by R. G. Frasks
Monday, 25 June 2018
Friday, 22 June 2018
One Midsummer Night
by Mary Elizabeth
"Bon jour, Maitre Picard. Can I have a word with you?"
Maitre Pierre Picard, the miller of Montvert—a little, spare dry chip of a man, with a brown, weather-beaten face carved into a myriad of crooked wrinkles, and keen, bird-like black eyes—was stooping to tie up a sack of flour at the foot of the mill steps. On being thus addressed he raised his head, which was decorated with a striped cotton nightcap, and shading his eyes from the glare of the June sunset, looked up at the speaker, a stalwart young Norman of five-and-twenty, fair-haired, fair-bearded, with frank, vivacious blue eyes and handsome, sun-burned features.
"Bon jour, Andre Leblond. A word with me? Certainly—as many as you like. Come indoors," and clapping his hands to rid them of the flour, he led the way across the green which lay between the mill and the house.
As he entered, a shrill voice cried joyfully, "Here's dear father!" And then a little crutch came tapping rapidly across the floor, and two little arms were thrown round his knees.
Maitre Picard's only son was a cripple—a frail, gentle little lad of five years, with wide, solemn dark eyes which seemed several sizes too large for his small, pale face. With a smile of tenderness which transfigured his hard features, the miller bent over his motherless child.
"Yes, here I am, little one," he said, giving the expected kiss; "but I cannot take thee now—I am busy. There—run to Denise. Come in, Monsieur Leblond."
The child obediently limped off to his sister, who sat near the window, peeling vegetables for the supper-soup. She was a tall, slim girl of nineteen, with a clear complexion, which the sun had kissed into warmth, and soft velvety brown eyes—eyes so beautiful that in looking at them one forgot to criticise the other features. She looked up as the visitor entered, and greeted him with a quick bright smile of welcome. A furtive glance of intelligence was exchanged between them, and then the young man uncovered, and saluted her with formal politeness.
"Bon jour, Ma'm'selle Denise. I hope I see you well. You are busy, as usual."
"As usual," repeated Denise, cheerfully. "It is a long time since we saw you at Montvert, Monsieur Andre. Your mother is well?"
"As well as usual, thanks; but the rheumatism gives her little rest, even in summer. Our house is damp, you see, the land being ill-drained."
"But it is good land," asserted the miller, as he sat down on a chair near the hearth, and took out his pipe—"very good land—La Chenaie."
"Not bad," the young man allowed, shrugging one shoulder; "but, as my father used to say, it has never been properly cultivated. It wants capital."
"It wants capital? A-ah!" responded Maitre Picard, lengthening the ejaculation into a sort of snarl, as he stooped over the hearth and lighted his pipe at one of the smouldering brands.
Andre, glancing at Denise, wondered why she frowned at him as if he had made a mistake; but he soon forgot that speculation and everything else in thinking what a pretty picture she made as she sat near the narrow easement a slanting ray of evening sunshine lighting up her brown hair, her high white coif, quaint silver earrings, and skirt of dark blue serge, with a great heap of vegetables at her feet—big round lettuces, carrots, leeks, and beans, all tumbled together in picturesque confusion. The miller glanced over his shoulder at the visitor and frowned, as if something displeased him.
"Denise," he said sharply, "it is Pierre's bedtime."
"Yes, father, I am just going to take him."
She rose as she spoke, shook the peelings from her apron, and threw the prepared vegetables into the great iron soup-kettle hanging over the fire, and then turned to the little lad, who had followed her about, watching her proceedings with a face of grave interest.
"Come then, my bird—it is time to go to roost! The dustman is coming presently to throw dust into the eyes of little folk who ought to be in bed. Kiss father and say good night."
The miller put down his pipe and opened his arms wide to take the child.
"Good-night, my heart, my treasure," he murmured—"angels guard thee!" And taking the little wan face between his brown hands, he looked at it with devouring tenderness, kissed it again and again, and then relinquished little Pierre to his sister.
"Say 'Bon soir, Monsieur Andre,'" prompted Denise; and putting the little hand to her lips, she sent the visitor a kiss by deputy, with another of her brief, bright smiles.
"Bon soir, Mon'sieu Andre," chirped little Pierre.
"Good-night, little one; sleep well!" said the young man pleasantly, returning both the smile and the kiss; and he watched the girl as she crossed the kitchen with the child in her arms and ascended the steep stairs.
Left tete-a-tete with his host, the visitor seemed to find a difficulty in opening the conversation.
"Won't you sit down?" said Maitre Picard drily; and the other, who had forgotten that he was standing, hastily subsided into a chair on the opposite side of the hearth, where he sat turning his hat about in his hands and absently examining the maker's name inside. The miller meanwhile smoked on placidly, looking at the fire. At length, "taking his courage in both hands," Andre plunged into his subject.
"Maitre Picard, I am come to renew the proposal I made two years ago for your daughter's hand."
"Well?" interrogated Maitre Picard, letting the word escape at that corner of his mouth in which his pipe was not.
"You declined it then on the ground that Denise was too young, and that I was too poor; but you gave me leave to hope that, if in two years' time I could raise myself to a better position, you would reconsider your refusal. You remember?"
"Perfectly."
"Well," the young farmer continued, gathering courage as he went on, "I think I may say that I have succeeded. I have been very lucky these last two years; everything seems to have prospered with me. I have bought fresh land, and have put my money in the bank—"
"Very proper—very prudent," interposed his companion, between two puffs.
"And altogether my prospects have never looked so bright. I love Denise fondly and truly, Maitre Picard, as she deserves to be loved; and if you will give her to me, I will do all a man can do to make her happy."
The miller, in a cool, leisurely way, extinguished his pipe, knocked out the ashes against the leg of his chair, and put the pipe in the breast-pocket of his coat; then, looking across at his companion, he said deliberately,
"I thank you for the honor you have done me, Monsieur Andre Leblond; and I beg to decline your proposal."
Andre's face, in its sudden change from cheerful confidence to rueful amazement, was a study.
"You refuse me—again? Well, but—you said—you as good as promised, when we spoke of this before—"
"Listen!" interrupted the miller, tapping his nose with his forefinger by way of emphasis. "This is what I said—'If, in two years' time, you are in a suitable position, and if Denise is still free'—mark that 'if'"—
"Well, she is free! she told me so herself!"
"Ah, indeed! When was that? When did you see her alone?" was the quick question.
Andre colored, and bit his lips.
"We—I—I sometimes walk a little way with her on Sundays, after church."
"Oh, indeed?" said the miller, resolving on the spot that for the future Monsieur le Cure should not have to complain of his non-attendance. "But, you see, I have not yet told Denise of my intentions," he resumed. "She does not know that she is promised, or as good as promised, to my friend and neighbor Simon Moreau."
Andre's chair squeaked on the stone floor, as he pushed it back half a yard in his indignant astonishment.
"Good Heavens, Maitre Picard, you don't mean it? Simon Moreau—a man old enough to be her father—a course, vulgar, uneducated boor, who is—"
"The richest man between here and Fougeres," interposed the miller with a nod.
"And you will sell your daughter to the highest bidder, without even letting her have a voice in the matter? You will—"
"Oh, Denise will not oppose me! She knows her duty too well," he interrupted.
"Then it is the more shame of you to make use of her submission to break her heart," was the quick retort. "You'll forgive me if I speak warmly; but I feel strongly."
"Yes, I make allowance; you are disappointed, naturally," the miller returned, taking a pinch of snuff. " My daughter's dowry would have been useful—hein? The farm 'wants capital.' A-ah; I understand!" And he shut his snuff-box with a snap, smiling sourly as he glanced at his visitor under his floury brows.
The young farmer flushed up to his bronzed temples.
"I am no fortune-hunter, Maitre Picard; I think you know that. I protest against such an accusation," he began hastily.
"Good; when you have done protesting, I will wish you good evening."
"Nay, but listen to me," Andre pleaded, conquering his resentment by an effort. "I am quite willing to take your daughter penniless, if you will give her to me on those terms."
"Good evening," was the only reply.
"Consider what you are doing!" cried the young man, with passionate earnestness. "We have loved each other for years, Denise and I; it will break our hears to divide us. And think what the poor child's life will be, as the wife of such a man as Moreau! Even if you persist in refusing her to me, don't—for heaven's sake, don't give her to him!"
"Good evening," said the miller once more—and this time his finger pointed to the door.
Andre, glancing at the stern set face, saw that all his eloquence was thrown away. With a sigh of despair he took up his hat and rose.
"You refuse me then—unconditionally."
"Exactly; and if you come again on the same errand, I shall shut the door in your face."
"I shall trouble you no more," the young man replied as he passed through the door.
As he was moving slowly and sorrowfully away, a widow high up in the steep roof, above the door, opened noiselessly, and Denise looked out. She called to him softly—
"Wait for me by the bridge."
He nodded and walked away across the yard, and along the unfenced road which wound down the hillside into the valley below.
At the foot of the hill was a stream, crossed by a quaint stone bridge with one wide arch and one narrow one. Beyond the bridge a lonely lane led between high banks and tangled hedgerows to the village of St. Marie-les-Chenes, three miles away.
At length the sound of a quick, light footstep made him look up with a start, and the next moment Denise was at his side. She was out of breath with the haste she had made, and could not protest, even had she been inclined to do so, when her lover, taking her hands in his, drew her to him, and kissed her on both cheeks.
"I dare not stay long, or father will miss me," she said hurriedly. "Have you spoken to him? What did he say? Ah, I see the answer in your face!" she broke off. " He has refused you!"
"Yes, Denise, he has refused me. And do you know what reason he gives? That you are promised to another!"
She started.
"Promised?" she repeated breathlessly. "To whom am I promised?"
"To Simon Moreau." he said.
She drew back, looking at him blankly, the color fading from her face.
"No, it is impossible; father cannot mean it!"
"That is what I said when he told me; but he does mean it, Denise. He refused you to me, and he will give you to that boor, who is not worthy to kiss your shoe! Great Heaven, how shall I bear it?" he exclaimed, with a passionate gesture. "To have worked for you, hoped for you, lived for you, all these years, and now, after all—"
His voice broke and he turned away his head abruptly.
Denise stood at his side with the same blank, stunned look on her face.
"But are you sure there is no hope?" she asked in an eager, tremulous undertone. "Did you remind him of his promise two years ago?"
"You may be sure I did not forget that. I used every argument I could think of; but there—I might as well have talked to a stone."
With a gesture of despair she let her hands fall to her sides.
"If he has made up his mind, nothing will move him. It is all over!"
"But it is not—it shall not be!" her lover exclaimed impetuously. "Do you think I will give you up so lightly, after loving you so long? Not at your father's or any man's bidding! Denise, listen. In less than a year you will be of age, and then, if he still refuses his consent, why—we will do without it! You need not look so shocked," he added impatiently. "It is not a crime that I am proposing."
Denise shook her head.
"If I set him at defiance he would curse me, and that would be terrible," she said. "No blessing would rest on our marriage, for certain."
"And will a blessing rest on the one he has planned for you?" her companion asked. "Will your father's approval make you any happier as Moreau's wife? Just think what your life will be in the long years to come. If you have no pity for me, have pity on yourself, Denise."
She nervously twisted the quaint gold ring on her finger, her eyes full of trouble and perplexity.
"Dear," she said slowly at last, "I must not think of myself in this matter. If I did I should never have courage to say to you what I say now, with a sorrowful heart—we must part." Her voice faltered, and she paused a moment, than went on. "Even if I could bring myself to disobey my father, there would still be an obstacle between us. If I married without his consent, I should come to you penniless, and—"
"What of that," he interrupted, quickly. "Your love is dower enough for me, my sweet."
"Ah, no," Denise returned, shaking her head. "It's not as if you were rich. You have your fortune still to make, and, as your mother said to me the last time I saw her, an imprudent marriage would hamper you for life."
"My mother need not have said that," said Andre, frowning.
"But it is quite true, dear. And knowing. this, can I be so selfish, so cruel as to—"
"Denise, Denise," he interrupted, passionately, "do not break my heart! What is poverty compared to the loss of you? What would riches be to me without you? Ah," he added bitterly, "you do not love me, or you would not talk in that strain."
"Do not I?" she questioned, with tender reproach. "I love you too well to injure you. It is love, as well as duty, that holds me back from you."
"I think you do not know what love means," was his reply. "If you felt for me as I do for you, nothing—nothing—would hold you back from these longing arms and this lonely heart of mine. Ah, no, Denise, you do not care for me! I have been miserably mistaken."
The tears rushed to her eyes and her lips quivered.
"You are mistaken now," she said, in a tone half proud, half sad; but think as you will. You do not understand me, that is all."
Both were silent a moment, Andre staring moodily on the ground, his companion looking sorrowfully away over the sunlit meadows.. At length the. sound of a horse approaching along the lane roused them both.
"I must go now," said the girl, with a sigh, looking at him wistfully as she put out her hand. "If we must part, Andre, let us not part in anger. Forgive me, dear, and—forget me."
He turned and looked at her, then, suddenly, with an inarticulate sound of tenderness, caught both her hands in his, and drew her to his breast.
"Forget you? When I forget there is a heaven above us!" he added, in a passionate undertone, and taking her face in his hands, he kissed her on her eyes, her lips, her brow. "You love me; we will not be parted," he whispered, laying his bearded cheek against her forehead. "I cannot live without you. Listen, dearest. I told your father I should trouble him no more; but I am resolved, now, to make one last appeal to him. If he repeats his refusal, then you will have to choose between him and me. You understand?"
"I understand," Denise replied; but wait a few days before you speak to him again. He—"
She broke off, glancing nervously down the lane.
"Look, Andre, it is Monsieur Moreau," she whispered. "Let me go; he must not see me here."
Andre glanced over his shoulder at the approaching horseman, muttering something that was certainly not a benediction.
"I shall come to Montvert again in a fortnight—on Midsummer Eve—" he said, hurriedly; till then, adieu, dear one."
"Adieu," she echoed, as she waved her hand to him, and hurried away.
The Grewelthorpe Feud
Author Unknown
It was market day in Fulford, and it was very hot, as the red-whiskered Mahoney, the rough "cross country" doctor, rode clattering in from the Barford road through a drove of panting sheep. His lank and jaded mare turned from habit into the yard of the old inn, and sniffed at the few drops of water at the bottom of a bucket before the door, while her master swung himself to the ground and entered the dim passage to the bar-parlor, tugging his stiff mustache clear of his mouth.
"Oh, now, be quiet, me darlin'! A big drink—I'm as dry as a salted cod."
The farmers and dealers stopped their talk and turned on their elbows. He nodded to them, took a long pull at the ale, and then took a long breath.
"Weel, what be news, doctor?" asked Long Ribston. Doctor Mahoney was known to be the greatest gossip on the countryside.
"Be auld Kitty dead yet?" asked the old Bidker; "she been a lang time aboot it."
"Yes, me old Tom; but not so long as ye think. She died a fortnight ago. Everybody knows, but old sinners like you that niver come into town but to the monthly cattle. Faix, now, there'll be a fine rumpus and a pretty bit o' law about the old lady's will. I walked up the hill wid Grewelthorpe—"
"Which?"
"Sure, big John o' the mill. We were speakin'—By the Lord! there he is in the yard—but ye'd see this blessed day some fun wid him and his brother, the agent. He's as mad as the divil wid him and the will."
The white-haired old man in the corner (the superannuated landlord), who had been muttering to himself "Big John—big John," now rose, and shuffled up to Mahoney, and peering in his face, said querulously, "Gearge at top o' toon is a deal foiner man, lat me tell ye. Au' Grewelthorpes," continued he, getting warmer and clutching the breast of the doctor's coat, "what doest thou knaw about them? They be as strange to thee as frummity. Gossip as thoo likes about too an'd wives an' thoo dawgs, but leave talk o' Grewelthorpes to them as knaws them."
"All right, old cock. I know the Grewelthorpe story is yours—all your own. Don't be afraid, I won't steal it."
"Sh! sh!" sounded from this side and that. "Here he be."
The patriarch shuffled back to his chair; the doctor sat on the table and looked to the buckle of his spur-strap; and the rest pursed up their lips, laid their arms on the table and winked. The door had opened, while a voice in the passage said, "Yes, lass; bring me a gill."
"O' ale, sir?"
"Ale? No! Brandy."
The occupants of the room lifted their eyebrows and nodded to each other. A tall, burly man entered, looking as white and dusty as a barn owl, except that his whiskers were black and crisp.
"Here ye be a," said he, taking a seat. The doctor gave a light nod of recognition, while the patriarch in the corner fussily filled his long pipe and scratched a match. The dull eyes around observed these movements as if they had never seen the like before. There was an embarrassed silence, broken only by the distracted bumping and buzzing of a bluebottle on the window pane, which the newcomer watched with apparent interest. His brandy was brought in a little pewter measure. He poured out a glassful and drank it off, and then turned to his neighbor.
"An' what be news goin'?"
"Nou't," said old Bidker promptly, from the other side of the table, "'cept aboot thoo."
"Ye say so?"
There was no change in his look or tone.
But Doctor Mahoney knew how Bidker delighted to engender strife, so he turned at once. "Fact is, John, I just told them as how ye were mad aboot something in your aunt's will; I didn't know what, but—"
"Knaw? Cod! How should ye knaw?" He poured out and drank the rest of his brandy. "The old lady may ha' left him the house and me the land—"
"But," cried the patriarch, "she wur fonder o' thoo than o' Gearge."
"—or," continued Grewelthorpe, without heeding him, "she may, peradventure, as parson says, ha' left me the house and him the land."
"Be that what she's done?" asked the patriarch eagerly.
