CHAPTER XXXVII.A BOWL OF BROTH.The words were hardly out of Honor's mouth before the party were surprised by a noise of voices and feet in the kitchen, and a cry as of dismay or fear. A moment after the tramp was in the passage the parlour door was flung open, and Sam Voaden, Hillary Nanspian and his father, Piper, Charles Luxmore, and Mrs. Veale came in, the latter gripped firmly by Piper and Charles.'Here I am,' said young Luxmore, with his usual swagger, and with some elation in his tone, 'here I am, come to know what the deuce you mean, Mr. Langford, charging me—a gentleman—not to the face but behind the back, with stealing your money? Look here, Sam, produce the box. There is your cash—whether right or not I cannot say. I have taken none of it. I did not remove the case. Tell 'em where you found it, Sam.''I found it in Wellon's Mound,' said the young man appealed to. 'I've been to Plymouth after Charles. I didn't believe he was a thief, but I'd hard matter to find him. Howsomedever, I did in the end, and here he be. He came along ready enough. He was out of money—wanted to go to America, but had not the means of paying his passage, and not inclined to work it.''I've lost a finger,' exclaimed Charles. 'How could I work, maimed as I am?—a wounded soldier without a pension! That is shameful of an ungrateful country.''He took on badly,' continued Sam, 'when I told him that Mr. Langford said he had stolen his cashbox with a thousand pounds.''I'm a Luxmore of Coombe Park,' said Charles, drawing himself up. 'I'm not one of your vulgar thieves, not I. Mrs. Veale did her best to tempt me to take it, but I resisted it manfully. At last I ran away, afraid lest she should over-persuade me and get me into trouble, when I saw she had actually got the box. I ran away from Mrs. Veale, and because ninepence a day wasn't sufficient to detain me. I wasn't over-sure neither that I hadn't, against my intention, broke the neck of Larry Nanspian. Now you know my reasons, and they're good in their way. Mrs. Veale, there, is a reg'lar bad un.''As soon as Sam returned with Charles,' said Larry, 'they came on direct to Chimsworthy, and then Charles told us the whole tale, how Mrs. Veale had shown him where Mr. Langford kept his money, then how she'd enticed him out on the moor to Wellon's Cairn, and had let him see that she had carried off the box and had concealed it there. Charles told us that it was then that he ran away, and frightened my horse so that I was thrown and injured.''There was nothing ungentlemanly or unsoldierlike in my cutting away,' exclaimed Charles. 'Adam was beguiled by Eve, and I didn't set myself up to be a better man than my great forefather. I'd like to know which of the company would like to be fondled by Mrs. Veale, and made much of, and coaxed to run away with her? She's a bad un. It wasn't like I should reciprocate.''When we had heard the story,' continued Larry, 'I persuaded my father and Mr. Piper, who was at our house, to come along with us and see the whole matter cleared up. We went immediately to Wellon's Cairn, and found, as Charles Luxmore said we should, a stone box or coffin, hidden in the hill, with bushes of heather and peat over the hole. That we cleared away, and were able to put our hands in, and extracted from the inside this iron case. It is yours, is it not, Mr. Langford?'He put the cashbox on the table, taking it into his left hand from his father.Taverner went to it and examined it. 'Yes,' he said slowly, 'this is the stolen box.''The lock is uninjured, it is fast,' said Charles; 'but I can tell you how to open it. "Ebal" is the word this year, and "Onam" was last year's word. Try the letters of the lock and the box will fly open. I know; Mrs. Veale told me. A reg'lar bad un she be, and how she has worreted me the time I've been here!—at ninepence, and Mrs. Veale not even good-looking.''How about the five-pound note?' asked Langford, looking hard at Charles from under his contracted heavy brows. 'You can't deny you had that.''What five-pound note?—what five-pound note have I had from you?''The note you gave us, Charles,' explained his father.'Oh, that. Did it come from your box? I did not know it; Mrs. Veale gave it me. Now, don't you glow'r at me that way!' This was to the housekeeper, who had turned her white, quivering face towards him. 'Now don't you try to wriggle or shiver yourself out of my hold, for go you don't; as you couldn't catch me, I've caught you, and to justice I'll bring you; a designing, harassing, sweethearting old female, you be!' He gripped her so hard that she exclaimed with pain. 'And to lay it on me when I was gone! To make out I—that am innocent as the angels in heaven—was a thief! And I, a Luxmore of Coombe Park, and a hero of the Afghan War!—I, that carried off the sandal-wood gates of Somnath! I, a thief! I, indeed! Mrs. Veale gave me, off and on, money when I was short—I wasn't very flush on ninepence a day. A man of my position and bringing up and military tastes can't put up well with ninepence. I only accepted her money as a loan; and when she let me have a five-pound note, I gave her a promise to pay for it when I came into my property. How was I to know that five pound was not hers? I suppose, by the way you ask, it was not?''No,' said Langford, 'it was not; it was taken from my box.''That is like her—a bad un down to the soles of her feet. Wanted to mix me up with it and have evidence against me. I reckon I've turned the tables on the old woman—considerably.''What do you say to this?' asked Taverner, directing his keen eyes on her face. She was flickering so that it was impossible to catch her eyes. Her face was as though seen through the hot air over a kiln.'I've been in your service fifteen years,' she said, in a voice as vibrating as the muscles of her countenance. 'I've been treated by you no better than a dog, and I've followed you, and been true to you as a dog. Whenever did I take anything from you before? I've watched for you against the mice that eat the corn, watched like an owl!''You acknowledge this?''What is the good of denying it? Let me go, for my fifteen years' faithful duty.''No, no,' said Taverner with a hard voice. 