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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Colin Clink, Volume I (of III) - -Author: Charles Hooton - -Illustrator: John Leech and George Cruikshank - -Release Date: February 14, 2014 [EBook #44901] -Last Updated: December 11, 2016 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLIN CLINK, VOLUME I (OF III) *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page scans generously provided -by The Internet Archive - - - - - - - +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 44901 *** COLIN CLINK. @@ -5399,360 +5364,4 @@ END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org - - -Title: Colin Clink, Volume I (of III) - -Author: Charles Hooton - -Illustrator: John Leech and George Cruikshank - -Release Date: February 14, 2014 [EBook #44901] -Last Updated: February 28, 2018 - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLIN CLINK, VOLUME I (OF III) *** - - - - -Produced by David Widger from page scans generously provided -by The Internet Archive - - - - - - -</pre> <p> <br /> </p> @@ -6386,380 +6350,6 @@ END OF THE FIRST VOLUME. <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> </div> - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of Project Gutenberg's Colin Clink, Volume I (of III), by Charles Hooton - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLIN CLINK, VOLUME I (OF III) *** - -***** This file should be named 44901-h.htm or 44901-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: -http://www.gutenberg.org/4/4/9/0/44901/ - -Produced by David Widger from page scans generously provided -by The Internet Archive - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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-Project Gutenberg's Colin Clink, Volume I (of III), by Charles Hooton
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
-almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
-re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
-with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-Title: Colin Clink, Volume I (of III)
-
-Author: Charles Hooton
-
-Illustrator: John Leech and George Cruikshank
-
-Release Date: February 14, 2014 [EBook #44901]
-Last Updated: February 28, 2018
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COLIN CLINK, VOLUME I (OF III) ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by David Widger from page scans generously provided
-by The Internet Archive
-
-
-
-
-
-
-</pre>
-<p>
- <br />
- </p>
-<hr />
-
-<div style="height: 8em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h1>
-COLIN CLINK.
-</h1>
-<h2>
-By Charles Hooton
-</h2>
-<h3>
-IN THREE VOLUMES. VOL. I.
-</h3>
-<p>
-<br />
-</p>
-<h5>
-LONDON: <br /> <br /> RICHARD BENTLEY, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
-</h5>
-<h4>
-1841
-</h4>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="linkimage-0001" id="linkimage-0001"> </a>
-</p>
-<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
-<img src="images/008m.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="008m " /><br />
-</div>
-<h4>
-<a href="images/008.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original Size</i></a>
-</h4>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="linkimage-0002" id="linkimage-0002"> </a>
-</p>
-<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
-<img src="images/009m.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="009m " /><br />
-</div>
-<h4>
-<a href="images/009.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original Size</i></a>
-</h4>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<p>
-<b>CONTENTS</b>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0001"> CHAPTER I. </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0002"> CHAPTER II. </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0003"> CHAPTER III. </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0004"> CHAPTER IV. </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0005"> CHAPTER V. </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0006"> CHAPTER VI. </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0007"> CHAPTER VII. </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0008"> CHAPTER VIII. </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0009"> CHAPTER IX. </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0010"> CHAPTER X. </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0011"> CHAPTER XI. </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0012"> CHAPTER XII. </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0013"> CHAPTER XIII. </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0014"> CHAPTER XIV. </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0015"> CHAPTER XV. </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0016"> CHAPTER XVI. </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0017"> CHAPTER XVII. </a>
-</p>
-<p class="toc">
-<a href="#link2HCH0018"> CHAPTER XVIII. </a>
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER I.
-</h2>
-<p>
-<i>Affords a capital illustration of the way of the world. For, whereas
-knaves and fools not unusually take precedence of better men, so this
-chapter, though placed at the head of a long regiment, is yet inferior to
-any one that comes after.</i>
-</p>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE famous John Bunyan, or Bunion,—for the true orthography of this
-renowned name is much doubted amongst the learned of the present age,—has
-laid it down as an axiom in that most glorious of all Progresses, the
-Pilgrim's Progress, that “He that is down, needs fear no fall.” And who,
-in good truth, will undertake to dispute the good pilgrim's remark? Since
-nothing can be more clear to an eye as philosophic as was that of Mr.
-Bunyan, that if a man be seated on the ground, he most certainly is not in
-much danger of slipping through his chair; or that, being already at the
-bottom of the water, he “needs fear no fall” from the yard-arm.
-</p>
-<p>
-On this assurance, I take courage for Colin Clink. Down in the world with
-respect to its goods, down in society, down in the estimation of his own
-father and mother, and down in that which our modern political ragamuffins
-are pleased to term the “accident” of birth, he assuredly had not the
-least occasion for a single instant to trouble his mind with fears of
-falling any lower.
-</p>
-<p>
-From the very earliest, therefore, he had, and could have, but one
-prospect before him, and that was, the prospect of rising above his first
-condition. To be sure, like Bruce's spider, he afterwards fell sometimes;
-but then he reflected that rising and falling, like standing up and
-sitting down, constitute a portion of the lot of every man's life.
-</p>
-<p>
-It is currently related amongst the good folks of the country-side wherein
-our hero first saw the light, that while three or four officious
-neighbourly women were stealing noiselessly about the room, attending to
-the wants of the sick woman, and while the accoucheur of the parish was
-inly congratulating himself on having introduced his round five-thousandth
-child to the troublesome pleasures of this world, young Colin turned from
-the arms of the nurse who held him, and, as though even then conscious of
-the obligation conferred upon him by his admission to the stage of life,
-stretched out his hand towards the astonished surgeon, and in a very
-audible voice exclaimed, “Thank you, doctor—thank you!”
- </p>
-<p>
-I do not vouch for the truth of this anecdote; but this I do say,—whether
-or not he had anything to be thankful for will be seen, much as he himself
-saw it, during the course of this his own true history.
-</p>
-<p>
-That he was lucky in opening his eyes, even though in an humble cottage,
-amidst the scenes that nature spread around him, is certain enough. To be
-born poor as the spirit of poverty herself, is sufficiently bad; but far
-worse is it to be thus born in the bottom of some noisome alley of a vast
-town, where a single ray of sunlight never falls, nor a glimpse of the sky
-itself is ever caught, beyond what may be afforded by that small dusky
-section of it which seems to lie like a dirty ceiling on the chimney-tops,
-and even then cannot be seen, unless (to speak like a geometrician) by
-raising the face to a horizontal position and the eyes perpendicularly.
-Fresh air, fields, rivers, clouds, and sunshine, redeem half the miseries
-of want, and make a happy joyful being of him who, in any other sense,
-cannot call one single atom of the world his own.
-</p>
-<p>
-Colin Clink was a native of the village of Bramleigh, about twenty miles
-west of that city of law and divinity, of sermons and proctors' parchment,
-the silent city of York.
-</p>
-<p>
-Some time previous to his birth, his mother had taken a fancy, suggested,
-very probably, by the powerful pleading of a weak pocket, or, with equal
-probability, by something else to the full as argumentative, to reside in
-a small cottage, (as rural landowners are in the habit of terming such
-residences, though they are known to everybody else as hovels,) altogether
-by herself; if I except a little girl, of some five or six years of age,
-who accompanied her in the capacity of embryo housemaid, gruel-maker, and,
-when strong enough, of nurse to the expected “little stranger.”
- </p>
-<p>
-For the discharge of the more important and pressing duties incident to
-her situation, she depended upon one or two of those permanently
-unemployed old crones, usually to be found in country places, who pass the
-greater portion of their time in “preserving” themselves, like red
-herrings or hung beef, over the idle smoke of their own scanty fires, and
-who, as they are always waiting chances, may be had by asking for at any
-moment. Their minimum of wages depended upon a small sum of money derived
-by Mistress Clink, the mother of our hero, from a source which, as she
-then followed no particular employment, we are compelled to pronounce
-obscure.
-</p>
-<p>
-The sagacious reader may perhaps, in the height of his wisdom, marvel how
-so young a child as one of five or six years of age should be introduced
-to his notice in the capacity above-mentioned; but the practice is common
-enough, and may be accounted for, in the way of cause and effect, upon the
-most modern philosophical principles. Thus:—Great states require
-great taxes to support them; great taxes produce political extravagance;
-political extravagance enforces domestic economy; and domestic economy in
-the lowest class, where misery would seem almost rudely to sever the most
-endearing ties, now-a-days, demands that every pair of hands, however
-small, shall labour for the milk that supports them; and every little
-heart, however light, shall be filled with the pale cares and yearning
-anxieties which naturally belong only to mature age.
-</p>
-<p>
-Of such as these was Mistress Clink's diminutive housemaid, Fanny
-Woodruff.
-</p>
-<p>
-Brought up amidst hardships from the first day of her existence, through
-the agency either of the rod, the heavier stick, or of keener hunger,
-during at least twelve hours out of every twenty-four that passed over her
-head; she presented, at five years of age, the miniature picture, painted
-in white and yellow,—for all the carnation had fled from Nature's
-palette when she drew this mere sketch of incipient woman,—she
-presented, I repeat, the miniature picture, not of what childhood is, a
-bright and joyful outburst of fresh life into a new world of strange
-attractive things—not of that restless inquiring existence, curious
-after every created object, and happy amidst them all; but of a little,
-pale, solemn thing, looking as though it had suddenly fallen,
-heart-checked, upon a world of evil—as though its eyes had looked
-only upon discouragement, and its hands been stretched in love, only to be
-repulsed with indifference or with hatred. The picture of a little baby
-soul, prematurely forced upon the grown-up anxieties of the world, and
-made almost a woman in demeanour, before she knew half the attractive
-actions of a child.
-</p>
-<p>
-Notwithstanding all this, and in spite of the unnatural care-worn
-expression of her little melancholy countenance, Fanny's features retained
-something of that indefinite quality commonly termed “interesting.” Two
-black eyes, which showed nothing but black between the lids, looked openly
-but fearfully from beneath the arched browless bones of the forehead, and,
-with an irrepressible questioning in the face of the spectator, seemed
-ever to be asking doubtfully, whether there was or was not such a creature
-as a friend in the world; but her sunken cheeks and wasted arms belied the
-happy age of childhood, and spoke only of hard usage and oft-continued
-suffering.
-</p>
-<p>
-On the eventful day that gave young Master Colin Clink to the world, and
-about twelve hours previous to the time at which he <i>should have made</i>
-his actual appearance, Mistress Clink, his mother, was lying upon a bed in
-an inner ground-floor room of her cottage, think-ing—if the troubled
-and confused ideas that filled her brain might be termed thinking—upon
-her coming trials; while little Fanny, taking temporary advantage of the
-illness of her mistress, and relaxing, in a moment of happy forgetfulness,
-again into a child, was sitting upon the ground near the door, and
-noiselessly amusing herself by weighing in a halfpenny pair of tin scales
-the sand which had been strown upon the floor by way of carpet, when the
-abrupt entrance of some one at the outer door, though unheard by the sick
-woman amidst her half-dreaming reveries, so startled the little offender
-on the ground, that, in her haste to scramble on to her feet, and recover
-all the solemn proprieties and demure looks which, in a returning moment
-of infantile nature, had been cast aside, she upset the last imaginary
-pound of sand-made sugar that had been heaped up on a stool beside her,
-and at the same time chanced to strike her head against the under side of
-the little round table which stood at hand, whereby a bottle of physic was
-tossed uninjured on to the bed, and a spoon precipitated to the floor. Her
-countenance instantly changed to an expression which told that the crime
-was of too black a dye to be forgiven. But patience without tears, and
-endurance without complaint, were also as visible; virtues which hard
-necessity had instilled into her bosom long before.
-</p>
-<p>
-Ill as Mistress Clink may readily be presumed to have been, she started
-half up in bed, leaning with her elbow upon the pillow, her countenance,
-pale and ghastly with sickness, rendered still more pale and horrible with
-anger, and gasping for words, which even then came faint in sound though
-strong in bitterness, she began to rate the child vehemently for her
-accidental disaster.
-</p>
-<p>
-In another instant a female servant of the squire of the parish stood by
-the bedside.
-</p>
-<p>
-Mistress Clink fell back upon the pillow, while her face for a moment
-blushed scarlet, and then became again as white as ashes.
-</p>
-<p>
-“<i>Don't</i> rate the poor child, if you please, ma'am,” said the woman.
-“Poor thing! it's only a bag of bones at best.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, I'm ill!” sighed Mistress Clink.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ay, dear! you <i>do</i> look ill,” responded the woman. “I 'll run and
-fetch the doctor; but, if you please, ma'am, master has sent this little
-basket of things for you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What things?” asked the sick woman, slightly rallying, and in an eager
-voice.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Linen, ma'am,” observed the servant, at the same time opening the lid of
-the basket.
-</p>
-<p>
-“How very good of him!” whispered Fanny.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, child,” replied the serving woman; “he's always very kind to poor
-women.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The invalid was aroused; she almost raised herself again upon her hand.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Very kind, is he? Yes, yes—say so, say so. But”—and she
-hesitated, and passed her hand across her forehead, as though mentally
-striving to recall her flitting senses—“Take 'em back—away
-with 'em—tell him—Oh! I'm ill, I'm ill!”
- </p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="linkimage-0003" id="linkimage-0003"> </a>
-</p>
-<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
-<img src="images/023m.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="023m " /><br />
-</div>
-<h4>
-<a href="images/023.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original Size</i></a>
-</h4>
-<p>
-She fell back insensible. The old woman and Fanny screamed first, and then
-ran for the surgeon. Within a very brief period Master Colin Clink
-appeared before the world, some half a day or so earlier than, to the best
-of my belief, nature originally intended he should. But it is the peculiar
-faculty of violent tempers to precipitate events, and realize prospective
-troubles before their time.
-</p>
-<p>
-As the reader will subsequently be called upon to make a more close
-acquaintance with the professional gentleman now introduced to notice, it
-may not be improper briefly to observe, that, amongst many other
-recommendations to the notice and favour of the public, the doctor offered
-himself as a guardian to “persons of unsound mind,” with, of course, the
-kindest and best mode of treatment that could possibly be adopted. In
-plain words, he kept a “retreat,” or private madhouse, for the especial
-and peculiar accommodation of those eager young gentlemen who may,
-perchance, find it more agreeable to shut up their elderly relations in a
-lunatic's cell, than to wait until death shall have relieved them of the
-antique burthen. The doctor's establishment was one of the worst of a bad
-kind; and, as we shall eventually see, he was in the regular practice of
-making a very curious application of it.
-</p>
-<p>
-We may now conclude the chapter.
-</p>
-<p>
-While Doctor Rowel was preparing for his departure, he chanced, in the
-course of some casual chat with one of the old gossips present, to ask
-where the sick woman's husband was at this interesting moment of his life;
-but, unluckily for his curiosity, all the old women were immediately
-seized with a momentary deafness, which totally prevented them from
-hearing his question, though it was twice repeated. He then asked how it
-came about that the Squire had sent such a pretty basket of baby-linen to
-Mistress Clink? But their ears were equally impervious to the sound of
-that inquiry as to the other; thus proving to a demonstration, that while
-there are some matters which certain ingenious people imagine they
-thoroughly understand even from the slightest hints and innuendoes, which
-is precisely the case with the good reader himself at this moment, (so far
-as our present story is concerned,) there are other matters that, put them
-into whatever language you will, can never be rendered at all
-comprehensible to discreet grown-up people.
-</p>
-<p>
-Nevertheless, the doctor did not depart unenlightened. Though the women
-were deaf and ignorant, a little child was present who seemed to know all
-about it. Finding that nobody else answered the great gentleman, little
-Fanny screwed her courage up to the speaking point, and looking the doctor
-earnestly in the face, said, “If you please, sir, the lady that brought
-the basket said it was because the squire is always so very kind to poor
-women.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The doctor burst into a laugh, though what for nobody present could
-imagine, as all the old women, and the child too, looked grave enough in
-all conscience.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER II.
-</h2>
-<p>
-<i>Involves a doubtful affair still deeper in doubt, through the attempts
-made to clear it up; and at the same time finds Colin Clink a reputable
-father, in a quarter the least expected.</i>
-</p>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>HORTLY after the maid-servant had returned to Kiddal, (a name by which
-Squire Lupton's family-house had been known for centuries,) and explained
-to her master, as in duty bound, how she found Mistress Clink, and how she
-left the linen, and how, likewise, another boy had been added to the
-common stock of mortals, that benevolent and considerate gentleman assumed
-a particularly grave aspect; and then, for the especial edification and
-future guidance of the damsel before him, he began to “improve” the event
-which had just taken place in the village, and to express his deep regret
-that the common orders of people were so very inconsiderate as to rush
-headlong, as it were, upon the increase of families which, after all, they
-could not support without entailing a portion of the burthen upon the rich
-and humane, who, strictly speaking, ought to have no hand whatever in the
-business. His peroration consisted of some excellent advice to the girl
-herself, (equally applicable to everybody else in similar situations,) not
-by any means to think of marrying either the gardener or the gamekeeper,
-until she knew herself capable of maintaining a very large family, without
-palming any of them upon either generous individuals or on the parish. She
-could not do better than keep the case of Mistress Clink continually
-before her eyes, as a standing warning of the evil effects of being in too
-great a hurry. The girl retired to her kitchen filled with great ideas of
-her master's goodness, and strengthened in her determination to disbelieve
-every word of the various slanders afloat throughout the lower part of the
-house, and through the village at large, which turned the squire's
-kindness to mere merchandise, by attributing it to interested motives.
-</p>
-<p>
-That same evening, as the squire sat alone by lamplight taking a glass of
-wine in his library, he was observed by the servant who had carried in the
-decanter to be in a humour not the most sprightly and frolicsome
-imaginable; and so he told the maid who had been lectured in the
-afternoon, at the same time going so far as to say, that he thought if
-master was more prudent sometimes than some folks said he was, it might be
-that he would not have occasion to be melancholy so often. The maid
-replied, that she knew all about it; and if the squire was melancholy, it
-was because some people in the world were so very wicked as to run
-head-first on to families, and then go for to come on the first people in
-the parish to maintain them. It was his own supernumerary goodness that
-got imposed on by deceitful and resolute women, who went about having
-children, because they knew that the squire was father to the whole
-parish, and would not let little innocents starve, let them belong to
-whomsoever they might.
-</p>
-<p>
-John was about rising to reply to this able defence when the library bell
-rang, and called him up stairs instead. The squire wanted to see his
-steward immediately, but the steward was just then getting his dinner; and
-therefore—as the dinner of a steward, in a great house with an easy
-master, is not, as Richard Oastler well knows, a matter of very easy
-despatch—he sent word that he was at that moment very deeply engaged
-in digesting his accounts, but would wait upon his master as soon as
-possible. In the mean time, the kitchen was converted into a debating room
-by John and the maid; but as the same subject was very shortly afterwards
-much better discussed in the second chamber, we will repair thither and
-ascertain what passed.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Come in, Longstaff,” cried the squire, in reply to a tap at the door
-which announced the presence of the steward, and in another second that
-worthy approached the table.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Dined, Longstaff?—take a glass of wine? Sit down, sit down. I've a
-little matter on hand, Longstaff, that requires to be rather nicely
-managed, and I know of no man so likely to do it well as you are,
-Longstaff, eh?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You flatter me, sir—” began Mr. Longstaff: but the squire
-interrupted him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No, no, Longstaff, no,—I flatter no man. Plain speaking is a jewel;
-but I know I can depend upon you for a little assistance when it is
-needed, better than upon any other man that ever entered my service.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You flatter—” again began the steward, but a second time was
-interrupted by his master.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No, no Longstaff, no, no,—truth's no flattery, as everybody knows;
-and no man need be afraid or ashamed of speaking truth before the best
-face in all Christendom.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mr. Longstaff mistook this last observation, and interpreted it as a
-compliment to his own beauty; he therefore felt himself bound to repeat
-his previously intended observation, and accordingly began, “You flat—”
- but for the third time was prevented giving utterance to it, through the
-interruption of Squire Lupton.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I 'll tell you what, Longstaff,—the thing is here. A little secresy
-and a little manoeuvring are just what's required. If you can <i>Talleyrand</i>
-it a little,—you understand me?”
- </p>
-<p>
-And the squire eked out his meaning with a certain jerk upwards of the
-head more significant than words, but which when dimly translated into
-English, seemed to mean as much as the mysterious popular phrase, “that's
-your ticket.” He then drank a bumper, and, pushing the bottle to
-Longstaff, waited in seeming anxiety half a minute before he filled again.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, Longstaff, magistrate as I am, and bound, of course, to carry the
-law, while it is law, into execution, I must say this,—and I speak
-from my own observation and experience, as you well know,—while the
-members of the British Legislature allow that clause of the forty-third of
-Elizabeth to remain upon the statute-books, they do not do their duty as
-legislators either to man, woman, or child.”
- </p>
-<p>
-A loud thump on the table, accompanied with corresponding emphasis of
-speech, made the word <i>child</i> sound a great deal bigger than either
-man or woman. The squire then went on,—“Look at the effect of it,
-Longstaff. Any man,—I myself,—you,—any of us, or all of
-us,—are liable at any time to have fathered upon us a thing, a brat,—any
-tinkers whelp that ever was bred, very likely in Cumberland or Cornwall,
-or a thousand miles off,—though, in point of fact, you or I had no
-more acquaintance with that child's mother—no, no more than we had
-with Donna Maria! Now mark, Longstaff. You know I've been something of a
-teazer in the course of my time to people of that sort. I've made them pay
-for their whistle, as Franklin says, pretty smartly. Well, what is the
-consequence?—what ensues? Why, just this. After I've ferreted out
-some of the worst of them, and put them, as I thought, upon better
-manners,—the very next time anything of the kind happens again, they
-lay their heads together, and have the audacious impudence,—the
-rascality, as I may call it,—the—the—the abominable—However,
-I should say, to—to go before the overseers of the parish, and
-persist in swearing every child, without exception, every one, girl and
-boy,—to <i>me</i>. Now, Longstaff, I dare say you have heard reports
-of this kind in the course of your acquaintance with one person or
-another, though I never mentioned a word about it before. Don't you think
-it a shame, a disgrace to the Parliament of Elizabeth that passed that
-law, that all county magistrates were not personally and especially <i>excepted</i>
-from the operation of that clause?—and that it was not rendered a
-misdemeanour, punishable by imprisonment or the stocks, for any woman, no
-matter what her degree, to swear a child to any county magistrate? Such a
-provision, Longstaff, would have effectually secured individuals like me
-against the malice of convicted persons, and prevented the possibility of
-such statements being circulated, as are now quite as common in the parish
-as rain and sunshine.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Certainly, sir,” replied Longstaff, acquiescingly; “but then, sir, might
-it not have operated, in the case of some individuals of the magistracy,
-as a sort of warrant of impunity to—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Impunity!” exclaimed the squire. “I mean to assert and to maintain it,
-that if Queen Bess had been a man, as she ought to have been, women would
-never have had it in their power to swear with impunity one half,—no,
-nor one-tenth part of that that they are now swearing every hour of their
-lives. Why, look ye,—here again to-day,—this very morning,
-that young woman Clink is laid up of another; and, as sure as there's head
-and tail to a shilling, so sure am I that, unless something be done
-beforehand to find a father somewhere or other for the young cub, it 'll
-be laid at <i>my</i> door, along with all the rest. But I 'm resolved this
-time to put a stop to it; and, as a man's word goes for nothing, though he
-be magistrate or anything else, we 'll try for once if we cannot fix the
-saddle on the right horse some other way.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The complying Mr. Longstaff willingly lent himself to the squire's
-designs; and, after some farther conversation of a similar character to
-that above given, it was agreed that the steward, acting as Squire
-Lupton's agent, should make use of all the means and appliances within his
-power, in order to ward off the expected declaration by Mistress Clink,
-and to induce her to avow before the overseers the real father of our hero
-Colin.
-</p>
-<p>
-Accordingly, as soon as the condition of that good lady would allow of a
-visit from Mr. Longstaff, he waited upon her, stuffed with persuasions to
-the very throat; and, after an hour and a half's exhortation, coupled with
-a round number of slices of that pleasant root, commonly called “the root
-of all evil,” he succeeded, to his great joy and satisfaction, in
-extorting from her a solemn promise to confer the honour of her son's
-parentage upon any man in the parish rather than upon Squire Lupton.
-</p>
-<p>
-As a moral-minded historian, I must confess this whole transaction to be
-most nefarious, regard it in whatever light we may.
-</p>
-<p>
-Longstaff was delighted with the success of his negociation, and,
-reflecting that there is nothing like striking while the iron is hot, he
-would not be satisfied unless Mistress Clink agreed there and then to go
-with him to Skinwell the overseer, to make her declaration respecting
-Colin's father.
-</p>
-<p>
-On the road to that functionary's office, Longstaff employed himself in
-suggesting to the excellent woman by his side the names of several
-individuals, with whom secretly he was upon very ill terms, as fit and
-proper persons from amongst whom to select a parent, chuckling with
-renewed glee every now and then as the thought came afresh over his mind
-of taking revenge upon some one or other of his enemies, through the
-medium of two and sixpence or three shillings per week. Mistress Clink
-replied to his suggestions by assuring him that she would endeavour to
-satisfy him in that particular to his heart's content.
-</p>
-<p>
-Skin well, besides being overseer of the parish during the year of which
-we are writing, was by profession a lawyer; and, in order to obtain a
-living in so small a field, was in the regular practice of getting up
-petty squabbles in a friendly way, and merely for the sake of obtaining
-justice to all parties, between his neighbours and acquaintances. A
-clothes-line across a yard, a stopped-up drain, or the question whether a
-certain ditch belonged to the right or to the left land owner, would
-afford him food for a fortnight; and while he laboured most assiduously in
-order to involve two parties in litigation, he contrived so ingeniously to
-gloss over his own conduct with the varnish of “favour to none, justice to
-all,” as invariably to come off without offending either.
-</p>
-<p>
-On entering Skinwell's office, Longstaff and the lady found that worthy at
-work on one side of a double desk, face to face, though divided by a
-miniature railing along the top, with a poor miserable-looking stripling
-of a clerk, not unlike, both in shape and colour, to a bricklayer's lath.
-</p>
-<p>
-Skinwell looked vacantly up at Mrs. Clink, recognised the steward by a
-nod, and then went on with his work. In the mean time Mrs. C. sat down on
-a three-legged-stool, placed there for the accommodation of weary clients,
-behind a high partition of boards, which divided the room, and inclosed,
-as in a sheep-pen, the man of law and his slave.
-</p>
-<p>
-At one end of the mantel-shelf stood a second-hand brown japanned tin box,
-divided into three compartments, and respectively lettered, “Delivery,—Received,—Post.”
- But there appeared not to be anything to deliver, nor to receive, nor to
-send to the post; for each division was as empty as a pauper's stomach.
-The remaining portion of the shelf was occupied by some few fat octavos
-bound in dry-looking unornamental calf; while over the fireplace hung the
-Yorkshire Almanack for the year but one preceding, Skinwell's business not
-being usually in a sufficiently flourishing condition to allow of the
-luxury of a clean almanack every twelve months; and even the one which
-already served to enlighten his office had been purchased at half price
-when two months old.
-</p>
-<p>
-“<i>Do</i> take a seat, Mr. Longstaff!” exclaimed the legal adviser of the
-village, as he raised his head, and, in apparent astonishment, beheld that
-gentleman still upon his feet, though without reflecting, it would seem,
-that his request could be much more easily made than complied with, there
-being not a single accommodation for the weary in his whole office, with
-the exception of the two high stools occupied respectively by himself and
-his clerk, and the low one of which Mrs. Clink had already taken
-possession. Longstaff, however, was soon enabled very kindly to compromise
-the matter; for while hunting about with his eyes in quest of a supporter
-of the description mentioned, he beheld in the far corner by the fireplace
-a few breadths of deal-plank fixed on tressels, by way of table, and
-partially covered with sundry sheets of calf-skin, interspersed with
-stumps of long-used pens, and crowned with a most business-like,
-formidable-looking pounce-box. To this quarter he accordingly repaired,
-and having placed one thigh across the corner of the make-shift table,
-while he stood plump upright on the other leg, began very seriously to
-stare into the fire.
-</p>
-<p>
-Some minutes of profound silence ensued.
-</p>
-<p>
-The ghostly clerk stopped short in his half-idle labour, as though
-hesitating what to do, and then made this learned inquiry of his employer,
-“Pray, sir, should this parchment be cut?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Certainly it should,” replied the latter testily. “Don't you see it's an
-indenture?—and an indenture is <i>not</i> an indenture, and of no
-force, until it is cut.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The novice accordingly, at a very accelerated speed, proceeded to cut it.
-Shortly afterwards he again had to trouble his master.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Should I say 'before said' or 'above said?'”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Above, certainly,” replied the sage. “'Before said' means the first thing
-that ever was written in the world,—before anything else that has
-ever been written since. Write 'above,' to be sure.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The clerk wrote “above” accordingly, while Longstaff and the lady looked
-up in admiration of Mr. Skinwells acuteness, and Skin well himself looked
-boldly into the steward's face, with all the brass of a knowing one
-triumphant in his knowledge.
-</p>
-<p>
-It will be remembered by the reader, that on the occasion of the birth of
-our hero Colin, Dr. Rowel expressed to those about him some curiosity
-respecting the little fellow's father.
-</p>
-<p>
-Happily, then, for the doctor's satisfaction, he chanced to enter
-Skinwell's office upon private business just as the above brief
-conversation had terminated, and before that examination of Mrs. Clink had
-commenced, in which a father was legally to be given him. The doctor,
-then, was upon the point of being gratified from the very best authority.
-</p>
-<p>
-Having now concluded the writing with which he had been engaged, the joint
-lawyer and overseer of the parish called to the woman Clink, and bade her
-stand up and look at him; and, in order to afford her every facility for
-doing so to the best advantage, he planted both his elbows firmly upon the
-desk, rested his chin upon both his hands, which stood up against his
-cheeks in such a manner as to convey to a casual spectator the idea that
-he was particularly solicitous about a pair of red scanty whiskers, like
-moles, which grew beneath, and then fixed his eyes in that particular
-place above the wooden horizon that inclosed him, in which the disc of
-Mrs. Clink's head now began slowly to appear. As she came gradually and
-modestly up, she met first the gaze of the lawyer, then of his clerk, then
-of Dr. Rowel, and then of Mr. Longstaff; so that by the time she was fully
-risen, four men's faces confronted her at once, and with such familiar
-earnestness, that, though not apt to be particularly tender-hearted in
-others' cases, she burst into tears at her own.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ay, ay, doctor,” sneeringly remarked Skinwell to that worthy
-professional, “this is just it. They can always cry when it is too late,
-instead of crying out at the proper time.” Then looking fiercely in the
-downcast countenance of the yet feeble culprit before him, he thus
-continued his discourse. “Come, come, woman, we can't have any blubbering
-here—it won't do. Hold your head up; for you can't be ashamed of
-seeing a man, I should think.” The surgeon, the steward, the clerk, and
-the brutal wit himself smiled.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Come, up with it, and let us look at you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Colin's mother sobbed louder, and, instead of complying with this
-gratuitously insolent request, buried her face so much lower in the folds
-of the shawl that covered her neck, and hung down upon her bosom, as to
-present to the gaze of the inquiring overseer almost a full-moon view of
-the crown of her bonnet.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Hum!” growled Skinwell; “like all the rest—not a look to be got at
-them. Well, now, listen to me, my good woman. You know what you 're
-brought here for?”
- </p>
-<p>
-A long-drawn snuffle from the other side of the partition, which sounded
-very much like what musicians term a shake, seemed to confess too deeply
-the painful fact.
-</p>
-<p>
-Mr. Longstaff's merriment was here evinced by a single explosion of the
-breath, which would have done much better to blow a lamp out with than to
-convince any body that he was pleased. The surgeon did not change
-countenance, while the clerk made three or four discursive flourishes with
-his pen on the blotting-paper before him, as much as to say he would take
-the propriety of laughing into further consideration. Mr. Skinwell then
-continued.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Now, now, woman,—<i>do</i> attend to me. It is impossible that my
-valuable time can be wasted in this manner. Who is that child's father?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes, yes,” echoed Mr. Longstaff, tapping the poor woman in joyful
-expectation upon the shoulder; “just say the word, and have done with it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Every eye was fixed on Mrs. Clink. After a brief pause, during which the
-tears yet remaining in her eyes were hastily dried up with the corner of
-her shawl, she raised her head with a feeling of confidence scarcely to be
-expected, and directing her eyes through the little palisadoes which
-stopped the wooden partition full at Mr. Skinwell, she said, in a voice
-sufficiently loud to be heard by all present,—
-</p>
-<p>
-“If you please, sir, it is Mr. Longstaff, the steward.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The office was amazed; while Mr. Longstaff himself started up in an
-attitude of mute astonishment, which Chantrey himself could scarcely have
-represented.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Longstaff, the steward!” ejaculated Skin-well.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Impossible!” observed Dr. Rowel.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It's false!” muttered the clerk.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It <i>is</i> false!” repeated the accused man in a faint voice. “Why,
-gentlemen,—a man with a wife and family,—in my situation;—it's
-monstrous and diabolical. If I could pull your tongue across your teeth,”
- he continued, turning to Colin's mother, and shaking his fist in her face,
-“I'd cure it and hang it up, as an eternal example to such arrant liars.