Grewelthorpe turned and looked at him a moment, and then said sententiously, "Mousetraps, old Cocker. Maybe he'll—"
A face darkened the little window, peering in. It was his—the brother's.
"D—nation!" slowly growled John, staring at the window. "That's jus' how he's aye a-interruptin' me now. But I done him out a' along, and I'll do'm out again!"
He rose suddenly, and went as if to intercept his brother. But they heard him stop at the bar and call for more brandy. They all agreed with Bidker that he was "going it," and that he must have been going it for some days.
"He'll be havin' the divils," said Long Ribston.
"Not he," said Mahoney, with a skilled, superior air, to which all deferred with a wistful, interrogative "No?"
The Doctor went out. In a moment he put his head in at the door again—"He's at it."
At what? They all pushed and stumbled into the street; even the patriarch, after a little hesitation, put down his pipe and shuffled after them.
The marketplace (which was no more than a portion of the street widened on one side by the retreat of a row of well-to-do houses up a sloping bank) was filled with men and beasts. The beasts were penned; sheep and pigs on the shop side and the cattle on the bank. The men usually talked and laughed, and felt handfuls of grain in groups, stood contemplative over a store pig, or gathered about Pottlethwaite, the auctioneer's little pulpit at the top of the bank, as much to hear his jokes as to make a bid; while the sharp horse dealers from Barford, with loud tones and cracking whips, trotted wild little nags of ponies up and down the street. But now sheep and cattle lay unheeded in the heat, panting and ruminant; every man was pushing toward the auctioneer; shopkeepers and customers crowded together to their doors; and even Mr. Parr, the vicar from Easterwyke, lingered on the grocer's step.
"Cod," said Bidker, "it be just like a preachin';" thinking, no doubt, of what he had seen in Methodist days.
Not a voice was heard but that of Pottlethwaite, which sounded loud and clear, "Seventeen; seventeen-ten; eighteen." The Grewelthorpe brothers were bidding against each other for a roan heifer. The auctioneer was very serious; the bidders did not need the spur of his wit—their mutual hate urged them on. Many pushed and pressed to get a sight of the brothers' faces. But there was little to be seen in them. A resolute lip, an eye fixed on the auctioneer, and a light nod first from the one and then from the other. Up and up went the bidding, till spectators began to stare at each other and to raise their eyebrows. Every one knew the value of the heifer had long been passed; it was plainly now a foolish, relentless duel in which the heifer was forgotten and hatred only remained.
"Twenty-seven; twenty-seven-ten; twenty-eight;" the eye of the town brother dropped a moment—"goin' at twenty-eight"—turned sideways it caught the flash of triumph in the country brother's eye and the satisfied sneer on his lip, and it again looked resolutely at Pottlethwaite. "Twenty-eight-ten," said Pottlethwaite. A nod from the other; "twenty-nine; twenty-nine-ten; thirty."
The excitement grew intense. The brothers knew they were merely throwing their money away; but no, neither would yield. In the tension of their passion they gradually turned to face each other. The lips were firmly set, the eyes fixed and fiery, as if the men were engaged in a belt-to-belt fight with knives. Every light nod the one cast at the other was a fierce stab. The passion of it began to glow in the bosoms and in the eyes of the crowd, and Pottlethwaite showed signs of anxiety and hesitation.
"Thirty-nine; thirty-nine-ten; forty; going at forty; any advance upon forty—"
"D— you!" cried the town brother, and fell down in a fit.
They gathered round to recover him. The victorious brother looked for a moment as if stung, and then turned away, muttering, "Done him out again. I swore I'd do it, and I done it."
In this bitter fraternal feud the sympathies of most had hitherto been, for no particular reason, with the bluff, obstinate miller, rather than with the retiring and reserved corn factor and agent. They had observed with satisfaction, and pointed out to wondering strangers, how the town brother would give the big miller the wall whenever they passed in the street; how he would submit to be outbidden at sales, outdone in subscriptions, outvoted in parish meetings, though they could account for their partisanship no better than by insisting that "the agent looked such a poor creature." But after this extraordinary exhibition of passion over the sale of the heifer, and the apparent indifference of the miller as to his brother's condition, a change of look and tone came over the crowd. They followed the miller's retreating figure with narrow eyes and something like repulsion. Another degree of heat added to their feelings would have made them hiss and hoot him. They turned to regard the agent, who was now sitting up, with a kind of pity.
"An' they wur once sae thick thegither!" said Long Ribston, looking from one brother to the other, striding off with his hand under his coat tail "Weel, theae's nou't sae queer as folks!"
"He dean't look ower strong," said Bidker, with his eye on the agent, now being led into the chemist's. "It be gey cruel o' that big John to harry and drive him as he do."
This was seized and assented to on all sides as the expression of the prevalent feeling. "He carry it too far now." "He be fair mad to run price up and throw money away like that." "They do say (speaking low) as how he be takin' t' drink." "Ah, it be time they made quarrel up, whativer it wur aboot. It been goin on for some years now, bain't it, Cocker?"
"Some year?" said old Cocker, chirruping into his favorite theme of the mysterious origin of the Grewelthorpe feud, and attracting about him a good many from Pottlethwaite's own audience. "It be nigh sivin year—sivin year came Michaelmas—sin' John buried his wife. Day o' funeral they were t' best friends, standin' by t' grave wi' fine new black coats on an' white handkerchiefs in their een; for, ye see, Gearge wur cruel fond o' t' neat, long-waisted Peggy afore John married her. Ay, ay; best friends day o'funeral. Next marnin' John walks into parlor at t' inn to ha'e a drink, and a little after in comes Gearge. They wur by theirsens, and I wur thinkin' o' goin' in to keep 'em company, when—ouf!—a hullabaloo that made us a' jump!—there wur cursin' and bangin' ower chairs and smashin' o' glass; an' I opens t' door an' there stands Gearge wipin' tipple frae his face and neck an' John in a white rage, wi' glass in his hand, like this, to thraw. 'What be up?' I says. 'Nou't,' says they. An' Gearge gang oot past me and says at bar, 'There's a glass broke. I'll pay for it.' (An'—he! he!—has paid for't.) An'—"
"An' naebody knaws yet," put in some one of those who had heard the story before, "what it wur aboot."
Cocker looked at the man, and frowned at his interruption of the steady flow of his narrative. "Naebody," said he, "unless it be thoo."
There threatened to be high words between the two, but the old storyteller was moved off home by his friends. There was a large company in the parlor talking all at once, but not quite in unison, about the sensational auction. All were agreed that the feud of the brothers had distinguished and disgraced Fulford long enough. "Why, next thing they'll be killin' t'une anither!' The cause of the quarrel should be ascertained, and the men brought to shake hands over it. But how? and by whom? Cocker shook his head; they had always been "cruel, passionate and obstinate lads."
Many friends had tried to bring them together. Even the parson had done his best—and his worst. He had, so far as he could, excommunicated them. He had preached so directly at them that the eyes of a full, plebeian evening congregation were incontinently turned on the two stiff-necked, stern-eyed men who sat on either side the aisle, each in his place as churchwarden; and when they rose to pass round the plates for the collection, he had addressed them by name, and ordered them to desist from the service of the Lord unless they were ready to forgive and embrace each other, upon which, without hesitation and without a word, they had surrendered the plates and walked out. He had forbidden their appearance at the sacramental table, and their holding any office in connection with the church, so that for a long time the church had ceased to know or see them.
No; how or by whom the feud was to be stopped no one could say; and old Cocker went back to his chair and his pipe in the corner.
But Fate had already begun to prepare the end of the feud in a way quite her own, by means which showed she understood the lives and tempers of men rather better than the parson.
That evening George Grewelthorpe, the town brother, sat in the dusky shadows of the little bar parlor with Cocker,
"I have, Cocker; you know I have," he was saying in a voice of remonstrance, "tried to let it drop. But he wean't. An' see what a fool he do make me. But I'll be even with him now."
"Um—m," murmured Cocker. "But it wur thysen, Gearge, played fool first—that I knaw. Now, look ye here; canstna get at him thro' his lass, Kitty? Thou wert aye fond o' her mother, wertna?"
"Now, Cocker, you knaw better than tell me to try thro' t' lass. You knaw he was aye jealous o' me."
"But it werena aboot that ye fell out—eh?"
George looked full at him.
"Thoo'rt tryin' to draw me, Cocker." After a pause: "If he'd just drop it; but he wean't. An' I bain't goin' beggin' and holdin' oot my hand to him—after he mak d—n fool of me all aboot!" He was silent.
There was a pause, during which Cocker felt about on the table, and got up and felt on the mantelshelf for a match. Having found one he returned to his seat. He scratched the light and held it up a moment to peer under at his companion, who sat stern and angry, with his eyes averted, nervously plucking at his whiskers. Cocker lit his pipe and continued:
"John, thoo see, be gey different frae thoo in soom ways. When thoo tak' to thinkin' on't, it mak's thoo look ill and sort o' d—d drunk like. But he—he allus look as if 'twere his meat and drink, and as if he throve on't uncommon weel. Weel, thou see, he has nou't else to think on scarce, as thoo has; so oot in field, or in mill wi' hoppers clatterin' and dust flyin', he nurse it, and nurse it, and keep thought o't fair coddled aboot's heart. But, for a', he can do non't wi' 't onless thoo cross and center him."
"He make me; and so does she—Aunt Kitty, I mean. The last thing she do in her will was to try and make fool of me. But she didn't know she gave me such fine chance to pay off scores wi' John!"
"Hump! What is this? I ask John, and he only say, 'Mousetraps, old Cocker.' Maybe, thoo'll say, 'Toasted cheese, old Cocker.'"
"Oh, it. dean't matter., Everybody'll knaw very soon; for it'll be up in Court and in newspapers; an' I think I'll get it. She put into her will, just for flout at me, that John was to hav' a' proputty in Fulford parish, and that I was to ha' a' in Thexton parish. Now thoo knaws it wur joke that Aunt Kitty had just enough land in Thexton—a bit corner at bottom o' field—as much as would mak' a grave."
"He! he!" Cocker could not help laughing.
"Weel, weel, I'll laugh too by-'m-bye. Now, ye think! I goes to lawyer Norton to arrange aboot gettin' ower my little bit land—"
"He! he!"
"When what do we find? The real old original boundary o' parish comes up by drain, which was oust a bit brook, and goes thro' end o' t' house! So all John has be three-quarters o' house, an' a bit o' back yard!"
"Whew! Thoo say so!"
Some months after, the case came on in a London Court. Of course all Fulford and the neighborhood were agog with speculation as to the result and cost of the trial; and there were a good many of the frivolous sort who had laid wagers on the event. So, one wintry forenoon, when old Cocker was seen bare-headed and bespectacled, trailing an open newspaper, and shuffling across the street to the house of his friend, the officer of excise, the word flew round, and before he had climbed the bank, he was prounced upon by the grocer and the baker, followed by Miss Hicks, the milliner (commonly reputed to have her maiden eye on one of the brothers), who, in her haste, had forgotten to put off her spectacles and to put on her cap straight. Then up came the butcher, and out came the excise man, and then another and another, each one quicker and more eager than the last (which is the law of accretion among human and other particles), till quite a crowd had gathered. But, bless you! no one need have hurried, for every one "knew" the case would have gone so. How could it help it? The will ran so and so and the parish boundary ran so; it was clear. A man with half an eye, old Cocker said, could see that, much more than a judge and a jury. "An' they two born idiots gone an' mayhap spent hundreds o' pounds on settlin' what might ha' been settled ower a twopenny pot o' ale!"
"An' it goes out o' t' town!" exclaimed the grocer.
"Except what the witnesses get," said the excise man.
It proved to be a terrible blow to John Grewelthorpe, the miller. He was for the first time "done out" by his brother; he was mulcted in heavy costs, and he was left in possession of the most ridiculous fragment of property man ever inherited—three-quarters of a house, and a small triangular section of back yard. If all the property had been won from him—that he could have endured; the loss would have been serious, but people would have regarded it seriously. As it was, he felt that every one laughed at him, and that every one had a right to laugh. His brother sent his lawyer with a kindly-meant offer to surrender the right the law allowed him to a part of the house, but the lawyer came back with a bouncing flea in his ear.
"Noo," said the miller, "just tell Gearge, you, if he send onybody here wi'ou't, or come himsen, I'll stick him head first i' that sweet duck-dabble! Dom his favors! Dost knaw he began wi' doin' me a favor? Dom! Nae mair! Law gi'es him quarter o' hoose, an' quarter o' hoose he'll ha'e! No, sir, thoo can wag."
The miller's answer of course soon got noised abroad, and it became a question of great interest at gossiping corners, and in the tap-room and bar of the old inn, how the division of the house was to be effected.
"Run up the petition wall," said old Cocker; "that's w a' they'll do."
"Faix !" cried Dr. Mahoney, "I'd manage aisier than that. Let it out in rooms to tenants, and divide the rints."
"Ah well," said the excise man, "they might just as easy let it to one tenant and divide the one rent."
"Yes, of course," said the Irishman, "of course. It comes to the same."
But one day Fulford became aware of the curious fact that scaffolding was being put up about one end of the house—"the Gearge end," as it was called. On closer inspection it was observed that a line of whitewash had been drawn obliquely across the roof and straight down the wall. The very curious went to question the workmen, and got for an answer that it "warn t to be told; but" (with a sly twinkle), "this bit be comin' down." People watched the work of demolition, how carefully it was conducted; the slates taken from the roof whole, and the brick cleared of mortar and piled. They looked at each other and laughed; no one had expected such a solution of the difficulty as this.
"They tell ye what," said old Cocker, in confidence to the exciseman, "that John be dom'd clever, malicious divil!"
It may be guessed that George was enraged at getting his quarter of the house handed over to him in this useless, broken shape. But he said nothing—at least not in public—and at home he had none but a deaf, old housekeeper to talk to. Perhaps he was the more inclined to be silent because he had already a scheme of retaliation, which threatened to be so serious in its consequences to his brother, that he hesitated to carry it into execution till he was stung to it by this new instance of implacable brotherly malice. On one piece of ground which his Aunt Kitty had by will unwittingly assigned to him, and on which he had for some years tried, with little success, to produce cabbages, he determined to build a steam mill. He knew his purpose was fratricide, and he feared others would see it was, and would cry "Shame!" upon him. So he tried to cover it, for decency sake, with talk about the necessity, in these pushing times, when business had so much increased, of a town like Fulford bestirring itself to supply all the wants of the neighborhood; it was notorious that the mills of Barford did much of the grinding of the Fulford district—why should this be? By a lucky chance he possessed a piece of worthless ground; he would risk the building of a mill for the good of the community, But George need not have excused his action so elaborately. He took very few in by his talk, and he might have known that friends and neighbors do not severely condemn a questionable act when they expect to profit by it.
The mill was built, and became very popular. Steam power was then in its youth (at any rate, in that district), and was believed to be capable of the greatest marvels of work I at the smallest possible expense. The belief, indeed, still obtained credence among the older and the more ignorant folk that it was a manifestation of the Evil One.
"But if it be divil," said old Bidker, "as soom say, it will be very good divil; eh Cocker?"
Carts and waggons of grain from the uplands, instead of rattling and lumbering on to Barford, now turned to Fulford, and Miller John had the chagrin of seeing them slowly come down the hill, tearing open one side of the road with their clumsy skid pans, and dash past him with fierce cracking of whips and wild "Woahoos," to take the opposite slope, up which the great broad-hoofed horses panted and scraped on their way to his brother's. If anyone came upon him at such a time, and ventured to condole with him on that "divlish trick of Gearge," he would face him with "Folk'll soon find difference atween divil's steam an' God's watter, and till that time God almighty can look aifter's ain watter, an' I can look aifter mysen," and then he would turn sharply off and enter his mill.
Big John's faith that the popularity of steam was a mere passing whim was severely tried. All that year, even right through the busy grinding months that follow on an abundant harvest, team after team of toiling horses dragged their rich load of wheat, of barley, or of pulse through the hollow past the old water-mill on to the town, and drew up under Aunt Kitty's house, which still stood as the workmen had left it, with one end completely open to wind and weather, a woeful witness to the foolish strife and spite of kindred. It became a general belief in the town and among the farmers that the occupation of big John and his ancestral water-mill was gone. There was no unseemly rejoicing over the fate of the miller and his mill; on the contrary, there was much expression of sorrow, of a calm and unproductive sort. A few, indeed, who did not like to see an old friend and neighbor and an old institution grow mouldy and wass, without an effort to save them, took John an occasional hurried job or two—a sack of oats to hash for next day's provender, or a bushel of wheat to grind for Friday's baking. But the work was done so badly—"The grit and dirt in't," said one, "be just as if 'twere swept off barn floor"—and customers were received so grumpily—"Why," he asked them, "didna ye tak' this where ye took t' rest?"—that they were not tempted to return to him. And their consciences were the more at ease in forsaking him, in the knowledge that he had curtly refused one or two "little jobs," saying that he could get plenty to do without such dirty bits, and in the comforting belief that since he said so it must be true. And certainly in this belief they were sustained by the evidence of their own eyes and ears. Whenever they passed the water was rushing and splashing, the wheel turning and dripping, and the hoppers clattering, just as in the busy old days. To shrewd and observant persons (which of course the men and women about Fulford were) this was all very puzzling, for no inquiry could discover anyone who empolyed John the Miller. Some, however, were found, who had met him, sometimes early, sometimes late of a night, going or returning on the Barford road, driving the one lean horse left to him, with a cart-load of full sacks.
"Good night, John," they had said, "Thoor t busy at mill, then, late and early."
"Business must be done, sirs," he had answered.
If any one pressed a question, where he was taking his sacks to or bringing them from, he would say, finger on nose, " Government contract."
