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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 4495 ***
+
+
+
+
+                        THE HOUSE ON THE BEACH
+
+                           A REALISTIC TALE
+
+                          By George Meredith
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+The experience of great officials who have laid down their dignities
+before death, or have had the philosophic mind to review themselves while
+still wielding the deputy sceptre, teaches them that in the exercise of
+authority over men an eccentric behaviour in trifles has most exposed
+them to hostile criticism and gone farthest to jeopardize their
+popularity.  It is their Achilles' heel; the place where their mother
+Nature holds them as she dips them in our waters.  The eccentricity of
+common persons is the entertainment of the multitude, and the maternal
+hand is perceived for a cherishing and endearing sign upon them; but
+rarely can this be found suitable for the august in station; only,
+indeed, when their sceptre is no more fearful than a grandmother's birch;
+and these must learn from it sooner or later that they are uncomfortably
+mortal.
+
+When herrings are at auction on a beach, for example, the man of chief
+distinction in the town should not step in among a poor fraternity to
+take advantage of an occasion of cheapness, though it be done, as he may
+protest, to relieve the fishermen of a burden; nor should such a
+dignitary as the bailiff of a Cinque Port carry home the spoil of
+victorious bargaining on his arm in a basket.  It is not that his conduct
+is in itself objectionable, so much as that it causes him to be popularly
+weighed; and during life, until the best of all advocates can plead
+before our fellow Englishmen that we are out of their way, it is prudent
+to avoid the process.
+
+Mr. Tinman, however, this high-stepping person in question, happened to
+have come of a marketing mother.  She had started him from a small shop
+to a big one.  He, by the practice of her virtues, had been enabled to
+start himself as a gentleman.  He was a man of this ambition, and prouder
+behind it.  But having started himself precipitately, he took rank among
+independent incomes, as they are called, only to take fright at the
+perils of starvation besetting one who has been tempted to abandon the
+source of fifty per cent.  So, if noble imagery were allowable in our
+time in prose, might alarms and partial regrets be assumed to animate the
+splendid pumpkin cut loose from the suckers.  Deprived of that prodigious
+nourishment of the shop in the fashionable seaport of Helmstone, he
+retired upon his native town, the Cinque Port of Crikswich, where he
+rented the cheapest residence he could discover for his habitation, the
+House on the Beach, and lived imposingly, though not in total disaccord
+with his old mother's principles.  His income, as he observed to his
+widowed sister and solitary companion almost daily in their privacy, was
+respectable.  The descent from an altitude of fifty to five per cent.
+cannot but be felt.  Nevertheless it was a comforting midnight bolster
+reflection for a man, turning over to the other side between a dream and
+a wink, that he was making no bad debts, and one must pay to be addressed
+as esquire.  Once an esquire, you are off the ground in England and on
+the ladder.  An esquire can offer his hand in marriage to a lady in her
+own right; plain esquires have married duchesses; they marry baronets'
+daughters every day of the week.
+
+Thoughts of this kind were as the rise and fall of waves in the bosom of
+the new esquire.  How often in his Helmstone shop had he not heard titled
+ladies disdaining to talk a whit more prettily than ordinary women; and
+he had been a match for the subtlety of their pride--he understood it.
+He knew well that at the hint of a proposal from him they would have
+spoken out in a manner very different to that of ordinary women.  The
+lightning, only to be warded by an esquire, was in them.  He quitted
+business at the age of forty, that he might pretend to espousals with a
+born lady; or at least it was one of the ideas in his mind.
+
+And here, I think, is the moment for the epitaph of anticipation over
+him, and the exclamation, alas!  I would not be premature, but it is
+necessary to create some interest in him, and no one but a foreigner
+could feel it at present for the Englishman who is bursting merely to do
+like the rest of his countrymen, and rise above them to shake them class
+by class as the dust from his heels.  Alas! then an--undertaker's pathos
+is better than none at all--he was not a single-minded aspirant to our
+social honours.  The old marketing mother; to whom he owed his fortunes,
+was in his blood to confound his ambition; and so contradictory was the
+man's nature, that in revenge for disappointments, there were times when
+he turned against the saving spirit of parsimony.  Readers deep in Greek
+dramatic writings will see the fatal Sisters behind the chair of a man
+who gives frequent and bigger dinners, that he may become important in
+his neighbourhood, while decreasing the price he pays for his wine, that
+he may miserably indemnify himself for the outlay.  A sip of his wine
+fetched the breath, as when men are in the presence of the tremendous
+elements of nature.  It sounded the constitution more darkly-awful, and
+with a profounder testimony to stubborn health, than the physician's
+instruments.  Most of the guests at Mr. Tinman's table were so
+constructed that they admired him for its powerful quality the more at
+his announcement of the price of it; the combined strength and cheapness
+probably flattering them, as by another mystic instance of the national
+energy.  It must have been so, since his townsmen rejoiced to hail him as
+head of their town.  Here and there a solitary esquire, fished out of the
+bathing season to dine at the house on the beach, was guilty of raising
+one of those clamours concerning subsequent headaches, which spread an
+evil reputation as a pall.  A resident esquire or two, in whom a
+reminiscence of Tinman's table may be likened to the hook which some old
+trout has borne away from the angler as the most vivid of warnings to him
+to beware for the future, caught up the black report and propagated it.
+
+The Lieutenant of the Coastguard, hearing the latest conscious victim, or
+hearing of him, would nod his head and say he had never dined at Tinman's
+table without a headache ensuing and a visit to the chemist's shop;
+which, he was assured, was good for trade, and he acquiesced, as it was
+right to do in a man devoted to his country.  He dined with Tinman again.
+We try our best to be social.  For eight months in our year he had little
+choice but to dine with Tinman or be a hermit attached to a telescope.
+
+"Where are you going, Lieutenant?"  His frank reply to the question was,
+"I am going to be killed;" and it grew notorious that this meant Tinman's
+table.  We get on together as well as we can.  Perhaps if we were an
+acutely calculating people we should find it preferable both for trade
+and our physical prosperity to turn and kill Tinman, in contempt of
+consequences.  But we are not, and so he does the business gradually for
+us.  A generous people we must be, for Tinman was not detested.  The
+recollection of "next morning" caused him to be dimly feared.
+
+Tinman, meanwhile, was awake only to the Circumstance that he made no
+progress as an esquire, except on the envelopes of letters, and in his
+own esteem.  That broad region he began to occupy to the exclusion of
+other inhabitants; and the result of such a state of princely isolation
+was a plunge of his whole being into deep thoughts.  From the hour of his
+investiture as the town's chief man, thoughts which were long shots took
+possession of him.  He had his wits about him; he was alive to ridicule;
+he knew he was not popular below, or on easy terms with people above him,
+and he meditated a surpassing stroke as one of the Band of Esq., that had
+nothing original about it to perplex and annoy the native mind, yet was
+dazzling.  Few members of the privileged Band dare even imagine the
+thing.
+
+It will hardly be believed, but it is historical fact, that in the act of
+carrying fresh herrings home on his arm, he entertained the idea of a
+visit to the First Person and Head of the realm, and was indulging in
+pleasing visions of the charms of a personal acquaintance.  Nay, he had
+already consulted with brother jurats.  For you must know that one of the
+princesses had recently suffered betrothal in the newspapers, and
+supposing her to deign to ratify the engagement, what so reasonable on
+the part of a Cinque Port chieftain as to congratulate his liege
+mistress, her illustrious mother?  These are thoughts and these are deeds
+>which give emotional warmth and colour to the ejecter members of a
+population wretchedly befogged.  They are our sunlight, and our brighter
+theme of conversation.  They are necessary to the climate and the Saxon
+mind; and it would be foolish to put them away, as it is foolish not to
+do our utmost to be intimate with terrestrial splendours while we have
+them--as it may be said of wardens, mayors, and bailiffs-at command.
+Tinman was quite of this opinion.  They are there to relieve our dulness.
+We have them in the place of heavenly; and he would have argued that we
+have a right to bother them too.  He had a notion, up in the clouds, of a
+Sailors' Convalescent Hospital at Crikswich to seduce a prince with, hand
+him the trowel, make him "lay the stone," and then poor prince! refresh
+him at table.  But that was a matter for by and by.
+
+His purchase of herrings completed, Mr. Tinman walked across the mound
+of shingle to the house on the beach.  He was rather a fresh-faced man,
+of the Saxon colouring, and at a distance looking good-humoured.  That he
+should have been able to make such an appearance while doing daily battle
+with his wine, was a proof of great physical vigour.  His pace was
+leisurely, as it must needs be over pebbles, where half a step is
+subtracted from each whole one in passing; and, besides, he was aware of
+a general breath at his departure that betokened a censorious assembly.
+Why should he not market for himself?  He threw dignity into his
+retreating figure in response to the internal interrogation.  The moment
+>was one when conscious rectitude =pliers man should have a tail for its
+just display.  Philosophers have drawn attention to the power of the
+human face to express pure virtue, but no sooner has it passed on than
+the spirit erect within would seem helpless.  The breadth of our
+shoulders is apparently presented for our critics to write on.  Poor duty
+is done by the simple sense of moral worth, to supplant that absence of
+feature in the plain flat back.  We are below the animals in this.  How
+charged with language behind him is a dog!  Everybody has noticed it.
+Let a dog turn away from a hostile circle, and his crisp and wary tail
+not merely defends him, it menaces; it is a weapon.  Man has no choice
+but to surge and boil, or stiffen preposterously.  Knowing the popular
+sentiment about his marketing--for men can see behind their backs, though
+they may have nothing to speak with--Tinman resembled those persons of
+principle who decline to pay for a "Bless your honour!" from a voluble
+beggar-woman, and obtain the reverse of it after they have gone by.  He
+was sufficiently sensitive to feel that his back was chalked as on a
+slate.  The only remark following him was, "There he goes!"
+
+He went to the seaward gate of the house on the beach, made practicable
+in a low flint wall, where he was met by his sister Martha, to whom he
+handed the basket.  Apparently he named the cost of his purchase per
+dozen.  She touched the fish and pressed the bellies of the topmost, it
+might be to question them tenderly concerning their roes.  Then the
+couple passed out of sight.  Herrings were soon after this despatching
+their odours through the chimneys of all Crikswich, and there was that
+much of concord and festive union among the inhabitants.
+
+The house on the beach had been posted where it stood, one supposes, for
+the sake of the sea-view, from which it turned right about to face the
+town across a patch of grass and salt scurf, looking like a square and
+scornful corporal engaged in the perpetual review of an awkward squad of
+recruits.  Sea delighted it not, nor land either.  Marine Parade fronting
+it to the left, shaded sickly eyes, under a worn green verandah, from a
+sun that rarely appeared, as the traducers of spinsters pretend those
+virgins are ever keenly on their guard against him that cometh not.
+Belle Vue Terrace stared out of lank glass panes without reserve,
+unashamed of its yellow complexion.  A gaping public-house, calling
+itself newly Hotel, fell backward a step.  Villas with the titles of
+royalty and bloody battles claimed five feet of garden, and swelled in
+bowwindows beside other villas which drew up firmly, commending to the
+attention a decent straightness and unintrusive decorum in preference.
+On an elevated meadow to the right was the Crouch.  The Hall of Elba
+nestled among weather-beaten dwarf woods further toward the cliff.
+Shavenness, featurelessness, emptiness, clamminess scurfiness, formed the
+outward expression of a town to which people were reasonably glad to come
+from London in summer-time, for there was nothing in Crikswich to
+distract the naked pursuit of health.  The sea tossed its renovating
+brine to the determinedly sniffing animal, who went to his meals with an
+appetite that rendered him cordially eulogistic of the place, in spite of
+certain frank whiffs of sewerage coming off an open deposit on the common
+to mingle with the brine.  Tradition told of a French lady and gentleman
+entering the town to take lodgings for a month, and that on the morrow
+they took a boat from the shore, saying in their faint English to a
+sailor veteran of the coastguard, whom they had consulted about the
+weather, "It is better zis zan zat," as they shrugged between rough sea
+and corpselike land.  And they were not seen again.  Their meaning none
+knew.  Having paid their bill at the lodging-house, their conduct was
+ascribed to systematic madness.  English people came to Crikswich for the
+pure salt sea air, and they did not expect it to be cooked and dressed
+and decorated for them.  If these things are done to nature, it is nature
+no longer that you have, but something Frenchified.  Those French are for
+trimming Neptune's beard!  Only wait, and you are sure to find variety in
+nature, more than you may like.  You will find it in Neptune.  What say
+you to a breach of the sea-wall, and an inundation of the aromatic grass-
+flat extending from the house on the beach to the tottering terraces,
+villas, cottages: and public-house transformed by its ensign to Hotel,
+along the frontage of the town?  Such an event had occurred of old, and
+had given the house on the beach the serious shaking great Neptune in his
+wrath alone can give.  But many years had intervened.  Groynes had been
+run down to intercept him and divert him.  He generally did his winter
+mischief on a mill and salt marshes lower westward.  Mr. Tinman had
+always been extremely zealous in promoting the expenditure of what moneys
+the town had to spare upon the protection of the shore, as it were for
+the propitiation or defiance of the sea-god.  There was a kindly joke
+against him an that subject among brother jurats.  He retorted with the
+joke, that the first thing for Englishmen to look to were England's
+defences.
+
+But it will not do to be dwelling too fondly on our eras of peace, for
+which we make such splendid sacrifices.  Peace, saving for the advent of
+a German band, which troubled the repose of the town at intervals, had
+imparted to the inhabitants of Crikswich, within and without, the
+likeness to its most perfect image, together, it must be confessed, with
+a degree of nervousness that invested common events with some of the
+terrors of the Last Trump, when one night, just upon the passing of the
+vernal equinox, something happened.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A carriage Stopped short in the ray of candlelight that was fitfully and
+feebly capering on the windy blackness outside the open workshop of
+Crickledon, the carpenter, fronting the sea-beach.  Mr. Tinnnan's house
+was inquired for.  Crickledon left off planing; at half-sprawl over the
+board, he bawled out, "Turn to the right; right ahead; can't mistake it."
+He nodded to one of the cronies intent on watching his labours: "Not
+unless they mean to be bait for whiting-pout.  Who's that for Tinman, I
+wonder?"  The speculations of Crickledon's friends were lost in the
+scream of the plane.
+
+One cast an eye through the door and observed that the carriage was there
+still.  "Gentleman's got out and walked," said Crickledon.  He was
+informed that somebody was visible inside.  "Gentleman's wife, mayhap,"
+he said.  His friends indulged in their privilege of thinking what they
+liked, and there was the usual silence of tongues in the shop.  He
+furnished them sound and motion for their amusement, and now and then a
+scrap of conversation; and the sedater spirits dwelling in his immediate
+neighbourhood were accustomed to step in and see him work up to supper-
+time, instead of resorting to the more turbid and costly excitement of
+the public-house.
+
+Crickledon looked up from the measurement of a thumb-line.  In the
+doorway stood a bearded gentleman, who announced himself with the
+startling exclamation, "Here's a pretty pickle!"  and bustled to make way
+for a man well known to them as Ned Crummins, the upholsterer's man, on
+whose back hung an article of furniture, the condition of which, with a
+condensed brevity of humour worthy of literary admiration, he displayed
+by mutely turning himself about as he entered.
+
+"Smashed!" was the general outcry.
+
+"I ran slap into him," said the gentleman.  "Who the deuce!--no bones
+broken, that's one thing.  The fellow--there, look at him: he's like a
+glass tortoise."
+
+"It's a chiwal glass," Crickledon remarked, and laid finger on the star
+in the centre.
+
+"Gentleman ran slap into me," said Crummins, depositing the frame on the
+floor of the shop.
+
+"Never had such a shock in my life," continued the gentleman.  "Upon my
+soul, I took him for a door: I did indeed.  A kind of light flashed from
+one of your houses here, and in the pitch dark I thought I was at the
+door of old Mart Tinman's house, and dash me if I did n't go in--crash!
+But what the deuce do you do, carrying that great big looking-glass at
+night, man?  And, look here tell me; how was it you happened to be going
+glass foremost when you'd got the glass on your back?"
+
+"Well, 't ain't my fault, I knows that," rejoined Crummins.  "I came
+along as careful as a man could.  I was just going to bawl out to Master
+Tinman, 'I knows the way, never fear me'; for I thinks I hears him call
+from his house, 'Do ye see the way?' and into me this gentleman runs all
+his might, and smash goes the glass.  I was just ten steps from Master
+Tinman's gate, and that careful, I reckoned every foot I put down, that I
+was; I knows I did, though."
+
+"Why, it was me calling, 'I'm sure I can't see the way.'
+
+"You heard me, you donkey!" retorted the bearded gentleman.  "What was
+the good of your turning that glass against me in the very nick when I
+dashed on you?"
+
+"Well, 't ain't my fault, I swear," said Crummins.  "The wind catches
+voices so on a pitch dark night, you never can tell whether they be on
+one shoulder or the other.  And if I'm to go and lose my place through no
+fault of mine----"
+
+"Have n't I told you, sir, I'm going to pay the damage?  Here," said the
+gentleman, fumbling at his waistcoat, "here, take this card.  Read it."
+
+For the first time during the scene in the carpenter's shop, a certain
+pomposity swelled the gentleman's tone.  His delivery of the card
+appeared to act on him like the flourish of a trumpet before great men.
+
+"Van Diemen Smith," he proclaimed himself for the assistance of Ned
+Crummins in his task; the latter's look of sad concern on receiving the
+card seeming to declare an unscholarly conscience.
+
+An anxious feminine voice was heard close beside Mr. Van Diemen Smith.
+
+"Oh, papa, has there been an accident?  Are you hurt?"
+
+"Not a bit, Netty; not a bit.  Walked into a big looking-glass in the
+dark, that's all.  A matter of eight or ten pound, and that won't stump
+us.  But these are what I call queer doings in Old England, when you
+can't take a step in the dark, on the seashore without plunging bang into
+a glass.  And it looks like bad luck to my visit to old Mart Tinman."
+
+"Can you," he addressed the company, "tell me of a clean, wholesome
+lodging-house?  I was thinking of flinging myself, body and baggage, on
+your mayor, or whatever he is--my old schoolmate; but I don't so much
+like this beginning.  A couple of bed-rooms and sitting-room; clean
+sheets, well aired; good food, well cooked; payment per week in advance."
+
+The pebble dropped into deep water speaks of its depth by the tardy
+arrival of bubbles on the surface, and, in like manner, the very simple
+question put by Mr. Van Diemen Smith pursued its course of penetration in
+the assembled mind in the carpenter's shop for a considerable period,
+with no sign to show that it had reached the bottom.
+
+"Surely, papa, we can go to an inn?  There must be some hotel," said his
+daughter.
+
+"There's good accommodation at the Cliff Hotel hard by," said Crickledon.
+
+"But," said one of his friends, "if you don't want to go so far, sir,
+there's Master Crickledon's own house next door, and his wife lets
+lodgings, and there's not a better cook along this coast."
+
+"Then why did n't the man mention it?  Is he afraid of having me?"  asked
+Mr. Smith, a little thunderingly.  "I may n't be known much yet in
+England; but I'll tell you, you inquire the route to Mr. Van Diemen Smith
+over there in Australia."
+
+"Yes, papa," interrupted his daughter, "only you must consider that it
+may not be convenient to take us in at this hour--so late."
+
+"It's not that, miss, begging your pardon," said Crickledon.  "I make a
+point of never recommending my own house.  That's where it is.  Otherwise
+you're welcome to try us."
+
+"I was thinking of falling bounce on my old schoolmate, and putting Old
+English hospitality to the proof," Mr. Smith meditated.  "But it's late.
+Yes, and that confounded glass!  No, we'll bide with you, Mr. Carpenter.
+I'll send my card across to Mart Tinman to-morrow, and set him agog at
+his breakfast."
+
+Mr. Van Diemen Smith waved his hand for Crickledon to lead the way.
+
+Hereupon Ned Crummins looked up from the card he had been turning over
+and over, more and more like one arriving at a condemnatory judgment of a
+fish.
+
+"I can't go and give my master a card instead of his glass," he remarked.
+
+"Yes, that reminds me; and I should like to know what you meant by
+bringing that glass away from Mr. Tinman's house at night," said Mr.
+Smith.  "If I'm to pay for it, I've a right to know.  What's the meaning
+of moving it at night?  Eh, let's hear.  Night's not the time for moving
+big glasses like that.  I'm not so sure I haven't got a case."
+
+"If you'll step round to my master along o' me, sir," said Crummins,
+"perhaps he'll explain."
+
+Crummins was requested to state who his master was, and he replied,
+"Phippun and Company;" but Mr. Smith positively refused to go with him.
+
+"But here," said he, "is a crown for you, for you're a civil fellow.
+You'll know where to find me in the morning; and mind, I shall expect
+Phippun and Company to give me a very good account of their reason for
+moving a big looking-glass on a night like this.  There, be off."
+
+The crown-piece in his hand effected a genial change in Crummins'
+disposition to communicate.  Crickledon spoke to him about the glass; two
+or three of the others present jogged him.  "What did Mr. Tinman want by
+having the glass moved so late in the day, Ned?  Your master wasn't
+nervous about his property, was he?"
+
+"Not he," said Crummins, and began to suck down his upper lip and agitate
+his eyelids and stand uneasily, glimmering signs of the setting in of the
+tide of narration.
+
+He caught the eye of Mr. Smith, then looked abashed at Miss.
+
+Crickledon saw his dilemma.  "Say what's uppermost, Ned; never mind how
+you says it.  English is English.  Mr. Tinman sent for you to take the
+glass away, now, did n't he?"
+
+"He did," said Crummins.
+
+"And you went to him."
+
+"Ay, that I did."
+
+"And he fastened the chiwal glass upon your back"
+
+"He did that."
+
+"That's all plain sailing.  Had he bought the glass?"
+
+"No, he had n't bought it.  He'd hired it."
+
+As when upon an enforced visit to the dentist, people have had one tooth
+out, the remaining offenders are more willingly submitted to the
+operation, insomuch that a poetical licence might hazard the statement
+that they shed them like leaves of the tree, so Crummins, who had shrunk
+from speech, now volunteered whole sentences in succession, and how
+important they were deemed by his fellow-townsman, Mr. Smith, and
+especially Miss Annette Smith, could perceive in their ejaculations,
+before they themselves were drawn into the strong current of interest.
+
+And this was the matter: Tinman had hired the glass for three days.
+Latish, on the very first day of the hiring, close upon dark, he had
+despatched imperative orders to Phippun and Company to take the glass out
+of his house on the spot.  And why?  Because, as he maintained, there was
+a fault in the glass causing an incongruous and absurd reflection; and he
+was at that moment awaiting the arrival of another chiwal-glass.
+
+"Cut along, Ned," said Crickledon.
+
+"What the deuce does he want with a chiwal-glass at all?"  cried Mr.
+Smith, endangering the flow of the story by suggesting to the narrator
+that he must "hark back," which to him was equivalent to the jumping of a
+chasm hindward.  Happily his brain had seized a picture:
+
+"Mr. Tinman, he's a-standin' in his best Court suit."
+
+Mr. Tinmau's old schoolmate gave a jump; and no wonder.
+
+"Standing?" he cried; and as the act of standing was really not
+extraordinary, he fixed upon the suit: "Court?"
+
+"So Mrs. Cavely told me, it was what he was standin' in, and as I found
+'m I left 'm," said Crummins.
+
+"He's standing in it now?" said Mr. Van Diemen Smith, with a great gape.
+
+Crummins doggedly repeated the statement.  Many would have ornamented it
+in the repetition, but he was for bare flat truth.
+
+"He must be precious proud of having a Court suit," said Mr. Smith, and
+gazed at his daughter so glassily that she smiled, though she was
+impatient to proceed to Mrs. Crickledon's lodgings.
+
+"Oh! there's where it is?" interjected the carpenter, with a funny frown
+at a low word from Ned Crummins.  "Practicing, is he?  Mr. Tinman's
+practicing before the glass preparatory to his going to the palace in
+London."
+
+"He gave me a shillin'," said Crummins.
+
+Crickledon comprehended him immediately.  "We sha'n't speak about it,
+Ned."
+
+What did you see?  was thus cautiously suggested.
+
+The shilling was on Crummins' tongue to check his betrayal of the secret
+scene.  But remembering that he had only witnessed it by accident, and
+that Mr. Tinman had not completely taken him into his confidence, he
+thrust his hand down his pocket to finger the crown-piece lying in
+fellowship with the coin it multiplied five times, and was inspired to
+think himself at liberty to say: "All I saw was when the door opened.
+Not the house-door.  It was the parlour-door.  I saw him walk up to the
+glass, and walk back from the glass.  And when he'd got up to the glass
+he bowed, he did, and he went back'ards just so."
+
+Doubtless the presence of a lady was the active agent that prevented
+Crummins from doubling his body entirely, and giving more than a rapid
+indication of the posture of Mr. Tinman in his retreat before the glass.
+But it was a glimpse of broad burlesque, and though it was received with
+becoming sobriety by the men in the carpenter's shop, Annette plucked at
+her father's arm.
+
+She could not get him to depart.  That picture of his old schoolmate
+Martin Tinman practicing before a chiwal glass to present himself at the
+palace in his Court suit, seemed to stupefy his Australian intelligence.
+
+"What right has he got to go to Court?"  Mr. Van Diemen Smith inquired,
+like the foreigner he had become through exile.
+
+"Mr. Tinman's bailiff of the town," said Crickledon.
+
+"And what was his objection to that glass I smashed?"
+
+"He's rather an irritable gentleman," Crickledon murmured, and turned to
+Crummins.
+
+Crummins growled: "He said it was misty, and gave him a twist."
+
+"What a big fool he must be! eh?"  Mr. Smith glanced at Crickledon and
+the other faces for the verdict of Tinman's townsmen upon his character.
+
+They had grounds for thinking differently of Tinman.
+
+"He's no fool," said Crickledon.
+
+Another shook his head.  "Sharp at a bargain."
+
+"That he be," said the chorus.
+
+Mr. Smith was informed that Mr. Tinman would probably end by buying up
+half the town.
+
+"Then," said Mr. Smith, "he can afford to pay half the money for that
+glass, and pay he shall."
+
+A serious view of the recent catastrophe was presented by his
+declaration.
+
+In the midst of a colloquy regarding the cost of the glass, during which
+it began to be seen by Mr. Tinman's townsmen that there was laughing-
+stuff for a year or so in the scene witnessed by Crummins, if they
+postponed a bit their right to the laugh and took it in doses, Annette
+induced her father to signal to Crickledon his readiness to go and see
+the lodgings.  No sooner had he done it than he said, "What on earth made
+us wait all this time here?  I'm hungry, my dear; I want supper."
+
+"That is because you have had a disappointment.  I know you, papa," said
+Annette.
+
+"Yes, it's rather a damper about old Mart Tinman," her father assented.
+"Or else I have n't recovered the shock of smashing that glass, and visit
+it on him.  But, upon my honour, he's my only friend in England, I have
+n't a single relative that I know of, and to come and find your only
+friend making a donkey of himself, is enough to make a man think of
+eating and drinking."
+
+Annette murmured reproachfully: "We can hardly say he is our only friend
+in England, papa, can we?"
+
+"Do you mean that young fellow?  You'll take my appetite away if you talk
+of him.  He's a stranger.  I don't believe he's worth a penny.  He owns
+he's what he calls a journalist."
+
+These latter remarks were hurriedly exchanged at the threshold of
+Crickledon's house.
+
+"It don't look promising," said Mr. Smith.
+
+"I didn't recommend it," said Crickledon.
+
+"Why the deuce do you let your lodgings, then?"
+
+"People who have come once come again."
+
+"Oh! I am in England," Annette sighed joyfully, feeling at home in some
+trait she had detected in Crickledon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The story of the shattered chiwal-glass and the visit of Tinman's old
+schoolmate fresh from Australia, was at many a breakfast-table before.
+Tinman heard a word of it, and when he did he had no time to spare for
+such incidents, for he was reading to his widowed sister Martha, in an
+impressive tone, at a tolerably high pitch of the voice, and with a
+suppressed excitement that shook away all things external from his mind
+as violently as it agitated his body.  Not the waves without but the
+engine within it is which gives the shock and tremor to the crazy
+steamer, forcing it to cut through the waves and scatter them to spray;
+and so did Martin Tinman make light of the external attack of the card of
+VAN DIEMEN SMITH, and its pencilled line: "An old chum of yours, eh,
+matey?  "Even the communication of Phippun & Co.  concerning the chiwal-
+glass, failed to divert him from his particular task.  It was indeed a
+public duty; and the chiwal-glass, though pertaining to it, was a private
+business.  He that has broken the glass, let that man pay for it, he
+pronounced--no doubt in simpler fashion, being at his ease in his home,
+but with the serenity of one uplifted.  As to the name VAN DIEMEN SMITH,
+he knew it not, and so he said to himself while accurately recollecting
+the identity of the old chum who alone of men would have thought of
+writing eh, matey?
+
+Mr. Van Diemen Smith did not present the card in person.
+"At Crickledon's," he wrote, apparently expecting the bailiff of the
+town to rush over to him before knowing who he was.
+
+Tinman was far too busy.  Anybody can read plain penmanship or print, but
+ask anybody not a Cabinet Minister or a Lord-in-Waiting to read out loud
+and clear in a Palace, before a Throne.  Oh! the nature of reading is
+distorted in a trice, and as Tinman said to his worthy sister: "I can do
+it, but I must lose no time in preparing myself."  Again, at a reperusal,
+he informed her: "I must habituate myself."  For this purpose he had put
+on the suit overnight.
+
+The articulation of faultless English was his object.  His sister Martha
+sat vice-regally to receive his loyal congratulations on the illustrious
+marriage, and she was pensive, less nervous than her brother from not
+having to speak continuously, yet somewhat perturbed.  She also had her
+task, and it was to avoid thinking herself the Person addressed by her
+suppliant brother, while at the same time she took possession of the
+scholarly training and perfect knowledge of diction and rules of
+pronunciation which would infallibly be brought to bear on him in the
+terrible hour of the delivery of the Address.  It was no small task
+moreover to be compelled to listen right through to the end of the
+Address, before the very gentlest word of criticism was allowed.  She did
+not exactly complain of the renewal of the rehearsal: a fatigue can be
+endured when it is a joy.  What vexed her was her failing memory for the
+points of objection, as in her imagined High Seat she conceived them;
+for, in painful truth, the instant her brother had finished she entirely
+lost her acuteness of ear, and with that her recollection: so there was
+nothing to do but to say: "Excellent!  Quite unobjectionable, dear
+Martin, quite:" so she said, and emphatically; but the addition of the
+word "only" was printed on her contracted brow, and every faculty of
+Tinman's mind and nature being at strain just then, he asked her testily:
+"What now?  what's the fault now?"  She assured him with languor that
+there was not a fault.  "It's not your way of talking," said he, and what
+he said was true.  His discernment was extraordinary; generally he
+noticed nothing.
+
+Not only were his perceptions quickened by the preparations for the day
+of great splendour: day of a great furnace to be passed through likewise!
+--he, was learning English at an astonishing rate into the bargain.  A
+pronouncing Dictionary lay open on his table.  To this he flew at a hint
+of a contrary method, and disputes, verifications and triumphs on one
+side and the other ensued between brother and sister.  In his heart the
+agitated man believed his sister to be a misleading guide.  He dared not
+say it, he thought it, and previous to his African travel through the
+Dictionary he had thought his sister infallible on these points.  He
+dared not say it, because he knew no one else before whom he could
+practice, and as it was confidence that he chiefly wanted--above all
+things, confidence and confidence comes of practice, he preferred the
+going on with his practice to an absolute certainty as to correctness.
+
+At midday came another card from Mr. Van Diemen Smith bearing the
+superscription: alias Phil R.
+
+"Can it be possible," Tinman asked his sister, "that Philip Ribstone has
+had the audacity to return to this country?  I think," he added,
+"I am right in treating whoever sends me this card as a counterfeit."
+
+Martha's advice was, that he should take no notice of the card.
+
+"I am seriously engaged," said Tinman.  With a "Now then, dear," he
+resumed his labours.
+
+Messages had passed between Tinman and Phippun; and in the afternoon
+Phippun appeared to broach the question of payment for the chiwal-glass.
+He had seen Mr. Van Diemen Smith, had found him very strange, rather
+impracticable.  He was obliged to tell Tinman that he must hold him
+responsible for the glass; nor could he send a second until payment was
+made for the first.  It really seemed as if Tinman would be compelled, by
+the force of circumstances, to go and shake his old friend by the hand.
+Otherwise one could clearly see the man might be off: he might be off at
+any minute, leaving a legal contention behind him.  On the other hand,
+supposing he had come to Crikswich for assistance in money?  Friendship
+is a good thing, and so is hospitality, which is an essentially English
+thing, and consequently one that it behoves an Englishman to think it his
+duty to perform, but we do not extend it to paupers.  But should a pauper
+get so close to us as to lay hold of us, vowing he was once our friend,
+how shake him loose?  Tinman foresaw that it might be a matter of five
+pounds thrown to the dogs, perhaps ten, counting the glass.  He put on
+his hat, full of melancholy presentiments; and it was exactly half-past
+five o'clock of the spring afternoon when he knocked at Crickledon's
+door.
+
+Had he looked into Crickledon's shop as he went by, he would have
+perceived Van Diemen Smith astride a piece of timber, smoking a pipe.
+Van Diemen saw Tinman.  His eyes cocked and watered.  It is a disgraceful
+fact to record of him without periphrasis.  In truth, the bearded fellow
+was almost a woman at heart, and had come from the Antipodes throbbing to
+slap Martin Tinman on the back, squeeze his hand, run over England with
+him, treat him, and talk of old times in the presence of a trotting
+regiment of champagne.  That affair of the chiwal-glass had temporarily
+damped his enthusiasm.  The absence of a reply to his double transmission
+of cards had wounded him; and something in the look of Tinman disgusted
+his rough taste.  But the well-known features recalled the days of youth.
+Tinman was his one living link to the country he admired as the conqueror
+of the world, and imaginatively delighted in as the seat of pleasures,
+and he could not discard the feeling of some love for Tinman without
+losing his grasp of the reason why, he had longed so fervently and
+travelled so breathlessly to return hither.  In the days of their youth,
+Van Diemen had been Tinman's cordial spirit, at whom he sipped for
+cheerful visions of life, and a good honest glow of emotion now and then.
+Whether it was odd or not that the sipper should be oblivious, and the
+cordial spirit heartily reminiscent of those times, we will not stay to
+inquire.
+
+Their meeting took place in Crickledon's shop.  Tinman was led in by Mrs.
+Crickledon.  His voice made a sound of metal in his throat, and his air
+was that of a man buttoned up to the palate, as he read from the card,
+glancing over his eyelids, "Mr. Van Diemen Smith, I believe."
+
+"Phil Ribstone, if you like," said the other, without rising.
+
+"Oh, ah, indeed!" Tinman temperately coughed.
+
+"Yes, dear me.  So it is.  It strikes you as odd?"
+
+"The change of name," said Tinman.
+
+"Not nature, though!"
+
+"Ah!  Have you been long in England?"
+
+"Time to run to Helmstone, and on here.  You've been lucky in business,
+I hear."
+
+"Thank you; as things go.  Do you think of remaining in England?"
+
+"I've got to settle about a glass I broke last night."
+
+"Ah! I have heard of it.  Yes, I fear there will have to be a
+settlement."
+
+"I shall pay half of the damage.  You'll have to stump up your part."
+
+Van Diemen smiled roguishly.
+
+"We must discuss that," said Tinman, smiling too, as a patient in bed may
+smile at a doctor's joke; for he was, as Crickledon had said of him, no
+fool on practical points, and Van Diemen's mention of the half-payment
+reassured him as to his old friend's position in the world, and softly
+thawed him.  "Will you dine with me to-day?"
+
+"I don't mind if I do.  I've a girl.  You remember little Netty?  She's
+walking out on the beach with a young fellow named Fellingham, whose
+acquaintance we made on the voyage, and has n't left us long to
+ourselves.  Will you have her as well?  And I suppose you must ask him.
+He's a newspaper man; been round the world; seen a lot."
+
+Tinman hesitated.  An electrical idea of putting sherry at fifteen
+shillings per dozen on his table instead of the ceremonial wine at
+twenty-five shillings, assisted him to say hospitably, "Oh! ah! yes; any
+friend of yours."
+
+"And now perhaps you'll shake my fist," said Van Diemen.
+
+"With pleasure," said Tinman.  "It was your change of name, you know, Philip."
+
+Look here, Martin.  Van Diemen Smith was a convict, and my benefactor.