-You <i>know</i> I'm as innocent as a March lamb,—you do, you
-deceitful woman!”
- </p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="linkimage-0004" id="linkimage-0004"> </a>
-</p>
-<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
-<img src="images/049m.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="049m " /><br />
-</div>
-<h4>
-<a href="images/049.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original Size</i></a>
-</h4>
-<p>
-Mrs. Clink, however, persisted in her statement, and avowed her readiness
-to take her oath upon the fact; so that Mr. Longstaff was obliged to
-submit with the best or the worst grace he might.
-</p>
-<p>
-This small scrap of experience fully convinced him, however, that Squire
-Lupton's views upon the subject of the forty-third of Elizabeth, which he
-had formerly opposed, were not only perfectly correct in themselves, but
-that they ought to have been extended much further, and that the exemption
-of which the squire had spoken, ought to have embraced not only county
-magistrates, but their stewards also.
-</p>
-<p>
-How the matter really was, the reader may decide for himself upon the
-following evidence, which is the best I have to offer him:—that Mr.
-Longstaff regularly paid the charge of three shillings per week towards
-the maintenance of that life which I am now writing, and that he failed
-not to account for it in the squire's books, under the mysterious, though
-very ministerial, title of “secret service money.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Possibly, however, Mr. Longstaff might economically consider the squire
-much more capable of paying it than he was himself. Nor, even in case it
-was so, would he have been the first steward in these latter days who, for
-his own use, has kindly condescended to borrow for a brief season his
-master's money.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER III.
-</h2>
-<p>
-<i>Describes the sufferings endured by Mr. Longstaff, in consequence of
-the diabolical proceedings against him recorded in the last chapter; and
-also hints at a cowardly piece of revenge which he and his wife planned,
-in the middle of the night, upon Mrs. Clink and Colin.</i>
-</p>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">M</span>R. LONGSTAFF returned towards the old house of Kiddal vexed, mortified,
-and ashamed; and while he mentally vowed never again to undertake a piece
-of dirty work for the best man living, neither for bribe, nor place, nor
-the hope of favour, he also as firmly, and in a spirit much more to be
-depended upon, determined to pour, to the very last drop, the phials of
-his wrath upon the devoted head of Colin's mother. “If there be not power
-in a steward,” thought he, “to harass such a poor, helpless, despicable
-thing as she is, where in the world is it to be found?—and if any
-steward knows how to do it better than I do, why, I 'll give him leave to
-eat me.” With which bold and magnanimous reflection he bustled along the
-road, almost heedless of the straggling briers which every now and then
-caught hold of his face or his ankles, and as though fully conscious only
-of the pleasing fact that each additional step brought him still a step
-nearer his revenge. Besides this, had the truth been fully known, his
-feelings of resentment against Mrs. Clink were in no small degree
-increased by the thoughts that crowded his brain touching the manner in
-which he should meet “the partner of his joys and woes,” Mrs. Æneasina
-Macleay Longstaff: a lady, as some years of hard experience had taught
-him, who well merited the title of a woman of spirit, and with whom in his
-soul, though he scarcely dare allow himself to believe it, he anticipated
-no very pleasant encounter.
-</p>
-<p>
-As for the squire, who naturally enough would wish to know how his steward
-had sped in the business, Mr. Longstaff did not feel much of the humour of
-eagerness to visit him, having already about as large a load on his
-stomach as he could conveniently carry, and being in his own mind fully
-persuaded that he really should not have a tithe of the requisite courage
-left to meet Mrs. Longstaff, if he ventured to encounter the jeers of the
-squire previously. With the view, then, of making the best of his way
-unobserved down to his own house, he left the high road, and exerted
-himself in a very unusual manner to leap half a score hedges and ditches
-which crossed the bird's-flight path he had taken, and ultimately stole
-privily down the side of the boundary-wall which inclosed the northern
-side of the plantations, intending to creep through a small private door,
-placed there for the convenience of the gamekeepers, which conducted to a
-path in the immediate direction of his own house. But, notwithstanding all
-his trouble, fortune again turned her wheel upon Mr. Longstaff; he fell
-into the very trap that he had taken so much trouble to avoid, and what—to
-a man already in a state of aggravation—was still worse, he fell
-into it solely because he had endeavoured to avoid it. Had he taken the
-common road, he would have arrived at home uninterrupted; as it was,
-scarcely had he reached within twenty yards of the little door when, to
-his great alarm, he heard the voice of the squire hailing him from some
-distance up the fields to the left hand. Mr. Longstaff pushed forwards
-with increased speed, and without taking more notice of his master's call
-than if he had not heard it; but before he could reach the gate of that
-which had now become as a fortress to him, Mr. Lupton again hallooed in a
-tone which even a deaf man could not, with any show of grace, have denied
-hearing something of. Longstaff accordingly stopped, and, on turning his
-head, beheld the squire on horseback beckoning to him with his hand. There
-was now no alternative; and in a few minutes the steward was by his side.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, Longstaff,” said he, as he carelessly twirled the lash of his whip
-upon its stock like a horizontal wheel, “how has it ended? I suppose you
-have given a son-and-heir to somebody or other?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It has turned out a deal worse job than I expected,” dolefully observed
-the steward.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ah!—a bad job is it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Very, sir, very!” sighed the unfortunate go-between.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why—what—wouldn't she be persuaded, Longstaff?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, yes,” replied the steward, with a deep curse on Mrs. Clink, “she took
-all I was authorised to give her—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And gave me the whelp in exchange, eh?” added the squire.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No, sir, no,”—(he inly wished she had)”—worse than that, sir,—a
-great deal worse.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Worse!” earnestly exclaimed Mr. Lupton; “that is impossible. Have <i>you</i>
-got him then?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mr. Longstaff cast his eyes to the ground, arranged the shoe-tie of his
-left foot with the toe of his right, and with a dolorous face, drawn
-nearly as long as his own name, faintly drawled out, “I have, sir!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mr. Lupton burst into a fit of laughter, which lasted two whole minutes,
-blew out his breath in a prolonged whistle, not unlike an autumn blast
-through an out-door key-hole, and then dashed away, cracking his whip and
-laughing as long as he could be heard.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Dang the woman!” exclaimed the steward, as he began to move off the
-ground homewards, “I 'll kick her and her barn * out of house and home
-to-night, or may I be———”
- </p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-* A common Yorkshire corruption of the Scottish <i>bairn</i>.
-</pre>
-<p>
-Somehow or other, however, he could not screw up sufficient courage to
-carry him immediately home, and, as it were, into the very jaws of Mrs.
-Æneasina Longstaff. He therefore crossed the corners of two other fields
-again, on to the high-road, and walked into the Cock and Bottle, the only
-inn in Bramleigh, with the intention of strengthening his shaken nerves
-with a respectable potation of brandy and water.
-</p>
-<p>
-On entering, he thought the landlady—with whom he had always been
-upon the best of terms, not only because of his situation, but also of his
-excellent moral character,—looked more than usually distant with
-him. The landlord, too, cast an eye at him, as much as to say, “I hear,
-Mr. Longstaff, you have had something unpleasant this morning?” While the
-maid, who formerly used to smile very prettily whenever he appeared,
-actually brushed by him as he went down the passage, as though she thought
-he was a better man half a mile off than between two such walls. As he
-passed the kitchen-door, everybody within turned to look at him; and, when
-he got into the parlour, he beheld four of the village farmers round the
-table, all of whom were smiling, evidently at something very funny. Mr.
-Longstaff, by that peculiar instinct which usually attends men in
-suspicious circumstances, knew, as well as if he had been told, that it
-was at him. He could not endure the company, the house, the landlord and
-his wife, nor himself; and, therefore, he marched out again, and homeward,
-in a state, as may easily be supposed, of more extraordinary preparation
-for meeting his lady, than if he had thrice over fulfilled his intention
-of imbibing at the Cock and Bottle some two or three glasses of aqua vitæ.
-The truth was, he had by this time, like a bull with running about, grown
-very desperate; and, for the moment, he cared no more about the temper of
-Mrs. Æneasina Longstaff than he cared for the wind that blew around him.
-</p>
-<p>
-And well was it for the steward that he did not. Everybody of experience
-knows that the worst news invariably flies the fastest: and, in the
-present case, the result of the examination in Mr. Skinwell's office,
-which has already been described, was made known to poor unhappy Mrs.
-Longstaff, through such a rapid chain of communication, as nearly equalled
-the transmission of a Government despatch by telegraph. By the time her
-husband arrived at home, then, she was, as a necessary consequence, not
-only filled with grief at the discovery that had been made, but also was
-more than filled,—she was absolutely overflowing—with feelings
-of jealous rage against the faithless barbarian, with whom, as she then
-thought, the most perverse destiny had united her. Every moment of
-cessation in the paroxysms of her grief was mentally employed in preparing
-a very pretty rod in pickle for him: with Cleopatra, she could have
-whipped him with wire first, and stewed him in brine afterwards; or she
-could, with the highest satisfaction, have done any other thing which the
-imagination most fertile in painful inventions might have suggested.
-</p>
-<p>
-All this latent indignation, however, Mr. Longstaff braved. He did not
-relish the undertaking, to be sure; but then, inly conscious of his own
-blamelessness, he concluded that, provided he could only get the first
-word with her, the storm might be blown aside. But, alas! he could not get
-the first word, although he had it on his lips as he entered the door.
-Mrs. Longstaff attacked him before he came in sight: and, in all
-probability, such an oratorical display of all the deprecatory figures of
-speech,—such disparagements, and condemnations, and denunciations;
-such hatreds, and despisings, and contempts, and upbraidings,—were
-never before, throughout the whole range of domestic disturbances,
-collected together within so brief a space of time. In fact, such an
-arrowy sleet of words was rained upon the unlucky steward, and so
-suddenly, that, without having been able to force in a single opposing
-syllable between them, he was at last compelled, after the royal example
-of some of our too closely besieged emperors and kings, to make good his
-retreat at the rear of the premises.
-</p>
-<p>
-According to the good old custom in cases of this kind, it is highly
-probable that Mr. and Mrs. Longstaff would that night have done themselves
-the pleasure of retiring to rest in most peaceable dumb-show, if not,
-indeed, the additional felicity of sleeping in separate beds, out of the
-very praiseworthy desire of mutual revenge, had it not so fallen out,and
-naturally enough, considering what had happened,—that Mr. Longstaff,
-contrary to his usual habit, consoled himself as well as he was able, by
-staying away from home until very late in the evening: so late indeed,
-that, as Mrs. Longstaff cooled, she really began to entertain very serious
-fears whether she had not carried matters rather too far; and, perhaps,—for
-the thing did not to her half-repentant mind appear impossible, had driven
-her husband, in a moment of desperation, to make away with himself. Hour
-after hour passed on; and the time thus allowed her for better reflection
-was not altogether ill-spent. She began to consider the many chances there
-were of great exaggeration in the report that had been brought to her; the
-fondness of human kind in general to deal in atrocities, even though one
-half of them be self-invented; the great improbability of Mr. Longstaff's
-having really compromised his character in the manner which it was
-currently related he had; and, above all, the very possible contingency
-that, as in many other similar cases, open perjury had been committed.
-Under any circumstances she now felt conscious that she had too suddenly
-allowed her feelings of jealousy to run riot upon the doubtful evidence of
-a piece of scandal, probably originating in malice, as it certainly had
-been repeated with secret gratification.
-</p>
-<p>
-These reflections had prepared her to hear in a proper spirit a quiet
-explanation of the whole transaction from the mouth of Mr. Longstaff
-himself; when, much to her private satisfaction, he returned home not long
-afterwards.
-</p>
-<p>
-That gentleman had already commanded a candle to be brought him, and was
-about to steer off to his chamber without exchanging a word, when some
-casual observation, dropped in an unexpectedly kind tone by his good lady,
-arrested his progress, and induced him to sit down in a chair about the
-same spot where he chanced to be standing. By and by he edged round to the
-fire; and, shortly afterwards, at her especial suggestion, he consented—much
-to his inward gratification—to take a little supper. This led to a
-kind of tacitly understood reconciliation; so that, eventually, the same
-subject which had caused so much difference in the afternoon, was again
-introduced and discussed in a manner truly dove-like and amiable. Mrs.
-Longstaff felt perfectly satisfied with the explanation given by her
-husband, that he had undertaken the negotiation with Mrs. Clink solely to
-oblige the squire; and that that infamous woman had attributed her
-disaster to him merely out of a spirit of annoyance and revenge, for which
-he expressed himself perfectly unable to account.
-</p>
-<p>
-But the steward's wife was gratified most to hear his threats of
-retaliation upon the little hero of our story and his mother. In these she
-joined with great cordiality, still farther urging him on to their
-immediate fulfilment, so that by the time he had taken his usual nightly
-allowance of punch, he found himself in particularly high condition, late
-as was the hour, for the instant execution of his cowardly and cruel
-enterprise.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER IV.
-</h2>
-<p>
-<i>Mr. Longstaff gets fuddled, and revenges himself upon Mrs. Clink;
-together with some excellent discourse of his while in that pleasing
-condition. The mother of our hero partially discloses a secret which the
-reader has been anxious to know ever since he commenced this history.</i>
-</p>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>HILE things were thus progressing elsewhere, the poor and destitute,
-though erring, creature, over whose head the rod of petty tyranny now hung
-so threateningly, had passed a solitary evening by the side of her small
-fire, unnoticed even by the neighbours humble as herself; for adversity,
-though it is said to make men friends, yet renders them selfish also, and
-leaves in their bosoms but few feelings of charity for others.
-</p>
-<p>
-Little Fanny, transformed into a miniature washerwoman, and elevated on
-two or three lumps of Yorkshire stone to lengthen her out, had been
-employed since nightfall, by the hazy light of a candle scarcely thicker
-than her own little finger, in washing some few things for the baby; while
-young Colin himself, held up in his mother's arms, with his face pressed
-close to her bosom, was silently engaged in fulfilling, as Voltaire has
-it, one of the most abstruse laws of natural philosophy. Having at length
-resolved this problem perfectly to his satisfaction, Master Colin betook
-himself, with the utmost complacency, to sleep, just as though his mother
-had had no trouble whatever in the world with him; or, as though Mr.
-Longstaff, the steward, had been fast asleep in bed, dreaming of felled
-timbers and unpaid arrears, and utterly regardless of Colin's existence,
-instead of preparing, as he was—untimely and heartlessly—to
-disturb that baby slumber, and to harass with additional pains and fears
-the bosom of one who had already found too abundantly that folly and vice
-mete out their own punishment.
-</p>
-<p>
-The child had already been placed in the cradle, and little Fanny had
-taken her seat on a small stool in the chimney-corner, with her supper in
-her hand, consisting of a basin of milk and water, thickened with cold
-potatoes; while the mother sat before the fire, alternately knitting a
-ball of black worsted on the floor into a stocking, and giving the cradle
-an additional push, as the impetus it had previously received died away
-and left it again almost at rest. Everything was silent, save one or two
-of those quiet homely sounds, which fall on the ear with a sensation that
-appears to render even silence itself still more silent. The solitary
-ticking of an old caseless Dutch clock on the wall was interrupted only by
-the smothered rocking of the cradle, wherein lay the yet unconscious cause
-of all I have told, or may yet have to tell. As hand or foot was applied
-to keep it in motion, the little charge within was tossed alternately
-against each blanketed side of his wooden prison, and jolted into the
-utterance, every now and then, of some slight sound of complaint, which as
-regularly sunk again to nothing as the rocking was increased, and the
-mother's low voice cried—
-</p>
-<p>
-“Hush, child! peace, peace! Sleep, barn, sleep!”
- </p>
-<p>
-And then rounded off into a momentary chant of the old ditty, beginning,
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-“There was an old woman, good lack! good lack!”
- </pre>
-<p>
-But out of doors, as the rustic village had long ago been gone to rest,
-everything was as silent as though the country had been depopulated.
-</p>
-<p>
-Fatigued by the long day's exertion, Fanny had fallen asleep, with half
-her supper uneaten in her lap; and Mistress Clink, unconsciously overtaken
-in a similar manner, had instinctively covered her face with her hand, and
-fallen into that imperfect state of rest in which realities and dreamy
-fictions are fused together like things perfectly akin,—when the
-sound of visionary tongues seemed to be about her.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Go straight in,” said one. “Don't stand knocking.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Perhaps she's a-bed,” observed another.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Then drag her out again, that 's all,” replied the same person that had
-first spoken; “I 've sworn to kick her and her young 'un into th' street
-to-night, and the devil's in it if I don't, dark as it is. It will not be
-the first time she's lay i' th' hedge-bottom till daylight, I 'll swear.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mrs. Clink started up, terrified. The door was pushed violently open, and
-the village constable, an assistant, and Mr. Longstaff, the steward,—in
-a state of considerable mental elevation, arising from the combination of
-punch and revenge,—stood in the middle of the room.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Now, missis!” bawled the steward, advancing, and clenching his fist
-before his own face, while he stared at her through a pair of leaden eyes,
-with much of the expression of an owl in the sun; “You see me, don't you?
-You see me, I say? Mark that. Did you expect me, I say, missis? No, no, I
-think not. You thought you were safe enough, but I've got you! I've got
-you, I tell you, as sure as a gun; and now I'm going to learn you how to
-put your whelps down i' th' parish books to my account; I am, my lady. I
-'ll teach you how to touch a steward again, you may 'pend on't!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, sir!” began Mrs. Clink imploringly; but she was instantly stopped by
-Mr. Longstaff.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ay, ay,—you may <i>oh, sir!</i> as long as you like, but I'm not to
-be <i>oh sir'd</i>, that way. Do you know aught about rent?—rent, I
-say—rent?—last year?—t' other house?—d 'ye know
-you hav'n't paid it? or are you going to swear <i>that</i> to me, an' all?—'Cause
-if you are, I wish you may die in a ditch, and your baby under you! Now,
-look you, I'm going to show you a pretty trick;—about as pretty,
-missis, as you showed me this morning. What d 'ye think of that, now, for
-a change? How d 'ye like that, eh? I'm going to seize on you—”
- </p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="linkimage-0005" id="linkimage-0005"> </a>
-</p>
-<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
-<img src="images/073m.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="073m " /><br />
-</div>
-<h4>
-<a href="images/073.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original Size</i></a>
-</h4>
-<p>
-No sooner did Mrs. Clink hear these words from the mouth of the
-intoxicated Mr. Longstaff, than she screamed, and fell on her knees;
-crying out in broken exclamations, “Oh, not to-night, sir—not
-to-night! Tomorrow, if you please, sir,—to-morrow—tomorrow!”
- </p>
-<p>
-But, though joined in this petition by the tears of little Fanny, and the
-unintentional pleadings of Colin, who now began to scream lustily in his
-cradle, the steward disregarded all, until, finding prayers and entreaties
-vain, the voice of the woman sunk into suppressed sobbings, or was only
-heard to utter repeatedly,
-</p>
-<p>
-“What <i>will</i> become of my poor baby!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Become of him?” exclaimed Longstaff, turning towards her as she yet
-remained on her knees on the ground. “Why,—take and throw him into
-th' horsepond, that's my advice. He 'll never be good for aught in this
-world but to hang on th' work'us, and pull money out of other people's
-pockets. Go on, Bill;—go on, my lad:—put 'em all down, stick
-and stone; and away with 'em all to-night. There sha'n't be a single thing
-of any sort left in this house for th' sun to shine on to-morrow morning.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The excitement produced by Mr. Longstaff's discourse upon his own stomach
-and brain had the effect of rendering him, in this brief period of time,
-apparently much more intoxicated than he was on first entering the
-cottage, and he now sunk heavily upon a chair, as though unable to remain
-upon his feet any longer.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Have you put this chair down, Bill?” he asked, at the same time tapping
-with his fingers the back of that upon which he was sitting, by way of
-drawing attention to it.
-</p>
-<p>
-The constable answered in the affirmative.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That's right, my boy—that's right. And that clock, there, have you
-got him? Bless his old pendulum! we 'll stop his ticking very soon:—we
-'ll show him what o'clock it is,—won't we, missis?”
- </p>
-<p>
-But this facetiousness passed unheeded by the poor woman to whom it was
-addressed, unless one look of reproachful scorn, which she cast in the
-stupid face of the steward, might be considered as an answer to it.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why, you 're looking quite pretty, tonight, <i>Miss</i> Clink,” said Mr.
-Longstaff in a more subdued tone:—“I don't wonder—though he is
-married, and all that sort of thing,—I don't wonder at the squire,
-if he did patronise you a little.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The cheeks of our hero's mother blushed scarlet with indignation. She rose
-from the cradle-side, on which she had been sitting, and with an evident
-struggle to overcome the sobs that were rising in her throat, so as to
-enable her to speak distinctly, she stood up before the astonished
-steward, displaying a countenance and figure that would have graced many a
-far fairer place, and thus addressed him:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'm a poor helpless woman, Mr. Longstaff, and you know it; but such men
-as you are always cowards. You may rob me of my few goods; you may destroy
-my home, though it is almost too poor to be worth the trouble; you may
-turn me out of my house, with that baby, without a roof to put my head
-under, because you may have power to do it, and no humanity left in you.
-But, I say, he is a mean contemptible man,—whether it be you, or any
-one else,—who can thus insult me, bad as I am. I can bear anything
-but that, and that I won't bear from any man. <i>Especially</i>—”
- and she laid strong emphasis on her words, and pointed with her finger
-emphatically to the person she addressed:—“Especially from such a
-man as you: for you know that if it had not been for you and your wife—”
- </p>
-<p>
-Longstaff began to lose his colour somewhat rapidly, and to look half a
-dozen degrees more sober.
-</p>
-<p>
-“—Yes, I repeat it, you and your wife,—I should not have been
-the wretched creature that I am. And yet you seek to be revenged on me,—”
- she continued, growing more passionate as she proceeded, “you have <i>courage</i>
-enough to set your foot on such a hovel as this, because it shelters me,
-and crush it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-It was clear beyond dispute, from Mr. Longstaff's manner, that he had
-drawn down upon himself a retort which he never intended—especially
-in the presence of two other persons. He leaned half over his chair-back,
-with his dull eyes fixed, though evidently in utter absence of mind, upon
-the ceiling; while a visible nervous quivering of his pale lips and
-nostrils evinced the working of inward emotions, to which his tongue
-either could not, or dared not, give utterance.
-</p>
-<p>
-Meantime, Mrs. Clink had taken little Colin out of his cradle, and wrapped
-him warmly round with all the clothes it contained. She then led Fanny
-into the inner room, which was occupied as a bed-chamber.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Come, Fanny,” said she; “if there be still less charity under a bare sky
-than under this stripped roof, we cannot do much worse. Put on all the
-clothes you have, child, for perhaps we may want them before morning.”
- </p>
-<p>
-And then she proceeded to select from her scantily stored drawers such few
-trifles as she wished to retain; and afterwards, in accordance with her
-own injunction, dressed herself as if for a long night-journey.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Come, lads,” at length remarked Mr. Longstaff, after a long silence,
-“hav'n't you done yet? You mustn't take any notice of this woman, mind;—she's
-had her liquor, and hardly knows what she's talking about.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Won't to-morrow do, sir, to finish off with?” asked the holder of the
-distress-war-rant: and at the same moment our hero's mother, with Colin in
-her arms, and Fanny by her side, passed out of the door-way of the inner
-room. Mr. Longstaff looked up, and, seeing them prepared for leaving the
-place, observed, in a tone very different to that in which he had before
-spoken, “We shall not remove anything now; so you may stay to-night, if
-you like.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No, sir,” replied Mrs. Clink; “your master's charity is quite enough: I
-want none of yours. But, before I go, let me tell you I know that Mr.
-Lupton has never sanctioned this; and I doubt your right to do what you
-are doing.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Here again was something which appeared to throw another new light upon
-the steward's mind; for, in reality, his passion had not allowed him for a
-moment to consider what might be the squire's opinion about such an
-off-hand and barbarous proceeding. He began to feel some misgivings as to
-the legal consequences of his own act, and eventually even went so far as
-to request that Mrs. Clink would remain in the house until the morrow,
-when something more could be seen about it.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No,” said she again, firmly, “whatever I may be now, I was not born to be
-blown about by every fool's breath that might come across me. Once done is
-not undone. Come, Fanny.”
- </p>
-<p>
-In another minute, Mr. Longstaff, Bill the constable, and his assistant,
-were the only living creatures beneath that roof, which, an hour before,
-with all its poverty, seemed to offer as secure a home, as inviolable a
-hearth stone, as the castle of the best lordling in the kingdom.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER V.
-</h2>
-<p>
-<i>Introduces to the reader two new characters of considerable importance,
-and describes a scene between them to which a very peculiar interest is
-attached.</i>
-</p>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>MONGST all those who were most materially concerned in the circumstances
-detailed in the preceding chapters, I must now name one person who has
-hitherto only been once passingly alluded to in the most brief manner, but
-whose happiness was (if not more) at least as deeply involved in the
-events which had taken place as was that of any other individual whatever,
-not excepting even our hero's mother herself. That person—for Mr.
-Longstaff has already hinted that his master was married—was Squire
-Lupton's wife.
-</p>
-<p>
-Should the acute reader's moral or religious sensibilities be shocked at
-the discovery of so much human depravity, as this avowal must necessarily
-uncurtain to him, it is to be hoped he will lay the blame thereof upon the
-right shoulders, and not rashly attack the compiler of this history, who
-does only as Josephus, Tacitus, and other great historians have done
-before him,—make use of the materials which other men's actions
-prepare ready to his hands, and with the good or evil of which he himself
-is no more chargeable, than is the obedient workman who mouldeth a vessel
-with clay of the quality which his master may please to put before him.
-</p>
-<p>
-During a period of some weeks prior to the time at which our story
-commences, Mrs. Lupton had been upon a visit to the family of Mr. Shirley,
-a resident in York, with whom she was intimately acquainted previously to
-her marriage with the heir of Kiddal House. Owing, however, to
-circumstances of a family nature, with which she had early become
-acquainted after her destiny had been for ever united with that of Mr.
-Lupton, she had hitherto found it impossible to introduce to her own
-house, with any degree of pleasure to herself, even the dearest companions
-of her youth; and no one was more so, for they had known each other from
-girlhood, than Miss Mary Shirley, the only daughter of her esteemed
-friend. Like many others in similar circumstances, she long strove to hide
-her own unhappiness from the world; but, in doing so, had been too often
-compelled to violate the most cherished feelings of her bosom; and—when
-at home—had chosen to remain like a recluse in her own house, when
-otherwise she would gladly have had some one with whom to commune when
-grief pressed heavily upon her; and he who had sworn to be all in all to
-her was in reality the cause, instead of the allayer, of her sorrows.
-</p>
-<p>
-On the afternoon when those events took place which have been chronicled
-in the last chapter, Mrs. Lupton returned to Kiddal, accompanied, for the
-first time, by Miss Mary Shirley.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Here we are at last,” remarked the lady of the house, as they drove up to
-the gate, and the highly ornamented oaken gable-ends of the old hall
-became visible above the garden-walls. “I have not a very merry home to
-bring you to, my dear Mary, and I dare not promise how long you may like
-to stay with us; but I hope you will enjoy yourself as well as you can;
-and when that is over,—though I could wish to keep you with me till
-I die,—when the time comes that you can be happy here no longer,
-then, my dear, you must not consider me;—leave me again alone, for I
-shall not dare to ask you to sacrifice another hour on my poor account, in
-a place so infinitely below the happy little home we have left in yonder
-city.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Nay,” replied the young lady, endeavouring to hide some slight feelings
-of emotion, “you cannot forbode unhappiness here. In such a place as this,
-these antique rooms, these gardens, and with such a glorious landscape of
-farms and hamlets, as lies below this hill, farther almost than the eye
-can reach,—it is impossible to be otherwise than happy.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ay, and so <i>I</i> said,” replied Mrs. Lupton, “when Walter first
-brought me here; and so <i>he</i> told me too, as we passed under this
-very gateway. But I have learned since then that such things have no
-pleasure in them, when those we love and with whom we live are not that to
-us which they ought to be.” Miss Shirley remained silent, for she feared
-to prolong a conversation which, at its very commencement, seemed to
-recall to the mind of her friend such painful reminiscences.
-</p>
-<p>
-On their introduction to the hall, Miss Shirley could not fail to remark
-the cold, unimpassioned, and formal manner in which Mr. Lupton received
-his lady; while towards herself he evinced so much affability and
-kindness, that the degradation of the wife was for the moment rendered
-still more striking and painful by the contrast. But, out of respect for
-the feelings of her friend, she affected not to notice it; although it was
-not without difficulty that she avoided betraying herself, when she
-observed Mrs. Lupton suddenly retire to another part of the room, because
-she was unable any longer to restrain the tears which now burst, in the
-bitterness of uncomplaining silence, from her eyes.
-</p>
-<p>
-Perhaps no feelings of mortification could readily be imagined more acute
-than were those which arose from this slight incident in the bosom of a
-sensible, a sensitive, and, I may add, a beautiful woman, too,—for
-such Mrs. Lupton undoubtedly was. To be thus slighted when alone, she had
-already learned to bear; but to be so slighted, for the first time, and,
-as if by a studied refinement of contempt, before another individual, and
-that individual a woman, to whom extraordinary attentions were at the same
-moment paid, was indeed more than she could well endure; though pride, and
-the more worthy feeling of self-respect, would not allow her openly to
-confess it. But while the throb-bings of her bosom could scarcely be
-repressed from becoming audible, and the tears welled up in her large blue
-eyes until she could not see distinctly for the space of half a minute
-together, she yet stood at one of the high-pointed windows of the antique
-room, and affected to be beckoning to one of the gallant peacocks on the
-grass before her, as he stretched his brilliant neck towards the window,
-in anticipation of that food which from the same fair hand was seldom
-expected in vain.
-</p>
-<p>
-In the mean time, seated at the farther end of the room, Mr. Lupton was
-endeavouring, though, after what had occurred it may be supposed, with but
-ill success, to engage the whole attention of the young lady who sat
-beside him. They had met some twelve months before at the house of her
-father, in York, during the time that he was paying his addresses to her
-friend, Miss Bernard, now his wife, and some short period before their
-ill-fated marriage.
-</p>
-<p>
-After inquiring with great particularity after the health of her family
-and relatives, and expressing the very high pleasure he felt in having the
-daughter of one of his most esteemed friends an inmate of his house, the
-squire proceeded to descant in very agreeable language upon the particular
-beauties of the situation and neighbourhood of his house, and to enlarge
-upon the many pleasures which Miss Shirley might enjoy there during the
-ensuing summer,—a period over which, he fully trusted, she would do
-himself and Mrs. Lupton the honour and pleasure of her company.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But shall we not ask Mrs. Lupton to join us?” remarked Miss Shirley. “It
-is unfair that we should have all this conversation to ourselves. I see
-she is at the window still;—though I remember the time, sir,” she
-added, dropping her voice to a more sedate tone, and looking archly in his
-face, “when there would have been no occasion, while you were in the room,
-for any other person to have made such a request.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh!” exclaimed Mr. Lupton, “she is happy enough with those birds about
-her. She and they are old friends, and it is now some time since they saw
-each other. Shall I have the pleasure of conducting you over the gardens,
-Miss Shirley?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I thank you,” replied she—“if Mrs. Lupton will accompany us.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“She cannot be better employed,” rejoined the squire, “nor, very probably,
-more to her own satisfaction, than she is.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But shall we not know that best on inquiry?” rejoined the young lady, as
-she rose from her seat, and, without farther parley, bounded across the
-room towards the object of their discourse.
-</p>
-<p>
-A brief conversation, carried on in a subdued tone of voice, ensued,
-during which Miss Shirley took a seat by the window, and appeared to sink
-into a more pensive mood, as though the contagion of unhappiness had
-communicated itself to her from the unfortunate lady with whom she had
-been speaking. The proposed walk in the gardens was eventually declined;
-and shortly afterwards Mrs. Lupton and her friend retired to their private
-apartment.