For want of another, this explanation of his continued activity was generally accepted, though it did seem singular that the Government should come out of its way to employ big John. The officer of excise declared, if it was so, it must be a job; big John must have somehow got at their member, Sir Thomas. The schoolmaster and the literary tailor (who had both tried to "get at" Sir Thomas and had failed) exclaimed it was "scandalous;" and even the successful George, who had been having some qualms of conscience for having stripped his brother of business, again hardened his heart against him.
But, job or no job, either the Government contract was very unprofitable, or John was become a great miser. He contrived to work the mill without any assistance; he even allowed his daughter Kitty to go as maid into Squire Harding's family (some were "particularly" told he insisted on her going); his jolly figure shrank to a gaunt skeleton; his trousers attracted passing notice, from the transparent tenuity of one part, and the thick, clumsy patching of another; and whenever he turned up in public (which now was seldom) his manner was truculent and suspicious. From all which (since it could not be that the Government paid him) it was readily concluded John was a "miserable hunks." There was another thing which lent color to this view: he never now tried to "do out" his brother at sales; when he appeared at them he would fidget here and there on the outskirts of the crowd, feeling and fumbling in his pockets, and if Pottlethwalite appealed to him for a bid, he would seem to wake up and stand irresolute a moment, and then would shake his head and stride away.
"He got some sense at last," said old Cocker. "We wean't throw away nae mair brass."
Yet his balance at the bank (as the clerk let friends know in confidence) did not increase; on the contrary, it was gradually growing less. But that was at once taken as excellent evidence of the miserly instinct working in him, which craves and lusts for the nightly finger of the precious gold; he was of course hording away his large savings somewhere about the mill, and he intended, bit by bit, to withdraw what the bank held of his, and add it to the chinking, shining pile.
But that Government contract was surely an unusually long one. Winter had softened into spring, spring had brightened and settled into summer, and summer deepened and swelled into autumn, and still the gaunt figure of John, with his gaunt horse and loaded cart, was met of an evening coming and going on the Barford road; still, whenever you might pass the mill water rushed and splashed, the wheel turned and dripped, and the hoppers clattered. The door, indeed, was never seen open now, not even its upper half, in the old sociable way, and no one would think of putting his nose into the miser's den and asking how he was. It is not to be wondered at that a feeling of something mysterious in all this should arise and spread. Sober, canny men began to shake their heads and purse their lips when talking of big John. It was agreed that it was not to the credit of an honest, respectable township like Fulford that John should be allowed to continue unquestioned his "secret, nefarious traffic." (These last were the words of the tailor with a taste for literature.)
"Ah, now, be aisy," said Dr. Mahoney one night, as the miller was being thus discussed in the old inn parlor—"be aisy. The old John's doing nothing wrong, I'll be bound. Oh, yes, it's true he shuts himself up. Now, now! because a man's lost his flesh don't ye go for to take his skin!"
When the doctor had gone out, switching his boot with his riding whip, much disgust was expressed at his defence of "'t au'd miser." Some one on the back bench spoke up, and said he knew why "t' doctor be so found o' au'd John." Being pressed for an explanuation, he said, "Doctor be sweet on t' lass, Ah, but I seen um! an' t' lass'll ha've all th' au'd man's brass as he hides away in stockings an' rat-holes."
"Ah, be that it?" The wise topers at once found this an explanation of a great deal, and made it an incentive to action. For might it not well be that Mahoney was in the miller's secrets, and wan sharing, eh ? Ecod! why should they not go down to the mill one night, while the miller was out on the Barford road, and enter and see what game he was up to? "And hunt out a rat or two from the holes," suggested one.
"Cod, yes!"
Now it chanced that the doctor, on leaving the parlor had turned into the bar—"just a hot whisky, me darlin', wid a bit of lemon"—and being suspicious that the topers might talk of him when he was gone, had, with a wink to the landlady, applied his ear to a convenient hole in the pine-board partition from which a knot had been pupshed. Of course he heard all that passed.
"Just sayin' the plisantest thing about your humble servant," he whispered to the landlady. "But, don't tell 'em I heard;" and with that he swallowed his whisky, and went off sucking the "bit o' lemon."
It was quite true he was in love with the trim little Kitty. Even while she was a thin, pale-faced girl, slaving about her father's house, he had lingered to talk with her. But after she had been some months in Squire Harding's house he had met her, and stared, blushed, and instantly taken fire with love. The poorly-dressed slip of a girl, who had left the mill, was hardly recognizable in this fresh, graceful young woman. So now he was very much alarmed by what he had overheard in the inn, not only on account of his sweetheart's father, but on his own. These valiant topers might set out on their expedition the very next night—drunk probably—to hunt a rat or two! He knew what that meant, and he feared: for, like every right-minded young man who has his way to make in the world, while he loved his "sweet Kitty so dearly, so dearly," he by no means despised her probable dowry, which he, like every one else, believed to be bestowed in "stockings and rate holes." Mahoney's medical practice made him quick to act in emergency. He stood a moment at the gateway of the inn, and looked up and down the street. The grocer was puttiing up his shutters; it was half past seven, it would be dark in less than two hours. Yes, he could do it. He ran up the yard.
"Jim! Jim! Oh! there you are. Get the mare out. No no; she's tired, the other."
"Saddle, sir?"
"No, beggar, no—of course not. The gig."
In twenty minutes he was at Squire Harding's side door. A quarter of an hour later he was dashing along with Kitty by his side, by the cross roads to the mill.
The doctor, after tying up the horse to the dusky yew, paused and looked at Kitty. He had not told her that half his purpose in coming to the mill was to ask her father's sanction to their engagement, and now the air of the place seemed to damp his ardor. The only sound was the monotonous spill of the "wastewater." The great wheel looked sodden and mouldy. The cart stood propped in the tumble-down shed. It was full of sacks: had the miller just returned, or was he just about to set out? They went to the house door, and tried it, and knocked. No answer. They went to the mill door; it was also locked, and no sound came in reply to repeated knocking. Ah, the little shutter window was unfasted; should he, Mahoney asked, enter that way and then open the door for Kitty? Perhaps something had happened to her father. In any case both were curious to see what it was the mill had been so busy with for months. Soon they were both in the mill. They looked about them in the dim light. Strange! A mere damp fustiness of smell; none of that warm fragrant odour of flour and meal in which mills are embalmed. Mahoney pushed open the shutters all round. . . Not a single sack; not a grain of wheat; not even a floury festoon of dust on wall or roof! They looked at each other in silent amazement; not a rat squeaked; the floor, the platforms, the hoppers were swept utterly empty and bare. A common impulse sent them out to look into the sacks in the cart. . . . Filled with sweepings, decaying ropes and cord, musty hay and straw, everything! They did not need to speak. It was plain to both that during all these months the old mill had been busily grinding nothing!
Through the mill they made their way into the house. In the kitchen they found the miller—he that had been called "Big John"—sitting in an armchair before a spark of fire, looking like an unwinking, ghastly Death. At sight of the two, a warm flush suffused he cadaverous face, and burned into his eyes. He tried to stand up, but he sank back into his chair again. He had always been a stern, undemonstrative father, and his daughter was always afraid to show any emotion; but his sad condition now so moved her she could not restrain herself. She threw herself on her knees before him, and wept and sobbed with her face in his lap. He looked this way and that for a moment, and his stubby chin began to work strangely. At length he looked suddenly at Mahoney:
"Weel—I s'pose thoo'st found a' oot in there?" motioning with his head toward the mill. "Weel, weel. It be a' up, eh! Or," again flushing and sitting up, "be ye come to say folk got back to right mind?—eh? Nae mair divil's steam, eh? Cod! I'll do that Gearge oof yet! Dom him!"
But the excitement was too much for him. He sank back pale and faint. He crossed and pressed his arms over his stomach, closed his eyes and uttered a faint moan. Mahoney guessed what this was—starvation. Till now he stood in utter blank surprise. Now he recovered his wits. He spoke to Kitty and sent her to get a light and to find what food there was, made John drink some brandy from the flask which he always carried, and felt and counted his pulse. He tried to persuade him to let them help him to bed, but "No," said John, "I be a' right. I'll bide here."
Kitty brought a piece of resiny wood and lit it, whispering there was neither candle nor coal, crust nor scrap, to be found any where.
In a minute or two Mahoney was driving into the town for food, in grave doubt whether it would be of any use. It suddenly occured to him to stop at the house of the other Grewelthorpe; he ought to know of his brother's condition. George Grewelthorpe, when he heard, was overcome with consternation and remorse, called himself a fool for ever having believed in such a thing as a government contract, and begged to be taken up to his brother.
"It been a' my fault from t' first, Doctor! I mun gan to him."
With such things as were necessary they returned to the mill. Kitty met them at the door in great distress; her father's behaviour was so unlike what she had ever known it before; he had been calling her by honeyed names. "And, oh, what do you think he's been living on all this time?—rats! ugh!" They entered the kitchen. John looked up sharply. "You've been giving him too much of the brandy," said Mahoney to Kitty. At the sight of his brother he seemed to swell and bristle with the old malice and obstinacy.
"No, no," said he, trying to rise; "I beart done oot yet!"
"John," said his brother in a choking voice, holding out his hand.
"Gearge?" said he, looking at the extended hand a moment, and then grasping it and sitting down. The hands kept pressing each other with a perceptible vibration.
"Has left of steam then?" asked John.
"Divil tak' steam!"
"Ah, I thought so," said John, with a smile in which he almost fainted away again. In a little time some chicken-broth was ready for him. While taking it he kept glancing furtively at his brother, and letting something of an angry cloud regather about his face.
"Gearge,"said he at length, pressing his brother's hand again, "I warn't now—eh?, wuz I?"
"What?"
"Thoo knows; drunk the even' o' her funeral—eh?"
"N—no, John; no."
Thus the Grewelthorpe feud ended. Next day a waggon from the steam mill brought something for the empty hoppers of the old mill to clatter about, and next week it was announced that the mills would be worked in concert by the firm of "Grewelthorpe Brothers."
"Oh, now, be quiet, me darlin'! A big drink—I'm as dry as a salted cod."
The farmers and dealers stopped their talk and turned on their elbows. He nodded to them, took a long pull at the ale, and then took a long breath.
"Weel, what be news, doctor?" asked Long Ribston. Doctor Mahoney was known to be the greatest gossip on the countryside.
"Be auld Kitty dead yet?" asked the old Bidker; "she been a lang time aboot it."
"Yes, me old Tom; but not so long as ye think. She died a fortnight ago. Everybody knows, but old sinners like you that niver come into town but to the monthly cattle. Faix, now, there'll be a fine rumpus and a pretty bit o' law about the old lady's will. I walked up the hill wid Grewelthorpe—"
"Which?"
"Sure, big John o' the mill. We were speakin'—By the Lord! there he is in the yard—but ye'd see this blessed day some fun wid him and his brother, the agent. He's as mad as the divil wid him and the will."
The white-haired old man in the corner (the superannuated landlord), who had been muttering to himself "Big John—big John," now rose, and shuffled up to Mahoney, and peering in his face, said querulously, "Gearge at top o' toon is a deal foiner man, lat me tell ye. Au' Grewelthorpes," continued he, getting warmer and clutching the breast of the doctor's coat, "what doest thou knaw about them? They be as strange to thee as frummity. Gossip as thoo likes about too an'd wives an' thoo dawgs, but leave talk o' Grewelthorpes to them as knaws them."
"All right, old cock. I know the Grewelthorpe story is yours—all your own. Don't be afraid, I won't steal it."
"Sh! sh!" sounded from this side and that. "Here he be."
The patriarch shuffled back to his chair; the doctor sat on the table and looked to the buckle of his spur-strap; and the rest pursed up their lips, laid their arms on the table and winked. The door had opened, while a voice in the passage said, "Yes, lass; bring me a gill."
"O' ale, sir?"
"Ale? No! Brandy."
The occupants of the room lifted their eyebrows and nodded to each other. A tall, burly man entered, looking as white and dusty as a barn owl, except that his whiskers were black and crisp.
"Here ye be a," said he, taking a seat. The doctor gave a light nod of recognition, while the patriarch in the corner fussily filled his long pipe and scratched a match. The dull eyes around observed these movements as if they had never seen the like before. There was an embarrassed silence, broken only by the distracted bumping and buzzing of a bluebottle on the window pane, which the newcomer watched with apparent interest. His brandy was brought in a little pewter measure. He poured out a glassful and drank it off, and then turned to his neighbor.
"An' what be news goin'?"
"Nou't," said old Bidker promptly, from the other side of the table, "'cept aboot thoo."
"Ye say so?"
There was no change in his look or tone.
But Doctor Mahoney knew how Bidker delighted to engender strife, so he turned at once. "Fact is, John, I just told them as how ye were mad aboot something in your aunt's will; I didn't know what, but—"
"Knaw? Cod! How should ye knaw?" He poured out and drank the rest of his brandy. "The old lady may ha' left him the house and me the land—"
"But," cried the patriarch, "she wur fonder o' thoo than o' Gearge."
"—or," continued Grewelthorpe, without heeding him, "she may, peradventure, as parson says, ha' left me the house and him the land."
"Be that what she's done?" asked the patriarch eagerly.
Grewelthorpe turned and looked at him a moment, and then said sententiously, "Mousetraps, old Cocker. Maybe he'll—"
A face darkened the little window, peering in. It was his—the brother's.
"D—nation!" slowly growled John, staring at the window. "That's jus' how he's aye a-interruptin' me now. But I done him out a' along, and I'll do'm out again!"
He rose suddenly, and went as if to intercept his brother. But they heard him stop at the bar and call for more brandy. They all agreed with Bidker that he was "going it," and that he must have been going it for some days.
"He'll be havin' the divils," said Long Ribston.
"Not he," said Mahoney, with a skilled, superior air, to which all deferred with a wistful, interrogative "No?"
The Doctor went out. In a moment he put his head in at the door again—"He's at it."
At what? They all pushed and stumbled into the street; even the patriarch, after a little hesitation, put down his pipe and shuffled after them.
The marketplace (which was no more than a portion of the street widened on one side by the retreat of a row of well-to-do houses up a sloping bank) was filled with men and beasts. The beasts were penned; sheep and pigs on the shop side and the cattle on the bank. The men usually talked and laughed, and felt handfuls of grain in groups, stood contemplative over a store pig, or gathered about Pottlethwaite, the auctioneer's little pulpit at the top of the bank, as much to hear his jokes as to make a bid; while the sharp horse dealers from Barford, with loud tones and cracking whips, trotted wild little nags of ponies up and down the street. But now sheep and cattle lay unheeded in the heat, panting and ruminant; every man was pushing toward the auctioneer; shopkeepers and customers crowded together to their doors; and even Mr. Parr, the vicar from Easterwyke, lingered on the grocer's step.
"Cod," said Bidker, "it be just like a preachin';" thinking, no doubt, of what he had seen in Methodist days.
Not a voice was heard but that of Pottlethwaite, which sounded loud and clear, "Seventeen; seventeen-ten; eighteen." The Grewelthorpe brothers were bidding against each other for a roan heifer. The auctioneer was very serious; the bidders did not need the spur of his wit—their mutual hate urged them on. Many pushed and pressed to get a sight of the brothers' faces. But there was little to be seen in them. A resolute lip, an eye fixed on the auctioneer, and a light nod first from the one and then from the other. Up and up went the bidding, till spectators began to stare at each other and to raise their eyebrows. Every one knew the value of the heifer had long been passed; it was plainly now a foolish, relentless duel in which the heifer was forgotten and hatred only remained.
"Twenty-seven; twenty-seven-ten; twenty-eight;" the eye of the town brother dropped a moment—"goin' at twenty-eight"—turned sideways it caught the flash of triumph in the country brother's eye and the satisfied sneer on his lip, and it again looked resolutely at Pottlethwaite. "Twenty-eight-ten," said Pottlethwaite. A nod from the other; "twenty-nine; twenty-nine-ten; thirty."
The excitement grew intense. The brothers knew they were merely throwing their money away; but no, neither would yield. In the tension of their passion they gradually turned to face each other. The lips were firmly set, the eyes fixed and fiery, as if the men were engaged in a belt-to-belt fight with knives. Every light nod the one cast at the other was a fierce stab. The passion of it began to glow in the bosoms and in the eyes of the crowd, and Pottlethwaite showed signs of anxiety and hesitation.
"Thirty-nine; thirty-nine-ten; forty; going at forty; any advance upon forty—"
"D— you!" cried the town brother, and fell down in a fit.
They gathered round to recover him. The victorious brother looked for a moment as if stung, and then turned away, muttering, "Done him out again. I swore I'd do it, and I done it."
In this bitter fraternal feud the sympathies of most had hitherto been, for no particular reason, with the bluff, obstinate miller, rather than with the retiring and reserved corn factor and agent. They had observed with satisfaction, and pointed out to wondering strangers, how the town brother would give the big miller the wall whenever they passed in the street; how he would submit to be outbidden at sales, outdone in subscriptions, outvoted in parish meetings, though they could account for their partisanship no better than by insisting that "the agent looked such a poor creature." But after this extraordinary exhibition of passion over the sale of the heifer, and the apparent indifference of the miller as to his brother's condition, a change of look and tone came over the crowd. They followed the miller's retreating figure with narrow eyes and something like repulsion. Another degree of heat added to their feelings would have made them hiss and hoot him. They turned to regard the agent, who was now sitting up, with a kind of pity.
"An' they wur once sae thick thegither!" said Long Ribston, looking from one brother to the other, striding off with his hand under his coat tail "Weel, theae's nou't sae queer as folks!"
