foolish importance to that.
However, it was not the part of a lady to be rude to any one through instinct; and I knew already that in England young women are not quite such masters of their own behavior as in the far West they are allowed to be. And so I did my best that, even in my eyes, he should not see how vexed I was at meeting him. And soon it appeared that this behavior, however painful to me, was no less wise than good, because both with my host and hostess this new visitor was already at the summit of all good graces. He had conquered the Major by admiration of all his schemes and upshots, and even offering glimmers of the needful money in the distance; and Mrs. Hockin lay quite at his feet ever since he had opened a hamper and produced a pair of frizzled fowls, creatures of an extraordinary aspect, toothed all over like a dandelion plant, with every feather sticking inside out. When I saw them, I tried for my life not to laugh, and biting my lips very hard, quite succeeded, until the cock opened up a pair of sleepy eyes, covered with comb and very sad inversions, and glancing with complacency at his wife (who stood beneath him, even more turned inside out), capered with his twiggy legs, and gave a long, sad crow. Mrs. Hockin looked at him with intense delight.
“Erema, is it possible that you laugh? I thought that you never laughed, Erema. At any rate, if you ever do indulge, you might choose a fitter opportunity, I think. You have spoiled his demonstration altogether—see, he does not understand such unkindness—and it is the very first he has uttered since he came. Oh, poor Fluffsky!”
“I am very, very sorry. But how was I to help it? I would not, on any account, have stopped him if I had known he was so sensitive. Fluffsky, do please to begin again.”
“These beggars are nothing at all, I can assure you,” said Sir Montague, coming to my aid, when Fluffsky spurned all our prayers for one more crow. “Mrs. Hockin, if you really would like to have a fowl that even Lady Clara Crowcombe has not got, you shall have it in a week, or a fortnight, or, at any rate, a month, if I can manage it. They are not to be had except through certain channels, and the fellows who write the poultry books have never even heard of them.”
“Oh, how delighted I shall be! Lady Clara despises all her neighbors so. But do they lay eggs? Half the use of keeping poultry, when you never kill them, is to get an egg for breakfast; and Major Hockin looks round and says, 'Now is this our own?' and I can not say that it is; and I am vexed with the books, and he begins to laugh at me. People said it was for want of chalk, but they walk upon nothing but chalk, as you can see.”
“And their food, Mrs. Hockin. They are walking upon that. Starve them for a week, and forty eggs at least will reward you for stern discipline.”
But all this little talk I only tell to show how good and soft Mrs. Hockin was; and her husband, in spite of all his self-opinion, and resolute talk about money and manorial dues, in his way, perhaps, was even less to be trusted to get his cash out of any poor and honest man.
On the very day after my return from London I received a letter from “Colonel Gundry” (as we always called the Sawyer now, through his kinship to the Major), and, as it can not easily be put into less compass, I may as well give his very words:
“DEAR MISS REMA,—Your last favor to hand, with thanks. Every thing is going on all right with us. The mill is built up, and goes better than ever; more orders on hand than we can get through. We have not cracked the big nugget yet. Expect the government to take him at a trifle below value, for Washington Museum. Must have your consent; but, for my part, would rather let him go there than break him. Am ready to lose a few dollars upon him, particularly as he might crack up all quartzy in the middle. They offer to take him by weight at three dollars and a half per pound below standard. Please say if agreeable.
“I fear, my dear, that there are bad times coming for all of us here in this part. Not about money, but a long sight worse; bad will, and contention, and rebellion, perhaps. What we hear concerning it is not much here; but even here thoughts are very much divided. Ephraim takes a different view from mine; which is not a right thing for a grandson to do; and neighbor Sylvester goes with him. The Lord send agreement and concord among us; but, if He doeth so, He must change his mind first, for every man is borrowing his neighbor's gun.
“If there is any thing that you can do to turn Ephraim back to his duty, my dear, I am sure that, for love of us, you will do it. If Firm was to run away from me now, and go fighting on behalf of slavery, I never should care more for naught upon this side of Jordan; and the new mill might go to Jericho; though it does look uncommon handsome now, I can assure you, and tears through its work like a tiger.
“Noting symptoms in your last of the price of things in England, and having carried over some to your account, inclosed please to find a bill for five hundred dollars, though not likely to be wanted yet. Save a care of your money, my dear; but pay your way handsome, as a Castlewood should do. Jowler goes his rounds twice a day looking for you; and somebody else never hangs his hat up without casting one eye at the corner you know. Sylvester's girl was over here last week, dashing about as usual. If Firm goes South, he may have her, for aught I care, and never see saw-mill again. But I hope that the Lord will spare my old days such disgrace and tribulation.