-</p>
-<p>
-“In yonder chapel,” remarked the lady of the house, as they passed along
-towards the great oaken staircase, “lie buried all the family of the
-Luptons during the last three or four hundred years. When we walk out, you
-will see upon that projecting part of the great hall where the stained
-windows are, a long inscription, carved in stone, just under the parapet,
-with the date of 1503 upon it, asking the passer-by to pray for the souls
-of Roger Lupton and of Sibylla his wife, whom God preserve! I hope,”
- continued Mrs. Lupton, “they will never think of burying <i>me</i> in that
-chapel. Not that I dislike the place itself so much; but then, to think
-that I should lie there, and that my spirit might see the trailing silks
-that would pass above my face, and unhallowed dames stepping lightly in
-the place where an honest wife had been a burthen,—and to hear in
-the distance their revelry and their hollow laughter of a night! O Mary! I
-should get out of my coffin and knock against those stones till I
-frightened the very hearts out of them. I should haunt this house day and
-night, till not a woman dare inhabit it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Nay,” ejaculated Miss Shirley, “you will frighten me, before all this
-happens, till I shall not sleep a wink. Let us go up stairs.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But wherefore frighten <i>you?</i>” asked Mrs. Lupton,—“why, Mary,
-should you fear? You would not flaunt over me if I did lie there,—you
-would not sit in my chair, and simper at my husband:—I say it
-touches not you. I should not have your heels upon my face, whoever else
-might be there. Leave those to fear who have need;—but for you—no
-one can approach those pure lips till he has sealed his faith before the
-altar, and had Heaven's approval.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mrs. Lupton's manner, as well as language, so alarmed the young lady, that
-she trembled violently, and burst into tears. Her friend, however, did not
-appear to observe it; for it was just at that time of the evening when, in
-such a place, the turn of darkness obliterates the individual features of
-things, and leaves only a shadowy phantom of their general appearance. She
-then resumed:
-</p>
-<p>
-“And, not that alone. There is another reason why I would not be buried <i>there</i>.”
- The sound of her foot upon the pavement made the gallery ring again.
-“Though I have been wed, it has not made me one of this family; and you
-have seen and known to-day that, though I am the poor lady of this house,
-I am still a stranger. In two months more that man will have quite
-forgotten me; and, if I remember myself to the end, why, I shall thank
-him, dear heart, I shall. But you are beautiful, Mary; and to paint such
-as you the memory is an excellent artist. I saw—oh! take care, my
-girl. There is bad in the best of men; the worst of them may make a
-woman's life not worth the keeping, within the ticking of five minutes.
-When <i>we</i> go out we will walk in the gardens together. Now we will go
-up stairs.”
- </p>
-<p>
-So saying, she clasped Miss Shirley by the wrist, much more forcibly than
-the occasion rendered needful, and hurried her, notwithstanding her fears,
-to her own dressing-room. When both had entered she closed the door, and
-locked it,—an action which, under present circumstances, threw her
-visitor into a state of agitation which she could scarcely conceal;
-though, while she strove to maintain an appearance of confident
-indifference, she took the precaution of placing herself so as to command
-the bell-rope in case—(for the horrible possibility did cross her
-mind)—it might be needful for her, though at the instant she knew
-not why, to summon assistance.
-</p>
-<p>
-As I have before hinted, the first shadows of night had fallen on the
-surrounding lower grounds and valleys, and had already hidden the
-ill-lighted corridors and rooms on the eastern side of the hall in a kind
-of visible darkness, although a dull reflection of red light from the
-western sky still partially illumined the upper portion of the room in
-which the two ladies now were; sufficiently so, indeed, to enable them
-perfectly to distinguish each other; a circumstance which, however slight
-in itself, enabled Miss Shirley to keep up her courage much better than
-otherwise she would have been able to do.
-</p>
-<p>
-Having, as before observed, turned the key in the lock, Mrs. Lupton walked
-on tip toe, as though afraid of being overheard, towards her visitor, and
-began to whisper to her, very cautiously, as follows:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“I have brought you here, Mary, to tell you something that I have heard
-since we came back to-day. But, my dear, it has confused my mind till I
-forget what I am saying. You will forgive me, won't you?” Her companion
-begged her to defer it until another time, and not to trouble herself by
-trying to remember it; but Mrs. Lupton interrupted her with a hysterical
-laugh.
-</p>
-<p>
-“The pain is not because I forget it, but because I can do nothing but
-remember it. I cannot get rid of it. It haunts me wherever I go; for, do
-you know, Mary, Walter Lupton grows worse and worse. I can never live
-under it; I know I cannot! And, as for beds, you and I will sleep in this
-next chamber, so that if there be women's feet in the night, we shall
-overhear it all. Now, keep awake, Mary, for sleep is of no use at all to
-me: and, besides that, she told me the baby was as like her master as snow
-to the clouds; so that what is to become of me I do not know.—I
-cannot tell, indeed!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Here Mrs. Lupton wrung her hands, and wept bitterly.
-</p>
-<p>
-Miss Shirley grew terrified at this incoherent discourse, and with an
-unconscious degree of earnestness begged her to go down stairs.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Never heed,—never heed,” said she, turning towards the table, and
-apparently forgetting her grief: “there will come an end. Days do not last
-for ever, nor nights either.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Do not sigh so deeply,” observed her companion. “I have heard say it
-wears the heart out, though that is idle.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Nay,—nay,” replied Mrs. Lupton, “the woman that first said that
-spoke fairly, for surely she had a bad husband. It wears mine out, truly;
-though not too soon for <i>him</i>. You know now that he cares nothing for
-me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But, let us hope it is not so,” replied Miss Shirley, somewhat re-assured
-from the more sane discourse of her entertainer.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And yet,” continued Mrs. Lupton, as though unconscious of the last
-remark, “I have striven to commend myself to him as my best abilities
-would enable me. Mary, turn the glass to me. It is almost dark. How is
-this bodice? Is the unlaced shape of a country girl more handsome than the
-turn of this?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, no—no—no!” answered the young lady, “nothing could be
-more handsome.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Nay,” protested Mrs. Lupton, “it is not what you think, or what I think;
-but with what eyes do the men see? Does it sit ungracefully on me?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Indeed, my dear, I heard my father say that one like you he never saw—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Do not tell me—do not tell me!” she exclaimed emphatically; “it is
-nothing to me, so that he who ought to say everything says not one word
-that I please him.”
- </p>
-<p>
-And again she burst into a flood of hysterical tears.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Come,” at length observed Miss Shirley, “it is too dark to see any longer
-here. Look, the little lights are beginning to shine in the
-cottage-windows yonder; let us go below. I dare say those poor labourers
-are making themselves as happy by their firesides as little kings; and why
-should not we, who have a thousand times more to be happy with, endeavour
-to do at least as much?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why not?” repeated Mrs. Lupton, “you ask why not?—Ay, why not,
-indeed? Let me see. Well, I do not know just now. This trouble keeps me
-from considering; or else I could answer you any questions in the world;
-for my education was excellent; and, ever since I was married, I have sat
-in the library, day and night, because Mr. Lupton did not speak to me.
-Now, Mary, you go down stairs, and take supper; but I shall stay here to
-watch; and, if that child comes here, if he should come to make me more
-ashamed, I will stamp my foot upon him, and crush him out: and then I will
-put him for the carrion-crows on the turret top!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But, you said before,” observed Miss Shirley, “that you and I should
-always go together.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh!—yes,—-so I did; truly. I had forgotten that, too! My
-memory is good for nothing: an hour's lease of it is not worth a loose
-feather. To be sure, Mary, I will go down with you. There is danger in
-waiting for all of us; and if you should be harmed under my care, your
-father would never—never forgive me!”
- </p>
-<p>
-So saying, she rose, and took her visitor by the hand; unlocked the door,
-and, resisting every proposal to call for a lamp, groped her way down
-stairs in utter darkness.
-</p>
-<p>
-Although, as might naturally be expected, the alarm experienced by Miss
-Shirley under the circumstances above related was very great, far deeper
-was her grief on being thus unexpectedly made aware for the first time
-that some additional unanticipated cause of sorrow (communicated most
-probably to her friend in a very incautious manner by some forward
-ignorant menial of the house,) had had the appalling effect,—if for
-no long period, at least for the moment,—of impairing her senses to
-a very painful degree. What the real cause of that sorrow might be,—evident
-as it is to the reader who has accompanied me thus far,—Miss Shirley
-could not fully comprehend, from the broken exclamations and the
-incoherent discourse of Mrs. Lupton; though enough had been conveyed, even
-in that manner, to give her the right end of a thread, the substance of
-which, however, she was left to spin out from conjecture and imagination.
-She felt extremely irresolute, too, as to the course most proper to be
-adopted by herself; for, though she had left her home with the intention
-of staying at Kiddal during a period of at least some weeks, the
-impropriety of remaining under the circumstances that had taken place,
-impressed itself strongly upon her mind. It might be that Mr. Lupton would
-secretly regard her as a kind of familiar spy upon his conduct and
-actions; and as one who might possibly report to the world those passages
-of his life which he wished to be concealed from it. Or, in case these
-conjectures were utterly groundless, it yet remained to be decided how far
-her conduct might be considered prudent and becoming, if she continued to
-tarry at the residence of Mr. Lupton, while his wife,—for thus, very
-possibly, it might happen,—was confined to her chamber in
-consequence of either bodily or mental afflictions. These and similar
-considerations doubtfully occupied her mind during the whole evening; but
-at length the ties of friendship and of feminine pity prevailed over all
-objections. She felt it to be impossible to leave the once happy companion
-of her girlish days in such a fearful condition as this; and inwardly
-resolved, in case of Mrs. Lupton's increased indisposition, to request
-permission of the squire that she might be allowed to send for her mother
-from York to keep her company.
-</p>
-<p>
-With these thoughts revolving in her mind much more rapidly than the time
-it has occupied the reader to become acquainted with them, Miss Shirley,
-followed by Mrs. Lupton, entered a side-room adjoining the great
-banquetting-hall, wainscotted from roof to ceiling with oak, now almost
-black with age, and amply filled throughout with ponderous antique
-furniture in corresponding taste. An old carved arm-chair, backed and
-cushioned with crimson velvet, stood on the farther side of the
-fire-place; and as it fitfully caught the glimmering of occasional
-momentary flames, stood out with peculiar distinctness, from the deep
-background of oaken panels, ample curtains, and dimly visible mirrors,
-beyond. On this seat—her favourite place—Mrs. Lupton threw
-herself; while Mary Shirley—as though anxious to evince still more
-attention to her in proportion as she failed to receive it from others,—seated
-herself, with her left arm laid upon the lap of her friend, on a low
-ottoman by her side.
-</p>
-<p>
-As the lady of the mansion persisted in refusing that lamps should be
-brought, the apartment remained shrouded in that peculiarly illuminated
-gloom, which to some temperaments is the very beau idéal of all imaginable
-degrees of light; and which gives to even the most ordinary scenes all the
-fulness and rich beauty of a masterpiece from the hand of Rembrandt. The
-ladies had been seated, as I have described, scarcely longer than some few
-minutes, and had not yet exchanged a word with each other, when the door
-of the apartment slowly opened, and the squire himself entered. Fearful of
-the consequences of an interview, at this particular time, between that
-gentleman and his unhappy wife, Miss Shirley hastily rose as he entered,
-and, advancing towards him before he could open his lips to address them,
-requested in a whisper that he would not heed anything Mrs. Lupton might
-say, lest his replies should still farther excite her, as she certainly
-had not the proper command of her senses some short time ago; and the
-least irritation might, she dreaded, render her still worse. The squire
-expressed a great deal of astonishment and concern, though not, it is to
-be supposed, very deeply felt, as he took a seat somewhat in the darkness
-beyond the table.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Who is that man?” asked Mrs. Lupton, in a voice just audible, as she bent
-down to Miss Shirley, in order to prevent her question being overheard.
-</p>
-<p>
-“My dear, you know him well enough, though you cannot see him in this
-light—it is your husband, Mr. Lupton.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No, no!” she exclaimed in a loud voice, and with a penetrating look at
-the indistinct figure beyond the table; “he cannot be come back again! I
-always feared what judgment he would come to, in spite of all my prayers
-for him; and to-night I saw a foul fiend carry his ghost away. You are not
-he, are you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Be assured I am, indeed, dear wife,” said the squire, rising from his
-chair, and advancing towards her; “you know me now. Give me your hand.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“If you be a gentleman, sir, leave me. The manners of this house have been
-corrupted so, that even strangers come here to insult me. Send him out,
-Mary; call William. I won't have men coming here, as though we were all
-disciples in the same school.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mr. Lupton began to act upon the hint previously given by his fair
-visitor, by leaving his seat, and retreating towards the door:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, sir,” continued his wife, “begone! for, as the sun shines in the
-daytime, and the moon by night, Mary, so I shall be to the end; and never
-wed again—never again,—never! Hark! I heard the rustling of a
-gown below that window. They are coming!” and she held up her hand in an
-attitude bidding silence, and listened. The dull roaring of the wind in
-the chimney-top, and the creak of the door-latch as Mr. Lupton closed it
-after him, were alone audible to the young lady whom she addressed.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Stay!” continued Mrs. Lupton, “perhaps his mother is bringing him home.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Her voice was at that instant interrupted by the unequivocal and distinct
-cry of a babe, uttered apparently within very few yards of them.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It is he!” shrieked the lady, as she strove by one energetic and
-convulsive spring to reach the window; but nature, overstrained so long,
-now failed her, and she fell like a stone, insensible, on the ground. Miss
-Shirley had started to her feet with terror, on hearing the first sound of
-that little living thing, which seemed to be close upon them in the room,
-or hidden behind the oaken panels of the wainscot: but before she could
-recover breath to raise an alarm, several of the domestics of the house
-rushed into the room; and seeing the situation of their mistress, raised
-her up, and by the direction of the squire, conveyed her up-stairs to her
-own apartment. While this was going on, others, at the bidding of Miss
-Shirley, examined both the room itself, and the outside of the premises;
-but as nothing could be seen, or even heard again, it was concluded either
-that the ladies had been deceived, or that the ghost of some buried
-ancestor had adopted this strange method of terrifying the present master
-of Kiddal into better morals. The logic, however, of this argument did not
-agree with Miss Shirley's conceptions; since, in that case, the squire,
-and not his lady, would have been the proper person for the ghost of his
-grandmother to appeal to.
-</p>
-<p>
-The messenger who, meanwhile, had been despatched into the village of
-Bramleigh to summon Doctor Rowel to the assistance of his mistress,
-returned with another conjectural interpretation of the affair. He had
-passed on the road a pedlar woman, with a little girl by her side, and a
-child wrapped up in her arms: was it not possible that she had been
-lurking about the house for reasons best known to herself, until the
-crying of her child obliged her to decamp, through fear of being detected?
-The doctor declared it must have been so, as a matter of course; but the
-maids, who had other thoughts in their heads, resolved, for that night at
-least, to huddle themselves for reciprocal security all in one room
-together.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER VI.
-</h2>
-<p>
-<i>Explains the last-recorded occurrence, and introduces Mistress Clink to
-an individual whom she little expected to see. Scene in a hedge alehouse,
-with a company of poachers. They are surprised by very unwelcome visitors.
-A terrible conflict ensues, and its consequences described.</i>
-</p>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>T the time when Mrs. Clink, with little Fanny by her side, and Colin
-snugly wrapped up, like a field-mouse in its winter's nest, in her arms,
-was driven away from her humble home, as related in a previous chapter,
-and forced to seek a retreat for the night wherever chance or Providence
-might direct her, the hand of Bramleigh church clock pointed nigh upon
-eleven. By and by she heard the monotonous bell toll, with a startling
-sound, over the deserted fields and the sleeping village; while she,
-divided between the stern resolution of an unconquered spirit, and the
-yearnings of Nature to provide a pillow for the heads of the two helpless
-creatures who could call no other soul but her their friend, paced the
-road which led towards the highway from York to Leeds, in painful
-irresolution as to the course most proper to pursue. To solicit the
-charity of a night's protection from any of the villagers with whom she
-was acquainted, appeared at once almost hopeless in itself, and beneath
-the station which she had once held amongst them, when her word of praise
-or of blame would have been decisive with him who held the whole
-neighbourhood in a state almost approaching to serfdom. Those whom she had
-served had nothing more to expect from the same hand; and one half at
-least of the world's gratitude is paid, not so much in requital of past,
-as in anticipation of future and additional favours. Amongst such as had
-received nothing at her hands, she felt it would be a bootless task to
-solicit assistance in her present condition.
-</p>
-<p>
-With her thoughts thus occupied, the distance over which she had passed
-seemed swallowed up; so that, somewhat to her surprise, an exclamation
-from the lips of little Fanny unexpectedly reminded her of the fact that
-they were now close upon the grounds adjoining the old hall of Kiddal. Its
-groups of ornamented stone chimneys, and its high-pointed roofs, stood
-black against the sky; while its lightless windows, and its homestead
-hushed in death-like silence, which not even the bark of a dog disturbed,
-appeared to present to her mind a gloomy, though a fitting, picture of the
-residence of such a tenant.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Here, at least,” thought she, “if I can find a barn open, or a bedding of
-dry straw to place under the wall between some of the huge buttresses of
-the house, we shall be secure from molestation; for should they even find
-us in the morning, the master will scarcely deny, even to me, the pitiable
-shelter of his walls for a creature that is indebted to him for its
-existence.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Thus thinking, she passed through the gateway adjoining the road, and
-thence on to the lawn and garden in front of the house, intending to make
-her way beyond the reach and hearing of the dogs, to a more remote and
-unfrequented portion of the out-buildings; but, as she passed the windows
-of the old wainscotted room before-mentioned, the sound of voices within
-caught her ear. Was it not possible that the squire might be speaking in
-some way or other of her?
-</p>
-<p>
-We are ever jealous of those who have done us wrong; and never more so,
-however little we may credit it, than when the sense of that wrong lies
-most keenly upon us. Colin was soundly asleep in her arms; she had nothing
-to fear. Leaving Fanny, therefore, under cover of a laurel-tree, she
-stepped lightly but rapidly up, and placed herself close by the window,
-about the same moment that, as previously described, Mr. Lupton had
-entered the room. Of the conversation that passed she could only catch
-occasional portions; and, in her endeavours to press still closer to the
-casement, young Master Colin got squeezed against the projecting moulding
-of the stone wall, in a manner which called forth that instantaneous
-expression of complaint and resentment, by which Mrs. Lupton and her
-friend had been so dreadfully alarmed. It was now no time for Mrs. Clink
-to stay any longer in concealment there; she accordingly smothered her
-baby's head in its clothes to stifle the sound; and having again taken the
-hand of little Fanny, made the best of her way over ditch and brier in the
-direction of the high road.
-</p>
-<p>
-Beyond the boundary of Mr. Lupton's grounds she came upon a by-way,
-originally intended, (as the blackthorn hedges on either side denoted,) to
-be used as a kind of occupation lane, by the farmers who held the fields
-adjacent; but which, from the abundant grass, with which it was overgrown,
-save where, in the middle, a narrow path meandered, like a packthread
-along a strip of green cloth, was evidently but little used, except as a
-footway by the straggling bumpkins who so thinly populated that remote
-territory. Mrs. Clink remembered, from the local features of the place,
-that, at about a mile farther up this road, stood a small hedge alehouse,
-of no very brilliant repute to be sure, amongst those to whom such an
-accommodation was needless, but highly necessary and useful to a certain
-class of persons whose convenience was best attained in places beyond the
-immediate reach and inspection of all descriptions of local and legal
-authorities. It stood upon a piece of ground just beyond the domains of
-Squire Lupton, and, though generally known as the resort of many lawless
-characters, was maintained by the proprietor of the soil in pure spite to
-his neighbour, the squire, whom he hated with that cordial degree of
-hatred not uncommonly existing between great landed proprietors, and the
-jealous little freeholders who dwell upon their skirts. Towards this
-house, then, Mrs. Clink, in her extremity, bent her way; and after half an
-hour spent in stumbling over the irregularities of a primitive road,
-winding amongst a range of low hills, studded with thick plantations and
-close preserves for game, she arrived in sight of the anticipated haven.
-It was not, however, without some degree of fear, that, several times in
-the course of the journey, when she chanced to cast her eyes back upon the
-way she had passed, the shadowy figure of a human being, skulking along
-under cover of the hedgerows, and apparently dodging her footsteps, had
-appeared to her; though under an aspect so blended with the shadows of
-night as left it still doubtful whether or not the whole was a creation of
-imagination and imperfect vision.
-</p>
-<p>
-A small desolate-looking hut, with a publican's sign over the door, put up
-more for pretence than use, now stood before her. At the same moment the
-figure she had seen shot rapidly forward up a ditch by the road-side, and
-disappeared behind the house.
-</p>
-<p>
-As she approached, the sound of several boisterous voices reached her ear;
-and then the distinct words of part of an old song, which one of the
-company was singing:—
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-“As I and my dogs went out one night,
-The moon and the stars did shine so bright,
-To catch a fat buck we thought we might,
-Fal de ral lu ra la!”
- </pre>
-<p>
-A rushing blast of wind bore away a verse or two of the narrative; but, as
-she had by this time reached the door, she stood still a moment, while the
-singer went on—
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-“He came all bleeding, and so lame,
-He was not able to follow the game,
-And sorry was I to see the same,
-Fal de ral lu ra la!
-
-“I 'll take my long staff in my han',
-And range the woods to find that man,
-And if that I do, his hide I 'll tan,
-Fal de ral lu ra la!”
- </pre>
-<p>
-The singer stopped.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Go on—go on!” cried several voices, “finish it, somehow; let's hear
-th' end on't!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Dang it!” exclaimed the singer, in a sort of good-natured passion, I
-don't remember it. This isn't the next verse, I know it isn't; but I 'll
-try.
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-“!Next day we offer'd it for sale,
-Fal de ral lu ra li to la!
-Unto an old woman that did sell ale,
-Fal de ral lu ra la!
-
-“Next day we offer'd it for sale
-Unto an old woman that did sell ale,
-But she 'd liked to have put us all in gaol,
-Fal de ral lu ra la!
-</pre>
-<p>
-“There!” he exclaimed again, “I know no more if you 'd fee me to sing it,
-so good b'ye to that, and be dang'd to it! as th' saying goes.” At the
-same time the sound of a huge pot, bounced upon the table, bore good
-evidence that the speaker had not allowed his elegant sentiment to pass
-without due honour.
-</p>
-<p>
-Mrs. Clink scarcely felt heart enough to face such a company as this
-without some previous notice. She accordingly knocked at the door somewhat
-loudly, whereupon every voice suddenly became silent, and a scrambling
-sound ensued, as of the gathering up of weapons; or, as though the
-individuals within were striving, upon the instant, to put themselves,
-from a state of disorder, into a condition fitted for the reception of any
-kind of company as might at such an hour chance to do them the honour of a
-visit.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Who's there?” cried a sharp voice inside the door, which Colin's mother
-recognised as that of the landlady of the house. She applied her mouth
-near the keyhole, and replied, “It's only me, Mrs. Mallory—only Anne
-Clink. I want a bed to-night, if you can let me have one.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“A bed!” repeated Mrs. Mallory. “This time o' night, and a bed! Sure
-there's nobody else?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mrs. Clink satisfied the inquiries of the landlady in this particular, and
-gave her very full assurances that no treachery was intended; still
-farther giving her to understand that Longstaff, the steward, had turned
-her out of house and home, late as it was, not an hour before. The bolt
-was undrawn, and Mrs. Clink walked in. The first greeting she received was
-from a dogged-looking savage, in a thick old velveteen shooting-jacket,
-who sat directly opposite the door.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It's well for you, missus, you aren't a gamekeeper, or I should have put
-a leaden pill in your head afore this.” Saying which, he raised from his
-side a short gun that had been held in readiness, and put it up the sleeve
-of his coat,—to which its construction was especially adapted, for
-security.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes; we tell no tales here,” observed another: “a ditch in th' woods is
-longer than th' longest tongue that ever spoke.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What, you think,” added the first speaker, “a crack on th' scull, and two
-or three shovelfuls of dirt, soon stops a gabbler, do ye? Ay, by Go'!
-you're right, lad, there; and so it does.”
- </p>
-<p>
-An uncouth laugh, which went nearly round the company, at once evinced
-their sense of the facetiousness of this remark, and showed the feeling of
-indifference with which nearly all present regarded a remedy for
-tale-telling of the kind here suggested; but, in the mean time, the
-individual whose appearance in the house had elicited these remarks, had
-been conducted, with her young charge, into a small inner room, where we
-will leave her conversing with Mrs. Mallory, or preparing for very needful
-rest, as the case may be. Scarcely, however, had she passed out of
-hearing, before some inquiry was made by the ruffian who had first spoken,
-and whose name, it may be observed, was David Shaw, as to the family and
-genealogy of old Jerry Clink, “Because,” he observed, “this woman called
-herself a Clink; and, as Jerry will be here to-night, I thought they might
-be summut related.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The explanation given by another of the company in reply, went on to state
-that at the time when Jerry was doing well in business he had two
-daughters, whom he brought up like two ladies: “But I thought there would
-soon be an end of that,” continued the speaker, “and so there was. The old
-man was getting on too fast by half; so that when his creditors came on
-him, and he'd all this finery to pay for, he found he'd been sailing in
-shallow water; and away he went off to prison. What became of the gals I
-don't know exactly; but, if my memory be right, one of 'em died; and t'
-other was obliged to take up with a place in a confectioner's shop. I
-don't know how true it is; but report said, after that, that Mrs.
-Longstaff here, the steward's wife at th' hall, persuaded her to go over
-as a sort of school-missis to her children; though, if that had been the
-case, she could not have been coming to such a house as this at twelve
-o'clock at night, and especially with two of th' children along wi' her.
-Thou mun be mistaken, David, i' th' name, I think.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Am I?” said David sourly; “then <i>I</i> think not.”
- </p>
-<p>
-A signal-sound near the door, in imitation of the crowing of a pheasant,
-announced the arrival at this instant of old Jerry Clink. David drew the
-bolt without stay or question, and the individual named walked in. Below
-the middle height, and not remarkably elegant in shape, he still bore in
-his features and carriage some traces of the phantom of a long-vanished
-day of respectability. His habiliments, however, appeared, by their
-condition, cut, and colour, to have been gathered at various periods from
-as many corners of the empire, A huge snuff-coloured long coat, originally
-made for a man as big again as himself, and which stood round him like a
-sentry-box, matched very indifferently with a red plush waistcoat adorned
-with blue glass buttons, which scarcely kissed the band of his
-inexpressibles; while the latter, composed of broad-striped corduroy, not
-unlike the impression of a rake on a garden-path, hung upon his shrivelled
-legs in pleasing imitation of the hide of a rhinoceros. Blue worsted
-stockings, and quarter-boots laced tightly round his ankles with leathern
-thongs, completed the costume of the man.
-</p>
-<p>
-Should the reader feel curious after a portrait of this gentleman, we
-refer him to a profile which he will find prefixed to Conyers Middleton's
-Life of Cicero, which bears no contemptible resemblance to Jerry, save
-that it lacks the heavy weight of animal faculties in the occipital
-region, which, in the head of our friend, seemed to toss the scale of
-humanities in front up into the air.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, how are you to-night,—all on you together?” asked Jerry, in a
-tone of voice which Dr. Johnson himself might have envied, when he
-brow-beat the very worst of his opponents, at the same time assisting
-himself to about a drachm of snuff from a tin case drawn from his
-coat-pocket, the contents of which he applied to his nasal organ by the
-aid of a small ladle, turned out of a boar's tusk, much as a scavenger
-might shovel dust into a cart. A general answer having been returned that
-all were in good health.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, well,” replied Jerry, “then tak' care to keep so, and mark I clap
-that injunction on you. What the dickens should you go to make yourselves
-badly for! Here, stand away.”
- </p>
-<p>
-So saying, he pushed Mr. David Shaw on one side, and elbowed half a dozen
-more on the other, as he strode forward towards the fire with the sole but
-very important object of poking it. He then sat down upon a seat that had
-purposely been vacated for him near the fire, and inquired in the same
-surly tone, “What are you drinking?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Here's plenty of ale, Jerry,” replied David.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Now, now,” objected Mr. Clink, “what are you going to insult me for? Talk
-of ale!—you know I've tasted none now these thirteen year, and
-shan't again, live as long as I will.—Mrs. Mallory, here, d 'ye
-hear! bring me a glass of gin; and then, David,” giving that amiable
-character a good-humoured poke under the right ribs, “you can pay for it
-if you like.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Can I?” asked the person thus addressed, when he was suddenly cut short
-by old Jerry.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Nay, nay, now!—I shall appeal to the company,—I never asked
-you; so don't go to say I did. Can you insure me four brace of birds and a
-few good tench by to-morrow morning? 'Cause if you think you can, the
-sooner you set about it, the sooner we shall get rid of you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, I 'll try, Jerry, if you want 'em particular.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Particular or not particular, what's that to you? I give you an order,
-and that, you'll admit, is the full extent of your business. Have you been
-up to them woods close to the house since t'other night?” he inquired;
-and, on being answered in the negative, thus continued,—“Then go
-to-night; for I 've spread a report that 'll draw most of them that you
-have to fear down into the valley; and there's plenty of time for you to
-go, and to get home again before they find out the mistake.”
- </p>
-<p>
-I need scarcely remind the reader that every part of this conversation
-which related to the sports of the field, was carried on in a tone of
-voice scarcely audible even half across the room, and also that the door
-had been effectually secured, and the candles removed, some minutes before
-the bell in Bramleigh tower struck twelve. For the accommodation, however,
-of those who might have business to transact abroad after that hour, there
-was a private outlet, known only to those in whom confidence could be
-placed, at the back of the premises. By this door Mr. Shaw now left,
-chanting, rather than singing, to himself as he left the room,
-</p>
-<pre xml:space="preserve">
-“We 'll hunt his game
-Through field and brake;
-His ponds we 'll net,
-His fish we 'll take;
-His woods we 'll scour
-In nutting time;
-And his mushrooms gather
-At morning prime;
-Since Nature gave—deny't who can—
-These things in common to ev'ry man.”
- </pre>
-<p>
-“Ay, ay,” remarked old Jerry, as the man departed, “if every man
-understood his trade as well as David does, there would be a good deal
-more sport by night, and less by light, than there is: but every dog to
-his varmint; he knows all the beasts of forest, beasts of chase, beasts
-and fowls of warren, and the laws of them, as well as the best sportsman
-in England that ever was, is, or will be.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But I 'll tell thee what he don't know,” remarked the same individual
-who, prior to Mr. Clink's appearance, had given a brief sketch of the
-last-named gentleman's previous career; “he don't know, any more nor some
-o' the rest of us, whether or no there's any relations of yours living up
-in this quarter?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why, as to that,” replied Jerry, “if he 'd wanted to be informed whether
-I had any relations here, and I had been in his company at the time, I
-could have stated this here. My youngest daughter Anne, was sent for by
-Mrs. Longstaff, wife to Squire Lupton's steward, considerably above twelve
-months ago, to eddi-cate her children, and, to the best of my knowledge,
-she's there yet. There is but one action of my life that gives me anything
-like satisfaction to reflect on, and that is, I spared neither expense nor
-trouble, when I had the means in my power, to fit my children for
-something better in the world than I myself was born to. And well it was I
-did so; or else, as things have come to this, and I'm not quite so rich as
-I once was, I can't say what might have become of them. What, wasn't it
-So-crates, the heathen philosopher, that considered learning the best
-portion a man could bestow on his children?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I don't know, I'm sure,” replied the other, “what he considered; but if
-that's your daughter, and you don't know what's become of her, I can tell
-you she <i>isn't</i> at Mrs. Longstaff's now. Well, you may put your pipe
-down, and look at me as hard as you like, but it will not alter the truth.
-<i>I</i> believe she's under this roof, in that back-room there, with Mrs.
-Mallory, at this very minute.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Confound it!” exclaimed Jerry, rising and striding towards the door of
-the room alluded to, “how is this? Foul play, my lads? By G! if there is—”
- and, before the sentence was finished, he had walked in and closed the
-door behind him. At that moment a faint shriek of surprise was heard
-within, and a cry of—“Oh, father, father!”
- </p>
-<p>
-The reader will perhaps readily see through the secret of all this without
-my assistance. It may, nevertheless, not be without its use, if, by way of
-summing up, I briefly state, that during the time the mother of our hero
-was placed, as had been hinted in the previous conversation, in a shop in
-the great manufacturing town of Leeds, her appearance had attracted the
-attention of Mr. Lupton, when on his visits there in his magisterial
-capacity, and that he had ingeniously contrived, with the aid, counsel,
-and assistance of the complying Mr. Longstaff, to entice her thence by the
-offer of a far better situation, in the capacity of governess to the
-steward's children, than that of which she was already in the enjoyment.
-When the consequences of the fatal error into which she had been led
-became evident to herself, she instantly quitted Mr. Longstaff's house;
-and, by the consent of Mr. Lupton, retired to a cottage in the village.
-Here she maintained herself during some months by the small profits of
-needlework, sent to her regularly from the hall; and, in the vain hope of
-keeping secure the secret of her own bosom, she had purposely forborne to
-acquaint any one of her friends of the cause of the change which had taken
-place, or even of the change itself.
-</p>
-<p>
-So far as the events of the night I am describing were concerned, although
-Mrs. Mallory was perfectly well acquainted with all the circumstances of
-the case, and also with the fact that the leading man of the night-company
-who assembled during the season at her house was Miss Clink's father, she
-had sufficient reasons, in the wish to keep that unfortunate young woman's
-secret, to prevent her from discovering to him any portion of her
-knowledge. The same feeling had caused her also to conceal the fact from
-both father and daughter that accident,—or misfortune rather,—had
-now brought them together under the same roof.
