THE HON. PERCIVAL PELLEW AND MISS CONSTANCE SMITH-DICKENSON, WHOSE BLOOM HAD GONE OFF. OLD MAIDS WERE TWENTY-EIGHT, THENADAYS. HOW THE TRAGEDY CAME OUT, AND MR. PELLEW TALKED IT OVER WITH MISS SMITH-DICKENSON, ALTHOUGH HER BLOOM REMAINED OFF. WHO THE SHOT MAN WAS. OF MR. PELLEW's CAUTION, AND A DARK GREEN FRITILLARY. WHAT YOU CAN DO AND CAN'T DO, WHEN YOU ARE A LADY AND GENTLEMAN
THE HON. PERCIVAL PELLEW AND MISS CONSTANCE SMITH-DICKENSON, WHOSE BLOOM HAD GONE OFF. OLD MAIDS WERE TWENTY-EIGHT, THENADAYS. HOW THE TRAGEDY CAME OUT, AND MR. PELLEW TALKED IT OVER WITH MISS SMITH-DICKENSON, ALTHOUGH HER BLOOM REMAINED OFF. WHO THE SHOT MAN WAS. OF MR. PELLEW's CAUTION, AND A DARK GREEN FRITILLARY. WHAT YOU CAN DO AND CAN'T DO, WHEN YOU ARE A LADY AND GENTLEMAN
At the Towers, in those days, there was always breakfast, but very few people came down to it. In saying this the story accepts the phraseology of the household, which must have known. Norbury the butler, for instance, who used the expression to the Hon. Percival Pellew, a guest who at half-past nine o'clock that morning expressed surprise at finding himself the only respondent to The Bell. It was the Mr. Pellew mentioned before, a Member of Parliament whose humorous speeches always commanded a hearing, even when he knew nothing about the subject under discussion; which, indeed, was very frequently the case.
Perhaps it was to keep his hand in that he adopted a tone of serious chaff to Mr. Norbury, such as some people think a well-chosen one towards children, to their great embarrassment. He replied to that most responsible of butlers with some pomposity of manner. "The question before the house," said he—and paused to enjoy a perversion of speech—"the question before the house comes down to breakfast I take to be this:—Is it breakfast at all till somebody has eaten it?"
"I could not say, sir." Mr. Norbury's manner is dignified, deferential, and dry. More serious than need be perhaps.
The Hon. Percival is not good at insight, and sees nothing of this. "It certainly appears to me," he says, taking his time over it, "that until breakfast has broken someone's fast, or someone has broken his own at the expense of breakfast.... What's that?"
"One of the ladies coming down, sir." Mr. Norbury would not, in the ordinary way of business, have mentioned this fact, but it had given him a resource against a pleasantry he found distasteful. Of course,heknew the event of the morning. Yet he could not say to the gentleman:—"A truce to jocularity. A man wasshot dead half a mile off last night, and the body has been taken to the Keeper's Lodge."
The lady coming downstairs was Miss Constance Smith-Dickenson, also uninformed about the tragedy. She had made her first appearance yesterday afternoon, and had looked rather well in a pink-figured muslin at dinner. The interchanges between this lady and the Hon. Percival, referring chiefly to the fact that no one else was down, seemed to have no interest for Mr. Norbury; who, however, noted that no new topic had dawned upon the conversation when he returned from a revision of the breakfast-table. The fact was that the Hon. Percival had detected in Miss Dickenson a fossil, and was feeling ashamed of a transient interest in her last night, when she had shown insight, under the guidance—suppose we say—of champagne. Her bloom had gone off, too, in a strange way, and bloom was asine qua nonto this gentleman. She for her part was conscious of a chill having come between them, she having retired to rest the evening before with a refreshing sensation that all was not over—could not be—when so agreeable a man could show her such marked attention. That was all she would endorse of a very temperate Vanity's suggestions, mentally crossing out an s at the end of "attention." If you have studied the niceties of the subject, you will know how much that letter would have meant.
A single lady of a particular type gets used to this sort of thing. But her proper pride has to be kept under steam, like a salvage-tug in harbour when there is a full gale in the Channel. However, she is better off than her great-great-aunts, who were exposed to what was described assatire. Nowadays, presumably, Man is not the treasure he was, for a good many women seem to scrat on cheerfully enough without him. Or is it that in those days he was the only person employed on his own valuation?
In the period of this story—that is to say, when our present veterans were schoolboys—the air was clearing a little. But the smell of the recent Georgian era hung about. There was still a fixed period in women's lives when they suddenly assumed a new identity—became old maids and were expected to dress the part. It was twenty-eight, to the best of our recollection. Therefore Miss Smith-Dickenson, who was thirty-eight if she was a minute, became a convicted impostor in the eyes of the Hon. Percival, when, about ten hours after he had said to himself that she was not a bad figure of a woman and that some of her remarks were racy, he perceived that she was going off; that her complexion didn't bear the daylight; that she wouldn't wash; that she was probablya favourite with her own sex, and, broadly speaking, an Intelligent Person. "Never do at all!" said the Hon. Percival to himself. And Space may have asked "What for?" But nobody answered.
On the other hand, the lady perceived, in time, that the gentleman looked ten years older by daylight; that no one could call him corpulent exactly; that he might be heavy on hand, only perhaps he wanted his breakfast—men did; that the Pall Mall and Piccadilly type of man very soon palled, and that, in short, that steam-tug would be quite unnecessary this time.
Therefore, when Lady Gwendolen appeared,point-devicefor breakfast as to dress, but looking dazed and preoccupied, she found this lady and gentleman being well-bred, as shown by scanty, feelingless remarks about the absence of morning papers as well as morning people. Her advent opened a new era for them, in which they could cultivate ignorance of one another on the bosom of a newcomer common to both.
"Only you two!" said the newcomer; which Miss Dickenson thought scarcely delicate, considering the respective sexes of the persons addressed. "I knew I was late, but I couldn't help it. Good-morning, Aunt Constance." She gave and got a kiss. The Hon. Percival would have liked the former for himself. Why need he have slightly flouted its receiver by a mental note that he would not have cared about itsriposte? It had not been offered.
"How well youarelooking, dear!" said Aunt Constance, holding her honorary niece at arms' length to visualise her robustness. She was not a real Aunt at all, only an old friend of the family.
"I'm not," said Gwendolen. "Norbury, is breakfast ready? Shall we go in?... Oh no, nothing! Please don't talk to me about it. I mean I'm all right. Ask Sir Coupland to tell you." For the great surgeon had come into the room, and was talking in an undertone to the old butler. Lady Gwendolen added an apology which she kept in stereotype for the non-appearance of her mother at breakfast. The Earl's absence was a usage, taken for granted. Some said he had a cup of coffee in his own room at eight, and starved till lunch.