"He dean't look ower strong," said Bidker, with his eye on the agent, now being led into the chemist's. "It be gey cruel o' that big John to harry and drive him as he do."
This was seized and assented to on all sides as the expression of the prevalent feeling. "He carry it too far now." "He be fair mad to run price up and throw money away like that." "They do say (speaking low) as how he be takin' t' drink." "Ah, it be time they made quarrel up, whativer it wur aboot. It been goin on for some years now, bain't it, Cocker?"
"Some year?" said old Cocker, chirruping into his favorite theme of the mysterious origin of the Grewelthorpe feud, and attracting about him a good many from Pottlethwaite's own audience. "It be nigh sivin year—sivin year came Michaelmas—sin' John buried his wife. Day o' funeral they were t' best friends, standin' by t' grave wi' fine new black coats on an' white handkerchiefs in their een; for, ye see, Gearge wur cruel fond o' t' neat, long-waisted Peggy afore John married her. Ay, ay; best friends day o'funeral. Next marnin' John walks into parlor at t' inn to ha'e a drink, and a little after in comes Gearge. They wur by theirsens, and I wur thinkin' o' goin' in to keep 'em company, when—ouf!—a hullabaloo that made us a' jump!—there wur cursin' and bangin' ower chairs and smashin' o' glass; an' I opens t' door an' there stands Gearge wipin' tipple frae his face and neck an' John in a white rage, wi' glass in his hand, like this, to thraw. 'What be up?' I says. 'Nou't,' says they. An' Gearge gang oot past me and says at bar, 'There's a glass broke. I'll pay for it.' (An'—he! he!—has paid for't.) An'—"
"An' naebody knaws yet," put in some one of those who had heard the story before, "what it wur aboot."
Cocker looked at the man, and frowned at his interruption of the steady flow of his narrative. "Naebody," said he, "unless it be thoo."
There threatened to be high words between the two, but the old storyteller was moved off home by his friends. There was a large company in the parlor talking all at once, but not quite in unison, about the sensational auction. All were agreed that the feud of the brothers had distinguished and disgraced Fulford long enough. "Why, next thing they'll be killin' t'une anither!' The cause of the quarrel should be ascertained, and the men brought to shake hands over it. But how? and by whom? Cocker shook his head; they had always been "cruel, passionate and obstinate lads."
Many friends had tried to bring them together. Even the parson had done his best—and his worst. He had, so far as he could, excommunicated them. He had preached so directly at them that the eyes of a full, plebeian evening congregation were incontinently turned on the two stiff-necked, stern-eyed men who sat on either side the aisle, each in his place as churchwarden; and when they rose to pass round the plates for the collection, he had addressed them by name, and ordered them to desist from the service of the Lord unless they were ready to forgive and embrace each other, upon which, without hesitation and without a word, they had surrendered the plates and walked out. He had forbidden their appearance at the sacramental table, and their holding any office in connection with the church, so that for a long time the church had ceased to know or see them.
No; how or by whom the feud was to be stopped no one could say; and old Cocker went back to his chair and his pipe in the corner.
But Fate had already begun to prepare the end of the feud in a way quite her own, by means which showed she understood the lives and tempers of men rather better than the parson.
That evening George Grewelthorpe, the town brother, sat in the dusky shadows of the little bar parlor with Cocker,
"I have, Cocker; you know I have," he was saying in a voice of remonstrance, "tried to let it drop. But he wean't. An' see what a fool he do make me. But I'll be even with him now."
"Um—m," murmured Cocker. "But it wur thysen, Gearge, played fool first—that I knaw. Now, look ye here; canstna get at him thro' his lass, Kitty? Thou wert aye fond o' her mother, wertna?"
"Now, Cocker, you knaw better than tell me to try thro' t' lass. You knaw he was aye jealous o' me."
"But it werena aboot that ye fell out—eh?"
George looked full at him.
"Thoo'rt tryin' to draw me, Cocker." After a pause: "If he'd just drop it; but he wean't. An' I bain't goin' beggin' and holdin' oot my hand to him—after he mak d—n fool of me all aboot!" He was silent.
There was a pause, during which Cocker felt about on the table, and got up and felt on the mantelshelf for a match. Having found one he returned to his seat. He scratched the light and held it up a moment to peer under at his companion, who sat stern and angry, with his eyes averted, nervously plucking at his whiskers. Cocker lit his pipe and continued:
"John, thoo see, be gey different frae thoo in soom ways. When thoo tak' to thinkin' on't, it mak's thoo look ill and sort o' d—d drunk like. But he—he allus look as if 'twere his meat and drink, and as if he throve on't uncommon weel. Weel, thou see, he has nou't else to think on scarce, as thoo has; so oot in field, or in mill wi' hoppers clatterin' and dust flyin', he nurse it, and nurse it, and keep thought o't fair coddled aboot's heart. But, for a', he can do non't wi' 't onless thoo cross and center him."
"He make me; and so does she—Aunt Kitty, I mean. The last thing she do in her will was to try and make fool of me. But she didn't know she gave me such fine chance to pay off scores wi' John!"
"Hump! What is this? I ask John, and he only say, 'Mousetraps, old Cocker.' Maybe, thoo'll say, 'Toasted cheese, old Cocker.'"
"Oh, it. dean't matter., Everybody'll knaw very soon; for it'll be up in Court and in newspapers; an' I think I'll get it. She put into her will, just for flout at me, that John was to hav' a' proputty in Fulford parish, and that I was to ha' a' in Thexton parish. Now thoo knaws it wur joke that Aunt Kitty had just enough land in Thexton—a bit corner at bottom o' field—as much as would mak' a grave."
"He! he!" Cocker could not help laughing.
"Weel, weel, I'll laugh too by-'m-bye. Now, ye think! I goes to lawyer Norton to arrange aboot gettin' ower my little bit land—"
"He! he!"
"When what do we find? The real old original boundary o' parish comes up by drain, which was oust a bit brook, and goes thro' end o' t' house! So all John has be three-quarters o' house, an' a bit o' back yard!"
"Whew! Thoo say so!"
Some months after, the case came on in a London Court. Of course all Fulford and the neighborhood were agog with speculation as to the result and cost of the trial; and there were a good many of the frivolous sort who had laid wagers on the event. So, one wintry forenoon, when old Cocker was seen bare-headed and bespectacled, trailing an open newspaper, and shuffling across the street to the house of his friend, the officer of excise, the word flew round, and before he had climbed the bank, he was prounced upon by the grocer and the baker, followed by Miss Hicks, the milliner (commonly reputed to have her maiden eye on one of the brothers), who, in her haste, had forgotten to put off her spectacles and to put on her cap straight. Then up came the butcher, and out came the excise man, and then another and another, each one quicker and more eager than the last (which is the law of accretion among human and other particles), till quite a crowd had gathered. But, bless you! no one need have hurried, for every one "knew" the case would have gone so. How could it help it? The will ran so and so and the parish boundary ran so; it was clear. A man with half an eye, old Cocker said, could see that, much more than a judge and a jury. "An' they two born idiots gone an' mayhap spent hundreds o' pounds on settlin' what might ha' been settled ower a twopenny pot o' ale!"
"An' it goes out o' t' town!" exclaimed the grocer.
"Except what the witnesses get," said the excise man.
It proved to be a terrible blow to John Grewelthorpe, the miller. He was for the first time "done out" by his brother; he was mulcted in heavy costs, and he was left in possession of the most ridiculous fragment of property man ever inherited—three-quarters of a house, and a small triangular section of back yard. If all the property had been won from him—that he could have endured; the loss would have been serious, but people would have regarded it seriously. As it was, he felt that every one laughed at him, and that every one had a right to laugh. His brother sent his lawyer with a kindly-meant offer to surrender the right the law allowed him to a part of the house, but the lawyer came back with a bouncing flea in his ear.
"Noo," said the miller, "just tell Gearge, you, if he send onybody here wi'ou't, or come himsen, I'll stick him head first i' that sweet duck-dabble! Dom his favors! Dost knaw he began wi' doin' me a favor? Dom! Nae mair! Law gi'es him quarter o' hoose, an' quarter o' hoose he'll ha'e! No, sir, thoo can wag."
The miller's answer of course soon got noised abroad, and it became a question of great interest at gossiping corners, and in the tap-room and bar of the old inn, how the division of the house was to be effected.
"Run up the petition wall," said old Cocker; "that's w a' they'll do."
"Faix !" cried Dr. Mahoney, "I'd manage aisier than that. Let it out in rooms to tenants, and divide the rints."
"Ah well," said the excise man, "they might just as easy let it to one tenant and divide the one rent."
"Yes, of course," said the Irishman, "of course. It comes to the same."
But one day Fulford became aware of the curious fact that scaffolding was being put up about one end of the house—"the Gearge end," as it was called. On closer inspection it was observed that a line of whitewash had been drawn obliquely across the roof and straight down the wall. The very curious went to question the workmen, and got for an answer that it "warn t to be told; but" (with a sly twinkle), "this bit be comin' down." People watched the work of demolition, how carefully it was conducted; the slates taken from the roof whole, and the brick cleared of mortar and piled. They looked at each other and laughed; no one had expected such a solution of the difficulty as this.
"They tell ye what," said old Cocker, in confidence to the exciseman, "that John be dom'd clever, malicious divil!"
It may be guessed that George was enraged at getting his quarter of the house handed over to him in this useless, broken shape. But he said nothing—at least not in public—and at home he had none but a deaf, old housekeeper to talk to. Perhaps he was the more inclined to be silent because he had already a scheme of retaliation, which threatened to be so serious in its consequences to his brother, that he hesitated to carry it into execution till he was stung to it by this new instance of implacable brotherly malice. On one piece of ground which his Aunt Kitty had by will unwittingly assigned to him, and on which he had for some years tried, with little success, to produce cabbages, he determined to build a steam mill. He knew his purpose was fratricide, and he feared others would see it was, and would cry "Shame!" upon him. So he tried to cover it, for decency sake, with talk about the necessity, in these pushing times, when business had so much increased, of a town like Fulford bestirring itself to supply all the wants of the neighborhood; it was notorious that the mills of Barford did much of the grinding of the Fulford district—why should this be? By a lucky chance he possessed a piece of worthless ground; he would risk the building of a mill for the good of the community, But George need not have excused his action so elaborately. He took very few in by his talk, and he might have known that friends and neighbors do not severely condemn a questionable act when they expect to profit by it.
The mill was built, and became very popular. Steam power was then in its youth (at any rate, in that district), and was believed to be capable of the greatest marvels of work I at the smallest possible expense. The belief, indeed, still obtained credence among the older and the more ignorant folk that it was a manifestation of the Evil One.
"But if it be divil," said old Bidker, "as soom say, it will be very good divil; eh Cocker?"
Carts and waggons of grain from the uplands, instead of rattling and lumbering on to Barford, now turned to Fulford, and Miller John had the chagrin of seeing them slowly come down the hill, tearing open one side of the road with their clumsy skid pans, and dash past him with fierce cracking of whips and wild "Woahoos," to take the opposite slope, up which the great broad-hoofed horses panted and scraped on their way to his brother's. If anyone came upon him at such a time, and ventured to condole with him on that "divlish trick of Gearge," he would face him with "Folk'll soon find difference atween divil's steam an' God's watter, and till that time God almighty can look aifter's ain watter, an' I can look aifter mysen," and then he would turn sharply off and enter his mill.
Big John's faith that the popularity of steam was a mere passing whim was severely tried. All that year, even right through the busy grinding months that follow on an abundant harvest, team after team of toiling horses dragged their rich load of wheat, of barley, or of pulse through the hollow past the old water-mill on to the town, and drew up under Aunt Kitty's house, which still stood as the workmen had left it, with one end completely open to wind and weather, a woeful witness to the foolish strife and spite of kindred. It became a general belief in the town and among the farmers that the occupation of big John and his ancestral water-mill was gone. There was no unseemly rejoicing over the fate of the miller and his mill; on the contrary, there was much expression of sorrow, of a calm and unproductive sort. A few, indeed, who did not like to see an old friend and neighbor and an old institution grow mouldy and wass, without an effort to save them, took John an occasional hurried job or two—a sack of oats to hash for next day's provender, or a bushel of wheat to grind for Friday's baking. But the work was done so badly—"The grit and dirt in't," said one, "be just as if 'twere swept off barn floor"—and customers were received so grumpily—"Why," he asked them, "didna ye tak' this where ye took t' rest?"—that they were not tempted to return to him. And their consciences were the more at ease in forsaking him, in the knowledge that he had curtly refused one or two "little jobs," saying that he could get plenty to do without such dirty bits, and in the comforting belief that since he said so it must be true. And certainly in this belief they were sustained by the evidence of their own eyes and ears. Whenever they passed the water was rushing and splashing, the wheel turning and dripping, and the hoppers clattering, just as in the busy old days. To shrewd and observant persons (which of course the men and women about Fulford were) this was all very puzzling, for no inquiry could discover anyone who empolyed John the Miller. Some, however, were found, who had met him, sometimes early, sometimes late of a night, going or returning on the Barford road, driving the one lean horse left to him, with a cart-load of full sacks.
"Good night, John," they had said, "Thoor t busy at mill, then, late and early."
"Business must be done, sirs," he had answered.
If any one pressed a question, where he was taking his sacks to or bringing them from, he would say, finger on nose, " Government contract."
For want of another, this explanation of his continued activity was generally accepted, though it did seem singular that the Government should come out of its way to employ big John. The officer of excise declared, if it was so, it must be a job; big John must have somehow got at their member, Sir Thomas. The schoolmaster and the literary tailor (who had both tried to "get at" Sir Thomas and had failed) exclaimed it was "scandalous;" and even the successful George, who had been having some qualms of conscience for having stripped his brother of business, again hardened his heart against him.
But, job or no job, either the Government contract was very unprofitable, or John was become a great miser. He contrived to work the mill without any assistance; he even allowed his daughter Kitty to go as maid into Squire Harding's family (some were "particularly" told he insisted on her going); his jolly figure shrank to a gaunt skeleton; his trousers attracted passing notice, from the transparent tenuity of one part, and the thick, clumsy patching of another; and whenever he turned up in public (which now was seldom) his manner was truculent and suspicious. From all which (since it could not be that the Government paid him) it was readily concluded John was a "miserable hunks." There was another thing which lent color to this view: he never now tried to "do out" his brother at sales; when he appeared at them he would fidget here and there on the outskirts of the crowd, feeling and fumbling in his pockets, and if Pottlethwalite appealed to him for a bid, he would seem to wake up and stand irresolute a moment, and then would shake his head and stride away.
"He got some sense at last," said old Cocker. "We wean't throw away nae mair brass."
Yet his balance at the bank (as the clerk let friends know in confidence) did not increase; on the contrary, it was gradually growing less. But that was at once taken as excellent evidence of the miserly instinct working in him, which craves and lusts for the nightly finger of the precious gold; he was of course hording away his large savings somewhere about the mill, and he intended, bit by bit, to withdraw what the bank held of his, and add it to the chinking, shining pile.
But that Government contract was surely an unusually long one. Winter had softened into spring, spring had brightened and settled into summer, and summer deepened and swelled into autumn, and still the gaunt figure of John, with his gaunt horse and loaded cart, was met of an evening coming and going on the Barford road; still, whenever you might pass the mill water rushed and splashed, the wheel turned and dripped, and the hoppers clattered. The door, indeed, was never seen open now, not even its upper half, in the old sociable way, and no one would think of putting his nose into the miser's den and asking how he was. It is not to be wondered at that a feeling of something mysterious in all this should arise and spread. Sober, canny men began to shake their heads and purse their lips when talking of big John. It was agreed that it was not to the credit of an honest, respectable township like Fulford that John should be allowed to continue unquestioned his "secret, nefarious traffic." (These last were the words of the tailor with a taste for literature.)
"Ah, now, be aisy," said Dr. Mahoney one night, as the miller was being thus discussed in the old inn parlor—"be aisy. The old John's doing nothing wrong, I'll be bound. Oh, yes, it's true he shuts himself up. Now, now! because a man's lost his flesh don't ye go for to take his skin!"
When the doctor had gone out, switching his boot with his riding whip, much disgust was expressed at his defence of "'t au'd miser." Some one on the back bench spoke up, and said he knew why "t' doctor be so found o' au'd John." Being pressed for an explanuation, he said, "Doctor be sweet on t' lass, Ah, but I seen um! an' t' lass'll ha've all th' au'd man's brass as he hides away in stockings an' rat-holes."
"Ah, be that it?" The wise topers at once found this an explanation of a great deal, and made it an incentive to action. For might it not well be that Mahoney was in the miller's secrets, and wan sharing, eh ? Ecod! why should they not go down to the mill one night, while the miller was out on the Barford road, and enter and see what game he was up to? "And hunt out a rat or two from the holes," suggested one.
"Cod, yes!"
Now it chanced that the doctor, on leaving the parlor had turned into the bar—"just a hot whisky, me darlin', wid a bit of lemon"—and being suspicious that the topers might talk of him when he was gone, had, with a wink to the landlady, applied his ear to a convenient hole in the pine-board partition from which a knot had been pupshed. Of course he heard all that passed.
"Just sayin' the plisantest thing about your humble servant," he whispered to the landlady. "But, don't tell 'em I heard;" and with that he swallowed his whisky, and went off sucking the "bit o' lemon."