-</p>
-<p>
-After some time had elapsed, during which we may imagine the old man was
-made fully acquainted with the situation in which his daughter was placed,
-he re-entered the room where his companions were assembled.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Lads!” said he, striking the table violently with his fist, while his
-lips quivered as with an ague, and his eyes rolled with an expression of
-unusual ferocity, “if I live to go to the gallows for it, old as I am, I
-'ll cool the blood of that man up at yonder hall for what he 's done to me
-and mine! To go in there, and see that wench a mother before she is a
-wife,—her character gone for ever,—ruined,—lost!—why,
-I say, sink me to perdition this instant! if I don't redden his own
-hearthstone with his own blood, though I wait for it to the last day of my
-life. As sure as he sees the day, I'll make his children fatherless—I'll
-have my knife in him!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Stop! stop! Mr. Clink!” cried Mrs. Mallory, laying her hand upon his
-shoulder, “do cool yourself, and do not threaten so terribly.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Threaten!” he exclaimed; “I say you are as bad as them; and it is high
-time somebody not only threatened, but did it.—What! isn't it enough
-that I am ruined as a tradesman for ever, and compelled to this beggarly
-night-work, in defiance of the laws, for the sake of a paltry existence,
-not worth holding from one day to another? Isn't this, I say, enough, but
-must our children be ruined, and shall we be degraded still lower besides?
-What!—we are <i>poor</i>, are we?—and it does not matter
-because a child is poor what becomes of her! Well, well, it may do for
-some of <i>you</i>,—it may mix with your dastardly spirits very
-well; but <i>I</i> am of a different metal, lads. I never passed by an
-injury unrevenged yet; and my memory has not yet got so bad as to let that
-man slip through it. There's some men I should never forgive, if I lived a
-thousand years, and some that I would lay my own life down to do five
-minutes' justice on; but, above them, there is one shall never slip me,
-though I go the world over after him!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Surrender! at the peril of your lives!” exclaimed a bluff coarse voice
-behind them, while, to the almost speechless astonishment and dismay of
-the company, the speaker advanced from a back doorway, discovering the
-person of a giant-looking fellow, considerably above six feet in height,
-clothed in a thick dress for the night air, armed with a long pistol in
-each hand, and guarded by a ferocious mastiff at his side.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Down with the lights, and defend yourselves, lads!” cried Jerry: “we are
-betrayed!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Almost before these words had passed his lips, half a dozen shots whizzed
-at the intruder, several of which lodged in Mrs. Mallory's bacon and hams,
-that hung from the ceiling of the room. One of the men on the far side of
-the table fell from the second shot of the head keeper of Kiddal, for he
-it was; while the dog he had brought with him attacked with the ferocity
-of a tiger old Jerry himself, who by this time had drawn a knife nearly
-nine inches long from his pocket, and stood prepared in the middle of the
-room for the reception of his four-footed antagonist. Meanwhile, five or
-six other keepers rushed into the room to aid their leader. Filled with
-smoke, as the place was, from the discharge of fire-arms, it became almost
-impossible to distinguish friends from foes. The lights were extinguished,
-the fire threw out only a dull red light upon the objects immediately
-contiguous to it, and the momentary glare of discharged guns and pistols
-alone enabled each party to distinguish, as by a lightning flash, the
-objects of their mutual enmity. At the same time the fierce howling of,
-the dog, mingled with the terrific and thick-coming curses of old Jerry,
-as those two combatants rolled together upon the floor in fearful
-contention for the mastery, together with the shrieks of the two women on
-the stairs, made up a chorus too dismal almost for the region of purgatory
-itself.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="linkimage-0006" id="linkimage-0006"> </a>
-</p>
-<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
-<img src="images/137m.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="137m " /><br />
-</div>
-<h4>
-<a href="images/137.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original Size</i></a>
-</h4>
-<p>
-In the midst of this, succour arrived for the invaded party in the person
-of no less a hero than Mr. David Shaw. In a state of exasperation
-amounting almost to frenzy, that individual rushed into the house, crying
-out as he impetuously advanced, “Where is she?—where is she?”—the
-idea that Mrs. Clink had purposely betrayed them being alone uppermost in
-his mind. Making his way, as if instinctively, towards the stairs, he
-beheld something like the figure of a woman standing three or four steps
-above him, for the light was not sufficient to discover more. A plunge
-with his right hand, which grasped a common pocket-knife, was the work of
-an instant, and the landlady of the house—for he had mistaken his
-object—fell with a dead weight under the blow. At the same instant
-the fingers of his right hand became fast bound, and the blood ran down
-his arm in a bubbling stream. Instead of doing the murder he intended, the
-knife blade had struck backwards, and closed tightly upon the holder, so
-that three of his fingers and the fleshy part of the thumb were gashed
-through to the bone. Regardless of this, he extricated his hand, cast the
-knife fiercely amongst the combatants, and fell to the attack in right
-good earnest.
-</p>
-<p>
-Pope, if I recollect aright, very highly extols some of those similes
-which Perrault describes as similes with a long tail, introduced by the
-greatest of epic poets into his descriptions of the combats between the
-Trojans and the Greeks, In humble imitation, then, of Homer, let me
-proceed to say, that as a platoon of maggots on a cheese-plate contend
-with violent writhings of the body for superiority, as they overrun each
-other, and alternately gain the uppermost place, or roll ingloriously to
-the bottom in the ambitious strife for mastery;—so did the
-preservers and the destroyers of game in the parlour of the poacher's ken
-mingle together in deadly strife, amidst the fall of tables and the wreck
-of kegs.
-</p>
-<p>
-Securely seated, after the struggles of an unequal war, old Jerry Clink
-might now, by the aid of some friendly candle, have been seen reposing
-himself between the legs of a round table, his countenance and hands so
-deeply besmeared with blood as to give him all the grimness of a red
-Indian squatting after the operation of scalping, the huge mastiff
-stretched before him, with its head bruised until its features were not
-discernible, and a gaping wound behind the left fore-leg, into which had
-been introduced the weapon that had let out his life; while around lay
-strewn in confusion the fragments and ribands of nearly every portion of
-dress that Mr. Clink had previously worn. Nothing was left of his large
-snuff-coloured coat, save the collar and a small portion of the upper ends
-of the arms; his red waistcoat lay in twenty pieces around; and his
-unmentionables hung about him like the shattered bark of some old tree,
-that has been doomed to experience the lacerating power of a
-lightning-stroke. Jerry could do no more. He saw David Shaw, after a
-desperate struggle, worthy of a more noble cavalier, subdued, and pinioned
-like a market-fowl across the back, without the power to make even an
-effort in his favour; while of the remaining portion of his men some had
-made their escape, and the rest, having exhausted their means of defence,
-were surrendering at discretion.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, if I could I would not leave you, lads,” thought Jerry, as he
-witnessed the defeat of his companions,—“I've stood by you in good,
-and I 'll stand by you in evil. Sooner than be guilty of a mean action
-like that, I'd do as the great Cato did, and fall upon my own
-pocket-knife. Here,” he cried in a loud voice, addressing himself to the
-head gamekeeper, “here, you big brute! pick me up, will you? I'm going
-along with all the rest.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I know that,” responded the individual thus addressed, with an allusion
-to Mr. Clink's eyes, which would not have benefited them, if carried into
-effect, quite so materially as might a pinch of Grimston's snuff; “I'll
-take care of you soon enough, old chap, trust me for that.”
- </p>
-<p>
-So saying, he cast a cord round Jerry's body, binding his arms to his
-sides; an operation which the latter underwent with the most heroic
-fortitude and good will. Not so, however, with the next proceeding; for
-the gamekeeper, having by this time discovered the carcass of his murdered
-dog under the table, seized hold of the loose end of the rope with which
-Jerry was tied, and fell to belabouring him without mercy.
-</p>
-<p>
-The remaining portion of his confederates being now secured in two bunches
-of three and four respectively, the whole were marched off under a strong
-escort of their conquerors, to a lock-up in the village, where they
-remained under guard all night; two or three hours of this time being
-expended in a hot dispute between Jerry and David Shaw, upon the point
-whether Mrs. Anne Clink did, or did not, wilfully and maliciously betray
-them into the hands of their enemies.
-</p>
-<p>
-That individually she was innocent, the reader is fully aware; although,
-in reality, she still had been the unconscious cause of all the disasters
-that had occurred. No sooner had she left her house on this eventful
-night, as described at the conclusion of a preceding chapter, than Mr.
-Longstaff, being conscious that he had stretched his authority too far,
-appointed his assistant, the constable, to steal out, and trace her
-footsteps wherever she might go, until he found her in a resting-place for
-the night; since, by this precaution, the steward would be enabled, in
-case of need, to find her again at any moment he might think proper. The
-constable discharged his commission so well, that he carried back a great
-deal more than he went for; and not only reported the lodging which
-Mistress Clink had taken up, but also discovered that a number of
-poachers, as he believed, against whom he had long held a warrant granted
-for offences against the game-laws, were there and then assembled in
-mischievous cogitation, as he had actually seen one of them emerge from a
-pigsty at the back of the premises. To be able to detect the unfortunate
-woman whom he had deprived of a home, in the very act of patronising a
-house of poachers upon the squire's manor, was the very thing for Mr.
-Longstaff. He lost no time in informing the guardians of the woods what a
-pretty garrison might be taken by surprise; and they, in accordance with
-that information, and the direction of the constable, accordingly advanced
-to the attack with the success which has already been related.
-</p>
-<p>
-The injury sustained by Mrs. Mallory when knocked down on the staircase
-was not very material; nor did she feel it half so much as the additional
-one inflicted on her by the magistrates, when she was, some short time
-after, called up and fined ten pounds for the share she had taken in this
-little business. Longstaff struggled hard to involve Mrs. Clink in the
-same difficulty, on the plea that she had aided and abetted Mrs. Mallory
-either in having game in her possession, or in eating it. He failed,
-however, to make out a case; and as the squire entirely disapproved of the
-step he had taken in breaking up Mrs. Clink's house, the steward had the
-additional mortification of hearing himself commanded not only to
-reinstate her therein, but also to make ample restitution for the loss and
-misery he had occasioned to her.
-</p>
-<p>
-In conclusion of this chapter, and of the events recorded therein, I may
-briefly observe, that, early on the following morning, old Jerry Clink,
-and seven of his associates, were conveyed to the castle at York; and
-that, after soliloquizing there during some weeks, they underwent their
-trial. Now, if any man can escape an infringement of the game-laws,
-especially if accompanied by violence, he can escape anything—in the
-items of burglary, manslaughter, and arson, he may be considered
-invulnerable. They all were found guilty: and, while some of the lesser
-offenders were sentenced to various terms of imprisonment at home, Mr.
-David Shaw and Jerry Clink were accommodated with a fourteen years'
-residence in New South Wales. This judgment served only to sharpen the
-fangs of Jerry's resentment; but as revenge is a commodity which like
-Thorn's Tally-Ho Sauce, may be warranted to keep in all climates with
-equal freshness, Jerry not only carried his resentment out with him, and
-preserved it while abroad, but likewise brought it back again, for the
-purpose of making use of it after his return to his own country.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER VII.
-</h2>
-<p>
-<i>Though short, would yet be found, could it be measured by time, nearly
-fifteen years long. Colin Clink's boyhood and character. A trap is laid
-for him by Mr. Longstaff, into which his mother lets him fall: with other
-matters highly essential to be told.</i>
-</p>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">H</span>AD not the days of omens and prognostications in great part passed by at
-the enlightened period in which our story commences, it would inevitably
-have been prophesied that the child, by whose very birth the passions of
-jealousy and revenge had been so strongly excited, and which had gone far
-to cloud the mind of the lady of Kiddal House, was predestined to create
-no common stir when he became a man. In that little vessel, it would have
-been contended, was contained a large measure of latent importance;
-although, contrary to the most approved and authentic cases of this
-nature, neither mark, spot, mole, nor even pimple, was to be found upon
-him; no strawberry on his shoulder, no cherry on his neck, no fairy's
-signet on his breast, by which the Fates are sometimes so obliging as to
-signify to anxious mothers the future eminence of their sons, or to stamp
-their identity. But, in the absence of all or any of these, he was gifted
-with that which some people consider of almost as much importance amongst
-the elements of future greatness,—an amount of brain which would
-have rejoiced the late Dr. Spurzheim, and put sweetness into the face of
-Gall himself.
-</p>
-<p>
-During the earlier years of his childhood, Master Colin did not display
-anything uncommon, if I except the extraordinary talent he developed in
-the consumption of all kinds of edible commodities, whereby, I firmly
-believe, he laid the foundation of that excellent figure in which he
-appeared after arriving at the age of manhood. Sometimes, when his mother
-was in a mood prospective and reflective, she would look upon him with
-grief, and almost wish him appetiteless; but Colin stared defiance in her
-face as he filled his mouth with potatoes, and drank up as much milk as
-would have served a fatting calf.
-</p>
-<p>
-Reinstated in the habitation where Colin was born, his mother eventually
-established a little shop, containing nearly everything, in a small way,
-that the inhabitants of such a locality could require. A bag of flour, a
-tub of oatmeal, and half a barrel of red herrings, stood for show directly
-opposite the door. A couple of cheeses, and a keg of butter, adorned the
-diminutive counter. Candles, long and short, thick and thin, dangled from
-the ceiling; half a dozen long brushes and mops stood sentry in one
-corner; and in and about the window was displayed a varied collection of
-pipes, penny loaves, tobacco, battledores, squares of pictures twenty-four
-for a halfpenny, cotton-balls, whipcord, and red worsted nightcaps. In
-this varied storehouse, with poor pale little Fanny for his nurse, until
-he grew too big for her any longer to carry him, did our hero Colin live
-and thrive. After he had found his own legs, his nurse became his
-companion; and many a time, as he grew older,—pitying her hungry
-looks, and solemn-looking eyes,—has he stolen out with half his own
-meals in his pinafore, on purpose to give them unseen to her who, he
-thought, wanted them more than he. But in time the little shop was to be
-minded, and Fanny had grown up enough to attend to it. Colin missed his
-companion in the fields, and therefore he too stayed more at home; and
-never felt more happy than when,—his mother's daily lessons being
-ended,—he hurried into the shop, and found something that he could
-do to help Fanny in her service.
-</p>
-<p>
-Possibly it might arise from the bitterness of her own reflections upon
-the evils and the misery resulting from the insincerity and deception so
-common amongst every class of society, that Mrs. Clink very early and
-emphatically impressed upon the mind of her boy the necessity of being,
-above all things, candid and truth-telling, regardless of whatever might
-be the consequences. Disadvantages, she knew, must accompany so unusual a
-style of behaviour; but then, she said to herself, “Let him but carry it
-out through life, and, if no other good come of it but this, it will far
-outbalance all the rest,—that, by him at least, no other young heart
-will be destroyed, as mine has been. No lasting misery will by him be
-entailed on the confiding and the helpless, under the promise of
-protection: no hope of the best earthly happiness be raised in a weak
-heart, only to be broken, amidst pain, and degradation, and self-reproach,
-that has no end except with life. If I can bring up but one such man, thus
-pure in heart and tongue, I shall die in the full consciousness that,
-whatever my own errors may have been, I have left behind me one in the
-world far better than any I have found there!”
- </p>
-<p>
-And so Master Colin was tutored on all occasions to think as correctly as
-he could, and then to say what he thought, without fear, or hope of
-favour.
-</p>
-<p>
-While Colin year after year thus continued to advance towards that period
-when he should finally peck his way through the shell of his childhood,
-and walk out unfledged into the world, his career did not pass unmarked by
-that ancient enemy of his mother, Longstaff, the steward. Wherever that
-worthy went, he was doomed, very frequently, to hear the name of young
-Master Clink alluded to in terms which, in the inner man of Mr. Longstaff,
-seemed to throw even the cleverest of his own little Longstaffs at home
-totally in the rear. Colin was a daring fellow, or a good-hearted fellow,
-or a comical lad, who promised to turn out something more than common;
-while Master Chatham Bolinbroke Longstaff, and Miss Æneasina Laxton
-Longstaff, the most promising pair of the family, were no more talked
-about, save by himself, Mrs. Longstaff, and the servants, than they would
-have been had they never honoured society with their presence. The
-annoyance resulting to Mr. Longstaff from this comparison was rendered
-more bitter in consequence of the formerly alleged, but now universally
-disowned, relationship between himself and our hero. He could not endure
-that the very child whose mother had endeavoured to cast disgrace upon
-him, and whom he hated on that account with intense hatred, should thus
-not only, as it were, exalt poverty above riches, but overtop
-intellectually in their native village as fine a family as any Suffolk
-grazier could wish to see. Mr. Longstaff determined, at length, to use his
-utmost exertions in order to rid the village of him; and, the better to
-effect his object, he endeavoured, by descending to meannesses which would
-not have graced anybody half so well as himself, to worm himself again
-into the good opinion of Colin's mother, by pretending that the doctrine
-of forget and forgive was not only eminently Christian and pious in
-itself, but that also, if it were not to be continually acted upon, and
-practically carried out, the various members of society might have nothing
-else to do but to be at endless war with one another. Though he had at one
-time certainly regarded Mrs. Clink as a very great enemy, he yet wished to
-let by-gones be by-gones; and, as she had had such a misfortune, if he
-could be of any benefit to her in putting the boy out when he was old
-enough, he should not refuse his services. Now, although the spirit of
-Mrs. Clink only despised this man for his conduct from first to last, she
-yet reflected that the benefit of Colin was her highest consideration; and
-that any help which might be extended to her for him ought not to be
-refused, however much she might dislike the hand that gave it.
-</p>
-<p>
-An opening accordingly appeared to the prophetic eye of Mr. Longstaff, not
-only for ridding the parish of one whose presence he could not tolerate,
-but also of accommodating him with a situation where he would have the
-satisfaction of reflecting that Colin would both sleep on thorns, and wake
-to pass his days in no garden of roses. He would lower his crest for him,—he
-would take the spirit out of him,—he would contrive to place him
-where he should learn on the wrong side of his mouth how to make himself
-the talk of a town, while the children of his superiors were passed by as
-though they had neither wealth, quality, nor talent to recommend them;
-and, in doing this, he should at the same time be paying with compound
-interest the debt he owed to Colin's mother.
-</p>
-<p>
-Such were the steward's reflections, when he found that the bait he hung
-out had been taken by Mrs. Clink, and that he should, at the first
-convenient opportunity, have it wholly in his power to dispose of Master
-Colin Clink after the best fashion his laudable wish for vengeance might
-suggest.
-</p>
-<p>
-How Mr. Longstaff' planned and succeeded in his design, and what kind of
-people Master Colin got amongst, together with certain curious adventures
-which befel him in his new situation, will be related in the ensuing
-chapter, as it is imperative upon me to conclude the present with some
-reference to the proceedings of the parties whom we left in trouble at the
-old hall of Kiddal.
-</p>
-<p>
-When Dr. Rowel had fully attended to the wants of his unfortunate patient,
-Miss Shirley seized the earliest opportunity to make an earnest inquiry of
-him as to Mrs. Lupton's state, and the probabilities of her speedy
-recovery.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, she will soon be better—much better!” encouragingly exclaimed
-the doctor. “A slight delirium of this kind is easily brought on by
-excitement; but it is only temporary. There is no organic disease
-whatever. We shall not have the least occasion to think of removing her to
-<i>my establishment</i>,—not the least. Mrs. Lupton is
-constitutionally very sensitive; but she is not a subject in any way
-predisposed to mental affliction. The course of my practice has led me to
-make perhaps a greater amount of observation on diseases of this peculiar
-description than could be found amongst all the other medical men in
-England put together. I do not hesitate at all to state that, because I <i>know
-it</i> to be the fact; and I have invariably remarked, that amongst the
-great majority of insane persons that have been under my care, and no
-practitioner could have had more, there is a peculiarity,—a
-difference,—an organic something or other, which,—I am as much
-convinced of as of my own existence,—might have been perceptible to
-a clever man at the period of their very earliest mental development, and
-which marked them out, if I may so say, to become at one period or other
-of their lives inmates of such establishments as this extensive one of
-mine at Nabbfield. But the good lady of this house has nothing whatever of
-that kind about her. I pronounce her to be one of the very last persons
-who could require, for permanent mental affections, the care, restraint,
-and assiduous attentions, only to be obtained in a retreat where the
-medical adviser is himself a permanent resident. The course of treatment I
-am adopting will soon bring her about again,—very soon. But I must
-beg you will be so kind as to take care that she is kept quiet, and—and
-prevent her as much as possible from conversing on painful or exciting
-subjects,” concluded the doctor, smiling very sweetly as he looked into
-Miss Shirley's eyes and profoundly bowed her a good night.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That fellow is a quack,” thought Miss Shirley, as she returned to Mrs.
-Lupton's chamber. “There is, as he says, <i>an organic something</i> about
-<i>him</i> that renders him very repulsive to me; and, if nothing worse
-come of him than we have had to-night, it will be a great deal more than
-his appearance promises.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Thus thinking, she threw herself into an easy-chair by her friend's
-bedside, and remained watching her attentively through the night.
-</p>
-<p>
-However much of a quack the doctor might be, his opinion respecting Mrs.
-Lupton's recovery proved to be correct. In the course of a few weeks she
-might have been seen, as formerly, for hours together, with slow steps,
-and a deep-seated expression of melancholy, pacing the gardens and woods
-of Kiddal, regardless almost of times and seasons. Though now perfectly
-recovered, her recent illness formed a very plausible pretext on which to
-found reasons for hastening her again away from her home; for that she was
-an unwelcome tenant there will readily be believed from the facts already
-related.
-</p>
-<p>
-One day, after a private consultation with the squire, Dr. Rowel suddenly
-discovered that it would prove materially beneficial to the health of the
-lady of Kiddal were she to exchange for some time the dull monotonous life
-of the gloomy old hall, for the more gay and spirit-stirring society of
-some busy city. He therefore impressed upon her, as a condition absolutely
-indispensable to a perfectly restored tone of the mind, the necessity
-under which she lay of residing for a while in or about the metropolis.
-Mrs. Lupton soon mentioned the subject again to her friend Miss Shirley.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It has been proposed to me,” said she, “to leave this place, and reside a
-while in London. I know the reason well—I feel it in my heart
-bitterly. I have been here too long, Mary. My picture on the wall is quite
-enough—he does not want <i>me</i>; but it is of no use to complain:
-I shall be as happy there as I am here, or here as I should be there. The
-time that I spend here seems to me only like one long thought of the hour,
-whether it come soon or late, when all that I endure shall be at an end.
-The only thing I love here, Mary, is that sweet little churchyard,—it
-looks <i>so</i> peaceful! When I am away, my only wish is that of
-returning, though why I should wish to return appears strange. But I
-cannot help it,—I know not how it is; but while I am alive, Mary, it
-seems as though I must haunt what ought to be my place, whether I will or
-not. Welcome or unwelcome, loved or hated, I feel that I am still a wife.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Her unresisting spirit accordingly gave way to the proposed arrangement
-without a murmur, and, with the exception of one or two brief visits which
-she made during the summer season to her unhappy home, she remained, for
-the time of which I have spoken, living apart, as though formally
-separated from her husband, during a lengthened period of some years.
-Under these circumstances, her friend Miss Shirley continued almost
-constantly with her, diverting her mind as much as possible from the
-subject which poisoned the happiness of her whole life, and supporting her
-in sorrow, when to divert reflection was no longer possible.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER VIII.
-</h2>
-<p>
-<i>Mr. Longstaff rides over to Snitterton Lodge to obtain Colin a
-situation.—Miss Maria Sowersoft and Mr. Samuel Palethorpe,—his
-future mistress and master,—described.</i>
-</p>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>T the distance of some five or six miles from Bramleigh, and to the
-south-west of that village, lies an extensive tract of bare, treeless
-country, which some years ago was almost wholly uninclosed—if we
-except a small farm, the property of the Church—together with some
-few scattered patches, selected on account of their situation, and
-inclosed with low stone walls, in order to entitle them to the
-denomination of fields. Owing to the abundance of gorse, or whins, with
-which the uncultivated parts of this district were overgrown, it had
-obtained the characteristic name of “Whin-moor;” while, in order to cover
-the barrenness of the place, and to exalt it somewhat in the eyes of
-strangers, the old farm itself, to which I have alluded, was dignified
-with the title of Snitterton Lodge, the seat of Miss Maria Sower-soft, its
-present tenant.
-</p>
-<p>
-Early one morning in the spring season, Mr. Longstaff mounted his horse in
-high glee, and jogged along the miry by-roads which led towards this
-abode, with the intention of consulting Miss Sowersoft upon a piece of
-business which to him was of the very greatest importance. He had
-ascertained on the preceding evening that Miss Sowersoft was in want of a
-farming-boy; one whom she could have cheap, and from some little distance.
-Indeed, from a combination of circumstances unfavourable to herself, she
-found some difficulty in getting suited from the immediate neighbourhood
-where she was known. If the boy happened to be without friends to
-interfere between him and his employer, all the better. Peace would
-thereby be much more certainly secured; besides that, it would be all the
-greater charity to employ such a boy in a place where, she well knew, he
-would never lack abundance of people to look after him, and to chastise
-him whenever he went wrong. In fact, Miss Maria herself regarded the
-situation as so eligible in the matters of little work, large feeding, and
-excellent moral tutorage, that she held the addition of wages to be almost
-unnecessary; and, therefore, very piously offered less than half the sum
-commonly given elsewhere.
-</p>
-<p>
-Mr. Longstaff had been acquainted with Miss Sowersoft for some years, and
-had enjoyed various opportunities of becoming acquainted with her
-character. He knew very well, that if he had possessed the power to make a
-situation for Master Colin Clink exactly after the model of his own fancy,
-he could not have succeeded better in gratifying his own malice than he
-was likely to do by getting the boy placed under the care of the mistress
-of Snitterton Lodge.
-</p>
-<p>
-Mr. Longstaff arrived at the place of his destination about two hours
-before noon; and, on entering the house, found Miss Sowersoft very busily
-engaged in frying veal cutlets for the delicate palate of a
-trencher-faced, red-clay complexioned fellow, who sat at his ease in a
-home-made stuffed chair by the fire, looking on, while the operation
-proceeded, with all the confidence and self-satisfaction of a master of
-the house. This worthy was the head farming-man, or director-general of
-the whole establishment, not excluding Miss Maria herself; for he
-exercised a very sovereign sway, not only over everything done, and over
-every person employed upon the premises, but also, it was generally
-believed, over the dreary region of Miss Sowersoft's heart. That he was a
-paragon of perfection, and well entitled to wield the sceptre of the
-homestead, there could be no doubt, since Miss Maria herself, who must be
-considered the best judge, most positively declared it.
-</p>
-<p>
-In his youth this useful man had been christened Samuel; but time, which
-impairs cloud-capped towers, and crumbles palaces, had fretted away some
-portion of that stately name, and left to him only the fragmentary
-appellation of “Sammy.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What!” exclaimed Mr. Longstaff in surprise as he caught the sound of the
-frying-pan, and beheld a clean napkin spread half over the table, with one
-knife and fork, and a plateful of bread, laid upon it; “dinner at ten
-o'clock, Miss Sowersoft?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, bless you, no!” replied the individual addressed, “it is only a bit
-of warm lunch I was just frizzling for Sammy. You see, he is out in these
-fields at six o'clock every morning, standing in the sharp cold winds till
-he is almost perished, and his appetite gets as keen as mustard. Really, I
-do say sometimes I wonder how he manages to be so well as he is: but then,
-you know, he is used to it, and I generally do him up a bit of something
-hot about nine or ten o'clock, that serves him pretty well till
-dinner-time.” Then, handing up a dish of cutlets sufficient for a small
-family, she continued,—“Now, Sammy, do try if you can manage this
-morsel while it is hot. Will you have ale, or a sup of warm
-gin-and-water?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Palethorpe was in no hurry to inform her which of the two he should
-prefer; and therefore Miss Sowersoft remained in an attitude of
-expectation, watching his mouth, until it pleased him to express his
-decision in favour of gin-and-water.
-</p>
-<p>
-While Mr. Palethorpe was intently engaged in putting the cutlets out of
-sight, Mr. Longstaff introduced the subject of his visit in a brief
-conversation with the mistress of the house. He gave the lady to
-understand that he had taken the trouble of riding over on purpose to name
-to her a boy, one Colin Clink, who, he believed, would just suit the
-situation she had vacant. He was now about fifteen years old, but as
-strong as an unbroke filly; he had sense enough to learn anything; had no
-friends, only one, in the shape of a helpless mother, so that Miss
-Sowersoft need not fear being crossed by anybody's meddling; and, at the
-same time, he thought that by a little dexterous management she might
-contrive to obtain him for an old song. For several reasons, which it
-would be needless to explain, he himself also strongly wished to see the
-boy comfortably settled in her house, as he felt convinced that it would
-prove highly advantageous to all the parties concerned. He concluded by
-recommending Miss Sowersoft to pay a visit to Bramleigh; when she could
-not only see the boy with her own eyes, but also make such statements to
-his mother as to her might at the time seem fit.
-</p>
-<p>
-To this proposal Miss Maria eventually agreed; and this amiable pair
-parted on the understanding that she should be driven over by Mr.
-Palethorpe in the chaise-cart on the following day. Just as Mr. Longstaff
-was passing out at the door, he was invited in again to take a glass of
-wine; an appeal which he felt no great desire to resist, especially as it
-was immediately reached out and filled for him by the fair hand of the
-hostess herself.
-</p>
-<p>
-“<i>You'll</i> have one?” asked she, as she placed a glass upon the table
-close under the nose of Mr. Palethorpe, “for I'm sure it can do you no
-harm such a day as this.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why, thank 'ee, meesis,” replied he, filling it to the brim, “but I feel
-as if I'd had almost enough.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Stuff and nonsense about enough!” cried Miss Maria; “you are always
-feeling as if you had had enough, according to your account; though you
-eat and drink nothing at all, hardly, considering what you get through
-every day.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Palethorpe looked particularly spiritual at this, as though he felt half
-persuaded that he did actually live like a seraph, and took off his wine
-at a gulp, satisfied, in the innocence of his own heart, that no
-reflections whatever could be made upon him by the steward after the
-verbal warrant thus given by his mistress, in corroboration of the extreme
-abstinence which he endured.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, meesis,” continued Palethorpe, rising from his chair, stretching
-his arms, and opening his mouth as wide as the entrance to a hen-roost, “I
-'ll just go again a bit, and see how them men's getting on. They do nought
-but look about 'em when I arn't there.” And, so saying, he walked out with
-the cautious deliberation of a man just returning from a public dinner.
-</p>
-<p>
-“A man like that,” said Miss Sowersoft, as she gazed after him with looks
-of admiration, “Mr. Longstaff, is a treasure on a farm; and I am sure we
-could never get our own out of this, do as we would, till he came and took
-the direction of it. He is such an excellent manager to be sure, and does
-understand all kinds of cattle so well. Why, his opinion is always
-consulted by everybody in the neighbourhood; but then, you know, if they
-buy, he gets a trifle for his judgment, and so that helps to make him up a
-little for his own purse. I could trust him with every penny I possess,
-I'm sure. He sells out and buys in everything we have; and I never yet
-lost a single farthing by anything he did. Why, you remember that pony of
-Dr. Rowel's; he knocked it to pieces with his hard riding, and one thing
-or another: well, Sammy bought that; and, by his good management of his
-knees, and a few innocent falsehoods, you know, just in the way of trade,
-he sold it again to a particular friend, at a price that more than doubled
-our money.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The steward, weary of Mr. Palethorpe's praises, and despairing of an end
-to them, pulled out his watch, and observed that it was high time for him
-to be in his saddle again. On which Miss Sowersoft checked herself for the
-present, and, having renewed her promise to go to Bramleigh on the morrow,
-allowed Mr. Longstaff to depart.
-</p>
-<p>
-With such a clever master, and eloquent mistress, Colin could scarcely
-fail to benefit most materially; and so he did,—though not exactly
-in the way intended,—for he learned while there a few experimental
-lessons in the art of living in the world, which lasted him during the
-whole subsequent period of his life; and which he finally bequeathed to
-me, in order to have them placed on record for the benefit of the reader.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER IX.
-</h2>
-<p>
-<i>Enhances the reader's opinion of Mr. Palethorpe and Miss Sowersoft
-still higher and higher; and describes an interview which the latter had
-with Mr. Longstaff respecting our hero.</i>
-</p>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HE benevolent Mr. Longstaff lost no time after his return home in
-acquainting Mrs. Clink with the great and innumerable advantages of the
-situation at Snitterton Lodge, which he had been endeavouring to procure
-for her son. Nor did he fail very strongly to impress upon her mind how
-necessary it would be, when Miss Sowersoft should arrive, for her to avoid
-stickling much about the terms on which Colin was to go; because, if by
-any mishap she should chance to offend that lady, and thus break off the
-negotiation, an opportunity would slip through her fingers, which, it was
-highly probable, no concatenation of fortunate circumstances would ever
-again throw in her way.