+Why the deuce he was so fond of that name, I can't tell you; but his
+dying wish was for me to take it and carry it on.  He left me his
+fortune, for Van Diemen Smith to enjoy life, as he never did, poor
+fellow, when he was alive.  The money was got honestly, by hard labour at
+a store.  He did evil once, and repented after.  But, by Heaven!"--Van
+Diemen jumped up and thundered out of a broad chest--"the man was one of
+the finest hearts that ever beat.  He was! and I'm proud of him.  When he
+died, I turned my thoughts home to Old England and you, Martin."
+
+"Oh!"  said Tinman; and reminded by Van Diemen's way of speaking, that
+cordiality was expected of him, he shook his limbs to some briskness, and
+continued, "Well, yes, we must all die in our native land if we can.
+I hope you're comfortable in your lodgings?"
+
+"I'll give you one of Mrs. Crickledon's dinners to try.  You're as good
+as mayor of this town, I hear?"
+
+"I am the bailiff of the town," said Mr. Tinman.
+
+"You're going to Court, I'm told."
+
+"The appointment," replied Mr. Tinman, "will soon be made.  I have not
+yet an appointed day."
+
+On the great highroad of life there is Expectation, and there is
+Attainment, and also there is Envy.  Mr. Tinman's posture stood for
+Attainment shadowing Expectation, and sunning itself in the glass of
+Envy, as he spoke of the appointed day.  It was involuntary, and
+naturally evanescent, a momentary view of the spirit.
+
+He unbent, and begged to be excused for the present, that he might go and
+apprise his sister of guests coming.
+
+"All right.  I daresay we shall see, enough of one another," said Van
+Diemen.  And almost before the creak of Tinman's heels was deadened on
+the road outside the shop, he put the funny question to Crickledon, "Do
+you box?"
+
+"I make 'em," Crickledon replied.
+
+"Because I should like to have a go in at something, my friend."
+
+Van Diemen stretched and yawned.
+
+Crickledon recommended the taking of a walk.
+
+"I think I will," said the other, and turned back abruptly.  "How long do
+you work in the day?"
+
+"Generally, all the hours of light," Crickledon replied; "and always up
+to supper-time."
+
+"You're healthy and happy?"
+
+"Nothing to complain of."
+
+"Good appetite?"
+
+"Pretty regular."
+
+"You never take a holiday?"
+
+"Except Sundays."
+
+"You'd like to be working then?"
+
+"I won't say that."
+
+"But you're glad to be up Monday morning?"
+
+"It feels cheerfuller in the shop."
+
+"And carpentering's your joy?"
+
+"I think I may say so."
+
+Van Diemen slapped his thigh.  "There's life in Old England yet!"
+
+Crickledon eyed him as he walked away to the beach to look for his
+daughter, and conceived that there was a touch of the soldier in him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Annette Smith's delight in her native England made her see beauty and
+kindness everywhere around her; it put a halo about the house on the
+beach, and thrilled her at Tinman's table when she heard the thunder of
+the waves hard by.  She fancied it had been a most agreeable dinner to
+her father and Mr. Herbert Fellingham--especially to the latter, who had
+laughed very much; and she was astonished to hear them at breakfast both
+complaining of their evening.  In answer to which, she exclaimed, "Oh, I
+think the situation of the house is so romantic!"
+
+"The situation of the host is exceedingly so," said Mr. Fellingham; "but
+I think his wine the most unromantic liquid I have ever tasted."
+
+"It must be that!"  cried Van Diemen, puzzled by novel pains in the head.
+"Old Martin woke up a little like his old self after dinner."
+
+"He drank sparingly," said Mr. Fellingham.
+
+"I am sure you were satirical last night," Annette said reproachfully.
+
+"On the contrary, I told him I thought he was in a romantic situation."
+
+"But I have had a French mademoiselle for my governess and an Oxford
+gentleman for my tutor; and I know you accepted French and English from
+Mr. Tinman and his sister that I should not have approved."
+
+"Netty," said Van Diemen, "has had the best instruction money could
+procure; and if she says you were satirical, you may depend on it you
+were."
+
+"Oh, in that case, of course!"  Mr. Fellingham rejoined.  "Who could help
+it?"
+
+He thought himself warranted in giving the rein to his wicked satirical
+spirit, and talked lightly of the accidental character of the letter H in
+Tinman's pronunciation; of how, like somebody else's hat in a high wind,
+it descended on somebody else's head, and of how his words walked about
+asking one another who they were and what they were doing, danced
+together madly, snapping their fingers at signification; and so forth.
+He was flippant.
+
+Annette glanced at her father, and dropped her eyelids.
+
+Mr. Fellingham perceived that he was enjoined to be on his guard.
+
+He went one step farther in his fun; upon which Van Diemen said, with a
+frown, "If you please!"
+
+Nothing could withstand that.
+
+"Hang old Mart Tinman's wine!" Van Diemen burst out in the dead pause.
+"My head's a bullet.  I'm in a shocking bad temper.  I can hardly see.
+I'm bilious."
+
+Mr. Fellingham counselled his lying down for an hour, and he went
+grumbling, complaining of Mart Tinman's incredulity about the towering
+beauty of a place in Australia called Gippsland.
+
+Annette confided to Mr. Fellingham, as soon as they were alone, the
+chivalrous nature of her father in his friendships, and his indisposition
+to hear a satirical remark upon his old schoolmate, the moment he
+understood it to be satire.
+
+Fellingham pleaded: "The man's a perfect burlesque.  He's as distinctly
+made to be laughed at as a mask in a pantomime."
+
+"Papa will not think so," said Annette; "and papa has been told that he
+is not to be laughed at as a man of business."
+
+"Do you prize him for that?"
+
+"I am no judge.  I am too happy to be in England to be a judge of
+anything."
+
+"You did not touch his wine!"
+
+"You men attach so much importance to wine!"
+
+"They do say that powders is a good thing after Mr. Tinman's wine,"
+observed Mrs. Crickledon, who had come into the sitting-room to take away
+the breakfast things.
+
+Mr. Fellingham gave a peal of laughter; but Mrs Crickledon bade him be
+hushed, for Mr. Van Diemen Smith had gone to lay down his poor aching
+head on his pillow.  Annette ran upstairs to speak to her father about
+a doctor.
+
+During her absence, Mr. Fellingham received the popular portrait of Mr.
+Tinman from the lips of Mrs. Crickledon.  He subsequently strolled to the
+carpenter's shop, and endeavoured to get a confirmation of it.
+
+"My wife talks too much," said Crickledon.
+
+When questioned by a gentleman, however, he was naturally bound to answer
+to the extent of his knowledge.
+
+"What a funny old country it is!"  Mr. Fellingham said to Annette, on
+their walk to the beach.
+
+She implored him not to laugh at anything English.
+
+"I don't, I assure you," said he.  "I love the country, too.  But when
+one comes back from abroad, and plunges into their daily life, it's
+difficult to retain the real figure of the old country seen from outside,
+and one has to remember half a dozen great names to right oneself.  And
+Englishmen are so funny!  Your father comes here to see his old friend,
+and begins boasting of the Gippsland he has left behind.  Tinman
+immediately brags of Helvellyn, and they fling mountains at one another
+till, on their first evening together, there's earthquake and rupture--
+they were nearly at fisticuffs at one time."
+
+"Oh!  surely no," said Annette.  "I did not hear them.  They were good
+friends when you came to the drawingroom.  Perhaps the wine did affect
+poor papa, if it was bad wine.  I wish men would never drink any.  How
+much happier they would be."
+
+"But then there would cease to be social meetings in England.  What
+should we do?"
+
+"I know that is a sneer; and you were nearly as enthusiastic as I was on
+board the vessel," Annette said, sadly.
+
+"Quite true.  I was.  But see what quaint creatures we have about us!
+Tinman practicing in his Court suit before the chiwal-glass!  And that
+good fellow, the carpenter, Crickledon, who has lived with the sea
+fronting him all his life, and has never been in a boat, and he confesses
+he has only once gone inland, and has never seen an acorn!"
+
+"I wish I could see one--of a real English oak," said Annette.
+
+"And after being in England a few months you will be sighing for the
+Continent."
+
+"Never!"
+
+"You think you will be quite contented here?"
+
+"I am sure I shall be.  May papa and I never be exiles again!  I did not
+feel it when I was three years old, going out to Australia; but it would
+be like death to me now.  Oh!" Annette shivered, as with the exile's
+chill.
+
+"On my honour," said Mr. Fellingham, as softly as he could with the wind
+in his teeth, "I love the old country ten times more from your love of
+it."
+
+"That is not how I want England to be loved," returned Annette.
+
+"The love is in your hands."
+
+She seemed indifferent on hearing it.
+
+He should have seen that the way to woo her was to humour her
+prepossession by another passion.  He could feel that it ennobled her in
+the abstract, but a latent spite at Tinman on account of his wine, to
+which he continued angrily to attribute as unwonted dizziness of the head
+and slight irascibility, made him urgent in his desire that she should
+separate herself from Tinman and his sister by the sharp division of
+derision.
+
+Annette declined to laugh at the most risible caricatures of Tinman.
+In her antagonism she forced her simplicity so far as to say that she did
+not think him absurd.  And supposing Mr. Tinman to have proposed to the
+titled widow, Lady Ray, as she had heard, and to other ladies young and
+middle-aged in the neighbourhood, why should he not, if he wished to
+marry?  If he was economical, surely he had a right to manage his own
+affairs.  Her dread was lest Mr. Tinman and her father should quarrel
+over the payment for the broken chiwal-glass: that she honestly admitted,
+and Fellingham was so indiscreet as to roar aloud, not so very cordially.
+
+Annette thought him unkindly satirical; and his thoughts of her reduced
+her to the condition of a commonplace girl with expressive eyes.
+
+She had to return to her father.  Mr. Fellingham took a walk on the
+springy turf along the cliffs; and "certainly she is a commonplace girl,"
+he began by reflecting; with a side eye at the fact that his meditations
+were excited by Tinman's poisoning of his bile.  "A girl who can't see
+the absurdity of Tinman must be destitute of common intelligence."
+After a while he sniffed the fine sharp air of mingled earth and sea
+delightedly, and he strode back to the town late in the afternoon,
+laughing at himself in scorn of his wretched susceptibility to bilious
+impressions, and really all but hating Tinman as the cause of his
+weakness--in the manner of the criminal hating the detective, perhaps.
+He cast it altogether on Tinman that Annette's complexion of character
+had become discoloured to his mind; for, in spite of the physical
+freshness with which he returned to her society, he was incapable of
+throwing off the idea of her being commonplace; and it was with regret
+that he acknowledged he had gained from his walk only a higher opinion of
+himself.
+
+Her father was the victim of a sick headache, [Migraine--D.W.]and lay, a
+groaning man, on his bed, ministered to by Mrs. Crickledon chiefly.
+Annette had to conduct the business with Mr. Phippun and Mr. Tinman as to
+payment for the chiwal-glass.  She was commissioned to offer half the
+price for the glass on her father's part; more he would not pay.  Tinman
+and Phippun sat with her in Crickledon's cottage, and Mrs. Crickledon
+brought down two messages from her invalid, each positive, to the effect
+that he would fight with all the arms of English law rather than yield
+his point.
+
+Tinman declared it to be quite out of the question that he should pay a
+penny.  Phippun vowed that from one or the other of them he would have
+the money.
+
+Annette naturally was in deep distress, and Fellingham postponed the
+discussion to the morrow.
+
+Even after such a taste of Tinman as that, Annette could not be induced
+to join in deriding him privately.  She looked pained by Mr. Fellingham's
+cruel jests.  It was monstrous, Fellingham considered, that he should
+draw on himself a second reprimand from Van Diemen Smith, while they were
+consulting in entire agreement upon the case of the chiwal-glass.
+
+"I must tell you this, mister sir," said Van Diemen, "I like you, but
+I'll be straightforward and truthful, or I'm not worthy the name of
+Englishman; and I do like you, or I should n't have given you leave to
+come down here after us two.  You must respect my friend if you care for
+my respect.  That's it.  There it is.  Now you know my conditions."
+
+"I 'm afraid I can't sign the treaty," said Fellingham.
+
+"Here's more," said Van Diemen.  "I'm a chilly man myself if I hear a
+laugh and think I know the aim of it.  I'll meet what you like except
+scorn.  I can't stand contempt.  So I feel for another.  And now you
+know."
+
+"It puts a stopper on the play of fancy, and checks the throwing off of
+steam," Fellingham remonstrated.  "I promise to do my best, but of all
+the men I've ever met in my life--Tinman!--the ridiculous!  Pray pardon
+me; but the donkey and his looking-glass!  The glass was misty!  He--as
+particular about his reflection in the glass as a poet with his verses!
+Advance, retire, bow; and such murder of the Queen's English in the very
+presence!  If I thought he was going to take his wine with him, I'd have
+him arrested for high treason."
+
+"You've chosen, and you know what you best like," said Van Diemen,
+pointing his accents--by which is produced the awkward pause, the pitfall
+of conversation, and sometimes of amity.
+
+Thus it happened that Mr. Herbert Fellingham journeyed back to London a
+day earlier than he had intended, and without saying what he meant to
+say.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A month later, after a night of sharp frost on the verge of the warmer
+days of spring, Mr. Fellingham entered Crikswich under a sky of perfect
+blue that was in brilliant harmony with the green downs, the white cliffs
+and sparkling sea, and no doubt it was the beauty before his eyes which
+persuaded him of his delusion in having taken Annette for a commonplace
+girl.  He had come in a merely curious mood to discover whether she was
+one or not.  Who but a commonplace girl would care to reside in
+Crikswich, he had asked himself; and now he was full sure that no
+commonplace girl would ever have had the idea.  Exquisitely simple, she
+certainly was; but that may well be a distinction in a young lady whose
+eyes are expressive.
+
+The sound of sawing attracted him to Crickledon's shop, and the
+industrious carpenter soon put him on the tide of affairs.
+
+Crickledon pointed to the house on the beach as the place where Mr. Van
+Diemen Smith and his daughter were staying.
+
+"Dear me! and how does he look?"  said Fellingham.
+
+"Our town seems to agree with him, sir."
+
+"Well, I must not say any more, I suppose."  Fellingham checked his
+tongue.  "How have they settled that dispute about the chiwal-glass?"
+
+"Mr. Tinman had to give way."
+
+"Really."
+
+"But," Crickledon stopped work, "Mr. Tinman sold him a meadow."
+
+"I see."
+
+"Mr. Smith has been buying a goodish bit of ground here.  They tell me
+he's about purchasing Elba.  He has bought the Crouch.  He and Mr. Tinman
+are always out together.  They're over at Helmstone now.  They've been to
+London."
+
+"Are they likely to be back to-day?"
+
+"Certain, I should think.  Mr. Tinman has to be in London to-morrow."
+
+Crickledon looked.  He was not the man to look artful, but there was a
+lighted corner in his look that revived Fellingham's recollections, and
+the latter burst out:
+
+"The Address?  I 'd half forgotten it.  That's not over yet?  Has he been
+practicing much?"
+
+"No more glasses ha' been broken."
+
+"And how is your wife, Crickledon?"
+
+"She's at home, sir, ready for a talk, if you've a mind to try her."
+
+Mrs. Crickledon proved to be very ready.  "That Tinman," was her theme.
+He had taken away her lodgers, and she knew his objects.  Mr. Smith
+repented of leaving her, she knew, though he dared not say it in plain
+words.  She knew Miss Smith was tired to death of constant companionship
+with Mrs. Cavely, Tinman's sister.  She generally came once in the day
+just to escape from Mrs. Cavely, who would not, bless you! step into a
+cottager's house where she was not allowed to patronize.  Fortunately
+Miss Smith had induced her father to get his own wine from the merchants.
+
+"A happy resolution," said Fellingham; "and a saving one."
+
+He heard further that Mr. Smith would take possession of the Crouch next
+month, and that Mrs. Cavely hung over Miss Smith like a kite.
+
+"And that old Tinman, old enough to be her father!" said Mrs. Crickledon.
+
+She dealt in the flashes which connect ideas.  Fellingham, though a man,
+and an Englishman, was nervously wakeful enough to see the connection.
+
+"They'll have to consult the young lady first, ma'am."
+
+"If it's her father's nod she'll bow to it; now mark me," Mrs. Crickledon
+said, with emphasis.  "She's a young lady who thinks for herself, but she
+takes her start from her father where it's feeling.  And he's gone stone-
+blind over that Tinman."
+
+While they were speaking, Annette appeared.
+
+"I saw you," she said to Fellingham; gladly and openly, in the most
+commonplace manner.
+
+"Are you going to give me a walk along the beach?"  said he.
+
+She proposed the country behind the town, and that was quite as much to
+his taste.  But it was not a happy walk.  He had decided that he admired
+her, and the notion of having Tinman for a rival annoyed him.  He
+overflowed with ridicule of Tinman, and this was distressing to Annette,
+because not only did she see that he would not control himself before her
+father, but he kindled her own satirical spirit in opposition to her
+father's friendly sentiments toward his old schoolmate.
+
+"Mr. Tinman has been extremely hospitable to us," she said, a little
+coldly.
+
+"May I ask you, has he consented to receive instruction in deportment and
+pronunciation?"
+
+Annette did not answer.
+
+"If practice makes perfect, he must be near the mark by this time."
+
+She continued silent.
+
+"I dare say, in domestic life, he's as amiable as he is hospitable, and
+it must be a daily gratification to see him in his Court suit."
+
+"I have not seen him in his Court suit."
+
+"That is his coyness."
+
+"People talk of those things."
+
+"The common people scandalize the great, about whom they know nothing,
+you mean!  I am sure that is true, and living in Courts one must be
+keenly aware of it.  But what a splendid sky and-sea!"
+
+"Is it not?"
+
+Annette echoed his false rapture with a candour that melted him.
+
+He was preparing to make up for lost time, when the wild waving of a
+parasol down a road to the right, coming from the town, caused Annette to
+stop and say, "I think that must be Mrs. Cavely.  We ought to meet her."
+
+Fellingham asked why.
+
+"She is so fond of walks," Anisette replied, with a tooth on her lip
+
+Fellingham thought she seemed fond of runs.
+
+Mrs. Cavely joined them, breathless.  "My dear! the pace you go at!"
+she shouted.  "I saw you starting.  I followed, I ran, I tore along.
+I feared I never should catch you.  And to lose such a morning of
+English scenery!
+
+"Is it not heavenly?"
+
+"One can't say more," Fellingham observed, bowing.
+
+"I am sure I am very glad to see you again, sir.  You enjoy Crikswich?"
+
+"Once visited, always desired, like Venice, ma'am.  May I venture to
+inquire whether Mr. Tinman has presented his Address?"
+
+"The day after to-morrow.  The appointment is made with him," said Mrs.
+Cavely, more officially in manner, "for the day after to-morrow.  He is
+excited, as you may well believe.  But Mr. Smith is an immense relief to
+him--the very distraction he wanted.  We have become one family, you
+know."
+
+"Indeed, ma'am, I did not know it," said Fellingham.
+
+The communication imparted such satiric venom to his further remarks,
+that Annette resolved to break her walk and dismiss him for the day.
+
+He called at the house on the beach after the dinner-hour, to see Mr. Van
+Diemen Smith, when there was literally a duel between him and Tinman; for
+Van Diemen's contribution to the table was champagne, and that had been
+drunk, but Tinman's sherry remained.  Tinman would insist on Fellingham's
+taking a glass.  Fellingham parried him with a sedate gravity of irony
+that was painfully perceptible to Anisette.  Van Diemen at last backed
+Tinman's hospitable intent, and, to Fellingham's astonishment, he found
+that he had been supposed by these two men to be bashfully retreating
+from a seductive offer all the time that his tricks of fence and
+transpiercings of one of them had been marvels of skill.
+
+Tinman pushed the glass into his hand.
+
+"You have spilt some," said Fellingham.
+
+"It won't hurt the carpet," said Tinman.
+
+"Won't it?" Fellingham gazed at the carpet, as if expecting a flame to
+arise.
+
+He then related the tale of the magnanimous Alexander drinking off the
+potion, in scorn of the slanderer, to show faith in his friend.
+
+"Alexander--Who was that?"  said Tinman, foiled in his historical
+recollections by the absence of the surname.
+
+"General Alexander," said Fellingham.  "Alexander Philipson, or he
+declared it was Joveson; and very fond of wine.  But his sherry did for
+him at last."
+
+"Ah! he drank too much, then," said Tinman.
+
+"Of his own!"
+
+Anisette admonished the vindictive young gentleman by saying, "How long
+do you stay in Crikswich, Mr. Fellingham?"
+
+He had grossly misconducted himself.  But an adversary at once offensive
+and helpless provokes brutality.  Anisette prudently avoided letting her
+father understand that satire was in the air; and neither he nor Tinman
+was conscious of it exactly: yet both shrank within themselves under the
+sensation of a devilish blast blowing.  Fellingham accompanied them and
+certain jurats to London next day.
+
+Yes, if you like: when a mayor visits Majesty, it is an important
+circumstance, and you are at liberty to argue at length that it means
+more than a desire on his part to show his writing power and his reading
+power: it is full of comfort the people, as an exhibition of their
+majesty likewise; and it is an encouragement to men to strive to become
+mayors, bailiffs, or prime men of any sort; but a stress in the reporting
+of it--the making it appear too important a circumstance--will surely
+breathe the intimation to a politically-minded people that satire is in
+the air, and however dearly they cherish the privilege of knocking at the
+first door of the kingdom, and walking ceremoniously in to read their
+writings, they will, if they are not in one of their moods for
+prostration, laugh.  They will laugh at the report.
+
+All the greater reason is it that we should not indulge them at such
+periods; and I say woe's me for any brother of the pen, and one in some
+esteem, who dressed the report of that presentation of the Address of
+congratulation by Mr. Bailiff Tinman, of Crikswich!  Herbert Fellingham
+wreaked his personal spite on Tinman.  He should have bethought him that
+it involved another than Tinman that is to say, an office--which the
+fitful beast rejoices to paw and play with contemptuously now and then,
+one may think, as a solace to his pride, and an indemnification for those
+caprices of abject worship so strongly recalling the days we see through
+Mr. Darwin's glasses.
+
+He should not have written the report.  It sent a titter over England.
+He was so unwise as to despatch a copy of the newspaper containing it to
+Van Diemen Smith.  Van Diemen perused it with satisfaction.  So did
+Tinman.  Both of these praised the able young writer.  But they handed
+the paper to the Coastguard Lieutenant, who asked Tinman how he liked it;
+and visitors were beginning to drop in to Crikswich, who made a point of
+asking for a sight of the chief man; and then came a comic publication,
+all in the Republican tone of the time, with Man's Dignity for the
+standpoint, and the wheezy laughter residing in old puns to back it, in
+eulogy of the satiric report of the famous Address of congratulation of
+the Bailiff of Crikswich.
+
+"Annette," Van Diemen said to his daughter, "you'll not encourage that
+newspaper fellow to come down here any more.  He had his warning."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+One of the most difficult lessons for spirited young men to learn is,
+that good jokes are not always good policy.  They have to be paid for,
+like good dinners, though dinner and joke shall seem to have been at
+somebody else's expense.  Young Fellingham was treated rudely by Van
+Diemen Smith, and with some cold reserve by Annette: in consequence of
+which he thought her more than ever commonplace.  He wrote her a letter
+of playful remonstrance, followed by one that appealed to her sentiments.
+
+But she replied to neither of them.  So his visits to Crikswich came to
+an end.
+
+Shall a girl who has no appreciation of fun affect us?  Her expressive
+eyes, and her quaint simplicity, and her enthusiasm for England, haunted
+Mr. Fellingham; being conjured up by contrast with what he met about him.
+But shall a girl who would impose upon us the task of holding in our
+laughter at Tinman be much regretted?  There could be no companionship
+between us, Fellingham thought.
+
+On an excursion to the English Lakes he saw the name of Van Diemen
+Smith in a visitors' book, and changed his ideas on the subject of
+companionship.  Among mountains, or on the sea, or reading history,
+Annette was one in a thousand.  He happened to be at a public ball at
+Helmstone in the Winter season, and who but Annette herself came whirling
+before him on the arm of an officer!  Fellingham did not miss his chance
+of talking to her.  She greeted him gaily, and speaking with the
+excitement of the dance upon her, appeared a stranger to the serious
+emotions he was willing to cherish.  She had been to the Lakes and to
+Scotland.  Next summer she was going to Wales.  All her experiences were
+delicious.  She was insatiable, but satisfied.
+
+"I wish I had been with you," said Fellingham.
+
+"I wish you had," said she.
+
+Mrs. Cavely was her chaperon at the ball, and he was not permitted to
+enjoy a lengthened conversation sitting with Annette.  What was he to
+think of a girl who could be submissive to Mrs. Cavely, and danced with
+any number of officers, and had no idea save of running incessantly over
+England in the pursuit of pleasure?  Her tone of saying, "I wish you
+had," was that of the most ordinary of wishes, distinctly, if not
+designedly different from his own melodious depth.
+
+She granted him one waltz, and he talked of her father and his whimsical
+vagrancies and feeling he had a positive liking for Van Diemen, and he
+sagaciously said so.
+
+Annette's eyes brightened.  "Then why do you never go to see him?  He has
+bought Elba.  We move into the Hall after Christmas.  We are at the
+Crouch at present.  Papa will be sure to make you welcome.  Do you not
+know that he never forgets a friend or breaks a friendship?"
+
+"I do, and I love him for it," said Fellingham.
+
+If he was not greatly mistaken a gentle pressure on the fingers of his
+left hand rewarded him.
+
+This determined him.  It should here be observed that he was by birth the
+superior of Annette's parentage, and such is the sentiment of a better
+blood that the flattery of her warm touch was needed for him to overlook
+the distinction.
+
+Two of his visits to Crikswich resulted simply in interviews and
+conversations with Mrs. Crickledon.  Van Diemen and his daughter were in
+London with Tinman and Mrs. Cavely, purchasing furniture for Elba Hall.
+Mrs. Crickledon had no scruple in saying, that Mrs. Cavely meant her
+brother to inhabit the Hall, though Mr. Smith had outbid him in the
+purchase.  According to her, Tinman and Mr. Smith had their differences;
+for Mr. Smith was a very outspoken gentleman, and had been known to call
+Tinman names that no man of spirit would bear if he was not scheming.
+
+Fellingham returned to London, where he roamed the streets famous for
+furniture warehouses, in the vain hope of encountering the new owner of
+Elba.
+
+Failing in this endeavour, he wrote a love-letter to Annette.
+
+It was her first.  She had liked him.  Her manner of thinking she might
+love him was through the reflection that no one stood in the way.  The
+letter opened a world to her, broader than Great Britain.
+
+Fellingham begged her, if she thought favourably of him, to prepare her
+father for the purport of his visit.  If otherwise, she was to interdict
+the visit with as little delay as possible and cut him adrift.
+
+A decided line of conduct was imperative.  Yet you have seen that she was
+not in love.  She was only not unwilling to be in love.  And Fellingham
+was just a trifle warmed.  Now mark what events will do to light the
+fires.
+
+Van Diemen and Tinman, old chums re-united, and both successful in life,
+had nevertheless, as Mrs. Crickledon said, their differences.  They
+commenced with an opposition to Tinman's views regarding the expenditure
+of town moneys.  Tinman was ever for devoting them to the patriotic
+defence of "our shores;" whereas Van Diemen, pointing in detestation of
+the town sewerage reeking across the common under the beach, loudly
+called on him to preserve our lives, by way of commencement.  Then Van
+Diemen precipitately purchased Elba at a high valuation, and Tinman had
+expected by waiting to buy it at his own valuation, and sell it out of
+friendly consideration to his friend afterwards, for a friendly
+consideration.  Van Diemen had joined the hunt.  Tinman could not mount
+a horse.  They had not quarrelled, but they had snapped about these and
+other affairs.  Van Diemen fancied Tinman was jealous of his wealth.
+Tinman shrewdly suspected Van Diemen to be contemptuous of his dignity.
+He suffered a loss in a loan of money; and instead of pitying him, Van
+Diemen had laughed him to scorn for expecting security for investments at
+ten per cent.  The bitterness of the pinch to Tinman made him frightfully
+sensitive to strictures on his discretion.  In his anguish he told his
+sister he was ruined, and she advised him to marry before the crash.  She
+was aware that he exaggerated, but she repeated her advice.  She went so
+far as to name the person.  This is known, because she was overheard by
+her housemaid, a gossip of Mrs. Crickledon's, the subsequently famous
+"Little Jane."
+
+Now, Annette had shyly intimated to her father the nature of Herbert
+Fellingham's letter, at the same time professing a perfect readiness to
+submit to his directions; and her father's perplexity was very great, for
+Annette had rather fervently dramatized the young man's words at the ball
+at Helmstone, which had pleasantly tickled him, and, besides, he liked
+the young man.  On the other hand, he did not at all like the prospect of
+losing his daughter; and he would have desired her to be a lady of title.
+He hinted at her right to claim a high position.  Annette shrank from the
+prospect, saying, "Never let me marry one who might be ashamed of my
+father!"
+
+"I shouldn't stomach that," said Van Diemen, more disposed in favour of
+the present suitor.
+
+Annette was now in a tremor.  She had a lover; he was coming.  And if he
+did not come, did it matter?  Not so very much, except to her pride.  And
+if he did, what was she to say to him?  She felt like an actress who may
+in a few minutes be called on the stage, without knowing her part.  This
+was painfully unlike love, and the poor girl feared it would be her
+conscientious duty to dismiss him--most gently, of course; and perhaps,
+should he be impetuous and picturesque, relent enough to let him hope,
+and so bring about a happy postponement of the question.  Her father had
+been to a neighbouring town on business with Mr. Tinman.  He knocked at
+her door at midnight; and she, in dread of she knew not what--chiefly
+that the Hour of the Scene had somehow struck--stepped out to him
+trembling.  He was alone.  She thought herself the most childish of
+mortals in supposing that she could have been summoned at midnight to
+declare her sentiments, and hardly noticed his gloomy depression.  He
+asked her to give him five minutes; then asked her for a kiss, and told
+her to go to bed and sleep.  But Annette had seen that a great present
+affliction was on him, and she would not be sent to sleep.  She promised
+to listen patiently, to bear anything, to be brave.  "Is it bad news from
+home?" she said, speaking of the old home where she had not left her
+heart, and where his money was invested.
+
+"It's this, my dear Netty," said Van Diemen, suffering her to lead him
+into her sitting-room; "we shall have to leave the shores of England."
+
+"Then we are ruined."
+
+"We're not; the rascal can't do that.  We might be off to the Continent,
+or we might go to America; we've money.  But we can't stay here.  I'll
+not live at any man's mercy."
+
+"The Continent! America!"  exclaimed the enthusiast for England.
+"Oh, papa, you love living in England so!"
+
+"Not so much as all that, my dear.  You do, that I know.  But I don't see
+how it's to be managed.  Mart Tinman and I have been at tooth and claw
+to-day and half the night; and he has thrown off the mask, or he's dashed
+something from my sight, I don't know which.  I knocked him down."
+
+"Papa!"
+
+"I picked him up."
+
+"Oh," cried Annette, "has Mr. Tinman been hurt?"
+
+"He called me a Deserter!"
+
+Anisette shuddered.
+
+She did not know what this thing was, but the name of it opened a cabinet
+of horrors, and she touched her father timidly, to assure him of her
+constant love, and a little to reassure herself of his substantial
+identity.
+
+"And I am one," Van Diemen made the confession at the pitch of his voice.
+"I am a Deserter; I'm liable to be branded on the back.  And it's in Mart
+Tinman's power to have me marched away to-morrow morning in the sight of
+Crikswich, and all I can say for myself, as a man and a Briton, is, I did
+not desert before the enemy.  That I swear I never would have done.
+Death, if death's in front; but your poor mother was a handsome woman, my
+child, and there--I could not go on living in barracks and leaving her
+unprotected.  I can't tell a young woman the tale.  A hundred pounds came
+on me for a legacy, as plump in my hands out of open heaven, and your
+poor mother and I saw our chance; we consulted, and we determined to risk
+it, and I got on board with her and you, and over the seas we went, first
+to shipwreck, ultimately to fortune."
+
+Van Diemen laughed miserably.  "They noticed in the hunting-field here I
+had a soldier-like seat.  A soldier-like seat it'll be, with a brand on
+it.  I sha'n't be asked to take a soldier-like seat at any of their
+tables again.  I may at Mart Tinman's, out of pity, after I've undergone
+my punishment.  There's a year still to run out of the twenty of my term
+of service due.  He knows it; he's been reckoning; he has me.  But the
+worst cat-o'-nine-tails for me is the disgrace.  To have myself pointed
+at, 'There goes the Deserter'  He was a private in the Carbineers, and he
+deserted.'  No one'll say, 'Ay, but he clung to the idea of his old
+schoolmate when abroad, and came back loving him, and trusted him, and
+was deceived."
+
+Van Diemen produced a spasmodic cough with a blow on his chest.  Anisette
+was weeping.
+
+"There, now go to bed," said he.  "I wish you might have known no more
+than you did of our flight when I got you on board the ship with your
+poor mother; but you're a young woman now, and you must help me to think
+of another cut and run, and what baggage we can scrape together in a
+jiffy, for I won't live here at Mart Tinman's mercy."
+
+Drying her eyes to weep again, Annette said, when she could speak: "Will
+nothing quiet him?  I was going to bother you with all sorts of silly
+questions, poor dear papa; but I see I can understand if I try.  Will
+nothing--Is he so very angry?  Can we not do something to pacify him?  He
+is fond of money.  He--oh, the thought of leaving England!  Papa, it will
+kill you; you set your whole heart on England.  We could--I could--could
+I not, do you not think?--step between you as a peacemaker.  Mr. Tinman
+is always very courteous to me."
+
+At these words of Annette's, Van Diemen burst into a short snap of savage
+laughter.  "But that's far away in the background, Mr. Mart Tinman!" he
+said.  "You stick to your game, I know that; but you'll find me flown,
+though I leave a name to stink like your common behind me.  And," he
+added, as a chill reminder, "that name the name of my benefactor.  Poor
+old Van Diemen!  He thought it a safe bequest to make."
+
+"It was; it is!  We will stay; we will not be exiled," said Annette.  "I
+will do anything.  What was the quarrel about, papa?"
+
+"The fact is, my dear, I just wanted to show him--and take down his
+pride--I'm by my Australian education a shrewder hand than his old
+country.  I bought the house on the beach while he was chaffering, and
+then I sold it him at a rise when the town was looking up--only to make
+him see.  Then he burst up about something I said of Australia.  I will
+have the common clean.  Let him live at the Crouch as my tenant if he
+finds the house on the beach in danger."
+
+"Papa, I am sure," Annette repeated--"sure I have influence with Mr.
+Tinman."
+
+"There are those lips of yours shutting tight," said her father.  "Just
+listen, and they make a big O.  The donkey!  He owns you've got
+influence, and he offers he'll be silent if you'll pledge your word to
+marry him.  I'm not sure he didn't say, within the year.  I told him to
+look sharp not to be knocked down again.  Mart Tinman for my son-in-law!
+That's an upside down of my expectations, as good as being at the
+antipodes without a second voyage back!  I let him know you were
+engaged."
+
+Annette gazed at her father open-mouthed, as he had predicted; now with
+a little chilly dimple at one corner of the mouth, now at another--as a
+breeze curves the leaden winter lake here and there.  She could not get
+his meaning into her sight, and she sought, by looking hard, to
+understand it better; much as when some solitary maiden lady, passing
+into her bedchamber in the hours of darkness, beholds--tradition telling
+us she has absolutely beheld foot of burglar under bed; and lo!  she
+stares, and, cunningly to moderate her horror, doubts, yet cannot but
+believe that there is a leg, and a trunk, and a head, and two terrible
+arms, bearing pistols, to follow.  Sick, she palpitates; she compresses
+her trepidation; she coughs, perchance she sings a bar or two of an aria.
+Glancing down again, thrice horrible to her is it to discover that there
+is no foot!  For had it remained, it might have been imagined a harmless,
+empty boot.  But the withdrawal has a deadly significance of animal life
+.  .  .  .
+
+In like manner our stricken Annette perceived the object; so did she
+gradually apprehend the fact of her being asked for Tinman's bride, and
+she could not think it credible.  She half scented, she devised her plan
+of escape from another single mention of it.  But on her father's
+remarking, with a shuffle, frightened by her countenance, "Don't listen
+to what I said, Netty.  I won't paint him blacker than he is"--then
+Annette was sure she had been proposed for by Mr. Tinman, and she fancied
+her father might have revolved it in his mind that there was this means
+of keeping Tinman silent, silent for ever, in his own interests.
+
+"It was not true, when you told Mr. Tinman I was engaged, papa," she
+said.
+
+"No, I know that.  Mart Tinman only half-kind of hinted.  Come, I say!
+Where's the unmarried man wouldn't like to have a girl like you, Netty!