'Not yet; I've something more to ask. Honor Luxmore, what did you say when you took my bowl of broth from me?' Honor drew back.'I spoke too hastily,' she said. 'I spoke without knowing.''You said that the bowl contained poison. Why did you say that?''It was fancy. Let me throw the broth away. I am sure of nothing.' Unlike her usual decision, Honor was now doubtful what to say and do.'I insist on knowing. I made a charge against your brother, and it has proved false, because it has been gone into. You have made a charge——''I have charged no one.''You have said that this bowl'—he took it from the shelf—'is poisoned. Why did you say that? No one touched it, no one mixed it, but Mrs. Veale. Therefore, when you said it was poisoned, you charged her with a dreadful crime; you charged her, that is, with an attempted crime.''I heard my sister say that she saw a yellow packet of rat-poison in the china dog on the shelf in the kitchen,' said Honor nervously, 'which—I do not mean the dog—I mean the poison, which Mrs. Veale had bought at the Revel, and when I was in the passage just now I saw Mrs. Veale put the contents of this packet into the broth she was stirring on the fire, before pouring it out into the basin, in which it now is. But,' continued Honor, drawing a long breath, 'but Kate is not very accurate; she sometimes thinks she sees a thing when she has only imagined it, and she talks at random at times, just because she likes to talk.''It was mace,' said Mrs. Veale.'Follow me,' ordered Taverner Langford, taking the basin between his hands, and going to the door. 'Let her go. She will follow me.''I've followed at your heel as a dog these fifteen years,' muttered Mrs. Veale, 'and now you know I must follow till you kick me away.'Charles, however, would not relinquish his hold.'Don't let her escape,' entreated Charles; 'she's a bad un, and ought to be brought to justice for falsely charging me.''Open the door, will you?' said Taverner roughly. 'Mrs. Veale, follow me into the harness-room'—this was the room on the other side of the passage, the room made out of the entrance hall.Charles drew the woman through the door, and did not relax his hold till he had thrust her into the apartment where Langford wished to speak to her alone.Taverner and she were now face to face without witnesses. The soft warm mist had changed to rain, that now pattered against the window. The room was wholly unfurnished. There was not a chair in it nor a table. Taverner had originally intended it as an office, but as he received few visitors he had come to use the parlour as reception room and office, and had made this apartment, cut from the hall, into a receptacle for lumber. A range of pegs on the wall supported old saddles and the gear of cart-horses, and branches of beanstalks, that had been hung there to dry for the preservation of seed. An unpleasant, stale odour hung about the room. The grate had not been used for many years, and was rusty; rain had brought the soot down the chimney, and, as there was no fender, had spluttered it over the floor. The window panes were dirty, and cobwebs hung in the corners of the room from the ceiling—old cobwebs thick with dust. Moths had eaten into the stuffing of the saddles, and, disturbed by the current of air from the door, fluttered about. In the corner was a heap of sacks, with nothing in them, smelling of earth and tar.'I've served you faithful as a dog,' said Mrs. Veale. 'Faithful as a dog,' she repeated; 'watched for you, wakeful as an owl.''And like a dog snarl and snap at me with poisoned fangs,' retorted Mr. Langford. 'Stand there!' He pointed to a place opposite him, so that the light from the window fell on her, and his own face was in darkness. 'Tell me the truth; what have you done to this broth?''If you think there's harm in it, throw it away,' said Mrs. Veale.'No, I will not. I will send it to Okehampton and have it analysed. Do you know what that means? Examined whether there be anything in it but good juice of meat and water and toast.''There's mace,' said the woman; 'I put in mace to spice it, and pepper and salt.''Anything else? What do you keep in yellow paper, and in the china dog?''Mace—every cook puts mace in soup. If you don't like it throw it away, and I will make you some without.''Mrs. Veale, so there's nothing further in the soup?''Nothing.''You warned me that a corpse-candle was coming to the door—nay, you said you had seen it travel up the road and dance on the step, and that same night I was taken ill.''Well, did I bring the corpse-light? It came of itself.''Mrs. Veale, I am not generally accounted a generous man, but I pride myself on being a just man. You have told me over and over again that you have served me faithfully for fifteen years. Well, you have had your way. You served me in your own fashion, with your head full of your own plans. You wanted to catch me, but the wary bird don't hop on the limed twig, to use your own expressions. I don't see that I'm much in your debt; if you are disappointed in the failure of your plans, that's your look-out; you should have seen earlier that nothing was to be made out of me. Now I am ready to stretch a point with you. You have robbed me. Fortunately for me, I've got my money and box back before you have been able to make off with it. What were you waiting for? For my death? For my marriage? Were you going to finish me because I had not been snared by your blandishments? I believe you intended to poison me.''It's a lie!' said Mrs. Veale hoarsely, trembling in every limb, and with flickering lips and eyes and nostrils and fluttering hair.'Very well. I am content to believe so. I can, if I choose, proceed against you at once—have you locked up this very night for your theft. But I am willing to deal even generously with you. It may be I have overlooked your many services; I may have repaid them scantily. You may be bitterly disappointed because I have not made you mistress of this house, and I will allow that I didn't keep you at arm's length as I should, finding you useful. Very well. The door is open. You shall go away and none shall follow, on one condition.'He looked fixedly at her, and her quivering became more violent. She did not ask what his condition was. She knew.'Finish this bowl, and convince me you were not bent on my murder.'She put out her hands to cover her face, but they trembled so that she could not hold them over her eyes.'If you refuse, I shall know the whole depth of your wickedness, and you shall only leave this room under arrest. If you accept, the moor is before you; go over it where you will.'He held the bowl to her. Then her trembling ceased—ceased as by a sudden spasm. She was still, set in face as if frozen; and her eyes, that glared on her master, were like pieces of ice. She said nothing, but took the bowl and put it to her lips, and, with her eyes on him, she drained it to the dregs.Then the shivering, like a palsy, came over her again. 