-</p>
-<p>
-Mrs. Clink's decision not being required before the following morning, she
-passed the night almost sleeplessly in considering the affair under every
-point of view that her anxious imagination could suggest. Colin himself,
-like most other boys, true to the earliest propensity of our nature,
-preferred a life passed in fields and woods, amongst horses, dogs, and
-cattle, to that of a dull shop behind a counter; or of any tedious and
-sickly mechanical trade. So far that was good. What he himself approved,
-he was most likely to succeed in; and with success in field-craft, he
-might eventually become a considerable farmer, or raise himself, like Mr.
-Longstaff, to the stewardship of some large estate. Visions, never to be
-realised, now rose in vivid distinctness before the mental eye of Mistress
-Clink. The far-off greatness of her son as a man of business passed in
-shining glory across the field of her telescope. But when again she
-reflected that every penny of his fortune remained to be gathered by his
-own fingers, the glass dropped from her eye,—all became again dark;
-the very speck of light she had so magnified, disappeared. But sleep came
-to wrap up all doubts; and she woke on the morrow, resolved that Colin
-should thus for the first time be launched upon the stream of life.
-</p>
-<p>
-Early in the afternoon a horse stopped at Mrs. Clink's door, bearing upon
-his back a very well-fed, self-satisfied, easy-looking man, about forty
-years of age; and behind him, on a rusty pillion at least three
-generations old, a lady in black silk gown and bonnet, of no beautiful
-aspect, and who had passed apparently about eight-and-forty years in this
-sublunary world. Mistress Clink was at no loss to conjecture at once that
-in this couple she beheld the future master and mistress of her son Colin.
-Nor can it be said she was mistaken: the truth being that, after the
-departure of Mr. Longstaff from Snitterton Lodge on the preceding day, it
-had occurred to Miss Sowersoft that, instead of taking the chaise-cart, as
-had been intended, it would be far pleasanter to take the longest-backed
-horse on the premises, and ride on a pillion behind Palethorpe. In this
-manner, then, they reached Bramleigh.
-</p>
-<p>
-While Mr. Palethorpe went down to the alehouse to put up his horse, and
-refresh himself with anything to be found there which he thought he could
-relish, Miss Sowersoft was conducted into the house by Fanny; and in a few
-minutes the desired interview between her and Mistress Clink took place.
-</p>
-<p>
-Colin was soon after called in to be looked at.
-</p>
-<p>
-“A nice boy!” observed Miss Sowersoft,—“a fine boy, indeed! Dear!
-how tall he is of his age! Come here, my boy,” and she drew him towards
-her, and fixed him between her knees while she stroked his hair over his
-forehead, and finished off with her hand at the tip of his nose. “And how
-should you like, my boy, to live with me, and ride on horses, and make
-hay, and gather up corn in harvest-time, and keep sheep and poultry, and
-live on all the fat of the land, as we do at Snitterton Lodge?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Very much,” replied Colin; “I should have some rare fun there.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Rare fun, would you?” repeated Miss Sowersoft, laughing. “Well, that is
-finely said. We shall see about that, my boy,—we shall see. Then you
-would like to go back with us, should you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, yes; I 'll go as soon as Fanny has finished my shirts, thank you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And when you get there you will tell me how you like it, won't you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes, ma'am,” continued Colin; “mother has taught me always to say what I
-think. I shall be sure to tell you exactly.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What a good mother!” exclaimed Miss Sowersoft.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I like her better than anybody else in the world,” added Colin.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What, better than me?” ironically demanded Miss Sowersoft.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I don't like you at all, I tell you!” he replied, at the same time
-breaking from her hands; “for I don't know you; and, besides, you are not
-half so pretty as my mother, nor Fanny either.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Miss Sowersoft blushed, and looked confused at this bit of truth—for
-a truth it was, which others would certainly have <i>thought</i>, but not
-have given utterance to.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I will teach you your manners, young Impudence, when I get hold of you,
-or else there are no hazel-twigs in Snitterton plantation!” <i>thought</i>
-Miss Sowersoft, reversing Colin's system, and keeping that truth all to
-herself which she ought to have spoken.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You will take care he is well fed?” remarked Mistress Clink, somewhat in
-a tone of interrogation, and as though anxious to divert her visitor's
-thoughts to some other topic.
-</p>
-<p>
-“As to feeding,” replied Miss Maria, once more verging towards her
-favourite topic, “I can assure you, ma'am, that the most delicious dinner
-is set out every day on my table; with a fine, large, rich Yorkshire
-pudding, the size of one of those floor-stones, good enough, I am sure,
-for a duke to sit down to. If you were to see the quantities of things
-that I put into my oven for the men's dinner, you would be astonished.
-Great bowls full of stewed meat, puddings, pies, and, I am sure, roasted
-potatoes past counting. Look at Mr. Palethorpe. You saw him. He does no
-discredit to the farm, I think. And really he is such a clever, good,
-honest man! He is worth a Jew's eye on that farm, for I never in my life
-could get any man like him. Then, see what an excellent master he will be
-for this boy. In five or six years he would be fit to take the best
-situation that ever could be got for him, and do Sammy a deal of credit,
-too, for his teaching. And as to his being taken ill, or anything of that
-kind, we never think of such a thing with us. People often complain of
-having no appetite, but it requires all that we can do to keep their
-appetites down. A beautiful bracing air we have off the moor, worth every
-doctor in Yorkshire; and I really believe it cures more people that are
-ill than all of them put together.”
- </p>
-<p>
-This discourse was not lost upon Mistress Clink. That lady looked upon the
-character of her visiter as a sort of essence of honesty, hospitality, and
-good-nature; and influenced by the feelings of the moment, she regarded
-Mr. Longstaff as really a friendly man, Miss Sowersoft as the best of
-women, and Colin the most fortunate of boys.
-</p>
-<p>
-Under these circumstances it became no difficult matter for Miss Maria to
-settle the affair exactly to her own mind; and, under the pretence of
-instruction in his business, which was never to be given,—of
-abundance, which he never found,—and of good-nature, which was
-concentrated wholly upon one individual,—to persuade Mistress Clink
-to give the services of her boy on the consideration that, in addition to
-all his other advantages, he should receive twenty-five shillings for the
-first year, and five shillings additional per year afterwards. This
-bargain being struck, it was agreed that Colin should be sent over at the
-earliest convenient time; and Miss Sowersoft took her leave.
-</p>
-<p>
-In order to save the expense of any slight refreshment at the tavern, Miss
-Maria called upon her friend the steward, on the pretence of communicating
-to him the result of her visit. She found that worthy in his dining-room,
-with Master Chatham Bolinbroke Longstaff—whom he was attempting to
-drill in the art of oratory,—mounted upon the table, and addressing
-his father, who was the only individual in the room, as a highly
-respectable and very numerous audience.
-</p>
-<p>
-While this was proceeding here, Miss Æneasina Longstaff, in an adjoining
-room, sat twanging the strings of a harp. On the other side her younger
-sister, Miss Magota, was spreading cakes of Reeve's water-colours upon
-sheets of Whatman's paper, and dignifying the combination with the title
-of drawings: while, above stairs, young Smackerton William Longstaff was
-acquiring the art of horsemanship on a steed of wood; and the younger
-Longstaffs were exercising with wooden swords, with a view to future
-eminence in the army; and, altogether, were making such disturbance in the
-house as rendered it a perfect Babel.
-</p>
-<p>
-Into this noisy dwelling did Miss Sowersoft introduce herself; and, after
-having stood out with great pretended admiration Master Bolinbroke's
-lesson, eventually succeeded in obtaining a hearing from the too happy
-parent of all this rising greatness.
-</p>
-<p>
-Mr. Longstaff congratulated her upon the agreement she had made, but
-advised her to be very strict with the boy Colin, or in a very short time
-she would find him a complete nuisance.
-</p>
-<p>
-“If <i>you</i> do not make something of him, Miss Sowersoft,” said he, “I
-am afraid he'll turn out one of that sort which a parish would much rather
-be without than see in it. He has some sense, as I told you yesterday, but
-that makes him all the more mischievous. Sense is well enough, Miss
-Sowersoft, where parents have discretion to turn it in the right channel,
-and direct it to proper ends; but I do conscientiously believe that when a
-little talent gets amongst poor people it plays the very deuce with them,
-unless it is directed by somebody who understands much better what is good
-for them than they can possibly know for themselves. If you do not hold a
-tight string over that boy Colin, he 'll get the upper hand of you, as
-sure as your head is on your shoulders.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You are right—very right!” exclaimed Miss Maria. “I am sure, if you
-had actually known how he insulted me this morning to my face, though I
-was quite a stranger to him, you could not have said anything more true.
-It was lucky for him that Palethorpe did not hear it, or there would not
-have been a square inch of white skin left on his back by this time. His
-mother cannot be any great shakes, I should think, to let him go on so.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“His mother!” cried Longstaff; “pooh! pooh! Between you and me, Miss
-Sowersoft,—though it does not do to show everybody what colour you
-wear towards them,—there is not a person in the world—and I
-ought not to say it of a woman, but so it is,—there is not a single
-individual living that I hate more than I do that woman. She created more
-mischief in my family, and between Mrs. Longstaff and myself, some years
-ago, than time has been able altogether to repair. I cannot mention the
-circumstance more particularly, but you may suppose it was no ordinary
-thing, when I tell you, that though Mrs. Longstaff knows the charge to
-have been as false as a quicksand; though she has completely exonerated me
-from it, time after time, when we happened to talk the matter over; yet,
-if ever she gets the least out of temper, and I say a word to her, she
-slaps that charge in my face again, as though it were as fresh as
-yesterday, and as true as Baker's Chronicles.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ay, dear!” sighed Miss Maria, “I feared she was a bad one.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“She <i>is</i> a bad one,” repeated Longstaff.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And that lad is worse,” added the lady.
-</p>
-<p>
-“However, we'll cure him, Mr. Longstaff.” Miss Maria Sowersoft laughed,
-and the steward laughed likewise as he added, that it would afford him
-very great pleasure indeed to hear of her success.
-</p>
-<p>
-This matter being settled so much to their mutual satisfaction, Mr.
-Longstaff invited his visiter to join Mrs. Longstaff and her daughters,
-the Misses Laxton and Magota, over a plate of bread and butter, and a
-glass of port, which were always ready when the lessons of the morning
-were finished. This invitation, being the main end and scope of her visit,
-she accepted at once; and after a very comfortable refection, rendered
-dull only by the absence of Palethorpe, she took her leave. Shortly
-afterwards Miss Maria might have been seen again upon her pillion; while
-her companion, mightily refreshed by the relishable drinks he had found at
-the tavern, trotted off his horse towards home at a round speed, for which
-everybody, save the landlady of the inn, who had kept his reckoning, was
-unable to account.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER X.
-</h2>
-<p>
-<i>A parting scene between Colin and Fanny, with the promises they made to
-each other. Colin sets out for his new destination.</i>
-</p>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">S</span>OMETHING closely akin to grief was visible in the little cottage at
-Bramleigh, even at daybreak, on that gloomy morning which had been fixed
-upon for Colin's departure. It was yet some hours before the time at which
-he should go; for his mother and Fanny had risen with the first dawn of
-light, in order to have everything for him in a state of preparation. Few
-words were exchanged between them as they went mechanically about their
-household work; but each looked serious, as though the day was bringing
-sorrow at its close: and now and then the lifting of Fanny's clean white
-apron to her eyes, or the sudden and unconscious fall of big tears upon
-her hands, as she kneeled to whiten the little hearthstone of the house,
-betrayed the presence of feelings in her bosom which put a seal upon the
-tongue, and demanded the observance of silence to keep them pent within
-their trembling prison-place. The mother, whose heart was more strongly
-fortified with the hope of her boy's well-doing, felt not so deeply;
-though the uppermost thoughts in her mind were yet of him, and of this
-change. To-morrow he would be gone. How she should miss his open heart and
-voluble tongue, which were wont to make her forget all the miseries she
-had endured on his account! She would no longer have need to lay the
-nightly pillow for him; nor to call him in the morning again to another
-day of life and action. The house would seem desolate without him; and she
-and Fanny would have to learn how to be alone.
-</p>
-<p>
-His little box of clothes was now carefully packed up; and amongst them
-Fanny laid a few trifling articles, all she could, which had been bought,
-unknown to any one, with the few shillings which had been hoarded up
-through a long season. These, she thought, might surprise him at some
-unexpected moment with the memory of home, and of those he had left there;
-when, perhaps, the treatment he might receive from others would render the
-memory of that home a welcome thing. A small phial of ink, three penny
-ready-made pens, and half a quire of letter-paper, formed part of Fanny's
-freightage: as she intended that, in case he could not return often enough
-on a visit to them of some few hours, he should at least write to tell
-them how he fared.
-</p>
-<p>
-When she was about completing these arrangements Colin entered the room,
-in high spirits at the anticipated pleasures of his new mode of existence.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Is it all ready, Fanny?” he asked; at the same time picking up one end of
-the cord by which the box was to be bound.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” she briefly replied; accompanying that single monosyllable with a
-sudden and convulsive catching of the breath, which told of an overladen
-bosom better than any language.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Then I shall go very soon,” coolly observed Colin,—“there is no
-good in stopping if everything is ready.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Nay, not yet,” murmured Fanny, as she bowed down her head under the
-pretence of arranging something in the box, though, in reality, only to
-hide that grief which in any other manner she could no longer conceal. “We
-can't tell when we shall see you again. Do not go sooner than you can
-help, for the latest will be soon enough.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What, are you crying?” asked Colin. “I did not mean to make you cry;” and
-he himself began to look unusually serious. “It is a good place, you know;
-and, if I get on well, perhaps when I am grown up I shall be able to keep
-a little house of my own; and then you, and my mother, and I, will live
-there, and be as comfortable as possible together. You shall be
-dairy-maid, while I ride about to see that the men do their work; and, as
-for my mother, she shall do as she likes.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Though not much consoled by this pleasing vision of future happiness,
-Fanny could not but smile at the earnestness with which Colin had depicted
-it. Indeed, he could not have offered this balm to her wounded spirit with
-greater sincerity had such a result as that alluded to been an inevitable
-and unavoidable consequence of his present engagement at Snitterton Lodge.
-But Fanny had still less faith in the prognostications of the little seer,
-in consequence of the opinion which she had secretly formed of the
-character of his mistress; notwithstanding the plausibility of her
-conversation. The natural expression of her countenance appeared to be
-that of clouded moroseness and grasping avarice; while a sort of equivocal
-crossing of the eyes, though only occasional, seemed to evince to those
-who could deeply read the human face divine, the existence of two distinct
-and opposite sentiments in her mind, to either of which she could, with
-equal show of truth, give utterance, as occasion might render necessary.
-Over all this, however, and, as it were, upon the surface, her life of
-traffic with the world seemed to have rendered it needful for her to
-assume a character which too often enabled her to impose upon the really
-honest and innocent; though it never left, even upon the most
-unsuspecting, any very deep feeling of confidence in her integrity. Such,
-at least, were the impressions which Miss Sowersoft's appearance produced
-upon the mind of Fanny; though the latter made no other use of them than
-that of taking some little precautions in order to be informed truly in
-what manner she and Colin might agree, which otherwise she would not have
-deemed at all needful.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You will come over to see us every Sunday?” she asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, if they will let me,” replied Colin.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Let you!” But she suddenly checked herself. “And, if not, when they will
-not let you, you will be sure to write, Colin? Now promise me that. Or, if
-anything should be amiss,—if you should not like the place, for
-there is no telling till you have tried it; if it <i>should</i> so happen
-that they do not use you so well as they ought to do, send, if you cannot
-come, directly; and, if there is nobody else to help you that is better
-able,”—Fanny stood up, and clasped both his hands with deep energy
-between her own,—“I will stand by you as long as I live. I am not
-able to do much, but I can earn my living; and, if I work like a slave,
-you shall never want a farthing as long as I have one left for myself in
-the world! I have nursed you, Colin, when I was almost as little as
-yourself; and I feel the same to you as though your mother was mine too.”
- </p>
-<p>
-While Colin, with tears in his eyes, promised implicit compliance with all
-that had been requested of him, he yet, with the candour and warm-hearted
-generosity peculiar to his character, declared that Fanny ought to despise
-him if ever he trusted to the labour of her hands for a single meal, No:
-he would save all his yearly wages, and bring them home for her and his
-mother; and in time he should be able to maintain them both by his own
-labour, without their having any need to struggle for themselves. As for
-the rest, if anybody ill-used him, he was strong enough to stand his own
-ground: or, if not, he knew of another way to save himself, which would do
-quite as well, or better.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What other way? What do you mean?” asked Fanny very anxiously.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, nothing,” said Colin; “only, if people do not treat us properly, we
-are not obliged to stay with them.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But you must never think of running away,” she replied, “and going you do
-not know where. Come back home if they ill-treat you, and you will always
-be safe with us.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Their morning meal being now prepared, the three sat down to it with an
-undefined feeling of sadness which no effort could shake off. Some little
-extra luxury was placed upon the table for Colin; and many times was he
-made to feel that—however unconsciously to themselves—both his
-mother and Fanny anticipated all his slightest wants with unusual
-quickness; and waited upon him, and pressed him to his last ill-relished
-meal, with a degree of assiduity which rendered the sense of his parting
-with them doubly painful.
-</p>
-<p>
-The hour for going at length arrived. At ten o'clock the village-carrier
-called for his little box; and at twelve Colin himself was to set out. The
-last half-hour was spent by his mother in giving him that impressive
-counsel which under such circumstances a mother best knows how to give;
-while Fanny stood by, weeping as she listened to it, and frequently
-sobbing aloud when some more striking observation, some more pointed moral
-truth, or apposite quotation from the sacred volume, escaped the mother's
-lips. Twelve o'clock struck. At a quarter past our hero was crossing the
-fields on the foot-road to Whinmoor; and at about three in the afternoon
-he arrived at the place of his future abode.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER XI.
-</h2>
-<p>
-<i>Describes the greeting which Colin received on his arrival at
-Snitterton Lodge; together with a very serious quarrel between him and Mr.
-Palethorpe; and its fearful results.</i>
-</p>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>S Colin descended a gentle declivity, where the sterility of the moor
-seemed imperceptibly to break into and blend with the woods and the bright
-spring greenery of a more fertile tract of country, he came within sight
-of Miss Sowersoft's abode. Though dignified with the title of a seat, it
-was a small common farmhouse, containing only four rooms, a long dairy and
-kitchen, and detached outhouses behind. To increase its resemblance to a
-private residence, a piece of ground in front was laid out with grass and
-flower-beds. The ground was flanked on either extremity with
-gooseberry-bushes, potato-lands, broad-beans, and pea-rows; and, farther
-in the rear, so as to be more out of sight, cabbages, carrots, and onions.
-The natural situation of the place was excellent. Standing on the north
-side of a valley which, though not deep, yet caused it to be shut out from
-any distant prospect in consequence of the long slope of the hills, the
-little dwelling looked out over a homely but rural prospect of ploughed
-and grass land, and thick woods to the left; over which, when the light of
-the sun was upon it, might be seen the white top of a maypole which stood
-in the middle of the next village; and, still nearer, the fruitful boughs
-of an extensive orchard, now pink and white with bloom; while along the
-foot of the garden plunged a little boisterous and headlong rivulet, worn
-deep into the earth, which every summer storm lashed into a hectoring fury
-of some few days' duration, and, on the other hand, which every week of
-settled fair weather, calmed down into a gentle streamlet,—now
-gathering in transparent pools, where minnows shot athwart the sun-warmed
-water like darts of light; and then again stretching over fragments of
-stone, in mimic falls and rapids, which only required to be enlarged by
-the imagination of the listless wanderer, to surpass in picturesque beauty
-the course of the most celebrated rivers.
-</p>
-<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
-<img src="images/008m.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="008m " /><br />
-</div>
-<h4>
-<a href="images/008.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original Size</i></a>
-</h4>
-<p>
-As Colin entered the garden-gate, he observed the industrious Mr.
-Palethorpe sitting against the western wall of the house,—the
-afternoon being warm and inviting,—smoking his pipe, and sipping the
-remains of a bottle of wine. With his legs thrown idly out, and his eyes
-nearly closed to keep out the sun, he appeared to be imbibing, in the most
-delicious dreamy listlessness, at once the pleasures of the weed and the
-grape, and those which could find their way to his inapprehensive soul
-from the vast speaking volume of glad nature which lay before him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“So, you 're come, are you?” he muttered, without relieving his mouth of
-the pipe, as the boy drew near him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, I am here at last,” replied Colin; adding very good-humouredly, “you
-seem to be enjoying yourself.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And what in th' devil's name is that to you?” he savagely exclaimed;
-“what business of yours is it what I'm doing?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I did not intend to offend you, I'm sure,” said Colin.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You be dang'd!” replied Sammy. “You arn't mester here yet, mind you, if
-you are at home! I have heard a bit about you, my lad; and if you don't
-take care how you carry yourself, you 'll soon hear a little bit about me,
-and feel it an' all, more than we've agreed for at present. Get into th'
-house with you, and let meesis see you 're come.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The blood rose in Colin's face; and tears, which he would have given half
-his life to suppress, welled up in his eyes at this brutal greeting, so
-different to that which he had expected, and to the feelings of happiness
-which a few minutes previously had thronged, like bees upon a flower,
-about his heart.
-</p>
-<p>
-As he passed the wire-woven windows of the dairy at the back of the house,
-he observed a maid within busily employed, in the absence of Miss
-Sowersoft, in devouring by stealth a piece of cheese.
-</p>
-<p>
-Colin knocked at the door; but before the maid could swallow her mouthful,
-and wipe the signs thereof from her lips, so as to fit herself to let him
-in, an ill-tempered voice, which he instantly recognised as that of Miss
-Sowersoft, bawled out, “Sally!—why don't you go to the door?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes, 'um!” bellowed Sally, in return, as she rushed to the place of
-entrance, and threw the door back.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Is Miss Sowersoft at home?” asked the boy.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, it's you, is it?” cried his mistress from an inner room. “Come in,
-come in, and don't keep that door open half an hour, while I am in a
-perspiration enough to drown anybody!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Colin passed through the kitchen into the apartment from which the voice
-had proceeded, and there beheld Miss Sowersoft, with a huge stack of
-newly-washed linen before her, rolling away at a mangle, which occupied
-nearly one side of the room.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why did n't your mother send you at a more convenient time?” continued
-Miss Sowersoft, looking askance at Colin, with her remotest eye cast
-crosswise upon him most malignantly. “If she had had as much to do as I
-have had, ever since she kept house of her own, she would have known
-pretty well before now that folks don't like to be interrupted in the
-middle of their day's work with new servants coming to their places. But I
-suppose she's had nothing to do but to pamper you all her life. I can't
-attend to you now;—you see I 'm up to my neck in business of one
-sort or another.”
- </p>
-<p>
-So saying, she fell to turning the mangle again with increased velocity;
-so that, had our hero even felt inclined to make an answer, his voice
-would have been utterly drowned by the noise.
-</p>
-<p>
-In the mean time Colin stood in the middle of the floor, doubtful what
-step to take next, whether into a chair or out of the house; but, in the
-lack of other employment, he pulled his cap into divers fanciful forms,
-which had never entered into the head of its manufacturer, until at length
-a temporary cessation of his mistress's labours, during which an exchange
-of linen was made in the mangle, enabled him to ask, with some chance of
-being heard, whether he could not begin to do something.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I 'll tell you what to do,” replied Miss Maria, “when I 've done myself,—if
-I ever shall have done; for I am more like a galley-slave than anything
-else. Nobody need sit with their hands in their pockets here, if their
-will is as good as their work. Go out and look about you;—there 's
-plenty of stables and places to get acquainted with before you 'll know
-where to fetch a thing from, if you are sent for it. And, if Palethorpe
-has finished his pipe and bottle, tell him I want to know what time he
-would like to have his tea ready.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Colin very gladly took Miss Sowersoft (who was more than usually sour, in
-consequence of the quantity of employment on her hands) at her word, and,
-without regarding her message to Palethorpe, with whom he had no desire to
-change another word at present, he hastened out of the house, and rambled
-alone about the fields and homestead until dusk.
-</p>
-<p>
-Several times during this stroll did Colin consider and re-consider the
-propriety of walking home again without giving his situation any farther
-trial. That Snitterton was no paradise, and its inhabitants a nest of
-hornets, he already began to believe; though to quit it before a beginning
-had been made, however much of ill-promise stared him in the face, would
-but indifferently accord with the resolutions he had formed in the
-morning, to undergo any difficulties rather than fail in his determination
-eventually to do something, not for himself only, but for his mother and
-Fanny. The advice which the former had given him not twelve hours ago also
-came vividly to his recollection; the sense of its truth, which experience
-was even now increasing, materially sharpening its impression on his
-memory. It was not, however, without some doubts and struggles that he
-finally resolved to brave the worst,—to stand out until, if it
-should be so, he could stand out no longer.
-</p>
-<p>
-Strengthened by these reflections, and relying on his own honesty of
-intention, our hero returned to the house just as all the labourers had
-gathered round the kitchen-grate, and were consuming their bread and
-cheese in the dim twilight. Amongst them was one old man, whose appearance
-proclaimed that his whole life had been spent in the hard toils of
-husbandry, but spent almost in vain, since it had provided him with
-nothing more than the continued means of subsistence, and left him, when
-worn-out nature loudly declared that his days of labour were past, no
-other resource but still to toil on, until his trembling hand should
-finally obtain a cessation in that place which the Creator has appointed
-for all living. What little hair remained upon his head was long and
-white; and of the same hue also was his week's beard. But a quiet
-intelligent grey eye, which looked out with benevolence from under a white
-penthouse of eyebrow, seemed to repress any feelings of levity that
-otherwise might arise from his appearance, and to appeal, in the depth of
-its humanity, from the helplessness of that old wreck of manhood, to the
-strength of those who were now what once he was, for assistance and
-support.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ay, my boy!” said old George, as Colin entered, and a seat was made for
-him near the old man, “thou looks a bit different to me; though I knew the
-time when I was bonny as thou art.”
- </p>
-<p>
-As he raised the bread he was eating to his mouth, his hand trembled like
-a last withered leaf, which the next blast will sweep away for ever. There
-was so much natural kindness in the old man's tone, that instantaneously,
-and almost unconsciously, the comparison between Miss Sowersoft and her
-man Samuel, who had spoken to him in the afternoon, and poor old George,
-was forced upon Colin's mind. In reply to the old man's concluding remark,
-Colin observed, “Yes, sir, I dare say; but that is a long while ago now.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ay, ay, thou's right, boy,—it is a long while. I've seen more than
-I shall ever see again, and done more than I shall ever do again.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mr. Palethorpe, who sat in the home-made easy-chair, while the old man
-occupied a fourlegged stool, burst into a laugh. “You 're right there,
-George,” he retorted. “Though you never did much since I knowed you, you
-'ll take right good care you 'll not do as much again. Drat your idle old
-carcase! you don't earn half the bread you 're eating.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The old man looked up,—not angry, nor yet seeking for pity. “Well,
-perhaps not; but it is none the sweeter for that, I can assure you. If I
-can't work as I did once, it's no fault of mine. We can get no more out of
-a nut than its kernel; and there's nought much but the shell left of me
-now.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes, yes,” returned Palethorpe, “you don't like it, George, and you'll
-not do it. Dang your good-for-nothing old limbs! you 'll come to the
-work'us at last, I know you will!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Nay, I hope not,” observed the old man, somewhat sorrowfully. “As I've
-lived out so long, I still hope, with God's blessing on my hands, though
-they can't do much, to manage to die out.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Come, then,” said Palethorpe, pushing a pair of hard clay-plastered
-quarter-boots from off his feet, “stir your lazy bones, and clean my boots
-once more before you put on th' parish livery.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The old man was accustomed to be thus insulted, and, because he dared not
-reply, to take insult in silence. He laid down the remaining portion of
-his bread and cheese, with the remark that he would finish it when he had
-cleaned the boots, and was about rising from his seat to step across the
-hearth to pick them up, as they lay tossed at random on the floor, when
-young Colin, whose heart had been almost bursting during this brief scene,
-put his hand upon the poor old creature's knee to stop him, and, at the
-same time starting to his own feet instead, exclaimed, “No, no!—It's
-a shame for such an old man as you.—Sit still, and I 'll do 'em.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You shan't though, you whelp!” exclaimed Palethorpe, in great wrath, at
-the same time kicking out his right foot in order to prevent Colin from
-picking them up. The blow caught him in the face, and a gush of blood fell
-upon the hearthstone.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I will, I tell you!” replied Colin vehemently, as he strove to wipe away
-the blood with his sleeve, and burst into tears.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I'm d——d if you do!” said Palethorpe, rising from his chair
-with fixed determination.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I 'll soon put you to rights, young busybody.”
- </p>
-<p>
-So saying, he laid a heavy grip with each iron hand on Colics shoulders.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Then if I don't, <i>he</i> shan't!” sobbed Colin.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Shan't he?” said Palethorpe, swallowing the oath which was upon his lips,
-as though he felt that the object of it was beneath his contempt. “I 'll
-tell you what, young imp, if you don't march off to bed this minute, I 'll
-just take and rough-wash you in the horse-pond.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Miss Sowersoft smiled with satisfaction, both at Mr. Palethorpe's wit and
-at his display of valour.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Do as you like about that,” replied Colin: “I don't care for you, nor
-anybody like you. I didn't come here to be beaten by you!”
- </p>
-<p>
-And another burst of tears, arising from vexation at his own helplessness,
-followed these words.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You don't care for me, don't you?” savagely demanded Palethorpe. “Come,
-then, let's try if I can't make you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-He then lifted Colin by the arms from the floor, with the intention of
-carrying him out; but the farm-labourers, who had hitherto sat by in
-silence, though with rising feelings of indignation, now began to watch
-what was going on.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You shan't hurt him any more,” cried old George, “or else you shall kill
-me first!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Kill you first, you old fool!” contemptuously repeated Palethorpe. “Why,
-if you say another word, I 'll double your crooked old back clean up, and
-throw you and him an' all both into th' brook together!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Then I 'm danged if you: do, and that's all about it!” fiercely exclaimed
-another of the labourers, striking his clenched fist upon his thigh, and
-throwing the chair on which he sat some feet behind him, in his sudden
-effort to rise. “If you dare to touch old George,” he added, with an oath,
-“I 'll knock you down, if I leave this service to-night for it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="linkimage-0007" id="linkimage-0007"> </a>
-</p>
-<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
-<img src="images/213m.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="213m " /><br />
-</div>
-<h4>
-<a href="images/213.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original Size</i></a>
-</h4>
-<p>
-“Ay,—what you an' all, Abel!” cried Palethorpe, somewhat paler in
-the cheeks than he was sixty seconds before. “Why, what will <i>you</i>
-do, lad?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What will <i>I</i> do?” said Abel, “Why, if you don't set that lad loose,
-you cowardly brute, and sit down in quietness, I'll thump you into a jelly
-in three minutes!—Dang you! everybody hates you, and I 'll tell you
-so now; for you are the biggest nuisance that ever set foot on a farm.
-Talk of that old man being idle!—why, what do you call yourself, you
-skulking vagabond? You never touch plough nor bill-hook once a-week, nor
-anything else that's worth a man's putting his hand to. Your business is
-to abuse everybody under you, and sneak after your missis's tail like a
-licked spaniel.—I wish I was your mester, instead of your being
-mine, I'd tickle your ears with a two-inch ash plant every morning, but I
-'d make you do more in a day than you ever did in a week yet!”
- </p>
-<p>
-A blow from Palethorpe's fist drove all the powers of oratory out of Abel,
-and caused him to stagger so suddenly backwards, that he would have
-fallen, had he not caught hold of the back of one of his comrades' chairs.
-All were now upon their feet; while Miss Sowersoft, who hitherto had sat
-petrified at the monstrous discourse of Abel, screamed out that whoever
-struck Palethorpe again should go out of the house that night. But as no
-one interfered farther in the quarrel, on the supposition that he was
-already pretty well matched, the penalty she had proclaimed amounted to
-nothing, since it did not deter the only man who at that moment was likely
-to commit anything so atrocious. Abel had no sooner recovered his balance
-than he made a furious lunge at the head farming-man, which that hero
-attempted but failed to parry. His antagonist, who, though less in weight,
-was yet tall and active, followed up his advantage; and, by a judicious
-and rapid application of his fists, he so far made good his former threat,
-as to give Miss Sowersoft's favourite two tremendous black eyes, and to
-plump his nose up to nearly double its original bulk and lustre, within
-sixty tickings of the clock. Miss Maria had now summoned the maid to her
-assistance, and between them they succeeded in protecting him from further
-vengeance. Nor did they find much difficulty in persuading that courageous
-man to sit down in his chair, and submit to a grand mopping with vinegar
-and hot water, which commenced as soon as active hostilities ceased, and
-did not conclude until nearly two hours afterwards.
-</p>
-<p>
-Long before that time was expired, as no more comfort could be expected by
-the fireside that night, the rustics had moved quietly off to rest, taking
-poor Colin along with them, and directing him to occupy one small bed
-which stood in a room containing two, and informing him at the same time,
-not much to his satisfaction, that Palethorpe always slept in the other.