+They say he's been rejected all round a circuit of fifteen miles; and
+he's not bad-looking, neither--he looks fresh and fair.  But I thought it
+as well to let him know he might get me at a disadvantage, but he
+couldn't you.  Now, don't think about it, my love."
+
+"Not if it is not necessary, papa," said Annette; and employed her
+familiar sweetness in persuading him to go to bed, as though he were the
+afflicted one requiring to be petted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Round under the cliffs by the sea, facing South, are warm seats in
+winter.  The sun that shines there on a day of frost wraps you as in a
+mantle.  Here it was that Mr. Herbert Fellingham found Annette, a chalk-
+block for her chair, and a mound of chalk-rubble defending her from the
+keen-tipped breath of the east, now and then shadowing the smooth blue
+water, faintly, like reflections of a flight of gulls.
+
+Infants are said to have their ideas, and why not young ladies?  Those
+who write of their perplexities in descriptions comical in their length
+are unkind to them, by making them appear the simplest of the creatures
+of fiction; and most of us, I am sure, would incline to believe in them
+if they were only some bit more lightly touched.  Those troubled
+sentiments of our young lady of the comfortable classes are quite worthy
+of mention.  Her poor little eye poring as little fishlike as possible
+upon the intricate, which she takes for the infinite, has its place in
+our history, nor should we any of us miss the pathos of it were it not
+that so large a space is claimed for the exposure.  As it is, one has
+almost to fight a battle to persuade the world that she has downright
+thoughts and feelings, and really a superhuman delicacy is required in
+presenting her that she may be credible.  Even then--so much being
+accomplished the thousands accustomed to chapters of her when she is in
+the situation of Annette will be disappointed by short sentences, just as
+of old the Continental eater of oysters would have been offended at the
+offer of an exchange of two live for two dozen dead ones.  Annette was in
+the grand crucial position of English imaginative prose.  I recognize it,
+and that to this the streamlets flow, thence pours the flood.  But what
+was the plain truth?  She had brought herself to think she ought to
+sacrifice herself to Tinman, and her evasions with Herbert, manifested in
+tricks of coldness alternating with tones of regret, ended, as they had
+commenced, in a mysterious half-sullenness.  She had hardly a word to
+say.  Let me step in again to observe that she had at the moment no
+pointed intention of marrying Tinman.  To her mind the circumstances
+compelled her to embark on the idea of doing so, and she saw the
+extremity in an extreme distance, as those who are taking voyages may see
+death by drowning.  Still she had embarked.
+
+"At all events, I have your word for it that you don't dislike me?" said
+Herbert.
+
+"Oh! no," she sighed.  She liked him as emigrants the land they are
+leaving.
+
+"And you have not promised your hand?"
+
+"No," she said, but sighed in thinking that if she could be induced to
+promise it, there would not be a word of leaving England.
+
+"Then, as you are not engaged, and don't hate me, I have a chance?" he
+said, in the semi-wailful interrogative of an organ making a mere windy
+conclusion.
+
+Ocean sent up a tiny wave at their feet.
+
+"A day like this in winter is rarer than a summer day," Herbert resumed
+encouragingly.
+
+Annette was replying, "People abuse our climate--"
+
+But the thought of having to go out away from this climate in the
+darkness of exile, with her father to suffer under it worse than herself,
+overwhelmed her, and fetched the reality of her sorrow in the form of
+Tinman swimming before her soul with the velocity of a telegraph-pole to
+the window of the flying train.  It was past as soon as seen, but it gave
+her a desperate sensation of speed.
+
+She began to feel that this was life in earnest.
+
+And Herbert should have been more resolute, fierier.  She needed a strong
+will.
+
+But he was not on the rapids of the masterful passion.  For though going
+at a certain pace, it was by his own impulsion; and I am afraid I must,
+with many apologies, compare him to the skater--to the skater on easy,
+slippery ice, be it understood; but he could perform gyrations as he
+went, and he rather sailed along than dashed; he was careful of his
+figuring.  Some lovers, right honest lovers, never get beyond this quaint
+skating-stage; and some ladies, a right goodly number in a foggy climate,
+deceived by their occasional runs ahead, take them for vessels on the
+very torrent of love.  Let them take them, and let the race continue.
+Only we perceive that they are skating; they are careering over a smooth
+icy floor, and they can stop at a signal, with just half-a-yard of
+grating on the heel at the outside.  Ice, and not fire nor falling water,
+has been their medium of progression.
+
+Whether a man should unveil his own sex is quite another question.
+If we are detected, not solely are we done for, but our love-tales too.
+However, there is not much ground for anxiety on that head.  Each member
+of the other party is blind on her own account.
+
+To Annette the figuring of Herbert was graceful, but it did not catch her
+up and carry her; it hardly touched her: He spoke well enough to make her
+sorry for him, and not warmly enough to make her forget her sorrow for
+herself.
+
+Herbert could obtain no explanation of the singularity of her conduct
+from Annette, and he went straight to her father, who was nearly as
+inexplicable for a time.  At last he said:
+
+"If you are ready to quit the country with us, you may have my consent."
+
+"Why quit the country?"  Herbert asked, in natural amazement.
+
+Van Diemen declined to tell him.
+
+But seeing the young man look stupefied and wretched he took a turn about
+the room, and said: "I have n't robbed," and after more turns, "I have
+n't murdered."  He growled in his menagerie trot within the four walls.
+"But I'm, in a man's power.  Will that satisfy you?  You'll tell me,
+because I'm rich, to snap my fingers.  I can't.  I've got feelings.  I'm
+in his power to hurt me and disgrace me.  It's the disgrace--to my
+disgrace I say it--I dread most.  You'd be up to my reason if you had
+ever served in a regiment.  I mean, discipline--if ever you'd known
+discipline--in the police if you like--anything--anywhere where there's
+what we used to call spiny de cor.  I mean, at school.  And I'm," said
+Van Diemen, "a rank idiot double D. dolt, and flat as a pancake, and
+transparent as a pane of glass.  You see through me.  Anybody could.
+I can't talk of my botheration without betraying myself.  What good am
+I among you sharp fellows in England?"
+
+Language of this kind, by virtue of its unintelligibility, set Mr.
+Herbert Fellingham's acute speculations at work.  He was obliged to lean
+on Van Diemen's assertion, that he had not robbed and had not murdered,
+to be comforted by the belief that he was not once a notorious
+bushranger, or a defaulting manager of mines, or any other thing
+that is naughtily Australian and kangarooly.
+
+He sat at the dinner-table at Elba, eating like the rest of mankind, and
+looking like a starved beggarman all the while.
+
+Annette, in pity of his bewilderment, would have had her father take him
+into their confidence.  She suggested it covertly, and next she spoke of
+it to him as a prudent measure, seeing that Mr. Fellingham might find out
+his exact degree of liability.  Van Diemen shouted; he betrayed himself
+in his weakness as she could not have imagined him.  He was ready to go,
+he said--go on the spot, give up Elba, fly from Old England: what he
+could not do was to let his countrymen know what he was, and live among
+them afterwards.  He declared that the fact had eternally been present to
+his mind, devouring him; and Annette remembered his kindness to the
+artillerymen posted along the shore westward of Crikswich, though she
+could recall no sign of remorse.  Van Diemen said: "We have to do with
+Martin Tinman; that's one who has a hold on me, and one's enough.  Leak
+out my secret to a second fellow, you double my risks."  He would not be
+taught to see how the second might counteract the first.  The singularity
+of the action of his character on her position was, that though she knew
+not a soul to whom she could unburden her wretchedness, and stood far
+more isolated than in her Australian home, fever and chill struck her
+blood in contemplation of the necessity of quitting England.
+
+Deep, then, was her gratitude to dear good Mrs. Cavely for stepping in to
+mediate between her father and Mr. Tinman.  And well might she be amazed
+to hear the origin of their recent dispute.
+
+"It was," Mrs. Cavely said, "that Gippsland."
+
+Annette cried: "What?"
+
+"That Gippsland of yours, my dear.  Your father will praise Gippsland
+whenever my Martin asks him to admire the beauties of our neighbourhood.
+Many a time has Martin come home to me complaining of it.  We have no
+doubt on earth that Gippsland is a very fine place; but my brother has
+his idea's of dignity, you must know, and I only wish he had been more
+used to contradiction, you may believe me.  He is a lamb by nature.  And,
+as he says, 'Why underrate one's own country?' He cannot bear to hear
+boasting.  Well! I put it to you, dear Annette, is he so unimportant a
+person?  He asks to be respected, and especially by his dearest friend.
+From that to blows!  It's the way with men.  They begin about trifles,
+they drink, they quarrel, and one does what he is sorry for, and one says
+more than he means.  All my Martin desires is to shake your dear father's
+hand, forgive and forget.  To win your esteem, darling Annette, he would
+humble himself in the dust.  Will you not help me to bring these two dear
+old friends together once more?  It is unreasonable of your dear papa to
+go on boasting of Gippsland if he is so fond of England, now is it not?
+My brother is the offended party in the eye of the law.  That is quite
+certain.  Do you suppose he dreams of taking advantage of it?  He is
+waiting at home to be told he may call on your father.  Rank, dignity,
+wounded feelings, is nothing to him in comparison with friendship."
+
+Annette thought of the blow which had felled him, and spoke the truth of
+her heart in saying, "He is very generous."
+
+"You understand him."  Mrs. Cavely pressed her hand.  "We will both go to
+your dear father.  He may," she added, not without a gleam of feminine
+archness, "praise Gippsland above the Himalayas to me.  What my Martin so
+much objected to was, the speaking of Gippsland at all when there was
+mention of our Lake scenery.  As for me, I know how men love to boast of
+things nobody else has seen."
+
+The two ladies went in company to Van Diemen, who allowed himself to be
+melted.  He was reserved nevertheless.  His reception of Mr. Tinman
+displeased his daughter.  Annette attached the blackest importance to a
+blow of the fist.  In her mind it blazed fiendlike, and the man who
+forgave it rose a step or two on the sublime.  Especially did he do so
+considering that he had it in his power to dismiss her father and herself
+from bright beaming England before she had looked on all the cathedrals
+and churches, the sea-shores and spots named in printed poetry, to say
+nothing of the nobility.
+
+"Papa, you were not so kind to Mr. Tinman as I could have hoped," said
+Annette.
+
+"Mart Tinman has me at his mercy, and he'll make me know it," her father
+returned gloomily.  "He may let me off with the Commander-in-chief.
+He'll blast my reputation some day, though.  I shall be hanging my head
+in society, through him."
+
+Van Diemen imitated the disconsolate appearance of a gallows body, in one
+of those rapid flashes of spontaneous veri-similitude which spring of an
+inborn horror painting itself on the outside.
+
+"A Deserter!" he moaned.
+
+He succeeded in impressing the terrible nature of the stigma upon
+Annette's imagination.
+
+The guest at Elba was busy in adding up the sum of his own impressions,
+and dividing it by this and that new circumstance; for he was totally in
+the dark.  He was attracted by the mysterious interview of Mrs. Cavely
+and Annette.  Tinman's calling and departing set him upon new
+calculations.  Annette grew cold and visibly distressed by her
+consciousness of it.
+
+She endeavoured to account for this variation of mood.  "We have been
+invited to dine at the house on the beach to-morrow.  I would not have
+accepted, but papa .  .  .  we seemed to think it a duty.  Of course the
+invitation extends to you.  We fancy you do not greatly enjoy dining
+there.  The table will be laid for you here, if you prefer."
+
+Herbert preferred to try the skill of Mrs. Crickledon.
+
+Now, for positive penetration the head prepossessed by a suspicion is
+unmatched; for where there is no daylight; this one at least goes about
+with a lantern.  Herbert begged Mrs. Crickledon to cook a dinner for him,
+and then to give the right colour to his absence from the table of Mr.
+Tinman, he started for a winter day's walk over the downs as sharpening a
+business as any young fellow, blunt or keen, may undertake; excellent for
+men of the pen, whether they be creative, and produce, or slaughtering,
+and review; good, then, for the silly sheep of letters and the butchers.
+He sat down to Mrs. Crickledon's table at half-past six.  She was, as she
+had previously informed him, a forty-pound-a-year cook at the period of
+her courting by Crickledon.  That zealous and devoted husband had made
+his first excursion inland to drop over the downs to the great house, and
+fetch her away as his bride, on the death of her master, Sir Alfred
+Pooney, who never would have parted with her in life; and every day of
+that man's life he dirtied thirteen plates at dinner, nor more, nor less,
+but exactly that number, as if he believed there was luck in it.  And as
+Crickledon said, it was odd.  But it was always a pleasure to cook for
+him.  Mrs. Crickledon could not abide cooking for a mean eater.  And when
+Crickledon said he had never seen an acorn, he might have seen one had he
+looked about him in the great park, under the oaks, on the day when he
+came to be married.
+
+"Then it's a standing compliment to you, Mrs. Crickledon, that he did
+not," said Herbert.
+
+He remarked with the sententiousness of enforced philosophy, that no wine
+was better than bad wine.
+
+Mrs. Crickledon spoke of a bottle left by her summer lodgers, who had
+indeed left two, calling the wine invalid's wine; and she and her husband
+had opened one on the anniversary of their marriage day in October.  It
+had the taste of doctor's shop, they both agreed; and as no friend of
+theirs could be tempted beyond a sip, they were advised, because it was
+called a tonic, to mix it with the pig-wash, so that it should not be
+entirely lost, but benefit the constitution of the pig.  Herbert sipped
+at the remaining bottle, and finding himself in the superior society of
+an old Manzanilla, refilled his glass.
+
+"Nothing I knows of proves the difference between gentlefolks and poor
+persons as tastes in wine," said Mrs. Crickledon, admiring him as she
+brought in a dish of cutlets,--with Sir Alfred Pooney's favourite sauce
+Soubise, wherein rightly onion should be delicate as the idea of love in
+maidens' thoughts, albeit constituting the element of flavour.  Something
+of such a dictum Sir Alfred Pooney had imparted to his cook, and she
+repeated it with the fresh elegance of, such sweet sayings when
+transfused through the native mind:
+
+"He said, I like as it was what you would call a young gal's blush at a
+kiss round a corner."
+
+The epicurean baronet had the habit of talking in that way.
+
+Herbert drank to his memory.  He was well-filled; he had no work to do,
+and he was exuberant in spirits, as Mrs. Crickledon knew her countrymen
+should and would be under those conditions.  And suddenly he drew his
+hand across a forehead so wrinkled and dark, that Mrs. Crickledon
+exclaimed, "Heart or stomach?"
+
+"Oh, no," said he.  "I'm sound enough in both, I hope."
+
+That old Tinman's up to one of his games," she observed.
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"He's circumventing Miss Annette Smith."
+
+"Pooh!  Crickledon.  A man of his age can't be seriously thinking of
+proposing for a young lady."
+
+He's a well-kept man.  He's never racketed.  He had n't the rackets in
+him.  And she may n't care for him.  But we hear things drop."
+
+"What things have you heard drop, Crickledon?  In a profound silence you
+may hear pins; in a hubbub you may hear cannon-balls.  But I never
+believe in eavesdropping gossip."
+
+"He was heard to say to Mr. Smith," Crickledon pursued, and she lowered
+her voice, "he was heard to say, it was when they were quarreling over
+that chiwal, and they went at one another pretty hard before Mr. Smith
+beat him and he sold Mr. Smith that meadow; he was heard to say, there
+was worse than transportation for Mr. Smith if he but lifted his finger.
+They Tinmans have awful tempers.  His old mother died malignant, though
+she was a saving woman, and never owed a penny to a Christian a hour
+longer than it took to pay the money.  And old Tinman's just such
+another."
+
+"Transportation!" Herbert ejaculated, "that's sheer nonsense, Crickledon.
+I'm sure your husband would tell you so."
+
+"It was my husband brought me the words," Mrs. Crickledon rejoined with
+some triumph.  "He did tell me, I own, to keep it shut: but my speaking
+to you, a friend of Mr. Smith's, won't do no harm.  He heard them under
+the battery, over that chiwal glass: 'And you shall pay,' says Mr. Smith,
+and 'I sha'n't,' says old Tinman.  Mr. Smith said he would have it if he
+had to squeeze a deathbed confession from a sinner.  Then old Tinman
+fires out, 'You!' he says, 'you' and he stammered.  'Mr. Smith,' my
+husband said and you never saw a man so shocked as my husband at being
+obliged to hear them at one another Mr. Smith used the word damn. 'You
+may laugh, sir.'"
+
+"You say it so capitally, Crickledon."
+
+"And then old Tinman said, 'And a D. to you; and if I lift my finger,
+it's Big D. on your back."
+
+"And what did Mr. Smith say, then?"
+
+"He said, like a man shot, my husband says he said, 'My God!'"
+
+Herbert Fellingham jumped away from the table.
+
+"You tell me, Crickledon, your husband actually heard that--just those
+words?--the tones?"
+
+"My husband says he heard him say, 'My God!' just like a poor man shot or
+stabbed.  You may speak to Crickledon, if you speaks to him alone, sir.
+I say you ought to know.  For I've noticed Mr. Smith since that day has
+never looked to me the same easy-minded happy gentleman he was when we
+first knew him.  He would have had me go to cook for him at Elba, but
+Crickledon thought I'd better be independent, and Mr. Smith said to me,
+'Perhaps you're right, Crickledon, for who knows how long I may be among
+you?'"
+
+Herbert took the solace of tobacco in Crickledon's shop.  Thence, with
+the story confirmed to him, he sauntered toward the house on the beach.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The moon was over sea.  Coasting vessels that had run into the bay for
+shelter from the North wind lay with their shadows thrown shoreward on
+the cold smooth water, almost to the verge of the beach, where there was
+neither breath nor sound of wind, only the lisp at the pebbles.
+
+Mrs. Crickledon's dinner and the state of his heart made young Fellingham
+indifferent to a wintry atmosphere.  It sufficed him that the night was
+fair.  He stretched himself on the shingle, thinking of the Manzanilla,
+and Annette, and the fine flavour given to tobacco by a dry still air in
+moonlight--thinking of his work, too, in the background, as far as mental
+lassitude would allow of it.  The idea of taking Annette to see his first
+play at the theatre when it should be performed--was very soothing.  The
+beach rather looked like a stage, and the sea like a ghostly audience,
+with, if you will, the broadside bulks of black sailing craft at anchor
+for representatives of the newspaper piers.  Annette was a nice girl; if
+a little commonplace and low-born, yet sweet.  What a subject he could
+make of her father!  "The Deserter" offered a new complication.
+Fellingham rapidly sketched it in fancy--Van Diemen, as a Member of the
+Parliament of Great Britain, led away from the House of Commons to be
+branded on the bank!  What a magnificent fall!  We have so few intensely
+dramatic positions in English real life that the meditative author grew
+enamoured of this one, and laughed out a royal "Ha!" like a monarch
+reviewing his well-appointed soldiery.
+
+"There you are," said Van Diemen's voice; "I smelt your pipe.  You're a
+rum fellow, to belying out on the beach on a cold night.  Lord!  I don't
+like you the worse for it.  Twas for the romance of the moon in my young
+days."
+
+"Where is Annette?"  said Fellingham, jumping to his feet.
+
+"My daughter?  She 's taking leave of her intended."
+
+"What's that?"  Fellingham gasped.  "Good heavens, Mr. Smith, what do you
+mean?"
+
+"Pick up your pipe, my lad.  Girls choose as they please, I suppose"
+
+"Her intended, did you say, sir?  What can that mean?"
+
+"My dear good young fellow, don't make a fuss.  We're all going to stay
+here, and very glad to see you from time to time.  The fact is, I
+oughtn't to have quarrelled with Mart Tinman as I've done; I'm too
+peppery by nature.  The fact is, I struck him, and he forgave it.
+I could n't have done that myself.  And I believe I'm in for a headache
+to-morrow; upon my soul, I do.  Mart Tinman would champagne us; but,
+poor old boy, I struck him, and I couldn't make amends--didn't see my
+way; and we joined hands over the glass--to the deuce with the glass!--
+and the end of it is, Netty--she did n't propose it, but as I'm in his
+--I say, as I had struck him, she--it was rather solemn, if you had seen
+us--she burst into tears, and there was Mrs. Cavely, and old Mart, and me
+as big a fool--if I'm not a villain!"
+
+Fellingham perceived a more than common effect of Tin man's wine.  He
+touched Van Diemen on the shoulder. "May I beg to hear exactly what has
+happened?"
+
+"Upon my soul, we're all going to live comfortably in Old England, and no
+more quarreling and decamping," was the stupid rejoinder.  "Except that I
+did n't exactly--I think you said I exactly'?--I did n't bargain for old
+Mart as my--but he's a sound man; Mart's my junior; he's rich.  He's eco
+.  .  .  he's eco .  .  .  you know--my Lord!  where's my brains?--but
+he's upright--'nomical!"
+
+"An economical man," said Fellingham, with sedate impatience.
+
+"My dear sir, I'm heartily obliged to you for your assistance," returned
+Van Diemen.  "Here she is."
+
+Annette had come out of the gate in the flint wall.  She started slightly
+on seeing Herbert, whom she had taken for a coastguard, she said.  He
+bowed.  He kept his head bent, peering at her intrusively.
+
+"It's the air on champagne," Van Diemen said, calling on his lungs to
+clear themselves and right him.  "I was n't a bit queer in the house."
+
+"The air on Tinman's champagne!"  said Fellingham.
+
+"It must be like the contact of two hostile chemical elements."
+
+Annette walked faster.
+
+They descended from the shingle to the scant-bladed grass-sweep running
+round the salted town-refuse on toward Elba.  Van Diemen sniffed,
+ejaculating, "I'll be best man with Mart Tinman about this business!
+You'll stop with us, Mr.----what's your Christian name?  Stop with us as
+long as you like.  Old friends for me!  The joke of it is that Nelson was
+my man, and yet I went and enlisted in the cavalry.  If you talk of
+chemical substances, old Mart Tinman was a sneak who never cared a dump
+for his country; and I'm not to speak a single sybbarel about that.....
+over there .  .  .  Australia .  .  .  Gippsland!  So down he went, clean
+over.  Very sorry for what we have done.  Contrite.  Penitent."
+
+"Now we feel the wind a little," said Annette.
+
+Fellingham murmured, "Allow me; your shawl is flying loose."
+
+He laid his hands on her arms, and, pressing her in a tremble, said,
+"One sign!  It's not true?  A word!  Do you hate me?"
+
+"Thank you very much, but I am not cold," she replied and linked herself
+to her father.
+
+Van Diemen immediately shouted, "For we are jolly boys! for we are jolly
+boys!  It's the air on the champagne.  And hang me," said he, as they
+entered the grounds of Elba, "if I don't walk over my property."
+
+Annette interposed; she stood like a reed in his way.
+
+"No! my Lord!  I'll see what I sold you for!"  he cried.  "I'm an owner
+of the soil of Old England, and care no more for the title of squire than
+Napoleon Bonaparty.  But I'll tell you what, Mr. Hubbard: your mother was
+never so astonished at her dog as old Van Diemen would be to hear himself
+called squire in Old England.  And a convict he was, for he did wrong
+once, but he worked his redemption.  And the smell of my own property
+makes me feel my legs again.  And I'll tell you what, Mr. Hubbard, as
+Netty calls you when she speaks of you in private: Mart Tinman's ideas of
+wine are pretty much like his ideas of healthy smells, and when I'm
+bailiff of Crikswich, mind, he'll find two to one against him in our town
+council.  I love my country, but hang me if I don't purify it--"
+
+Saying this, with the excitement of a high resolve a upon him, Van Diemen
+bored through a shrubbery-brake, and Fellingham said to Annette:
+
+"Have I lost you?"
+
+"I belong to my father," said she, contracting and disengaging her
+feminine garments to step after him in the cold silver-spotted dusk of
+the winter woods.
+
+Van Diemen came out on a fish-pond.
+
+"Here you are, young ones!" he said to the pair.  "This way, Fellowman.
+I'm clearer now, and it's my belief I've been talking nonsense.  I'm
+puffed up with money, and have n't the heart I once had.  I say,
+Fellowman, Fellowbird, Hubbard--what's your right name?--fancy an old
+carp fished out of that pond and flung into the sea.  That's exile!
+And if the girl don't mind, what does it matter?"
+
+"Mr. Herbert Fellingham, I think, would like to go to bed, papa," said
+Annette.
+
+"Miss Smith must be getting cold," Fellingham hinted.
+
+"Bounce away indoors," replied Van Diemen, and he led them like a bull.
+
+Annette was disinclined to leave them together in the smoking-room, and
+under the pretext of wishing to see her father to bed she remained with
+them, though there was a novel directness and heat of tone in Herbert
+that alarmed her, and with reason.  He divined in hideous outlines what
+had happened.  He was no longer figuring on easy ice, but desperate at
+the prospect of a loss to himself, and a fate for Annette, that tossed
+him from repulsion to incredulity, and so back.
+
+Van Diemen begged him to light his pipe.
+
+"I'm off to London to-morrow," said Fellingham.  "I don't want to go, for
+very particular reasons; I may be of more use there.  I have a cousin
+who's a General officer in the army, and if I have your permission--you
+see, anything's better, as it seems to me, than that you should depend
+for peace and comfort on one man's tongue not wagging, especially when he
+is not the best of tempers if I have your permission--without mentioning
+names, of course--I'll consult him."
+
+There was a dead silence.
+
+"You know you may trust me, sir.  I love your daughter with all my heart.
+Your honour and your interests are mine."
+
+Van Diemen struggled for composure.
+
+"Netty, what have you been at?" he said.
+
+"It is untrue, papa!"  she answered the unworded accusation.
+
+"Annette has told me nothing, sir.  I have heard it.  You must brace your
+mind to the fact that it is known.  What is known to Mr. Tinman is pretty
+sure to be known generally at the next disagreement."
+
+"That scoundrel Mart!" Van Diemen muttered.
+
+"I am positive Mr. Tinman did not speak of you, papa," said Annette, and
+turned her eyes from the half-paralyzed figure of her father on Herbert
+to put him to proof.
+
+"No, but he made himself heard when it was being discussed.  At any rate,
+it's known; and the thing to do is to meet it."
+
+"I'm off.  I'll not stop a day.  I'd rather live on the Continent," said
+Van Diemen, shaking himself, as to prepare for the step into that desert.
+
+"Mr. Tinman has been most generous!"  Annette protested tearfully.
+
+"I won't say no: I think you are deceived and lend him your own
+generosity," said Herbert.  "Can you suppose it generous, that even in
+the extremest case, he should speak of the matter to your father, and
+talk of denouncing him?  He did it."
+
+"He was provoked."
+
+"A gentleman is distinguished by his not allowing himself to be
+provoked."
+
+"I am engaged to him, and I cannot hear it said that he is not a
+gentleman."
+
+The first part of her sentence Annette uttered bravely; at the conclusion
+she broke down.  She wished Herbert to be aware of the truth, that he
+might stay his attacks on Mr. Tinman; and she believed he had only been
+guessing the circumstances in which her father was placed; but the
+comparison between her two suitors forced itself on her now, when the
+younger one spoke in a manner so self-contained, brief, and full of
+feeling.
+
+She had to leave the room weeping.
+
+"Has your daughter engaged herself, sir?" said Herbert,
+
+"Talk to me to-morrow; don't give us up if she has we were trapped, it's
+my opinion," said Van Diemen.  "There's the devil in that wine of--Mart
+Tinman's.  I feel it still, and in the morning it'll be worse.  What can
+she see in him?  I must quit the country; carry her off.  How he did it,
+I don't know.  It was that woman, the widow, the fellow's sister.  She
+talked till she piped her eye--talked about our lasting union.  On my
+soul, I believe I egged Netty on!  I was in a mollified way with that
+wine; all of a sudden the woman joins their hands!  And I--a man of
+spirit will despise me!--what I thought of was, "now my secret's safe!
+You've sobered me, young sir.  I see myself, if that's being sober.
+I don't ask your opinion of me; I am a deserter, false to my colours,
+a breaker of his oath.  Only mark this: I was married, and a common
+trooper, married to a handsome young woman, true as steel; but she was
+handsome, and we were starvation poor, and she had to endure persecution
+from an officer day by day.  Bear that situation in your mind. . . .
+Providence dropped me a hundred pounds out of the sky.  Properly
+speaking, it popped up out of the earth, for I reaped it, you may say,
+from a relative's grave.  Rich and poor 's all right, if I'm rich and
+you're poor; and you may be happy though you're poor; but where there are
+many poor young women, lots of rich men are a terrible temptation to
+them.  That's my dear good wife speaking, and had she been spared to me
+I never should have come back to Old England, and heart's delight and
+heartache I should not have known.  She was my backbone, she was my
+breast-comforter too.  Why did she stick to me?  Because I had faith in
+her when appearances were against her.  But she never forgave this
+country the hurt to her woman's pride.  You'll have noticed a squarish
+jaw in Netty.  That's her mother.  And I shall have to encounter it,
+supposing I find Mart Tinman has been playing me false.  I'm blown on
+somehow.  I'll think of what course I'll take 'twixt now and morning.
+Good night, young gentleman."
+
+"Good night; sir," said Herbert, adding, "I will get information from the
+Horse Guards; as for the people knowing it about here, you're not living
+much in society--"
+
+"It's not other people's feelings, it's my own," Van Diemen silenced him.
+"I feel it, if it's in the wind; ever since Mart Tinman spoke the thing
+out, I've felt on my skin cold and hot."
+
+He flourished his lighted candle and went to bed, manifestly solaced by
+the idea that he was the victim of his own feelings.
+
+Herbert could not sleep.  Annette's monstrous choice of Tinman in
+preference to himself constantly assailed and shook his understanding.
+There was the "squarish jaw" mentioned by her father to think of.  It
+filled him with a vague apprehension, but he was unable to imagine that
+a young girl, and an English girl, and an enthusiastic young English
+girl, could be devoid of sentiment; and presuming her to have it, as one
+must, there was no fear, that she would persist in her loathsome choice
+when she knew her father was against it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Annette did not shun him next morning.  She did not shun the subject,
+either.  But she had been exact in arranging that she should not be more
+than a few minutes downstairs before her father.  Herbert found, that
+compared with her, girls of sentiment are commonplace indeed.  She had
+conceived an insane idea of nobility in Tinman that blinded her to his
+face, figure, and character--his manners, likewise.  He had forgiven a
+blow!
+
+Silly as the delusion might be, it clothed her in whimsical
+attractiveness.
+
+It was a beauty in her to dwell so firmly upon moral quality.  Overthrown
+and stunned as he was, and reduced to helplessness by her brief and
+positive replies, Herbert was obliged to admire the singular young lady,
+who spoke, without much shyness, of her incongruous, destined mate though
+his admiration had an edge cutting like irony.  While in the turn for
+candour, she ought to have told him, that previous to her decision she
+had weighed the case of the diverse claims of himself and Tinman, and
+resolved them according to her predilection for the peaceful residence
+of her father and herself in England.  This she had done a little
+regretfully, because of the natural sympathy of the young girl for the
+younger man.  But the younger man had seemed to her seriously-
+straightforward mind too light and airy in his wooing, like one of her
+waltzing officers--very well so long as she stepped the measure with him,
+and not forcible enough to take her off her feet.  He had changed, and
+now that he had become persuasive, she feared he would disturb the
+serenity with which she desired and strove to contemplate her decision.
+Tinman's magnanimity was present in her imagination to sustain her,
+though she was aware that Mrs. Cavely had surprised her will, and caused
+it to surrender unconsulted by her wiser intelligence.
+
+"I cannot listen to you," she said to Herbert, after listening longer
+than was prudent.  "If what you say of papa is true, I do not think he
+will remain in Crikswich, or even in England.  But I am sure the old
+friend we used, to speak of so much in Australia has not wilfully
+betrayed him."
+
+Herbert would have had to say, "Look on us two!" to proceed in his
+baffled wooing; and the very ludicrousness of the contrast led him to see
+the folly and shame of proposing it.
+
+Van Diemen came down to breakfast looking haggard and restless.  "I have
+'nt had my morning's walk--I can't go out to be hooted," he said, calling
+to his daughter for tea, and strong tea; and explaining to Herbert that
+he knew it to be bad for the nerves, but it was an antidote to bad
+champagne.
+
+Mr. Herbert Fellingham had previously received an invitation on behalf of
+a sister of his to Crikswich.  A dull sense of genuine sagacity inspired
+him to remind Annette of it.  She wrote prettily to Miss Mary Fellingham,
+and Herbert had some faint joy in carrying away the letter of her
+handwriting.
+
+"Fetch her soon, for we sha'n't be here long," Van Diemen said to him at
+parting.  He expressed a certain dread of his next meeting with Mart
+Tinman.
+
+Herbert speedily brought Mary Fellingham to Elba, and left her there.
+The situation was apparently unaltered.  Van Diemen looked worn, like a
+man who has been feeding mainly on his reflections, which was manifest in
+his few melancholy bits of speech.  He said to Herbert: "How you feel a
+thing when you are found out!"  and, "It doesn't do for a man with a
+heart to do wrong!"  He designated the two principal roads by which poor
+sinners come to a conscience.  His own would have slumbered but for
+discovery; and, as he remarked, if it had not been for his heart leading
+him to Tinman, he would not have fallen into that man's power.
+
+The arrival of a young lady of fashionable appearance at Elba was matter
+of cogitation to Mrs. Cavely.  She was disposed to suspect that it meant
+something, and Van Diemen's behaviour to her brother would of itself have
+fortified any suspicion.  He did not call at the house on the beach, he
+did not invite Martin to dinner, he was rarely seen, and when he appeared
+at the Town Council he once or twice violently opposed his friend Martin,
+who came home ruffled, deeply offended in his interests and his dignity.
+
+"Have you noticed any difference in Annette's treatment of you, dear?"
+Mrs. Cavely inquired.
+
+"No," said Tinman; "none.  She shakes hands.  She asks after my health.
+She offers me my cup of tea."
+
+"I have seen all that.  But does she avoid privacy with you?"
+
+"Dear me, no!  Why should she?  I hope, Martha, I am a man who may be
+confided in by any young lady in England."
+
+"I am sure you may, dear Martin."
+
+"She has an objection to name the .  .  .  the day," said Martin.
+"I have informed her that I have an objection to long engagements.
+I don't like her new companion: She says she has been presented at Court.
+I greatly doubt it."
+
+"It's to give herself a style, you may depend.  I don't believe her!"
+exclaimed Mrs. Cavely, with sharp personal asperity.
+
+Brother and sister examined together the Court Guide they had purchased
+on the occasion at once of their largest outlay and most thrilling
+gratification; in it they certainly found the name of General Fellingham.
+"But he can't be related to a newspaper-writer," said Mrs. Cavely.
+
+To which her brother rejoined, "Unless the young man turned scamp.  I
+hate unproductive professions."
+
+"I hate him, Martin."  Mrs. Cavely laughed in scorn, "I should say, I
+pity him.  It's as clear to me as the sun at noonday, he wanted Annette.
+That's why I was in a hurry.  How I dreaded he would come that evening
+to our dinner!  When I saw him absent, I could have cried out it was
+Providence!  And so be careful--we have had everything done for us from
+on High as yet--but be careful of your temper, dear Martin.  I will
+hasten on the union; for it's a shame of a girl to drag a man behind her
+till he 's old at the altar.  Temper, dear, if you will only think of it,
+is the weak point."
+
+"Now he has begun boasting to me of his Australian wines!" Tinman
+ejaculated.
+
+"Bear it.  Bear it as you do Gippsland.  My dear, you have the retort in
+your heart:--Yes! but have you a Court in Australia?"
+
+"Ha! and his Australian wines cost twice the amount I pay for mine!"
+
+"Quite true.  We are not obliged to buy them, I should hope.  I would,
+though--a dozen--if I thought it necessary, to keep him quiet."
+
+Tinman continued muttering angrily over the Australian wines, with a word
+of irritation at Gippsland, while promising to be watchful of his temper.
+
+"What good is Australia to us," he asked, "if it does n't bring us
+money?"
+
+"It's going to, my dear," said Mrs. Cavely.  "Think of that when he
+begins boasting his Australia.  And though it's convict's money, as he
+confesses--"
+
+"With his convict's money!"  Tinman interjected tremblingly.  "How long
+am I expected to wait?"
+
+"Rely on me to hurry on the day," said Mrs. Cavely.  "There is no other
+annoyance?"
+
+"Wherever I am going to buy, that man outbids me and then says it's the
+old country's want of pluck and dash, and doing things large-handed!
+A man who'd go on his knees to stop in England!"  Tinman vociferated in
+a breath; and fairly reddened by the effort: "He may have to do it yet.
+I can't stand insult."
+
+"You are less able to stand insult after Honours," his sister said, in
+obedience to what she had observed of him since his famous visit to
+London.  "It must be so, in nature.  But temper is everything just now.