'Let me go,' she said huskily. 'Let none follow. Leave me in peace.' Langford opened the door and went back into the parlour. Mrs. Veale stole out after him, and those in the sitting-room heard her going down the passage like a bird, flapping against the walls on each side.'Where is she going?' asked Charles. 'She is not to escape us. She's such a bad un, trying to involve me.''I've forgiven her.' answered Langford in a surly tone. 'I mayn't be over generous, but I'm just.''And now, Taverner, one word wi' you,' said old Nanspian. 'I reckon you thought to sloke away this Red Spider, as you did the first; but there you are mistaken. As I've heard, you have tried to force her to accept you—who are old enough to be her father—shame be to you! But this is your own house, and I'll say no more on what I think. Now, Taverner, I venture to declare you have no more hold on the girl. Her brother never took your money; you were robbed by your own housekeeper. You say you've forgiven her because you are just. What the justice is, in that, I don't see, but I do see one thing clear as daylight, and that is, you've no right any more to insist on Honor coming here as your wife, not unless by her free will and consent, and that, I reckon, you won't have, as Larry, my boy, has secured her heart.'Langford looked at Nanspian, then at Honor and Larry; at the latter he looked long.'I suppose it is so,' he said. 'Give me the settlement.' He tore it to pieces. 'I'll have nothing more to do with women, old or young. They're all vexatious.''Hark!' They heard a wailing cry.'Go and see what is the matter,' said Langford to Piper; then, turning to Oliver, he said, 'I tear up the settlement, but I'll not lend the hundred pounds.''Larry!' said old Nanspian, 'she shan't be sloked away any more. Take the maid's hand, and may the Lord bless and unite you.' Then to Langford, 'Now look y' here, Taverner. Us have been quarrelling long enough, I reckon. You've tried your worst against us, and you've failed. I've made the first advance on my side, and uninvited come over your doorstep, a thing I swore I never would do. Give me your hand, brother-in-law, and let us forget the past, or rather let us go back to a past before we squabbled over a little Red Spider. You can't help it now; Langford and Chimsworthy will be united, but not whilst we old folk are alive, and Honor will be a queen o' managers. She'll rake the maidens out of their beds at five o'clock in the morning to make the butter, and——'Piper burst into the room. 'Mrs. Veale!' he exclaimed.'Well, what of Mrs. Veale?' asked Langford sharply.'She has run out, crying like an owl and flapping her arms, over the moor, till she came to Wellon's Hill.''Let her go,' said Langford.'She went right into the mound,' continued Piper breathlessly, 'and when I came up she had crawled into the stone coffin inside, and had only her arm out, and she was tearing and scraping at the earth and drawing it down over the hole by which she'd gone in—burying herself alive, and wailing like an owl.''Is there any money still hid there?' asked Langford.'She screamed at me when I came up, "Will you not leave me alone? I be poisoned! I be dying! Let me die in peace!" Whatever shall us do?'CHAPTER XXXVIII.THE LOOK-OUT STONE.One Sunday evening, a year after the events just related, Taverner Langford and Hillary Nanspian, senior, were seated in the sun on the Look-out stone, in friendly conversation. Nanspian was looking happier, more hale, and prosperous than he had appeared since his stroke. He wore the badger-skin waistcoat, and his shirtsleeves. The waistcoat had been relined with brilliant crimson stuff; bright was the hue of the lining displayed by the lappets. Taverner Langford had not a cheerful expression; his hair was more grizzled than it was twelve months ago, and his face more livid. There was, however, a gentler light in his eyes.'It is a great change in Larry,' said Nanspian. 'Though I say it, there never was a steadier and better son. He is at work from morning to night, and is getting the farm into first-rate order—you'll allow that?''Yes,' answered Langford, 'I'll allow he begins well; I hope it will last. As for first-rate order, that I will not admit. "One year's seeds, three years' weeds," as Mrs. Veale——'He checked himself.'That were a queer creature,' observed Nanspian, taking the pipe from his mouth, and blowing a long puff. 'That was the queerest thing of all, her burying herself, when she felt she was dying, in old Wellon's grave.''It was not his grave. It was a grave of the old ancient Britons.''Well, it don't matter exactly whose the grave was. Mrs. Veale seemed mighty set on making it her own.' He continued puffing, looking before him. 'I'm not sure you acted right about her,' he said after a while. 