It was quite true he was in love with the trim little Kitty. Even while she was a thin, pale-faced girl, slaving about her father's house, he had lingered to talk with her. But after she had been some months in Squire Harding's house he had met her, and stared, blushed, and instantly taken fire with love. The poorly-dressed slip of a girl, who had left the mill, was hardly recognizable in this fresh, graceful young woman. So now he was very much alarmed by what he had overheard in the inn, not only on account of his sweetheart's father, but on his own. These valiant topers might set out on their expedition the very next night—drunk probably—to hunt a rat or two! He knew what that meant, and he feared: for, like every right-minded young man who has his way to make in the world, while he loved his "sweet Kitty so dearly, so dearly," he by no means despised her probable dowry, which he, like every one else, believed to be bestowed in "stockings and rate holes." Mahoney's medical practice made him quick to act in emergency. He stood a moment at the gateway of the inn, and looked up and down the street. The grocer was puttiing up his shutters; it was half past seven, it would be dark in less than two hours. Yes, he could do it. He ran up the yard.
"Jim! Jim! Oh! there you are. Get the mare out. No no; she's tired, the other."
"Saddle, sir?"
"No, beggar, no—of course not. The gig."
In twenty minutes he was at Squire Harding's side door. A quarter of an hour later he was dashing along with Kitty by his side, by the cross roads to the mill.
The doctor, after tying up the horse to the dusky yew, paused and looked at Kitty. He had not told her that half his purpose in coming to the mill was to ask her father's sanction to their engagement, and now the air of the place seemed to damp his ardor. The only sound was the monotonous spill of the "wastewater." The great wheel looked sodden and mouldy. The cart stood propped in the tumble-down shed. It was full of sacks: had the miller just returned, or was he just about to set out? They went to the house door, and tried it, and knocked. No answer. They went to the mill door; it was also locked, and no sound came in reply to repeated knocking. Ah, the little shutter window was unfasted; should he, Mahoney asked, enter that way and then open the door for Kitty? Perhaps something had happened to her father. In any case both were curious to see what it was the mill had been so busy with for months. Soon they were both in the mill. They looked about them in the dim light. Strange! A mere damp fustiness of smell; none of that warm fragrant odour of flour and meal in which mills are embalmed. Mahoney pushed open the shutters all round. . . Not a single sack; not a grain of wheat; not even a floury festoon of dust on wall or roof! They looked at each other in silent amazement; not a rat squeaked; the floor, the platforms, the hoppers were swept utterly empty and bare. A common impulse sent them out to look into the sacks in the cart. . . . Filled with sweepings, decaying ropes and cord, musty hay and straw, everything! They did not need to speak. It was plain to both that during all these months the old mill had been busily grinding nothing!
Through the mill they made their way into the house. In the kitchen they found the miller—he that had been called "Big John"—sitting in an armchair before a spark of fire, looking like an unwinking, ghastly Death. At sight of the two, a warm flush suffused he cadaverous face, and burned into his eyes. He tried to stand up, but he sank back into his chair again. He had always been a stern, undemonstrative father, and his daughter was always afraid to show any emotion; but his sad condition now so moved her she could not restrain herself. She threw herself on her knees before him, and wept and sobbed with her face in his lap. He looked this way and that for a moment, and his stubby chin began to work strangely. At length he looked suddenly at Mahoney:
"Weel—I s'pose thoo'st found a' oot in there?" motioning with his head toward the mill. "Weel, weel. It be a' up, eh! Or," again flushing and sitting up, "be ye come to say folk got back to right mind?—eh? Nae mair divil's steam, eh? Cod! I'll do that Gearge oof yet! Dom him!"
But the excitement was too much for him. He sank back pale and faint. He crossed and pressed his arms over his stomach, closed his eyes and uttered a faint moan. Mahoney guessed what this was—starvation. Till now he stood in utter blank surprise. Now he recovered his wits. He spoke to Kitty and sent her to get a light and to find what food there was, made John drink some brandy from the flask which he always carried, and felt and counted his pulse. He tried to persuade him to let them help him to bed, but "No," said John, "I be a' right. I'll bide here."
Kitty brought a piece of resiny wood and lit it, whispering there was neither candle nor coal, crust nor scrap, to be found any where.
In a minute or two Mahoney was driving into the town for food, in grave doubt whether it would be of any use. It suddenly occured to him to stop at the house of the other Grewelthorpe; he ought to know of his brother's condition. George Grewelthorpe, when he heard, was overcome with consternation and remorse, called himself a fool for ever having believed in such a thing as a government contract, and begged to be taken up to his brother.
"It been a' my fault from t' first, Doctor! I mun gan to him."
With such things as were necessary they returned to the mill. Kitty met them at the door in great distress; her father's behaviour was so unlike what she had ever known it before; he had been calling her by honeyed names. "And, oh, what do you think he's been living on all this time?—rats! ugh!" They entered the kitchen. John looked up sharply. "You've been giving him too much of the brandy," said Mahoney to Kitty. At the sight of his brother he seemed to swell and bristle with the old malice and obstinacy.
"No, no," said he, trying to rise; "I beart done oot yet!"
"John," said his brother in a choking voice, holding out his hand.
"Gearge?" said he, looking at the extended hand a moment, and then grasping it and sitting down. The hands kept pressing each other with a perceptible vibration.
"Has left of steam then?" asked John.
"Divil tak' steam!"
"Ah, I thought so," said John, with a smile in which he almost fainted away again. In a little time some chicken-broth was ready for him. While taking it he kept glancing furtively at his brother, and letting something of an angry cloud regather about his face.
"Gearge,"said he at length, pressing his brother's hand again, "I warn't now—eh?, wuz I?"
"What?"
"Thoo knows; drunk the even' o' her funeral—eh?"
"N—no, John; no."
Thus the Grewelthorpe feud ended. Next day a waggon from the steam mill brought something for the empty hoppers of the old mill to clatter about, and next week it was announced that the mills would be worked in concert by the firm of "Grewelthorpe Brothers."
Warragul Guardian, Thursday 6 October 1881, supplement page 2 (reprint from Temple Bar).
Monday, 18 June 2018
Mad Love
by Julian Hawthorne
Spencer Curtis, as I remember him, was a hollow-cheeked, bright-eyed, excitable young fellow, with soft brown hair, a lock of which was continually falling down over his broad forehead. He could not talk long on any subject without becoming excited; and when he was excited he coughed, and his eager face flushed; he was supposed to have a tendency to consumption. In character he was viewy, enthusiastic, and unpractical, but subject to fits of profound depression, and his enthusiasm was easily discouraged. There was a slender vein of genius in the man, and he occasionally said strangely brilliant things, without seeming to be aware of it. He was given to philosophical speculations, and had written a very eccentric book, treating de omnibus rebus et quibusdam allis, which had been made fun of by most of the reviews, but which contained promise of powers that might have achieved something really new and valuable. But, somehow, we never regarded Curtis as a man who was likely to live long, and perhaps this led us to humor him more than we should otherwise have done. Still, he was a winning and lovable fellow; and some women were very much attracted by him. He himself, however, was extremely shy of female society; and since he had only about three thousand pounds in the world, besides what he could make by his pen, nobody ever dreamed of such a thing as hearing that he was going to be married.
Consequently, I was nothing less than amazed when he burst into my rooms one day, and, seizing me by both arms, looked for a moment in my face, and said,
"Kate Masters has promised to be my wife!"
"Kate Masters? What are you thinking of?" I exclaimed. "Not the heiress?"
Spencer's eyes darkened and his face flushed; he let go my arms.
"Is that all you have to say to me?" he asked, in an aggrieved tone.
"But you took my breath away; besides—"
"Do you suppose I care for her money?"
"My dear fellow, of course not! I only feared the news was too good to be true. I congratulate you with all my heart!"
"Her money is the only thing that troubles me," continued Spencer, dropping moodily into a chair. "I wish she had no more than I have—or nothing at all. Now that I know she cares for me, I am able to make a living for both of us, whatever you may think. And you are the oldest friend I have!"
"You have none that believes more in your ability and honor," I said, for I was sincerely sorry that I had hurt his feelings. "Come, shake hands, old boy, and let us hear all about it."
He finally consented to be appeased, and told me his story—not that there was really very much more to tell. He had been invited out to Colonel Masters' country seat, and of course Kate had been there. They had (as I already knew) met each other a good many times before, and she had once or twice spoken to me of her admiration for Spencer, while he, for his part, had seemed more at ease in her company than in that of most women. But I should as soon have thought of his marrying her as of her marrying the Shah of Persia. However, they were together at her uncle the Colonel's, and in the course of the week they became engaged. Wonders will never cease, especially when there is a woman in the case; and probably this did not seem to Spencer so very wonderful, though of course he regarded himself as the most blessed of mankind.
"It was in the little chalet that it happened," he said, drawing his breath after a sharp fit of coughing. (He had been tramping up and down the room, shoving the chairs about, and talking rapidly.) "You know the chalet?—in that clump of trees at the further end of the lawn, about a quarter of a mile from the house; I had been rambling about the grounds, and came in there quite by chance, supposing it to be empty. But she was there, sitting at the western window, with a book in her lap. She looked round, and when she saw it was I, an expression came into her eyes that—it made me feel the time had come! I had hardly realised how it was with me before; but then, everything explained itself! I began by remarking what a pretty little house it was, and how happy one might be to live in it; and so one thing led to another. At last—oh, she was so heavenly sweet! She said the world might laugh at us, but that I was worth a thousand worlds to her. We walked home with her arm resting on mine; and the new moon was just above the tops of the trees."
"What did the Colonel say to it?" I inquired.
"O, he behaved just as might have been expected," answered Spencer, throwing back the hair from his forehead. "At first he took me to task very severely, and talked about my having abused his confidence, and all that. But I would not allow him to hold that tone with me, and, after a while, we got to talking more reasonably. He said he was Kate's guardian as long as she was under age, and that he could not conscientiously let her marry me until she was beyond his control. Of course that won't be till a year from now. I said that I was prepared to wait, and that I desired all the property should be settled on her. Then he wanted me to promise not to see or correspond with her while the period of probation lasted; but neither Kate nor I would agree to that; and at last it was arranged that there was to be no letters, but that we were to meet once every month. In the end he and I parted very politely. I fancy, though, that he calculates on Kate's changing her mind. If so, he is making a great mistake. I trust in her constancy as I trust in Heaven!"
Now, although I would not for the world have had Spencer suspect it, I must admit that I was a good deal of the Colonel's way of thinking as regarded Miss Masters. I knew something of her. She was a fine, handsome, wholesome girl, with an aristocratic nose, and a complexion like a warm rose leaf; her white teeth sparkled when she laughed, and she had more hair growing on her head than she well knew what to do with. Her voice was pleasant, though rather loud; she rode dashingly to hounds, and was a champion lawn tennis player. But she was not, so far as I was aware, a student of any kind of literature, and the only philosophy that concerned her was how to get the most fun out of the passing moment. I could imagine her enjoying a bit of romance, and playing her part in it very well; but that she should make an imprudent match and stick to it did not seem so likely. Her father and mother, whose only child she was, had been dead some years, and she inherited the whole of that large property, her uncle being her guardian during her minority. It was in her power to make the most brilliant match of the season; and I knew it for a fact that Captain the Honorable Arthur Taverney had made her an offer not three months before. She must have refused him, for he went off to the Ashantee war in despair. But that was no reason why she should fall in love with a man like poor Spencer Curtis; and I had serious doubts whether she intended anything more than a vacation pastime.
My misgivings were not relieved by the discovery that the engagement was for the present to be kept a secret. Spencer had stipulated with the Colonel to be allowed to tell me, because I had known him when he was a boy, and was his most intimate friend; but the rest of the world was to remain uninformed until the day for the wedding was fixed. Miss Master herself did not seem to have objected to this arrangement; and as for Spencer, he declared that he preferred it. If all the world had been as ingenuous as Spencer, no harm would have been done, but, as it was, some miscarriage was at least conceivable. However, I held my peace, and hoped for the best; and when Spencer left me, he was in very good spirits.
For a couple of months all went well; but with the advent of winter Spencer's cough grew worse, and his physician told him he had better go to Madeira if he meant to live. After some hesitation he decided to go. He was to be allowed to write to Kate once a month, and to receive letters from her, since they would not meet until his return.
"It won't be for long, after all," he remarked to me, trying to put a brave face on the matter; "and this will be our last separation. If I have to go to Madeira next year, she will go with me."
He made me promise to keep him informed of Kate's doings while he was away; and so finally off he went, I bidding him farewell on the deck of the steamer with a heavy heart.
Poor Spencer! It was long before I discovered that the promise I had given him would be no agreeable matter to keep. Miss Masters was admirably constant to him for a time, and spoke to me of her devotion to him in terms that I was glad to hear; and I began to repent of the suspicions I had entertained of her. I wrote to Spencer that all was going on well, and that I felt disposed to fall in love with his Kate myself. But one day, while I was chatting with her at an after-dinner reception at Lady Loraley's, she gave a sudden start and an exclamation, and there, behind my shoulder, stood Captain the Honorable Arthur Taverney, pale and handsome, with his arm in a sling. He had just been invalided home from Africa, and was a great hero. He spoke to Miss Masters, who received him cordially; and there was nothing for me but to make my bow and move off. They were together the rest of the evening; but I was determined to have one word with her. So, just before I took my departure, I made my way up to her. She was standing shoulder to shoulder with Captain Taverney, listening to the last bars of a song from Madame Semaroff.
When it was over, she turned to exchange an admiring exclamation with the captain, and I took the opportunity to say,
"I have come to bid you good evening, Miss Masters."
"O, good evening," she said, not offering me her hand.
"I am sending a letter to-morrow to our friend in Madeira," I continued; "have you any message?"
She replied, coldly, "I think not, thank you;" but in a moment she added, her cheeks reddening, "Tell him not to be away too long."
I decided not to send my letter to Spencer the next day, but to wait for further developments. Kate was evidently wavering; she wished to be true, but distrusted herself; and, with a woman like her, such distrust is the prelude to surrender. Captain Taverney was very fascinating, and he was on the ground; I knew also that the Colonel would favor his suit. To tell the truth, I myself considered him a much better match than Spencer for the girl; but, things having gone so far as they had, that was neither here nor there. Meanwhile, the aspect of affairs became less and less encouraging; but there was still nothing tangible; these constant visits of Captain Taverney might be merely friendly, and mean nothing; moreover, since Kate's engagement to Spencer was kept secret, the Captain was not to blame. But Kate and the Colonel were to blame; and, after some deliberation, and with great reluctance, I resolved to speak openly with the former. This was about six weeks subsequent to our interview at Lady Lornley's. I was at the opera, and seeing Miss Masters in her box, I presented myself there at the end of the first act.
"I knew I should find you here to-night," I remarked, after she had asked me to sit down beside her.
"Why to-night, particularly?"
"Because it is La Favorita—Spencer's favorite opera. By this time next year he will be sitting here beside you. You expect him back in May, don't you?"
"I suppose so,'' she said, distraitly, leaning away from me and rippling her fan.
"It is a long time for him to have been exiled from you," continued I; "but I hope," I went on, looking at her, "that he will not have been away too long?"
At first I thought she was going to ignore my allusion—evidently she was not thankful to me for making it. But, presently, she seemed to take a resolution; she closed her fan and turned to me, breathing more quickly, and rather pale.
"I suppose Spencer authorised you to act as his representative during his absence—to see that I behaved myself, I mean, and did not forget him?"
"He had no misgivings of that sort, Miss Masters. He told me before he went away that he trusted you as he trusted Heaven. He asked me, as his friend, to keep him informed of your health and happiness ; and that I have done."
"If you have told him that I was happy, you have misled him. I have been very unhappy."
"You have not been without distractions—more than he has had, poor fellow."
"I do not need your sarcasm," she said, hotly. "I have been more sarcastic to myself than you would dare to be; but it is no use. I made a terrible mistake. I don't know how I came to make it. I always knew that Spencer was above me, intellectually and in other ways; but I thought I could grow up to him. I thought more highly of myself than I deserved. Since he has been away I have come back to my own level."
While she was thus confirming my worst fears, I leaned on my elbow on the edge of the box, looking out across the theatre. A young man was standing up in the stalls, directing his opera-glass towards us. I recognised Captain Taverney.
"A very attractive and fashionable level, unquestionably," I observed, with a slight indicative movement of the head.
She looked across and saw him, and the color swept into her face, whether it came from anger or from other passion, I could not tell.
"It is my own level, at all events," she said, with a dignity which commanded some respect; "and the only one in which I could give happiness or feel it."
"I doubt whether beauty has any level, whatever may be the case with its professor," I said getting up; "hence many sorrows and misunderstandings. Have you no regrets?"
"None—to speak of," she replied; and upon that ambiguous answer I bowed and took my departure, passing Captain Taverney in the lobby.
It only remained for me to perform one of the most welcome duties that ever fell to my lot—to write the news to Spencer Curtis. I sent him a long letter; I said everything that I could; but in the course of it the reluctant words had to be spoken; Kate Masters renounced her engagement. I did not think it necessary to mention the name of Captain Taverney. I also dispatched a curt note to Miss Kate, telling her what I had done. I received no reply to it; but the next thing I heard about her was that a marriage had been arranged between her and Captain Taverney. In due course the wedding invitations were distributed, and finally the wedding, at which I did not care to be present, took place. All this time I had heard nothing from Spencer, and his silence began seriously to disquiet me.
By the end of another month, however, two pieces of intelligence reached me. Captain Taverney had been unexpectedly ordered abroad with his regiment, and Spencer Curtis had come back to England raving mad.
Mrs. Taverney did not accompany her husband to India; the regiment was not expected to remain abroad long, and the work it had to do was not consistent with the presence of ladies. She took up her abode with her uncle in the interval. Whether or not she knew of the calamity which had happened to Spencer I cannot say; but I fancy the facts had been concealed, or at any rate, softened to her. She believed him to be ill, and nothing more. I saw the poor fellow once or twice, but he never recognised me. He had every comfort that his condition admitted and that money could procure (for, singularly enough, a relative of his had bequeathed him £18,000 just about the time that he lost his love and reason); but he was dangerously mad, and had more than once attempted to kill his attendant. I asked the physician whether there was any hope of his being cured, upon which that prudent gentleman smiled, and remarked that he had as bad cases as that come round.