+Remember, it was by command of temper, and letting her father put himself
+in the wrong, you got hold of Annette.  And I would abstain even from
+wine.  For sometimes after it, you have owned it disagreed.  And I have
+noticed these eruptions between you and Mr. Smith--as he calls himself
+--generally after wine."
+
+"Always the poor! the poor! money for the poor!" Tinman harped on further
+grievances against Van Diemen.  "I say doctors have said the drain on the
+common is healthy; it's a healthy smell, nourishing.  We've always had it
+and been a healthy town.  But the sea encroaches, and I say my house and
+my property is in danger.  He buys my house over my head, and offers me
+the Crouch to live in at an advanced rent.  And then he sells me my house
+at an advanced price, and I buy, and then he votes against a penny for
+the protection of the shore!  And we're in Winter again!  As if he was
+not in my power!"
+
+"My dear Martin, to Elba we go, and soon, if you will govern your
+temper," said Mrs. Cavely.  "You're an angel to let me speak of it so,
+and it's only that man that irritates you.  I call him sinfully
+ostentatious."
+
+"I could blow him from a gun if I spoke out, and he knows it!  He's
+wanting in common gratitude, let alone respect," Tinman snorted.
+
+"But he has a daughter, my dear."
+
+Tinman slowly and crackingly subsided.
+
+His main grievance against Van Diemen was the non-recognition of his
+importance by that uncultured Australian, who did not seem to be
+conscious of the dignities and distinctions we come to in our country.
+The moneyed daughter, the prospective marriage, for an economical
+man rejected by every lady surrounding him, advised him to lock up his
+temper in submission to Martha.
+
+"Bring Annette to dine with us," he said, on Martha's proposing a visit
+to the dear young creature.
+
+Martha drank a glass of her brother's wine at lunch, and departed on the
+mission.
+
+Annette declined to be brought.  Her excuse was her guest, Miss
+Fellingham.
+
+"Bring her too, by all means--if you'll condescend, I am sure," Mrs.
+Cavely said to Mary.
+
+"I am much obliged to you; I do not dine out at present," said the London
+lady.
+
+"Dear me! are you ill?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nothing in the family, I hope?"
+
+"My family?"
+
+"I am sure, I beg pardon," said Mrs. Cavely, bridling with a spite
+pardonable by the severest moralist.
+
+"Can I speak to you alone?"  she addressed Annette.
+
+Miss Fellingham rose.
+
+Mrs. Cavely confronted her.  "I can't allow it; I can't think of it.
+I'm only taking a little liberty with one I may call my future sister-in-
+law."
+
+"Shall I come out with you?"  said Annette, in sheer lassitude assisting
+Mary Fellingham in her scheme to show the distastefulness of this lady
+and her brother.
+
+"Not if you don't wish to."
+
+"I have no objection."
+
+"Another time will do."
+
+"Will you write?"
+
+"By post indeed!"
+
+Mrs. Cavely delivered a laugh supposed to, be peculiar to the English
+stage.
+
+"It would be a penny thrown away," said Annette.  "I thought you could
+send a messenger."
+
+Intercommunication with Miss Fellingham had done mischief to her high
+moral conception of the pair inhabiting the house on the beach. Mrs.
+Cavely saw it, and could not conceal that she smarted.
+
+Her counsel to her brother, after recounting the offensive scene to him
+in animated dialogue, was, to give Van Diemen a fright.
+
+"I wish I had not drunk that glass of sherry before starting," she
+exclaimed, both savagely and sagely.  "It's best after business.  And
+these gentlemen's habits of yours of taking to dining late upset me.
+I'm afraid I showed temper; but you, Martin, would not have borne one-
+tenth of what I did."
+
+"How dare you say so!" her brother rebuked her indignantly; and the house
+on the beach enclosed with difficulty a storm between brother and sister,
+happily not heard outside, because of loud winds raging.
+
+Nevertheless Tinman pondered on Martha's idea of the wisdom of giving Van
+Diemen a fright.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+The English have been called a bad-tempered people, but this is to judge
+of them by their manifestations; whereas an examination into causes might
+prove them to be no worse tempered than that man is a bad sleeper who
+lies in a biting bed.  If a sagacious instinct directs them to
+discountenance realistic tales, the realistic tale should justify its
+appearance by the discovery of an apology for the tormented souls.  Once
+they sang madrigals, once they danced on the green, they revelled in
+their lusty humours, without having recourse to the pun for fun, an
+exhibition of hundreds of bare legs for jollity, a sentimental wailing
+all in the throat for music.  Evidence is procurable that they have been
+an artificially-reared people, feeding on the genius of inventors,
+transposers, adulterators, instead of the products of nature, for the
+last half century; and it is unfair to affirm of them that they are
+positively this or that.  They are experiments.  They are the sons and
+victims of a desperate Energy, alluring by cheapness, satiating with
+quantity, that it may mount in the social scale, at the expense of their
+tissues.  The land is in a state of fermentation to mount, and the shop,
+which has shot half their stars to their social zenith, is what verily
+they would scald themselves to wash themselves free of.  Nor is it in any
+degree a reprehensible sign that they should fly as from hue and cry the
+title of tradesman.  It is on the contrary the spot of sanity, which bids
+us right cordially hope.  Energy, transferred to the moral sense, may
+clear them yet.
+
+Meanwhile this beer, this wine, both are of a character to have killed
+more than the tempers of a less gifted people.  Martin Tinman invited Van
+Diemen Smith to try the flavour of a wine that, as he said, he thought of
+"laying down."
+
+It has been hinted before of a strange effect upon the minds of men who
+knew what they were going to, when they received an invitation to dine
+with Tinman.  For the sake of a little social meeting at any cost, they
+accepted it; accepted it with a sigh, midway as by engineering
+measurement between prospective and retrospective; as nearly mechanical
+as things human may be, like the Mussulman's accustomed cry of Kismet.
+Has it not been related of the little Jew babe sucking at its mother's
+breast in Jerusalem, that this innocent, long after the Captivity, would
+start convulsively, relinquishing its feast, and indulging in the purest.
+Hebrew lamentation of the most tenacious of races, at the passing sound
+of a Babylonian or a Ninevite voice?  In some such manner did men, unable
+to refuse, deep in what remained to them of nature, listen to Tinman; and
+so did Van Diemen, sighing heavily under the operation of simple animal
+instinct.
+
+"You seem miserable," said Tinman, not oblivious of his design to give
+his friend a fright.
+
+"Do I?  No, I'm all right," Van Diemen replied.  "I'm thinking of
+alterations at the Hall before Summer, to accommodate guests--if I stay
+here."
+
+"I suppose you would not like to be separated from Annette."
+
+"Separated?  No, I should think I shouldn't.  Who'd do it?"
+
+"Because I should not like to leave my good sister Martha all to herself
+in a house so near the sea--"
+
+"Why not go to the Crouch, man?"
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"No thanks needed if you don't take advantage of the offer."
+
+They were at the entrance to Elba, whither Mr. Tinman was betaking
+himself to see his intended.  He asked if Annette was at home, and to his
+great stupefaction heard that she had gone to London for a week.
+
+Dissembling the spite aroused within him, he postponed his very strongly
+fortified design, and said, "You must be lonely."
+
+Van Diemen informed him that it would be for a night only, as young
+Fellingham was coming down to keep him company.
+
+"At six o'clock this evening, then," said Tinman.  "We're not fashionable
+in Winter."
+
+"Hang me,  if I know when ever we were!" Van Diemen rejoined.
+
+"Come, though, you'd like to be.  You've got your ambition, Philip, like
+other men."
+
+"Respectable and respected--that 's my ambition, Mr. Mart."
+
+Tinman simpered: "With your wealth!"
+
+"Ay, I 'm rich--for a contented mind."
+
+"I 'm pretty sure you 'll approve my new vintage," said Tinman.  "It's
+direct from Oporto, my wine-merchant tells me, on his word."
+
+"What's the price?"
+
+"No, no, no.  Try it first.  It's rather a stiff price."
+
+Van Diemen was partially reassured by the announcement.  "What do you
+call a stiff price?"
+
+"Well!--over thirty."
+
+"Double that, and you may have a chance."
+
+"Now," cried Tinman, exasperated, "how can a man from Australia know
+anything about prices for port?  You can't divest your ideas of diggers'
+prices.  You're like an intoxicating drink yourself on the tradesmen of
+our town.  You think it fine--ha!  ha!  I daresay, Philip, I should be
+doing the same if I were up to your mark at my banker's.  We can't all
+of us be lords, nor baronets."
+
+Catching up his temper thus cleverly, he curbed that habitual runaway,
+and retired from his old friend's presence to explode in the society of
+the solitary Martha.
+
+Annette's behaviour was as bitterly criticized by the sister as by the
+brother.
+
+"She has gone to those Fellingham people; and she may be thinking of
+jilting us," Mrs. Cavely said.
+
+"In that case, I have no mercy," cried her brother.  "I have borne"--he
+bowed with a professional spiritual humility--"as I should, but it may
+get past endurance.  I say I have borne enough; and if the worst comes to
+the worst, and I hand him over to the authorities--I say I mean him no
+harm, but he has struck me.  He beat me as a boy and he has struck me as
+a man, and I say I have no thought of revenge, but I cannot have him
+here; and I say if I drive him out of the country back to his Gippsland!"
+
+Martin Tinman quivered for speech, probably for that which feedeth
+speech, as is the way with angry men.
+
+"And what?--what then?" said Martha, with the tender mellifluousness of
+sisterly reproach.  "What good can you expect of letting temper get the
+better of you, dear?"
+
+Tinman did not enjoy her recent turn for usurping the lead in their
+consultations, and he said, tartly, "This good, Martha.  We shall get the
+Hall at my price, and be Head People here.  Which," he raised his note,
+"which he, a Deserter, has no right to pretend to give himself out to be.
+What your feelings may be as an old inhabitant, I don't know, but I have
+always looked up to the people at Elba Hall, and I say I don't like to
+have a Deserter squandering convict's money there--with his forty-pound-
+a-year cook, and his champagne at seventy a dozen.  It's the luxury of
+Sodom and Gomorrah."
+
+"That does not prevent its being very nice to dine there," said Mrs.
+Cavely; "and it shall be our table for good if I have any management."
+
+"You mean me, ma'am," bellowed Tinman.
+
+"Not at all," she breathed, in dulcet contrast.  "You are good-looking,
+Martin, but you have not half such pretty eyes as the person I mean.  I
+never ventured to dream of managing you, Martin.  I am thinking of the
+people at Elba."
+
+"But why this extraordinary treatment of me, Martha?"
+
+"She's a child, having her head turned by those Fellinghams.  But she's
+honourable; she has sworn to me she would be honourable."
+
+"You do think I may as well give him a fright?"  Tinman inquired
+hungrily.
+
+"A sort of hint; but very gentle, Martin.  Do be gentle--casual like--as
+if you did n't want to say it.  Get him on his Gippsland.  Then if he
+brings you to words, you can always laugh back, and say you will go to
+Kew and see the Fernery, and fancy all that, so high, on Helvellyn or the
+Downs.  Why"--Mrs. Cavely, at the end of her astute advices and
+cautionings, as usual, gave loose to her natural character--"Why that man
+came back to England at all, with his boastings of Gippsland, I can't for
+the life of me find out.  It 's a perfect mystery."
+
+"It is," Tinman sounded his voice at a great depth, reflectively.  Glad
+of taking the part she was perpetually assuming of late, he put out his
+hand and said: "But it may have been ordained for our good, Martha."
+
+"True, dear," said she, with an earnest sentiment of thankfulness to the
+Power which had led him round to her way of thinking and feeling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Annette had gone to the big metropolis, which burns in colonial
+imaginations as the sun of cities, and was about to see something of
+London, under the excellent auspices of her new friend, Mary Fellingham,
+and a dense fog.  She was alarmed by the darkness, a little in fear, too,
+of Herbert; and these feelings caused her to chide herself for leaving
+her father.
+
+Hearing her speak of her father sadly, Herbert kindly proposed to go down
+to Crikswich on the very day of her coming.  She thanked him, and gave
+him a taste of bitterness by smiling favourably on his offer; but as he
+wished her to discern and take to heart the difference between one man
+and another, in the light of a suitor, he let her perceive that it cost
+him heavy pangs to depart immediately, and left her to brood on his
+example.  Mary Fellingham liked Annette.  She thought her a sensible girl
+of uncultivated sensibilities, the reverse of thousands; not commonplace,
+therefore; and that the sensibilities were expanding was to be seen in
+her gradual unreadiness to talk of her engagement to Mr. Tinman, though
+her intimacy with Mary warmed daily.  She considered she was bound to
+marry the man at some distant date, and did not feel unhappiness yet.
+She had only felt uneasy when she had to greet and converse with her
+intended; especially when the London young lady had been present.
+Herbert's departure relieved her of the pressing sense of contrast.  She
+praised him to Mary for his extreme kindness to her father, and down in
+her unsounded heart desired that her father might appreciate it even more
+than she did.
+
+Herbert drove into Crikswich at night, and stopped at Crickledon's, where
+he heard that Van Diemen was dining with Tinman.
+
+Crickledon the carpenter permitted certain dry curves to play round his
+lips like miniature shavings at the name of Tinman; but Herbert asked,
+"What is it now?" in vain, and he went to Crickledon the cook.
+
+This union of the two Crickledons, male and female; was an ideal one,
+such as poor women dream of; and men would do the same, if they knew how
+poor they are.  Each had a profession, each was independent of the other,
+each supported the fabric.  Consequently there was mutual respect, as
+between two pillars of a house.  Each saw the other's faults with a sly
+wink to the world, and an occasional interchange of sarcasm that was
+tonic, very strengthening to the wits without endangering the habit of
+affection.  Crickledon the cook stood for her own opinions, and directed
+the public conduct of Crickledon the carpenter; and if he went astray
+from the line she marked out, she put it down to human nature, to which
+she was tolerant.  He, when she had not followed his advice, ascribed it
+to the nature of women.  She never said she was the equal of her husband;
+but the carpenter proudly acknowledged that she was as good as a man, and
+he bore with foibles derogatory to such high stature, by teaching himself
+to observe a neatness of domestic and general management that told him he
+certainly was not as good as a woman.  Herbert delighted in them.  The
+cook regaled the carpenter with skilful, tasty, and economic dishes; and
+the carpenter, obedient to her supplications, had promised, in the event
+of his outliving her, that no hands but his should have the making of her
+coffin.  "It is so nice," she said, "to think one's own husband will put
+together the box you are to lie in, of his own make!"  Had they been even
+a doubtfully united pair, the cook's anticipation of a comfortable
+coffin, the work of the best carpenter in England, would have kept them
+together; and that which fine cookery does for the cementing of couples
+needs not to be recounted to those who have read a chapter or two of the
+natural history of the male sex.
+
+"Crickledon, my dear soul, your husband is labouring with a bit of fun,"
+Herbert said to her.
+
+"He would n't laugh loud at Punch, for fear of an action," she replied.
+"He never laughs out till he gets to bed, and has locked the door; and
+when he does he says 'Hush!' to me.  Tinman is n't bailiff again just
+yet, and where he has his bailiff's best Court suit from, you may ask.
+He exercises in it off and on all the week, at night, and sometimes in
+the middle of the day."
+
+Herbert rallied her for her gossip's credulity.
+
+"It's truth," she declared.  "I have it from the maid of the house,
+little Jane, whom he pays four pound a year for all the work of the
+house: a clever little thing with her hands and her head she is; and can
+read and write beautiful; and she's a mind to leave 'em if they don't
+advance her.  She knocked and went in while he was full blaze, and bowing
+his poll to his glass.  And now he turns the key, and a child might know
+he was at it."
+
+"He can't be such a donkey!"
+
+"And he's been seen at the window on the seaside.  'Who's your Admiral
+staying at the house on the beach?' men have inquired as they come
+ashore.  My husband has heard it.  Tinman's got it on his brain.  He
+might be cured by marriage to a sound-headed woman, but he 'll soon be
+wanting to walk about in silk legs if he stops a bachelor.  They tell me
+his old mother here had a dress value twenty pound; and pomp's inherited.
+Save as he may, there's his leak."
+
+Herbert's contempt for Tinman was intense; it was that of the young and
+ignorant who live in their imaginations like spendthrifts, unaware of the
+importance of them as the food of life, and of how necessary it is to
+seize upon the solider one among them for perpetual sustenance when the
+unsubstantial are vanishing.  The great event of his bailiff's term of
+office had become the sun of Tinman's system.  He basked in its rays.
+He meant to be again the proud official, royally distinguished; meantime,
+though he knew not that his days were dull, he groaned under the dulness;
+and, as cart or cab horses, uncomplaining as a rule, show their view of
+the nature of harness when they have release to frisk in a field, it is
+possible that existence was made tolerable to the jogging man by some
+minutes of excitement in his bailiff's Court suit.  Really to pasture on
+our recollections we ought to dramatize them.  There is, however, only
+the testimony of a maid and a mariner to show that Tinman did it, and
+those are witnesses coming of particularly long-bow classes, given to
+magnify small items of fact.
+
+On reaching the hall Herbert found the fire alight in the smoking-room,
+and soon after settling himself there he heard Van Diemen's voice at the
+hall-door saying good night to Tinman.
+
+"Thank the Lord! there you are," said Van Diemen, entering the room.
+"I couldn't have hoped so much.  That rascal!"  he turned round to the
+door.  "He has been threatening me, and then smoothing me.  Hang his oil!
+It's combustible.  And hang the port he's for laying down, as he calls
+it.  'Leave it to posterity,' says I.  'Why?' says he.  'Because the
+young ones 'll be better able to take care of themselves,' says I, and he
+insists on an explanation.  I gave it to him.  Out he bursts like a
+wasp's nest.  He may have said what he did say in temper.  He seemed
+sorry afterwards--poor old Mart!  The scoundrel talked of Horse Guards
+and telegraph wires."
+
+"Scoundrel, but more ninny," said Herbert, full of his contempt.  "Dare
+him to do his worst.  The General tells me they 'd be glad to overlook it
+at the Guards, even if they had all the facts.  Branding 's out of the
+question."
+
+"I swear it was done in my time," cried Van Diemen, all on fire.
+
+"It's out of the question.  You might be advised to leave England for a
+few months.  As for the society here--"
+
+"If I leave, I leave for good.  My heart's broken.  I'm disappointed.
+I'm deceived in my friend.  He and I in the old days!  What's come to
+him?  What on earth is it changes men who stop in England so?  It can't
+be the climate.  And did you mention my name to General Fellingham?"
+
+"Certainly not," said Herbert.  "But listen to me, sir, a moment.  Why
+not get together half-a-dozen friends of the neighbourhood, and make a
+clean breast of it.  Englishmen like that kind of manliness, and they are
+sure to ring sound to it."
+
+"I couldn't!"  Van Diemen sighed.  "It's not a natural feeling I have
+about it--I 've brooded on the word.  If I have a nightmare, I see
+Deserter written in sulphur on the black wall."
+
+"You can't remain at his mercy, and be bullied as you are.  He makes you
+ill, sir.  He won't do anything, but he'll go on worrying you.  I'd stop
+him at once.  I'd take the train to-morrow and get an introduction to the
+Commander-in-Chief.  He's the very man to be kind to you in a situation
+like this.  The General would get you the introduction."
+
+"That's more to my taste; but no, I couldn't," Van Diemen moaned in his
+weakness.  "Money has unmanned me.  I was n't this kind of man formerly;
+nor more was Mart Tinman, the traitor!  All the world seems changeing for
+the worse, and England is n't what she used to be."
+
+"You let that man spoil it for you, sir."  Herbert related Mrs.
+Crickledon's tale of Mr. Tinman, adding, "He's an utter donkey.  I should
+defy him.  What I should do would be to let him know to-morrow morning
+that you don't intend to see him again.  Blow for, blow, is the thing he
+requires.  He'll be cringing to you in a week."
+
+"And you'd like to marry Annette," said Van Diemen, relishing,
+nevertheless, the advice, whose origin and object he perceived so
+plainly.
+
+"Of course I should," said Herbert, franker still in his colour than his
+speech.
+
+"I don't see him my girl's husband."  Van Diemen eyed the red hollow in
+the falling coals.  "When I came first, and found him a healthy man,
+good-looking enough for a trifle over forty, I 'd have given her gladly,
+she nodding Yes.  Now all my fear is she's in earnest.  Upon my soul, I
+had the notion old Mart was a sort of a boy still; playing man, you know.
+But how can you understand?  I fancied his airs and stiffness were put
+on; thought I saw him burning true behind it.  Who can tell?  He seems to
+be jealous of my buying property in his native town.  Something frets
+him.  I ought never to have struck him!  There's my error, and I repent
+it.  Strike a friend!  I wonder he didn't go off to the Horse Guards at
+once.  I might have done it in his place, if I found I couldn't lick him.
+I should have tried kicking first."
+
+"Yes, shinning before peaching," said Herbert, astonished almost as much
+as he was disgusted by the inveterate sentimental attachment of Van
+Diemen to his old friend.
+
+Martin Tinman anticipated good things of the fright he had given the man
+after dinner.  He had, undoubtedly, yielded to temper, forgetting pure
+policy, which it is so exceeding difficult to practice.  But he had
+soothed the startled beast; they had shaken hands at parting, and Tinman
+hoped that the week of Annette's absence would enable him to mould her
+father.  Young Fellingham's appointment to come to Elba had slipped Mr.
+Tinman's memory.  It was annoying to see this intruder.  "At all events,
+he's not with Annette," said Mrs. Cavely.  "How long has her father to
+run on?"
+
+"Five months," Tinman replied.  "He would have completed his term of
+service in five months."
+
+"And to think of his being a rich man because he deserted," Mrs. Cavely
+interjected.  "Oh! I do call it immoral.  He ought to be apprehended and
+punished, to be an example for the good of society.  If you lose time,
+my dear Martin, your chance is gone.  He's wriggling now.  And if I could
+believe he talked us over to that young impudent, who has n't a penny
+that he does n't get from his pen, I'd say, denounce him to-morrow.
+I long for Elba.  I hate this house.  It will be swallowed up some day;
+I know it; I have dreamt it.  Elba at any cost.  Depend upon it, Martin,
+you have been foiled in your suits on account of the mean house you
+inhabit.  Enter Elba as that girl's husband, or go there to own it, and
+girls will crawl to you."
+
+"You are a ridiculous woman, Martha," said Tinman, not dissenting.
+
+The mixture of an idea of public duty with a feeling of personal rancour
+is a strong incentive to the pursuit of a stern line of conduct; and the
+glimmer of self-interest superadded does not check the steps of the
+moralist.  Nevertheless, Tinman held himself in.  He loved peace.  He
+preached it, he disseminated it.  At a meeting in the town he strove to
+win Van Diemen's voice in favour of a vote for further moneys to protect
+'our shores.'"  Van Diemen laughed at him, telling him he wanted a
+battery.  "No," said Tinman, "I've had enough to do with soldiers."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"They might be more cautious.  I say, they might learn to know their
+friends from their enemies."
+
+"That's it, that's it," said Van Diemen.  "If you say much more, my
+hearty, you'll find me bidding against you next week for Marine Parade
+and Belle Vue Terrace.  I've a cute eye for property, and this town's
+looking up."
+
+"You look about you before you speculate in land and house property
+here," retorted Tinman.
+
+Van Diemen bore so much from him that he asked himself whether he could
+be an Englishman.  The title of Deserter was his raw wound.  He attempted
+to form the habit of stigmatizing himself with it in the privacy of his
+chamber, and he succeeded in establishing the habit of talking to
+himself, so that he was heard by the household, and Annette, on her
+return, was obliged to warn him of his indiscretion.  This development of
+a new weakness exasperated him.  Rather to prove his courage by defiance
+than to baffle Tinman's ambition to become the principal owner of houses
+in Crikswich, by outbidding him at the auction for the sale of Marine
+Parade and Belle Vue Terrace, Van Diemen ran the houses up at the
+auction, and ultimately had Belle Vue knocked down to him.  So fierce was
+the quarrel that Annette, in conjunction with Mrs. Cavely; was called on
+to interpose with her sweetest grace.  "My native place," Tinman said to
+her; "it is my native place.  I have a pride in it; I desire to own
+property in it, and your father opposes me.  He opposes me.  Then says I
+may have it back at auction price, after he has gone far to double the
+price!  I have borne--I repeat I have borne too much."
+
+"Are n't your properties to be equal to one?"  said Mrs. Cavely, smiling
+mother--like from Tinman to Annette.
+
+He sought to produce a fondling eye in a wry face, and said, "Yes, I will
+remember that."
+
+"Annette will bless you with her dear hand in a month or two at the
+outside," Mrs. Cavely murmured, cherishingly.
+
+"She will?"  Tinman cracked his body to bend to her.
+
+"Oh, I cannot say; do not distress me.  Be friendly with papa," the girl
+resumed, moving to escape.
+
+"That is the essential," said Mrs. Cavely; and continued, when Annette
+had gone, "The essential is to get over the next few months, miss, and
+then to snap your fingers at us.  Martin, I would force that man to sell
+you Belle Vue under the price he paid for it, just to try your power."
+
+Tinman was not quite so forcible.  He obtained Belle Vue at auction
+price, and his passion for revenge was tipped with fire by having it
+accorded as a friend's favour.
+
+The poisoned state of his mind was increased by a December high wind that
+rattled his casements, and warned him of his accession of property
+exposed to the elements.  Both he and his sister attributed their
+nervousness to the sinister behaviour of Van Diemen.  For the house on
+the beach had only, in most distant times, been threatened by the sea,
+and no house on earth was better protected from man,--Neptune, in the
+shape of a coastguard, being paid by Government to patrol about it during
+the hours of darkness.  They had never had any fears before Van Diemen
+arrived, and caused them to give thrice their ordinary number of dinners
+to guests per annum.  In fact, before Van Diemen came, the house on the
+beach looked on Crikswich without a rival to challenge its anticipated
+lordship over the place, and for some inexplicable reason it seemed to
+its inhabitants to have been a safer as well as a happier residence.
+
+They were consoled by Tinman's performance of a clever stroke in
+privately purchasing the cottages west of the town, and including
+Crickledon's shop, abutting on Marine Parade.  Then from the house
+on the beach they looked at an entire frontage of their property.
+
+They entered the month of February.  No further time was to be lost,
+"or we shall wake up to find that man has fooled us," Mrs. Cavely said.
+Tinman appeared at Elba to demand a private interview with Annette.  His
+hat was blown into the hall as the door opened to him, and he himself was
+glad to be sheltered by the door, so violent was the gale.  Annette and
+her father were sitting together.  They kept the betrothed gentleman
+waiting a very long time.  At last Van Diemen went to him, and said,
+"Netty 'll see you, if you must.  I suppose you have no business with
+me?"
+
+"Not to-day," Tinman replied.
+
+Van Diemen strode round the drawing-room with his hands in his pockets.
+"There's a disparity of ages," he said, abruptly, as if desirous to pour
+out his lesson while he remembered it.  "A man upwards of forty marries a
+girl under twenty, he's over sixty before she's forty; he's decaying when
+she's only mellow.  I ought never to have struck you, I know.  And you're
+such an infernal bad temper at times, and age does n't improve that, they
+say; and she's been educated tip-top.  She's sharp on grammar, and a man
+may n't like that much when he's a husband.  See her, if you must.  But
+she does n't take to the idea; there's the truth.  Disparity of ages and
+unsuitableness of dispositions--what was it Fellingham said?--like two
+barrel-organs grinding different tunes all day in a house."
+
+"I don't want to hear Mr. Fellingham's comparisons," Tinman snapped.
+
+"Oh! he's nothing to the girl," said Van Diemen.  "She doesn't stomach
+leaving me."
+
+"My dear Philip! why should she leave you?  When we have interests in
+common as one household--"
+
+"She says you're such a damned bad temper."
+
+Tinman was pursuing amicably, "When we are united--" But the frightful
+charge brought against his temper drew him up.  "Fiery I may be.  Annette
+has seen I am forgiving.  I am a Christian.  You have provoked me; you
+have struck me."
+
+"I 'll give you a couple of thousand pounds in hard money to be off the
+bargain, and not bother the girl," said Van Diemen.
+
+"Now," rejoined Tinman, "I am offended.  I like money, like most men who
+have made it.  You do, Philip.  But I don't come courting like a pauper.
+Not for ten thousand; not for twenty.  Money cannot be a compensation to
+me for the loss of Annette.  I say I love Annette."
+
+"Because," Van Diemen continued his speech, "you trapped us into that
+engagement, Mart.  You dosed me with the stuff you buy for wine, while
+your sister sat sugaring and mollifying my girl; and she did the trick in
+a minute, taking Netty by surprise when I was all heart and no head; and
+since that you may have seen the girl turn her head from marriage like my
+woods from the wind."
+
+"Mr. Van Diemen Smith!"  Tinman panted; he mastered himself.  "You shall
+not provoke me.  My introductions of you in this neighbourhood, my
+patronage, prove my friendship."
+
+"You'll be a good old fellow, Mart, when you get over your hopes of being
+knighted."
+
+"Mr. Fellingham may set you against my wine, Philip.  Let me tell you--I
+know you--you would not object to have your daughter called Lady."
+
+"With a spindle-shanked husband capering in a Court suit before he goes
+to bed every night, that he may n't forget what a fine fellow he was one
+day bygone!  You're growing lean on it, Mart, like a recollection fifty
+years old."
+
+"You have never forgiven me that day, Philip!"
+
+"Jealous, am I?  Take the money, give up the girl, and see what friends
+we'll be.  I'll back your buyings, I'll advertise your sellings.  I'll
+pay a painter to paint you in your Court suit, and hang up a copy of you
+in my diningroom."
+
+"Annette is here," said Tinman, who had been showing Etna's tokens of
+insurgency.
+
+He admired Annette.  Not till latterly had Herbert Fellingham been so
+true an admirer of Annette as Tinman was.  She looked sincere and she
+dressed inexpensively.  For these reasons she was the best example of
+womankind that he knew, and her enthusiasm for England had the
+sympathetic effect on him of obscuring the rest of the world, and
+thrilling him with the reassuring belief that he was blest in his blood
+and his birthplace--points which her father, with his boastings of
+Gippsland, and other people talking of scenes on the Continent,
+sometimes disturbed in his mind.
+
+"Annette," said he, "I come requesting to converse with you in private."
+
+"If you wish it--I would rather not," she answered.
+
+Tinman raised his head, as often at Helmstone when some offending
+shopwoman was to hear her doom.
+
+He bent to her.  "I see.  Before your father, then!"
+
+"It isn't an agreeable bit of business, to me," Van Diemen grumbled,
+frowning and shrugging.
+
+"I have come, Annette, to ask you, to beg you, entreat--before a third
+person--laughing, Philip?"
+
+"The wrong side of my mouth, my friend.  And I'll tell you what: we're in
+for heavy seas, and I 'm not sorry you've taken the house on the beach
+off my hands."
+
+"Pray, Mr. Tinman, speak at once, if you please, and I will do my best.
+Papa vexes you."
+
+"No, no," replied Tinman.
+
+He renewed his commencement.  Van Diemen interrupted him again.
+
+"Hang your power over me, as you call it.  Eh, old Mart?  I'm a Deserter.
+I'll pay a thousand pounds to the British army, whether they punish me or
+not.  March me off tomorrow!"
+
+"Papa, you are unjust, unkind."  Annette turned to him in tears.
+
+"No, no," said Tinman, "I do not feel it.  Your father has misunderstood
+me, Annette."
+
+"I am sure he has," she said fervently.  "And, Mr. Tinman, I will
+faithfully promise that so long as you are good to my dear father, I will
+not be untrue to my engagement, only do not wish me to name any day.  We
+shall be such very good dear friends if you consent to this.  Will you?"
+
+Pausing for a space, the enamoured man unrolled his voice in lamentation:
+"Oh!  Annette, how long will you keep me?"
+
+"There; you'll set her crying!"  said Van Diemen.  "Now you can run
+upstairs, Netty.  By jingo!  Mart Tinman, you've got a bass voice for
+love affairs."
+
+"Annette," Tinman called to her, and made her turn round as she was
+retiring.  "I must know the day before the end of winter.  Please.
+In kind consideration.  My arrangements demand it."
+
+"Do let the girl go," said Van Diemen.  "Dine with me tonight and I'll
+give you a wine to brisk your spirits, old boy"
+
+"Thank you.  When I have ordered dinner at home, I----and my wine agrees
+with ME," Tinman replied.
+
+"I doubt it."
+
+"You shall not provoke me, Philip."
+
+They parted stiffly.
+
+Mrs. Cavely had unpleasant domestic news to communicate to her brother,
+in return for his tale of affliction and wrath.  It concerned the
+ungrateful conduct of their little housemaid Jane, who, as Mrs. Cavely
+said, "egged on by that woman Crickledon," had been hinting at an advance
+of wages.
+
+"She didn't dare speak, but I saw what was in her when she broke a plate,
+and wouldn't say she was sorry.  I know she goes to Crickledon and talks
+us over.  She's a willing worker, but she has no heart."
+
+Tinman had been accustomed in his shop at Helmstone--where heaven had
+blessed him with the patronage of the rich, as visibly as rays of
+supernal light are seen selecting from above the heads of prophets in the
+illustrations to cheap holy books--to deal with willing workers that have
+no hearts.  Before the application for an advance of wages--and he knew
+the signs of it coming--his method was to calculate how much he might be
+asked for, and divide the estimated sum by the figure 4; which, as it
+seemed to come from a generous impulse, and had been unsolicited, was
+often humbly accepted, and the willing worker pursued her lean and hungry
+course in his service.  The treatment did not always agree with his
+males.  Women it suited; because they do not like to lift up their voices
+unless they are in a passion; and if you take from them the grounds of
+temper, you take their words away--you make chickens of them.  And as
+Tinman said, "Gratitude I never expect!"  Why not?  For the reason that
+he knew human nature.  He could record shocking instances of the
+ingratitude of human nature, as revealed to him in the term of his tenure
+of the shop at Helmstone.  Blest from above, human nature's wickedness
+had from below too frequently besulphured and suffumigated him for his
+memory to be dim; and though he was ever ready to own himself an example
+that heaven prevaileth, he could cite instances of scandalmongering shop-
+women dismissed and working him mischief in the town, which pointed to
+him in person for a proof that the Powers of Good and Evil were still
+engaged in unhappy contention.  Witness Strikes! witness Revolutions!
+
+"Tell her, when she lays the cloth, that I advance her, on account of
+general good conduct, five shillings per annum.  Add," said Tinman, "that
+I wish no thanks.  It is for her merits--to reward her; you understand
+me, Martha?"
+
+"Quite; if you think it prudent, Martin."
+
+"I do.  She is not to breathe a syllable to cook."
+
+"She will."
+
+"Then keep your eye on cook."
+
+Mrs. Cavely promised she would do so.  She felt sure she was paying five
+shillings for ingratitude; and, therefore, it was with humility that she
+owned her error when, while her brother sipped his sugared acrid liquor
+after dinner (in devotion to the doctor's decree, that he should take a
+couple of glasses, rigorously as body-lashing friar), she imparted to him
+the singular effect of the advance of wages upon little Jane--"Oh, ma'am!
+and me never asked you for it!"  She informed her brother how little Jane
+had confided to her that they were called "close," and how little Jane
+had vowed she would--the willing little thing!--go about letting
+everybody know their kindness.
+
+"Yes! Ah!"  Tinman inhaled the praise.  "No, no; I don't want to be
+puffed," he said.  "Remember cook.  I have," he continued, meditatively,
+"rarely found my plan fail.  But mind, I give the Crickledons notice to
+quit to-morrow.  They are a pest.  Besides, I shall probably think of
+erecting villas."
+
+"How dreadful the wind is!" Mrs. Cavely exclaimed.  "I would give that
+girl Annette one chance more.  Try her by letter."
+
+Tinman despatched a business letter to Annette, which brought back a
+vague, unbusiness-like reply.  Two days afterward Mrs. Cavely reported to
+her brother the presence of Mr. Fellingham and Miss Mary Fellingham in
+Crikswich.  At her dictation he wrote a second letter.  This time the
+reply came from Van Diemen:
+
+     "My DEAR MARTIN,--Please do not go on bothering my girl.  She does
+     not like the idea of leaving me, and my experience tells me I could
+     not live in the house with you. So there it is.  Take it friendly.
+     I have always wanted to be, and am,
+                                        "Your friend,
+                                                       "PHIL."
+
+Tinman proceeded straight to Elba; that is, as nearly straight as the
+wind would allow his legs to walk.  Van Diemen was announced to be out;
+Miss Annette begged to be excused, under the pretext that she was unwell;
+and Tinman heard of a dinner-party at Elba that night.
+
+He met Mr. Fellingham on the carriage drive.  The young Londoner presumed
+to touch upon Tinman's private affairs by pleading on behalf of the
+Crikledons, who were, he said, much dejected by the notice they had
+received to quit house and shop.