Other guests appeared, and the usual English country-house breakfast followed: a haphazard banquet, a decorous scrimmage for a surfeit of eggs, and fish, and bacon, and tongue, and tea, and coffee, and porridge, and even Heaven itself hardly knows what. Less than usual vanished to become a vested interest of digestion; more than usual went back to the kitchen for appreciation elsewhere. For Sir Coupland, appealed to, had given a briefintelligent report of the occurrence of the morning. Then followed undertones of conversation apart between him and the Hon. Percival, who had not the heart for a pleasantry, and groups of two or three aside. Lady Gwen alone was silent, leaving the narration entirely to her medical friend, to whom she had told the incident of last evening—her interview with the man now lying between life and death, and the way his body was found by following the dog. She left the room as early as courtesy allowed, and Sir Coupland did not remain long. He had to go and tell the matter to the Earl, he said. Gwendolen, no doubt, had to do the same to her mother the Countess. It was an awful business.
Said Miss Smith-Dickenson to the Hon. Percival, on the shady terrace, a quarter of an hour afterwards, "Hedidtell you who the man is, though? Or perhaps I oughtn't to ask?" Other guests were scattered otherwhere, talking of the tragedy. Not a smile to be seen; still, the victim of the mishap was a stranger. It was a cloud under which a man might enjoy a cigar,quand même.
The Hon. Percival knocked an instalment ofcaput mortuumoff his; an inch of ash which had begun on the terrace; so the interview was some minutes old. "Yes," said he. "Yes, he knows who it is. That's the worst of it."
"The worst of it?"
"I don't know of any reason myself why I should not tell you his name. Sir Coupland only said he wanted it kept quiet till he could see his father, whom he knows, of course. I understand that the family belongs to this county—lives about twenty miles off." The lady felt so confident that she would be told the name that she seized the opportunity to show how discreet she was, and kept silence.Shewas quite incapable of mere vulgar inquisitiveness, you see. Her inmost core had the satisfaction of feeling that its visible outer husk, Miss Constance Smith-Dickenson, was killing two birds with one stone. The way in which the gentleman continued justified it. "Besides, I know I may rely uponyouto say nothing about it." Clearly the effect of her visible, almost palpable, discretion! For really—said the core—this good gentleman never set eyes on my husk till yesterday evening. And he is a Man of the World and all that sort of thing.
Miss Smith-Dickenson knew perfectly well how her sister Lilian—the one with the rolling, liquid eyes, now Baroness Porchammer—would have responded. But she herself mistrusting her powers of gushing right, did not feel equal to "Oh, but how nice of you to say so, dear Mr. Pellew!" And she felt that she was not cut out for a satirical puss neither, like her sister Georgie, now Mrs. AmphlettStarfax, to whom a mental review of possible responses assigned, "Oh dear, how complimentary we are, all of a sudden!"—with possibly a heavy blow on the gentleman's fore-arm with a fan, if she had one. So she decided on "Pray go on. You may rely on my discretion." It was simple, and made her feel like Elizabeth in "Pride and Prejudice"—a safe model, if a little old-fashioned.
The gentleman pulled at his cigar in a considerative way, and said in a perfunctory one:—"I am sure I may." Nevertheless, he postponed his answer through a mouthful of smoke, dismissing it into the atmosphere finally, to allow of speech determined on during its detention: "I'm afraid it's Adrian Torrens—there can't be two of the name who write poetry. Besides—the dog!"
The lady said "Good Heavens!" in a frightened underbreath, and was visibly shocked. For it is usually someone of whom one knows nothing at all that gets shot accidentally. Now, Adrian Torrens was the name of a man recently distinguished as the author of some remarkable verse. A man of very good family too. So—altogether!... This was the expression used by Miss Smith-Dickenson's core, almost unrebuked. "Of course, I remember the poem about the collie-dog," she added aloud.
"Can you remember the name of the dog? Wasn't it Aeneas?"
"No—Achilles."
"I meant Achilles. Well—his dog's Achilles."
"I thought you said there was no name on the collar."
"No more there was. But I understand that Gwen met him yesterday evening—down by Arthur's Bridge, I believe—and had some conversation with him, I gather."
"Oh!"
"But why? Why 'Oh!'—I mean?"
"I didn't mean anything. Only that she was looking so scared and unhappy at breakfast, and that would account for it."
"Surely...."
"Surely what?"
"Well—does it want accounting for? A man shot dead almost in sight of the house, and by your own gamekeeper! Isn't that enough?"
"Enough in all conscience. But it makes a difference. All the difference. I can't exactly describe.... It is not as if she had never met him in her life before.Nowdo you see?..."
"Never met him in her life before?..." The Hon. Percival stands waiting for more, one-third of his cigar in abeyance between his finger-tips. Getting no more, he continues:—"Why—you don't mean to say?..."
"What?"
"Well—it's something like this, if I can put the case. Take somebody you've just met and spoken to...." But Mr. Pellew's prudence became suddenly aware of a direction in which the conversation might drift, and he pulled up short. If he pushed on rashly, how avoid an entanglement of himself in a personal discussion? If his introduction to this lady had been days old, instead of merely hours, there would have been no quicksands ahead. He felt proud of his astuteness in dealing with a wily sex.
Only he shouldn't have been so transparent. All that the lady had to do was to change the subject of the conversation with venomous decision, and she did it. "What a beautiful dark green fritillary!" said she. "I hope you care for butterflies, Mr. Pellew. I simply dote on them." She was conscious of indebtedness for this to her sister Lilian. Never mind!—Lilian was married now, and had no further occasion to be enchanting. A sister might borrow a cast-off. Its effect was to make the gentleman clearly alive to the fact that she knew exactly why he had stopped short.
But Miss Smith-Dickenson didnotsay to Mr. Pellew:—"I am perfectly well aware that you, sir, see danger ahead—danger of a delicate discussion of the differenceourshort acquaintance would have made to me if I had heard this morning thatyouwere shot overnight. Pray understand that I discern in this nothing but restless male vanity, always on the alert to save its owner—or slave—from capture or entanglement by dangerous single women with no property. You would have been perfectly safe in my hands, even if your recommendations as an Adonis had been less equivocal." She said no such thing. But something or other—can it have been the jump to that butterfly?—made Mr. Pellew conscious that if shehadworded a thought of the kind, it would have been just like a female of her sort. Because he wasn't going to end up that she wouldn't have been so very far wrong.
A name ought to be invented for these little ripples of human intercourse, that are hardly to be called embarrassments, seeing that theirmondedenies their existence. We do not believe it is only nervous and imaginative folk that are affected by them. The most prosaic of mankind keeps a sort of internal or subjective diary of contemporary history, many of whose entries run on such events, and are so very unlike what their author said at the time.