The ensuing autumn I went on the continent for a change and recreation, for I missed Spencer more than I should have anticipated—more, perhaps, than if he had been dead. I renewed my acquaintance with Naples and Venice, and Constantinople and Madrid; at last, one spring day, I found myself in Paris. Sitting in a café on the Boulevard, I took up a copy of Galiganni, and read in it that Captain the Honorable Arthur Taverney had died of fever in Bombay. The paragraph added that he left a widow and infant daughter in England.
I returned to London in June. My heart was softened towards Mrs. Taverney, and I wished to renew my acquaintance with her, and to make that of the little child whom its father had never seen. I found her living alone in a small house in Hampstead. It was a lovely spot at that time of year; and London, with its busy season, might have been a hundred miles away for all that could be seen or heard of it. I found Mrs. Taverney looking very handsome in her widow's dress, and the baby was a healthy and energetic little creature, with its mother's eyes and hair. Our talk was friendly and quiet, and mostly kept clear of the things that lay nearest to the heart with both of us; but the two men whom we did not name waited behind our words, and spoke in our silence. Yet I was pained to believe that I detected something in her tone occasionally, indicating that she held poor Spencer to be in some way the origin of her griefs. "If he had never crossed my path, all would have gone well," seemed to be the gist of her feeling. Nothing more unreasonable and unjust could have been imagined; but there is no logic in a woman's suffering. I was confirmed by this in my previous conclusion—that she could never have heard of Spencer's insanity; indeed it was known to very few persons. I was half-minded to tell her of it, then; but on second thoughts it seemed to be best not to assume the responsibility of the revelation; it should come to her from some other source, if at all.
I met Colonel Masters several times in London, and he seemed inclined to renew the cordial relation which had subsisted between us previous to the recent events. At length he invited me to come down with him to his country seat for a couple of days; there were to be a few friends and plenty of quiet and fresh air, nothing elaborate. After some hesitation I agreed to go. A party of us went out by special train, and we found the house and grounds at their loveliest; but in the afternoon some heavy showers came on, compelling us to take shelter indoors. Here we amused ourselves as best we might; but it began to be rather dull, and we looked forward to the time when dinner should be ready. At length, just before the dressing-bell rang, I saw, from the window at which I happened to be standing, a carriage drive up to the door. A lady, dressed in black, got out of it; following her, a maid, with a baby in her arms. It was Mrs. Taverney. She had come in complete ignorance of there being any company in the house; and as she had not faced society since her loss, and there were no ladies among the Colonel's guests, the situation promised to be rather awkward.
She accommodated herself to it very gracefully. She greeted us all with courtesy and composure, and was prevailed upon to preside at the dinner table. After dinner she announced her intention of retiring to the little chalet in the park, where a bedroom had been fitted up. One and all of us were ready to give up our rooms to her, but she refused all offers. She had often before slept in the chalet, and preferred it to the house. Finding her resolute, the Colonel and I accompanied her over there, the maid bringing the child. The clouds had cleared away, and it was now bright moonlight.
The interior arrangement of the chalet was very simple. There were two rooms, each about fifteen feet square, opening into each other. The first of these was the bedroom, and had one large window on the right as you entered. The other room was used as a parlor; it had books, and a writing table, and a sofa in the bay window. Adjoining it was a small chamber, at that time used for lumber. The only entrance to the building was by the front door, which was of solid wood, and could be securely fastened. But the neighborhood was a very quiet one, and such a thing as a burglary had not been heard of for years. After having seen Mrs. Taverney safely into her little hermitage, therefore, we left her there without any apprehensions. The maid went back with us. We locked the door on the outside, it being arranged that the maid was to go over early in the morning to attend to washing and dressing the baby. Mrs. Taverney stood at the open window, and waved her hand in adieu to us as we set off on our homeward journey. Then she closed the window and fastened it.
"It seems rather a lonely place to leave her in," I remarked to the Colonel, as we strolled along over the damp turf, smoking our cigars.
"Bless you, her baby is all the company a mother wants," replied my gallant companion. "As for safety, she couldn't be safer if she was in our house in town. Not but what I wish the poor girl had some better protector than a baby, too!" The Colonel said this with a sigh, and no further words passed between us till our arrival at the house.
I went to my chamber that night about midnight. It was quite warm, and after partly undressing, I sat down at my open window to finish my smoke and enjoy the moon. While thus comfortably engaged, a sound reached my ears that made me start. It was very faint, but was it not a scream? I listened again for a long time, for my thoughts had immediately gone to the distant chalet, from the direction of which the sound had seemed to come. But it was not repeated, and at last I persuaded myself I must have been mistaken, and sought my bed.
Meanwhile, this was what occurred at the chalet.
After putting her baby to sleep, Mrs. Taverney threw off her dress and put on a loose negligee, and, for additional ease, she unfastened her hair and suffered it to fall down over her shoulders and below her waist. She was not sleepy, and purposed reading a while before going to bed. There were no books in the bedroom, so she went into the other room to get one. She did not take her candle with her, for the moonlight was so bright that no other light was needed. The book she selected was Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. After taking it from the bookshelf, she paused a minute or two by the sofa in the bow window, gazing out across the silent landscape. Her thoughts went back to the time, two years ago, when she had sat there with Spencer Curtis at her feet, and he had told her his love. Her bosom heaved sighs, and a deeper look came into her eyes. Poor Spencer! After all, no one had spoken to her of love as he had spoken it. Where was he now? Was he thinking of her? Had he forgotten her? The place seemed full of him. There was the very spot where he had knelt.
A slight sound, which Mrs. Taverney supposed to come from the baby, interrupted her reverie at this point, and she hastened back to the bedside. No; the child slept peacefully, lying on its back, with its little white arms above its head. The mother bent over it lovingly, but feared to kiss it, lest it should awake. She sat down in a chair by the bedside, drew up the small table which held the candle, and was soon deep in the mysteries of Mr. Rochester's establishment. As she sat she faced the door of the inner room; it stood wide open, and by raising her eyes, she could see through to the bay-window. But she presently became so absorbed in her book, that she had eyes for nothing else.
She had been reading for perhaps half-an-hour, when an unmistakable noise from the inner room again put her on the alert. It was a slow pushing sound, and was followed by a faint creak—the door of the little lumber-closet was being opened. That door lay out of the range of her vision, unless she moved, and for the moment, bold-hearted woman though she was, she was powerless to move. The creaking ceased; but, as she listened intently, she fancied she could detect a long irregular breathing. Then a shadow fell across the moonlight that rested on the floor of the inner room.
Mrs. Taverney turned, and extinguished her candle by putting her fingers on the wick. It was the thought of her baby that made her do this. She hoped that, whatever' might happen to her, the baby might not be noticed. The candle being out, she silently arose, and drew the coverlet over the baby's face. Meanwhile, she kept her eyes directed towards the open doorway.
A face was now visible in the other room, its features strongly lighted and blackly shadowed by the moon. It was a man's face, wild and ghastly. A thin and ragged beard and tangled hair, emaciated cheeks and appalling eyes, glittering and restless. In hue and cadaverousness it resembled the face of a dead person; but it was alive, though with no ordinary life. The figure moved so silent that at first Mrs. Taverney thought that it was a spectre; and the idea was strengthened by the shadow of resemblance it bore to some one whom she had known well and had met in that very spot. The figure moved towards the bay-window, and knelt down there, grasping in its arm one of the cushions of the sofa. It pressed the cushion to its breast, and seemed to kiss it passionately. Then, all at once, it broke out into a hurried murmur of strange disjointed words—expressions of love, despair, and entreaty, and her own name incessantly repeated. A horrible oppression made Mrs. Taverney s heart shudder and pause. This was no horrible spectre, but a living man—a madman—and her discarded lover.
If it had not been for her baby she would have dropped fainting where she stood; but as it was, she dared not faint. The thing was unexpected and inconceivable as it was real and terrible. She was shut up, alone and beyond reach of help, with the mad lover whom her own inconstancy had driven to madness. To escape was hopeless; and to remain might be death—not to her only! Her least movement might reveal her presence to him; or at any moment he might turn and see her. Yet to stand there inactive was most intolerable of all. Something she must do, or the suspense would drive her also mad. If she could reach unobserved the door between the two rooms and manage to close it! She believed there was a key in the lock; at all events, it would be better than nothing. She did not wait for the idea to cool, but instantly stepped towards the door. Unfortunately, it opened away from her, towards the inner room. Yet she almost had her hand upon it, when the madman rose from his knees and faced her. Then, without wavering, she did a thing which showed a valiant heart. She walked quickly forwards into the room, and closed the door behind her. She had the madman to herself; but the baby—for the time at least—was safe.
She never knew how long she was closeted there with him, in that fearful companionship; nor did she ever tell what passed between them, save in disconnected hints. Whatever it was, the traces which it left upon her remained permanently. There is reason to suppose that the madman who had been Spencer Curtis did not show uncontrollable violence; but there is reason to believe that, with the hideous unconsciousness of insanity, he made her drink to the last dregs the bitterness of the wrong that she had done him. Perhaps there have been others besides Kate Taverney who had held in their memory the consciousness of an hour which no one else besides their Creator will ever know anything about. I am thought to be of a speculative turn of mind, but I do not care to speculate further in this matter.
But this night was not to pass without a further incident. At about twelve o'clock, according to my reckoning, Kate heard a sound which she had heard many times before with little emotion, but which now severed her heart like a sword. It was the crying of her baby in the next room. She was sitting on the sofa in the window at the time, and she had succeeded in soothing her companion so far, that he was crouching beside her, with his head in her lap. He heard it too, and immediately leaped to his feet with a mad man's suspicious alertness. She tried to restrain him, but horror made her powerless; he broke away from her, opened the door of the bedroom, and went in, she following with stiffened limbs. The child continued its cries; he went to the bed, turned back the coverlet, and caught the infant up in his arms. Then Kate fell down on her knees, and uttered that scream which reached my ears as I sat smoking at my chamber window.
The next morning, when the maid went at the appointed hour to awaken her mistress, she found her kneeling on the floor in front of a haggard-looking creature, who sat in a chair with the baby in his arms. It was sleeping quietly; he was crooning over it, and mumbling loving words to it in a hushing tone. As the amazed woman drew near, Mrs. Taverney turned upon her a face that seemed wrinkled and aged, and said huskily, "Do not disturb them. He thinks the baby is his. He has been very gentle to her. Let them be!" And then, in a moment, she dropped sideways insensible.
From that night Spencer partially recovered from his madness, insomuch that it was not found necessary to send him back to the asylum from which he escaped; but he always persisted in believing the baby to be his own. Mrs. Taverney made arrangements to take charge of him, and they have in a manner lived together ever since. She seems to feel that he belongs to her; and when I visited them the other day, her manner towards him struck me as being exquisitely tender. The little girl was smiling between them.
Warragul Guardian, Thursday 29 September 1881, supplement page 2. Originally published in The World.
Friday, 15 June 2018
Sunday, 10 June 2018
A Rogue of the Period
by John Baker Hopkins
The lines of Mr. Albert Fitz-Talbot Copsey are cast at Bayswater, where he occupies Candy Villa, a residence a quarter of a mile remote from the main road, situated in an unpretentious stucco street, which is a favorite resort of open-air musicians by day, and of mouse-catchers by night.
Candy Villa is a breakfast parlor and two-storey house, with twenty-feet grounds in the rear, and a six-feet garden in the front. The abode of Mr. Copsey, though small, is imposing. On the little veranda that juts from the little drawing-window, are four little evergreens in four little tubs. There is a capacious portico, which is approached by a flight of three stone steps, guarded by two stone lions, the magnificent animals having prodigiously luxuriant manes and very long tails.
Let us be introduced to Mr. Copsey in his study. The writing table is covered with letters and papers. There are books on suspended shelves. In a corner are two hat-boxes, a case of mineral waters, and a case of wine. On a small round table are two tumblers, a glass jug of water, an open box of cigars, and a bundle of cigarettes. Over the mantelpiece hangs a weapon that was presented to Mr. Copsey by an African king. The walls are decorated with photographs of Mr. Copsey. One of the photographs has St. Peter's for a back ground, in another Mr. Copsey dwarfs the Niagara Falls, and in others St. Mark's, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Alps have the honor of playing second fiddle to Mr. Copsey's likeness. The back grounds serve to remind Mr. Copsey of his travels.
The nose of the visitor encounters' a smell of assorted scents, emanating from the pomade with which Mr. Copsey renovates his hair, the cosmetique with which he disciplines his beard and moustache, and the Imperial Perfume with which he saturates his handkerchief. In the crown of Mr. Copsey's hat, on his signet ring, on the case of his watch, on his note-paper, on his linen, on his cigar-case, on his purse, on the knob of his umbrella, and on all that is his there is printed, or embossed, or embroidered, or engraved his initials in monogram and his crest, which is a long-eared tiger, tottering in its hind legs.
Mr. Copsey was always carefully prepared for the gaze of mankind, and though he never left his bed until the vulgar world had done half a day's work, he devoted over two hours to dressing. He is now arrayed for dinner. The extremities of his superfine black trousers gracefully repose on patent-leather shoes. From the button-hole of his rich silk waistcoat is suspended a gold chain and a bunch of ornaments, including a miniature tea-urn, the gift of his Celestial Majesty the late Emperor of China, and a miniature warming-pan, given to him by the late Duke of Wellington. The white necktie is fringed with lace, and gold studs and a ruby pin enrich his shirt front. On his fingers are three rings, which he is constantly feeling—perhaps to make sure that they have not been given into the custody of an accommodating relation; for he has at intervals banked with the descendants of the ancient Lombards. A gold-rimmed eyeglass is suspended round his neck, and the links of his shirt sleeves are conspicuous.
A low and slightly overhanging forehead, an elongated nose, with a snubby termination; eyes of ferret shape and expression, of feline color, and with a fishy film; a capacious and thin-lipped mouth. Neither photography nor art could fail to do him justice.
According to rumor, Mr. Copsey had been in various callings, and, at the time we make his acquaintance, he was supposed to be living on his means, devoting his time to philanthropy.
Mr. Copsey rang the bell, and ordered the servant to ask Mrs. Copsey to come into the study. The lady, who was very much dressed, particularly about the head and skirt, and who appeared to be awkwardly conscious of the grandeur of her attire, speedily complied with the request.
"Where are the children?"
"They are dressing."
"You mean that they are engaged on their toilet."
"Yes; and, poor dears, they are quite upset by the heat."
"Ah!" said Mr. Copsey, "what is this to crossing the line, when to respire is intensest agony, and causes an aqueous discharge from every pore of the skin. But I have been trained to endurance, and the cold of Lapland and the heat of the torrid zone did not evoke a murmur."
"Nonsense, Copsey. No one can be froze or boiled without feeling it."
"My dear, froze or boiled is an expression that, applied to the temperature of humanity, does not befit the lips of a lady."
"We are alone."
Mr. Copsey rectified some mineral water with brandy, and drank the mixture.
"How often am I to repeat that, in order to avoid embarrassments, we should, in the privacy of the domestic circle, seem to one another what we wish to appear in the vision of society."
Mr. Copsey spoke slowly, and mouthed his words as if they were so precious and so nice that he was loath to part with them.
"We have a beautiful bowl of ice, Copsey."
"An indispensable gastronomical obbligato at this season. By the way, we have no ice tongs."
"We can use the sugar tongs."
"That will not do," said Mr. Copsey, as he prepared another tumbler of mineral water, rectified with brandy. "It is better to take our liquids warm, to say that our purveyor of ice has disappointed us, than adopt a vulgar substitute for the proper implement."
"But, Copsey, can't we say that the proper tongs has gone to be mended, or been stolen?"
"My dear, you forestall the utterance of my thought. In a duly regulated establishment, mending is so arranged that no inconvenience accrues from the operation. Our ice tongs, given to me by an Indian prince, were stolen by an applicant for alms, who was left solus in our dining room."
At that moment the two children—the only children of Mr. Copsey—entered the study. They are girls, and their papa often expresses regret that he has not a son to inherit his ancient name.
"My dears, your ma and I have arranged that our ice tongs have been purloined by an impostor soliciting benevolence."
"Yes, papa; and couldn't our silver fish-knives have been stolen at the same time. For, as Vespasia was just saying, it is so vulgar not to have them."
"Certainly, my dear. We only discovered the cruel theft this afternoon. I will state the circumstance to our guests."
The elder of the children is Miss Innocence Estella Viola Copsey, and, according to the family reckoning, she is about twenty-one years old, though she was baptised with less poetical names, nearly forty years ago. The younger child, Miss Vespasia Rosina Lily Copsey, favored the light of the sun all thirty-five years ago, but, according to the Copsey calculation, she is not quite of her teens. Papa has lately bought a big family Bible, and entered the births of Innocence and Vespasia, at dates which support the theory of their juvenility.
What with the squeezing in and the padding out, the complexion put on, the hair of foreign growth, and the teeth of art, they might be taken, at a distance, for girls. Their manners are quite infantile. They are addicted to giggling, but, as their mamma observes, children will be tickled by straws. In their movements they strive to imitate the friskiness of lambs, and, as their papa remarks, the graceful agility of youth must necessarily herald the dignity of mature life. There is no doubt that the Copseys were perfectly unconscious that their grotesque pretensions were laughed at, yet, as we shall see, they were clever and successful dupers—that they had the ability and tact to live by fraud without being overhauled by justice and dry-docked. The phenomenon can be explained. Personal vanity, the unmingled worship of self, blinds the sharpest sight to defects of self. Also the habitual liar becomes the dupe of his own lying.