'I suppose you didn't really suppose there was any poison in the broth.''I'm a just man,' said Langford, 'To do as you were to be done by is my maxim. And—it's Gospel.''But you didn't think it would kill her?''I don't know what I thought. I wasn't sure.'Another pause.'Swaddledown ain't coming to the hammer after all,' said Nanspian.'No, I'm glad the Voadens remain on.''Ah! and Sam is a good lad. I reckon before Michaelmas he and Kate will make a pair. They'd have done that afore if it had been settled whether Swaddledown would be sold, and they have to leave.''Kate is too giddy to be any use in a farm.''Oh, wait till she has responsibilities. See how well she has managed since Honor has been here—how she has kept the children, and made her father comfortable.''The children are half their time at Chimsworthy.''Well, well, I like to hear their voices.''And you see more than you like of Luxmore.''Oh, no, I like to see a neighbour. I allow I'm a bit weary of Coombe Park; but bless you, now you and I let him have a trifle, he spends most of his time when not in the van rambling about from one parish to another looking at the registers, and trying to find whether his grandfather were James, or John, or Joseph, or Jonah. It amuses him, and it don't cost much.''He'll never establish his claim.''I reckon he won't. But it's an occupation, and the carrying don't bring him much money—just enough to keep the children alive on.''Have you heard of Charles lately?''Oh, he is on the road. That was a fine idea, making a carrier of him between Exeter and Launceston. There are so many stations on the way—there's Tap House, and Crockernwell, and Sticklepath, and Okehampton, and Sourton Down Inn, and Bridestowe, and Lew Down, and Lifton; and he can talk to his heart's content at each about what he did in Afghanistan, and what he might be if his father could prove his claim to Coombe Park. Then he's so occupied with his horses on Sundays at Launceston that he can't possibly get over here to see his relations, which is a mercy.''I've been thinking,' said Langford, 'as we've got Larry in for third feoffee in Coryndon's Charity, couldn't we get the baby in for the fourth now there's a vacancy?''But the baby ain't come yet, and I don't know whether it'll be a boy or a maid.''It would be a satisfaction, and a further bond of union,' argued Langford. 'The Coryndon trust land comes in very fitting with Langford and Chimsworthy, and I thought that when you and I are gone, Larry might absorb our feoffeeships into himself, as a snail draws in his horns, and then there'd be only he and his son, and when he himself goes, his son would be sole feoffee and responsible to no one. Coryndon's land comes in very fitly.''I don't think it can be done,' said Nanspian, shaking his head. 'There's such a lot of ramping and roaring radicalism about. I thought we'd better put in Sam Voaden. Thus it will be in the family.''In the Luxmore, not in ours.''We can't have everything,' argued Nanspian. Then both were silent again. Langford sighed. Presently he said, 'I'm a just man, and do like to see the property rounded shapely on all sides. That is why I proposed it.'Then another pause.Presently Hillary Nanspian drew a long pull at his pipe, and sent two little shoots of smoke through his nostrils. 'Taverner,' said he, when all the smoke was expended, 'going back to that woman, Mrs. Veale, I don't think you ought to have taken me up so mighty sharp about her. After all this is sifted and said, you must allow you stood afraid of her, and I allow that you had a right to be so. A woman as would steal your cashbox, and make attempts on your heart, and poison your gruel, no man need blush and hang his head to admit that he was a bit afraid of.''And, Nanspian,' said Langford with solemnity, 'you will excuse my remarking that I think you took me up far too testily when I said you was a long-tailed ourang-outang, for it so happens that the ourang-outang is ataillessape. Consequently, no offence could have been meant, and should not ha' been taken.''You don't mean to say so?''It is true. I have it in print in a Nature History, and, what is more, I've got a picture of an ourang-outang, holding a torn-off bough in his hand, and showing just enough of his back to let folks understand he's very like a man. Well, I've a mind, as the expression I used about you was repeated in the long room of the "Ring of Bells," to have that picture framed and hung up there. Besides, under it stands in print, "The ourang-outang, ortaillessape."''You will? Well, I always said you were a just man; now I will add you're generous.' The brothers-in-law shook hands. After a moment's consideration Nanspian said, 'I don't like to be outdone in generosity by you, much as I respect you. If it would be any satisfaction to the parish of Bratton Clovelly, the weather being warm, and for the quieting of minds and setting at rest all disputes, I don't object to bathing once in the river Thrustle before the feoffees of Coryndon's Charity, excepting Larry, whom from motives of delicacy I exclude.''Well,' said Langford, 'I won't deny you're a liberal-minded man.'Taverner sprang to his feet, and Nanspian also rose. Over the stile from the lane came Honor, in her red stockings and scarlet cloak, the latter drawn closely round her.'Why didn't you call us?' said Nanspian. 'We'd have come and helped you over.''You shouldn't be climbing about now,' said Taverner.'Come and sit between us on the Look-out stone,' said Nanspian.So the two old men reseated themselves on the granite slab, with Honor between them.'You tried hard to sloke her away,' remarked Nanspian, shaking his head.'Let bygones be bygones,' said Langford. 'She may be here at Chimsworthy now, but she'll be at Langford some day. I'm proud and happy to think.''Ah!' said Nanspian, 'she's made a mighty change in Larry, and, faith, in me also. I'm a happier man than I was.' He put his arm round behind Honor.'I may say that of myself,' said Langford. 'I can know that Langford will be made the most of after I'm gone.' He put his arm round her, and clasped that of Nanspian.'Ah!' said Nanspian, in his old soft, furry, pleasant voice, 'if I'd a many score of faces in front of me, and I were addressing a political meeting, I'd say the same as I says now. Never you argue that what we was taught as children is gammon and superstition, it's no such thing. It has always been said that he who lays hold of a red spider secures good luck, and we've proved it, Taverner and I, we've proved it. Us have got hold of the very best and biggest and reddest of money-spinners between us—us don't try to sloke her away to this side or to that. Her belongs ekally to Chimsworthy and to Langford, to myself and to Taverner, and blessed if there be a chance for any man all over England of getting such another treasure as this Red Spider which Taverner and I be holding atween us—ekally belonging to each.'THE END.PRINTED BYSPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARELONDON*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOKRED SPIDER, VOLUME 2 (OF 2)***
CHAPTER XXXVII.
A BOWL OF BROTH.