The dark green fritillary did not stay long enough to make any conversation worth the name, having an appointment with a friend in the air. Mr. Pellew hummedNon piu andrai farfallon amoroso,producing on the mind of Miss Dickenson vague impressions of the Opera, Her Majesty's—not displaced by a Hotel in those days—tinctured with a consciousness of Club-houses and Men of the World. This gentleman, with his whiskers and monocular wrinkle responding to his right-eye-glass-grip, who had as good as admitted last night that his uncle was intimate with the late Prince Regent, was surely an example of this singular class; which is really scarcely admissible on the domestic hearth, owing to the purity of the latter. Possibly, however, these impressions had nothing to do with the lady's discovery that perhaps she ought to go in and find out what "they" were thinking of doing this morning. It may be that it was only due to her consciousness that you cannot—when female and single—stand alone with a live single gentleman on a terrace, both speechless. You can walk up and down with him, conversing vivaciously, but you mustn't come to an anchor beside him in silence. There would be a suspicion about it of each valuing the other's presence for its own sake, which would never do.
"Goin' in?" said the Hon. Percival. "Well—it's been very jolly out here."
"Very pleasant, I am sure," said Miss Constance Smith-Dickenson. If either made a diary entry out of this, it was of the slightest. She moved away across the lawn, her skirt brushing it audibly, as the cage-borne skirt of those days did, suggesting the advantages of Jack-in-the-Green's costume. For Jack could leave his green on the ground and move freely inside it. He did not stick out at the top. Mr. Pellew remained on the shady terrace, to end up his cigar. He was a little disquieted by the recollection of his very last words, which remembered themselves on his tongue-tip as a key remembers itself in one's hand, when one has forgotten if one really locked that box. Why, though, should he not say to a maiden lady of a certain age—these are the words he thought in—that it was very nice on this terrace? Why not indeed? But that wasn't exactly the question. What he had really said was that ithad beenvery nice on this terrace. All the difference!
Miss Dickenson was soon aware what the "they" she had referred to was going to do, and offered to accompany it. The Countess and her daughter and others were the owners of the voices she could hear outside the drawing-room door when at liberty to expand, after a crush in half a French window that opened on the terrace. Her ladyship the Countess was as completely upset as her husband's ancestry permitted—quite whiteand almost crying, only not prepared to admit it. "Oh, Constance dear," said she. "Are you there? You are always so sensible. But isn't this awful?"
Aunt Constance perceived the necessity for a sympathetic spurt. She had been taking it too easily, evidently. She was equal to the occasion, responding with effusion that it was "so dreadful that she could think of nothing else!" Which wasn't true, for the moment before she had been collating the Hon. Percival's remarks and analysing the last one. Not that she was an unfeeling person—only more like everyone else than everyone else may be inclined to admit.
HOW THE COUNTESS AND HER DAUGHTER WALKED OVER TO THE VERDERER'S HALL. HOW ACHILLES KNEW BETTER THAN THE DOCTORS. THE ACCIDENT WAS NOT A FATAL ACCIDENT. AN OLD GENERAL WHO MADE A POOR FIGURE AS A CORPSE. HOW THE WOUNDED MAN'S FATHER AND SISTER CAME, AND HOW HE HIMSELF WAS TO BE CARRIED TO THE TOWERS
HOW THE COUNTESS AND HER DAUGHTER WALKED OVER TO THE VERDERER'S HALL. HOW ACHILLES KNEW BETTER THAN THE DOCTORS. THE ACCIDENT WAS NOT A FATAL ACCIDENT. AN OLD GENERAL WHO MADE A POOR FIGURE AS A CORPSE. HOW THE WOUNDED MAN'S FATHER AND SISTER CAME, AND HOW HE HIMSELF WAS TO BE CARRIED TO THE TOWERS
There was no need for a reason why Lady Gwendolen and her mother should take the first opportunity of walking over to the Lodge, where this man lay either dead or dying; but one presented itself to the Countess, as an addendum to others less defined. "We ought to go," said she, "if only for poor old Stephen's sake. The old man will be quite off his head with grief. And it was such an absolute accident."
This was on the way, walking over the grassland. Aunt Constance felt a little unconvinced. He who sends a bullet abroad at random may hear later that it had its billet all along, though it was so silent about it. As for the girl, she was in a fever of excitement; to reach the scene of disaster, anyhow—to hear some news of respite, possibly. No one had vouched for Death so far.
Sir Coupland was already on the spot, having only stayed long enough to give particulars of the catastrophe to the Earl; but he was not by the bedside. He was outside the cottage, speaking with Dr. Nash, the local doctor from Grantley Thorpe, who had passed most of the night there. There was a sort of conclusiveness about their conference, even as seen from a distance, which promised ill. As the three ladies approached, he came to meet them.
"Is there a chance?" said the Countess, as he came within hearing.
Only a shake of the head in reply. It quenches all the eagerness to hear in the three faces, each in its own degree. Aunt Constance's gives place to "Oh dear!" and solicitude. Lady Ancester's to a gasp like sudden pain, and "Oh, Sir Coupland! are you quite,quitesure?" Her daughter's to a sharp cry, or the first of one cut short, and "Oh, mamma!" Then a bitten lip, and a face shrinking from the others' view as she turns and looks out across the Park. That is Arthur's Bridge over yonder, where last evening she spoke with this man that now lies dead, and took some note of his great dark eyes in the living glory of the sunset.
As the world and sky swim about her for a moment, even she herself wonders why she should be so hard hit. A perfect stranger! A man she had never before in her life spoken to. And then, for such a moment! But the great dark eyes of the man now dead are upon her, and she does not at first hear that her mother is speaking to her.
"Gwen dear!... Gwen darling!—you hear what Sir Coupland says? We can do no good." She has to touch her daughter's arm to get her attention.
"Well!" The girl turns, and her tears are as plain on her face as its beauty. "That means go home?" says she; and then gives a sort of heart-broken sigh. "Oh dear!" Her lack of claim to grieve for this man cuts like a knife.
"We can do no good," her mother repeats. "Now, can we?"
"No, I see. Suppose we go." She turns as though to go, but either her intention hangs fire, or she only wishes her face unseen for the moment; for she pauses, saying to her mother: "There is old Stephen. Ought we not to see him—one of us?"
"Yes!" says her ladyship, decisive on reflection. "I had forgotten about old Stephen. ButIcan go to him. You go back!... Yes, dear, you had better go back.... What?"
"I am not going back. I want to see the body—this man's body. I want to see his face.... No; I am not a child, mamma. Let me have my way."
"If you must, darling, you must. But I cannot see what use it can be. See—here is Aunt Constance!Shedoes not want to see it...." A confirmatory head-shake from Miss Dickenson. "Why shouldyou?"