-Old George shook hands with Colin at the door, bidding him good night, and
-God bless him; and telling him not to care for what had happened, as
-Heaven would reward his goodness of heart at a time when, perhaps, being
-old and feeble, he might most want a friend to help him. As the old man
-said this, his voice failed, and Colin felt a warm tear drop upon his hand
-as it remained clasped in that of the speaker.
-</p>
-<p>
-Colin rushed into his room, and in great distress, resulting from the
-memory of all he had left behind, and the dread of all that might meet him
-here, he fell on his knees by the bed-side.
-</p>
-<p>
-That night the voices of two lonely women, praying for the welfare of a
-still more lonely child, and of a child asking for help in his loneliness,
-ascended to heaven. Their hearts were comforted.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER XII.
-</h2>
-<p>
-<i>Briefly details a slight love-skirmish between Sammy and Miss
-Sowersoft, which took place before Colin, while that youth was supposed to
-be asleep, and also illustrates the manner in which old maids sometimes
-endeavour to procure themselves husbands.—Colin's employment at the
-lodge.—He becomes involved in a dilemma, which threatens unheard-of
-consequences.</i>
-</p>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>FTER Colin had spent some twenty minutes where we left him at the
-conclusion of the last chapter, he crept into bed. The room in which he
-lay being partly in the roof, admitted only of a very small window in the
-upright portion of the wall, and that was placed so close to the floor as
-to throw very little light into the apartment, except during a strong day
-or moon light.
-</p>
-<p>
-The candle being extinguished, Colin could see nothing save a small square
-of dim light where the window was. Below stairs he could hear the
-muttering of voices, as Miss Sower-soft still endeavoured to restore the
-beauty of Mr. Palethorpe's countenance; and in the false floor over his
-head the sound of rats, who were at work in the roof, making noise
-sufficient over their labours to keep awake, during the whole night, any
-person less accustomed to that kind of nocturnal entertainment than the
-inhabitants of country-houses usually are. Colin could usually have slept
-soundly had all the rats in Christendom been let loose in a legion about
-him, but he could not sleep tonight. It was pitch-dark; he was in a
-strange place, with brutal employers, who disliked him only because he had
-offered to relieve a poor old man of some portion of his labours. Who knew—for
-such things had been heard of, and passionate men often take their
-revenge, regardless of consequences—who knew, as Mr. Palethorpe was
-to occupy the adjoining bed, that he might not take advantage of his
-sleep, and steal out in the night to murder him? He might do so, and then
-throw him down the brook, as he had threatened, or perhaps bury him deep
-in the garden, and say in the morning that he had run away.
-</p>
-<p>
-With these, and similar imaginations, did Colin keep himself awake in a
-feverish state of terror during a space of time which to him seemed almost
-endless; for, however groundless and ridiculous such fears may be deemed
-by the stout-hearted reader who peruses this by broad daylight, he must be
-pleased to call to mind that poor Colin was neither of an age nor in a
-situation in which great account is commonly made of probabilities. The
-boy's fancies were at length interrupted by the appearance of something
-more real. A light shot through the chinks of the door, and run an
-ignisfatuus kind of chase round the walls and ceiling, as it advanced up
-stairs in the hands of the maid Sally. Shortly afterwards the door was
-gently pushed open; and while Colin's heart beat violently against the
-bars of its cage, and his breath came short and loud, like that of a
-sleeper in a troubled dream, he saw a huge warming-pan flaring through its
-twenty eyes with red-hot cinders, protruded through the opening, and at
-the other end of the handle Miss Sally herself. She placed her candle down
-in the passage, in order to avoid awakening Colin with its light, and then
-commenced warming Mr. Pale-thorpe's bed. By the time that operation was
-about finished, the feet of two other individuals creeping cautiously up
-were heard on the stairs. Then a voice whispered circumspectly, but
-earnestly, “Now, Sammy, make haste and get in while it is nice and hot, or
-else it will do you no good; and in a minute or two I 'll be up again with
-some warm posset, so that you can have it when you've lain down.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Palethorpe and Miss Sowersoft then entered, the latter having come up
-stairs with no other intention, apparently, than that of frustrating by
-her presence any design which Palethorpe might else have had of rewarding
-Sally for her trouble with a gentle salute upon the cheek. Having seen the
-maid safe out of the chamber, Miss Maria returned down stairs.
-</p>
-<p>
-Colin now began to tremble in earnest; for he indistinctly heard
-Palethorpe muttering words of violence against every one of them without
-exception, and threatening to kick the house upside down before another
-day was over his head. By and by the cautious approach of his footsteps
-towards Colin's bed caused the boy to peep out through the merest chink
-between his eyelids, when he beheld the hideous face of the farming-man
-almost close to his own, with its huge swollen and blackened features
-fixed in an expression of deep malice upon him, and a ponderous clenched
-fist held threateningly near his face, as the horrible gazer muttered
-between his forcibly closed teeth, “I 'll pay you your wages for this,
-young man! I 'll reckon with you in a new fashion before long! You shall
-repent this night to the last end of your life, that shall you! I could
-split your skull now, if you were not asleep. But you may rest this time!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Saying which, he retired to bed. Immediately afterwards Miss Sowersoft
-glided noiselessly in, with a huge basin of treacle-posset in one hand,
-and one of her own linen nightcaps, which she had been heating by the
-fire, in the other. This last-named article she at once proceeded to place
-on Mr. Palthorpe's head, and tie under his chin; because the long tabs
-with which it was supplied would cover his bruised face much better than
-any cap of his own. As Colin glanced from under the clothes he could
-scarcely forbear laughing, in spite of his fears, at the odd combination
-which, his mistress's Cupid suggested,—of a copper-coloured,
-black-bearded face, with the primly-starched, snowy frillings of a woman's
-nightcap.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Is he asleep, Sammy?” asked Miss Maria in a low whisper.
-</p>
-<p>
-“A deal faster than he deserves to be,” replied that worthy.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I will just step across, and see,” observed the lady; and accordingly she
-trod lightly over the floor, in order to assure herself of that fact.
-Colin's closed eyes, his silence, and his quick full breathing, confirmed
-her in the pleasing delusion; and she returned to Pale-thorpe's bedside,
-and deposited herself in a chair with the remark that, under those
-circumstances, she would sit with him a few minutes. As she gazed with
-admiration on the uncouth countenance of Palethorpe, set, like a picture,
-in the white frame of her own cap, and watched him deliberately transfer
-spoonful after spoonful of the posset from the basin into the ill-shaped
-hole in his own face, she heaved a profound sigh, which seemed one moment
-to inflate her bosom like a balloon, and the next to collapse it again as
-closely as poor Cocking's parachute. Palethorpe went on with his posset.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="linkimage-0008" id="linkimage-0008"> </a>
-</p>
-<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
-<img src="images/225m.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="225m " /><br />
-</div>
-<h4>
-<a href="images/225.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original Size</i></a>
-</h4>
-<p>
-“Ay, dear!” she sighed again.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What 's amiss, meesis?” asked Mr. Palethorpe, as soon as the emptied
-basin left him at liberty to speak.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Nothing, Sammy,—nothing. Ay, dear! I'm quite well, as far as that
-goes,” replied Miss Maria very despondingly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But you have summat not right, I'm sure,” persisted he.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, it is of no matter!” she sighed again.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But, what is it?” he a third time asked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It does not signify much,” she again remarked; “it will be all the same a
-few years hence.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You've tired yourself to death with that mangle, I suppose?” said
-Palethorpe.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, no!” she exclaimed in a tone of voice which betrayed some slight
-offence at the vulgarity of his suggestion; “it is a very different sort
-of mangle to that. I am sure I am mangled enough by people's
-indifference.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why, as for that,” replied Sammy, trying to exculpate himself from any
-charge of neglect, “you are meesis of the house, and don't want to be
-pressed to your meat and drink like a visiter.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Meat and drink!” she exclaimed, as though indignant that such animal
-ideas should degrade the present elevation of her soul, “I care nothing
-about meat and drink, not I. You seem as if you could see nothing, though
-people make the plainest allusions that female propriety allows any woman
-to make.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mr. Palethorpe looked astonished as he observed, “Well, I'm sure, meesis,
-you can't say that ever I made any allusions to female propriety.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No,—that's it! there it is!” sighed Miss Sowersoft: “though you get
-all the fat of the land, and are treated more like a gentleman in the
-house than like what you are, you never make the least allusions.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Palethorpe protested that under those circumstances he ought to feel all
-the more ashamed of himself if he did make allusions, or else other people
-would think it very odd of him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, then the truth's out at last, is it?” said Miss Sowersoft, “you have
-other people, have you? Ay, dear!” and she apparently fell a-crying. “It's
-impossible, then, for all the goodness in the world to make any
-impression. Oh!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Saying which she rose up, with her handkerchief to her eyes, and walked
-towards the door, muttering as she went, that since he seemed so very fond
-of other people, other people might feed him, as that was the last posset
-he would ever have from her hands. Mr. Palethorpe endeavoured several
-times to recall her; but Miss Sowersoft's new jealousy of other people had
-rendered her inexorable; and, in the course of a few more seconds her own
-chamber-door was heard to be violently closed and to be most resolutely
-bolted and locked behind her. Our worthy uttered a discontented groan, and
-composed himself to sleep; an example which Colin was enabled to follow
-some long time after, though not before his weariness had completely
-overpowered his fears of danger from the savage sharer of his dormitory.
-</p>
-<p>
-While yet in the middle of his slumber, and busy with a dream of home,
-which placed him again in the bright warm sunshine by the step of his
-mother's door, Colin was suddenly startled by the dragging of every inch
-of bed-covering from off him, and the not very sparing application of a
-hand-whip about his body, while the voice of Palethorpe summoned him,
-under the courteous title of a lazy heavyheaded young rascal, to turn out,
-and get off to work. It was nearly broad day-light; and Colin obeyed the
-summons with considerable alacrity, though not without informing his
-driver at the same time, that there was no occasion for a whip to him,
-because a word would have done quite as well, if not better.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Then you shall have both, to make sure, and plenty of them too,” replied
-Mr. Palethorpe. “If long scores are ever to be cleared off, we should
-begin to pay 'em betimes; and I have a score chalked on for you that will
-want interest before it is discharged, I know. Mark, you will have this
-every morning regularly if you are not down stairs as the clock strikes
-six, neither sooner nor later. If you get up too soon, I shall lay on you
-just the same as if you got up too late,—for a right hour is a right
-hour, and six exactly is our time. I 'll make you feel where your mistake
-was, my boy, when you thought of coming mester here! There's last night's
-job I owe you for yet, and a good price you shall pay for it, or else I
-don't know how to reckon.”
- </p>
-<p>
-A blow on the right ear, and another on the left, immediately after, in
-order to keep his head in the middle, fell to Colin's lot at the
-conclusion of this harangue; and a push at the back of the neck which
-followed directly, enabled him to get out of the room somewhat more
-speedily than he would have done without that assistance. But to all this—though
-taken much in dudgeon—being mildness itself as compared with what
-might have been expected, Colin submitted in a sturdy mood, and without
-saying anything; though he did not forget to promise himself at some
-future day to adjust the balances between them.
-</p>
-<p>
-In consequence of the lack-a-daisical turn which Miss Sowersoft's
-interview with Mr. Palethorpe had taken on the preceding night, that lady
-denied to the household the pleasure of her company at breakfast, as she
-could not meet the ungrateful farm-servant before company again until an
-explanation in private had taken place. Poor old George, all benignity,
-and looking like an elder of some by-gone age, seemed more than usually
-anxious to promote good feeling amongst his fellows, and to restore the
-harmony which had been destroyed the evening before, on his account. But
-Palethorpe was unforgiving, and Abel unrepentant: so that, whatever might
-be the disposition of others, those two characters at least regarded each
-other over the table much in the same manner as, it might be supposed, two
-of Mr. Wombwell's beasts, placed on opposite sides of his menagerie, would
-do when they address each other before a meal-time in that language of the
-eyes of which poets speak, and seem to intimate a very unequivocal desire
-to dine upon one another.
-</p>
-<p>
-That day Master Colin took his first lesson in field-craft, by being set
-to gather stones from off the wheat-sown lands, before the blade was more
-than an inch or two out of the ground. His out-door labours were concluded
-at six in the evening; after which time, as the horses remained to be put
-up, he was drilled in the art of cleaning, bedding, harnessing, and
-managing those animals; and, after that was done, he was allowed, by way
-of amusement, to spend the remaining few hours before bed-time in setting
-rat-traps, or accompanying some one or other of the men in weasel-shooting
-along the banksides and hedges.
-</p>
-<p>
-Some few days elapsed without a reconcilement having taken place between
-Palethorpe and his mistress; during which time our hero fared considerably
-better than otherwise he might have done; partly because Miss Sowersoft's
-attention was not now so completely engrossed as it had hitherto been by
-her favourite; and partly because that very pleasant personage himself,
-while unsupported by the smiles and attentions of his mistress, was by no
-means so formidable in his display of courage as otherwise he would have
-been. The prospect which had broken on Colin's mind on his first
-introduction to Snitterton began accordingly to brighten considerably. He
-liked his employment in the fields, as well as all that followed it, so
-well, that when on the ensuing Sunday he asked for leave to walk over to
-Bramleigh for the purpose of seeing his mother and Fanny, and was at once
-peremptorily denied, he felt that denial as no very great hardship; but
-soon made up his mind to spend the day as pleasantly as he could, and to
-write a letter to Fanny, detailing his thoughts and opinions, his likings
-and dis-likings, instead.
-</p>
-<p>
-These resolves he eventually put into execution: and everything very
-probably might have gone on smoothly enough, had not a circumstance
-utterly unforeseen occurred, whereby he himself was brought into a second
-dilemma with his mistress and Palethorpe, still worse than the previous
-one; and whereby, also, the plain-spoken epistle which he had secretly
-indited for the private and especial perusal of his mother and Fanny, was
-in an evil hour thrown into the hands of the identical parties about whom,
-in its honest simplicity, it told so many truthful libels. But the shame
-of Miss Sowersoft was so deep, and the rage of Palethorpe so high, and the
-consequences of both to Colin so important, that I verily believe it will
-occupy nearly the whole of the next chapter to describe them.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER XIII.
-</h2>
-<p>
-<i>Demonstrates, in the case of Miss Sowersoft and Mr. Samuel Palethorpe,
-the folly of people being too curious about the truth, in matters better
-left in the dark. Colin is subjected to a strict examination, in which the
-judge, instead of the culprit, is convicted. Colin's punishment.</i>
-</p>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">T</span>HAT period of the year having now arrived when the days were materially
-lengthened, as well as increased in warmth, Colin selected an hour or two
-one evening after his day's labour was over, for the purpose of writing
-that letter to his mother and Fanny which he had projected some short time
-before. In order to do this, both by a good light and away from the
-probability of intrusion, he selected a little spot of ground, formed by
-an obtuse angle of the brook, at the bottom of the garden; though divided
-from it by a thick clump of holly, intermingled with hawthorn and wild
-brier. On this grassy knoll he sat down to his task; making a higher
-portion of its slope serve as a natural table to hold his ink and paper.
-</p>
-<p>
-Those vespers which Nature herself offers up to her Creator amidst the
-magnificent cathedral columns of her own tall trees, the loud songs of the
-blackbird and the thrush, and the occasional shrill cry of the
-discontented pewet as it swept in tempestuous circles over the distant
-arable land, were loudly heard around him; while, some two or three yards
-below the spot where he sat, a ridge of large stones, placed across the
-rivulet for the greater convenience of crossing, partially held up the
-water, and caused an eternal poppling murmur, as that portion which forced
-its escape between them, rushed with mimic velocity into the tiny gulf
-that lay some ten or twelve inches below. Colin felt elevated and happy.
-He could scarcely write many complainings there; although he had been so
-disappointed and ill-used on his arrival. At the same time he felt bound
-to tell the truth as far as it went, though not to represent himself as
-materially unhappy in consequence of the behaviour which had been adopted
-towards him. In this task, then, he proceeded, until the hundreds of
-bright twinkling leaves which at first glittered around him in the stray
-beams of sunlight, had all resolved themselves into one mass of broad
-shade; to this succeeded a red horizontal light upon the upper portions of
-the trees to the eastward, as though their tops were tipped with fire;
-which also rapidly faded, and left him, by the time he had about concluded
-his letter, scarcely able any longer to follow with his sight the course
-of his pen upon the paper.
-</p>
-<p>
-Having wrapped his epistle awkwardly up, he placed it in his pocket, and
-was about to emerge from his rural study, when the leisurely tread of feet
-approaching down the garden-path, and the subdued sound of tongues which
-he too well knew, caused him to step back, and closer to the clumps of
-holly, in the hope of getting away unobserved when the individuals whom he
-wished to avoid had passed. They still continued to converse; and the
-first distinct words Colin heard were these:—
-</p>
-<p>
-“I am sure, out of the many, very many excellent offers, I have had made
-me,—excellent offers they were,—I might have done so over and
-over again; but I never intended to be married. I always liked to be my
-own mistress and my own master. Besides that, it does entail so much
-trouble on people in one way or another. Really, when I look on that great
-family of my brother Ted, I am fit to fancy it is pulling him down to the
-ground; and I positively believe it would, if he did not take advantage of
-his situation in trade, and rap and wring every farthing out of everybody
-in any way that he possibly can, without being at all particular;—though
-they are sweet children, they are! Ay, but something must be risked, and
-something must be sacrificed in this world. I mean to say, that when
-people do get married, they must make up their minds to strike the best
-balance between them mutually that they are able. That is my candid
-opinion of things; and, when I look upon them in that light—when I
-think about them in that manner, and say to myself, there is this on this
-side, and nothing on that side, which should I take? I lose my resolution,—I
-don't know; I feel that, by a person to whom I had no objection in any
-other shape, I might perhaps be superinduced to do as others have done,
-and to make a sacrifice, for the sake of spending our lives in that kind
-of domestic combination which binds people together more than anything
-else ever can. I am weak on that point, I know; but then, the home
-affections, as Mr. Longstaff says, constitute a very worthy and amiable
-weakness.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Miss Sowersoft uttered this last sentence in such a peculiar tone of
-self-satisfied depreciation, as evidently proved that she considered
-herself a much more eligible subject, on account of that identical
-weakness which she had verbally condemned, than she would have been if
-wholly free from it.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, meesis,” replied Mr. Palethorpe, with considerate deliberation, “I
-should have no objection to our union, if it so happened that we were not
-doing very well as we are at present; and, while we are making a little
-money to put by every week, I think it is as well just now to let good
-alone. I should like—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, you misunderstand me!” exclaimed Miss Sowersoft; “I did not make any
-allusions to you in particular. Oh, no! I have had very many most
-excellent offers, and could have them now for that matter; but then, you
-see, I was only just saying, as the thought came across my mind, that
-there is something to be said against being married, and something against
-keeping single. I remember the time when I could not bear the very
-thoughts of a man about me; but, somehow, as one gets older we see so much
-more of the world, and one's ideas change almost as much as one's bodies;
-really, I am as different as another woman to what I once was. Somehow, I
-don't know how, but so it happens—Ah!” shrieked Miss Sowersoft,
-interrupting herself in the demonstration of this very metaphysical and
-abstruse point in her discourse, “take hold of me, dear,—take hold
-of me! I've trod on a toad, I believe!”
- </p>
-<p>
-At the same time she threw her arms up to Mr. Palethorpe for protection;
-and, very accidentally, of course, they chanced to alight round that
-worthy's neck. A round dozen of rough-bearded kisses, which even he, stoic
-as he was, could not refrain from bestowing upon her, in order to revive
-and restore her spirits, smacked loudly on the dusky air, and set poor
-little Colin a-laughing in spite of himself.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Who the deuce is that!” earnestly whispered the farming-man. “There's
-somebody under the brook bank!” and, as he instantly disengaged Miss
-Sowersoft from his arms, he rushed round the holly-bushes, and caught fast
-hold of Colin, just as that unlucky lad was making a speedy retreat across
-the rivulet into the opposite orchard. “What! it is you, you young divel,
-is it?” exclaimed he in a fury, as he dragged the boy up the sloping bank,
-and bestowed upon him sundry kicks, scarcely inferior to those of a
-vicious horse, with his heavy, clench-nailed, quarter-boots. “You 're
-listening after your meesis, now, are you? Dang your meddling carcass! I
-'ll stop your ears for you!”
- </p>
-<p>
-And bang went his ponderous fist on Colin's organs of Secretiveness and
-Acquisitiveness, until his head sung again throughout, like a seething
-caldron.
-</p>
-<p>
-“That's right!” cried Miss Sowersoft; “make him feel; drag him up; my face
-burns with shame at him; I'm as hot as a scarlet-fever, I am—a young
-scoundrel!”
- </p>
-<p>
-And Colin was pulled up on to the level of the garden, more like a
-half-killed rat than a half-grown human being.
-</p>
-<p>
-“We'll know how this is, meesis,” said Mr. Palethorpe, when he had fairly
-landed his cargo. “I 'll see to the bottom of it before he goes into th'
-house. He sha'n't have a chance of being backed up in his impudence as he
-was t'other night.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Take him into the thrashing-barn,” advised Miss Sowersoft, “and we can
-have him there in private.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Colin now found breath to put in a protest against the bill of indictment
-which they were preferring against him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I was not listening,” said he; “I was only writing a letter to my mother,
-I 'm sure!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What! at dark hour?” ejaculated Palethorpe with a laugh. “Come along, you
-young liar! you shan't escape that way.” Accordingly he dragged the lad up
-the garden, and behind the house, into the spacious barn, of which Miss
-Sowersoft had spoken: and, while that innocent lady went to procure a
-lantern, her favourite held him tightly by the collar; save when,
-occasionally, to beguile the time until her return, he regaled him with a
-severe shake, and an additional curse or two upon his vagabond and
-mischievous carcass.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Do you think he knows anything about it?” asked Miss Sowersoft aside to
-Palethorpe, as she entered the barn, and the dim light of her horn-lantern
-summoned to view the spectral appearances—rather than the distinct
-objects themselves—of various implements of husbandry, and of heaps
-of thrashed wheat and straw scattered around.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Well, I don't know; but I should think not much,” said he.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I hope not,” rejoined his mistress, “or it will get into everybody's
-mouth. But we will question him very closely; we 'll have it out of him by
-hook or by crook.”
- </p>
-<p>
-She then held a broken side of the lantern a little above Colin's face, in
-order to cast the better light upon it; and proceeded to question the
-culprit.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Now, before I ask you a single question, promise to tell me the truth,
-and nothing but the truth. Now, mark; I shall know whether you speak the
-truth or not, so it will be of no use to try to deceive me. Tell me
-whether you heard me and Mr. Palethorpe talking in the garden; and whether
-you saw him pick me up so very kindly when I slipped down; and then tell
-me for what purpose you were standing behind those trees? No falsehoods,
-now. The truth, nothing else. Take care; because if you say anything
-untrue I shall know it directly; and then woe be to you for your trouble?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I always do tell truth,” replied Colin, crying, “without being frightened
-into it that way. I'm sure I had only been writing a letter to my mother
-and Fanny; and I stood there because I did not want anybody to catch me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And why did not you want anybody to catch you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why, because I didn't,” answered Colin.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Because you didn't!” exclaimed Mr. Palethorpe, as he emerged from out the
-shadow of Miss Sowersoft's figure; “what answer is that, you sulky
-ill-looking whelp? Give meesis a proper answer, or I 'll send my fist in
-your face in a minnit!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Miss Sowersoft put her hand on Palethorpe's arm to keep him back,—not
-so much to prevent him carrying his threat into execution, as because his
-interference seemed to imply a doubt of her own abilities in worming all
-she wanted to know out of the boy before her.
-</p>
-<p>
-“But <i>why</i> didn't you?” she asked again, more emphatically.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Because they might want to read my letter.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh,—there's something in it not to be seen, is there?” continued
-the inquisitor, as her cheeks reddened with fears of she knew not what.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It is all truth, every word of it!” contended Colin.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ay, ay, my lad, we must see about that. I cannot let you send a whole
-pack of falsehoods over to Bramleigh, and make as much mischief in my
-family as your mother made in Mr. Longstaff's. It is needful to look after
-your doings. Is the letter in your pocket?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Having received an answer in the affirmative, she directed Palethorpe to
-search him for it; an operation which that amiable individual very soon
-concluded by drawing the desired document from his trowsers.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, this is it, is it?” said Miss Sowersoft, as she partly opened it to
-assure herself. “Well, well,” folding it up again: “we'll read this by and
-by. Now, what did you hear us talking about? If you say anything shameful,
-now, and we shall know whether it is true or not directly that we hear it,—if
-you do not say something—a—. You know what Scripture tells
-you, always to speak well of your mistress and master. Be careful, now.
-What did we say?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Please, 'um,” replied Colin, “you said, that when people get married they
-strike a balance between them; and that if one thing was on one side, and
-nothing on the other, you should lose your resolution, and make a
-sacrifice of the little you possess, whatever it is.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, you little wretch!” ejaculated Maria. “Go on with your lies, go on!
-and you <i>shall</i> have it on your shoulders when you have done. What
-else, you vile toad?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Colin stood mute.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What next, I say!” stormed the lady, with a furious stamp of the right
-foot.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why, then, mum,” added Colin, “I heard Palethorpe kiss you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Kiss me!—kiss me, you young rascal!” and the face of Miss Sowersoft
-became as red as the gills of one of her own turkey-cocks at the
-discovery. “If you dare to say such a thing as that again, I 'll strip the
-very skin off your back,—I will, you caitiff! Kiss <i>me</i>,
-indeed! A pretty tale to tell as ever I heard!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'm sure it's true,” blubbered the boy; “for I heard it ever so many
-times.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh!” exclaimed the virtuous Miss Sowersoft, “so we have got it out of you
-at last. What!—your mother has set you to watch your mistress, has
-she? That's all her schooling, is it? But Mr. Palethorpe shall learn you
-to spy about this house,—He shall, you dog!”
- </p>
-<p>
-That worthy was now about to pounce upon his victim, but was again
-arrested by his mistress.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Stop! stop!—we have not done yet,” pulling the letter before
-mentioned from her bosom; “there is a pretty budget here, I 'll be bound
-to say. After such as this, we may expect anything. There is nothing too
-bad for him.”
- </p>
-<p>
-While Palethorpe held the culprit fast by one hand, and the lantern in the
-other, he and Miss Sowersoft enjoyed the high gratification of perusing
-together the said letter which follows:—
-</p>
-<p>
-<i>“Dear Mother and Fanny,</i>
-</p>
-<p>
-<i>“As I promised to write if they would not let me come on Sunday, which
-they did not do, I take this opportunity after tea to tell you all about
-it. I like this house very well, and have caught fourteen rats with traps
-of my own setting, besides helping Abel to shoot forwards, which he fired
-at, and I looked on while. I can harness a horse and curry him down
-already. But when I first got here I did not think I should like it at
-all, as Palethorpe flew at me like a yard-dog because I spoke to him, and
-Miss Sowersoft was mangling, and as cross as patch. I did think of coming
-home again; but then I said to myself, 'Well, I'll lay a penny if I do,
-mother will send me back; so it will be of no use, and I shall have my
-walk for nothing.' I do not like mistress a bit. When she was at our
-house, she told you a pack of the biggest fibs in the world. I never beard
-of a bigger fibber than she is in my life; for all the good victuals she
-made such a bother about are made up for Palethorpe. He is like a
-master-pig in a sty, because he crunches up the best of everything.
-Mistress seems very fond of him, though; for after we had had a shindy the
-first night, and Palethorpe made my nose bleed, I went to bed, and saw her
-tie her nightcap on his head, and feed him with a posset. I could not help
-laughing, he looked such a fool. Then I heard her courting him as plain as
-sunshine; for she tries as hard as she can to get him to marry her; but I
-would not have her, if I were him, she is so very mean and pretending. But
-then he is a savage idle fellow himself: and as Abel said to him, said he,
-'You never touch plough nor bill-hook once a-week,'—no more he does.
-Our mistress backs him up in it, and that is the reason. I shall come over
-as soon as I can, as I want to see you and Fanny very much indeed.</i>
-</p>
-<p>
-<i>“Yours affectionately,</i>
-</p>
-<p>
-“Colin Clink.”
- </p>
-<p>
-At all events the murder was now out, and no mistake. The letter dropped
-from Miss Sowersoft's hand, and she almost fainted in Mr. Palethorpe's
-arms, as she faintly sighed, “Oh!—he 'll be the death of me!”
- </p>
-<p>
-When Miss Sowersoft was somewhat recovered, Palethorpe turned in great
-wrath towards Colin, uttering a more fearful asseveration than I can
-repeat, that if he could make no better use than that of his eyes when he
-went to bed, he would knock them out of his head for him. Seizing the boy
-ferociously by the nape of the neck with one hand, and a portion of his
-clothes with the other, he lifted him from the ground, like a dog by head
-and tail, and carried him straight into the yard, dashing him violently
-into the horse-trough, very much to the satisfaction of the indignant Miss
-Sower-soft, who had suddenly recovered on beholding this spectacle, and
-followed her favourite with the lantern. While Palethorpe held him down in
-the trough, Miss Sowersoft proceeded with great alacrity to pump upon him
-very vigorously until her arms were tired.
-</p>
-<p>
-The boy's cries soon brought several of the domestics of the establishment
-together. Sally rushed out of her kitchen inquiring what Colin had done to
-be ducked.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Spying after the secrets of other people!” exclaimed the wrathful Mr.
-Palethorpe.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Spying!” echoed the maid.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, spying!” added Miss Sowersoft, in corroboration of Palethorpe's
-statement. “We have caught him out, according to his own confession, in
-spying after the secrets of everybody about the premises, and sending it
-all in writing to his mother!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ay! I'd souse him well!” observed Sally, who began to fear that some of
-her own secret interviews with Abel had very probably been registered in
-black and white, for the edification of the good people of Bramleigh.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What has he been a-gate of?” asked Abel, who had come up just in time to
-catch the end of the above conversation.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, he's been watching you come into the dairy when I was there!” added
-Sally, accompanying her remark with a broad simper, and a sly blushing
-glance at Abel, which caused Abel to shuffle on his feet, and dangle his
-legs about, as though at a loss what to do with them.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Then a sheep-washing will do him no harm for sheep's eyes,” rejoined
-Abel, rounding off his sharp-pointed wit with a broad laugh.
-</p>
-<p>
-When the ducking was concluded, they drove him, bruised, drenched, and
-weeping, into the kitchen. Old George, who had been a distant and silent
-spectator of the scene, stood at the door as he entered.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ay, poor boy!” said he, pityingly, as the child passed by him, “they'd
-more need to nurse him by the fireside than half drown him this way. It's
-sad wages—sad wages, indeed, for a nest-babe like him! But they
-don't heed what I say. I'm an old man, and have no right to speak.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Miss Sowersoft seized the earliest opportunity she could to place Colin's
-letter upon the fire, which she did with a spoonful of salt upon it, in
-order that its flames should be of the same colour as its contents.
-</p>
-<p>
-In the mean time Colin had shuffled off his mortal coil of wet clothes,
-and in a moist skin gone silently off to bed. At supper-time old George
-carried him up the pint of warm ale which had been served out for himself.
-Colin accepted it, less because he relished it, than because he knew not
-how at that moment to refuse the hand by which it was offered; and within
-ten minutes afterwards, notwithstanding all his troubles, he fell into a
-sound state of repose.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER XIV.
-</h2>
-<p>
-<i>The benefits of being soused in a horse-trough.—Some farther
-specimens of Miss Sowersoft's moral excellence.—An unlooked-for
-discovery is partially made, which materially concerns Miss Fanny Woodruff
-and Dr. Rowel.</i>
-</p>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">O</span>N the following morning Palethorpe arose, and finding Colin still asleep,
-was proceeding, whip in hand, to help him up according to custom, when, as
-he turned down the clothes that almost enveloped the child's head, the
-unusual appearance of his countenance arrested the man's attention as well
-as his hand. His veins were swollen with rapid bounding blood, and his
-heart thumped audibly in its place, and with doubly accelerated motion, as
-though eagerly hastening to beat out its appointed number of pulsations,
-and leave the little harassed life it contained again free from the pains
-and vexations of this lower world.
-</p>
-<p>
-Something like remorse passed for a moment over the man's dark countenance
-as he gazed. What had they done to him?—what was amiss? He covered
-the boy carefully up again, and hastened down stairs to communicate the
-news to Miss Sowersoft.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh,—it's all nonsense!” she exclaimed, on hearing all that Mr.
-Palethorpe had to say about it. “The lad's got a bit of a cold,—that's
-all. I 'll make him a basin of milk, with a little of that nice feverfew
-out of the garden boiled in it, and then if you wake him up, and let him
-take that, it will stick to his ribs, and do him an amazing deal of good.”
- </p>
-<p>
-But as there was no hurry about such a matter, Miss Sowersoft very
-leisurely took her own breakfast before she set about carrying her very
-charitable project into execution. When the milk, with some sprigs of
-feverfew boiled in it, was ready, Sally was sent up stairs with it. She
-found Colin awake, but weak and ill; and, much to her surprise, on
-presenting him with a lump of bread and the basin of milk, which more
-closely resembled a light green wash for stencilling walls, than any true
-Christian dish, he could neither touch nor bear the sight of either.