“About you know what, my dear, be not overanxious. I have been young, and now am old, as the holy Psalmist says; and the more I see of the ways of men, the less I verily think of them. Their good esteem, their cap in hand, their fair fame, as they call it, goes by accident, and fortune, the whim of the moment, and the way the clever ones have of tickling them. A great man laughs at the flimsy of it, and a good one goes to his conscience. Your father saw these things at their value. I have often grieved that you can not see them so; but perhaps I have liked you none the worse, my dear.
“Don't forget about going South. A word from you may stop him. It is almost the only hope I have, and even that may be too late. Suan Isco and Martin send messages. The flowers are on your father's grave. I have got a large order for pine cradles in great haste, but have time to be,
“Truly yours,
“SAMPSON GUNDRY.”
That letter, while it relieved me in one way, from the want of money, cost me more than ten times five hundred dollars' worth of anxiety. The Sawyer had written to me twice ere this—kind, simple letters, but of no importance, except for their goodness and affection. But now it was clear that when he wrote this letter he must have been sadly put out and upset. His advice to me was beyond all value; but he seemed to have kept none at home for himself. He was carried quite out of his large, staid ways when he wrote those bitter words about poor Firm—the very apple of his eye, as the holy Psalmist says. And, knowing the obstinacy of them both, I dreaded clash between them.
Having got money enough to last long with one brought up to simplicity, and resolved to have nothing to do for a while with charity or furnished lodgings (what though kept by one's own nurse), I cast about now for good reason to be off from all the busy works at Bruntsea. So soon after such a tremendous blow, it was impossible for me to push my own little troubles and concerns upon good Mr. Shovelin's family, much as I longed to know what was to become of my father's will, if any thing. But my desire to be doing something, or, at least, to get away for a time from Bruntsea, was largely increased by Sir Montague Hockin's strange behavior toward me.
That young man, if still he could be called young—which, at my age, scarcely seemed to be his right, for he must have been ten years older than poor Firm—began more and more every day to come after me, just when I wanted to be quite alone. There was nothing more soothing to my thoughts and mind (the latter getting quiet from the former, I suppose) than for the whole of me to rest a while in such a little scollop of the shingle as a new-moon tide, in little crescents, leaves just below high-water mark. And now it was new-moon tide again, a fortnight after the flooding of our fly by the activity of the full moon; and, feeling how I longed to understand these things—which seem to be denied to all who are of the same sex as the moon herself—I sat in a very nice nick, where no wind could make me look worse than nature willed. But of my own looks I never did think twice, unless there was any one to speak of such a subject.
Here I was sitting in the afternoon of a gentle July day, wondering by what energy of nature all these countless pebbles were produced, and not even a couple to be found among them fit to lie side by side and purely tally with each other. Right and left, for miles and miles, millions multiplied into millions; yet I might hold any one in my palm and be sure that it never had been there before. And of the quiet wavelets even, taking their own time and manner, in default of will of wind, all to come and call attention to their doom by arching over, and endeavoring to make froth, were any two in sound and size, much more in shape and shade, alike? Every one had its own little business, of floating pop-weed or foam bubbles or of blistered light, to do; and every one, having done it, died and subsided into its successor.
“A trifle sentimental, are we?” cried a lively voice behind me, and the waves of my soft reflections fell, and instead of them stood Sir Montague Hockin, with a hideous parasol.
I never received him with worse grace, often as I had repulsed him; but he was one of those people who think that women are all whims and ways.
“I grieve to intrude upon large ideas,” he said, as I rose and looked at him, “but I act under positive orders now. A lady knows what is best for a lady. Mrs. Hockin has been looking from the window, and she thinks that you ought not to be sitting in the sun like this. There has been a case of sun-stroke at Southbourne—a young lady meditating under the cliff—and she begs you to accept this palm leaf.”
I thought of the many miles I had wandered under the fierce Californian sun; but I would not speak to him of that. “Thank you,” I said; “it was very kind of her to think of it, and of you to do it. But will it be safe for you to go back without it?”
“Oh, why should I do so?” he answered, with a tone of mock pathos which provoked me always, though I never could believe it to be meant in ridicule of me, for that would have been too low a thing; and, besides, I never spoke so. “Could you bear to see me slain by the shafts of the sun? Miss Castlewood, this parasol is amply large for both of us.”
I would not answer him in his own vein, because I never liked his vein at all; though I was not so entirely possessed as to want every body to be like myself.
“Thank you; I mean to stay here,” I said; “you may either leave the parasol or take it, whichever will be less troublesome. At any rate, I shall not use it.”
A gentleman, according to my ideas, would have bowed and gone upon his way; but Sir Montague Hockin would have no rebuff. He seemed to look upon me as a child, such as average English girls, fresh from little schools, would be. Nothing more annoyed me, after all my thoughts and dream of some power in myself, than this.