"Aunt Constance never spoke to him. I did. And he spoke to me. Let me go, mamma dear. Don't oppose me." Indeed, thegirl seems almost feverishly anxious, quite on a sudden, to have this wish. No need for her mother to accompany her, she adds. To which her mother replies:—"I would if you wished it, dear Gwen"; whereupon Aunt Constance, perceiving in her heart an opportunity for public service tending to distinction, says so would she. Further, in view of a verdict from somebody somewhere later on, that she showed a very nice feeling on this occasion, she takes an opportunity before they reach the cottage to say to Lady Gwendolen in an important aside:—"You won't let your mother go into the room, dear. Anything of this sort tells so on her system." To which the reply is rather abrupt:—"You needn't come, either of you." So that is settled.
The body had not been carried into a room of the cottage, but into what goes by the name of the Verderer's Hall, some fifty yards off. That much carriage was spared by doing so. It now lies on the "Lord's table," so called not from any reference to sacramental usage, but because the Lord of the Manor sat at it on the occasions of the Manorial Courts. Three centuries have passed since the last Court Baron; the last landlord who sat in real council with his tenantry under its roof having been Roger Earl of Ancester, who was killed in the Civil War. But old customs die hard, and every Michaelmas Day—except it fall on a Sunday—the Earl or his Steward at twelve o'clock receives from the person who enjoys a right of free-warren over certain acres that have long since harboured neither hare nor rabbit, an annual tribute which a chronicle as old as Chaucer speaks of as "iiij tusshes of a wild bore." If no boars' tusks are forthcoming, he has to be content with some equivalent devised to meet their scarcity nowadays. Otherwise, the old Hall grows to be more and more a museum of curios connected with the Park and outlying woodlands, the remains of the old forest that covered the land when even Earls were upstarts. A record pair of antlers on the wall is still incredulously measured tip to tip by visitors unconvinced by local testimony, and a respectable approach to Roman Antiquities is at rest after a learned description by Archæology. The place smells sweet of an old age that is so slow—that the centuries have handled so tenderly—that one's heart thinks of it rather as spontaneous preservation than decay. It will see to its own survival through some lifetimes yet, if no man restores it or converts it into a Studio.
Is his rating "Death" or not, whose body is so still on its extemporised couch—just a mattress from the keeper's cottage close at hand? Was the doctor's wording warranted when he said just now under his breath:—"Itis in here"? Could he not have said"He"? What does the dog think, that waits and watches immovable atitsfeet? If this is death, what is he watching for? What does the old keeper himself think, who lingers by this man whom he may have slain—this man whomaylive, yet? He has scarcely taken his eyes off that white face and its strapped-up wound from the first moment of his sight of it. He does not note the subdued entry of Lady Gwendolen and the two doctors, and when touched on the shoulder to call his attention to the presence of a ladyship from the Castle, defers looking round until a fancy of his restless hope dies down—a fancy that the mouth was closing of itself. He has had such fancies by scores for the last few hours, and said farewell to each with a groan.
"My mother is at the cottage, Stephen," says Gwen. "She would like to see you, I know." Thereon the old man turns to go. He looks ten years older than his rather contentious self of yesterday. The young lady says no word either way of his responsibility for this disaster. She cannot blame, but she cannot quite absolve him yet, without a grudge. Her mother can; and will, somehow.
The dog has run to her side for a moment—has uttered an undertone of bewildered complaint; then has gone back patiently to his old post, and is again watching. The great surgeon and the girl stand side by side, watching also. The humbler medico stands back a little, his eyes rather on his senior than on the body.
"It is absolutely certain—this?" says Lady Gwen; questioning, not affirming. She is wonderfully courageous—so Sir Coupland thinks—in the presence of Death. But she is ashy white.
He utters the barest syllable of doubt; then half-turns for courtesy to his junior, who echoes it. Then each shakes his head, looking at the other.
"Is there no sound—nothing to show?" Gwen has some hazy idea that there ought to be, if there is not, some official note of death due from the dying, a rattle in the throat at least.
Sir Coupland sees her meaning. "In a case of this sort," says he, "sheer loss of blood, the breath may cease so gradually that sound is impossible. All one can say is that thereisno breath, and no action of the heart—so far as one can tell." He speaks in a business-like way that is a sort of compliment to his hearer; no accommodation of facts as to a child; then raises the lifeless hand slightly and lets it fall, saying:—"See!"
To his surprise the girl, without any comment, also raises the band in hers, and stands holding it. "Yes—it will fall," says he, as though she had spoken questioning it. But still she holds it, and never shrinks from the horror of its mortality, somewhatto the wonder of her only spectator. For the other doctor has withdrawn, to speak to someone outside.
Of a sudden the dog Achilles starts barking. A short, sharp, startled bark—once, twice—and is silent. The girl lays the dead hand gently down, not dropping it, but replacing it where it first lay. She does not speak for a moment—cannot, perhaps. Then it comes with a cry, neither of pain nor joy—mere tension. "Oh, Dr. Merridew ... the fingers closed.... They closed on mine ... the fingersclosed.... I know it. I know it.... The fingersclosed!..." She says it again and again as though in terror that her word might be doubted. He sees as she turns to him that all her pride of self-control has given way. She is fighting against an outburst of tears, and her breath comes and goes at will, or at the will of some power that drives it. Sir Coupland may be contemplating speech—something it is correct to say, something the cooler judgment will endorse—but whatever it is he keeps it to himself. He is not one of those cheap sages that hashysteriaon his tongue's tip to account for everything. Itmaybe that; but it may be ... Well—he has seen some odd cases in his time.
So, without speaking to the agitated young lady, he simply calls his colleague back; and, after a word or two aside with him, says to her:—"You had better leave him to us. Go now." It gives her confidence that he does not soothe or cajole, but speaks as he would to a man. She goes, and as she walks across to the Keeper's Lodge makes a little peace for her heart out of small material. Sir Coupland said "him" this time—look you!—not "it" as before.
The daughter finds the mother, five minutes later, trying a well-meant word to the old keeper; to put a little heart in him, if possible. It was no fault of his; he only carried out his orders, and so on. Gwen is silent about her experience; she will not raise false hopes. Besides, she is only half grieved for the old chap—has only a languid sympathy in her heart for him who, tampering with implements of Death, becomes Cain unawares. If she is right, he will know in time. Meanwhile it will be a lesson to him to avoid triggers, and will thus minimise the exigencies of Hell. Also, she has recovered her self-command; and will not show, even to her mother, how keen her interest has been in this man in the balance betwixt life and death.
As to the older lady, who has fought shy of seeing the body, the affair is no more than a casualty, very little coloured by the fact that its victim is a "gentleman." This sort of thing may impress the groundlings, while a real Earl or Duke remains untouched. A coronet has a very levelling effect on the plains below. Your merebaronet is but a hillock, after all. Possibly, however, this is a proletariate view, which always snubs rank, and her ladyship the Countess may never have given a thought to this side of the case. Certainly she is honestly grieved on behalf of her old friend Stephen, whom she has known for thirty years past. In fact, of the two, as they walk back to the Towers, the mother shows more than the daughter the reaction of emotion.