+
+"Another time," bawled Tinman.  "I can't hear you in this wind."
+
+"Come in," said Fellingham.
+
+"The master of the house is absent," was the smart retort roared at him;
+and Tinman staggered away, enjoying it as he did his wine.
+
+His house rocked.  He was backed by his sister in the assurance that he
+had been duped.
+
+The process he supposed to be thinking, which was the castigation of his
+brains with every sting wherewith a native touchiness could ply immediate
+recollection, led him to conclude that he must bring Van Diemen to his
+senses, and Annette running to him for mercy.
+
+He sat down that night amid the howling of the storm, wind whistling,
+water crashing, casements rattling, beach desperately dragging, as by the
+wide-stretched star-fish fingers of the half-engulphed.
+
+He hardly knew what he wrote.  The man was in a state of personal terror,
+burning with indignation at Van Diemen as the main cause of his jeopardy.
+For, in order to prosecute his pursuit of Annette, he had abstained from
+going to Helmstone to pay moneys into his bank there, and what was
+precious to life as well as life itself, was imperilled by those two--
+Annette and her father--who, had they been true, had they been honest,
+to say nothing of honourable, would by this time have opened Elba to him
+as a fast and safe abode.
+
+His letter was addressed, on a large envelope,
+
+     "To the Adjutant-General,
+
+     "HORSE GUARDS."
+
+But if ever consigned to the Post, that post-office must be in London;
+and Tinman left the letter on his desk till the morning should bring
+counsel to him as to the London friend to whom he might despatch it under
+cover for posting, if he pushed it so far.
+
+Sleep was impossible.  Black night favoured the tearing fiends of
+shipwreck, and looking through a back window over sea, Tinman saw with
+dismay huge towering ghostwhite wreaths, that travelled up swiftly on his
+level, and lit the dark as they flung themselves in ruin, with a gasp,
+across the mound of shingle at his feet.
+
+He undressed: His sister called to him to know if they were in danger.
+Clothed in his dressing-gown, he slipped along to her door, to vociferate
+to her hoarsely that she must not frighten the servants; and one fine
+quality in the training of the couple, which had helped them to prosper,
+a form of self-command, kept her quiet in her shivering fears.
+
+For a distraction Tinman pulled open the drawers of his wardrobe.  His
+glittering suit lay in one.  And he thought, "What wonderful changes
+there are in the world!" meaning, between a man exposed to the wrath of
+the elements, and the same individual reading from vellum, in that suit,
+in a palace, to the Head of all of us!
+
+The presumption is; that he must have often done it before.  The fact is
+established, that he did it that night.  The conclusion drawn from it is,
+that it must have given him a sense of stability and safety.
+
+At any rate that he put on the suit is quite certain.
+
+Probably it was a work of ingratiation and degrees; a feeling of the
+silk, a trying on to one leg, then a matching of the fellow with it.
+O you Revolutionists!  who would have no state, no ceremonial, and but
+one order of galligaskins!  This man must have been wooed away in spirit
+to forgetfulness of the tempest scourging his mighty neighbour to a
+bigger and a farther leap; he must have obtained from the contemplation
+of himself in his suit that which would be the saving of all men, in
+especial of his countrymen--imagination, namely.
+
+Certain it is, as I have said, that he attired himself in the suit.  He
+covered it with his dressing-gown, and he lay down on his bed so garbed,
+to await the morrow's light, being probably surprised by sleep acting
+upon fatigue and nerves appeased and soothed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Elba lay more sheltered from South-east winds under the slopes of down
+than any other house in Crikswich.  The South-caster struck off the cliff
+to a martello tower and the house on the beach, leaving Elba to repose,
+so that the worst wind for that coast was one of the most comfortable for
+the owner of the hall, and he looked from his upper window on a sea of
+crumbling grey chalk, lashed unremittingly by the featureless piping
+gale, without fear that his elevated grounds and walls would be open at
+high tide to the ravage of water.  Van Diemen had no idea of calamity
+being at work on land when he sat down to breakfast.  He told Herbert
+that he had prayed for poor fellows at sea last night.  Mary Fellingham
+and Annette were anxious to finish breakfast and mount the down to gaze
+on the sea, and receiving a caution from Van Diemen not to go too near
+the cliff, they were inclined to think he was needlessly timorous on
+their account.
+
+Before they were half way through the meal, word was brought in of great
+breaches in the shingle, and water covering the common.  Van Diemen sent
+for his head gardener, whose report of the state of things outside took
+the comprehensive form of prophecy; he predicted the fall of the town.
+
+"Nonsense; what do you mean, John Scott?"  said Van Diemen, eyeing his
+orderly breakfast table and the man in turns.  "It does n't seem like
+that, yet, does it?"
+
+"The house on the beach won't stand an hour longer, sir."
+
+"Who says so?"
+
+"It's cut off from land now, and waves mast-high all about it."
+
+"Mart Tinman?"  cried Van Diemen.
+
+All started; all jumped up; and there was a scampering for hats and
+cloaks.  Maids and men of the house ran in and out confirming the news of
+inundation.  Some in terror for the fate of relatives, others pleasantly
+excited, glad of catastrophe if it but killed monotony, for at any rate
+it was a change of demons.
+
+The view from the outer bank of Elba was of water covering the space of
+the common up to the stones of Marine Parade and Belle Vue.  But at a
+distance it had not the appearance of angry water; the ladies thought it
+picturesque, and the house on the beach was seen standing firm.  A second
+look showed the house completely isolated; and as the party led by Van
+Diemen circled hurriedly toward the town, they discerned heavy cataracts
+of foam pouring down the wrecked mound of shingle on either side of the
+house.
+
+"Why, the outer wall's washed away," said Van Diemen."  Are they in real
+danger?" asked Annette, her teeth chattering, and the cold and other
+matters at her heart precluding for the moment such warmth of sympathy as
+she hoped soon to feel for them.  She was glad to hear her father say:
+
+"Oh!  they're high and dry by this time.  We shall find them in the town
+And we'll take them in and comfort them.  Ten to one they have n't
+breakfasted.  They sha'n't go to an inn while I'm handy."
+
+He dashed ahead, followed closely by Herbert.  The ladies beheld them
+talking to townsfolk as they passed along the upper streets, and did not
+augur well of their increase of speed.  At the head of the town water was
+visible, part of the way up the main street, and crossing it, the ladies
+went swiftly under the old church, on the tower of which were spectators,
+through the churchyard to a high meadow that dropped to a stone wall
+fixed between the meadow and a grass bank above the level of the road,
+where now salt water beat and cast some spray.  Not less than a hundred
+people were in this field, among them Crickledon and his wife.  All were
+in silent watch of the house on the beach, which was to east of the
+field, at a distance of perhaps three stonethrows.  The scene was wild.
+Continuously the torrents poured through the shingleclefts, and momently
+a thunder sounded, and high leapt a billow that topped the house and
+folded it weltering.
+
+"They tell me Mart Tinman's in the house," Van Diemen roared to Herbert.
+He listened to further information, and bellowed: "There's no boat!"
+
+Herbert answered: "It must be a mistake, I think; here's Crickledon says
+he had a warning before dawn and managed to move most of his things, and
+the people over there must have been awakened by the row in time to get
+off"
+
+"I can't hear a word you say;" Van Diemen tried to pitch his voice higher
+than the wind.  "Did you say a boat?  But where?"
+
+Crickledon the carpenter made signal to Herbert.  They stepped rapidly up
+the field.
+
+"Women feels their weakness in times like these, my dear," Mrs.
+Crickledon said to Annette.  "What with our clothes and our cowardice
+it do seem we're not the equals of men when winds is high."
+
+Annette expressed the hope to her that she had not lost much property.
+Mrs. Crickledon said she was glad to let her know she was insured in an
+Accident Company.  "But," said she, "I do grieve for that poor man
+Tinman, if alive he be, and comes ashore to find his property wrecked by
+water.  Bless ye! he wouldn't insure against anything less common than
+fire; and my house and Crickledon's shop are floating timbers by this
+time; and Marine Parade and Belle Vue are safe to go.  And it'll be a
+pretty welcome for him, poor man, from his investments."
+
+A cry at a tremendous blow of a wave on the doomed house rose from the
+field.  Back and front door were broken down, and the force of water
+drove a round volume through the channel, shaking the walls.
+
+"I can't stand this," Van Diemen cried.
+
+Annette was too late to hold him back.  He ran up the field.  She was
+preparing to run after when Mrs. Crickledon touched her arm and implored
+her: "Interfere not with men, but let them follow their judgements when
+it's seasons of mighty peril, my dear.  If any one's guilty it's me, for
+minding my husband of a boat that was launched for a life-boat here, and
+wouldn't answer, and is at the shed by the Crouch--left lying there, I've
+often said, as if it was a-sulking.  My goodness!"
+
+A linen sheet bad been flung out from one of the windows of the house on
+the beach, and flew loose and flapping in sign of distress.
+
+"It looks as if they had gone mad in that house, to have waited so long
+for to declare theirselves, poor souls," Mrs. Crickledon said, sighing.
+
+She was assured right and left that signals had been seen before, and
+some one stated that the cook of Mr. Tinman, and also Mrs. Cavely, were
+on shore.
+
+"It's his furniture, poor man, he sticks to: and nothing gets round the
+heart so!"  resumed Mrs. Crickledon.  "There goes his bed-linen!"
+
+The sheet was whirled and snapped away by the wind; distended doubled,
+like a flock of winter geese changeing alphabetical letters on the
+clouds, darted this way and that, and finally outspread on the waters
+breaking against Marine Parade.
+
+"They cannot have thought there was positive danger in remaining," said
+Annette.
+
+"Mr. Tinman was waiting for the cheapest Insurance office," a man
+remarked to Mrs. Crickledon.
+
+"The least to pay is to the undertaker," she replied, standing on tiptoe.
+"And it's to be hoped he 'll pay more to-day.  If only those walls don't
+fall and stop the chance of the boat to save him for more outlay, poor
+man!  What boats was on the beach last night, high up and over the ridge
+as they was, are planks by this time and only good for carpenters."
+
+"Half our town's done for," one old man said; and another followed him in.
+a pious tone: "From water we came and to water we go."
+
+They talked of ancient inroads of the sea, none so serious as this
+threatened to be for them.  The gallant solidity, of the house on the
+beach had withstood heavy gales: it was a brave house.  Heaven be
+thanked, no fishing boats were out.  Chiefly well-to-do people would be
+the sufferers--an exceptional case.  For it is the mysterious and
+unexplained dispensation that: "Mostly heaven chastises we."
+
+A knot of excited gazers drew the rest of the field to them.  Mrs.
+Crickledon, on the edge of the crowd, reported what was doing to Annette
+and Miss Fellingham.  A boat had been launched from the town.  "Praise
+the Lord, there's none but coastguard in it!"  she exclaimed, and excused
+herself for having her heart on her husband.
+
+Annette was as deeply thankful that her father was not in the boat.
+
+They looked round and saw Herbert beside them.  Van Diemen was in the
+rear, panting, and straining his neck to catch sight of the boat now
+pulling fast across a tumbled sea to where Tinman himself was perceived,
+beckoning them wildly, half out of one of the windows.
+
+"A pound apiece to those fellows, and two if they land Mart Tinman dry;
+I've promised it, and they'll earn it.  Look at that!  Quick, you
+rascals!"
+
+To the east a portion of the house had fallen, melted away.  Where it
+stood, just below the line of shingle, it was now like a structure
+wasting on a tormented submerged reef.  The whole line was given over to
+the waves.
+
+"Where is his sister?"  Annette shrieked to her father.
+
+"Safe ashore; and one of the women with her.  But Mart Tinman would stop,
+the fool!  to-poor old boy!  save his papers and things; and has n't a
+head to do it, Martha Cavely tells me.  They're at him now!  They've got
+him in!  There's another?  Oh! it's a girl, who would n't go and leave
+him.  They'll pull to the field here.  Brave lads!--By jingo, why ain't
+Englishmen always in danger!--eh?  if you want to see them shine!"
+
+"It's little Jane," said Mrs. Crickledon, who had been joined by her
+husband, and now that she knew him to be no longer in peril, kept her
+hand on him to restrain him, just for comfort's sake.
+
+The boat held under the lee of the house-wreck a minute; then, as if
+shooting a small rapid, came down on a wave crowned with foam, to hurrahs
+from the townsmen.
+
+"They're all right," said Van Diemen, puffing as at a mist before his
+eyes.  "They'll pull westward, with the wind, and land him among us.  I
+remember when old Mart and I were bathing once, he was younger than me,
+and could n't swim much, and I saw him going down.  It'd have been hard
+to see him washed off before one's eyes thirty years afterwards.  Here
+they come.  He's all right.  He's in his dressing-gown!"
+
+The crowd made way for Mr. Van Diemen Smith to welcome his friend.  Two
+of the coastguard jumped out, and handed him to the dry bank, while
+Herbert, Van Diemen, and Crickledon took him by hand and arm, and hoisted
+him on to the flint wall, preparatory to his descent into the field.  In
+this exposed situation the wind, whose pranks are endless when it is once
+up, seized and blew Martin Tinman's dressing-gown wide as two violently
+flapping wings on each side of him, and finally over his head.
+
+Van Diemen turned a pair of stupefied flat eyes on Herbert, who cast a
+sly look at the ladies.  Tinman had sprung down.  But not before the.
+world, in one tempestuous glimpse, had caught sight of the Court suit.
+
+Perfect gravity greeted him from the crowd.
+
+"Safe, old Mart! and glad to be able to say it," said Van Diemen.
+
+"We are so happy," said Annette.
+
+"House, furniture, property, everything I possess!"  ejaculated Tinman,
+shivering.
+
+"Fiddle, man; you want some hot breakfast in you.  Your sister has gone
+on--to Elba.  Come you too, old Man; and where's that plucky little girl
+who stood by--"
+
+"Was there a girl?"  said Tinman.
+
+"Yes, and there was a boy wanted to help."  Van Diemen pointed at
+Herbert.
+
+Tinman looked, and piteously asked, "Have you examined Marine Parade and
+Belle Vue?  It depends on the tide!"
+
+"Here is little Jane, sir," said Mrs. Crickledon.
+
+"Fall in," Van Diemen said to little Jane.
+
+The girl was bobbing curtseys to Annette, on her introduction by Mrs.
+Crickledon.
+
+"Martin, you stay at my house; you stay at Elba till you get things
+comfortable about you, and then you shall have the Crouch for a year,
+rent free.  Eh, Netty?"
+
+Annette chimed in: "Anything we can do, anything.  Nothing can be too
+much."
+
+Van Diemen was praising little Jane for her devotion to her master.
+
+"Master have been so kind to me," said little Jane.
+
+"Now, march; it is cold," Van Diemen gave the word, and Herbert stood by
+Mary rather dejectedly, foreseeing that his prospects at Elba were
+darkened.
+
+"Now then, Mart, left leg forward," Van Diemen linked his arm in his
+friend's.
+
+"I must have a look," Tinman broke from him, and cast a forlorn look of
+farewell on the last of the house on the beach.
+
+"You've got me left to you, old Mart; don't forget that," said Van
+Diemen.
+
+Tinman's chest fell.  "Yes, yes," he responded.  He was touched.
+
+"And I told those fellows if they landed you dry they should have--I'd
+give them double pay; and I do believe they've earned their money."
+
+"I don't think I'm very wet, I'm cold," said Tinman.
+
+"You can't help being cold, so come along."
+
+"But, Philip!" Tinman lifted his voice; "I've lost everything.  I tried
+to save a little. I worked hard, I exposed my life, and all in vain."
+
+The voice of little Jane was heard.
+
+"What's the matter with the child?" said Van Diemen.
+
+Annette went up to her quietly.
+
+But little Jane was addressing her master.
+
+"Oh! if you please, I did manage to save something the last thing when
+the boat was at the window, and if you please, sir, all the bundles is
+lost, but I saved you a papercutter, and a letter Horse Guards, and here
+they are, sir."
+
+The grateful little creature drew the square letter and paper-cutter from
+her bosom, and held them out to Mr. Tinman.
+
+It was a letter of the imposing size, with THE HORSE GUARDS very
+distinctly inscribed on it in Tinman's best round hand, to strike his
+vindictive spirit as positively intended for transmission, and give him
+sight of his power to wound if it pleased him; as it might.
+
+"What!" cried he, not clearly comprehending how much her devotion had
+accomplished for him.
+
+"A letter to the Horse Guards!" cried Van Diemen.
+
+"Here, give it me," said little Jane's master, and grasped it nervously.
+
+"What's in that letter?" Van Diemen asked.  "Let me look at that letter.
+Don't tell me it's private correspondence."
+
+"My dear Philip, dear friend, kind thanks; it's not a letter," said
+Tinman.
+
+"Not a letter! why, I read the address, 'Horse Guards.' I read it as it
+passed into your hands.  Now, my man, one look at that letter, or take
+the consequences."
+
+"Kind thanks for your assistance, dear Philip, indeed!  Oh! this?  Oh!
+it's nothing."  He tore it in halves.
+
+His face was of the winter sea-colour, with the chalk wash on it.
+
+"Tear again, and I shall know what to think of the contents," Van Diemen
+frowned.  "Let me see what you've said.  You've sworn you would do it,
+and there it is at last, by miracle; but let me see it and I'll overlook
+it, and you shall be my house-mate still.  If not!----"
+
+Tinman tore away.
+
+"You mistake, you mistake, you're entirely wrong," he said, as he pursued
+with desperation his task of rendering every word unreadable.
+
+Van Diemen stood fronting him; the accumulation of stores of petty
+injuries and meannesses which he had endured from this man, swelled under
+the whip of the conclusive exhibition of treachery.  He looked so black
+that Annette called, "Papa!"
+
+"Philip," said Tinman.  "Philip! my best friend!"
+
+"Pooh, you're a poor creature.  Come along and breakfast at Elba, and you
+can sleep at the Crouch, and goodnight to you.  Crickledon," he called to
+the houseless couple, "you stop at Elba till I build you a shop."
+
+With these words, Van Diemen led the way, walking alone.  Herbert was
+compelled to walk with Tinman.
+
+Mary and Annette came behind, and Mary pinched Annette's arm so sharply
+that she must have cried out aloud had it been possible for her to feel
+pain at that moment, instead of a personal exultation, flying wildly over
+the clash of astonishment and horror, like a sea-bird over the foam.
+
+In the first silent place they came to, Mary murmured the words: "Little
+Jane."
+
+Annette looked round at Mrs. Crickledon, who wound up the procession,
+taking little Jane by the hand.  Little Jane was walking demurely, with a
+placid face.  Annette glanced at Tinman.  Her excited feelings nearly
+rose to a scream of laughter.  For hours after, Mary had only to say to
+her: "Little Jane," to produce the same convulsion.  It rolled her heart
+and senses in a headlong surge, shook her to burning tears, and seemed to
+her ideas the most wonderful running together of opposite things ever
+known on this earth.  The young lady was ashamed of her laughter; but she
+was deeply indebted to it, for never was mind made so clear by that
+beneficent exercise.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Adversary at once offensive and helpless provokes brutality
+Causes him to be popularly weighed
+Distinguished by his not allowing himself to be provoked
+Eccentric behaviour in trifles
+Excited, glad of catastrophe if it but killed monotony
+Generally he noticed nothing
+Good jokes are not always good policy
+I make a point of never recommending my own house
+Indulged in their privilege of thinking what they liked
+Infants are said to have their ideas, and why not young ladies?
+Lend him your own generosity
+Men love to boast of things nobody else has seen
+Naughtily Australian and kangarooly
+Not in love--She was only not unwilling to be in love
+Rich and poor 's all right, if I'm rich and you're poor
+She began to feel that this was life in earnest
+She dealt in the flashes which connect ideas
+She sought, by looking hard, to understand it better
+Sunning itself in the glass of Envy
+That which fine cookery does for the cementing of couples
+The intricate, which she takes for the infinite
+Tossed him from repulsion to incredulity, and so back
+Two principal roads by which poor sinners come to a conscience
+
+
+[The End]
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 4495 ***
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The House on the Beach
+by George Meredith
+#101 in our series by George Meredith
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+Title: The House on the Beach
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+Author: George Meredith
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+Edition: 10
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+Language: English
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext The House on the Beach by George Meredith
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+
+THE HOUSE ON THE BEACH
+
+By George Meredith
+
+
+
+A REALISTIC TALE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+The experience of great officials who have laid down their dignities
+before death, or have had the philosophic mind to review themselves while
+still wielding the deputy sceptre, teaches them that in the exercise of
+authority over men an eccentric behaviour in trifles has most exposed
+them to hostile criticism and gone farthest to jeopardize their
+popularity.  It is their Achilles' heel; the place where their mother
+Nature holds them as she dips them in our waters.  The eccentricity of
+common persons is the entertainment of the multitude, and the maternal
+hand is perceived for a cherishing and endearing sign upon them; but
+rarely can this be found suitable for the august in station; only,
+indeed, when their sceptre is no more fearful than a grandmother's birch;
+and these must learn from it sooner or later that they are uncomfortably
+mortal.
+
+When herrings are at auction on a beach, for example, the man of chief
+distinction in the town should not step in among a poor fraternity to
+take advantage of an occasion of cheapness, though it be done, as he may
+protest, to relieve the fishermen of a burden; nor should such a
+dignitary as the bailiff of a Cinque Port carry home the spoil of
+victorious bargaining on his arm in a basket.  It is not that his conduct
+is in itself objectionable, so much as that it causes him to be popularly
+weighed; and during life, until the best of all advocates can plead
+before our fellow Englishmen that we are out of their way, it is prudent
+to avoid the process.
+
+Mr. Tinman, however, this high-stepping person in question, happened to
+have come of a marketing mother.  She had started him from a small shop
+to a big one.  He, by the practice of her virtues, had been enabled to
+start himself as a gentleman.  He was a man of this ambition, and prouder
+behind it.  But having started himself precipitately, he took rank among
+independent incomes, as they are called, only to take fright at the
+perils of starvation besetting one who has been tempted to abandon the
+source of fifty per cent.  So, if noble imagery were allowable in our
+time in prose, might alarms and partial regrets be assumed to animate the
+splendid pumpkin cut loose from the suckers.  Deprived of that prodigious
+nourishment of the shop in the fashionable seaport of Helmstone, he
+retired upon his native town, the Cinque Port of Crikswich, where he
+rented the cheapest residence he could discover for his habitation, the
+House on the Beach, and lived imposingly, though not in total disaccord
+with his old mother's principles.  His income, as he observed to his
+widowed sister and solitary companion almost daily in their privacy, was
+respectable.  The descent from an altitude of fifty to five per cent.
+cannot but be felt.  Nevertheless it was a comforting midnight bolster
+reflection for a man, turning over to the other side between a dream and
+a wink, that he was making no bad debts, and one must pay to be addressed
+as esquire.  Once an esquire, you are off the ground in England and on
+the ladder.  An esquire can offer his hand in marriage to a lady in her
+own right; plain esquires have married duchesses; they marry baronets'
+daughters every day of the week.
+
+Thoughts of this kind were as the rise and fall of waves in the bosom of
+the new esquire.  How often in his Helmstone shop had he not heard titled
+ladies disdaining to talk a whit more prettily than ordinary women; and
+he had been a match for the subtlety of their pride--he understood it.
+He knew well that at the hint of a proposal from him they would have
+spoken out in a manner very different to that of ordinary women.  The
+lightning, only to be warded by an esquire, was in them.  He quitted
+business at the age of forty, that he might pretend to espousals with a
+born lady; or at least it was one of the ideas in his mind.
+
+And here, I think, is the moment for the epitaph of anticipation over
+him, and the exclamation, alas!  I would not be premature, but it is
+necessary to create some interest in him, and no one but a foreigner
+could feel it at present for the Englishman who is bursting merely to do
+like the rest of his countrymen, and rise above them to shake them class
+by class as the dust from his heels.  Alas! then an--undertaker's pathos
+is better than none at all--he was not a single-minded aspirant to our
+social honours.  The old marketing mother; to whom he owed his fortunes,
+was in his blood to confound his ambition; and so contradictory was the
+man's nature, that in revenge for disappointments, there were times when
+he turned against the saving spirit of parsimony.  Readers deep in Greek
+dramatic writings will see the fatal Sisters behind the chair of a man
+who gives frequent and bigger dinners, that he may become important in
+his neighbourhood, while decreasing the price he pays for his wine, that
+he may miserably indemnify himself for the outlay.  A sip of his wine
+fetched the breath, as when men are in the presence of the tremendous
+elements of nature.  It sounded the constitution more darkly-awful, and
+with a profounder testimony to stubborn health, than the physician's
+instruments.  Most of the guests at Mr. Tinman's table were so
+constructed that they admired him for its powerful quality the more at
+his announcement of the price of it; the combined strength and cheapness
+probably flattering them, as by another mystic instance of the national
+energy.  It must have been so, since his townsmen rejoiced to hail him as
+head of their town.  Here and there a solitary esquire, fished out of the
+bathing season to dine at the house on the beach, was guilty of raising
+one of those clamours concerning subsequent headaches, which spread an
+evil reputation as a pall.  A resident esquire or two, in whom a
+reminiscence of Tinman's table may be likened to the hook which some old
+trout has borne away from the angler as the most vivid of warnings to him
+to beware for the future, caught up the black report and propagated it.
+
+The Lieutenant of the Coastguard, hearing the latest conscious victim, or
+hearing of him, would nod his head and say he had never dined at Tinman's
+table without a headache ensuing and a visit to the chemist's shop;
+which, he was assured, was good for trade, and he acquiesced, as it was
+right to do in a man devoted to his country.  He dined with Tinman again.
+We try our best to be social.  For eight months in our year he had little
+choice but to dine with Tinman or be a hermit attached to a telescope.
+
+"Where are you going, Lieutenant?"  His frank reply to the question was,
+"I am going to be killed;" and it grew notorious that this meant Tinman's
+table.  We get on together as well as we can.  Perhaps if we were an
+acutely calculating people we should find it preferable both for trade
+and our physical prosperity to turn and kill Tinman, in contempt of
+consequences.  But we are not, and so he does the business gradually for
+us.  A generous people we must be, for Tinman was not detested.  The
+recollection of "next morning" caused him to be dimly feared.
+
+Tinman, meanwhile, was awake only to the Circumstance that he made no
+progress as an esquire, except on the envelopes of letters, and in his
+own esteem.  That broad region he began to occupy to the exclusion of
+other inhabitants; and the result of such a state of princely isolation
+was a plunge of his whole being into deep thoughts.  From the hour of his
+investiture as the town's chief man, thoughts which were long shots took
+possession of him.  He had his wits about him; he was alive to ridicule;
+he knew he was not popular below, or on easy terms with people above him,
+and he meditated a surpassing stroke as one of the Band of Esq., that had
+nothing original about it to perplex and annoy the native mind, yet was
+dazzling.  Few members of the privileged Band dare even imagine the
+thing.
+
+It will hardly be believed, but it is historical fact, that in the act of
+carrying fresh herrings home on his arm, he entertained the idea of a
+visit to the First Person and Head of the realm, and was indulging in
+pleasing visions of the charms of a personal acquaintance.  Nay, he had
+already consulted with brother jurats.  For you must know that one of the
+princesses had recently suffered betrothal in the newspapers, and
+supposing her to deign to ratify the engagement, what so reasonable on
+the part of a Cinque Port chieftain as to congratulate his liege
+mistress, her illustrious mother?  These are thoughts and these are deeds
+>which give emotional warmth and colour to the ejecter members of a
+population wretchedly befogged.  They are our sunlight, and our brighter
+theme of conversation.  They are necessary to the climate and the Saxon
+mind; and it would be foolish to put them away, as it is foolish not to
+do our utmost to be intimate with terrestrial splendours while we have
+them--as it may be said of wardens, mayors, and bailiffs-at command.
+Tinman was quite of this opinion.  They are there to relieve our dulness.
+We have them in the place of heavenly; and he would have argued that we
+have a right to bother them too.  He had a notion, up in the clouds, of a
+Sailors' Convalescent Hospital at Crikswich to seduce a prince with, hand
+him the trowel, make him "lay the stone," and then poor prince! refresh
+him at table.  But that was a matter for by and by.
+
+His purchase of herrings completed, Mr. Tinman walked across the mound
+of shingle to the house on the beach.  He was rather a fresh-faced man,
+of the Saxon colouring, and at a distance looking good-humoured.  That he
+should have been able to make such an appearance while doing daily battle
+with his wine, was a proof of great physical vigour.  His pace was
+leisurely, as it must needs be over pebbles, where half a step is
+subtracted from each whole one in passing; and, besides, he was aware of
+a general breath at his departure that betokened a censorious assembly.
+Why should he not market for himself?  He threw dignity into his
+retreating figure in response to the internal interrogation.  The moment
+>was one when conscious rectitude =pliers man should have a tail for its
+just display.  Philosophers have drawn attention to the power of the
+human face to express pure virtue, but no sooner has it passed on than
+the spirit erect within would seem helpless.  The breadth of our
+shoulders is apparently presented for our critics to write on.  Poor duty
+is done by the simple sense of moral worth, to supplant that absence of
+feature in the plain flat back.  We are below the animals in this.  How
+charged with language behind him is a dog!  Everybody has noticed it.
+Let a dog turn away from a hostile circle, and his crisp and wary tail
+not merely defends him, it menaces; it is a weapon.  Man has no choice
+but to surge and boil, or stiffen preposterously.  Knowing the popular
+sentiment about his marketing--for men can see behind their backs, though
+they may have nothing to speak with--Tinman resembled those persons of
+principle who decline to pay for a "Bless your honour!" from a voluble
+beggar-woman, and obtain the reverse of it after they have gone by.  He
+was sufficiently sensitive to feel that his back was chalked as on a
+slate.  The only remark following him was, "There he goes!"
+
+He went to the seaward gate of the house on the beach, made practicable
+in a low flint wall, where he was met by his sister Martha, to whom he
+handed the basket.  Apparently he named the cost of his purchase per
+dozen.  She touched the fish and pressed the bellies of the topmost, it
+might be to question them tenderly concerning their roes.  Then the
+couple passed out of sight.  Herrings were soon after this despatching
+their odours through the chimneys of all Crikswich, and there was that
+much of concord and festive union among the inhabitants.
+
+The house on the beach had been posted where it stood, one supposes, for
+the sake of the sea-view, from which it turned right about to face the
+town across a patch of grass and salt scurf, looking like a square and
+scornful corporal engaged in the perpetual review of an awkward squad of
+recruits.  Sea delighted it not, nor land either.  Marine Parade fronting
+it to the left, shaded sickly eyes, under a worn green verandah, from a
+sun that rarely appeared, as the traducers of spinsters pretend those
+virgins are ever keenly on their guard against him that cometh not.
+Belle Vue Terrace stared out of lank glass panes without reserve,
+unashamed of its yellow complexion.  A gaping public-house, calling
+itself newly Hotel, fell backward a step.  Villas with the titles of
+royalty and bloody battles claimed five feet of garden, and swelled in
+bowwindows beside other villas which drew up firmly, commending to the
+attention a decent straightness and unintrusive decorum in preference.
+On an elevated meadow to the right was the Crouch.  The Hall of Elba
+nestled among weather-beaten dwarf woods further toward the cliff.
+Shavenness, featurelessness, emptiness, clamminess scurfiness, formed the
+outward expression of a town to which people were reasonably glad to come
+from London in summer-time, for there was nothing in Crikswich to
+distract the naked pursuit of health.  The sea tossed its renovating
+brine to the determinedly sniffing animal, who went to his meals with an
+appetite that rendered him cordially eulogistic of the place, in spite of
+certain frank whiffs of sewerage coming off an open deposit on the common
+to mingle with the brine.  Tradition told of a French lady and gentleman
+entering the town to take lodgings for a month, and that on the morrow
+they took a boat from the shore, saying in their faint English to a
+sailor veteran of the coastguard, whom they had consulted about the
+weather, "It is better zis zan zat," as they shrugged between rough sea
+and corpselike land.  And they were not seen again.  Their meaning none
+knew.  Having paid their bill at the lodging-house, their conduct was
+ascribed to systematic madness.  English people came to Crikswich for the
+pure salt sea air, and they did not expect it to be cooked and dressed
+and decorated for them.  If these things are done to nature, it is nature
+no longer that you have, but something Frenchified.  Those French are for
+trimming Neptune's beard!  Only wait, and you are sure to find variety in
+nature, more than you may like.  You will find it in Neptune.  What say
+you to a breach of the sea-wall, and an inundation of the aromatic grass-
+flat extending from the house on the beach to the tottering terraces,
+villas, cottages: and public-house transformed by its ensign to Hotel,
+along the frontage of the town?  Such an event had occurred of old, and
+had given the house on the beach the serious shaking great Neptune in his
+wrath alone can give.  But many years had intervened.  Groynes had been
+run down to intercept him and divert him.  He generally did his winter
+mischief on a mill and salt marshes lower westward.  Mr. Tinman had
+always been extremely zealous in promoting the expenditure of what moneys
+the town had to spare upon the protection of the shore, as it were for
+the propitiation or defiance of the sea-god.  There was a kindly joke
+against him an that subject among brother jurats.  He retorted with the
+joke, that the first thing for Englishmen to look to were England's
+defences.
+
+But it will not do to be dwelling too fondly on our eras of peace, for
+which we make such splendid sacrifices.  Peace, saving for the advent of
+a German band, which troubled the repose of the town at intervals, had
+imparted to the inhabitants of Crikswich, within and without, the
+likeness to its most perfect image, together, it must be confessed, with
+a degree of nervousness that invested common events with some of the
+terrors of the Last Trump, when one night, just upon the passing of the
+vernal equinox, something happened.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A carriage Stopped short in the ray of candlelight that was fitfully and
+feebly capering on the windy blackness outside the open workshop of
+Crickledon, the carpenter, fronting the sea-beach.  Mr. Tinnnan's house
+was inquired for.  Crickledon left off planing; at half-sprawl over the
+board, he bawled out, "Turn to the right; right ahead; can't mistake it."
+He nodded to one of the cronies intent on watching his labours: "Not
+unless they mean to be bait for whiting-pout.  Who's that for Tinman, I
+wonder?"  The speculations of Crickledon's friends were lost in the
+scream of the plane.
+
+One cast an eye through the door and observed that the carriage was there
+still.  "Gentleman's got out and walked," said Crickledon.  He was
+informed that somebody was visible inside.  "Gentleman's wife, mayhap,"
+he said.  His friends indulged in their privilege of thinking what they
+liked, and there was the usual silence of tongues in the shop.  He
+furnished them sound and motion for their amusement, and now and then a
+scrap of conversation; and the sedater spirits dwelling in his immediate
+neighbourhood were accustomed to step in and see him work up to supper-
+time, instead of resorting to the more turbid and costly excitement of
+the public-house.
+
+Crickledon looked up from the measurement of a thumb-line.  In the
+doorway stood a bearded gentleman, who announced himself with the
+startling exclamation, "Here's a pretty pickle!"  and bustled to make way
+for a man well known to them as Ned Crummins, the upholsterer's man, on
+whose back hung an article of furniture, the condition of which, with a
+condensed brevity of humour worthy of literary admiration, he displayed
+by mutely turning himself about as he entered.
+
+"Smashed!" was the general outcry.
+
+"I ran slap into him," said the gentleman.  "Who the deuce!--no bones
+broken, that's one thing.  The fellow--there, look at him: he's like a
+glass tortoise."
+
+"It's a chiwal glass," Crickledon remarked, and laid finger on the star
+in the centre.
+
+"Gentleman ran slap into me," said Crummins, depositing the frame on the
+floor of the shop.
+
+"Never had such a shock in my life," continued the gentleman.  "Upon my
+soul, I took him for a door: I did indeed.  A kind of light flashed from
+one of your houses here, and in the pitch dark I thought I was at the
+door of old Mart Tinman's house, and dash me if I did n't go in--crash!
+But what the deuce do you do, carrying that great big looking-glass at
+night, man?  And, look here tell me; how was it you happened to be going
+glass foremost when you'd got the glass on your back?"
+
+"Well, 't ain't my fault, I knows that," rejoined Crummins.  "I came
+along as careful as a man could.  I was just going to bawl out to Master
+Tinman, 'I knows the way, never fear me'; for I thinks I hears him call
+from his house, 'Do ye see the way?' and into me this gentleman runs all
+his might, and smash goes the glass.  I was just ten steps from Master
+Tinman's gate, and that careful, I reckoned every foot I put down, that I
+was; I knows I did, though."
+
+"Why, it was me calling, 'I'm sure I can't see the way.'
+
+"You heard me, you donkey!" retorted the bearded gentleman.  "What was
+the good of your turning that glass against me in the very nick when I
+dashed on you?"