The words were hardly out of Honor's mouth before the party were surprised by a noise of voices and feet in the kitchen, and a cry as of dismay or fear. A moment after the tramp was in the passage the parlour door was flung open, and Sam Voaden, Hillary Nanspian and his father, Piper, Charles Luxmore, and Mrs. Veale came in, the latter gripped firmly by Piper and Charles.
'Here I am,' said young Luxmore, with his usual swagger, and with some elation in his tone, 'here I am, come to know what the deuce you mean, Mr. Langford, charging me—a gentleman—not to the face but behind the back, with stealing your money? Look here, Sam, produce the box. There is your cash—whether right or not I cannot say. I have taken none of it. I did not remove the case. Tell 'em where you found it, Sam.'
'I found it in Wellon's Mound,' said the young man appealed to. 'I've been to Plymouth after Charles. I didn't believe he was a thief, but I'd hard matter to find him. Howsomedever, I did in the end, and here he be. He came along ready enough. He was out of money—wanted to go to America, but had not the means of paying his passage, and not inclined to work it.'
'I've lost a finger,' exclaimed Charles. 'How could I work, maimed as I am?—a wounded soldier without a pension! That is shameful of an ungrateful country.'
'He took on badly,' continued Sam, 'when I told him that Mr. Langford said he had stolen his cashbox with a thousand pounds.'
'I'm a Luxmore of Coombe Park,' said Charles, drawing himself up. 'I'm not one of your vulgar thieves, not I. Mrs. Veale did her best to tempt me to take it, but I resisted it manfully. At last I ran away, afraid lest she should over-persuade me and get me into trouble, when I saw she had actually got the box. I ran away from Mrs. Veale, and because ninepence a day wasn't sufficient to detain me. I wasn't over-sure neither that I hadn't, against my intention, broke the neck of Larry Nanspian. Now you know my reasons, and they're good in their way. Mrs. Veale, there, is a reg'lar bad un.'
'As soon as Sam returned with Charles,' said Larry, 'they came on direct to Chimsworthy, and then Charles told us the whole tale, how Mrs. Veale had shown him where Mr. Langford kept his money, then how she'd enticed him out on the moor to Wellon's Cairn, and had let him see that she had carried off the box and had concealed it there. Charles told us that it was then that he ran away, and frightened my horse so that I was thrown and injured.'
'There was nothing ungentlemanly or unsoldierlike in my cutting away,' exclaimed Charles. 'Adam was beguiled by Eve, and I didn't set myself up to be a better man than my great forefather. I'd like to know which of the company would like to be fondled by Mrs. Veale, and made much of, and coaxed to run away with her? She's a bad un. It wasn't like I should reciprocate.'
'When we had heard the story,' continued Larry, 'I persuaded my father and Mr. Piper, who was at our house, to come along with us and see the whole matter cleared up. We went immediately to Wellon's Cairn, and found, as Charles Luxmore said we should, a stone box or coffin, hidden in the hill, with bushes of heather and peat over the hole. That we cleared away, and were able to put our hands in, and extracted from the inside this iron case. It is yours, is it not, Mr. Langford?'
He put the cashbox on the table, taking it into his left hand from his father.
Taverner went to it and examined it. 'Yes,' he said slowly, 'this is the stolen box.'
'The lock is uninjured, it is fast,' said Charles; 'but I can tell you how to open it. "Ebal" is the word this year, and "Onam" was last year's word. Try the letters of the lock and the box will fly open. I know; Mrs. Veale told me. A reg'lar bad un she be, and how she has worreted me the time I've been here!—at ninepence, and Mrs. Veale not even good-looking.'
'How about the five-pound note?' asked Langford, looking hard at Charles from under his contracted heavy brows. 'You can't deny you had that.'
'What five-pound note?—what five-pound note have I had from you?'
'The note you gave us, Charles,' explained his father.
'Oh, that. Did it come from your box? I did not know it; Mrs. Veale gave it me. Now, don't you glow'r at me that way!' This was to the housekeeper, who had turned her white, quivering face towards him. 'Now don't you try to wriggle or shiver yourself out of my hold, for go you don't; as you couldn't catch me, I've caught you, and to justice I'll bring you; a designing, harassing, sweethearting old female, you be!' He gripped her so hard that she exclaimed with pain. 'And to lay it on me when I was gone! To make out I—that am innocent as the angels in heaven—was a thief! And I, a Luxmore of Coombe Park, and a hero of the Afghan War!—I, that carried off the sandal-wood gates of Somnath! I, a thief! I, indeed! Mrs. Veale gave me, off and on, money when I was short—I wasn't very flush on ninepence a day. A man of my position and bringing up and military tastes can't put up well with ninepence. I only accepted her money as a loan; and when she let me have a five-pound note, I gave her a promise to pay for it when I came into my property. How was I to know that five pound was not hers? I suppose, by the way you ask, it was not?'
'No,' said Langford, 'it was not; it was taken from my box.'
'That is like her—a bad un down to the soles of her feet. Wanted to mix me up with it and have evidence against me. I reckon I've turned the tables on the old woman—considerably.'
'What do you say to this?' asked Taverner, directing his keen eyes on her face. She was flickering so that it was impossible to catch her eyes. Her face was as though seen through the hot air over a kiln.
'I've been in your service fifteen years,' she said, in a voice as vibrating as the muscles of her countenance. 'I've been treated by you no better than a dog, and I've followed you, and been true to you as a dog. Whenever did I take anything from you before? I've watched for you against the mice that eat the corn, watched like an owl!'
'You acknowledge this?'
'What is the good of denying it? Let me go, for my fifteen years' faithful duty.'
'No, no,' said Taverner with a hard voice. 'Not yet; I've something more to ask. Honor Luxmore, what did you say when you took my bowl of broth from me?' Honor drew back.