Says her daughter to her as they walk back—the three as they came—"I believe he will recover, for all that. I believe Dr. Merridew believes it, too. I am certain the fingers moved." Her manner lays stress on her own equanimity. It is more self-contained than need be, all things considered.
"The eyesight is easily deceived," says Miss Dickenson, prompt with the views of experience. She always holds a brief for common sense, and is considered an authority. "Even experts are misled—sometimes—in such cases...."
Gwen interrupts:—"It had nothing to do with eyesight. Ifeltthe fingers move." Whereupon her mother, roused by her sudden emphasis, says:—"But we are so glad that itshouldbe so, Gwen darling." And then, when the girl stops in her walk and says:—"Of course you are—but why not?" she has a half-smile as for petulance forgiven, as she says:—"Because you fired up so about it, darling; that's all. We did not understand that you had hold of the hand. Was it stiff?" This in a semi-whisper of protest against the horror of the subject.
"Not the least. Cold!—oh, how cold!" She shudders of set purpose to show how cold. "But notstiff."
The two other ladies go into a partnership of seniority, glancing at each other; and each contributes to a duet about the duty of being hopeful, and we shall soon know, and at any rate, the case could not be in better hands, and so on. But whereas the elder lady was only working for reassurance—puzzled somewhat at a certain flushed emphasis in this beautiful daughter of hers—Miss Smith-Dickenson was taking mental notes, and looking intuitive. She was still looking intuitive when she joined the numerous party at lunch, an hour later. She had more than one inquiry addressed to her about "this unfortunate accident," but she reserved her information, with mystery, acquiring thereby a more defined importance. A river behind abarrageis much more impressive than a pump.
Sir Coupland Merridew's place at table was still empty when the first storm of comparison of notes set in over the events anddeeds of the morning. A conscious reservation was in the air about the disaster of last night, causing talk to run on every other subject, but betrayed by more interest in the door and its openings than lunch generally shows. Presently it would open for the overdue guest, and he would have news worth hearing, said Hope. For stinted versions of event had leaked out, and had outlived the reservations and corrections of those who knew.
Lunch was conscious of Sir Coupland's arrival in the house before he entered, and its factors nodded to each other and said: "That's him!" Nice customs of Grammar bow before big mouthfuls. However, Miss Smith-Dickenson did certainly say: "I believe thatisSir Coupland."
It was, and in his face was secret content and reserve. In response to a volley of What?—Well?—Tell us!—and so forth, he only said:—"Shan't tell you anything till I've had something to eat!" But he glanced across at Lady Gwen and nodded slightly—a nod for her exclusive use.
Lunch, liberated by what amounted to certainty that the man was not killed, ran riot; almost all its factors taking a little more, thank you! It was brought up on its haunches by being suddenly made aware that Sir Coupland—having had something to eat—had spoken. He had to repeat his words to reach the far end of the long table.
"Yes—I said ... only of course if you make such a row you can't hear.... I said that this gentleman cannot be said to have recovered consciousness"—here he paused for a mistaken exclamation of disappointment to get nipped in the bud, and then continued—"yet a while. However, I am glad to say I—both of us, Dr. Nash and myself, I should say—were completely mistaken about the case. It has turned out contrary to every expectation that...." Nobody noticed that a pause here was due to Lady Gwen having made "No!" with her lips, and looked a protest at the speaker. He went on:—"Well ... in short ... I would have sworn the man was dead ... and he isn't! That's all I have to say about it at present. It might be over-sanguine to say he is alive—meaning that he will succeed in keeping so—but he is certainly notdead." Miss Dickenson lodged her claim to a mild form of omniscience by saying with presence of mind:—"Exactly!" but without presumption, so that only her near neighbours heard her. Self-respect called for no more.
Had the insensible man spoken?—the Earl asked pertinently. Oh dear, no! Nothing so satisfactory as that, so far. The vitality was almostnil. The Earl retired on his question to listen towhat a Peninsular veteran was saying to Gwen. This ancient warrior was one who talked but little, and then only to two sorts, old men like himself, with old memories of India and the Napoleonic wars, and young women like Gwen. As this was his way, it did not seem strange that he should address her all but exclusively, with only a chance side-word now and then to his host, for mere courtesy.
"When I was in Madras in eighteen-two—no—eighteen-three," he said, "I was in the Nineteenth Dragoons under Maxwell—he was killed, you know—in that affair with the Mahrattas...."
"I know. I've read about the Battle of Assaye, and how General Wellesley had two horses shot under him...."
"That was it. Scindia, you know—that affair! They had some very good artillery for those days, and our men had to charge up to the guns. I was cut down in Maxwell's cavalry charge, and went near bleeding to death. He was a fine fellow that did it...."
"Never mind him! You were going to tell me about yourself."
"Why—I was given up for dead. It was a good job I escaped decent interment. But the surgeon gave me the benefit of the doubt, and stood me over for a day or two. Then, as I didn't decay properly...."
"Oh, General—don't be so horrible!" This from Miss Smith-Dickenson close at hand. But Gwen is too eager to hear, to care about delicacies of speech, and strikes in:—
"Do go on, General! Never mind Aunt Constance. She is so fussy. Go on—'didn't decay properly'...."
"Well—I was behindhand! Not up to my duties, considered as a corpse! The doctor stood me over another twenty-four hours, and I came to. I was very much run down, certainly, but Ididcome to, or I shouldn't be here now to tell you about it, my dear. I should have been sorry."
A matter-of-fact gentleman "pointed out" that had General Rawnsley died of his wounds, he would not have been in a position to feel either joy or sorrow, or to be conscious that he was not dining at Ancester. The General fished up a wandering eyeglass to look at him, and said:—"Quite correct!" Miss Smith-Dickenson remarked upon the dangers attendant on over-literal interpretations. The Hon. Mr. Pellew perceived in this that Miss Dickenson had a sort of dry humour.
"But youdidcome to, General, and youaretelling me about it," said Lady Gwen. "Now, how long was it before you rejoined your regiment?"
"H'm—well! I wasn't good for much two months later, or I should have come in for the fag-end of the campaign. All right in three months, I should say. But then—I was a young fellah!—in those days. How old's your man?"
"This gentleman who has been shot?" says Gwen, with some stiffness. "I have not the slightest idea." But Sir Coupland answered the question for her. "At a guess, General, twenty-five or twenty-six. He ought to do well if he gets through the next day or two. He may have a good constitution. I can't say yet. Yours must have been remarkable."