+
+"Well, 't ain't my fault, I swear," said Crummins.  "The wind catches
+voices so on a pitch dark night, you never can tell whether they be on
+one shoulder or the other.  And if I'm to go and lose my place through no
+fault of mine----"
+
+"Have n't I told you, sir, I'm going to pay the damage?  Here," said the
+gentleman, fumbling at his waistcoat, "here, take this card.  Read it."
+
+For the first time during the scene in the carpenter's shop, a certain
+pomposity swelled the gentleman's tone.  His delivery of the card
+appeared to act on him like the flourish of a trumpet before great men.
+
+"Van Diemen Smith," he proclaimed himself for the assistance of Ned
+Crummins in his task; the latter's look of sad concern on receiving the
+card seeming to declare an unscholarly conscience.
+
+An anxious feminine voice was heard close beside Mr. Van Diemen Smith.
+
+"Oh, papa, has there been an accident?  Are you hurt?"
+
+"Not a bit, Netty; not a bit.  Walked into a big looking-glass in the
+dark, that's all.  A matter of eight or ten pound, and that won't stump
+us.  But these are what I call queer doings in Old England, when you
+can't take a step in the dark, on the seashore without plunging bang into
+a glass.  And it looks like bad luck to my visit to old Mart Tinman."
+
+"Can you," he addressed the company, "tell me of a clean, wholesome
+lodging-house?  I was thinking of flinging myself, body and baggage, on
+your mayor, or whatever he is--my old schoolmate; but I don't so much
+like this beginning.  A couple of bed-rooms and sitting-room; clean
+sheets, well aired; good food, well cooked; payment per week in advance."
+
+The pebble dropped into deep water speaks of its depth by the tardy
+arrival of bubbles on the surface, and, in like manner, the very simple
+question put by Mr. Van Diemen Smith pursued its course of penetration in
+the assembled mind in the carpenter's shop for a considerable period,
+with no sign to show that it had reached the bottom.
+
+"Surely, papa, we can go to an inn?  There must be some hotel," said his
+daughter.
+
+"There's good accommodation at the Cliff Hotel hard by," said Crickledon.
+
+"But," said one of his friends, "if you don't want to go so far, sir,
+there's Master Crickledon's own house next door, and his wife lets
+lodgings, and there's not a better cook along this coast."
+
+"Then why did n't the man mention it?  Is he afraid of having me?"  asked
+Mr. Smith, a little thunderingly.  "I may n't be known much yet in
+England; but I'll tell you, you inquire the route to Mr. Van Diemen Smith
+over there in Australia."
+
+"Yes, papa," interrupted his daughter, "only you must consider that it
+may not be convenient to take us in at this hour--so late."
+
+"It's not that, miss, begging your pardon," said Crickledon.  "I make a
+point of never recommending my own house.  That's where it is.  Otherwise
+you're welcome to try us."
+
+"I was thinking of falling bounce on my old schoolmate, and putting Old
+English hospitality to the proof," Mr. Smith meditated.  "But it's late.
+Yes, and that confounded glass!  No, we'll bide with you, Mr. Carpenter.
+I'll send my card across to Mart Tinman to-morrow, and set him agog at
+his breakfast."
+
+Mr. Van Diemen Smith waved his hand for Crickledon to lead the way.
+
+Hereupon Ned Crummins looked up from the card he had been turning over
+and over, more and more like one arriving at a condemnatory judgment of a
+fish.
+
+"I can't go and give my master a card instead of his glass," he remarked.
+
+"Yes, that reminds me; and I should like to know what you meant by
+bringing that glass away from Mr. Tinman's house at night," said Mr.
+Smith.  "If I'm to pay for it, I've a right to know.  What's the meaning
+of moving it at night?  Eh, let's hear.  Night's not the time for moving
+big glasses like that.  I'm not so sure I haven't got a case."
+
+"If you'll step round to my master along o' me, sir," said Crummins,
+"perhaps he'll explain."
+
+Crummins was requested to state who his master was, and he replied,
+"Phippun and Company;" but Mr. Smith positively refused to go with him.
+
+"But here," said he, "is a crown for you, for you're a civil fellow.
+You'll know where to find me in the morning; and mind, I shall expect
+Phippun and Company to give me a very good account of their reason for
+moving a big looking-glass on a night like this.  There, be off."
+
+The crown-piece in his hand effected a genial change in Crummins'
+disposition to communicate.  Crickledon spoke to him about the glass; two
+or three of the others present jogged him.  "What did Mr. Tinman want by
+having the glass moved so late in the day, Ned?  Your master wasn't
+nervous about his property, was he?"
+
+"Not he," said Crummins, and began to suck down his upper lip and agitate
+his eyelids and stand uneasily, glimmering signs of the setting in of the
+tide of narration.
+
+He caught the eye of Mr. Smith, then looked abashed at Miss.
+
+Crickledon saw his dilemma.  "Say what's uppermost, Ned; never mind how
+you says it.  English is English.  Mr. Tinman sent for you to take the
+glass away, now, did n't he?"
+
+"He did," said Crummins.
+
+"And you went to him."
+
+"Ay, that I did."
+
+"And he fastened the chiwal glass upon your back"
+
+"He did that."
+
+"That's all plain sailing.  Had he bought the glass?"
+
+"No, he had n't bought it.  He'd hired it."
+
+As when upon an enforced visit to the dentist, people have had one tooth
+out, the remaining offenders are more willingly submitted to the
+operation, insomuch that a poetical licence might hazard the statement
+that they shed them like leaves of the tree, so Crummins, who had shrunk
+from speech, now volunteered whole sentences in succession, and how
+important they were deemed by his fellow-townsman, Mr. Smith, and
+especially Miss Annette Smith, could perceive in their ejaculations,
+before they themselves were drawn into the strong current of interest.
+
+And this was the matter: Tinman had hired the glass for three days.
+Latish, on the very first day of the hiring, close upon dark, he had
+despatched imperative orders to Phippun and Company to take the glass out
+of his house on the spot.  And why?  Because, as he maintained, there was
+a fault in the glass causing an incongruous and absurd reflection; and he
+was at that moment awaiting the arrival of another chiwal-glass.
+
+"Cut along, Ned," said Crickledon.
+
+"What the deuce does he want with a chiwal-glass at all?"  cried Mr.
+Smith, endangering the flow of the story by suggesting to the narrator
+that he must "hark back," which to him was equivalent to the jumping of a
+chasm hindward.  Happily his brain had seized a picture:
+
+"Mr. Tinman, he's a-standin' in his best Court suit."
+
+Mr. Tinmau's old schoolmate gave a jump; and no wonder.
+
+"Standing?" he cried; and as the act of standing was really not
+extraordinary, he fixed upon the suit: "Court?"
+
+"So Mrs. Cavely told me, it was what he was standin' in, and as I found
+'m I left 'm," said Crummins.
+
+"He's standing in it now?" said Mr. Van Diemen Smith, with a great gape.
+
+Crummins doggedly repeated the statement.  Many would have ornamented it
+in the repetition, but he was for bare flat truth.
+
+"He must be precious proud of having a Court suit," said Mr. Smith, and
+gazed at his daughter so glassily that she smiled, though she was
+impatient to proceed to Mrs. Crickledon's lodgings.
+
+"Oh! there's where it is?" interjected the carpenter, with a funny frown
+at a low word from Ned Crummins.  "Practicing, is he?  Mr. Tinman's
+practicing before the glass preparatory to his going to the palace in
+London."
+
+"He gave me a shillin'," said Crummins.
+
+Crickledon comprehended him immediately.  "We sha'n't speak about it,
+Ned."
+
+What did you see?  was thus cautiously suggested.
+
+The shilling was on Crummins' tongue to check his betrayal of the secret
+scene.  But remembering that he had only witnessed it by accident, and
+that Mr. Tinman had not completely taken him into his confidence, he
+thrust his hand down his pocket to finger the crown-piece lying in
+fellowship with the coin it multiplied five times, and was inspired to
+think himself at liberty to say: "All I saw was when the door opened.
+Not the house-door.  It was the parlour-door.  I saw him walk up to the
+glass, and walk back from the glass.  And when he'd got up to the glass
+he bowed, he did, and he went back'ards just so."
+
+Doubtless the presence of a lady was the active agent that prevented
+Crummins from doubling his body entirely, and giving more than a rapid
+indication of the posture of Mr. Tinman in his retreat before the glass.
+But it was a glimpse of broad burlesque, and though it was received with
+becoming sobriety by the men in the carpenter's shop, Annette plucked at
+her father's arm.
+
+She could not get him to depart.  That picture of his old schoolmate
+Martin Tinman practicing before a chiwal glass to present himself at the
+palace in his Court suit, seemed to stupefy his Australian intelligence.
+
+"What right has he got to go to Court?"  Mr. Van Diemen Smith inquired,
+like the foreigner he had become through exile.
+
+"Mr. Tinman's bailiff of the town," said Crickledon.
+
+"And what was his objection to that glass I smashed?"
+
+"He's rather an irritable gentleman," Crickledon murmured, and turned to
+Crummins.
+
+Crummins growled: "He said it was misty, and gave him a twist."
+
+"What a big fool he must be! eh?"  Mr. Smith glanced at Crickledon and
+the other faces for the verdict of Tinman's townsmen upon his character.
+
+They had grounds for thinking differently of Tinman.
+
+"He's no fool," said Crickledon.
+
+Another shook his head.  "Sharp at a bargain."
+
+"That he be," said the chorus.
+
+Mr. Smith was informed that Mr. Tinman would probably end by buying up
+half the town.
+
+"Then," said Mr. Smith, "he can afford to pay half the money for that
+glass, and pay he shall."
+
+A serious view of the recent catastrophe was presented by his
+declaration.
+
+In the midst of a colloquy regarding the cost of the glass, during which
+it began to be seen by Mr. Tinman's townsmen that there was laughing-
+stuff for a year or so in the scene witnessed by Crummins, if they
+postponed a bit their right to the laugh and took it in doses, Annette
+induced her father to signal to Crickledon his readiness to go and see
+the lodgings.  No sooner had he done it than he said, "What on earth made
+us wait all this time here?  I'm hungry, my dear; I want supper."
+
+"That is because you have had a disappointment.  I know you, papa," said
+Annette.
+
+"Yes, it's rather a damper about old Mart Tinman," her father assented.
+"Or else I have n't recovered the shock of smashing that glass, and visit
+it on him.  But, upon my honour, he's my only friend in England, I have
+n't a single relative that I know of, and to come and find your only
+friend making a donkey of himself, is enough to make a man think of
+eating and drinking."
+
+Annette murmured reproachfully: "We can hardly say he is our only friend
+in England, papa, can we?"
+
+"Do you mean that young fellow?  You'll take my appetite away if you talk
+of him.  He's a stranger.  I don't believe he's worth a penny.  He owns
+he's what he calls a journalist."
+
+These latter remarks were hurriedly exchanged at the threshold of
+Crickledon's house.
+
+"It don't look promising," said Mr. Smith.
+
+"I didn't recommend it," said Crickledon.
+
+"Why the deuce do you let your lodgings, then?"
+
+"People who have come once come again."
+
+"Oh! I am in England," Annette sighed joyfully, feeling at home in some
+trait she had detected in Crickledon.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+The story of the shattered chiwal-glass and the visit of Tinman's old
+schoolmate fresh from Australia, was at many a breakfast-table before.
+Tinman heard a word of it, and when he did he had no time to spare for
+such incidents, for he was reading to his widowed sister Martha, in an
+impressive tone, at a tolerably high pitch of the voice, and with a
+suppressed excitement that shook away all things external from his mind
+as violently as it agitated his body.  Not the waves without but the
+engine within it is which gives the shock and tremor to the crazy
+steamer, forcing it to cut through the waves and scatter them to spray;
+and so did Martin Tinman make light of the external attack of the card of
+VAN DIEMEN SMITH, and its pencilled line: "An old chum of yours, eh,
+matey?  "Even the communication of Phippun & Co.  concerning the chiwal-
+glass, failed to divert him from his particular task.  It was indeed a
+public duty; and the chiwal-glass, though pertaining to it, was a private
+business.  He that has broken the glass, let that man pay for it, he
+pronounced--no doubt in simpler fashion, being at his ease in his home,
+but with the serenity of one uplifted.  As to the name VAN DIEMEN SMITH,
+he knew it not, and so he said to himself while accurately recollecting
+the identity of the old chum who alone of men would have thought of
+writing eh, matey?
+
+Mr. Van Diemen Smith did not present the card in person.
+"At Crickledon's," he wrote, apparently expecting the bailiff of the
+town to rush over to him before knowing who he was.
+
+Tinman was far too busy.  Anybody can read plain penmanship or print, but
+ask anybody not a Cabinet Minister or a Lord-in-Waiting to read out loud
+and clear in a Palace, before a Throne.  Oh! the nature of reading is
+distorted in a trice, and as Tinman said to his worthy sister: "I can do
+it, but I must lose no time in preparing myself."  Again, at a reperusal,
+he informed her: "I must habituate myself."  For this purpose he had put
+on the suit overnight.
+
+The articulation of faultless English was his object.  His sister Martha
+sat vice-regally to receive his loyal congratulations on the illustrious
+marriage, and she was pensive, less nervous than her brother from not
+having to speak continuously, yet somewhat perturbed.  She also had her
+task, and it was to avoid thinking herself the Person addressed by her
+suppliant brother, while at the same time she took possession of the
+scholarly training and perfect knowledge of diction and rules of
+pronunciation which would infallibly be brought to bear on him in the
+terrible hour of the delivery of the Address.  It was no small task
+moreover to be compelled to listen right through to the end of the
+Address, before the very gentlest word of criticism was allowed.  She did
+not exactly complain of the renewal of the rehearsal: a fatigue can be
+endured when it is a joy.  What vexed her was her failing memory for the
+points of objection, as in her imagined High Seat she conceived them;
+for, in painful truth, the instant her brother had finished she entirely
+lost her acuteness of ear, and with that her recollection: so there was
+nothing to do but to say: "Excellent!  Quite unobjectionable, dear
+Martin, quite:" so she said, and emphatically; but the addition of the
+word "only" was printed on her contracted brow, and every faculty of
+Tinman's mind and nature being at strain just then, he asked her testily:
+"What now?  what's the fault now?"  She assured him with languor that
+there was not a fault.  "It's not your way of talking," said he, and what
+he said was true.  His discernment was extraordinary; generally he
+noticed nothing.
+
+Not only were his perceptions quickened by the preparations for the day
+of great splendour: day of a great furnace to be passed through likewise!
+--he, was learning English at an astonishing rate into the bargain.  A
+pronouncing Dictionary lay open on his table.  To this he flew at a hint
+of a contrary method, and disputes, verifications and triumphs on one
+side and the other ensued between brother and sister.  In his heart the
+agitated man believed his sister to be a misleading guide.  He dared not
+say it, he thought it, and previous to his African travel through the
+Dictionary he had thought his sister infallible on these points.  He
+dared not say it, because he knew no one else before whom he could
+practice, and as it was confidence that he chiefly wanted--above all
+things, confidence and confidence comes of practice, he preferred the
+going on with his practice to an absolute certainty as to correctness.
+
+At midday came another card from Mr. Van Diemen Smith bearing the
+superscription: alias Phil R.
+
+"Can it be possible," Tinman asked his sister, "that Philip Ribstone has
+had the audacity to return to this country?  I think," he added,
+"I am right in treating whoever sends me this card as a counterfeit."
+
+Martha's advice was, that he should take no notice of the card.
+
+"I am seriously engaged," said Tinman.  With a "Now then, dear," he
+resumed his labours.
+
+Messages had passed between Tinman and Phippun; and in the afternoon
+Phippun appeared to broach the question of payment for the chiwal-glass.
+He had seen Mr. Van Diemen Smith, had found him very strange, rather
+impracticable.  He was obliged to tell Tinman that he must hold him
+responsible for the glass; nor could he send a second until payment was
+made for the first.  It really seemed as if Tinman would be compelled, by
+the force of circumstances, to go and shake his old friend by the hand.
+Otherwise one could clearly see the man might be off: he might be off at
+any minute, leaving a legal contention behind him.  On the other hand,
+supposing he had come to Crikswich for assistance in money?  Friendship
+is a good thing, and so is hospitality, which is an essentially English
+thing, and consequently one that it behoves an Englishman to think it his
+duty to perform, but we do not extend it to paupers.  But should a pauper
+get so close to us as to lay hold of us, vowing he was once our friend,
+how shake him loose?  Tinman foresaw that it might be a matter of five
+pounds thrown to the dogs, perhaps ten, counting the glass.  He put on
+his hat, full of melancholy presentiments; and it was exactly half-past
+five o'clock of the spring afternoon when he knocked at Crickledon's
+door.
+
+Had he looked into Crickledon's shop as he went by, he would have
+perceived Van Diemen Smith astride a piece of timber, smoking a pipe.
+Van Diemen saw Tinman.  His eyes cocked and watered.  It is a disgraceful
+fact to record of him without periphrasis.  In truth, the bearded fellow
+was almost a woman at heart, and had come from the Antipodes throbbing to
+slap Martin Tinman on the back, squeeze his hand, run over England with
+him, treat him, and talk of old times in the presence of a trotting
+regiment of champagne.  That affair of the chiwal-glass had temporarily
+damped his enthusiasm.  The absence of a reply to his double transmission
+of cards had wounded him; and something in the look of Tinman disgusted
+his rough taste.  But the well-known features recalled the days of youth.
+Tinman was his one living link to the country he admired as the conqueror
+of the world, and imaginatively delighted in as the seat of pleasures,
+and he could not discard the feeling of some love for Tinman without
+losing his grasp of the reason why, he had longed so fervently and
+travelled so breathlessly to return hither.  In the days of their youth,
+Van Diemen had been Tinman's cordial spirit, at whom he sipped for
+cheerful visions of life, and a good honest glow of emotion now and then.
+Whether it was odd or not that the sipper should be oblivious, and the
+cordial spirit heartily reminiscent of those times, we will not stay to
+inquire.
+
+Their meeting took place in Crickledon's shop.  Tinman was led in by Mrs.
+Crickledon.  His voice made a sound of metal in his throat, and his air
+was that of a man buttoned up to the palate, as he read from the card,
+glancing over his eyelids, "Mr. Van Diemen Smith, I believe."
+
+"Phil Ribstone, if you like," said the other, without rising.
+
+"Oh, ah, indeed!" Tinman temperately coughed.
+
+"Yes, dear me.  So it is.  It strikes you as odd?"
+
+"The change of name," said Tinman.
+
+"Not nature, though!"
+
+"Ah!  Have you been long in England?"
+
+"Time to run to Helmstone, and on here.  You've been lucky in business,
+I hear."
+
+"Thank you; as things go.  Do you think of remaining in England?"
+
+"I've got to settle about a glass I broke last night."
+
+"Ah! I have heard of it.  Yes, I fear there will have to be a
+settlement."
+
+"I shall pay half of the damage.  You'll have to stump up your part."
+
+Van Diemen smiled roguishly.
+
+"We must discuss that," said Tinman, smiling too, as a patient in bed may
+smile at a doctor's joke; for he was, as Crickledon had said of him, no
+fool on practical points, and Van Diemen's mention of the half-payment
+reassured him as to his old friend's position in the world, and softly
+thawed him.  "Will you dine with me to-day?"
+
+"I don't mind if I do.  I've a girl.  You remember little Netty?  She's
+walking out on the beach with a young fellow named Fellingham, whose
+acquaintance we made on the voyage, and has n't left us long to
+ourselves.  Will you have her as well?  And I suppose you must ask him.
+He's a newspaper man; been round the world; seen a lot."
+
+Tinman hesitated.  An electrical idea of putting sherry at fifteen
+shillings per dozen on his table instead of the ceremonial wine at
+twenty-five shillings, assisted him to say hospitably, "Oh! ah! yes; any
+friend of yours."
+
+"And now perhaps you'll shake my fist," said Van Diemen.
+
+"With pleasure," said Tinman.  "It was your change of name, you know, Philip."
+
+Look here, Martin.  Van Diemen Smith was a convict, and my benefactor.
+Why the deuce he was so fond of that name, I can't tell you; but his
+dying wish was for me to take it and carry it on.  He left me his
+fortune, for Van Diemen Smith to enjoy life, as he never did, poor
+fellow, when he was alive.  The money was got honestly, by hard labour at
+a store.  He did evil once, and repented after.  But, by Heaven!"--Van
+Diemen jumped up and thundered out of a broad chest--"the man was one of
+the finest hearts that ever beat.  He was! and I'm proud of him.  When he
+died, I turned my thoughts home to Old England and you, Martin."
+
+"Oh!"  said Tinman; and reminded by Van Diemen's way of speaking, that
+cordiality was expected of him, he shook his limbs to some briskness, and
+continued, "Well, yes, we must all die in our native land if we can.
+I hope you're comfortable in your lodgings?"
+
+"I'll give you one of Mrs. Crickledon's dinners to try.  You're as good
+as mayor of this town, I hear?"
+
+"I am the bailiff of the town," said Mr. Tinman.
+
+"You're going to Court, I'm told."
+
+"The appointment," replied Mr. Tinman, "will soon be made.  I have not
+yet an appointed day."
+
+On the great highroad of life there is Expectation, and there is
+Attainment, and also there is Envy.  Mr. Tinman's posture stood for
+Attainment shadowing Expectation, and sunning itself in the glass of
+Envy, as he spoke of the appointed day.  It was involuntary, and
+naturally evanescent, a momentary view of the spirit.
+
+He unbent, and begged to be excused for the present, that he might go and
+apprise his sister of guests coming.
+
+"All right.  I daresay we shall see, enough of one another," said Van
+Diemen.  And almost before the creak of Tinman's heels was deadened on
+the road outside the shop, he put the funny question to Crickledon, "Do
+you box?"
+
+"I make 'em," Crickledon replied.
+
+"Because I should like to have a go in at something, my friend."
+
+Van Diemen stretched and yawned.
+
+Crickledon recommended the taking of a walk.
+
+"I think I will," said the other, and turned back abruptly.  "How long do
+you work in the day?"
+
+"Generally, all the hours of light," Crickledon replied; "and always up
+to supper-time."
+
+"You're healthy and happy?"
+
+"Nothing to complain of."
+
+"Good appetite?"
+
+"Pretty regular."
+
+"You never take a holiday?"
+
+"Except Sundays."
+
+"You'd like to be working then?"
+
+"I won't say that."
+
+"But you're glad to be up Monday morning?"
+
+"It feels cheerfuller in the shop."
+
+"And carpentering's your joy?"
+
+"I think I may say so."
+
+Van Diemen slapped his thigh.  "There's life in Old England yet!"
+
+Crickledon eyed him as he walked away to the beach to look for his
+daughter, and conceived that there was a touch of the soldier in him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+Annette Smith's delight in her native England made her see beauty and
+kindness everywhere around her; it put a halo about the house on the
+beach, and thrilled her at Tinman's table when she heard the thunder of
+the waves hard by.  She fancied it had been a most agreeable dinner to
+her father and Mr. Herbert Fellingham--especially to the latter, who had
+laughed very much; and she was astonished to hear them at breakfast both
+complaining of their evening.  In answer to which, she exclaimed, "Oh, I
+think the situation of the house is so romantic!"
+
+"The situation of the host is exceedingly so," said Mr. Fellingham; "but
+I think his wine the most unromantic liquid I have ever tasted."
+
+"It must be that!"  cried Van Diemen, puzzled by novel pains in the head.
+"Old Martin woke up a little like his old self after dinner."
+
+"He drank sparingly," said Mr. Fellingham.
+
+"I am sure you were satirical last night," Annette said reproachfully.
+
+"On the contrary, I told him I thought he was in a romantic situation."
+
+"But I have had a French mademoiselle for my governess and an Oxford
+gentleman for my tutor; and I know you accepted French and English from
+Mr. Tinman and his sister that I should not have approved."
+
+"Netty," said Van Diemen, "has had the best instruction money could
+procure; and if she says you were satirical, you may depend on it you
+were."
+
+"Oh, in that case, of course!"  Mr. Fellingham rejoined.  "Who could help
+it?"
+
+He thought himself warranted in giving the rein to his wicked satirical
+spirit, and talked lightly of the accidental character of the letter H in
+Tinman's pronunciation; of how, like somebody else's hat in a high wind,
+it descended on somebody else's head, and of how his words walked about
+asking one another who they were and what they were doing, danced
+together madly, snapping their fingers at signification; and so forth.
+He was flippant.
+
+Annette glanced at her father, and dropped her eyelids.
+
+Mr. Fellingham perceived that he was enjoined to be on his guard.
+
+He went one step farther in his fun; upon which Van Diemen said, with a
+frown, "If you please!"
+
+Nothing could withstand that.
+
+"Hang old Mart Tinman's wine!" Van Diemen burst out in the dead pause.
+"My head's a bullet.  I'm in a shocking bad temper.  I can hardly see.
+I'm bilious."
+
+Mr. Fellingham counselled his lying down for an hour, and he went
+grumbling, complaining of Mart Tinman's incredulity about the towering
+beauty of a place in Australia called Gippsland.
+
+Annette confided to Mr. Fellingham, as soon as they were alone, the
+chivalrous nature of her father in his friendships, and his indisposition
+to hear a satirical remark upon his old schoolmate, the moment he
+understood it to be satire.
+
+Fellingham pleaded: "The man's a perfect burlesque.  He's as distinctly
+made to be laughed at as a mask in a pantomime."
+
+"Papa will not think so," said Annette; "and papa has been told that he
+is not to be laughed at as a man of business."
+
+"Do you prize him for that?"
+
+"I am no judge.  I am too happy to be in England to be a judge of
+anything."
+
+"You did not touch his wine!"
+
+"You men attach so much importance to wine!"
+
+"They do say that powders is a good thing after Mr. Tinman's wine,"
+observed Mrs. Crickledon, who had come into the sitting-room to take away
+the breakfast things.
+
+Mr. Fellingham gave a peal of laughter; but Mrs Crickledon bade him be
+hushed, for Mr. Van Diemen Smith had gone to lay down his poor aching
+head on his pillow.  Annette ran upstairs to speak to her father about
+a doctor.
+
+During her absence, Mr. Fellingham received the popular portrait of Mr.
+Tinman from the lips of Mrs. Crickledon.  He subsequently strolled to the
+carpenter's shop, and endeavoured to get a confirmation of it.
+
+"My wife talks too much," said Crickledon.
+
+When questioned by a gentleman, however, he was naturally bound to answer
+to the extent of his knowledge.
+
+"What a funny old country it is!"  Mr. Fellingham said to Annette, on
+their walk to the beach.
+
+She implored him not to laugh at anything English.
+
+"I don't, I assure you," said he.  "I love the country, too.  But when
+one comes back from abroad, and plunges into their daily life, it's
+difficult to retain the real figure of the old country seen from outside,
+and one has to remember half a dozen great names to right oneself.  And
+Englishmen are so funny!  Your father comes here to see his old friend,
+and begins boasting of the Gippsland he has left behind.  Tinman
+immediately brags of Helvellyn, and they fling mountains at one another
+till, on their first evening together, there's earthquake and rupture--
+they were nearly at fisticuffs at one time."
+
+"Oh!  surely no," said Annette.  "I did not hear them.  They were good
+friends when you came to the drawingroom.  Perhaps the wine did affect
+poor papa, if it was bad wine.  I wish men would never drink any.  How
+much happier they would be."
+
+"But then there would cease to be social meetings in England.  What
+should we do?"
+
+"I know that is a sneer; and you were nearly as enthusiastic as I was on
+board the vessel," Annette said, sadly.
+
+"Quite true.  I was.  But see what quaint creatures we have about us!
+Tinman practicing in his Court suit before the chiwal-glass!  And that
+good fellow, the carpenter, Crickledon, who has lived with the sea
+fronting him all his life, and has never been in a boat, and he confesses
+he has only once gone inland, and has never seen an acorn!"
+
+"I wish I could see one--of a real English oak," said Annette.
+
+"And after being in England a few months you will be sighing for the
+Continent."
+
+"Never!"
+
+"You think you will be quite contented here?"
+
+"I am sure I shall be.  May papa and I never be exiles again!  I did not
+feel it when I was three years old, going out to Australia; but it would
+be like death to me now.  Oh!" Annette shivered, as with the exile's
+chill.
+
+"On my honour," said Mr. Fellingham, as softly as he could with the wind
+in his teeth, "I love the old country ten times more from your love of
+it."
+
+"That is not how I want England to be loved," returned Annette.
+
+"The love is in your hands."
+
+She seemed indifferent on hearing it.
+
+He should have seen that the way to woo her was to humour her
+prepossession by another passion.  He could feel that it ennobled her in
+the abstract, but a latent spite at Tinman on account of his wine, to
+which he continued angrily to attribute as unwonted dizziness of the head
+and slight irascibility, made him urgent in his desire that she should
+separate herself from Tinman and his sister by the sharp division of
+derision.
+
+Annette declined to laugh at the most risible caricatures of Tinman.
+In her antagonism she forced her simplicity so far as to say that she did
+not think him absurd.  And supposing Mr. Tinman to have proposed to the
+titled widow, Lady Ray, as she had heard, and to other ladies young and
+middle-aged in the neighbourhood, why should he not, if he wished to
+marry?  If he was economical, surely he had a right to manage his own
+affairs.  Her dread was lest Mr. Tinman and her father should quarrel
+over the payment for the broken chiwal-glass: that she honestly admitted,
+and Fellingham was so indiscreet as to roar aloud, not so very cordially.
+
+Annette thought him unkindly satirical; and his thoughts of her reduced
+her to the condition of a commonplace girl with expressive eyes.
+
+She had to return to her father.  Mr. Fellingham took a walk on the
+springy turf along the cliffs; and "certainly she is a commonplace girl,"
+he began by reflecting; with a side eye at the fact that his meditations
+were excited by Tinman's poisoning of his bile.  "A girl who can't see
+the absurdity of Tinman must be destitute of common intelligence."
+After a while he sniffed the fine sharp air of mingled earth and sea
+delightedly, and he strode back to the town late in the afternoon,
+laughing at himself in scorn of his wretched susceptibility to bilious
+impressions, and really all but hating Tinman as the cause of his
+weakness--in the manner of the criminal hating the detective, perhaps.
+He cast it altogether on Tinman that Annette's complexion of character
+had become discoloured to his mind; for, in spite of the physical
+freshness with which he returned to her society, he was incapable of
+throwing off the idea of her being commonplace; and it was with regret
+that he acknowledged he had gained from his walk only a higher opinion of
+himself.
+
+Her father was the victim of a sick headache, [Migraine--D.W.]and lay, a
+groaning man, on his bed, ministered to by Mrs. Crickledon chiefly.
+Annette had to conduct the business with Mr. Phippun and Mr. Tinman as to
+payment for the chiwal-glass.  She was commissioned to offer half the
+price for the glass on her father's part; more he would not pay.  Tinman
+and Phippun sat with her in Crickledon's cottage, and Mrs. Crickledon
+brought down two messages from her invalid, each positive, to the effect
+that he would fight with all the arms of English law rather than yield
+his point.
+
+Tinman declared it to be quite out of the question that he should pay a
+penny.  Phippun vowed that from one or the other of them he would have
+the money.
+
+Annette naturally was in deep distress, and Fellingham postponed the
+discussion to the morrow.
+
+Even after such a taste of Tinman as that, Annette could not be induced
+to join in deriding him privately.  She looked pained by Mr. Fellingham's
+cruel jests.  It was monstrous, Fellingham considered, that he should
+draw on himself a second reprimand from Van Diemen Smith, while they were
+consulting in entire agreement upon the case of the chiwal-glass.
+
+"I must tell you this, mister sir," said Van Diemen, "I like you, but
+I'll be straightforward and truthful, or I'm not worthy the name of
+Englishman; and I do like you, or I should n't have given you leave to
+come down here after us two.  You must respect my friend if you care for
+my respect.  That's it.  There it is.  Now you know my conditions."
+
+"I 'm afraid I can't sign the treaty," said Fellingham.
+
+"Here's more," said Van Diemen.  "I'm a chilly man myself if I hear a
+laugh and think I know the aim of it.  I'll meet what you like except
+scorn.  I can't stand contempt.  So I feel for another.  And now you
+know."
+
+"It puts a stopper on the play of fancy, and checks the throwing off of
+steam," Fellingham remonstrated.  "I promise to do my best, but of all
+the men I've ever met in my life--Tinman!--the ridiculous!  Pray pardon
+me; but the donkey and his looking-glass!  The glass was misty!  He--as
+particular about his reflection in the glass as a poet with his verses!
+Advance, retire, bow; and such murder of the Queen's English in the very
+presence!  If I thought he was going to take his wine with him, I'd have
+him arrested for high treason."
+
+"You've chosen, and you know what you best like," said Van Diemen,
+pointing his accents--by which is produced the awkward pause, the pitfall
+of conversation, and sometimes of amity.
+
+Thus it happened that Mr. Herbert Fellingham journeyed back to London a
+day earlier than he had intended, and without saying what he meant to
+say.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A month later, after a night of sharp frost on the verge of the warmer
+days of spring, Mr. Fellingham entered Crikswich under a sky of perfect
+blue that was in brilliant harmony with the green downs, the white cliffs
+and sparkling sea, and no doubt it was the beauty before his eyes which
+persuaded him of his delusion in having taken Annette for a commonplace
+girl.  He had come in a merely curious mood to discover whether she was
+one or not.  Who but a commonplace girl would care to reside in
+Crikswich, he had asked himself; and now he was full sure that no
+commonplace girl would ever have had the idea.  Exquisitely simple, she
+certainly was; but that may well be a distinction in a young lady whose
+eyes are expressive.
+
+The sound of sawing attracted him to Crickledon's shop, and the
+industrious carpenter soon put him on the tide of affairs.
+
+Crickledon pointed to the house on the beach as the place where Mr. Van
+Diemen Smith and his daughter were staying.
+
+"Dear me! and how does he look?"  said Fellingham.
+
+"Our town seems to agree with him, sir."
+
+"Well, I must not say any more, I suppose."  Fellingham checked his
+tongue.  "How have they settled that dispute about the chiwal-glass?"
+
+"Mr. Tinman had to give way."
+
+"Really."
+
+"But," Crickledon stopped work, "Mr. Tinman sold him a meadow."
+
+"I see."
+
+"Mr. Smith has been buying a goodish bit of ground here.  They tell me
+he's about purchasing Elba.  He has bought the Crouch.  He and Mr. Tinman
+are always out together.  They're over at Helmstone now.  They've been to
+London."
+
+"Are they likely to be back to-day?"
+
+"Certain, I should think.  Mr. Tinman has to be in London to-morrow."
+
+Crickledon looked.  He was not the man to look artful, but there was a
+lighted corner in his look that revived Fellingham's recollections, and
+the latter burst out:
+
+"The Address?  I 'd half forgotten it.  That's not over yet?  Has he been
+practicing much?"
+
+"No more glasses ha' been broken."
+
+"And how is your wife, Crickledon?"
+
+"She's at home, sir, ready for a talk, if you've a mind to try her."
+
+Mrs. Crickledon proved to be very ready.  "That Tinman," was her theme.
+He had taken away her lodgers, and she knew his objects.  Mr. Smith
+repented of leaving her, she knew, though he dared not say it in plain
+words.  She knew Miss Smith was tired to death of constant companionship
+with Mrs. Cavely, Tinman's sister.  She generally came once in the day
+just to escape from Mrs. Cavely, who would not, bless you! step into a
+cottager's house where she was not allowed to patronize.  Fortunately
+Miss Smith had induced her father to get his own wine from the merchants.
+
+"A happy resolution," said Fellingham; "and a saving one."
+
+He heard further that Mr. Smith would take possession of the Crouch next
+month, and that Mrs. Cavely hung over Miss Smith like a kite.
+
+"And that old Tinman, old enough to be her father!" said Mrs. Crickledon.
+
+She dealt in the flashes which connect ideas.  Fellingham, though a man,
+and an Englishman, was nervously wakeful enough to see the connection.
+
+"They'll have to consult the young lady first, ma'am."
+
+"If it's her father's nod she'll bow to it; now mark me," Mrs. Crickledon
+said, with emphasis.  "She's a young lady who thinks for herself, but she
+takes her start from her father where it's feeling.  And he's gone stone-
+blind over that Tinman."
+
+While they were speaking, Annette appeared.
+
+"I saw you," she said to Fellingham; gladly and openly, in the most
+commonplace manner.
+
+"Are you going to give me a walk along the beach?"  said he.
+
+She proposed the country behind the town, and that was quite as much to
+his taste.  But it was not a happy walk.  He had decided that he admired
+her, and the notion of having Tinman for a rival annoyed him.  He
+overflowed with ridicule of Tinman, and this was distressing to Annette,
+because not only did she see that he would not control himself before her
+father, but he kindled her own satirical spirit in opposition to her
+father's friendly sentiments toward his old schoolmate.