-</p>
-<p>
-“La!” cried Sally, “why, I never heard anything like it, as neither to eat
-nor drink! Come, cram a bit down your throat with your finger, and see if
-it will not get you an appetite. Why, <i>I</i> can eat and drink very
-well, and why shouldn't you? Come, come, don't be soft, and refuse what
-Gor-amighty sends you, while it lies in your power to get it. I'm sure
-this milk is very nice, indeed.”
- </p>
-<p>
-In corroboration of her statement she took a sip. But Colin shook his head
-feebly and heavily, and declared it would do him no good. He could take
-nothing,—he wanted nothing, but to be left alone, that he might
-think and wish, and weep as he thought and wished that he were but once
-more at home, or that his mother or Fanny were but with him.
-</p>
-<p>
-Shortly after Sally had returned below stairs, and communicated the
-astounding intelligence that Colin would take neither bit nor sup, Miss
-Sowersoft herself crept up stairs. She assured him he had plenty of colour
-in his face; that there could not be anything particularly amiss with him;
-advised him against putting on pretences of sickness, lest he should be
-struck with sickness in reality as a judgment on him, like the children
-that mocked the prophet Elijah, and were eaten up by bears; and concluded
-by insinuating, that if he were tickled with a whip-thong, he would in all
-probability be a great deal better directly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Send me home!” bitterly ejaculated Colin, bursting into tears. “Put me in
-a cart, and send me home!—I want to go home!—I must go home!—Mother'!—Fanny!—Oh,
-come to me!—I shall die—I shall die!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Miss Sowersoft felt rather alarmed; but reflecting that there was nothing
-like showing a little spirit and resolution when young folks took such
-whims as those into their heads, she severely taunted him with being
-home-sick and mother-sick; told him that neither she nor Fanny, if they
-were present, could do more for him than she could; and threatened that,
-if he did not leave off that hideous noise, which was disgraceful to a
-great lad of his age, she would tie a stocking round his mouth, and stop
-him that way. There being no great consolation in all this, it is not
-surprising that our hero made such slight application of it, that, for the
-matter of any difference it made in him, Miss Sowersoft might just as well
-have tied her stocking across her own mouth, or stuffed it in, which ever
-she might prefer, as have given utterance to it. She was therefore
-constrained to submit to the lad's own way, and to confess in her own mind
-that there really was something more amiss with him than at first she had
-believed.
-</p>
-<p>
-By mid-day he had become a great deal worse; and in the afternoon, as his
-disorder still rapidly increased, Mr. Palethorpe was despatched on
-horseback to Bramleigh, for the purpose of consulting Dr. Rowel.
-</p>
-<p>
-About six o'clock in the evening he returned home, bringing with him a
-packet of white powders in little blue papers, tied together much in the
-fashion of that little pyrotechnic engine of mischief usually denominated
-a cracker.
-</p>
-<p>
-Certain fears which had by this time crept over the mind of Miss Sowersoft
-caused her to be more than usually charitable and eager in her inquiries
-after the doctor's opinion about Colin: but the answers she received were
-neither very conclusive nor very satisfactory. She was, in fact, obliged
-to seek for consolation, for the present, in the belief, which she
-struggled hard to impress firmly upon herself, that the boy's illness had
-arisen wholly in consequence of his sitting on the ground so late in the
-evening to write his letter; and that his subsequent sousing in the
-horse-trough had no connexion whatever with it; as he might very easily
-have fallen accidentally into a river instead, and received no more harm
-from it than he had from the aforesaid pumping.
-</p>
-<p>
-Daring several subsequent days the boy continued in such a state as filled
-his mistress with continual apprehensions lest her house should eventually
-be troubled with his corpse. About his death, considering that event
-solely by itself, she cared very little; he might live or die, just as his
-constitution inclined him, for aught she would choose between the two;
-only, in case he should not survive, it would annoy her very much indeed
-to have all the trouble of getting another body's corpse prepared for the
-ground, without in all likelihood ever receiving from Mrs. Clink a single
-halfpenny in return for it. She mentioned her apprehensions to Mr.
-Palethorpe, who replied that it was all silly childishness to allow
-herself to be imposed on by her own good feelings, and that to talk about
-humanity would never do for folks so far north as they were. On this
-unquestioned authority Miss Sowersoft would inevitably have acted that
-very day, and removed our hero, at any risk, to Bramleigh, in order to
-give him a chance of dying comfortably at home, had not fortune so ordered
-it, that, while preparations were being made for taking him from a bed of
-fever into an open cart which stood ready in the yard, Dr. Rowel chanced
-to ride up, and at once put his veto upon their proceedings. Not that the
-doctor would by any means have purposely ridden half the distance for the
-sake of such a patient; but as chance not unfrequently favours those whom
-their own species despise, it happened that his professional assistance
-had that afternoon been required in the case of a wealthy old lady in the
-neighbourhood; and, as the doctor's humanity was not, at all events, so
-very short-legged as not to be able to carry him one quarter of a mile
-when it lay in his way, he took Snitterton Lodge in his circuit, for the
-sake of seeing Master Colin.
-</p>
-<p>
-It will readily be supposed that during these few days, (as the boy had
-not made his appearance at home on the previous Sunday, according to
-conditional promise,) both his mother and Fanny had almost hourly been
-expecting to hear from him. Nor had various discussions on the cause of
-his silence been by any means omitted. Mrs. Clink attributed it to the
-fact of his having found everything so very pleasant at Snitterton Lodge,
-that he really had had neither time nor inclination to wean himself for a
-few short hours from the delights with which he was surrounded; but Fanny,
-whose mind had been dwelling ever since his departure upon the dismal
-forebodings with which Miss Sowersoft's appearance had filled it,
-expressed to Mrs. Clink her full belief that something had happened to
-Colin, or he would never have neglected either to come himself, or to
-write, as he had promised.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I am sure,” she continued, very pensively, “it has made me so uneasy all
-this last week, that I have dreamed about him almost every night.
-Something has happened to him, I am as certain as if I had seen it; for I
-can trust to Colin's word just as well as though he had taken his oath
-about it. However, I will walk over this afternoon and see; for I shall
-never rest until I know for a certainty.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Walk, fiddlesticks!” exclaimed Mrs. Clink. “If you go over there in that
-suspicious manner, as though you fancied they had murdered him, it is a
-hundred to one but you will affront Miss Sowersoft, and get Colin turned
-out of a situation that may be the making of him. Stay where you are—do;
-and if you cannot make anything, do not mar it by interfering in a matter
-that you know nothing about. I have had trouble enough with him one way or
-another, without his being brought back on my hands, when he is as
-comfortable, I dare say, as he possibly can be.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Though the latter remark was evidently intended to apply to Fanny's
-supposed injudicious solicitude for Colin's welfare, the girl passed it by
-without observation. She hurried her day's work forwards, in order to gain
-the necessary time for making her projected visit; and at about the middle
-of the afternoon suddenly disappeared from the eyes of Mrs. Clink, without
-informing her previously touching her place of destination.
-</p>
-<p>
-While Dr. Rowel was yet in attendance on Colin, Fanny arrived and
-introduced herself to Miss Sowersoft, as she was employing herself in
-picking the pips off a handful of cowslips which lay in her lap. On seeing
-Fanny thus unexpectedly, and under circumstances which she felt would
-require some very ingenious explanation or evasion, her countenance seemed
-to darken as though a positive shadow had been cast upon it. A struggle
-between her real feelings and her consciousness of the necessity to
-disguise them ensued; and in the course of a few brief seconds the
-darkness of her countenance passed away, and she affected to salute her
-unwelcome visitor with much cordiality.
-</p>
-<p>
-In reply to Fanny's inquiry respecting Colin, Miss Sowersoft stated that
-he was improving very nicely under Mr. Palethorpe's tuition, although they
-had had some trouble to make him do as he was bid; that he had enjoyed the
-most extraordinary good health until a few days ago, when he took a little
-cold, which had made him rather poorly.
-</p>
-<p>
-“There!—I was sure of it!” cried Fanny, interrupting her; “I said so
-to his mother before I came away. I knew there was something amiss, or he
-would have written to us before now. And how did he take such a cold, Miss
-Sowersoft?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Take cold!—why, you know there are a hundred different ways of
-taking cold, and it is impossible sometimes for even a person himself to
-say how he took it. I am sure Palethorpe gets tremendous colds sometimes,
-and how he gets them is a perfect miracle. But, on my word, cold is so
-insinuating, that really, as I say sometimes, there is not a part but it
-will find its way to at one time or another.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes—but where is Colin now?—because I shall want to see him
-before I go back.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, he is somewhere about the house,” replied Miss Sowersoft, with an
-unprecedented degree of effrontery; “but your seeing him is not of the
-least consequence. It cannot cure his cold; and as for anything else, it
-would very likely make him all the more discontented when you were gone
-again. If you take my advice, you would not see him, especially when I can
-tell you everything just the same as though you saw it yourself.”
- </p>
-<p>
-At this moment the foot of the doctor, as he groped his way down stairs,
-was overheard by the speaker. She started up instantly, and endeavoured to
-hurry Fanny out of the room before that professional gentleman should
-enter it; but her manoeuvre failed, and before Miss Sowersoft could
-caution him to be silent the doctor remarked, in a sufficiently loud tone
-to be heard distinctly by both, that unless the boy was taken great care
-of, there was little chance left of his recovery.
-</p>
-<p>
-“What boy?” exclaimed Fanny, rushing forward. “What <i>is</i> he so ill as
-that? For God's sake let me see him!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Concluding from the direction in which the doctor had come that Colin was
-somewhere in the regions above, she flew rather than walked up stairs,
-without waiting for an invitation or a conductor, and soon threw her arms
-in an ecstasy of grief upon his neck.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Oh, Colin! God has sent me on purpose to save you! <i>Do</i> be better,
-and you shall go home again very soon.”
- </p>
-<p>
-But Colin could only put up his pallid arms in an imploring action, and
-cry for very joy, as he gazed in the face of one of those only two who had
-occupied his das and night thoughts, and been the unconscious subjects of
-his unceasing and most anxious wishes.
-</p>
-<p>
-The trouble of this first meeting being over, some more quiet conversation
-ensued; and, although almost too ill and weak to be allowed to talk, Colin
-persisted in stating briefly to the horror-stricken Fanny the kind of
-reception he had met with on his arrival, his treatment afterwards, the
-taking of his letter from him, and the brutal conduct which had caused his
-present illness. The girl stood silent, merely because she knew not what
-to think, what to believe, what to doubt; and was besides utterly lost for
-words to express properly her strangely mingled thoughts. It was almost
-impossible—incredible! Why could they do it? There was no cause for
-it—there <i>could</i> be no cause for it. Human nature, and
-especially human nature in the shape of woman, was incapable of anything
-so infamous. Yet Colin was sensible—he had told an intelligible
-tale; and, most true of all, there he lay, a mere vision of what he was so
-brief a time ago,—a warranty plain and palpable that grievous wrong
-had been endured. Her brain was absolutely bewildered—she looked
-like one hovering on the doubtful boundary between sense and insanity. She
-cast her eyes around for surety—on the bed—at <i>him</i>, A
-burst of tears, as of a spring that for the first time breaks its bounds,
-succeeded,—and then another and another, as she fell on her knees
-and buried her face in the clothes that covered him.
-</p>
-<p>
-By and by, the doctor and Miss Sowersoft were present in the room with
-her. Fanny raised her head and beheld Colin's mistress attempting, in the
-presence of the doctor, to do the attentive, by adjusting the sheet about
-the boy's neck to keep off the external air.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Do not touch him!” exclaimed Fanny, springing to her feet; “he shall have
-nothing from your hands!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ay!” cried the doctor: “young woman, what now, what now?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“What now? Sir, you may well say <i>what now!</i> I have heard all about
-it—Colin has told me all. Miss Sowersoft has nearly killed him, and
-now wants to show, because <i>you</i> are here, how kind and good she is!”
- </p>
-<p>
-So saying, Fanny resolutely set about making the arrangement which Miss
-Sowersoft had contemplated with her own hands.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Why—what—who is this young woman?” asked the doctor, somewhat
-astonished at the unexpected scene which had just passed before him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Nobody!” replied Miss Sowersoft; “she is only Mrs. Clink's servant, and a
-pert impudent hussy, too, as you have heard.”
- </p>
-<p>
-At the same time she looked in the doctor's face, and endeavoured to smile
-contemptuously, though it “came off” in such a manner as would inevitably
-have frightened anybody less accustomed than was Dr. Rowel to witness the
-agonies of the human countenance.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, sir,” added Fanny, “I am only a servant; but I am a <i>woman</i>,
-whether servant or mistress. I nursed this lad when I was but six years
-old myself, and have taken care of him ever since. She shall not drown
-him, though she thinks she will!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“<i>Me</i> drown him!” exclaimed Miss Sowersoft in feigned amazement.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” replied Fanny, “<i>you</i> drown him. If you had not half murdered
-him in that trough, he would never have been here now.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“<i>Do</i> let us go down stairs, doctor,” observed Miss Sowersoft; “such
-rubbish as this is not worth hearing.” And she made her way towards the
-door.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Where is that letter?” cried Fanny eagerly, fearful lest the lady to whom
-she addressed herself should escape.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Pshaw! nonsense! don't catechise me!” replied Miss Sowersoft, as she
-tripped down stairs; while the doctor, half in soliloquy and half
-addressing Miss Sowersoft, remarked, in allusion to Fanny, “She's a damsel
-of some spirit too!” Then addressing the girl herself, “Are you the little
-girl I saw at Mrs. Clink's when this boy was born?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes, sir, I am,” answered Fanny, as her passion sunk almost to nothing,
-and she blushed to be so questioned.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ah, indeed!” cried Doctor Rowel. “Well, I should not have thought it.
-Why, you are quite a fine young woman now. Dear-a-me! I had quite lost
-sight of you. I could not have believed it. Humph!” And the doctor
-surveyed her fair proportions with something of astonishment, and a great
-deal of satisfaction. To think that from such a little pale, half-fed,
-unhappy thing of work and thought beyond her years as she then was, there
-should have sprung up the full-sized, the pretty featured, and naturally
-genteel-looking girl now before him! But then, he had not that benefit
-which the reader enjoys, of reflecting how worldly circumstances, how
-poverty and plenty, sway the tempers of mankind; and that, as Mistress
-Clink's circumstances improved, so had Fanny improved likewise; and from
-seven or eight years old upwards, Fanny had enjoyed a much more
-comfortable home than, on his first introduction to her, might reasonably
-have been expected.
-</p>
-<p>
-Doctor Rowel resumed his conversation.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And how came you to be put to service so very early? for you had not, if
-I remember rightly, either health or strength to recommend you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Colin's eyes as he lay were fixed, as it might have been the eyes of a
-picture, on the doctor's countenance.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I don't know, I'm sure, sir,” replied Fanny: but after a few moments'
-hesitation, added, “I suppose it was because I had no friends.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No friends!” the doctor repeated,—“why, where's your father and
-mother?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I never knew them, sir.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Indeed! never knew them!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No, sir!” and Fanny sobbed at the very recollection of her childhood's
-helplessness.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Humph!” ejaculated the doctor; “you scarcely seem to have been born for a
-servant. Where did Mrs. Clink find you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I do not know, sir. She never told me.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah!—oh! oh!—well! It's odd she never told you. So you do not
-know either who your father, or your mother, or your friends were?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No, sir,—I do not. But I remember———”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well,—go on,—you remember,—what do you remember? where
-did you come from? Do you know that?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I think, from Leeds, sir.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Leeds!” exclaimed the doctor; “and what else do you remember?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I can remember, sir,—though I can but just remember it,—that
-my father was taken away from me once, and I never saw him again.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“And, what's your name?” continued the doctor in evident excitement.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Fanny Woodruff,” she replied.
-</p>
-<p>
-The doctor's features became pale and rigid, and his eyes were fixed upon
-her almost immoveably.
-</p>
-<p>
-“God bless my soul!” he slowly ejaculated, as he rose to leave the room;
-“she should have been lost, or dead!”
- </p>
-<p>
-But he turned again when at the head of the stairs.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Now, young woman,—if you can keep a secret,—tell nobody, not
-even your mistress, what has passed. Take no notice; and perhaps I may do
-something for you. But I thought we had seen the last of your face
-seventeen years ago!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Fanny and Colin were left alone.
-</p>
-<p>
-“He knows something about me!” was the first thought that arose in Fanny's
-mind. But she did not utter it, and only asked very softly, if Colin had
-heard what the doctor said.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” he replied, “and I shall never forget it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But, say nothing,” added the girl: “he promised to do something for me. I
-wonder what it is!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“So do I,” added Colin; “something worth having, I dare say.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Thus they talked till evening. Colin said how much better he felt since
-she had been with him; and Fanny declared she would not leave him again
-for another day, until he was well; and, when he was well, then she would
-get him away from such unfeeling people, even though she had to go down on
-her knees to beg another situation for him elsewhere.
-</p>
-<p>
-When, some little time afterwards, Fanny went down stairs, and informed
-the mistress of the house of her resolution to stay and attend on Colin
-until he was better, that amiable creature replied, “I think you won't
-then. We have not any room to spare. As if I was going to keep beds at
-liberty, to accommodate any trunnion that may think fit to cram herself
-into my house! We've plenty of work on our hands without having to wait on
-other people's servants. What do you say, Palethorpe?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Well, I don't know, meesis,” replied Mr. Palethorpe; “it seems as if Mr.
-Rowel was understood to say he was very bad, and must be waited on pretty
-constantly.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I'm sure <i>I</i> sha'n't wait on him neither constantly nor
-inconstantly!” very pertly exclaimed Miss Sowersoft; and certainly giving
-a very ingenious turn to her own views, as soon as she found which way her
-lover's needle pointed; “<i>I</i>'m not going to trot up and down stairs a
-thousand times a day for the sake of such a thing as a plough-lad. Them
-may wait on him that likes him, if he is to be waited on; but I'm positive
-<i>I</i> shan't, nor anybody else that belongs to me!”
- </p>
-<p>
-This conclusion left, without another word, the field wholly open to
-Fanny; and as Miss Sowersoft, on concluding her speech, bounced off into
-the dairy, not another word was needed.
-</p>
-<p>
-Whatever might be the views entertained by the lady of the house touching
-the treatment most proper for Colin, there still were individuals amongst
-that rude community whose feelings were of a somewhat more catholic kind
-than those of their mistress; so that Fanny found no difficulty in
-procuring a volunteer, in the person of Abel, to go over to Bramleigh for
-the purpose of informing Mistress Clink how affairs stood, and of bringing
-back such few needful articles as Fanny might require during her stay at
-the farm.
-</p>
-<p>
-All that night she passed a sleepless watch by the side of Colin's bed,
-beguiling the hours not devoted to immediate attendance on him, partly by
-looking over the little books which had come from home in his box, but
-more by employing her mind in the creation of every possible description
-of fanciful supposition touching her own origin, her history, her parents,
-and the knowledge which the doctor appeared to have of her earliest life.
-What was it?—what could it be? and, what could he mean by enjoining
-her to mention nothing of all this to any second person? In her he had
-unexpectedly found one whom he had known a baby, and had believed to be
-dead, or lost in the vast crowds of poverty long ago. Had she been born to
-better things than surrounded her now? Had she been defrauded of her
-rights? And, did the doctor bid her be silent because he might have to
-employ stratagem in order to recover them again? Perhaps she was born—nay!
-she knew not what she was born; nor dare she trust herself to think,
-scarcely; though, certain it is that a visionary world of ladies and
-gentlemen, and fine things, and wealth to set Colin up in the world and to
-make his mother comfortable, and to exalt herself over all the petty
-enemies by whom they were now surrounded, passed in pleasant state before
-her prolific imagination: while, it is equally certain, that—blushing,
-though unseen and in secret, at the very consciousness—a prouder
-feeling sprung up in her bosom, and she began to feel as though she must
-be more genteel, and more particular, and less like a common servant, than
-she had hitherto been.
-</p>
-<p>
-Such were the golden fancies, and the pretty resolves that crowded round
-her brain that night. Neither, as a honest chronicler of human nature,
-would I take upon me to assert that she did not once or twice during these
-reveries rise to contemplate her features in the glass, and to adjust her
-hair more fancifully, and wonder—if it should be so—what kind
-of looking lady she should make. Truly, it was a pretty face that met her
-eyes in the mirror. As Colin woke up from a partial slumber, and raised
-his head slightly from the pillow, to ascertain what had become of his
-guardian, the reflection of her countenance as she was “looking the lady,”
- chanced to catch his eye: and, though he smiled as he gently sunk down
-again, he thought that that face would never again pass from before him.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER XV.
-</h2>
-<p>
-<i>Fanny is deceived by the doctor.—A scene in Rowel's
-“Establishment for the Insane” at Nabbfield.</i>
-</p>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">P</span>OOR girl! What pains she takes—if not to “curse herself,” at least
-to form that paradise out of the chaos of her own thoughts, which her
-supposed benefactor, the physician, never intended to realize. She was
-deceived, utterly and deeply deceived; and deceived, too, by the very
-means which the doctor had recommended to her apparently for the
-attainment of success. For, great as some of our modern diplomatists have
-incontestably been considered in their noble and polite art, I much
-question whether the man more capable of aspiring to higher honours in it
-than Doctor Rowel of Nabbfield, is not yet to be born.
-</p>
-<p>
-As the doctor rode homewards, after his interview with Fanny, he several
-times over, and with inexpressible inward satisfaction, congratulated and
-complimented himself upon having achieved such a really fine stroke of
-policy at a very critical moment, as no other man living could, he verily
-believed, have at all equalled. Within the space of a few brief moments he
-had, to his infinite astonishment, discovered, in the person of a serving
-girl, one whom he himself had endeavoured, while she was yet an infant, to
-put out of the way; and upon whose father he had perpetrated one of the
-most atrocious of social crimes, for the sole purpose of obtaining the
-management of his property while he lived, and its absolute possession on
-his decease. He had ascertained that the girl retained some indistinct
-recollection of the forcible arrest and carrying away of her parent, of
-which he himself had been the instigator; and thus suddenly he found
-himself placed in a position which demanded both promptitude and ingenuity
-in order to secure his own safety and the permanency of all he held
-through this unjust tenure. Since any discovery by Fanny of what had
-passed between them would inevitably excite public question and inquiry,
-the very brilliant idea had instantaneously suggested itself to his mind
-that—as in-the girl's continued silence alone lay his own hopes of
-security—no project could be conceived more likely to prove
-successful in obtaining and preserving that silence, than that of
-representing it as vital to her own dearest interest to keep the subject
-deeply locked for the present in her own bosom. This object, he flattered
-himself, he had already succeeded in achieving, without exciting in the
-mind of Fanny herself the least suspicion of his real and ultimate
-purpose. At the same time he inwardly resolved not to stop here, but to
-resort to every means in his power calculated still more deeply to bind
-the unsuspecting young woman to the preservation of that silence upon the
-subject, which, if once broken, might lead to the utter overthrow of a
-system which he had now maintained for many years.
-</p>
-<p>
-Elated with the idea of his own uncommon cleverness, he cantered along the
-York road from the moor with corresponding briskness; turned down a green
-lane to the left, cleared several fences and a pair of gates in his
-progress, and reached within sight of his “Establishment for the Insane”
- at Nabbfield, as the last light of another unwished-for and unwelcome sun
-shot through the barred and grated windows of the house, and served dimly
-to show to the melancholy habitants of those cells the extent of their
-deprivations and their misery.
-</p>
-<p>
-Far advanced as it was in the evening, the doctor had not yet dined; his
-professional duties, together with some other causes already explained,
-having detained him beyond his usual hour. Nevertheless, for reasons best
-known to himself, but which, it may be supposed, the events of the
-afternoon had operated in producing, the doctor had no sooner dismounted,
-and resigned his steed to the care of a groom, who appeared in waiting the
-instant that the clatter of his hoofs sounded on the stones of the yard,
-than, instead of retiring to that removed portion of the building, in
-which, for the purpose of being beyond reach of the cries of those who
-were kept in confinement, his own private apartments were situated, he
-demanded of one of the keepers the key of a particular cell. Having
-obtained it,—
-</p>
-<p>
-“Shall I attend you, sir?” asked the man.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No, Robson. James is harmless. I will see him into his cell myself
-to-night.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“He is in the patient's yard, sir,” replied the keeper.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Very well—very well. Wait outside; and, if I want assistance, I
-will call you.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The man retired, while Doctor Rowel proceeded down a long and ill-lighted
-passage, or corridor, in which were several angular turns and windings;
-and when nearly lost in the gloom of the place, he might have been heard
-to draw back a heavy bolt, and raise a spring-latch like an iron bar,
-which made fast the door that opened upon the yard, or piece of ground to
-which the keeper had alluded.
-</p>
-<p>
-It was just at that brief but peculiar time at the turn of day and night,
-which every observer of Nature must occasionally have remarked, when the
-light of the western atmosphere, and that of a rayless moon high up the
-southern heaven, mingle together in subdued harmony, and produce a kind of
-illumination, issuing from no given spot, but pervading equally the whole
-atmosphere,—like that which we might imagine of a fairy's palace,—without
-any particular source, neither wholly of heaven nor of earth, but
-partaking partially of each.
-</p>
-<p>
-The passage-door was thrown back, and the doctor stood upon its threshold.
-A yard some forty feet square, surrounded by a wall about six yards high,
-and floored with rolled gravel, like the path of a garden, was before him.
-Near the centre stood a dismal-looking yewtree, its trunk rugged, and
-indented with deep natural furrows, as though four or five shoots had
-sprung up together, and at last become matted into one; its black lines of
-foliage, harmonizing in form with the long horizontal clouds of the
-north-west quarter, which now marked the close approach of night. Nothing
-else was to be seen. As the eye, however, became somewhat more accustomed
-to the peculiar dusky light which pervaded this place, the figure of a man
-standing against the tree-trunk became visible; with his arms tightly
-crossed upon his breast, and bound behind him as though they had almost
-grown into his sides; and his hair hanging long upon his shoulders,
-somewhat like that of a cavalier, or royalist, of the middle of the
-seventeenth century.
-</p>
-<p>
-The doctor raised his voice, and called, in a lusty tone, “Woodruff!”
- </p>
-<p>
-The patient returned no answer, nor did he move.
-</p>
-<p>
-“James Woodruff!” again shouted the doctor.
-</p>
-<p>
-A slight turn of the head, which as quickly resumed its previous attitude,
-was the only response made to the doctor's summons.
-</p>
-<p>
-Finding that he could not call this strange individual to him, Doctor
-Rowel stepped across the yard, and advanced up to him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“James,” said he mildly, “it is time you were in your cell.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The man looked sternly in his face, and replied, “I have been there some
-thousands of times too often already.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Never heed that,” answered Rowel. “You <i>must</i> go to rest, you know.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“<i>Must</i> go—ay? Ah! and so I must. I am helpless. But, had I one
-hand free—only one hand—nay, with one finger and thumb, I
-would first put you to rest where you should never wake again! When am I
-to go free?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Will you go to your room?” said the doctor, without regarding his
-question.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I ask again,” cried the alleged madman, “as I have asked every day past
-counting, when am I to be loosed of this accursed place? How long is this
-to last?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Only until you are better,” remarked, with deep dissimulation, this
-worthy member of the faculty.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Better!” exclaimed Woodruff, with rising passion, as he tugged to loosen
-his arms from the jacket which bound him, though as ineffectually as a
-child might have tugged at the roots of an oak sapling. “I could curse you
-again and doubly for that word, but that I <i>have</i> cursed till
-language is weak as water, and words have no more meaning. I am sick of
-railing. Better! Till I am <i>better!</i> Thief!—liar!—villain!—for
-you are all these, and a thousand more,—I am well. You know it.
-Sound in mind and body,—only that these girths have crippled me
-before my time. How am I mad? I can think, reason, talk, argue,—hold
-memory of past life. I remember, villain! when you and your assassins
-seized me; stole my child from me; swore that I was mad; and brought me
-here, now seventeen years ago; and all in order that you might rob me of
-my property!—I remember that. Is that madness? I remember, before
-that, that I married your sister. Was it not so? I remember that she died,
-and left me a little pattern of herself, that called you uncle. Was not
-that so? Where is that child? What has become of her? Or are you a
-murderer besides? All this I remember: and I know now that I have power of
-will, and aptness to do all that man's mind is called to do. How, then, am
-I mad? Oh! for one hand free! One hand and arm. Only one! Give me that
-half chance to struggle with you. Let us end it so, if I am never to go
-free again. Take two to one; and if you kill me, you shall stand free of
-the scaffold; for I will swear with my last breath that you did it in
-self-defence. Do that. Let me have one grapple—a single gripe—and,
-if you can master me, why God forgive you!”
- </p>
-<p>
-The doctor smiled, as in contempt of the impotent ravings and wild
-propositions of his brother-in-law; for such, it is almost needless to
-state, James Woodruff was. But the alleged maniac continued his discourse.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Then, as you are such a rank, arrant coward, give me my whole liberty;
-let me go beyond this house, and I will never touch you. I will not ruffle
-a hair of your accursed head. Do that, and I will leave you to God for the
-reward of all you have done to me and mine. Set me free! Untie my limbs,
-and let me out this night! It is dark. Nobody can tell where I came from.
-Let me go, and I will never mention your name in complaint, nor lift a
-hand against you. Think, man,—do but think! To spend seventeen years
-of nights in that dungeon, and seventeen years of days on this speck of
-ground! To you who have been at liberty to walk, and breathe freely, and
-see God's creation, it may be idle; but I have seen nothing of seventeen
-springs but their light skies; nor of summers, but their heat and their
-strong shadows; nor of autumn, but the random leaves which the wind
-whirled over into this yard; nor of winter, but its snow and clouds. I
-want to be upon the green earth,—the grass,—amongst the
-fields. I want to see my wife's grave again!—some other human face
-than yours I—and—and—Man,—if you be man,—I
-want to find my daughter!”
- </p>
-<p>
-He flung himself on the ground, and groaned as in utter despair.
-</p>
-<p>
-The doctor was accustomed to witness these fits of frenzy, and therefore
-paid no farther attention now than consisted in an effort to raise the man
-again upon his feet, and a renewed solicitation to him to retire into his
-room.
-</p>
-<p>
-“No,” said he; “I have something to speak of yet. I have come to another
-determination. In my mind, villain! there has been seventeen years of
-rebellion against your wrong; and I have sworn, and have kept my oath till
-now, that you should never compel me to give up my rights, in virtue of my
-wife, to you. But time has outworn the iron of my soul: and seventeen
-years of this endurance cannot be set against all the wealth of the world.
-What is it to me? To dig the earth, and live on roots; but to be free with
-it; to go and come as I list; to be at liberty, body and limb! This would
-be paradise compared with the best palace that ever Mammon built in hell.
-Now, take these straps from off me, and set me free. Time is favourable.
-Take me into your house peaceably and quietly, and I will make over to you
-all I have, as a free gift. What you have stolen, you shall keep. Land,
-houses, gold, everything; I will not retain of them a grain of sand, a
-stone, or a sparkle of metal. But let me out! Let me see this prison
-behind me!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It would be the act of a lunatic, and of no effect,” replied the doctor.
-</p>
-<p>
-“How lunatic? To give that which is of no use to me for that which is
-dearer than life? Besides, I am sane—sound of mind.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No,” interrupted the doctor, “you are wrong on one question. Your disease
-consists in this very thing. You fancy I keep you confined in order to
-hold your property myself.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“<i>Fancy</i> you do!” savagely exclaimed Woodruff, stamping the ground
-with rage; “this contradiction is enough to drive me mad. I <i>know</i>
-it! <i>You</i> know it. There is no fancy in the case. It is an excuse, a
-vile pretence, a lie of seventeen years' standing. It was a lie at first.
-Will you set me free?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It cannot be,” said the doctor; “go to your room.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It <i>shall</i> be!” replied Woodruff; “I will not go.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Then I must call assistance,” observed Rowel, as he attempted to approach
-the door at which he had entered.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You shall not!” replied the patient, placing himself in front of the
-doctor, as though resolutely bent on preventing his approach to the door,
-although he had not the least use of his arms, which might have enabled
-him to effect his purpose.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Stand aside, fool!” Rowel exclaimed, as he threw out his right arm in
-order to strike off the intruder. But Woodruff anticipated him; and, by a
-sudden and dexterous thrust of his foot in a horizontal line, knocked the
-doctor's legs from under him, and set him sprawling on the ground.