"I had such a good appetite, you know," says the General. "Such a devil of a twist! If I had had my way, I should have been at Argaum two months later. But, good Lard!—they wouldn't let me out of Hospital." The old soldier, roused by the recollection of a fifty-year-old grievance, still rankling, launched into a denunciation of the effeminacy and timidity of Authorities and Seniors, of all sorts and conditions. His youth was back upon him with its memories, and he had forgotten that he too was now a Senior. His torrent of thinly disguised execrations was of service to Lady Gwen; as the original subject of the conversation, just shot, was naturally forgotten. She had got all the enlightenment she wanted about him, and was cultivating an artificial lack of interest in his accident.
She was, however, a little dissatisfied with her own success in this branch of horticulture. Her anxiety had felt itself fully justified till now by the bare facts of the case. Her longing that this man should not die was so safe while it seemed certain that he could not live, that she felt under no obligation to account to herself for it. Analysis of niceties of feeling in the presence of Death were uncalled for, surely. But now, with at least a chance of his recovery, she felt that she ought to be able to think of something else. So she talked of Sardanapalus and Charles Keane at the Princesses' Theatre—the first a play, the second a player—and the General, declining more than monosyllables to the matter-o'-fact gentleman, subsided into wrathful recollection of an exasperated young Dragoon chafing under canvas beneath an Indian sun, and panting for news of his regiment in the north, fifty years before.
But such intermittent conversation could not prevent her seeing that Norbury the butler had handed a visiting-card, pencilled on the back, to her father, and had whispered a message to him with a sense of its gravity, and that her father had replied:—"Yes, say I will be there presently." Nor that—in response to remoteinquiry from his Countess at the end of an avenue of finger-glasses—he had thrown the words "Hamilton Torrens and the daughter—mother too ill to come—won't come up to the house until he's fit to move!" all the length of the table. That her mother had said:—"Oh yes—you know them," perhaps because of an apologetic manner in her husband for being the recipient of the message. Also that curiosity and information were mutual in the avenue, and that next-door neighbours but one were saying:—"What's that?" and getting no answer.
However, the Intelligence Department did itself credit in the end, and everyone knew that, immediately on the receipt of sanction from headquarters, Tom Kettering the young groom had mounted the grey mare—a celebrity in these parts—and made a foxhunter's short cut across a stiff country to carry the news of the disaster to Pensham Steynes, Sir Hamilton Torrens's house twenty miles off, and that that baronet and his daughter Irene Torrens had come at once. "I hope he hasn't killed the mare," said the Earl apprehensively. But his wife summoned Norbury to a secret confidence, saying after it:—"No—it's all right—he came on the box—didn't ride." From which the Earl knew—if the avenue didn't—that Tom Kettering the groom, after an incredible break across country, stabled the mare at Pensham Steynes, and rode back with the carriage. The whole thing had been negotiated in less than three hours.
All these things Gwendolen comes to be aware of somehow. But all of us know how a chance word in a confused conversation stays by the hearer, who is forced to listen to what is no elucidation of it, and is discontented. Such a word had struck this young lady; and she watched for her father, as lunch died away, to get the elucidation overdue. She was able to intercept him at the end of a long colloquy with Sir Coupland. "What did you mean, papa dearest, just now?..."
"What did I mean, dear?... When?"
"By 'until he's fit to move'?"
"I meant until Sir Coupland says he can be safely brought up to the house."
"Thishouse, my dear?" It is not Gwen who speaks, but her mother, who has joined the conversation.
"Certainly, my love," says the Earl, with a kind of appealing diffidence. "If you have no very strong objection. He can be carried, Sir Coupland says, as soon as the wound is safe from inflammation. Of course he must not be left at the Hall."
"Of course not. But there are beds at the Lodge...." However,the Earl says with a meek self-assertion:—"I think I would rather he were brought here. His father and George were at Christ Church together...." Before which her ladyship concedes the point. His lordship then says he shall go at once to the Hall to see Sir Hamilton, and Gwen suggests that she shall accompany him. She may persuade Miss Torrens to come up to the Towers.
This assumption that the wounded man could be moved, after conversation between the Earl and Sir Coupland, was so reassuring, that Gwendolen felt it more than ever due to herself to cultivate that indifference about his recovery. However, she could not easily be too affectionate and hospitable to his sister under the circumstances.
By-the-by, it was rather singular that she had never seen this Irene Torrens, when they were almost neighbours—only eighteen miles by road between them. And Irene's father had been her Uncle George's great friend at Oxford; both at Christ Church! This uncle, who, like his friend Torrens, had gone into the army, was killed in action at Rangoon, long before Gwendolen's day.
It all takes so long to tell. The omission of half would shorten the tale and spare the reader so much. What a very small book the History of the World would be if all the events were left out!
BACK IN SAPPS COURT. MICHAEL RAGSTROAR'S SECULARISM. HIS EXTENDED KNOWLEDGE OF LIFE. YET A GAOL-BIRD PROPER WAS OUTSIDE IT. ONE IN QUEST OF A WIDOW. THE DEAD BEETLE IN DOLLY'S CAKE. HOW UNCLE MO DID NOT LIKE THE MAN'S LOOKS. THEREWASNO WIDOW DAVERILL AND NEITHER BURR NOR PRICHARD WOULD DO. HOW AUNT M'RIAR HAD BEEN AT CHAPEL. THE SONS OF LEVI. MICHAEL'S NOBLE LOYALTY TOWARDS OUTLAWS
BACK IN SAPPS COURT. MICHAEL RAGSTROAR'S SECULARISM. HIS EXTENDED KNOWLEDGE OF LIFE. YET A GAOL-BIRD PROPER WAS OUTSIDE IT. ONE IN QUEST OF A WIDOW. THE DEAD BEETLE IN DOLLY'S CAKE. HOW UNCLE MO DID NOT LIKE THE MAN'S LOOKS. THEREWASNO WIDOW DAVERILL AND NEITHER BURR NOR PRICHARD WOULD DO. HOW AUNT M'RIAR HAD BEEN AT CHAPEL. THE SONS OF LEVI. MICHAEL'S NOBLE LOYALTY TOWARDS OUTLAWS
It was a fine Sunday morning in Sapps Court, and our young friend Michael Rackstraw was not attending public worship. Not that it was his custom to do so. Nevertheless, the way he replied to a question by a chance loiterer into the Court seemed to imply the contrary. The question was, what the Devil he was doing that for?—and referred to the fact that he was walking on his hands. His answer was, that it was because he wasn't at Church. Not that all absentees from religious rites went about upside down;but that, had he been at Church, the narrow exclusiveness of its ritual would have kept him right side up.