+
+"Mr. Tinman has been extremely hospitable to us," she said, a little
+coldly.
+
+"May I ask you, has he consented to receive instruction in deportment and
+pronunciation?"
+
+Annette did not answer.
+
+"If practice makes perfect, he must be near the mark by this time."
+
+She continued silent.
+
+"I dare say, in domestic life, he's as amiable as he is hospitable, and
+it must be a daily gratification to see him in his Court suit."
+
+"I have not seen him in his Court suit."
+
+"That is his coyness."
+
+"People talk of those things."
+
+"The common people scandalize the great, about whom they know nothing,
+you mean!  I am sure that is true, and living in Courts one must be
+keenly aware of it.  But what a splendid sky and-sea!"
+
+"Is it not?"
+
+Annette echoed his false rapture with a candour that melted him.
+
+He was preparing to make up for lost time, when the wild waving of a
+parasol down a road to the right, coming from the town, caused Annette to
+stop and say, "I think that must be Mrs. Cavely.  We ought to meet her."
+
+Fellingham asked why.
+
+"She is so fond of walks," Anisette replied, with a tooth on her lip
+
+Fellingham thought she seemed fond of runs.
+
+Mrs. Cavely joined them, breathless.  "My dear! the pace you go at!"
+she shouted.  "I saw you starting.  I followed, I ran, I tore along.
+I feared I never should catch you.  And to lose such a morning of
+English scenery!
+
+"Is it not heavenly?"
+
+"One can't say more," Fellingham observed, bowing.
+
+"I am sure I am very glad to see you again, sir.  You enjoy Crikswich?"
+
+"Once visited, always desired, like Venice, ma'am.  May I venture to
+inquire whether Mr. Tinman has presented his Address?"
+
+"The day after to-morrow.  The appointment is made with him," said Mrs.
+Cavely, more officially in manner, "for the day after to-morrow.  He is
+excited, as you may well believe.  But Mr. Smith is an immense relief to
+him--the very distraction he wanted.  We have become one family, you
+know."
+
+"Indeed, ma'am, I did not know it," said Fellingham.
+
+The communication imparted such satiric venom to his further remarks,
+that Annette resolved to break her walk and dismiss him for the day.
+
+He called at the house on the beach after the dinner-hour, to see Mr. Van
+Diemen Smith, when there was literally a duel between him and Tinman; for
+Van Diemen's contribution to the table was champagne, and that had been
+drunk, but Tinman's sherry remained.  Tinman would insist on Fellingham's
+taking a glass.  Fellingham parried him with a sedate gravity of irony
+that was painfully perceptible to Anisette.  Van Diemen at last backed
+Tinman's hospitable intent, and, to Fellingham's astonishment, he found
+that he had been supposed by these two men to be bashfully retreating
+from a seductive offer all the time that his tricks of fence and
+transpiercings of one of them had been marvels of skill.
+
+Tinman pushed the glass into his hand.
+
+"You have spilt some," said Fellingham.
+
+"It won't hurt the carpet," said Tinman.
+
+"Won't it?" Fellingham gazed at the carpet, as if expecting a flame to
+arise.
+
+He then related the tale of the magnanimous Alexander drinking off the
+potion, in scorn of the slanderer, to show faith in his friend.
+
+"Alexander--Who was that?"  said Tinman, foiled in his historical
+recollections by the absence of the surname.
+
+"General Alexander," said Fellingham.  "Alexander Philipson, or he
+declared it was Joveson; and very fond of wine.  But his sherry did for
+him at last."
+
+"Ah! he drank too much, then," said Tinman.
+
+"Of his own!"
+
+Anisette admonished the vindictive young gentleman by saying, "How long
+do you stay in Crikswich, Mr. Fellingham?"
+
+He had grossly misconducted himself.  But an adversary at once offensive
+and helpless provokes brutality.  Anisette prudently avoided letting her
+father understand that satire was in the air; and neither he nor Tinman
+was conscious of it exactly: yet both shrank within themselves under the
+sensation of a devilish blast blowing.  Fellingham accompanied them and
+certain jurats to London next day.
+
+Yes, if you like: when a mayor visits Majesty, it is an important
+circumstance, and you are at liberty to argue at length that it means
+more than a desire on his part to show his writing power and his reading
+power: it is full of comfort the people, as an exhibition of their
+majesty likewise; and it is an encouragement to men to strive to become
+mayors, bailiffs, or prime men of any sort; but a stress in the reporting
+of it--the making it appear too important a circumstance--will surely
+breathe the intimation to a politically-minded people that satire is in
+the air, and however dearly they cherish the privilege of knocking at the
+first door of the kingdom, and walking ceremoniously in to read their
+writings, they will, if they are not in one of their moods for
+prostration, laugh.  They will laugh at the report.
+
+All the greater reason is it that we should not indulge them at such
+periods; and I say woe's me for any brother of the pen, and one in some
+esteem, who dressed the report of that presentation of the Address of
+congratulation by Mr. Bailiff Tinman, of Crikswich!  Herbert Fellingham
+wreaked his personal spite on Tinman.  He should have bethought him that
+it involved another than Tinman that is to say, an office--which the
+fitful beast rejoices to paw and play with contemptuously now and then,
+one may think, as a solace to his pride, and an indemnification for those
+caprices of abject worship so strongly recalling the days we see through
+Mr. Darwin's glasses.
+
+He should not have written the report.  It sent a titter over England.
+He was so unwise as to despatch a copy of the newspaper containing it to
+Van Diemen Smith.  Van Diemen perused it with satisfaction.  So did
+Tinman.  Both of these praised the able young writer.  But they handed
+the paper to the Coastguard Lieutenant, who asked Tinman how he liked it;
+and visitors were beginning to drop in to Crikswich, who made a point of
+asking for a sight of the chief man; and then came a comic publication,
+all in the Republican tone of the time, with Man's Dignity for the
+standpoint, and the wheezy laughter residing in old puns to back it, in
+eulogy of the satiric report of the famous Address of congratulation of
+the Bailiff of Crikswich.
+
+"Annette," Van Diemen said to his daughter, "you'll not encourage that
+newspaper fellow to come down here any more.  He had his warning."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+One of the most difficult lessons for spirited young men to learn is,
+that good jokes are not always good policy.  They have to be paid for,
+like good dinners, though dinner and joke shall seem to have been at
+somebody else's expense.  Young Fellingham was treated rudely by Van
+Diemen Smith, and with some cold reserve by Annette: in consequence of
+which he thought her more than ever commonplace.  He wrote her a letter
+of playful remonstrance, followed by one that appealed to her sentiments.
+
+But she replied to neither of them.  So his visits to Crikswich came to
+an end.
+
+Shall a girl who has no appreciation of fun affect us?  Her expressive
+eyes, and her quaint simplicity, and her enthusiasm for England, haunted
+Mr. Fellingham; being conjured up by contrast with what he met about him.
+But shall a girl who would impose upon us the task of holding in our
+laughter at Tinman be much regretted?  There could be no companionship
+between us, Fellingham thought.
+
+On an excursion to the English Lakes he saw the name of Van Diemen
+Smith in a visitors' book, and changed his ideas on the subject of
+companionship.  Among mountains, or on the sea, or reading history,
+Annette was one in a thousand.  He happened to be at a public ball at
+Helmstone in the Winter season, and who but Annette herself came whirling
+before him on the arm of an officer!  Fellingham did not miss his chance
+of talking to her.  She greeted him gaily, and speaking with the
+excitement of the dance upon her, appeared a stranger to the serious
+emotions he was willing to cherish.  She had been to the Lakes and to
+Scotland.  Next summer she was going to Wales.  All her experiences were
+delicious.  She was insatiable, but satisfied.
+
+"I wish I had been with you," said Fellingham.
+
+"I wish you had," said she.
+
+Mrs. Cavely was her chaperon at the ball, and he was not permitted to
+enjoy a lengthened conversation sitting with Annette.  What was he to
+think of a girl who could be submissive to Mrs. Cavely, and danced with
+any number of officers, and had no idea save of running incessantly over
+England in the pursuit of pleasure?  Her tone of saying, "I wish you
+had," was that of the most ordinary of wishes, distinctly, if not
+designedly different from his own melodious depth.
+
+She granted him one waltz, and he talked of her father and his whimsical
+vagrancies and feeling he had a positive liking for Van Diemen, and he
+sagaciously said so.
+
+Annette's eyes brightened.  "Then why do you never go to see him?  He has
+bought Elba.  We move into the Hall after Christmas.  We are at the
+Crouch at present.  Papa will be sure to make you welcome.  Do you not
+know that he never forgets a friend or breaks a friendship?"
+
+"I do, and I love him for it," said Fellingham.
+
+If he was not greatly mistaken a gentle pressure on the fingers of his
+left hand rewarded him.
+
+This determined him.  It should here be observed that he was by birth the
+superior of Annette's parentage, and such is the sentiment of a better
+blood that the flattery of her warm touch was needed for him to overlook
+the distinction.
+
+Two of his visits to Crikswich resulted simply in interviews and
+conversations with Mrs. Crickledon.  Van Diemen and his daughter were in
+London with Tinman and Mrs. Cavely, purchasing furniture for Elba Hall.
+Mrs. Crickledon had no scruple in saying, that Mrs. Cavely meant her
+brother to inhabit the Hall, though Mr. Smith had outbid him in the
+purchase.  According to her, Tinman and Mr. Smith had their differences;
+for Mr. Smith was a very outspoken gentleman, and had been known to call
+Tinman names that no man of spirit would bear if he was not scheming.
+
+Fellingham returned to London, where he roamed the streets famous for
+furniture warehouses, in the vain hope of encountering the new owner of
+Elba.
+
+Failing in this endeavour, he wrote a love-letter to Annette.
+
+It was her first.  She had liked him.  Her manner of thinking she might
+love him was through the reflection that no one stood in the way.  The
+letter opened a world to her, broader than Great Britain.
+
+Fellingham begged her, if she thought favourably of him, to prepare her
+father for the purport of his visit.  If otherwise, she was to interdict
+the visit with as little delay as possible and cut him adrift.
+
+A decided line of conduct was imperative.  Yet you have seen that she was
+not in love.  She was only not unwilling to be in love.  And Fellingham
+was just a trifle warmed.  Now mark what events will do to light the
+fires.
+
+Van Diemen and Tinman, old chums re-united, and both successful in life,
+had nevertheless, as Mrs. Crickledon said, their differences.  They
+commenced with an opposition to Tinman's views regarding the expenditure
+of town moneys.  Tinman was ever for devoting them to the patriotic
+defence of "our shores;" whereas Van Diemen, pointing in detestation of
+the town sewerage reeking across the common under the beach, loudly
+called on him to preserve our lives, by way of commencement.  Then Van
+Diemen precipitately purchased Elba at a high valuation, and Tinman had
+expected by waiting to buy it at his own valuation, and sell it out of
+friendly consideration to his friend afterwards, for a friendly
+consideration.  Van Diemen had joined the hunt.  Tinman could not mount
+a horse.  They had not quarrelled, but they had snapped about these and
+other affairs.  Van Diemen fancied Tinman was jealous of his wealth.
+Tinman shrewdly suspected Van Diemen to be contemptuous of his dignity.
+He suffered a loss in a loan of money; and instead of pitying him, Van
+Diemen had laughed him to scorn for expecting security for investments at
+ten per cent.  The bitterness of the pinch to Tinman made him frightfully
+sensitive to strictures on his discretion.  In his anguish he told his
+sister he was ruined, and she advised him to marry before the crash.  She
+was aware that he exaggerated, but she repeated her advice.  She went so
+far as to name the person.  This is known, because she was overheard by
+her housemaid, a gossip of Mrs. Crickledon's, the subsequently famous
+"Little Jane."
+
+Now, Annette had shyly intimated to her father the nature of Herbert
+Fellingham's letter, at the same time professing a perfect readiness to
+submit to his directions; and her father's perplexity was very great, for
+Annette had rather fervently dramatized the young man's words at the ball
+at Helmstone, which had pleasantly tickled him, and, besides, he liked
+the young man.  On the other hand, he did not at all like the prospect of
+losing his daughter; and he would have desired her to be a lady of title.
+He hinted at her right to claim a high position.  Annette shrank from the
+prospect, saying, "Never let me marry one who might be ashamed of my
+father!"
+
+"I shouldn't stomach that," said Van Diemen, more disposed in favour of
+the present suitor.
+
+Annette was now in a tremor.  She had a lover; he was coming.  And if he
+did not come, did it matter?  Not so very much, except to her pride.  And
+if he did, what was she to say to him?  She felt like an actress who may
+in a few minutes be called on the stage, without knowing her part.  This
+was painfully unlike love, and the poor girl feared it would be her
+conscientious duty to dismiss him--most gently, of course; and perhaps,
+should he be impetuous and picturesque, relent enough to let him hope,
+and so bring about a happy postponement of the question.  Her father had
+been to a neighbouring town on business with Mr. Tinman.  He knocked at
+her door at midnight; and she, in dread of she knew not what--chiefly
+that the Hour of the Scene had somehow struck--stepped out to him
+trembling.  He was alone.  She thought herself the most childish of
+mortals in supposing that she could have been summoned at midnight to
+declare her sentiments, and hardly noticed his gloomy depression.  He
+asked her to give him five minutes; then asked her for a kiss, and told
+her to go to bed and sleep.  But Annette had seen that a great present
+affliction was on him, and she would not be sent to sleep.  She promised
+to listen patiently, to bear anything, to be brave.  "Is it bad news from
+home?" she said, speaking of the old home where she had not left her
+heart, and where his money was invested.
+
+"It's this, my dear Netty," said Van Diemen, suffering her to lead him
+into her sitting-room; "we shall have to leave the shores of England."
+
+"Then we are ruined."
+
+"We're not; the rascal can't do that.  We might be off to the Continent,
+or we might go to America; we've money.  But we can't stay here.  I'll
+not live at any man's mercy."
+
+"The Continent! America!"  exclaimed the enthusiast for England.
+"Oh, papa, you love living in England so!"
+
+"Not so much as all that, my dear.  You do, that I know.  But I don't see
+how it's to be managed.  Mart Tinman and I have been at tooth and claw
+to-day and half the night; and he has thrown off the mask, or he's dashed
+something from my sight, I don't know which.  I knocked him down."
+
+"Papa!"
+
+"I picked him up."
+
+"Oh," cried Annette, "has Mr. Tinman been hurt?"
+
+"He called me a Deserter!"
+
+Anisette shuddered.
+
+She did not know what this thing was, but the name of it opened a cabinet
+of horrors, and she touched her father timidly, to assure him of her
+constant love, and a little to reassure herself of his substantial
+identity.
+
+"And I am one," Van Diemen made the confession at the pitch of his voice.
+"I am a Deserter; I'm liable to be branded on the back.  And it's in Mart
+Tinman's power to have me marched away to-morrow morning in the sight of
+Crikswich, and all I can say for myself, as a man and a Briton, is, I did
+not desert before the enemy.  That I swear I never would have done.
+Death, if death's in front; but your poor mother was a handsome woman, my
+child, and there--I could not go on living in barracks and leaving her
+unprotected.  I can't tell a young woman the tale.  A hundred pounds came
+on me for a legacy, as plump in my hands out of open heaven, and your
+poor mother and I saw our chance; we consulted, and we determined to risk
+it, and I got on board with her and you, and over the seas we went, first
+to shipwreck, ultimately to fortune."
+
+Van Diemen laughed miserably.  "They noticed in the hunting-field here I
+had a soldier-like seat.  A soldier-like seat it'll be, with a brand on
+it.  I sha'n't be asked to take a soldier-like seat at any of their
+tables again.  I may at Mart Tinman's, out of pity, after I've undergone
+my punishment.  There's a year still to run out of the twenty of my term
+of service due.  He knows it; he's been reckoning; he has me.  But the
+worst cat-o'-nine-tails for me is the disgrace.  To have myself pointed
+at, 'There goes the Deserter'  He was a private in the Carbineers, and he
+deserted.'  No one'll say, 'Ay, but he clung to the idea of his old
+schoolmate when abroad, and came back loving him, and trusted him, and
+was deceived."
+
+Van Diemen produced a spasmodic cough with a blow on his chest.  Anisette
+was weeping.
+
+"There, now go to bed," said he.  "I wish you might have known no more
+than you did of our flight when I got you on board the ship with your
+poor mother; but you're a young woman now, and you must help me to think
+of another cut and run, and what baggage we can scrape together in a
+jiffy, for I won't live here at Mart Tinman's mercy."
+
+Drying her eyes to weep again, Annette said, when she could speak: "Will
+nothing quiet him?  I was going to bother you with all sorts of silly
+questions, poor dear papa; but I see I can understand if I try.  Will
+nothing--Is he so very angry?  Can we not do something to pacify him?  He
+is fond of money.  He--oh, the thought of leaving England!  Papa, it will
+kill you; you set your whole heart on England.  We could--I could--could
+I not, do you not think?--step between you as a peacemaker.  Mr. Tinman
+is always very courteous to me."
+
+At these words of Annette's, Van Diemen burst into a short snap of savage
+laughter.  "But that's far away in the background, Mr. Mart Tinman!" he
+said.  "You stick to your game, I know that; but you'll find me flown,
+though I leave a name to stink like your common behind me.  And," he
+added, as a chill reminder, "that name the name of my benefactor.  Poor
+old Van Diemen!  He thought it a safe bequest to make."
+
+"It was; it is!  We will stay; we will not be exiled," said Annette.  "I
+will do anything.  What was the quarrel about, papa?"
+
+"The fact is, my dear, I just wanted to show him--and take down his
+pride--I'm by my Australian education a shrewder hand than his old
+country.  I bought the house on the beach while he was chaffering, and
+then I sold it him at a rise when the town was looking up--only to make
+him see.  Then he burst up about something I said of Australia.  I will
+have the common clean.  Let him live at the Crouch as my tenant if he
+finds the house on the beach in danger."
+
+"Papa, I am sure," Annette repeated--"sure I have influence with Mr.
+Tinman."
+
+"There are those lips of yours shutting tight," said her father.  "Just
+listen, and they make a big O.  The donkey!  He owns you've got
+influence, and he offers he'll be silent if you'll pledge your word to
+marry him.  I'm not sure he didn't say, within the year.  I told him to
+look sharp not to be knocked down again.  Mart Tinman for my son-in-law!
+That's an upside down of my expectations, as good as being at the
+antipodes without a second voyage back!  I let him know you were
+engaged."
+
+Annette gazed at her father open-mouthed, as he had predicted; now with
+a little chilly dimple at one corner of the mouth, now at another--as a
+breeze curves the leaden winter lake here and there.  She could not get
+his meaning into her sight, and she sought, by looking hard, to
+understand it better; much as when some solitary maiden lady, passing
+into her bedchamber in the hours of darkness, beholds--tradition telling
+us she has absolutely beheld foot of burglar under bed; and lo!  she
+stares, and, cunningly to moderate her horror, doubts, yet cannot but
+believe that there is a leg, and a trunk, and a head, and two terrible
+arms, bearing pistols, to follow.  Sick, she palpitates; she compresses
+her trepidation; she coughs, perchance she sings a bar or two of an aria.
+Glancing down again, thrice horrible to her is it to discover that there
+is no foot!  For had it remained, it might have been imagined a harmless,
+empty boot.  But the withdrawal has a deadly significance of animal life
+.  .  .  .
+
+In like manner our stricken Annette perceived the object; so did she
+gradually apprehend the fact of her being asked for Tinman's bride, and
+she could not think it credible.  She half scented, she devised her plan
+of escape from another single mention of it.  But on her father's
+remarking, with a shuffle, frightened by her countenance, "Don't listen
+to what I said, Netty.  I won't paint him blacker than he is"--then
+Annette was sure she had been proposed for by Mr. Tinman, and she fancied
+her father might have revolved it in his mind that there was this means
+of keeping Tinman silent, silent for ever, in his own interests.
+
+"It was not true, when you told Mr. Tinman I was engaged, papa," she
+said.
+
+"No, I know that.  Mart Tinman only half-kind of hinted.  Come, I say!
+Where's the unmarried man wouldn't like to have a girl like you, Netty!
+They say he's been rejected all round a circuit of fifteen miles; and
+he's not bad-looking, neither--he looks fresh and fair.  But I thought it
+as well to let him know he might get me at a disadvantage, but he
+couldn't you.  Now, don't think about it, my love."
+
+"Not if it is not necessary, papa," said Annette; and employed her
+familiar sweetness in persuading him to go to bed, as though he were the
+afflicted one requiring to be petted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+Round under the cliffs by the sea, facing South, are warm seats in
+winter.  The sun that shines there on a day of frost wraps you as in a
+mantle.  Here it was that Mr. Herbert Fellingham found Annette, a chalk-
+block for her chair, and a mound of chalk-rubble defending her from the
+keen-tipped breath of the east, now and then shadowing the smooth blue
+water, faintly, like reflections of a flight of gulls.
+
+Infants are said to have their ideas, and why not young ladies?  Those
+who write of their perplexities in descriptions comical in their length
+are unkind to them, by making them appear the simplest of the creatures
+of fiction; and most of us, I am sure, would incline to believe in them
+if they were only some bit more lightly touched.  Those troubled
+sentiments of our young lady of the comfortable classes are quite worthy
+of mention.  Her poor little eye poring as little fishlike as possible
+upon the intricate, which she takes for the infinite, has its place in
+our history, nor should we any of us miss the pathos of it were it not
+that so large a space is claimed for the exposure.  As it is, one has
+almost to fight a battle to persuade the world that she has downright
+thoughts and feelings, and really a superhuman delicacy is required in
+presenting her that she may be credible.  Even then--so much being
+accomplished the thousands accustomed to chapters of her when she is in
+the situation of Annette will be disappointed by short sentences, just as
+of old the Continental eater of oysters would have been offended at the
+offer of an exchange of two live for two dozen dead ones.  Annette was in
+the grand crucial position of English imaginative prose.  I recognize it,
+and that to this the streamlets flow, thence pours the flood.  But what
+was the plain truth?  She had brought herself to think she ought to
+sacrifice herself to Tinman, and her evasions with Herbert, manifested in
+tricks of coldness alternating with tones of regret, ended, as they had
+commenced, in a mysterious half-sullenness.  She had hardly a word to
+say.  Let me step in again to observe that she had at the moment no
+pointed intention of marrying Tinman.  To her mind the circumstances
+compelled her to embark on the idea of doing so, and she saw the
+extremity in an extreme distance, as those who are taking voyages may see
+death by drowning.  Still she had embarked.
+
+"At all events, I have your word for it that you don't dislike me?" said
+Herbert.
+
+"Oh! no," she sighed.  She liked him as emigrants the land they are
+leaving.
+
+"And you have not promised your hand?"
+
+"No," she said, but sighed in thinking that if she could be induced to
+promise it, there would not be a word of leaving England.
+
+"Then, as you are not engaged, and don't hate me, I have a chance?" he
+said, in the semi-wailful interrogative of an organ making a mere windy
+conclusion.
+
+Ocean sent up a tiny wave at their feet.
+
+"A day like this in winter is rarer than a summer day," Herbert resumed
+encouragingly.
+
+Annette was replying, "People abuse our climate--"
+
+But the thought of having to go out away from this climate in the
+darkness of exile, with her father to suffer under it worse than herself,
+overwhelmed her, and fetched the reality of her sorrow in the form of
+Tinman swimming before her soul with the velocity of a telegraph-pole to
+the window of the flying train.  It was past as soon as seen, but it gave
+her a desperate sensation of speed.
+
+She began to feel that this was life in earnest.
+
+And Herbert should have been more resolute, fierier.  She needed a strong
+will.
+
+But he was not on the rapids of the masterful passion.  For though going
+at a certain pace, it was by his own impulsion; and I am afraid I must,
+with many apologies, compare him to the skater--to the skater on easy,
+slippery ice, be it understood; but he could perform gyrations as he
+went, and he rather sailed along than dashed; he was careful of his
+figuring.  Some lovers, right honest lovers, never get beyond this quaint
+skating-stage; and some ladies, a right goodly number in a foggy climate,
+deceived by their occasional runs ahead, take them for vessels on the
+very torrent of love.  Let them take them, and let the race continue.
+Only we perceive that they are skating; they are careering over a smooth
+icy floor, and they can stop at a signal, with just half-a-yard of
+grating on the heel at the outside.  Ice, and not fire nor falling water,
+has been their medium of progression.
+
+Whether a man should unveil his own sex is quite another question.
+If we are detected, not solely are we done for, but our love-tales too.
+However, there is not much ground for anxiety on that head.  Each member
+of the other party is blind on her own account.
+
+To Annette the figuring of Herbert was graceful, but it did not catch her
+up and carry her; it hardly touched her: He spoke well enough to make her
+sorry for him, and not warmly enough to make her forget her sorrow for
+herself.
+
+Herbert could obtain no explanation of the singularity of her conduct
+from Annette, and he went straight to her father, who was nearly as
+inexplicable for a time.  At last he said:
+
+"If you are ready to quit the country with us, you may have my consent."
+
+"Why quit the country?"  Herbert asked, in natural amazement.
+
+Van Diemen declined to tell him.
+
+But seeing the young man look stupefied and wretched he took a turn about
+the room, and said: "I have n't robbed," and after more turns, "I have
+n't murdered."  He growled in his menagerie trot within the four walls.
+"But I'm, in a man's power.  Will that satisfy you?  You'll tell me,
+because I'm rich, to snap my fingers.  I can't.  I've got feelings.  I'm
+in his power to hurt me and disgrace me.  It's the disgrace--to my
+disgrace I say it--I dread most.  You'd be up to my reason if you had
+ever served in a regiment.  I mean, discipline--if ever you'd known
+discipline--in the police if you like--anything--anywhere where there's
+what we used to call spiny de cor.  I mean, at school.  And I'm," said
+Van Diemen, "a rank idiot double D. dolt, and flat as a pancake, and
+transparent as a pane of glass.  You see through me.  Anybody could.
+I can't talk of my botheration without betraying myself.  What good am
+I among you sharp fellows in England?"
+
+Language of this kind, by virtue of its unintelligibility, set Mr.
+Herbert Fellingham's acute speculations at work.  He was obliged to lean
+on Van Diemen's assertion, that he had not robbed and had not murdered,
+to be comforted by the belief that he was not once a notorious
+bushranger, or a defaulting manager of mines, or any other thing
+that is naughtily Australian and kangarooly.
+
+He sat at the dinner-table at Elba, eating like the rest of mankind, and
+looking like a starved beggarman all the while.
+
+Annette, in pity of his bewilderment, would have had her father take him
+into their confidence.  She suggested it covertly, and next she spoke of
+it to him as a prudent measure, seeing that Mr. Fellingham might find out
+his exact degree of liability.  Van Diemen shouted; he betrayed himself
+in his weakness as she could not have imagined him.  He was ready to go,
+he said--go on the spot, give up Elba, fly from Old England: what he
+could not do was to let his countrymen know what he was, and live among
+them afterwards.  He declared that the fact had eternally been present to
+his mind, devouring him; and Annette remembered his kindness to the
+artillerymen posted along the shore westward of Crikswich, though she
+could recall no sign of remorse.  Van Diemen said: "We have to do with
+Martin Tinman; that's one who has a hold on me, and one's enough.  Leak
+out my secret to a second fellow, you double my risks."  He would not be
+taught to see how the second might counteract the first.  The singularity
+of the action of his character on her position was, that though she knew
+not a soul to whom she could unburden her wretchedness, and stood far
+more isolated than in her Australian home, fever and chill struck her
+blood in contemplation of the necessity of quitting England.
+
+Deep, then, was her gratitude to dear good Mrs. Cavely for stepping in to
+mediate between her father and Mr. Tinman.  And well might she be amazed
+to hear the origin of their recent dispute.
+
+"It was," Mrs. Cavely said, "that Gippsland."
+
+Annette cried: "What?"
+
+"That Gippsland of yours, my dear.  Your father will praise Gippsland
+whenever my Martin asks him to admire the beauties of our neighbourhood.
+Many a time has Martin come home to me complaining of it.  We have no
+doubt on earth that Gippsland is a very fine place; but my brother has
+his idea's of dignity, you must know, and I only wish he had been more
+used to contradiction, you may believe me.  He is a lamb by nature.  And,
+as he says, 'Why underrate one's own country?' He cannot bear to hear
+boasting.  Well! I put it to you, dear Annette, is he so unimportant a
+person?  He asks to be respected, and especially by his dearest friend.
+From that to blows!  It's the way with men.  They begin about trifles,
+they drink, they quarrel, and one does what he is sorry for, and one says
+more than he means.  All my Martin desires is to shake your dear father's
+hand, forgive and forget.  To win your esteem, darling Annette, he would
+humble himself in the dust.  Will you not help me to bring these two dear
+old friends together once more?  It is unreasonable of your dear papa to
+go on boasting of Gippsland if he is so fond of England, now is it not?
+My brother is the offended party in the eye of the law.  That is quite
+certain.  Do you suppose he dreams of taking advantage of it?  He is
+waiting at home to be told he may call on your father.  Rank, dignity,
+wounded feelings, is nothing to him in comparison with friendship."
+
+Annette thought of the blow which had felled him, and spoke the truth of
+her heart in saying, "He is very generous."
+
+"You understand him."  Mrs. Cavely pressed her hand.  "We will both go to
+your dear father.  He may," she added, not without a gleam of feminine
+archness, "praise Gippsland above the Himalayas to me.  What my Martin so
+much objected to was, the speaking of Gippsland at all when there was
+mention of our Lake scenery.  As for me, I know how men love to boast of
+things nobody else has seen."
+
+The two ladies went in company to Van Diemen, who allowed himself to be
+melted.  He was reserved nevertheless.  His reception of Mr. Tinman
+displeased his daughter.  Annette attached the blackest importance to a
+blow of the fist.  In her mind it blazed fiendlike, and the man who
+forgave it rose a step or two on the sublime.  Especially did he do so
+considering that he had it in his power to dismiss her father and herself
+from bright beaming England before she had looked on all the cathedrals
+and churches, the sea-shores and spots named in printed poetry, to say
+nothing of the nobility.
+
+"Papa, you were not so kind to Mr. Tinman as I could have hoped," said
+Annette.
+
+"Mart Tinman has me at his mercy, and he'll make me know it," her father
+returned gloomily.  "He may let me off with the Commander-in-chief.
+He'll blast my reputation some day, though.  I shall be hanging my head
+in society, through him."
+
+Van Diemen imitated the disconsolate appearance of a gallows body, in one
+of those rapid flashes of spontaneous veri-similitude which spring of an
+inborn horror painting itself on the outside.
+
+"A Deserter!" he moaned.
+
+He succeeded in impressing the terrible nature of the stigma upon
+Annette's imagination.
+
+The guest at Elba was busy in adding up the sum of his own impressions,
+and dividing it by this and that new circumstance; for he was totally in
+the dark.  He was attracted by the mysterious interview of Mrs. Cavely
+and Annette.  Tinman's calling and departing set him upon new
+calculations.  Annette grew cold and visibly distressed by her
+consciousness of it.
+
+She endeavoured to account for this variation of mood.  "We have been
+invited to dine at the house on the beach to-morrow.  I would not have
+accepted, but papa .  .  .  we seemed to think it a duty.  Of course the
+invitation extends to you.  We fancy you do not greatly enjoy dining
+there.  The table will be laid for you here, if you prefer."
+
+Herbert preferred to try the skill of Mrs. Crickledon.
+
+Now, for positive penetration the head prepossessed by a suspicion is
+unmatched; for where there is no daylight; this one at least goes about
+with a lantern.  Herbert begged Mrs. Crickledon to cook a dinner for him,
+and then to give the right colour to his absence from the table of Mr.
+Tinman, he started for a winter day's walk over the downs as sharpening a
+business as any young fellow, blunt or keen, may undertake; excellent for
+men of the pen, whether they be creative, and produce, or slaughtering,
+and review; good, then, for the silly sheep of letters and the butchers.
+He sat down to Mrs. Crickledon's table at half-past six.  She was, as she
+had previously informed him, a forty-pound-a-year cook at the period of
+her courting by Crickledon.  That zealous and devoted husband had made
+his first excursion inland to drop over the downs to the great house, and
+fetch her away as his bride, on the death of her master, Sir Alfred
+Pooney, who never would have parted with her in life; and every day of
+that man's life he dirtied thirteen plates at dinner, nor more, nor less,
+but exactly that number, as if he believed there was luck in it.  And as
+Crickledon said, it was odd.  But it was always a pleasure to cook for
+him.  Mrs. Crickledon could not abide cooking for a mean eater.  And when
+Crickledon said he had never seen an acorn, he might have seen one had he
+looked about him in the great park, under the oaks, on the day when he
+came to be married.
+
+"Then it's a standing compliment to you, Mrs. Crickledon, that he did
+not," said Herbert.
+
+He remarked with the sententiousness of enforced philosophy, that no wine
+was better than bad wine.
+
+Mrs. Crickledon spoke of a bottle left by her summer lodgers, who had
+indeed left two, calling the wine invalid's wine; and she and her husband
+had opened one on the anniversary of their marriage day in October.  It
+had the taste of doctor's shop, they both agreed; and as no friend of
+theirs could be tempted beyond a sip, they were advised, because it was
+called a tonic, to mix it with the pig-wash, so that it should not be
+entirely lost, but benefit the constitution of the pig.  Herbert sipped
+at the remaining bottle, and finding himself in the superior society of
+an old Manzanilla, refilled his glass.
+
+"Nothing I knows of proves the difference between gentlefolks and poor
+persons as tastes in wine," said Mrs. Crickledon, admiring him as she
+brought in a dish of cutlets,--with Sir Alfred Pooney's favourite sauce
+Soubise, wherein rightly onion should be delicate as the idea of love in
+maidens' thoughts, albeit constituting the element of flavour.  Something
+of such a dictum Sir Alfred Pooney had imparted to his cook, and she
+repeated it with the fresh elegance of, such sweet sayings when
+transfused through the native mind:
+
+"He said, I like as it was what you would call a young gal's blush at a
+kiss round a corner."
+
+The epicurean baronet had the habit of talking in that way.
+
+Herbert drank to his memory.  He was well-filled; he had no work to do,
+and he was exuberant in spirits, as Mrs. Crickledon knew her countrymen
+should and would be under those conditions.  And suddenly he drew his
+hand across a forehead so wrinkled and dark, that Mrs. Crickledon
+exclaimed, "Heart or stomach?"
+
+"Oh, no," said he.  "I'm sound enough in both, I hope."
+
+That old Tinman's up to one of his games," she observed.
+
+"Do you think so?"
+
+"He's circumventing Miss Annette Smith."
+
+"Pooh!  Crickledon.  A man of his age can't be seriously thinking of
+proposing for a young lady."
+
+He's a well-kept man.  He's never racketed.  He had n't the rackets in
+him.  And she may n't care for him.  But we hear things drop."
+
+"What things have you heard drop, Crickledon?  In a profound silence you
+may hear pins; in a hubbub you may hear cannon-balls.  But I never
+believe in eavesdropping gossip."
+
+"He was heard to say to Mr. Smith," Crickledon pursued, and she lowered
+her voice, "he was heard to say, it was when they were quarreling over
+that chiwal, and they went at one another pretty hard before Mr. Smith
+beat him and he sold Mr. Smith that meadow; he was heard to say, there
+was worse than transportation for Mr. Smith if he but lifted his finger.
+They Tinmans have awful tempers.  His old mother died malignant, though
+she was a saving woman, and never owed a penny to a Christian a hour
+longer than it took to pay the money.  And old Tinman's just such
+another."
+
+"Transportation!" Herbert ejaculated, "that's sheer nonsense, Crickledon.
+I'm sure your husband would tell you so."
+
+"It was my husband brought me the words," Mrs. Crickledon rejoined with
+some triumph.  "He did tell me, I own, to keep it shut: but my speaking
+to you, a friend of Mr. Smith's, won't do no harm.  He heard them under
+the battery, over that chiwal glass: 'And you shall pay,' says Mr. Smith,
+and 'I sha'n't,' says old Tinman.  Mr. Smith said he would have it if he
+had to squeeze a deathbed confession from a sinner.  Then old Tinman
+fires out, 'You!' he says, 'you' and he stammered.  'Mr. Smith,' my
+husband said and you never saw a man so shocked as my husband at being
+obliged to hear them at one another Mr. Smith used the word damn. 'You
+may laugh, sir.'"
+
+"You say it so capitally, Crickledon."
+
+"And then old Tinman said, 'And a D. to you; and if I lift my finger,
+it's Big D. on your back."
+
+"And what did Mr. Smith say, then?"
+
+"He said, like a man shot, my husband says he said, 'My God!'"
+
+Herbert Fellingham jumped away from the table.
+
+"You tell me, Crickledon, your husband actually heard that--just those
+words?--the tones?"