'I spoke too hastily,' she said. 'I spoke without knowing.'
'You said that the bowl contained poison. Why did you say that?'
'It was fancy. Let me throw the broth away. I am sure of nothing.' Unlike her usual decision, Honor was now doubtful what to say and do.
'I insist on knowing. I made a charge against your brother, and it has proved false, because it has been gone into. You have made a charge——'
'I have charged no one.'
'You have said that this bowl'—he took it from the shelf—'is poisoned. Why did you say that? No one touched it, no one mixed it, but Mrs. Veale. Therefore, when you said it was poisoned, you charged her with a dreadful crime; you charged her, that is, with an attempted crime.'
'I heard my sister say that she saw a yellow packet of rat-poison in the china dog on the shelf in the kitchen,' said Honor nervously, 'which—I do not mean the dog—I mean the poison, which Mrs. Veale had bought at the Revel, and when I was in the passage just now I saw Mrs. Veale put the contents of this packet into the broth she was stirring on the fire, before pouring it out into the basin, in which it now is. But,' continued Honor, drawing a long breath, 'but Kate is not very accurate; she sometimes thinks she sees a thing when she has only imagined it, and she talks at random at times, just because she likes to talk.'
'It was mace,' said Mrs. Veale.
'Follow me,' ordered Taverner Langford, taking the basin between his hands, and going to the door. 'Let her go. She will follow me.'
'I've followed at your heel as a dog these fifteen years,' muttered Mrs. Veale, 'and now you know I must follow till you kick me away.'
Charles, however, would not relinquish his hold.
'Don't let her escape,' entreated Charles; 'she's a bad un, and ought to be brought to justice for falsely charging me.'
'Open the door, will you?' said Taverner roughly. 'Mrs. Veale, follow me into the harness-room'—this was the room on the other side of the passage, the room made out of the entrance hall.
Charles drew the woman through the door, and did not relax his hold till he had thrust her into the apartment where Langford wished to speak to her alone.
Taverner and she were now face to face without witnesses. The soft warm mist had changed to rain, that now pattered against the window. The room was wholly unfurnished. There was not a chair in it nor a table. Taverner had originally intended it as an office, but as he received few visitors he had come to use the parlour as reception room and office, and had made this apartment, cut from the hall, into a receptacle for lumber. A range of pegs on the wall supported old saddles and the gear of cart-horses, and branches of beanstalks, that had been hung there to dry for the preservation of seed. An unpleasant, stale odour hung about the room. The grate had not been used for many years, and was rusty; rain had brought the soot down the chimney, and, as there was no fender, had spluttered it over the floor. The window panes were dirty, and cobwebs hung in the corners of the room from the ceiling—old cobwebs thick with dust. Moths had eaten into the stuffing of the saddles, and, disturbed by the current of air from the door, fluttered about. In the corner was a heap of sacks, with nothing in them, smelling of earth and tar.
'I've served you faithful as a dog,' said Mrs. Veale. 'Faithful as a dog,' she repeated; 'watched for you, wakeful as an owl.'
'And like a dog snarl and snap at me with poisoned fangs,' retorted Mr. Langford. 'Stand there!' He pointed to a place opposite him, so that the light from the window fell on her, and his own face was in darkness. 'Tell me the truth; what have you done to this broth?'
'If you think there's harm in it, throw it away,' said Mrs. Veale.
'No, I will not. I will send it to Okehampton and have it analysed. Do you know what that means? Examined whether there be anything in it but good juice of meat and water and toast.'
'There's mace,' said the woman; 'I put in mace to spice it, and pepper and salt.'
'Anything else? What do you keep in yellow paper, and in the china dog?'
'Mace—every cook puts mace in soup. If you don't like it throw it away, and I will make you some without.'
'Mrs. Veale, so there's nothing further in the soup?'
'Nothing.'
'You warned me that a corpse-candle was coming to the door—nay, you said you had seen it travel up the road and dance on the step, and that same night I was taken ill.'
'Well, did I bring the corpse-light? It came of itself.'
'Mrs. Veale, I am not generally accounted a generous man, but I pride myself on being a just man. You have told me over and over again that you have served me faithfully for fifteen years. Well, you have had your way. You served me in your own fashion, with your head full of your own plans. You wanted to catch me, but the wary bird don't hop on the limed twig, to use your own expressions. I don't see that I'm much in your debt; if you are disappointed in the failure of your plans, that's your look-out; you should have seen earlier that nothing was to be made out of me. Now I am ready to stretch a point with you. You have robbed me. Fortunately for me, I've got my money and box back before you have been able to make off with it. What were you waiting for? For my death? For my marriage? Were you going to finish me because I had not been snared by your blandishments? I believe you intended to poison me.'
'It's a lie!' said Mrs. Veale hoarsely, trembling in every limb, and with flickering lips and eyes and nostrils and fluttering hair.
'Very well. I am content to believe so. I can, if I choose, proceed against you at once—have you locked up this very night for your theft. But I am willing to deal even generously with you. It may be I have overlooked your many services; I may have repaid them scantily. You may be bitterly disappointed because I have not made you mistress of this house, and I will allow that I didn't keep you at arm's length as I should, finding you useful. Very well. The door is open. You shall go away and none shall follow, on one condition.'
He looked fixedly at her, and her quivering became more violent. She did not ask what his condition was. She knew.
'Finish this bowl, and convince me you were not bent on my murder.'
She put out her hands to cover her face, but they trembled so that she could not hold them over her eyes.
'If you refuse, I shall know the whole depth of your wickedness, and you shall only leave this room under arrest. If you accept, the moor is before you; go over it where you will.'