The speaker's appearance was disreputable, and his manner morose, sullen, and unconciliatory. Michael, even while still upside down, fancied he could identify a certain twist in his face that seemed not unfamiliar; but thought this might be due to his own drawbacks on correct observation. Upright again, his identification was confirmed and he knew quite well whose question he was answering by the time he felt his feet. It was the man he had seen in the clutches of the water-rat at Hammersmith, when both were capsized into the river six months ago. This put him on his guard, and he prepared to meet further questions with evasion or defiance. But he would flavour them with substantial facts. It would confuse issues and make it more difficult to convict him of mendacity.
"You don't look an unlikely young beggar," said the man. "What name are you called?"
Michael thought a moment and settled that it might be impolitic to disclose his name. So he answered simply:—"Ikey." Now, this name was not contrary to any statute or usage. The man appeared to accept it in good faith, and Michael decided in his heart that he was softer than what he'd took him for.
He recovered some credit, however, by his next inquiry which seemed to place baptismal names among negligibles: "Ah, that's it, is it? But Ikey what? What do they call your father, if you've got one?"
Three courses occurred to Michael; improbable fiction, evasive or defiant; plausible fiction; and the undisguised truth. As the first, the Duke of Wellington's name recommended itself. He had, however, decided mentally that this man was a queer customer, and might be an awkward customer. So he discarded the Duke—satire might irritate—and chose the second course to avoid the third. But he was betrayed by Realism, which suggested that a study from Nature would carry conviction. He decided on assuming the name of his friend the apothecary round the corner, up the street facing over against the Wheatsheaf. He replied that his father's name was Heeking's. It was easier to do this than to invent a name, which might have turned out an insult to the human understanding. He was disgusted to be met with incredulity.
"Don't believe you," said the man. "You're a young liar. Where's your father now—now this very minute?"
"Abed."
"What's he doing there?"
"Sleeping of it off. It was Saturday with him last night. He had to be fetched from the King's Arms very careful. Perkins's Entire. Barclay Perkins. Fetched him myself! Mean to say I didn't?" But this part of the tale was probable and no comment seemed necessary.
"Where's your mother?"
"Cookin' 'im a bloater over the fire. It does the temper good. Can't yer smell it?" A flavour of cooking confirmed Michael's words, but he seemed to require a more formal admission of his veracity than a mere nostril set ajar and a glance at an open window. "Say, if you don't! On'y there's no charge for the smelling of it. She'll tell yer just the same like me, word in and word out. You can arks for yourself. I can 'oller 'er up less time than talkin' about it. You've only to say!"
But this man, the twist of whose face had not been improved by his recognition of the bloater, seemed to wish to confine his communications to Michael, rather decisively. Indeed, there was a sound of veiled intimidation in his voice as he said:—"You leave your mother to see to the herrings, young 'un, and just you listen to me. You be done with your kidding and listen to me.Youcan tell me as much as I want to know. Sharp young beggar!—you know what's good for you." An intimidation of a possibledouceurperhaps?
Now Master Michael, though absolutely deficient in education—his class, a sort of aristocracy of guttersnipes, was so in the pre-Board-School fifties,—was as sharp as a razor already even in the days of Dave Wardle's early accident, and had added a world of experience to his stock in the last few months. He had, in fact, been seeing the Metropolis, as an exponent or auxiliary of his father's vocation as a costermonger; and had made himself extremely useful, said Mr. Rackstraw, in the manner of speaking. Only the manner of speaking, strictly reported, did not use the expressionextremely, but another one which we need not dwell upon except to make reference to its inappropriateness. Mr. Rackstraw was not a man of many words, so he had to fall back upon the same very often or hold his tongue: a course uncongenial to him. This word was apièce de résistance—a kind of sheet-anchor.
In the course of these last few months of active costermongery, of transactions in early peas and new potatoes, spring-cabbage and ripe strawberries, he had acquired not only an insight into commerce but apparently an intimate knowledge of every streetin London, and a very fair acquaintance with its celebrities; meaning thereby its real celebrities—its sportsmen, patrons of the Prize Ring, cricketers, rowing-men, billiard-players, jockeys—what not? Its less important representative men, statesmen, bishops, writers, artists, lawyers; soldiers and sailors even, though here concession was rife, had to take a second place. But there was one class—a class whose members may have belonged to any one of these—of which Michael's experience was very limited. It was the class of gaol-birds. This type, the most puzzling to eyes that see it for the first time, the most unmistakable by those well read in it, was the type that was now setting this juvenile coster's wits to work upon its classification, on this May morning in Sapps Court. Michael's previous record of him was an interrupted sight of his face in the river-garden at Hammersmith, and a reference to his felonious antecedents at the inquest. He was, by the time the conversation assumed the interest due to a hint of emolument, able to say to himself that he should know the Old Bailey again by the cut of its jib next time he came across it.
In reply, he scorned circumlocution, saying briefly:—"Wot'll it come to? Wot are you good for? That's the p'int."
"You tell me no lies and you'll see. There's an old widow-lady down this Court. Don't you go and say there ain't!"
"There's any number. Which old widder?"
"Name of Daverill. Old enough to be your father's granny."
"No sich a name! There's one a sight older than that though—last house down the Court—top bell."
"How old do you make her out?"
"Two 'underd next birthday!" But Michael perceived in his questioner's eye a possible withdrawal of his offer of a consideration, and amended his statement:—"Ninety-nine, p'raps!—couldn't say to arf a minute."
"House at the end where the old cock in a blue shirt's smoking a pipe—is that it?"
"Ah!—up two flights of stairs. But she can't see you, nor yet hear you, to speak of."
"Who's the old cock?"
"This little boy's uncle. He b'longs to the Fancy. 'Eavyweight he was, wunst upon a time." And Dave Wardle, who had joined the colloquy, gave confirmatory evidence: "He's moy Uncle Moses, he is. And he's moy sister Dolly's Uncle Moses, he is. And moy sister Dolly she had a piece of koyk with a beadle in it. Shehad. A dead beadle!" But this evidence was ruled out of court by general consent; or rather, perhaps, it should be said that thewitness remained in the box giving evidence of the same nature for his own satisfaction, while the court's attention wandered.
"Oh—he was a heavyweight, was he? An ugly customer, I should reckon." The stranger said this more to himself than to the boys. But he spoke direct to Michael with the question, "What was it you said was the old lady's name, now?"
The boy, shrewd as he was, was but a boy after all. Was it wonderful that he should accept the implication that he had given the name? Thrown off his guard he answered:—"Name of Richards." Whereupon Dave, who was still stuttering on melodiously about the dead monster in Dolly's cake, endeavoured to correct his friend without complete success.
"Pitcher, is it?" said the stranger. Michael, disgusted to find that he had been betrayed into giving a name, though he was far from clear why it should have been reserved, was glad of Dave's perverted version, as replacing matters on their former footing. But the repetition of the name, by voices the stimulus of definition had emphasized, caught the attention of Uncle Moses, who thereon moved up the Court to find out who this stranger could be, who was so evidently inquiring about the upstairs tenant. As he reached close inspection-point his face did not look as though the visitor pleased him. The latter said good-morning first; but, simple as his words were, the gaol-bird manner of guarded suspicion crept into them and stamped the speaker.