“Perhaps I might tell you a thing or two,” he said, while I kept gazing at some fishing-boats, and sat down again, as a sign for him to go—“a little thing or two of which you have no idea, even in your most lonely musings, which might have a very deep interest for you. Do you think that I came to this hole to see the sea? Or that fussy old muff of a Major's doings?”
“Perhaps you would like me to tell him your opinion of his intellect and great plans,” I answered. “And after all his kindness to you!”
“You never will do that,” he said; “because you are a lady, and will not repeat what is said in confidence. I could help you materially in your great object, if you would only make a friend of me.”
“And what would your own object be? The pure anxiety to do right?”
“Partly, and I might say mainly, that; also an ambition for your good opinion, which seems so inaccessible. But you will think me selfish if I even hint at any condition of any kind. Every body I have ever met with likes me, except Miss Castlewood.”
As he spoke he glanced down his fine amber-colored beard, shining in the sun, and even in the sun showing no gray hair (for a reason which Mrs. Hockin told me afterward), and he seemed to think it hard that a man with such a beard should be valued lightly.
“I do not see why we should talk,” I said, “about either likes or dislikes. Only, if you have any thing to tell, I shall be very much obliged to you.”
This gentleman looked at me in a way which I have often observed in England. A general idea there prevails that the free and enlightened natives of the West are in front of those here in intelligence, and to some extent, therefore, in dishonesty. But there must be many cases where the two are not the same.
“No,” I replied, while he was looking at his buttons, which had every British animal upon them; “I mean nothing more than the simple thing I say. If you ought to tell me any thing, tell it. I am accustomed to straightforward people. But they disappoint one by their never knowing any thing.”
“But I know something,” he answered, with a nod of grave, mysterious import; “and perhaps I will tell you some day, when admitted, if ever I have such an honor, to some little degree of friendship.”
“Oh, please not to think of yourself,” I exclaimed, in a manner which must have amused him. “In such a case, the last thing that you should do is that. Think only of what is right and honorable, and your duty toward a lady. Also your duty to the laws of your country. I am not at all sure that you ought not to be arrested. But perhaps it is nothing at all, after all; only something invented to provoke me.”
“In that case, I can only drop the subject,” he answered, with that stern gleam of the eyes which I had observed before, and detested. “I was also to tell you that we dine to-day an hour before the usual time, that my cousin may go out in the boat for whiting. The sea will be as smooth as glass. Perhaps you will come with us.”
With these words, he lifted his hat and went off, leaving me in a most uncomfortable state, as he must have known if he had even tried to think. For I could not get the smallest idea what he meant; and, much as I tried to believe that he must be only pretending, for reasons of his own, to have something important to tell me, scarcely was it possible to be contented so. A thousand absurd imaginations began to torment me as to what he meant. He lived in London so much, for instance, that he had much quicker chance of knowing whatever there was to know; again, he was a man of the world, full of short, sharp sagacity, and able to penetrate what I could not; then, again, he kept a large account with Shovelin, Wayte, and Shovelin, as Major Hockin chanced to say; and I knew not that a banker's reserve is much deeper than his deposit; moreover—which, to my mind, was almost stronger proof than any thing—Sir Montague Hockin was of smuggling pedigree, and likely to be skillful in illicit runs of knowledge.
However, in spite of all this uneasiness, not another word would I say to him about it, waiting rather for him to begin again upon it. But, though I waited and waited, as, perhaps, with any other person I scarcely could have done, he would not condescend to give me even another look about it.
Disliking that gentleman more and more for his supercilious conduct and certainty of subduing me, I naturally turned again to my good host and hostess. But here there was very little help or support to be obtained at present. Major Hockin was laying the foundations of “The Bruntsea Assembly-Rooms, Literary Institute, Mutual Improvement Association, Lyceum, and Baths, from sixpence upward;” while Mrs. Hockin had a hatch of “White Sultans,” or, rather, a prolonged sitting of eggs, fondly hoped to hatch at last, from having cost so much, like a chicken-hearted Conference. Much as I sorrowed at her disappointment—for the sitting cost twelve guineas—I could not feel quite guiltless of a petty and ignoble smile, when, after hoping against hope, upon the thirtieth day she placed her beautifully sound eggs in a large bowl of warm water, in which they floated as calmly as if their price was a penny a dozen. The poor lady tried to believe that they were spinning with vitality; but at last she allowed me to break one, and lo! it had been half boiled by the advertiser. “This is very sad,” cried Mrs. Hockin; and the patient old hen, who was come in a basket of hay to see the end of it, echoed with a cluck that sentiment.