He held the bowl to her. Then her trembling ceased—ceased as by a sudden spasm. She was still, set in face as if frozen; and her eyes, that glared on her master, were like pieces of ice. She said nothing, but took the bowl and put it to her lips, and, with her eyes on him, she drained it to the dregs.
Then the shivering, like a palsy, came over her again. 'Let me go,' she said huskily. 'Let none follow. Leave me in peace.' Langford opened the door and went back into the parlour. Mrs. Veale stole out after him, and those in the sitting-room heard her going down the passage like a bird, flapping against the walls on each side.
'Where is she going?' asked Charles. 'She is not to escape us. She's such a bad un, trying to involve me.'
'I've forgiven her.' answered Langford in a surly tone. 'I mayn't be over generous, but I'm just.'
'And now, Taverner, one word wi' you,' said old Nanspian. 'I reckon you thought to sloke away this Red Spider, as you did the first; but there you are mistaken. As I've heard, you have tried to force her to accept you—who are old enough to be her father—shame be to you! But this is your own house, and I'll say no more on what I think. Now, Taverner, I venture to declare you have no more hold on the girl. Her brother never took your money; you were robbed by your own housekeeper. You say you've forgiven her because you are just. What the justice is, in that, I don't see, but I do see one thing clear as daylight, and that is, you've no right any more to insist on Honor coming here as your wife, not unless by her free will and consent, and that, I reckon, you won't have, as Larry, my boy, has secured her heart.'
Langford looked at Nanspian, then at Honor and Larry; at the latter he looked long.
'I suppose it is so,' he said. 'Give me the settlement.' He tore it to pieces. 'I'll have nothing more to do with women, old or young. They're all vexatious.'
'Hark!' They heard a wailing cry.
'Go and see what is the matter,' said Langford to Piper; then, turning to Oliver, he said, 'I tear up the settlement, but I'll not lend the hundred pounds.'
'Larry!' said old Nanspian, 'she shan't be sloked away any more. Take the maid's hand, and may the Lord bless and unite you.' Then to Langford, 'Now look y' here, Taverner. Us have been quarrelling long enough, I reckon. You've tried your worst against us, and you've failed. I've made the first advance on my side, and uninvited come over your doorstep, a thing I swore I never would do. Give me your hand, brother-in-law, and let us forget the past, or rather let us go back to a past before we squabbled over a little Red Spider. You can't help it now; Langford and Chimsworthy will be united, but not whilst we old folk are alive, and Honor will be a queen o' managers. She'll rake the maidens out of their beds at five o'clock in the morning to make the butter, and——'
Piper burst into the room. 'Mrs. Veale!' he exclaimed.
'Well, what of Mrs. Veale?' asked Langford sharply.
'She has run out, crying like an owl and flapping her arms, over the moor, till she came to Wellon's Hill.'
'Let her go,' said Langford.
'She went right into the mound,' continued Piper breathlessly, 'and when I came up she had crawled into the stone coffin inside, and had only her arm out, and she was tearing and scraping at the earth and drawing it down over the hole by which she'd gone in—burying herself alive, and wailing like an owl.'
'Is there any money still hid there?' asked Langford.
'She screamed at me when I came up, "Will you not leave me alone? I be poisoned! I be dying! Let me die in peace!" Whatever shall us do?'
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
THE LOOK-OUT STONE.
One Sunday evening, a year after the events just related, Taverner Langford and Hillary Nanspian, senior, were seated in the sun on the Look-out stone, in friendly conversation. Nanspian was looking happier, more hale, and prosperous than he had appeared since his stroke. He wore the badger-skin waistcoat, and his shirtsleeves. The waistcoat had been relined with brilliant crimson stuff; bright was the hue of the lining displayed by the lappets. Taverner Langford had not a cheerful expression; his hair was more grizzled than it was twelve months ago, and his face more livid. There was, however, a gentler light in his eyes.
'It is a great change in Larry,' said Nanspian. 'Though I say it, there never was a steadier and better son. He is at work from morning to night, and is getting the farm into first-rate order—you'll allow that?'
'Yes,' answered Langford, 'I'll allow he begins well; I hope it will last. As for first-rate order, that I will not admit. "One year's seeds, three years' weeds," as Mrs. Veale——'
He checked himself.
'That were a queer creature,' observed Nanspian, taking the pipe from his mouth, and blowing a long puff. 'That was the queerest thing of all, her burying herself, when she felt she was dying, in old Wellon's grave.'
'It was not his grave. It was a grave of the old ancient Britons.'
'Well, it don't matter exactly whose the grave was. Mrs. Veale seemed mighty set on making it her own.' He continued puffing, looking before him. 'I'm not sure you acted right about her,' he said after a while. 'I suppose you didn't really suppose there was any poison in the broth.'
'I'm a just man,' said Langford, 'To do as you were to be done by is my maxim. And—it's Gospel.'
'But you didn't think it would kill her?'
'I don't know what I thought. I wasn't sure.'
Another pause.
'Swaddledown ain't coming to the hammer after all,' said Nanspian.
'No, I'm glad the Voadens remain on.'
'Ah! and Sam is a good lad. I reckon before Michaelmas he and Kate will make a pair. They'd have done that afore if it had been settled whether Swaddledown would be sold, and they have to leave.'
'Kate is too giddy to be any use in a farm.'
'Oh, wait till she has responsibilities. See how well she has managed since Honor has been here—how she has kept the children, and made her father comfortable.'
'The children are half their time at Chimsworthy.'
'Well, well, I like to hear their voices.'