"Don't like the looks of you, mister!" said Uncle Mo to himself. But aloud he said:—"Good-morning toyou, sir. I understood you to be inquiring for Mrs. Prichard."
"No—Daverill. No such a name, this young shaver says."
"Not down this Court. It wasn't Burr by any chance now, was it?"
"No—Daverill."
"Because thereisa party by the name of Burr if you could have seen your way." This was only the natural civility which sometimes runs riot with an informant's judgment, making him anxious to meet the inquirer at any cost, whatever inalienable stipulations the latter may have committed himself to. In this case it seemed that nothing short of Daverill, crisp and well defined, would satisfy the conditions. The stranger shook his head with as much decision as reciprocal civility permitted—rather as though he regretted his inability to accept Burr—and replied that the name had "got to be" Daverill and no other. But he seemed reluctant to leave the widows down this Court unsifted, saying:—"You're sure there ain't any other old party now?" To whichUncle Moses responded: "Ne'er a one, master, tomyknowledge. Widow Daverill she's somewheres else. Not downthisCourt!" He said it in a valedictory way as though he had no wish to open a new subject, and considered this one closed. He had profited by his inspection of the stranger, and had formed a low opinion of him.
But the stranger's reluctance continued. "You couldn't say, I suppose," said he, in a cautious hesitating way, "you couldn't say what countrywoman she was, now?" His manner might easily have been—so Uncle Mo thought at least—that of indigence trying to get a foothold with an eye to begging in the end. It really was the furtive suspiciousness that hangs alike upon the miscreant and the mere rebel against law into whose bones the fetter has rusted. The guilt of the former, if he can cheat both the gaol and the gallows, may merge in the demeanour of a free man; that of the latter, after a decade of prison-service you or I might have remitted, will hang by him till death.
Uncle Mo may have detected, through the mere blood-poisoning of the prison, the inherent baseness of the man, or may have recoiled from the type. Anyway, his instinct was to get rid of him. And evidently the less he said about anyone in Sapps Court the better. So he replied, surlily enough considering his really amiable disposition:—"No—I couldnotsay what countrywoman she is, master." Then he thought a small trifle of fiction thrown in might contribute to the detachment of this man's curiosity from Mrs. Prichard, and added carelessly:—"Some sort of a foringer I take it." Which accounted, too, for his knowing nothing about her. No true Englishman knows anything about that benighted class.
Now the boy Michael, all eyes and ears, had somehow come to an imperfect knowledge that Mrs. Prichard had been in Australia once on a time. The imperfection of this knowledge had affected the name of the place, and when he officiously struck in to supply it, he did so inaccurately. "Horstrian she is!" He added:—"Rode in a circus, she did." But this was only the reaction of misinterpretation on a too inventive brain.
"Then she ain't any use to me. Austrian, is she?" Thus the stranger; who then, after a slow glare up and down the Court, in search of further widows perhaps, turned to go, saying merely:—"I'll wish you a good-morning, guv'nor. Good-morning!" Uncle Mo watched him as he lurched up the Court, noting the oddity of his walk. This man, you see, had been chained to another like himself, and his bias went to one side like a horse that has gone in harness. This gait is known in the class he belonged to asthe "darby-roll," from the name by which fetters are often spoken of.
"How long has that charackter been makin' the Court stink, young Carrots?" said Uncle Moses to Michael.
"Afore you come up, Mr. Moses."
"Afore I come up. How long afore I come up?"
Michael appeared to pass through a paroxysm of acute calculation, ending in a lucid calm with particulars. "Seven minute and a half," said he resolutely. "Wanted my name, he did!"
"What did you tell him?"
"I told 'im a name. Orl correct it was. Only it warn't mine. I was too fly for him."
"What name did you tell him?"
"Mr. Eking's at the doctor's shop. He'll find that all right. He can read it over the door. He's got eyes in his head." No doubt sticklers for conscience will quarrel with the view that the demands of Truth can be satisfied by an authentic name applied to the wrong person.
It did not seem to grate on Uncle Moses, who only said:—"Sharp boy! But don't you tell no more lies than's wanted. Only now and again to shame the Devil, as the sayin' is. And you, little Dave, don't you tell nothing but the truth, 'cos your Aunt M'riar she says not to it." Dave promised to oblige.
Aunt M'riar, returning home with Dolly from a place known as "Chapel"—a place generally understood to be good, and an antidote to The Rising Sun, which represented Satan and was bad—only missed meeting this visitor to Sapps by a couple of minutes. She might have just come face to face with him the very minute he left the Court, if she had not delayed a little at the baker's, where she had prevailed on Sharmanses—the promoter of some latent heat in the bowels of the earth which came through to the pavement, making it nice and dry and warm to set upon in damp, cold weather—to keep the family Sunday dinner back just enough to guarantee it brown all through, and the potatoes crackly all over. Sharmanses was that obliging he would have kep' it in—it was a shoulder of mutton—any time you named, but he declined to be responsible that the gravy should not dry up. So Dolly carried her aunt's prayer-book, feeling like the priests, the Sons of Levi, which bare the Ark of the Covenant; and Aunt M'riar carried the Tin of the Shoulder of Mutton, and took great care not to spill any of the Gravy. The office of the Sons of Levi was a sinecure by comparison.
Why did our astute young friend Michael keep his counselabout the identity of the bloke that come down the Court that Sunday morning? Well—it was not mere astuteness or vulgar cunning on the watch for an honorarium. It was really a noble chivalry akin to that of the schoolboy who will be flogged till the blood comes, rather than tell upon his schoolfellow, even though he loathes the misdemeanour of the latter. It was enough for Michael that this man was wanted by Scotland Yard, to make silence seem a duty—silence, at any rate, until interrogated. He was certainly not going to volunteer information—was, in fact, in the position of the Humanitarian who declined to say which way the fox had gone when the scent was at fault; only with this difference—that the hounds were not in sight. Neither was he threatened with the hunting-whip of an irate M.F.H. "Give the beggar his chance!"—that was how Michael looked at it. He who knows the traditions of the class this boy was born in will understand and excuse the feeling.
Michael was—said hisentourage—that sharp at twelve that he could understand a'most anything. He had certainly understood that the man whom he saw in the grip of the police-officer overturned in the Thames was wanted by Scotland Yard, to pay an old score, with possible additions to it due to that officer's death. He had understood, too, that the attempt to capture the man had been treacherous according to his ideas of fair play, while he had no information about his original crime. He did not like his looks, certainly, but then looks warn't much to go by. His conclusion was—silence for the present, without prejudice to future speech if applied for. When that time came, he would tell no more lies than were wanted.