These things being so, I was left once more to follow my own guidance, which had seemed, in the main, to be my fortune ever since my father died. For one day Mr. Shovelin had appeared, to my great joy and comfort, as a guide and guardian; but, alas! for one day only. And, except for his good advice and kind paternal conduct to me, it seemed at present an unlucky thing that I had ever discovered him. Not only through deep sense of loss and real sorrow for him, but also because Major Hockin, however good and great and generous, took it unreasonably into his head that I threw him over, and threw myself (as with want of fine taste he expressed it) into the arms of the banker. This hurt me very much, and I felt that Major Hockin could never have spoken so hastily unless his hair had been originally red; and so it might be detected, even now, where it survived itself, though blanched where he brushed it into that pretentious ridge. Sometimes I liked that man, when his thoughts were large and liberal; but no sooner had he said a fine brave thing than he seemed to have an after-thought not to go too far with it; just as he had done about the poor robbed woman from the steerage and the young man who pulled out his guinea. I paid him for my board and lodging, upon a scale settled by Uncle Sam himself, at California prices; therefore I am under no obligation to conceal his foibles. But, take him altogether, he was good and brave and just, though unable, from absence of inner light, to be to me what Uncle Sam had been.
When I perceived that the Major condemned my simple behavior in London, and (if I may speak it, as I said it to myself) “blew hot and cold” in half a minute—hot when I thought of any good things to be done, and cold as soon as he became the man to do them—also, when I remembered what a chronic plague was now at Bruntsea, in the shape of Sir Montague, who went to and fro, but could never be trusted to be far off, I resolved to do what I had long been thinking of, and believed that my guardian, if he had lived another day, would have recommended. I resolved to go and see Lord Castlewood, my father's first cousin and friend in need.
When I asked my host and hostess what they thought of this, they both declared that it was the very thing they were at the point of advising, which, however, they had forborne from doing because I never took advice. At this, as being such a great exaggeration, I could not help smiling seriously; but I could not accept their sage opinion that, before I went to see my kinsman, I ought to write and ask his leave to do so. For that would have made it quite a rude thing to call, as I must still have done, if he should decline beforehand to receive me. Moreover, it would look as if I sought an invitation, while only wanting an interview. Therefore, being now full of money again, I hired the flyman who had made us taste the water, and taking train at Newport, and changing at two or three places as ordered, crossed many little streams, and came to a fair river, which proved to be the Thames itself, a few miles above Reading.
In spite of all the larger lessons of travel, adventure, and tribulation, my heart was throbbing with some rather small feelings, as for the first time I drew near to the home of my forefathers. I should have been sorry to find it ugly or mean, or lying in a hole, or even modern or insignificant; and when none of these charges could be brought against it, I was filled with highly discreditable pain that Providence had not seen fit to issue me into this world in the masculine form; in which case this fine property would, according to the rules of mankind, have been mine. However, I was very soon ashamed of such ideas, and sat down on a bank to dispel them with the free and fair view around me.
The builder of that house knew well both where to place and how to shape it, so as not to spoil the site. It stood near the brow of a bosoming hill, which sheltered it, both with wood and clevice, from the rigor and fury of the north and east; while in front the sloping foreground widened its soft lap of green. In bays and waves of rolling grass, promontoried, here and there, by jutting copse or massive tree, and jotted now and then with cattle as calm as boats at anchor, the range of sunny upland fell to the reedy fringe and clustered silence of deep river meadows. Here the Thames, in pleasant bends of gentleness and courtesy, yet with will of its own ways, being now a plenteous river, spreads low music, and holds mirror to the woods and hills and fields, casting afar a broad still gleam, and on the banks presenting tremulous infinitude of flash.
Now these things touched me all the more because none of them belonged to me; and, after thus trying to enlarge my views, I got up with much better heart, and hurried on to have it over, whatever it might be. A girl brought up in the real English way would have spent her last shilling to drive up to the door in the fly at the station—a most sad machine—but I thought it no disgrace to go in a more becoming manner.
One scarcely ever acts up to the force of situation; and I went as quietly into that house as if it were Betsy Bowen's. If any body had been rude to me, or asked who I was, or a little thing of that sort, my spirit might have been up at once, and found, as usually happens then, good reason to go down afterward. But happily there was nothing of the kind. An elderly man, without any gaudy badges, opened the door very quietly, and begged my pardon, before I spoke, for asking me to speak softly. It was one of his lordship's very worst days, and when he was so, every sound seemed to reach him. I took the hint, and did not speak at all, but followed him over deep matting into a little room to which he showed me. And then I gave him a little note, written before I left Bruntsea, and asked him whether he thought that his master was well enough to attend to it.
He looked at me in a peculiar manner, for he had known my father well, having served from his youth in the family; but he only asked whether my message was important. I answered that it was, but that I would wait for another time rather than do any harm. But he said that, however ill his master was, nothing provoked him more than to find that any thing was neglected through it. And before I could speak again he was gone with my letter to Lord Castlewood.