'And you see more than you like of Luxmore.'
'Oh, no, I like to see a neighbour. I allow I'm a bit weary of Coombe Park; but bless you, now you and I let him have a trifle, he spends most of his time when not in the van rambling about from one parish to another looking at the registers, and trying to find whether his grandfather were James, or John, or Joseph, or Jonah. It amuses him, and it don't cost much.'
'He'll never establish his claim.'
'I reckon he won't. But it's an occupation, and the carrying don't bring him much money—just enough to keep the children alive on.'
'Have you heard of Charles lately?'
'Oh, he is on the road. That was a fine idea, making a carrier of him between Exeter and Launceston. There are so many stations on the way—there's Tap House, and Crockernwell, and Sticklepath, and Okehampton, and Sourton Down Inn, and Bridestowe, and Lew Down, and Lifton; and he can talk to his heart's content at each about what he did in Afghanistan, and what he might be if his father could prove his claim to Coombe Park. Then he's so occupied with his horses on Sundays at Launceston that he can't possibly get over here to see his relations, which is a mercy.'
'I've been thinking,' said Langford, 'as we've got Larry in for third feoffee in Coryndon's Charity, couldn't we get the baby in for the fourth now there's a vacancy?'
'But the baby ain't come yet, and I don't know whether it'll be a boy or a maid.'
'It would be a satisfaction, and a further bond of union,' argued Langford. 'The Coryndon trust land comes in very fitting with Langford and Chimsworthy, and I thought that when you and I are gone, Larry might absorb our feoffeeships into himself, as a snail draws in his horns, and then there'd be only he and his son, and when he himself goes, his son would be sole feoffee and responsible to no one. Coryndon's land comes in very fitly.'
'I don't think it can be done,' said Nanspian, shaking his head. 'There's such a lot of ramping and roaring radicalism about. I thought we'd better put in Sam Voaden. Thus it will be in the family.'
'In the Luxmore, not in ours.'
'We can't have everything,' argued Nanspian. Then both were silent again. Langford sighed. Presently he said, 'I'm a just man, and do like to see the property rounded shapely on all sides. That is why I proposed it.'
Then another pause.
Presently Hillary Nanspian drew a long pull at his pipe, and sent two little shoots of smoke through his nostrils. 'Taverner,' said he, when all the smoke was expended, 'going back to that woman, Mrs. Veale, I don't think you ought to have taken me up so mighty sharp about her. After all this is sifted and said, you must allow you stood afraid of her, and I allow that you had a right to be so. A woman as would steal your cashbox, and make attempts on your heart, and poison your gruel, no man need blush and hang his head to admit that he was a bit afraid of.'
'And, Nanspian,' said Langford with solemnity, 'you will excuse my remarking that I think you took me up far too testily when I said you was a long-tailed ourang-outang, for it so happens that the ourang-outang is ataillessape. Consequently, no offence could have been meant, and should not ha' been taken.'
'You don't mean to say so?'
'It is true. I have it in print in a Nature History, and, what is more, I've got a picture of an ourang-outang, holding a torn-off bough in his hand, and showing just enough of his back to let folks understand he's very like a man. Well, I've a mind, as the expression I used about you was repeated in the long room of the "Ring of Bells," to have that picture framed and hung up there. Besides, under it stands in print, "The ourang-outang, ortaillessape."'
'You will? Well, I always said you were a just man; now I will add you're generous.' The brothers-in-law shook hands. After a moment's consideration Nanspian said, 'I don't like to be outdone in generosity by you, much as I respect you. If it would be any satisfaction to the parish of Bratton Clovelly, the weather being warm, and for the quieting of minds and setting at rest all disputes, I don't object to bathing once in the river Thrustle before the feoffees of Coryndon's Charity, excepting Larry, whom from motives of delicacy I exclude.'
'Well,' said Langford, 'I won't deny you're a liberal-minded man.'
Taverner sprang to his feet, and Nanspian also rose. Over the stile from the lane came Honor, in her red stockings and scarlet cloak, the latter drawn closely round her.
'Why didn't you call us?' said Nanspian. 'We'd have come and helped you over.'
'You shouldn't be climbing about now,' said Taverner.
'Come and sit between us on the Look-out stone,' said Nanspian.
So the two old men reseated themselves on the granite slab, with Honor between them.
'You tried hard to sloke her away,' remarked Nanspian, shaking his head.
'Let bygones be bygones,' said Langford. 'She may be here at Chimsworthy now, but she'll be at Langford some day. I'm proud and happy to think.'
'Ah!' said Nanspian, 'she's made a mighty change in Larry, and, faith, in me also. I'm a happier man than I was.' He put his arm round behind Honor.
'I may say that of myself,' said Langford. 'I can know that Langford will be made the most of after I'm gone.' He put his arm round her, and clasped that of Nanspian.
'Ah!' said Nanspian, in his old soft, furry, pleasant voice, 'if I'd a many score of faces in front of me, and I were addressing a political meeting, I'd say the same as I says now. Never you argue that what we was taught as children is gammon and superstition, it's no such thing. It has always been said that he who lays hold of a red spider secures good luck, and we've proved it, Taverner and I, we've proved it. Us have got hold of the very best and biggest and reddest of money-spinners between us—us don't try to sloke her away to this side or to that. Her belongs ekally to Chimsworthy and to Langford, to myself and to Taverner, and blessed if there be a chance for any man all over England of getting such another treasure as this Red Spider which Taverner and I be holding atween us—ekally belonging to each.'
THE END.
PRINTED BYSPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARELONDON
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOKRED SPIDER, VOLUME 2 (OF 2)***