-Woodruff fell upon him instantly, in order to keep him down, and to stifle
-the loud cries of “Robson! Robson!” which were now issuing in rapid
-succession from the doctor's larynx. At the same time a tremendous
-struggle, rendered still more desperate by the doctor's fears, took place
-on the ground; during which the unhappy Woodruff strove so violently to
-disengage his hands from the ligatures of the waistcoat which bound him,
-that the blood gushed copiously from his mouth and nostrils. His efforts
-were not altogether unavailing. He partly disengaged one hand; and, with a
-degree of activity and energy only to be accounted for from the almost
-superhuman spirit which burned within him, and for which his antagonist,
-with all his advantages, was by no means an equal match, he succeeded in
-planting his forefinger and thumb, like the bite of a crocodile upon the
-doctor's throat.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="linkimage-0009" id="linkimage-0009"> </a>
-</p>
-<div class="fig" style="width:60%;">
-<img src="images/301m.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="301m " /><br />
-</div>
-<h4>
-<a href="images/301.jpg" style="width:100%;" ><i>Original Size</i></a>
-</h4>
-<p>
-“Swear to let me free, or I 'll kill you!” he exclaimed.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes,—y—e—s,—I sw—ear!” gurgled through the
-windpipe of Dr. Rowel as he kicked and plunged like a horse in a bog to
-shake off his foe. The light of a lamp flashed upon them, and Robson
-rushed into the yard.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Let me out!” again demanded Woodruff.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I will; I will!” replied the doctor.
-</p>
-<p>
-Before Robson could interfere, the grasp upon his neck was loosed, and
-Woodruff stood quietly upon his feet. The doctor soon followed.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Seize him, Robson!” said he; and, in an instant, before Woodruff was
-aware, the strong man had him grasped as in a vice.
-</p>
-<p>
-“You swore to set me free!” cried the patient.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes,” replied the doctor, with a triumphant sneer, as he followed the
-keeper until he had pitched Woodruff into his room, and secured the
-entrance; “Yes,” he repeated, staring maliciously at his prisoner through
-the little barred opening in the door,—“yes, you shall be let out—<i>of
-this cell into that yard again</i>, when you have grown a little tamer!”
- </p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER XVI.
-</h2>
-<p>
-<i>Doctor Rowel argues very learnedly, in order to prove that not only his
-wife and himself, but the reader also, and all the world besides, may, for
-aught they know to the contrary, be stark mad.</i>
-</p>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">A</span>S Dr. Rowel stepped briskly from the scene of his disaster on the way to
-his diningroom, he slackened his neckcloth considerably, and with his most
-critical finger felt very carefully on each side of his gullet, in order
-to ascertain whether those parts had sustained any material injury; and
-though he soon convinced himself that no organic disarrangement had
-resulted, he yet reflected, in the true spirit of an observant
-practitioner, that a fierce gripe by the throat is but an indifferent
-stomachic.
-</p>
-<p>
-Whatever other injury was or was not clone, his appetite, at least, felt
-considerably reduced. Disasters like this, however, being common to every
-individual who has the care of insane persons, he determined to pass it by
-unnoticed, and to shake the very recollection of it from off his own mind
-as soon as possible.
-</p>
-<p>
-Shortly afterwards the doctor sat down to a well-furnished table, in the
-place usually appropriated to that second-rate character, the <i>vice</i>,
-and directly opposite his wife, who, in the absence of other company than
-themselves, invariably took the chair. As he helped himself to the breast
-of a young turkey, which a week previously had stalked and gobbled with
-pride about his own yard, he remarked,—for his mind reverted to the
-trick he had put upon Fanny with great complacency,—that never,
-during the whole course of his experience, had he so cleverly handled a
-difficult affair as he had that day. The lady to whom he addressed himself
-might have considered, in the way of the profession, that he alluded to
-some case of amputation at the hip-joint, or other similar operation
-equally delicate, as she replied by begging him not to inform her of it
-that night, as she was already almost overcome with the nervous excitement
-consequent on the events of the afternoon.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Indeed!” the doctor exclaimed, raising his eyes. “What has occurred? No
-patient dead, I hope?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Nothing of the kind,” returned the lady; “only that James Woodruff has
-been talking again in such an extraordinary manner, that I feel quite
-faint even now with it. Do reach me that bottle, dear. Really, Rowel, I
-tell you again, that if he cannot be set at liberty very soon, I shall be
-compelled to keep out of the way altogether. I will confine myself to this
-end of the house, and never go within reach of him any more. What a
-horrible creature he is!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“He has not injured you, has he?” the doctor again inquired, as he
-involuntarily run his fore-finger round the inner front of his
-neckerchief.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Of course not—how could he? But then that long hair gives him such
-a frightful look, and at the same time, whenever he can catch a glimpse of
-me, he always begs and prays me to prevail on you to set him free. I am
-sure I wonder you keep him, even for my sake; and, besides that, the man
-seems sensible enough, and always has been, if I am to judge by his
-conversation.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Ah!—what—again?” exclaimed her husband, interrupting her.
-“How many more times shall I have to repeat to you, that a madman, when
-under restraint, cannot, in some particular cases, be in the most remote
-degree depended upon, though his observations be apparently as intelligent
-and sane as yours or mine?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I remember you have said so,” remarked Mrs. Rowel; “but it seems very
-singular.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“It may appear very singular in your opinion, my dear, because you are not
-expected to possess the same erudition and extensive knowledge that a
-professional man does in these things; though, with deference, my dear,
-common experience and observation might by this time have convinced you
-that my theory is perfectly correct. With these unhappy people you should
-believe neither your eyes nor your ears; for if you do, it is a hundred to
-one but that some of them, at one time or another, will persuade you that
-they are perfectly sane and well, when, were they to be freed from
-restrain, they would tear you in pieces the very next instant.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mrs. Rowel looked somewhat disconcerted, and at a loss to meet her husband
-in a region so scientific that neither seeing nor hearing were of any use;
-though secretly she could not but wonder, if neither eyes nor ears were to
-be trusted, by what superior faculty, what divining-rod of intellect, a
-patient's madness was to be ascertained. Her doubts were not wholly
-overturned by the ploughshare of the doctor's logic, and therefore she
-very naturally, though with considerable show of diffidence, stuck
-pertinaciously to her old opinion.
-</p>
-<p>
-Her husband felt vexed,—and especially as he wished to impose upon
-her understanding,—that with all his powers of speech, and his
-assumption of profound knowledge, he could not now, any more than
-hitherto, succeed in converting her to the faith which he himself
-pretended so devoutly to hold, that lunatics sometimes could not be known
-by their conversation, and that the individual James Woodruff, in
-particular, who was the subject of their conversation, was actually as mad
-as a March hare, notwithstanding the actions and appearances, undeviating
-and regular, which in his case so obstinately forced upon Mrs. Rowel the
-private conviction that he was quite as sound in intellect as any other
-subject within the King's dominions. Nevertheless the doctor stifled the
-feelings of petulant resentment which were rising in his bosom, and
-satisfied himself simply by assuring his good, though somewhat perverse
-lady, that it was no very unusual thing for a certain description of
-lunatics to maintain their own sanity by arguments which, in any other
-case, would be considered very excellent; though, with experienced
-professional men, that very fact went farther in support of their
-derangement than almost any other that could be brought to bear.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Whenever,” continued the doctor, with some degree of warmth, “whenever I
-meet with a patient,—never mind whether he is under medical
-treatment or not,—a patient who endeavours by argument and proof to
-show me that he is <i>compos mentis</i>,—who seeks for evidence, as
-it were, in his own mind to substantiate the sanity of that very mind,—that
-is, a man who appeals for proof to the very thing to be itself proved,—who
-tests the mind by the mind,—when I meet with a patient of that
-description, it seems to imply a kind of doubt and distrust of his own
-intellect, and I set him down, in spite of what anybody can say to the
-contrary, as <i>non compos mentis</i>, and a proper subject on whom to
-issue a writ <i>ideota inquirendo vel examinando</i>.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I cannot argue with you like that, Frank,” observed the doctor's wife;
-“but do you mean to say that a man cannot himself tell whether he is mad,—and
-that nobody else, by what they see and hear, can tell either?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I do!” exclaimed Rowel. “I contend that numberless instances exist of
-latent mental derangement, which are totally unknown both to the insane
-themselves, and to those persons who are about them.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Then how do <i>you</i> know it?” asked the lady.
-</p>
-<p>
-“From the very nature of things, my dear,” Mr. Rowel replied. “Time was
-when verdicts of <i>felo de se</i> were returned in cases of
-self-destruction; but now every twopenny shopkeeper is wise enough to
-know, that the very act of self-murder itself is evidence of mental
-derangement.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But what has this to do with the question?” demanded Mrs. Rowel.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It has this to do with it,” continued her husband, “that neither you, nor
-I, nor anybody else, however wise we may think ourselves, can know for a
-certainty, positively and conclusively, whether we are mad or not.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Then do you mean to say that <i>I</i> am mad?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I mean to say this, my dear, that for aught you know to the contrary, you
-may be.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Come, that is foolish, Frank. But you do not think so, do you?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Think!—I think nothing about it,” replied Rowel; “only, as you seem
-to believe that such a lunatic as James Woodruff is very much in his
-senses, it might be supposed you had a bit of a slate loose yourself.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Oh, I am sure I have not!” tartly resumed the lady. “You ought to be
-ashamed of yourself for saying such a thing.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“No, no!—I do not say any such thing, by any means. The case of
-Woodruff is certainly, in one sense, the most singular I ever knew, and to
-me, in my situation, a peculiarly painful one; but what then?—what
-can I do?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why, you know, my dear,” replied Mrs. Rowel, in a deprecatory tone of
-voice, “that you <i>do</i> manage his property, after all. The man is
-right enough as far as that goes?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Right enough, truly—I <i>do</i>. But how do I? Is not the trouble
-as great as the profit? I keep it altogether where it was for him,—prevent
-him from squandering it in his mad fits, as he was about to do at the time
-I caused him to be placed in confinement,—keep him out of harm's
-way,—clothe him,—feed him,—medicine,—attendance,—everything,—and
-not a single item put down against his estate for all this. What was I to
-do, do you suppose? Was it likely that I should stand quietly by, and see
-all that he had himself, and all that my sister Frances left him, go to
-rack and ruin, waste and destruction, as if it were of no more value than
-an old song?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But what was it that he was doing?” asked Mrs. Rowel; “for I am sure I
-could never find out.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“He was doing nothing actually,” said the doctor. “But what should you
-have thought of me, if I had kept my hands in my pockets until the
-mischief was past before I attempted to interfere? It was what I foresaw
-he <i>intended</i> to do that caused me to step between. Was not he going
-to pull that good new house to pieces, for the sake of patching up the old
-one with its materials? The man must have been stark raving mad to have
-thought of such a thing, and everybody would have said so.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“<i>I</i> should not have said so,” observed the lady; “though there is
-nothing wonderful about that, as you have told me that <i>I</i> may be mad
-too. But it was always my opinion that the old family house was worth ten
-of the other, if it had but the same fire-grates and chimney-pieces put in
-it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“The fact is,” replied he, “you were all mad together about that
-tumble-down crazy concern, merely because it <i>was</i> the old house; and
-I am very glad I put a stop to it when I did, and in the manner I did,
-though I think he knows better now, mad as he is at present. To tell you
-the truth, my dear,” and the doctor lowered his voice to a more serious
-and impressive tone, “I do not think he cares much, or perhaps not
-anything at all, about it. His liberty seems to be the principal thing
-with him. Do you know, he offered this evening to make the whole property
-over to me as a free gift, if I would let him out.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Did he indeed!” exclaimed the lady, as tears of pity swam in her eyes.
-“Poor fellow!—poor fellow!”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Why, poor fellow? I didn't prompt him to say what he did. Besides, I
-would not take it. How dare I let him out? His gift would be good for
-nothing to me, being void at law. I cannot let him out. And even if I had
-ever dreamed of trying such a hazardous experiment, it would, under
-present circumstances, be impossible.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“But why <i>impossible</i>, Frank?” asked Mrs. Rowel.
-</p>
-<p>
-Frank Rowel began to imagine, from the turn which his wife appeared
-inclined to take in this business, that the relation of his interview with
-Fanny, which had discovered to him so unexpectedly the person of James
-Woodruff's daughter, and his own niece, would not materially profit him in
-the eyes of that lady; and therefore, although he had at first intended to
-make it known to her, he for the present forbore, and contented himself by
-assuring her how exceedingly lucky it was that, for her own sake, she had
-some one about her whose knowledge was not so soon set aside, and whose
-feelings of compassion were not so easily excited as her own; or otherwise
-it would inevitably come about that a whole establishment of lunatics
-would some day or other, out of pure kindness, be let loose to run rampant
-over and affright the whole country-side.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Then James is to remain there?” questioned the lady.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I see no chance for him,” was the reply; “everything is against him. He
-<i>must</i> be confined for life.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mrs. Rowel sighed, looked at her husband, then at the decanter of sherry
-which stood on the table, then smiled significantly, and then added in a
-half-jesting tone, though with a very serious and fixed intention, “I 'll
-take a glass of wine with you, my dear.”
- </p>
-<p>
-And so she did, and several others after it.
-</p>
-<p>
-In fact, though I abhor anything that might be supposed to touch on
-scandal, Mrs. Rowel liked sherry.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER XVII.
-</h2>
-<p>
-<i>James Woodruff soliloquizes in his cell.—An unlooked-for offer of
-liberty is made him, and on what conditions.</i>
-</p>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">W</span>HILE yet the last ominous and deceitful reply which Dr. Rowel had made to
-James Woodruff rung in his ear, as a sound incredible and impossible to
-have been heard, he threw himself on the loose straw which covered an iron
-bedstead that stood in a corner of his cell, and writhed in bodily and in
-mental agony, both from what he had just endured, and from the stinging
-reflections that, having once had his oppressor in his power, he should
-have so spared him, so confided in his promises, and been so treacherously
-deceived!
-</p>
-<p>
-The consciousness of his own magnanimity, and implicit faith in his
-brother-in-law's solemn word and oath, aggravated the bitterness of these
-reflections, until the despair within him became worse to endure than all
-the horrors without. All hope of freedom had now finally departed. He had
-made the last and greatest sacrifice in his power to obtain it, and it had
-only been cast back in his face as worthless, because it would be
-considered as the act of a madman. He had implored, promised, threatened,—nay,
-he had put his very life in peril,—and all for what? for nothing.
-What more remained to do?—To wait the doubtful result of chance for
-an unforeseen and apparently impossible deliverance,—to waste away
-the last pulsations of a worse than worthless life in the protracted
-misery of that dungeon,—or to take heart in this extremity to do a
-deed that should at once shut the gates of hope and of fear in this world
-upon him for ever? Would it not be better to beat out his brains against
-the wall, and throw himself, uncalled, before his God, his wretchedness
-standing in extenuation of his crime, than thus to do and to suffer by
-hours, days, nights, and years, with no change that marked to-day from
-yesterday, or this year from the year that went before, nor any chance of
-change to distinguish the years to come from those that had already
-passed? In the same monotonous round of darkness passed in that cell, of
-pacing some few steps to his day-yard, of turnings and returnings within
-that limited space, and then of pacing back to pass hours of darkness in
-his cell again,—time seemed to stand still, or only to return at
-daylight, and work over again the same well-known revolution that it
-wrought when daylight last appeared.
-</p>
-<p>
-Looking back beyond these dreary seventeen years, what had his mind to
-rest upon? Sorrow for his wife's premature death; solicitude, painful and
-unfathomably deep, for the babe she had left to his sole care; his
-struggle onwards solely on account of the little helpless thing that had
-no friend but him; and then the sudden, the unexpected, and horrible
-injustice of an avaricious brother-in-law, which had overwhelmed him as
-with an avalanche, deprived him of all he possessed, shut him up in a
-place of horrors, and, worst of all, put away that child, motherless and
-fatherless, to endure perhaps all that the lowest poverty endures, or to
-sink under it when she could endure no longer.
-</p>
-<p>
-Before him, even under the best circumstances, what had he to look for,
-even if he were free? The world had nothing in it for him but that wife's
-burying-place, a house where her dear living picture should be, and was
-not, and a hearth of desolation for himself! Why had he pleaded so
-earnestly for liberty?—the liberty that had nothing to offer him
-even when obtained? Those two beings gone, why should he alone wish to
-remain? A bed of earth was, after all, the best place for him.
-</p>
-<p>
-And yet—for the rebound of the spirits is often in proportion to
-their fall—it was possible, were he free, that he might find his
-daughter again. The doctor might be compelled to tell him how she had been
-disposed of in the first instance, and he might be able to trace her out.
-Occurrences less probable had come to pass before, and why not in this
-case also? He might find her, and in her—though grown a woman, whom
-he should not perhaps know again—one who would yet be like her
-mother Frances over again, a pride and joy to his house, and a consolation
-in the last years of his existence. But the vision faded when again and
-again the withering and insurmountable question recurred to him,—how
-could he get free? In the most direct course, the events of that evening
-had cut off all hope; in any other there lay none. It was true that
-visitors sometimes came to inspect the house, and mark the treatment of
-the patients. To tell them his tale, and ask their aid, was useless. Such
-had been before, and he had told them; but nobody believed him: they only
-looked on with wonder or fear, and went away pitying the painful nature of
-his delusions. Could he escape? He had, years ago, planned every
-conceivable mode of escape,—he had tried them, and had failed. He
-must remain there—it was his doom: he must still hear, as he had
-heard until he cared little for it, the solemn deadness of the night
-disturbed with shrieks that no sane mortal could have uttered; the
-untimely dancings of witless men, without joy in them; the bursts of
-horrid laughter from women's lips, without mirth; the singings of merry
-words, with a direful vivacity that filled the veins with a creeping
-terror more fearful than that of curses; and sometimes plaintive notes
-from the love-lost, whose eyes were sleepless, which might have made the
-heart burst with pity! He must still live amidst all this, and still
-shrink (as he did sometimes) into the closest corner of his pallet, and
-bless himself in the iron security of his cell, (which by daylight he
-abhorred,) from very dread of those imaginary horrors which the wild
-people about the building conjured up in the depth of Nature's
-sleeping-time.
-</p>
-<p>
-As these thoughts thronged thickly on James Woodruff's mind, he extended
-himself on his back along the couch of straw; and put up his hands, which
-were commonly loosed when in his cell, in an attitude of prayer upon his
-breast. But the contemplated words were momentarily arrested by the light
-tread of feet along the passage outside. A ray of moonlight from the
-high-up little window streamed almost perpendicularly down, and fell
-partly on his bed and partly on the floor, making an oblong figure of
-white thereon, distinct and sharp-edged, as though light and darkness had
-been severed as with a knife. A strong reflection from this spot was
-thrown upon the door, by the aid of which he beheld through the grating
-that looked into the dark passage a white hand clutching the little bars,
-and higher up the dim shadow of a face, that looked like that of a spirit.
-Woodruff rose up, and sat upon the cold edge of his iron bedstead.
-</p>
-<p>
-“James!” whispered a voice through the grating, which he instantly
-recognised as that of the doctor's wife, “are you awake?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Would that I were not!” he replied; “for the oblivion of sleep is the
-only welcome thing to me here.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“My husband has written a paper for you,—will you sign it?”
- </p>
-<p>
-“To set me free?” demanded Woodruff, as he started eagerly up at the very
-thought, and seemed to show by his signs how gladly he caught at the
-remotest possibility of deliverance, and how fearful he felt lest it
-should escape him.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Yes, yes!” exclaimed the lady, hurriedly; “that is the object.” And on
-receiving, on the part of Woodruff, a passionate assurance of compliance
-with the proposal, she hastened back as though for the purpose of fetching
-the paper alluded to.
-</p>
-<p>
-It is needful here to explain, that after we had parted with the doctor
-and his wife at the dinner-table, as related in the preceding chapter, the
-conversation relating to James Woodruff, a portion of which has been
-chronicled for the reader's edification, was renewed; and as the doctor
-discussed his wine and shrivelled walnuts, and increased proportionably
-both in boldness of thought and fertility of invention, he considered over
-and over again the proposal that his brother-in-law had made to him for
-the conditional surrender of all his property. The idea took hold of him
-very strongly, and struck the deeper root in his bosom the longer he
-considered it. Charnwood was a snug little estate, to be sure. It had been
-in the family some generations, and great would be his regret that it
-should pass away by marriage, as it must, in the event of Woodruff's
-retaining possession. It was true he had told Fanny's father that his
-proffered gift of it would, under present circumstances, be considered as
-the act of a madman, and therefore invalid and illegal. But could no mode
-be adopted to obviate this difficulty? The doctor thought, and thought
-again; and at last came to the conclusion that he would disregard the
-illegality of the transaction altogether, provided he could induce James
-to make a solemn written declaration, binding himself in a moral sense, if
-in no other, that, on obtaining his liberty, he would not take any steps
-whatever to recover possession of the estate. A clever move, thought
-Rowel;—the man is conscientious fool enough to keep his word; and,
-as possession is nine parts the law, I shall be safe.
-</p>
-<p>
-Full of this scheme, he sounded the opinion of his wife on the subject;
-and, although she had at first expressed pity for the condition of her
-brother-in-law, yet, when it came to the serious question which involved
-the possession of such a pleasant little estate as Charnwood, Mrs. Rowel
-began to reflect that, after all, people must look a little to their own
-interests in this world, or else they may allow everybody to step over
-their heads. As to being so over particular about how you get it, so that
-you do but get it, people were always ready to look up to you; and, if the
-truth were known, she dare say that some others she could mention who did
-possess property had obtained it in not a better manner, if so good. She
-could not, therefore, see any <i>very</i> great harm—and especially
-as Woodruff had offered it himself—in taking the property on those
-conditions; although she should certainly have liked it all the better,
-had there been any choice, if the transaction could have been managed with
-a greater show of equity.
-</p>
-<p>
-The doctor felt quite pleased with the business-like turn of mind which
-his lady had developed; and, as nothing less than drawing up a paper to
-the effect explained would satisfy him, he proceeded at once to its
-accomplishment.
-</p>
-<p>
-When Mrs. Rowel returned to the room in which Woodruff was confined, with
-the paper in one hand which her husband had written, and a small lamp in
-the other, followed closely by the doctor with ink and pen, the alleged
-lunatic again rose from his bed, and eagerly demanded the instrument which
-was to seal his redemption. While the little lamp was held up to the
-grating in the door, Woodruff took the paper and read as follows:—
-</p>
-<p>
-<i>“Memorandum made this—day of —————,</i>
-</p>
-<h3>
-<i>18—.</i>
-</h3>
-<p>
-<i>“Whereas I, James Woodruff, widower, formerly of Charnwood, in the
-county of ————, being at the time in sound and
-composed mind, do hereby promise to make over to Frank Rowel, M.D. of
-Nabbfield, in the said county, brother of my late wife, Frances, all and
-singular the lands, houses, barns, and all other property whatever,
-comprised in and on the estate known as the Charnwood farm, on the
-conditions now specified, viz.—that he, the said Frank Rowel, shall
-hold me free to come to, and go from, his establishment for the insane at
-Nabbfield in what manner and whenever I please, and shall also hold me
-wholly exempt from molestation from the date of this memorandum
-henceforward: now this is to certify that I, the said James Woodruff,
-hereby solemnly and faithfully pledge myself, without equivocation or
-mental reservation of any kind, that, on the conditions named on the part
-of the aforesaid Frank Rowel being fulfilled, I will never in any manner,
-by word or by deed, either of myself or through the instrumentality of
-others, take any steps whatever to recover possession of the said
-property, or of any portion of it, either in my own name or in that of my
-daughter, Frances Woodruff, spinster.”</i>
-</p>
-<p>
-The document dropped from his hands. “Then she is living!” exclaimed the
-father: “my daughter is alive!”
- </p>
-<p>
-Doctor Rowel changed countenance, as though suddenly made aware that he
-had committed a slight mistake; but he put the best face he could upon it,
-by reluctantly assuring his prisoner that she was alive and well.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Thank Heaven for that!” cried Woodruff: “then take this bond away—I
-will not sign it! I would give away my own, were it a thousand times
-greater, for one more day of life at liberty; but I cannot rob her of her
-mother's dower. Let me rather rot here, and trust that a better fate than
-has befallen me may restore her to that which I can never enjoy. Away with
-it!—leave me!—And yet—”
- </p>
-<p>
-Woodruff covered his eyes with his hand, and stood trembling in doubt and
-irresolution.
-</p>
-<p>
-“And yet—and yet tell me where my daughter is, and I <i>will</i>
-sign it. Liberate me <i>now</i>—upon this spot, and at this time,
-and I will sign it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-The doctor demurred.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Then to-morrow!—as soon as possible—before another night?”
- </p>
-<p>
-Still the doctor would not promise exactly when he would liberate him. At
-length certain conditional terms were agreed to, and James Woodruff signed
-away all his own property, and that which should have been Fanny's
-inheritance, together.
-</p>
-<p>
-Dr. Rowel knew that the memorandum he held, morally binding upon Woodruff
-to leave him in undisputed possession of Charnwood, was useless, except
-between himself and that unfortunate man. He put it safely away in his
-escrutoire for that night, and on the morrow looked it carefully over
-again, and still felt distrustful and in doubt. As Woodruff had given the
-promise under compulsion, would he not consider it no crime to disregard
-it the instant he felt himself secure beyond the walls? At all events, he
-would keep on the safe side, and detain him for the present, or until he
-could obtain more full satisfaction.
-</p>
-<p>
-With this reflection, he gave orders that Woodruff was that day only to be
-removed into his accustomed yard; and mounting his horse, rode off in the
-direction of the farm at Whinmoor, as he felt desirous of seeing Fanny
-again.
-</p>
-<p>
-<br /><br />
-</p>
-<hr />
-<p>
-<a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018"> </a>
-</p>
-<div style="height: 4em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-<h2>
-CHAPTER XVIII.
-</h2>
-<p>
-<i>A colloquy between Mrs. Clink and Miss Sowersoft, in which the latter
-proves herself a most able tactician, and gives a striking illustration of
-the difference between talking and doing</i>.
-</p>
-<p class="pfirst"><span class="dropcap" style="font-size: 4.00em">B</span>EFORE Dr. Rowel had ridden two miles on his journey, another visiter had
-arrived at Miss Sowersoft's, in the person of Mrs. Clink. Astonished at
-the account she had received through Abel of the illness of her son, and
-vexed at the stay which Fanny made with the boy, she resolved to walk over
-and inquire into the affair in person.
-</p>
-<p>
-Taking advantage of the first interview with her, the amiable Miss
-Sowersoft had done to the utmost of her power to qualify the evil
-impressions which she feared some mischievous tale-tellers might have
-raised in her mind with respect to the treatment that Colin had received.
-Without having actually witnessed it, she said it was impossible that any
-mother could credit the trouble taken with him, in order to render him fit
-for his situation, and enable him to go out into the world without being
-misled by that great fallacy, so common amongst the youth of both sexes,
-that they are born for nothing but enjoyment, and that everybody they meet
-with are their friends. To root out this fatal error at the very
-commencement had been her principal endeavour; and though she, of course,
-expected nothing less than that the boy himself would look upon her
-somewhat harshly,—for it was natural to juvenile minds to be easily
-offended,—yet she had persevered in her course conscientiously, and
-with the full assurance that, whatever the lad might think or say now, he
-would <i>thank</i> her in after years; and also, that either his own
-mother, or any other person of ripe experience, would see good reason to
-thank her also, for adopting a method of discipline so eminently
-calculated to impress upon his mind that truest of all truths, that the
-world was a hard place, and life a difficult journey to struggle through.
-</p>
-<p>
-“The sooner young people are made acquainted with that fact,” continued
-Miss Sowersoft, “the better it is for themselves.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“You are right there, Miss Sowersoft,” replied Mrs. Clink; “for I am sure
-if we were but taught at first what the world <i>really is</i>, we should
-never go into it, as many of us do, only to be imposed upon, deceived, and
-ruined, through the false confidence in which we have been bred of
-everybody's good meaning, and uprightness, and integrity. It is precisely
-the line of conduct I have myself pursued in bringing Colin up from the
-cradle. I have impressed upon him above all things to tell the truth
-whenever it was necessary to speak, and to pay no regard whatever to
-consequences, be they good or evil.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Yes, Mrs. Clink,” replied Miss Sowersoft, slightly reddening, and peeping
-at the ends of her finger-nails, “yes,—that is very good to a
-certain extent; but then I think it might be carried too far. Children
-should be taught to discriminate a little between truth and downright
-impudence, as well as to keep their mouths shut about anything they may
-happen to overhear, whenever their masters or mistresses are talking in
-the confidentiality of privacy.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mrs. Clink confessed herself ignorant of what Miss Sowersoft alluded to,
-but observed, that if she intended the remark to apply to Colin, she was
-confident he would never be guilty of so mean a thing as to listen to the
-private conversation of any two persons in the world.
-</p>
-<p>
-“It is natural you should have a good opinion of him,” replied Miss
-Sowersoft; “but should you believe your eyes if you had caught him at it?—oracular
-demonstration, as my brother Ted calls it.”
- </p>
-<p>
-“I should believe my eyes, certainly,” said Mrs. Clink.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Then we did catch him at it, and Mr. Palethorpe was much excited of
-course,—for he is very passionate indeed when he is once got up,—and
-he took him in his rage and dipped him in the horse-trough. Not that I
-justify his passion, or say that I admire his revenge,—nothing of
-the sort: but I must say, that if there is one thing more mean and
-contemptible than another, or that deserves to be more severely punished
-in children, it is that of listening behind hedges and doors, to know the
-very thing that people wish to keep particularly secret.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Colin's mother was about to reply, had not the sudden entrance of Dr.
-Rowel prevented her, and left Miss Sowersoft's philippic against listeners
-and listening in all its force and weight upon her mind.
-</p>
-<p>
-Anxious to see the boy, Mrs. Clink followed the doctor up stairs, and
-found Fanny sitting by his bed-side, with a cup of lukewarm tea in her
-hand, waiting until he should wake. Having examined his patient, the
-doctor addressed Fanny to the effect that he wished to have a few minutes'
-conversation with her down stairs. Miss Sowersoft, on being made aware of
-the doctor's wish, ushered him and Fanny into an inner parlour, assuring
-them that they would be perfectly retired there, as no one could approach
-the door without her own knowledge.
-</p>
-<p>
-“There is something vastly curious in this,” said Miss Sowersoft to
-herself, as she carefully closed the door. “What can the doctor want with
-such an impudent minx?”
- </p>
-<p>
-And so she remained, pursuing her dark cogitations through all the
-labyrinths of scandal, until Mrs. Clink had bidden our hero good-b'ye, and
-crept down stairs. On turning the corner of the wall, the first object she
-beheld was Miss Sowersoft, with her ear close to the keyhole of the inner
-parlour-door, apparently so deeply intent on what was going forward
-within, as to have almost closed her senses to anything without, for she
-did not perceive Mrs. Clink's approach until she stood within a yard or
-two of her.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Ay, bless me!—are you here?” she exclaimed, as she drew herself up.
-“Why, you see, ma'am, there is no rule without an exception; and,
-notwithstanding what I was saying when Dr. Rowel came in, yet, Mrs. Clink,
-it was impossible for me to be aware how soon it might be needful for me
-to break my own rule. You know that servant of yours is a very likely
-person, Mrs. Clink, for any gentleman to joke with; and, though I do not
-mean to insinuate anything—I should be very sorry to do so, indeed;
-but still, doctor though he is—in fact, to tell you the truth,”—and
-Miss Sowersoft drew her auditor to the farther side of the room, and spoke
-in a whisper,—“it is highly fortunate I had the presence of mind to
-listen at the door; for I heard the doctor very emphatically impress on
-your servant the necessity of not letting even <i>you</i> yourself know
-anything about it, under any circumstances; and at the same time he
-promised her something,—presents, for aught we know,—and said
-he would do something for her. Now, Mrs. Clink, what could he mean by
-that?—I have my suspicions; and if I were in <i>your</i> place, I
-should <i>insist, positively insist</i>, on knowing all about it, or she
-should not live another day in my house.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Mrs. Clink stood amazed and confounded. She would have pledged her word
-that, if needful, Fanny would have resisted any offered insult to the
-death; but she knew not what to think after what she had just heard.
-</p>
-<p>
-“I <i>will</i> insist on knowing it!” she exclaimed. “The girl is young
-and simple, and may be easily imposed upon by—”
- </p>
-<p>
-“Hush, hush!” interposed Miss Sowersoft, “they are coming out!”
- </p>
-<p>
-As they came out, Miss Sowersoft looked thunder at Fanny, and bade the
-doctor good morning with a peculiar stiltiness of expression, which
-implied, in her own opinion, a great deal more than anybody else could
-possibly have made of it.
-</p>
-<p>
-“Have her down stairs directly!” continued the lady of the establishment,
-(for Fanny had gone up stairs,) as soon as Mr. Rowel had passed out of
-hearing. “A wicked hussy!—If she did not answer me everything
-straight forwards, <i>I</i> should know what to think of it, and what to
-do as well, that I should! But <i>you</i> can do as you like, Mrs. Clink.”
- </p>
-<p>
-Colin's mother called Fanny down stairs again, and took her, followed by
-Miss Sower-soft, into the same room in which she had so recently held her
-colloquy with her uncle the doctor.
-</p>
-<h3>
-END OF THE FIRST VOLUME.
-</h3>
-<div style="height: 6em;">
-<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />
-</div>
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-<pre>
-
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