"I think, my dear, that on this occasion you might, if the opportunity occurs, ask Mr. Pooner and Mr. Drumhead to assist us in a work of benevolence. Pooner has a very fair income, and Drumhead is rich."
"Yes, papa," said Vespasia; ''but I am sure Pooner is awfully mean. The gloves he gave me were not worth two shillings a pair."
"Perhaps, my dear, Mr. Pooner is a lemon that requires extra squeezing; but in the cause of charity we must not be discouraged."
"Shall we plead for the poor family in the country which wants to emigrate?"
"No, dear Innocence; I am afraid that the poor family in the country is not effective. Why should we not ask for help in the case of Margaret and Martha Manvers, whose bad conduct I have again and again forgiven, who are now in dire distress, and are willing to emigrate and lead a proper life, if the funds can be procured. Your ma might, without my consent, take our friends to see the unhappy women."
"But, pa, they would want us to go with them, so perhaps it would be better to plead for only one woman."
"My dear Vespasia, you and Innocence are too sensitive to look upon such misery; and that is a reason for declining."
"I don't like or trust that Pooner," said Mrs. Copsey. "Old fools have eyes."'
"Let him use his eyes," rejoined Mr. Copsey. "We are not ashamed of what we do in the cause of charity."
"And it is about time we did something," said Innocence, "for nothing is coming in. We wrote to Old Chubb, telling him that the poor widow Ward has just lost her youngest child, and has not a penny for a bit of crape or to buy a coffin, and the brute replies that he will not give her another sixpence, and that we are to tell Mrs. Ward that if she calls at his house again he will not see her and will take some steps to get rid of the nuisance."
"I should like to see the wretch horse-whipped," exclaimed Vespasia.
Mr. Copsey played with his toy tea urn and his toy warming pan, and smiled.
"The brutality of Mr. Chubb will be defeated. I happen to have found out an excessively unpleasant circumstance about his son. I shall call on him in the morning and condole with him on that painful affair, and after that he will be civil to you and to any person whose cause you advocate. He who know's another man's unpleasant secret is master of that man."
Mr. Copsey had devoted much of his time to discovering other people's secrets, and he found the occupation profitable. There were half a dozen men and women who dared not refuse to help his poor family in the country, his distressed widow in town, his ruined professional friend, his clergyman who had disgraced the cloth and was in most pitiable penury, or his orphan girl whose life depended upon a visit to Madeira. Mr. Copsey had a very long list of pensioners on his bounty. There was an author engaged on an immortal work who yearned for a pat, only one pat, of butter to lubricate his dry crust; there was a governess who was always going into a first-rate situation, provided she could obtain a few clothes; there was a mother praying for a few pounds to save her son from shame; there was always on hand a woman earning bread for her helpless family, who was in peril of having her sewing machine seized for rent.
The guests arrived in due course. Mr. Pooner is middle aged and attentive to Vespasia. Mr. Drumhead is young and devoted to Innocence. The dear children were so playful. Vespasia made little bread pills and threw them at Mr. Pooner. Innocence put her plated napkin ring on Mr. Drumhead's thumb, and said, "With this ring O thee wed." Mrs. Copsey did not notice it.
"Try that condiment, Mr. Pooner. It is not unlike the palate stimulant that I enjoyed in Pekin, where I resided for three months. Khan Bang Foo, the Imperial Chamberlain, prepared sumptuous banquets for my stomachic delectation. Khan Bang Foo loved me, and tears streamed down his venerable cheeks when I refused to entertain His Celestial Majesty's offer of £10,000 a year, and a palace to remain in his Empire. Imperial grandeur could not tempt me to forsake my native land. The Emperor was offended at first, but became reconciled and presented me with his miniature tea-urn as a parting gift."
"Pa, dear, wasn't the Emperor's daughter very fond of you?" asked Vespasia.
"My dear child, you awaken a delicate memory. The illustrious Princess honored me by a profound attachment, which, if I had forsaken my native land, would doubtless have eventuated in an alliance. Her feet were so exquisitely small that I could barely get my thumb into the jewelled shoe, that she gave me as a memento of our friendship."
Mr. Copsey enlivened the dinner with many such anecdotes of his travels.
"Put some ice into your claret, Mr. Drumhead. When I was in Africa, the honored guest of King Tumtum, I had a refrigerating apparatus in my baggage, and made artificial ice. The delight of the king and his wives was ecstatic. His majesty offered to abdicate in my favor. Often when I had been panting in the hot air of the torrid zone, far away from the haunts of civilisation, I have thought that the manufacturing of artificial ice was the most beneficial invention of any age."
Mrs. Copsy again and again apologised for the plainness of the dinner.
"My dear," said Mr. Copsey, "our friends did not expect a princely banquet. When my fortune was shattered by the failure of Overend, Gurney and Co., I had only enough salvage from the wreck for that simplicity of style, that is happily not incompatible with the aspirations of a noble soul. We might have a somewhat larger establishment, but I can't spend all I have over ourselves. To bestow on the needy is as indispensable to my life as food. Alas! I deplore the loss of fortune because I have now so little wherewith to alleviate distress. Even in the society of my friends, even at this moment I am oppressed by a case that I cannot adequately relieve."
Mr. Copsey wiped his gold-rimmed eyeglass, emptied his glass, and sighed.
"If my purse was as large and full as my heart, the sun would not shine on suffering that riches could assuage. My child, fetch some cigars from my study. Some of the Cabanas that were sent me by His Grace. I find a cigar soothing to painful emotion."
When the guests left about midnight, they had to walk some distance for a cab, and began to talk, as departed guests are apt to do, about their entertainers and entertainment.
"These cigars are A1, Pooner. Copsey is a queer fish, but he is good-natured, and does his best to make a fellow comfortable."
"Very queer, indeed. If he is not an artful cadger, I am."
"Well, of course, the Emperor of China, Bang Foo, and King Tumtum, and all that talk is cram; but I don't think the girls are a bad sort."
Candy Villa is a breakfast parlor and two-storey house, with twenty-feet grounds in the rear, and a six-feet garden in the front. The abode of Mr. Copsey, though small, is imposing. On the little veranda that juts from the little drawing-window, are four little evergreens in four little tubs. There is a capacious portico, which is approached by a flight of three stone steps, guarded by two stone lions, the magnificent animals having prodigiously luxuriant manes and very long tails.
Let us be introduced to Mr. Copsey in his study. The writing table is covered with letters and papers. There are books on suspended shelves. In a corner are two hat-boxes, a case of mineral waters, and a case of wine. On a small round table are two tumblers, a glass jug of water, an open box of cigars, and a bundle of cigarettes. Over the mantelpiece hangs a weapon that was presented to Mr. Copsey by an African king. The walls are decorated with photographs of Mr. Copsey. One of the photographs has St. Peter's for a back ground, in another Mr. Copsey dwarfs the Niagara Falls, and in others St. Mark's, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Alps have the honor of playing second fiddle to Mr. Copsey's likeness. The back grounds serve to remind Mr. Copsey of his travels.
The nose of the visitor encounters' a smell of assorted scents, emanating from the pomade with which Mr. Copsey renovates his hair, the cosmetique with which he disciplines his beard and moustache, and the Imperial Perfume with which he saturates his handkerchief. In the crown of Mr. Copsey's hat, on his signet ring, on the case of his watch, on his note-paper, on his linen, on his cigar-case, on his purse, on the knob of his umbrella, and on all that is his there is printed, or embossed, or embroidered, or engraved his initials in monogram and his crest, which is a long-eared tiger, tottering in its hind legs.
Mr. Copsey was always carefully prepared for the gaze of mankind, and though he never left his bed until the vulgar world had done half a day's work, he devoted over two hours to dressing. He is now arrayed for dinner. The extremities of his superfine black trousers gracefully repose on patent-leather shoes. From the button-hole of his rich silk waistcoat is suspended a gold chain and a bunch of ornaments, including a miniature tea-urn, the gift of his Celestial Majesty the late Emperor of China, and a miniature warming-pan, given to him by the late Duke of Wellington. The white necktie is fringed with lace, and gold studs and a ruby pin enrich his shirt front. On his fingers are three rings, which he is constantly feeling—perhaps to make sure that they have not been given into the custody of an accommodating relation; for he has at intervals banked with the descendants of the ancient Lombards. A gold-rimmed eyeglass is suspended round his neck, and the links of his shirt sleeves are conspicuous.
A low and slightly overhanging forehead, an elongated nose, with a snubby termination; eyes of ferret shape and expression, of feline color, and with a fishy film; a capacious and thin-lipped mouth. Neither photography nor art could fail to do him justice.
According to rumor, Mr. Copsey had been in various callings, and, at the time we make his acquaintance, he was supposed to be living on his means, devoting his time to philanthropy.
Mr. Copsey rang the bell, and ordered the servant to ask Mrs. Copsey to come into the study. The lady, who was very much dressed, particularly about the head and skirt, and who appeared to be awkwardly conscious of the grandeur of her attire, speedily complied with the request.
"Where are the children?"
"They are dressing."
"You mean that they are engaged on their toilet."
"Yes; and, poor dears, they are quite upset by the heat."
"Ah!" said Mr. Copsey, "what is this to crossing the line, when to respire is intensest agony, and causes an aqueous discharge from every pore of the skin. But I have been trained to endurance, and the cold of Lapland and the heat of the torrid zone did not evoke a murmur."
"Nonsense, Copsey. No one can be froze or boiled without feeling it."
"My dear, froze or boiled is an expression that, applied to the temperature of humanity, does not befit the lips of a lady."
"We are alone."
Mr. Copsey rectified some mineral water with brandy, and drank the mixture.
"How often am I to repeat that, in order to avoid embarrassments, we should, in the privacy of the domestic circle, seem to one another what we wish to appear in the vision of society."
Mr. Copsey spoke slowly, and mouthed his words as if they were so precious and so nice that he was loath to part with them.
"We have a beautiful bowl of ice, Copsey."
"An indispensable gastronomical obbligato at this season. By the way, we have no ice tongs."
"We can use the sugar tongs."
"That will not do," said Mr. Copsey, as he prepared another tumbler of mineral water, rectified with brandy. "It is better to take our liquids warm, to say that our purveyor of ice has disappointed us, than adopt a vulgar substitute for the proper implement."
"But, Copsey, can't we say that the proper tongs has gone to be mended, or been stolen?"
"My dear, you forestall the utterance of my thought. In a duly regulated establishment, mending is so arranged that no inconvenience accrues from the operation. Our ice tongs, given to me by an Indian prince, were stolen by an applicant for alms, who was left solus in our dining room."
At that moment the two children—the only children of Mr. Copsey—entered the study. They are girls, and their papa often expresses regret that he has not a son to inherit his ancient name.
"My dears, your ma and I have arranged that our ice tongs have been purloined by an impostor soliciting benevolence."
"Yes, papa; and couldn't our silver fish-knives have been stolen at the same time. For, as Vespasia was just saying, it is so vulgar not to have them."
"Certainly, my dear. We only discovered the cruel theft this afternoon. I will state the circumstance to our guests."
The elder of the children is Miss Innocence Estella Viola Copsey, and, according to the family reckoning, she is about twenty-one years old, though she was baptised with less poetical names, nearly forty years ago. The younger child, Miss Vespasia Rosina Lily Copsey, favored the light of the sun all thirty-five years ago, but, according to the Copsey calculation, she is not quite of her teens. Papa has lately bought a big family Bible, and entered the births of Innocence and Vespasia, at dates which support the theory of their juvenility.
What with the squeezing in and the padding out, the complexion put on, the hair of foreign growth, and the teeth of art, they might be taken, at a distance, for girls. Their manners are quite infantile. They are addicted to giggling, but, as their mamma observes, children will be tickled by straws. In their movements they strive to imitate the friskiness of lambs, and, as their papa remarks, the graceful agility of youth must necessarily herald the dignity of mature life. There is no doubt that the Copseys were perfectly unconscious that their grotesque pretensions were laughed at, yet, as we shall see, they were clever and successful dupers—that they had the ability and tact to live by fraud without being overhauled by justice and dry-docked. The phenomenon can be explained. Personal vanity, the unmingled worship of self, blinds the sharpest sight to defects of self. Also the habitual liar becomes the dupe of his own lying.
"I think, my dear, that on this occasion you might, if the opportunity occurs, ask Mr. Pooner and Mr. Drumhead to assist us in a work of benevolence. Pooner has a very fair income, and Drumhead is rich."
"Yes, papa," said Vespasia; ''but I am sure Pooner is awfully mean. The gloves he gave me were not worth two shillings a pair."
"Perhaps, my dear, Mr. Pooner is a lemon that requires extra squeezing; but in the cause of charity we must not be discouraged."
"Shall we plead for the poor family in the country which wants to emigrate?"
"No, dear Innocence; I am afraid that the poor family in the country is not effective. Why should we not ask for help in the case of Margaret and Martha Manvers, whose bad conduct I have again and again forgiven, who are now in dire distress, and are willing to emigrate and lead a proper life, if the funds can be procured. Your ma might, without my consent, take our friends to see the unhappy women."
"But, pa, they would want us to go with them, so perhaps it would be better to plead for only one woman."
"My dear Vespasia, you and Innocence are too sensitive to look upon such misery; and that is a reason for declining."
"I don't like or trust that Pooner," said Mrs. Copsey. "Old fools have eyes."'
"Let him use his eyes," rejoined Mr. Copsey. "We are not ashamed of what we do in the cause of charity."
"And it is about time we did something," said Innocence, "for nothing is coming in. We wrote to Old Chubb, telling him that the poor widow Ward has just lost her youngest child, and has not a penny for a bit of crape or to buy a coffin, and the brute replies that he will not give her another sixpence, and that we are to tell Mrs. Ward that if she calls at his house again he will not see her and will take some steps to get rid of the nuisance."
"I should like to see the wretch horse-whipped," exclaimed Vespasia.
Mr. Copsey played with his toy tea urn and his toy warming pan, and smiled.
"The brutality of Mr. Chubb will be defeated. I happen to have found out an excessively unpleasant circumstance about his son. I shall call on him in the morning and condole with him on that painful affair, and after that he will be civil to you and to any person whose cause you advocate. He who know's another man's unpleasant secret is master of that man."
Mr. Copsey had devoted much of his time to discovering other people's secrets, and he found the occupation profitable. There were half a dozen men and women who dared not refuse to help his poor family in the country, his distressed widow in town, his ruined professional friend, his clergyman who had disgraced the cloth and was in most pitiable penury, or his orphan girl whose life depended upon a visit to Madeira. Mr. Copsey had a very long list of pensioners on his bounty. There was an author engaged on an immortal work who yearned for a pat, only one pat, of butter to lubricate his dry crust; there was a governess who was always going into a first-rate situation, provided she could obtain a few clothes; there was a mother praying for a few pounds to save her son from shame; there was always on hand a woman earning bread for her helpless family, who was in peril of having her sewing machine seized for rent.
The guests arrived in due course. Mr. Pooner is middle aged and attentive to Vespasia. Mr. Drumhead is young and devoted to Innocence. The dear children were so playful. Vespasia made little bread pills and threw them at Mr. Pooner. Innocence put her plated napkin ring on Mr. Drumhead's thumb, and said, "With this ring O thee wed." Mrs. Copsey did not notice it.
"Try that condiment, Mr. Pooner. It is not unlike the palate stimulant that I enjoyed in Pekin, where I resided for three months. Khan Bang Foo, the Imperial Chamberlain, prepared sumptuous banquets for my stomachic delectation. Khan Bang Foo loved me, and tears streamed down his venerable cheeks when I refused to entertain His Celestial Majesty's offer of £10,000 a year, and a palace to remain in his Empire. Imperial grandeur could not tempt me to forsake my native land. The Emperor was offended at first, but became reconciled and presented me with his miniature tea-urn as a parting gift."
"Pa, dear, wasn't the Emperor's daughter very fond of you?" asked Vespasia.
"My dear child, you awaken a delicate memory. The illustrious Princess honored me by a profound attachment, which, if I had forsaken my native land, would doubtless have eventuated in an alliance. Her feet were so exquisitely small that I could barely get my thumb into the jewelled shoe, that she gave me as a memento of our friendship."
Mr. Copsey enlivened the dinner with many such anecdotes of his travels.
"Put some ice into your claret, Mr. Drumhead. When I was in Africa, the honored guest of King Tumtum, I had a refrigerating apparatus in my baggage, and made artificial ice. The delight of the king and his wives was ecstatic. His majesty offered to abdicate in my favor. Often when I had been panting in the hot air of the torrid zone, far away from the haunts of civilisation, I have thought that the manufacturing of artificial ice was the most beneficial invention of any age."
Mrs. Copsy again and again apologised for the plainness of the dinner.
"My dear," said Mr. Copsey, "our friends did not expect a princely banquet. When my fortune was shattered by the failure of Overend, Gurney and Co., I had only enough salvage from the wreck for that simplicity of style, that is happily not incompatible with the aspirations of a noble soul. We might have a somewhat larger establishment, but I can't spend all I have over ourselves. To bestow on the needy is as indispensable to my life as food. Alas! I deplore the loss of fortune because I have now so little wherewith to alleviate distress. Even in the society of my friends, even at this moment I am oppressed by a case that I cannot adequately relieve."
Mr. Copsey wiped his gold-rimmed eyeglass, emptied his glass, and sighed.
"If my purse was as large and full as my heart, the sun would not shine on suffering that riches could assuage. My child, fetch some cigars from my study. Some of the Cabanas that were sent me by His Grace. I find a cigar soothing to painful emotion."
When the guests left about midnight, they had to walk some distance for a cab, and began to talk, as departed guests are apt to do, about their entertainers and entertainment.
"These cigars are A1, Pooner. Copsey is a queer fish, but he is good-natured, and does his best to make a fellow comfortable."
"Very queer, indeed. If he is not an artful cadger, I am."
"Well, of course, the Emperor of China, Bang Foo, and King Tumtum, and all that talk is cram; but I don't think the girls are a bad sort."
"Precious old girls, but not old enough to fool me. Vespasia looked spiteful, though she pretended to be very grateful when I gave a sovereign to help the two unfortunate women named Manvers. She expected a fiver."
"I gave Innocence two fivers for the Manvers women."
"Bravo, Drumhead! Then our dinner, wine and cigars are handsomely paid for."
"Come, my boy, they are not quite so fishy as to cheat the poor."
"I no more believe in the Manvers' women, than I do in Bang Foo and his Celestial Majesty's daughter."
"Nonsense, Pooner. Innocence proposed that I should go and see the women."
"The sweet Vespasia made the same suggestion to me."
"It's not pleasant to be bled, Pooner. Only a fortnight ago, Copsey got a twenty from me for a parson who has gone to the dogs, and was quite savage when I said I could not afford more than a fiver. It is this way, Pooner. About two years ago I did my first and last turf plunge, and to pay my losses discounted bills secured by a post obit. Somehow or other Copsey knows about that job, which is all squared, but if it came to the ears of my Governor, I should be cut off with a bronze token, and serve me right, and old Copsey has a way of letting you know he knows your secret. So you see I don't want to offend him."
Before he again spoke, Mr. Pooner whistled a popular air with elaborate variations.
"Look here, Drumhead, I'll lay you long odds, it shall be twenty sovs. to one, that the Manvers' women are a sham."
"It would he plundering you to take the bet."
"No, it would not. Let it be a bet, to oblige me, Drumhead."
"Done. But how can we decide it?"
"I feel a sudden interest in their case, and you and I will be willing to come down handsomely to get them abroad. We will go and see them as proposed by the sweet Vespasia and the charming Innocence. Come to my chambers for a brandied soda, and we will fix up the details.
Perhaps if Mr. Copsey had heard the conversation of his departed guests, he would not that night have slept the sound sleep of infancy before it is troubled with teething.
The next day he called on Mr. Chubb, and when he returned to Candy Villa, said:
"After an interesting and confidential conversation with Mr. Chubb, about an unpleasant affair, I told him that I knew my children had ventured to trouble him about the distress of a poor widow, and that he must excuse you for so doing, because I had trained you to regard charity as the business of your life. He was very polite, and spoke most kindly of your benevolence. I think that Mrs. Ward should call on him."
"Yes, pa," said Innocence, "perhaps I had better go with Mrs. Ward. I can see Chubb whilst she sits in the cab."
"I suppose the widdy has buried the kid by this time," said Vespasia, laughing.
"Do not jest about these matters, my dear, or you will be caught laughing when you ought to be serious."
"Of course not, Vespy; did we not write the evening before last to say that the child had just died, and poor Mrs. Ward could not provide for the funeral!"
"I think," said Mr. Copsey, "that besides temporary relief, something substantial should be done for the bereaved widow. If Mr. Chubb will find £30, I will put £30 to it, and we can furnish two rooms for her; and as she is an accomplished woman, we can put her in the way of getting a living for herself and surviving child, by teaching."
Then Mr. Copsey dined. A little soup. A taste of fish. A delicate preparation of sweetbread. Vegetables cooked in French fashion. Claret and two or three glasses of burgundy. Mr. Copsey often spoke of the refined and aesthetical tendencies of his nature. He abhorred common food, the vulgar chop, steak or joint, plain boiled potatoes, and brutal beer.. Even his nose was aesthetical, and was tortured by contact with even the finest cambric, unless the cambric had been aesthetically perfumed.
"Now, my dear children, whilst you are charitably engaged in connection with the appalling distress of the poor widow Ward, I shall recline on the couch, for I am suffering from a sense of fatigue. With my postprandial cigar, I will take some mineral water with a slight precautionary infusion of alcohol in the form of brandy. Oh, my dear Innocence, not that thick tumbler. Please give me a thin and elongated mineral water glass. I cannot help the asthetical sensitiveness of my nature. My lips shrink from contact with thick glass. I remember when I was in Africa, and tormented by the raging thirst which is incidental to jungle fever, I could not moisten my parched lips until my faithful attendant brought my liquid in a suitable vessel, that is to say, in the burnished silver goblet always carried in my valise."
Mr. Copsey smoked his cigar and then dosed placidly, the aesthetically perfumed cambric being put over his head as a defence against the flies which have no respect even for a Copsey. But the fatigued philanthropist did not enjoy the contemplated evening of seclusion and repose.
Clifford, the general domestic—her real name was Ann Mugg, but Mr. Copsey preferred a more aristocratic appellation—aroused her master from his sweet sleep to announce that Mr. Proven wanted to see him about a case of charity.
"Conduct him to me, Clifford, for even a stranger, if he comes on an errand of mercy, has a claim to disturb your master's rest."
He put the brandy out of sight, took up a book, and began to read.
"Good evening, Mr. Copsey, I hope I don't interrupt. Mr. Neal has referred to us a letter you wrote to him about the case of a merchant who is sick and starving. If you will oblige me with the details the case shall be looked into, and if it turns out genuine, shall be duly and promptly relieved."
Mr. Copsey coloured and looked hard at his visitor through his gold-rimmed eyeglass.
"And who are you, sir?"
"My name is Proven, sir. I am a local superintendent of the Charity Organisation Society."
Mr. Copsey rose from his chair, and spoke in a tone of indignation that ought to have made Mr. Proven quake in his stockings.
"This is a most unwarrantable and unprovoked intrusion, sir. If Mr. Neal will not lay up treasure in heaven that is his affair: but it is a breach of etiquette, a violation of the law of honor, almost a violation of the law of the land, to send you my letter. As for your society, sir, I hate it, I abhor it, I detest it; and before men and angels I anathematise it. Is the dew of heaven, sir, to be sold by measure? So far as I can I will oppose the cruel desecration of charity. You have my answer to your request. Good night to you."
The indignant philanthropist had not recovered from the shock of Mr. Proven's wicked request, when Clifford announced Mr. Burrell.
"How are you? I am delighted to see you. Mrs. Copsey and the children will be in shortly."
"Thanks; but I cannot remain to-night. I have called about the distressed clergyman. Ever since I have had your letter it has worried me. Such trouble and misery is awful."
"Ah, my dear Mr. Burrell, the eyes of my heart are suffused with tears—pitying tears of blood—when I think of the suffering of a man whom I knew when he basked in the sunshine of prosperity. True, my unfortunate friend has erred, and deeply. In a moment of weakness he sullied his cloth; he forgot the reverence due to his sacred office. But when I behold my fallen fellow creature writhing in the dust, spurned by the world, and mangled by remorse, I forget his iniquity, and hold out to him my ungloved hand."
"You are right, Mr. Copsey. I'll call on the poor fellow, and when I see what he can do, we must and will find him a means of living. I was struck by his noble remark you quote in your letter, that the bread of charity chokes him, and that it is only honestly earned bread that can restore his health and sustain his life. He must be a manly fellow. Where shall I find him?"
Mr. Copsey shook his head.
"Alas! my dear Mr. Burrell, the sensitiveness of his nature is intensified by suffering, and he would rather decease than be seen in his misery and degradation. Even the visit of my gentle child Vespasia caused a nervous shock that was nearly fatal."
"But, Mr. Copsey, how can a man be helped who will not be seen?"
"My dear friend, let him receive the aid he needs as the flowers of the field receive the refreshing dew."
"I promise you I will not wound his feelings. Give me his address."
"No, Mr. Burrell. My soul so deeply sympathise with the sensitiveness of woe, that I cannot comply with your kindly meant request."
"Then I can't help him."
"So be it, my dear friend. However, when I see him to-morrow I will mention your proposal."
Mr. Burrell handed two sovereigns to Mr. Copsey.
"Give him that. I'll do more for him if he'll let me."
Mr. Copsey put two sovereigns to Mr. Burrell's gift, and wrapped the four in an envelope.
"Ah, my dear Mr. Burrell, what a blessed investment is charity!" There is no fraudulent trustee or dishonest director to steal our money. There is no winding up and calls to pay. The land shall be desolate and consols shall be no more; but these sovereigns, that we have invested in mercy, will yield us a dividend of bliss for ever."
When Mr. Burrell had left Candy Villa, Mr. Copsey, transferred the sovereigns from the envelope to his purse.
"There is no nobility of soul left in the world! Burrell must be worth three or four thousand a year, yet he gives a paltry two pounds for a case of awful distress. I wish I had tried him for the Manvers women or for the widow Ward, for then he might have seen the case.
Miss Innocence did not bring cheering news to the eminent philanthropist.
"Yes, pa, we have seen old Chubb, and he only gave three pounds, and said he could do no more."
"But I think he will do more, my dear Innocence. It is a very unpleasant affair indeed I have discovered about his son. I think he will do more for the widow."
"I hope he will be made to do it, for he quite upset us. He came up to the cab to see the widow, and said, 'I will call on you, what is your address?' Of course she began to sob, and I sobbed too. Then the wretch said: 'I'll go with you now, and see what is to be done!' But I was equal to him, for I said, 'Oh, how good and brave you are, dear Mr. Chubb, for no one will come near the poor thing, because her child died of putrid fever.' He made such a bolt into his house that we couldn't help laughing; but he was too frightened to hear our laughter. The mean wretch."
Vespasia tripped in, wearing a white cotton wrapper trimmed with red ribbon.
"My dear child, what a style for this hour. A lady puts on evening attire for dinner, and continues in evening attire until she disrobes for her couch. The observation of the etiquette of the elite is a moral tonic that no one can dispense with without deterioration."
Mr. Copsey's speech, always slow, was slower than usual, and clammy. The children looked at the brandy bottle. Pa had taken a great deal of precaution in the rectification of the mineral water.
"Well, pa, I am so hot after black, and I am tired of dressing. But, Inny, who do you think has written to me? Pooner. And what do you suppose he says? Guess what the letter is about."
"My dear child, I object to anything that has the remotest affinity to a riddle. It is the amusement of the inferior classes, and therefore a vulgar practice."
The children never regarded the admonitions of the pa when he was in the clammy stage of alcoholic precaution. Innocence took the letter and read it.
"Oh, isn't it jolly! Pa, old Pooner writes to Vespy, that he talked to Drumhead about the Manvers case, and they will give a hundred pounds between them to help the unfortunate women, and put them in a decent position. Pooner and Drumhead will call here to-morrow afternoon for us to take them to see the women."
"There is some nobility of soul in the world, my children, though it is hard to get at it; for the ear of those who have is so encrusted and hardened with gold, with the dross of commerce, that it is deaf as the auricular of the adder to the moan of distress. We will debate the affair in the morning; for I am too exhausted to-night. l am afraid that mineral water, though it pleasantly gratifies and allays the liquid craving of the palate, relaxes the nervous tone. Ask your ma, my dear, to prepare a thin sandwich of tongue, with a little condiment in the form of mustard. And though I abhor malt liquor I will swallow a glass of bitter beer, which is the least objectionable form of malt infusion."
Mr. Copsey continued to talk very slowly and with increasing clamminess until he was in bed and asleep. Mr. Copsey was never intoxicated, but a stranger might have mistaken his nightly mineral water clamminess for a stage of the complaint; that is to say, a stranger who did not know and hold the Copsey doctrine, that Albert Fitz-Talbot Copsey never said, or did, or thought amiss, and that a person who obeyed the behest of the said Copsey only did his duty; and any person who denied the said Copsey was vulgar, ignoble, and wicked. There is no doubt whatever that Mr. Copsey was persuaded that blackest black was brightest white, that he a most despicable scoundrel was a truly noble and meritorious man. Perhaps it is not uncommon for scoundrels to be blind to their faults and imagine themselves to be very superior to the rest of their fellow creatures, and not a whit lower than the angels.
Mr. Copsey slept soundly, as the innocent sheep sleeps unconscious that to-morrow it will be butchered into mutton.
When Mr. Podner and Mr. Drumhead arrived at Candy Villa, the children were out purchasing flannel to be made into petticoats for the Poor Female Winter Clothing Club.
"Since infancy my dear children have daily toiled in the sweet and noble field of charity. Ah, Mr. Drumhead, our National Debt, though immense, would not, though it were multiplied by a thousand, produce the income my girls have laid up in another world. No wonder that some little ragged children came to them the other day and said—'Oh, please, please, Miss Innocence, and Miss Vespasia, we know you are angels, for mother says so, and you are so good. Oh, please do show us your wings!' I am not ashamed to confess that when I heard that touching anecdote my eyes were not tearless."
"It was proposed that we should see the unfortunate women, the Manvers," said Mr. Pooner.
"I am aware of your benevolent design, and that is one reason why I insisted upon the children going out. It prostrates them, it is almost fatal to them to look upon such misery as afflicts Martha and Margaret Manvers. Five years ago, Martha was as well-shapen as my own girls, but now she is bent, and deformed by curvature of the spine caused by the weakness engendered by want.
For three months, the poor creature had no other food than an occasional dry crust and the fumes of boiled beef and carrots that she daily inhaled by standing over the grating of a cookshop. Once the poor creature tore some cat's meat from the mouth of a cat and eat it. That was not honest, but let us forgive the dishonesty. Margaret is so lamed with rheumatism, caught by exposure to the weather in soleless shoes, that she cannot move without the help of a stick. Yet those women are educated daughters of a refined gentleman, whose face was not unknown to the gold stick in waiting at the court of our sovereign."
"We will go alone to see the unfortunates."
"No, my dear Mr. Pooner. Mrs. Copsey will conduct you to the abode of misery."
Whilst Mrs. Copsey and the gentlemen were engaged on what Mr. Copsey described as the heart-rending mission of angelic mercy, the eminent philanthropist, drove to the Park in a hansom, walked half-an-hour, and then dined at his club. It was twilight when he returned to his residence.
Mrs. Copsey and the children were in the reception room. Mrs. Copsey was lying on the couch, groaning. Vespasia was swallowing some brandy and water, the glass being held to her lips by Innocence.
"What does this mean? What I ask, is the meaning of this excitement and confusion?"
"Oh, that horrid Pooner!" said Innocence.
"I'll murder the wretch," exclaimed Vespasia.
"I told your pa what Pooner was," groaned Mrs Copsey.
Presently, whilst Mrs. Copsey continued to groan, and Vespasia to scream, Innocence informed the eminent philanthropist of what had happened.
Mrs. Copsey conducted Mr. Pooner and Mr. Drumhead to the miserable unfurnished cottage in which a benevolent landlord allowed the unfortunate Manvers women to shelter until it was left. Margaret Manvers was on the straw mattress covered with a ragged quilt and moaning with agony. Her rheumatism was so bad she could not sit up or even speak to the benevolent visitors. Martha Manvers, dreadfully deformed with a huge lump on her back, was so weak that she could only speak in a whisper. Mrs. Copsey called Pooner to a corner of the room and said she was sure the woman on the mattress was attacked with fever, and it would not be prudent to remain long in the place. Pooner opened the door and whistled, and old Chubb came in. In a moment Pooner seized Martha, violently tore off her wig and hump, whilst Chubb and Drumhead took the rags and wig off the moaning Margaret.
I can't tell you what was said, for we were stunned. As soon as the wretches left we came home. I am sure they will go to the police."
"What trouble you have brought upon me," said Mr. Copsey. "I shall leave, and you had better follow."
"How dare you talk of forsaking me and the poor children? You are as bad as Pooner,"
"Don't be such fools as to row when every moment is valuable," said Innocence.
"Hark!" exclaimed Mr. Copsey, "there is some one at the door. It is only the postman. Yes, Innocence, we have not a moment to waste."
The following afternoon the milkman was surprised to find that the milk he had left in the morning in a can, under the guardianship of the stone lions, had not been taken in. After knocking and ringing, he enquired of the neighbors. The opinions were various.
At the end of the week the landlord of Candy Villa, received a post packet bearing a French post mark. It contained a key and the following letter:
"France, Thursday Night.
"I am compelled for a while to sojourn in a foreign land. After a life devoted to the work of charity and mercy, I am the victim of a cruel and fiendish plot. An innocent masquerading frolic of my children has been wickedly misconstrued. But I am blessed with a noble soul and a tender heart, and I forgive my enemies, who have for a time deprived the afflicted of their friend in need, their brother in adversity. Sell the furniture and effects at Candy Villa, and out of the proceeds take the rent due to you, and be good enough to disburse the balance in charity. Even in my own trouble I cannot forget the troubles of others. I am a child in business, and indeed the only business I understand is helping others. Hoping you will cheerfully undertake to act as my almoner, and that the sale may yield a goodly balance for the relief of distress,
"I am, Your faithful friend,
"ALBERT FITZ-TALBOT COPSEY."
In the children's room was found a large trunk, which was fastened by a patent lock.
The trunk contained tattered dresses, widow's caps and bonnets, an assortment of false hair of various colors, several sets of artificial teeth, crutches, and a back hump similar to that which had been worn by Martha Manvers.
Whether Mr. Copsey has returned to his native land is uncertain; but he may have done so, and under another name and in another locality, be engaged in philanthropic enterprise, aided by the charming Innocence and the sweet Vespasia.
Warragul Guardian, Thursday 28 July 1881, supplement page 2.
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