+
+"My husband says he heard him say, 'My God!' just like a poor man shot or
+stabbed.  You may speak to Crickledon, if you speaks to him alone, sir.
+I say you ought to know.  For I've noticed Mr. Smith since that day has
+never looked to me the same easy-minded happy gentleman he was when we
+first knew him.  He would have had me go to cook for him at Elba, but
+Crickledon thought I'd better be independent, and Mr. Smith said to me,
+'Perhaps you're right, Crickledon, for who knows how long I may be among
+you?'"
+
+Herbert took the solace of tobacco in Crickledon's shop.  Thence, with
+the story confirmed to him, he sauntered toward the house on the beach.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+The moon was over sea.  Coasting vessels that had run into the bay for
+shelter from the North wind lay with their shadows thrown shoreward on
+the cold smooth water, almost to the verge of the beach, where there was
+neither breath nor sound of wind, only the lisp at the pebbles.
+
+Mrs. Crickledon's dinner and the state of his heart made young Fellingham
+indifferent to a wintry atmosphere.  It sufficed him that the night was
+fair.  He stretched himself on the shingle, thinking of the Manzanilla,
+and Annette, and the fine flavour given to tobacco by a dry still air in
+moonlight--thinking of his work, too, in the background, as far as mental
+lassitude would allow of it.  The idea of taking Annette to see his first
+play at the theatre when it should be performed--was very soothing.  The
+beach rather looked like a stage, and the sea like a ghostly audience,
+with, if you will, the broadside bulks of black sailing craft at anchor
+for representatives of the newspaper piers.  Annette was a nice girl; if
+a little commonplace and low-born, yet sweet.  What a subject he could
+make of her father!  "The Deserter" offered a new complication.
+Fellingham rapidly sketched it in fancy--Van Diemen, as a Member of the
+Parliament of Great Britain, led away from the House of Commons to be
+branded on the bank!  What a magnificent fall!  We have so few intensely
+dramatic positions in English real life that the meditative author grew
+enamoured of this one, and laughed out a royal "Ha!" like a monarch
+reviewing his well-appointed soldiery.
+
+"There you are," said Van Diemen's voice; "I smelt your pipe.  You're a
+rum fellow, to belying out on the beach on a cold night.  Lord!  I don't
+like you the worse for it.  Twas for the romance of the moon in my young
+days."
+
+"Where is Annette?"  said Fellingham, jumping to his feet.
+
+"My daughter?  She 's taking leave of her intended."
+
+"What's that?"  Fellingham gasped.  "Good heavens, Mr. Smith, what do you
+mean?"
+
+"Pick up your pipe, my lad.  Girls choose as they please, I suppose"
+
+"Her intended, did you say, sir?  What can that mean?"
+
+"My dear good young fellow, don't make a fuss.  We're all going to stay
+here, and very glad to see you from time to time.  The fact is, I
+oughtn't to have quarrelled with Mart Tinman as I've done; I'm too
+peppery by nature.  The fact is, I struck him, and he forgave it.
+I could n't have done that myself.  And I believe I'm in for a headache
+to-morrow; upon my soul, I do.  Mart Tinman would champagne us; but,
+poor old boy, I struck him, and I couldn't make amends--didn't see my
+way; and we joined hands over the glass--to the deuce with the glass!--
+and the end of it is, Netty--she did n't propose it, but as I'm in his
+--I say, as I had struck him, she--it was rather solemn, if you had seen
+us--she burst into tears, and there was Mrs. Cavely, and old Mart, and me
+as big a fool--if I'm not a villain!"
+
+Fellingham perceived a more than common effect of Tin man's wine.  He
+touched Van Diemen on the shoulder. "May I beg to hear exactly what has
+happened?"
+
+"Upon my soul, we're all going to live comfortably in Old England, and no
+more quarreling and decamping," was the stupid rejoinder.  "Except that I
+did n't exactly--I think you said I exactly'?--I did n't bargain for old
+Mart as my--but he's a sound man; Mart's my junior; he's rich.  He's eco
+.  .  .  he's eco .  .  .  you know--my Lord!  where's my brains?--but
+he's upright--'nomical!"
+
+"An economical man," said Fellingham, with sedate impatience.
+
+"My dear sir, I'm heartily obliged to you for your assistance," returned
+Van Diemen.  "Here she is."
+
+Annette had come out of the gate in the flint wall.  She started slightly
+on seeing Herbert, whom she had taken for a coastguard, she said.  He
+bowed.  He kept his head bent, peering at her intrusively.
+
+"It's the air on champagne," Van Diemen said, calling on his lungs to
+clear themselves and right him.  "I was n't a bit queer in the house."
+
+"The air on Tinman's champagne!"  said Fellingham.
+
+"It must be like the contact of two hostile chemical elements."
+
+Annette walked faster.
+
+They descended from the shingle to the scant-bladed grass-sweep running
+round the salted town-refuse on toward Elba.  Van Diemen sniffed,
+ejaculating, "I'll be best man with Mart Tinman about this business!
+You'll stop with us, Mr.----what's your Christian name?  Stop with us as
+long as you like.  Old friends for me!  The joke of it is that Nelson was
+my man, and yet I went and enlisted in the cavalry.  If you talk of
+chemical substances, old Mart Tinman was a sneak who never cared a dump
+for his country; and I'm not to speak a single sybbarel about that.....
+over there .  .  .  Australia .  .  .  Gippsland!  So down he went, clean
+over.  Very sorry for what we have done.  Contrite.  Penitent."
+
+"Now we feel the wind a little," said Annette.
+
+Fellingham murmured, "Allow me; your shawl is flying loose."
+
+He laid his hands on her arms, and, pressing her in a tremble, said,
+"One sign!  It's not true?  A word!  Do you hate me?"
+
+"Thank you very much, but I am not cold," she replied and linked herself
+to her father.
+
+Van Diemen immediately shouted, "For we are jolly boys! for we are jolly
+boys!  It's the air on the champagne.  And hang me," said he, as they
+entered the grounds of Elba, "if I don't walk over my property."
+
+Annette interposed; she stood like a reed in his way.
+
+"No! my Lord!  I'll see what I sold you for!"  he cried.  "I'm an owner
+of the soil of Old England, and care no more for the title of squire than
+Napoleon Bonaparty.  But I'll tell you what, Mr. Hubbard: your mother was
+never so astonished at her dog as old Van Diemen would be to hear himself
+called squire in Old England.  And a convict he was, for he did wrong
+once, but he worked his redemption.  And the smell of my own property
+makes me feel my legs again.  And I'll tell you what, Mr. Hubbard, as
+Netty calls you when she speaks of you in private: Mart Tinman's ideas of
+wine are pretty much like his ideas of healthy smells, and when I'm
+bailiff of Crikswich, mind, he'll find two to one against him in our town
+council.  I love my country, but hang me if I don't purify it--"
+
+Saying this, with the excitement of a high resolve a upon him, Van Diemen
+bored through a shrubbery-brake, and Fellingham said to Annette:
+
+"Have I lost you?"
+
+"I belong to my father," said she, contracting and disengaging her
+feminine garments to step after him in the cold silver-spotted dusk of
+the winter woods.
+
+Van Diemen came out on a fish-pond.
+
+"Here you are, young ones!" he said to the pair.  "This way, Fellowman.
+I'm clearer now, and it's my belief I've been talking nonsense.  I'm
+puffed up with money, and have n't the heart I once had.  I say,
+Fellowman, Fellowbird, Hubbard--what's your right name?--fancy an old
+carp fished out of that pond and flung into the sea.  That's exile!
+And if the girl don't mind, what does it matter?"
+
+"Mr. Herbert Fellingham, I think, would like to go to bed, papa," said
+Annette.
+
+"Miss Smith must be getting cold," Fellingham hinted.
+
+"Bounce away indoors," replied Van Diemen, and he led them like a bull.
+
+Annette was disinclined to leave them together in the smoking-room, and
+under the pretext of wishing to see her father to bed she remained with
+them, though there was a novel directness and heat of tone in Herbert
+that alarmed her, and with reason.  He divined in hideous outlines what
+had happened.  He was no longer figuring on easy ice, but desperate at
+the prospect of a loss to himself, and a fate for Annette, that tossed
+him from repulsion to incredulity, and so back.
+
+Van Diemen begged him to light his pipe.
+
+"I'm off to London to-morrow," said Fellingham.  "I don't want to go, for
+very particular reasons; I may be of more use there.  I have a cousin
+who's a General officer in the army, and if I have your permission--you
+see, anything's better, as it seems to me, than that you should depend
+for peace and comfort on one man's tongue not wagging, especially when he
+is not the best of tempers if I have your permission--without mentioning
+names, of course--I'll consult him."
+
+There was a dead silence.
+
+"You know you may trust me, sir.  I love your daughter with all my heart.
+Your honour and your interests are mine."
+
+Van Diemen struggled for composure.
+
+"Netty, what have you been at?" he said.
+
+"It is untrue, papa!"  she answered the unworded accusation.
+
+"Annette has told me nothing, sir.  I have heard it.  You must brace your
+mind to the fact that it is known.  What is known to Mr. Tinman is pretty
+sure to be known generally at the next disagreement."
+
+"That scoundrel Mart!" Van Diemen muttered.
+
+"I am positive Mr. Tinman did not speak of you, papa," said Annette, and
+turned her eyes from the half-paralyzed figure of her father on Herbert
+to put him to proof.
+
+"No, but he made himself heard when it was being discussed.  At any rate,
+it's known; and the thing to do is to meet it."
+
+"I'm off.  I'll not stop a day.  I'd rather live on the Continent," said
+Van Diemen, shaking himself, as to prepare for the step into that desert.
+
+"Mr. Tinman has been most generous!"  Annette protested tearfully.
+
+"I won't say no: I think you are deceived and lend him your own
+generosity," said Herbert.  "Can you suppose it generous, that even in
+the extremest case, he should speak of the matter to your father, and
+talk of denouncing him?  He did it."
+
+"He was provoked."
+
+"A gentleman is distinguished by his not allowing himself to be
+provoked."
+
+"I am engaged to him, and I cannot hear it said that he is not a
+gentleman."
+
+The first part of her sentence Annette uttered bravely; at the conclusion
+she broke down.  She wished Herbert to be aware of the truth, that he
+might stay his attacks on Mr. Tinman; and she believed he had only been
+guessing the circumstances in which her father was placed; but the
+comparison between her two suitors forced itself on her now, when the
+younger one spoke in a manner so self-contained, brief, and full of
+feeling.
+
+She had to leave the room weeping.
+
+"Has your daughter engaged herself, sir?" said Herbert,
+
+"Talk to me to-morrow; don't give us up if she has we were trapped, it's
+my opinion," said Van Diemen.  "There's the devil in that wine of--Mart
+Tinman's.  I feel it still, and in the morning it'll be worse.  What can
+she see in him?  I must quit the country; carry her off.  How he did it,
+I don't know.  It was that woman, the widow, the fellow's sister.  She
+talked till she piped her eye--talked about our lasting union.  On my
+soul, I believe I egged Netty on!  I was in a mollified way with that
+wine; all of a sudden the woman joins their hands!  And I--a man of
+spirit will despise me!--what I thought of was, "now my secret's safe!
+You've sobered me, young sir.  I see myself, if that's being sober.
+I don't ask your opinion of me; I am a deserter, false to my colours,
+a breaker of his oath.  Only mark this: I was married, and a common
+trooper, married to a handsome young woman, true as steel; but she was
+handsome, and we were starvation poor, and she had to endure persecution
+from an officer day by day.  Bear that situation in your mind. . . .
+Providence dropped me a hundred pounds out of the sky.  Properly
+speaking, it popped up out of the earth, for I reaped it, you may say,
+from a relative's grave.  Rich and poor 's all right, if I'm rich and
+you're poor; and you may be happy though you're poor; but where there are
+many poor young women, lots of rich men are a terrible temptation to
+them.  That's my dear good wife speaking, and had she been spared to me
+I never should have come back to Old England, and heart's delight and
+heartache I should not have known.  She was my backbone, she was my
+breast-comforter too.  Why did she stick to me?  Because I had faith in
+her when appearances were against her.  But she never forgave this
+country the hurt to her woman's pride.  You'll have noticed a squarish
+jaw in Netty.  That's her mother.  And I shall have to encounter it,
+supposing I find Mart Tinman has been playing me false.  I'm blown on
+somehow.  I'll think of what course I'll take 'twixt now and morning.
+Good night, young gentleman."
+
+"Good night; sir," said Herbert, adding, "I will get information from the
+Horse Guards; as for the people knowing it about here, you're not living
+much in society--"
+
+"It's not other people's feelings, it's my own," Van Diemen silenced him.
+"I feel it, if it's in the wind; ever since Mart Tinman spoke the thing
+out, I've felt on my skin cold and hot."
+
+He flourished his lighted candle and went to bed, manifestly solaced by
+the idea that he was the victim of his own feelings.
+
+Herbert could not sleep.  Annette's monstrous choice of Tinman in
+preference to himself constantly assailed and shook his understanding.
+There was the "squarish jaw" mentioned by her father to think of.  It
+filled him with a vague apprehension, but he was unable to imagine that
+a young girl, and an English girl, and an enthusiastic young English
+girl, could be devoid of sentiment; and presuming her to have it, as one
+must, there was no fear, that she would persist in her loathsome choice
+when she knew her father was against it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+Annette did not shun him next morning.  She did not shun the subject,
+either.  But she had been exact in arranging that she should not be more
+than a few minutes downstairs before her father.  Herbert found, that
+compared with her, girls of sentiment are commonplace indeed.  She had
+conceived an insane idea of nobility in Tinman that blinded her to his
+face, figure, and character--his manners, likewise.  He had forgiven a
+blow!
+
+Silly as the delusion might be, it clothed her in whimsical
+attractiveness.
+
+It was a beauty in her to dwell so firmly upon moral quality.  Overthrown
+and stunned as he was, and reduced to helplessness by her brief and
+positive replies, Herbert was obliged to admire the singular young lady,
+who spoke, without much shyness, of her incongruous, destined mate though
+his admiration had an edge cutting like irony.  While in the turn for
+candour, she ought to have told him, that previous to her decision she
+had weighed the case of the diverse claims of himself and Tinman, and
+resolved them according to her predilection for the peaceful residence
+of her father and herself in England.  This she had done a little
+regretfully, because of the natural sympathy of the young girl for the
+younger man.  But the younger man had seemed to her seriously-
+straightforward mind too light and airy in his wooing, like one of her
+waltzing officers--very well so long as she stepped the measure with him,
+and not forcible enough to take her off her feet.  He had changed, and
+now that he had become persuasive, she feared he would disturb the
+serenity with which she desired and strove to contemplate her decision.
+Tinman's magnanimity was present in her imagination to sustain her,
+though she was aware that Mrs. Cavely had surprised her will, and caused
+it to surrender unconsulted by her wiser intelligence.
+
+"I cannot listen to you," she said to Herbert, after listening longer
+than was prudent.  "If what you say of papa is true, I do not think he
+will remain in Crikswich, or even in England.  But I am sure the old
+friend we used, to speak of so much in Australia has not wilfully
+betrayed him."
+
+Herbert would have had to say, "Look on us two!" to proceed in his
+baffled wooing; and the very ludicrousness of the contrast led him to see
+the folly and shame of proposing it.
+
+Van Diemen came down to breakfast looking haggard and restless.  "I have
+'nt had my morning's walk--I can't go out to be hooted," he said, calling
+to his daughter for tea, and strong tea; and explaining to Herbert that
+he knew it to be bad for the nerves, but it was an antidote to bad
+champagne.
+
+Mr. Herbert Fellingham had previously received an invitation on behalf of
+a sister of his to Crikswich.  A dull sense of genuine sagacity inspired
+him to remind Annette of it.  She wrote prettily to Miss Mary Fellingham,
+and Herbert had some faint joy in carrying away the letter of her
+handwriting.
+
+"Fetch her soon, for we sha'n't be here long," Van Diemen said to him at
+parting.  He expressed a certain dread of his next meeting with Mart
+Tinman.
+
+Herbert speedily brought Mary Fellingham to Elba, and left her there.
+The situation was apparently unaltered.  Van Diemen looked worn, like a
+man who has been feeding mainly on his reflections, which was manifest in
+his few melancholy bits of speech.  He said to Herbert: "How you feel a
+thing when you are found out!"  and, "It doesn't do for a man with a
+heart to do wrong!"  He designated the two principal roads by which poor
+sinners come to a conscience.  His own would have slumbered but for
+discovery; and, as he remarked, if it had not been for his heart leading
+him to Tinman, he would not have fallen into that man's power.
+
+The arrival of a young lady of fashionable appearance at Elba was matter
+of cogitation to Mrs. Cavely.  She was disposed to suspect that it meant
+something, and Van Diemen's behaviour to her brother would of itself have
+fortified any suspicion.  He did not call at the house on the beach, he
+did not invite Martin to dinner, he was rarely seen, and when he appeared
+at the Town Council he once or twice violently opposed his friend Martin,
+who came home ruffled, deeply offended in his interests and his dignity.
+
+"Have you noticed any difference in Annette's treatment of you, dear?"
+Mrs. Cavely inquired.
+
+"No," said Tinman; "none.  She shakes hands.  She asks after my health.
+She offers me my cup of tea."
+
+"I have seen all that.  But does she avoid privacy with you?"
+
+"Dear me, no!  Why should she?  I hope, Martha, I am a man who may be
+confided in by any young lady in England."
+
+"I am sure you may, dear Martin."
+
+"She has an objection to name the .  .  .  the day," said Martin.
+"I have informed her that I have an objection to long engagements.
+I don't like her new companion: She says she has been presented at Court.
+I greatly doubt it."
+
+"It's to give herself a style, you may depend.  I don't believe her!"
+exclaimed Mrs. Cavely, with sharp personal asperity.
+
+Brother and sister examined together the Court Guide they had purchased
+on the occasion at once of their largest outlay and most thrilling
+gratification; in it they certainly found the name of General Fellingham.
+"But he can't be related to a newspaper-writer," said Mrs. Cavely.
+
+To which her brother rejoined, "Unless the young man turned scamp.  I
+hate unproductive professions."
+
+"I hate him, Martin."  Mrs. Cavely laughed in scorn, "I should say, I
+pity him.  It's as clear to me as the sun at noonday, he wanted Annette.
+That's why I was in a hurry.  How I dreaded he would come that evening
+to our dinner!  When I saw him absent, I could have cried out it was
+Providence!  And so be careful--we have had everything done for us from
+on High as yet--but be careful of your temper, dear Martin.  I will
+hasten on the union; for it's a shame of a girl to drag a man behind her
+till he 's old at the altar.  Temper, dear, if you will only think of it,
+is the weak point."
+
+"Now he has begun boasting to me of his Australian wines!" Tinman
+ejaculated.
+
+"Bear it.  Bear it as you do Gippsland.  My dear, you have the retort in
+your heart:--Yes! but have you a Court in Australia?"
+
+"Ha! and his Australian wines cost twice the amount I pay for mine!"
+
+"Quite true.  We are not obliged to buy them, I should hope.  I would,
+though--a dozen--if I thought it necessary, to keep him quiet."
+
+Tinman continued muttering angrily over the Australian wines, with a word
+of irritation at Gippsland, while promising to be watchful of his temper.
+
+"What good is Australia to us," he asked, "if it does n't bring us
+money?"
+
+"It's going to, my dear," said Mrs. Cavely.  "Think of that when he
+begins boasting his Australia.  And though it's convict's money, as he
+confesses--"
+
+"With his convict's money!"  Tinman interjected tremblingly.  "How long
+am I expected to wait?"
+
+"Rely on me to hurry on the day," said Mrs. Cavely.  "There is no other
+annoyance?"
+
+"Wherever I am going to buy, that man outbids me and then says it's the
+old country's want of pluck and dash, and doing things large-handed!
+A man who'd go on his knees to stop in England!"  Tinman vociferated in
+a breath; and fairly reddened by the effort: "He may have to do it yet.
+I can't stand insult."
+
+"You are less able to stand insult after Honours," his sister said, in
+obedience to what she had observed of him since his famous visit to
+London.  "It must be so, in nature.  But temper is everything just now.
+Remember, it was by command of temper, and letting her father put himself
+in the wrong, you got hold of Annette.  And I would abstain even from
+wine.  For sometimes after it, you have owned it disagreed.  And I have
+noticed these eruptions between you and Mr. Smith--as he calls himself
+--generally after wine."
+
+"Always the poor! the poor! money for the poor!" Tinman harped on further
+grievances against Van Diemen.  "I say doctors have said the drain on the
+common is healthy; it's a healthy smell, nourishing.  We've always had it
+and been a healthy town.  But the sea encroaches, and I say my house and
+my property is in danger.  He buys my house over my head, and offers me
+the Crouch to live in at an advanced rent.  And then he sells me my house
+at an advanced price, and I buy, and then he votes against a penny for
+the protection of the shore!  And we're in Winter again!  As if he was
+not in my power!"
+
+"My dear Martin, to Elba we go, and soon, if you will govern your
+temper," said Mrs. Cavely.  "You're an angel to let me speak of it so,
+and it's only that man that irritates you.  I call him sinfully
+ostentatious."
+
+"I could blow him from a gun if I spoke out, and he knows it!  He's
+wanting in common gratitude, let alone respect," Tinman snorted.
+
+"But he has a daughter, my dear."
+
+Tinman slowly and crackingly subsided.
+
+His main grievance against Van Diemen was the non-recognition of his
+importance by that uncultured Australian, who did not seem to be
+conscious of the dignities and distinctions we come to in our country.
+The moneyed daughter, the prospective marriage, for an economical
+man rejected by every lady surrounding him, advised him to lock up his
+temper in submission to Martha.
+
+"Bring Annette to dine with us," he said, on Martha's proposing a visit
+to the dear young creature.
+
+Martha drank a glass of her brother's wine at lunch, and departed on the
+mission.
+
+Annette declined to be brought.  Her excuse was her guest, Miss
+Fellingham.
+
+"Bring her too, by all means--if you'll condescend, I am sure," Mrs.
+Cavely said to Mary.
+
+"I am much obliged to you; I do not dine out at present," said the London
+lady.
+
+"Dear me! are you ill?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Nothing in the family, I hope?"
+
+"My family?"
+
+"I am sure, I beg pardon," said Mrs. Cavely, bridling with a spite
+pardonable by the severest moralist.
+
+"Can I speak to you alone?"  she addressed Annette.
+
+Miss Fellingham rose.
+
+Mrs. Cavely confronted her.  "I can't allow it; I can't think of it.
+I'm only taking a little liberty with one I may call my future sister-in-
+law."
+
+"Shall I come out with you?"  said Annette, in sheer lassitude assisting
+Mary Fellingham in her scheme to show the distastefulness of this lady
+and her brother.
+
+"Not if you don't wish to."
+
+"I have no objection."
+
+"Another time will do."
+
+"Will you write?"
+
+"By post indeed!"
+
+Mrs. Cavely delivered a laugh supposed to, be peculiar to the English
+stage.
+
+"It would be a penny thrown away," said Annette.  "I thought you could
+send a messenger."
+
+Intercommunication with Miss Fellingham had done mischief to her high
+moral conception of the pair inhabiting the house on the beach. Mrs.
+Cavely saw it, and could not conceal that she smarted.
+
+Her counsel to her brother, after recounting the offensive scene to him
+in animated dialogue, was, to give Van Diemen a fright.
+
+"I wish I had not drunk that glass of sherry before starting," she
+exclaimed, both savagely and sagely.  "It's best after business.  And
+these gentlemen's habits of yours of taking to dining late upset me.
+I'm afraid I showed temper; but you, Martin, would not have borne one-
+tenth of what I did."
+
+"How dare you say so!" her brother rebuked her indignantly; and the house
+on the beach enclosed with difficulty a storm between brother and sister,
+happily not heard outside, because of loud winds raging.
+
+Nevertheless Tinman pondered on Martha's idea of the wisdom of giving Van
+Diemen a fright.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+The English have been called a bad-tempered people, but this is to judge
+of them by their manifestations; whereas an examination into causes might
+prove them to be no worse tempered than that man is a bad sleeper who
+lies in a biting bed.  If a sagacious instinct directs them to
+discountenance realistic tales, the realistic tale should justify its
+appearance by the discovery of an apology for the tormented souls.  Once
+they sang madrigals, once they danced on the green, they revelled in
+their lusty humours, without having recourse to the pun for fun, an
+exhibition of hundreds of bare legs for jollity, a sentimental wailing
+all in the throat for music.  Evidence is procurable that they have been
+an artificially-reared people, feeding on the genius of inventors,
+transposers, adulterators, instead of the products of nature, for the
+last half century; and it is unfair to affirm of them that they are
+positively this or that.  They are experiments.  They are the sons and
+victims of a desperate Energy, alluring by cheapness, satiating with
+quantity, that it may mount in the social scale, at the expense of their
+tissues.  The land is in a state of fermentation to mount, and the shop,
+which has shot half their stars to their social zenith, is what verily
+they would scald themselves to wash themselves free of.  Nor is it in any
+degree a reprehensible sign that they should fly as from hue and cry the
+title of tradesman.  It is on the contrary the spot of sanity, which bids
+us right cordially hope.  Energy, transferred to the moral sense, may
+clear them yet.
+
+Meanwhile this beer, this wine, both are of a character to have killed
+more than the tempers of a less gifted people.  Martin Tinman invited Van
+Diemen Smith to try the flavour of a wine that, as he said, he thought of
+"laying down."
+
+It has been hinted before of a strange effect upon the minds of men who
+knew what they were going to, when they received an invitation to dine
+with Tinman.  For the sake of a little social meeting at any cost, they
+accepted it; accepted it with a sigh, midway as by engineering
+measurement between prospective and retrospective; as nearly mechanical
+as things human may be, like the Mussulman's accustomed cry of Kismet.
+Has it not been related of the little Jew babe sucking at its mother's
+breast in Jerusalem, that this innocent, long after the Captivity, would
+start convulsively, relinquishing its feast, and indulging in the purest.
+Hebrew lamentation of the most tenacious of races, at the passing sound
+of a Babylonian or a Ninevite voice?  In some such manner did men, unable
+to refuse, deep in what remained to them of nature, listen to Tinman; and
+so did Van Diemen, sighing heavily under the operation of simple animal
+instinct.
+
+"You seem miserable," said Tinman, not oblivious of his design to give
+his friend a fright.
+
+"Do I?  No, I'm all right," Van Diemen replied.  "I'm thinking of
+alterations at the Hall before Summer, to accommodate guests--if I stay
+here."
+
+"I suppose you would not like to be separated from Annette."
+
+"Separated?  No, I should think I shouldn't.  Who'd do it?"
+
+"Because I should not like to leave my good sister Martha all to herself
+in a house so near the sea--"
+
+"Why not go to the Crouch, man?"
+
+"Thank you."
+
+"No thanks needed if you don't take advantage of the offer."
+
+They were at the entrance to Elba, whither Mr. Tinman was betaking
+himself to see his intended.  He asked if Annette was at home, and to his
+great stupefaction heard that she had gone to London for a week.
+
+Dissembling the spite aroused within him, he postponed his very strongly
+fortified design, and said, "You must be lonely."
+
+Van Diemen informed him that it would be for a night only, as young
+Fellingham was coming down to keep him company.
+
+"At six o'clock this evening, then," said Tinman.  "We're not fashionable
+in Winter."
+
+"Hang me,  if I know when ever we were!" Van Diemen rejoined.
+
+"Come, though, you'd like to be.  You've got your ambition, Philip, like
+other men."
+
+"Respectable and respected--that 's my ambition, Mr. Mart."
+
+Tinman simpered: "With your wealth!"
+
+"Ay, I 'm rich--for a contented mind."
+
+"I 'm pretty sure you 'll approve my new vintage," said Tinman.  "It's
+direct from Oporto, my wine-merchant tells me, on his word."
+
+"What's the price?"
+
+"No, no, no.  Try it first.  It's rather a stiff price."
+
+Van Diemen was partially reassured by the announcement.  "What do you
+call a stiff price?"
+
+"Well!--over thirty."
+
+"Double that, and you may have a chance."
+
+"Now," cried Tinman, exasperated, "how can a man from Australia know
+anything about prices for port?  You can't divest your ideas of diggers'
+prices.  You're like an intoxicating drink yourself on the tradesmen of
+our town.  You think it fine--ha!  ha!  I daresay, Philip, I should be
+doing the same if I were up to your mark at my banker's.  We can't all
+of us be lords, nor baronets."
+
+Catching up his temper thus cleverly, he curbed that habitual runaway,
+and retired from his old friend's presence to explode in the society of
+the solitary Martha.
+
+Annette's behaviour was as bitterly criticized by the sister as by the
+brother.
+
+"She has gone to those Fellingham people; and she may be thinking of
+jilting us," Mrs. Cavely said.
+
+"In that case, I have no mercy," cried her brother.  "I have borne"--he
+bowed with a professional spiritual humility--"as I should, but it may
+get past endurance.  I say I have borne enough; and if the worst comes to
+the worst, and I hand him over to the authorities--I say I mean him no
+harm, but he has struck me.  He beat me as a boy and he has struck me as
+a man, and I say I have no thought of revenge, but I cannot have him
+here; and I say if I drive him out of the country back to his Gippsland!"
+
+Martin Tinman quivered for speech, probably for that which feedeth
+speech, as is the way with angry men.
+
+"And what?--what then?" said Martha, with the tender mellifluousness of
+sisterly reproach.  "What good can you expect of letting temper get the
+better of you, dear?"
+
+Tinman did not enjoy her recent turn for usurping the lead in their
+consultations, and he said, tartly, "This good, Martha.  We shall get the
+Hall at my price, and be Head People here.  Which," he raised his note,
+"which he, a Deserter, has no right to pretend to give himself out to be.
+What your feelings may be as an old inhabitant, I don't know, but I have
+always looked up to the people at Elba Hall, and I say I don't like to
+have a Deserter squandering convict's money there--with his forty-pound-
+a-year cook, and his champagne at seventy a dozen.  It's the luxury of
+Sodom and Gomorrah."
+
+"That does not prevent its being very nice to dine there," said Mrs.
+Cavely; "and it shall be our table for good if I have any management."
+
+"You mean me, ma'am," bellowed Tinman.
+
+"Not at all," she breathed, in dulcet contrast.  "You are good-looking,
+Martin, but you have not half such pretty eyes as the person I mean.  I
+never ventured to dream of managing you, Martin.  I am thinking of the
+people at Elba."
+
+"But why this extraordinary treatment of me, Martha?"
+
+"She's a child, having her head turned by those Fellinghams.  But she's
+honourable; she has sworn to me she would be honourable."
+
+"You do think I may as well give him a fright?"  Tinman inquired
+hungrily.
+
+"A sort of hint; but very gentle, Martin.  Do be gentle--casual like--as
+if you did n't want to say it.  Get him on his Gippsland.  Then if he
+brings you to words, you can always laugh back, and say you will go to
+Kew and see the Fernery, and fancy all that, so high, on Helvellyn or the
+Downs.  Why"--Mrs. Cavely, at the end of her astute advices and
+cautionings, as usual, gave loose to her natural character--"Why that man
+came back to England at all, with his boastings of Gippsland, I can't for
+the life of me find out.  It 's a perfect mystery."
+
+"It is," Tinman sounded his voice at a great depth, reflectively.  Glad
+of taking the part she was perpetually assuming of late, he put out his
+hand and said: "But it may have been ordained for our good, Martha."
+
+"True, dear," said she, with an earnest sentiment of thankfulness to the
+Power which had led him round to her way of thinking and feeling.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+Annette had gone to the big metropolis, which burns in colonial
+imaginations as the sun of cities, and was about to see something of
+London, under the excellent auspices of her new friend, Mary Fellingham,
+and a dense fog.  She was alarmed by the darkness, a little in fear, too,
+of Herbert; and these feelings caused her to chide herself for leaving
+her father.
+
+Hearing her speak of her father sadly, Herbert kindly proposed to go down
+to Crikswich on the very day of her coming.  She thanked him, and gave
+him a taste of bitterness by smiling favourably on his offer; but as he
+wished her to discern and take to heart the difference between one man
+and another, in the light of a suitor, he let her perceive that it cost
+him heavy pangs to depart immediately, and left her to brood on his
+example.  Mary Fellingham liked Annette.  She thought her a sensible girl
+of uncultivated sensibilities, the reverse of thousands; not commonplace,
+therefore; and that the sensibilities were expanding was to be seen in
+her gradual unreadiness to talk of her engagement to Mr. Tinman, though
+her intimacy with Mary warmed daily.  She considered she was bound to
+marry the man at some distant date, and did not feel unhappiness yet.
+She had only felt uneasy when she had to greet and converse with her
+intended; especially when the London young lady had been present.
+Herbert's departure relieved her of the pressing sense of contrast.  She
+praised him to Mary for his extreme kindness to her father, and down in
+her unsounded heart desired that her father might appreciate it even more
+than she did.
+
+Herbert drove into Crikswich at night, and stopped at Crickledon's, where
+he heard that Van Diemen was dining with Tinman.
+
+Crickledon the carpenter permitted certain dry curves to play round his
+lips like miniature shavings at the name of Tinman; but Herbert asked,
+"What is it now?" in vain, and he went to Crickledon the cook.
+
+This union of the two Crickledons, male and female; was an ideal one,
+such as poor women dream of; and men would do the same, if they knew how
+poor they are.  Each had a profession, each was independent of the other,
+each supported the fabric.  Consequently there was mutual respect, as
+between two pillars of a house.  Each saw the other's faults with a sly
+wink to the world, and an occasional interchange of sarcasm that was
+tonic, very strengthening to the wits without endangering the habit of
+affection.  Crickledon the cook stood for her own opinions, and directed
+the public conduct of Crickledon the carpenter; and if he went astray
+from the line she marked out, she put it down to human nature, to which
+she was tolerant.  He, when she had not followed his advice, ascribed it
+to the nature of women.  She never said she was the equal of her husband;
+but the carpenter proudly acknowledged that she was as good as a man, and
+he bore with foibles derogatory to such high stature, by teaching himself
+to observe a neatness of domestic and general management that told him he
+certainly was not as good as a woman.  Herbert delighted in them.  The
+cook regaled the carpenter with skilful, tasty, and economic dishes; and
+the carpenter, obedient to her supplications, had promised, in the event
+of his outliving her, that no hands but his should have the making of her
+coffin.  "It is so nice," she said, "to think one's own husband will put
+together the box you are to lie in, of his own make!"  Had they been even
+a doubtfully united pair, the cook's anticipation of a comfortable
+coffin, the work of the best carpenter in England, would have kept them
+together; and that which fine cookery does for the cementing of couples
+needs not to be recounted to those who have read a chapter or two of the
+natural history of the male sex.
+
+"Crickledon, my dear soul, your husband is labouring with a bit of fun,"
+Herbert said to her.
+
+"He would n't laugh loud at Punch, for fear of an action," she replied.
+"He never laughs out till he gets to bed, and has locked the door; and
+when he does he says 'Hush!' to me.  Tinman is n't bailiff again just
+yet, and where he has his bailiff's best Court suit from, you may ask.
+He exercises in it off and on all the week, at night, and sometimes in
+the middle of the day."
+
+Herbert rallied her for her gossip's credulity.
+
+"It's truth," she declared.  "I have it from the maid of the house,
+little Jane, whom he pays four pound a year for all the work of the
+house: a clever little thing with her hands and her head she is; and can
+read and write beautiful; and she's a mind to leave 'em if they don't
+advance her.  She knocked and went in while he was full blaze, and bowing
+his poll to his glass.  And now he turns the key, and a child might know
+he was at it."
+
+"He can't be such a donkey!"
+
+"And he's been seen at the window on the seaside.  'Who's your Admiral
+staying at the house on the beach?' men have inquired as they come
+ashore.  My husband has heard it.  Tinman's got it on his brain.  He
+might be cured by marriage to a sound-headed woman, but he 'll soon be
+wanting to walk about in silk legs if he stops a bachelor.  They tell me
+his old mother here had a dress value twenty pound; and pomp's inherited.
+Save as he may, there's his leak."
+
+Herbert's contempt for Tinman was intense; it was that of the young and
+ignorant who live in their imaginations like spendthrifts, unaware of the
+importance of them as the food of life, and of how necessary it is to
+seize upon the solider one among them for perpetual sustenance when the
+unsubstantial are vanishing.  The great event of his bailiff's term of
+office had become the sun of Tinman's system.  He basked in its rays.
+He meant to be again the proud official, royally distinguished; meantime,
+though he knew not that his days were dull, he groaned under the dulness;
+and, as cart or cab horses, uncomplaining as a rule, show their view of
+the nature of harness when they have release to frisk in a field, it is
+possible that existence was made tolerable to the jogging man by some
+minutes of excitement in his bailiff's Court suit.  Really to pasture on
+our recollections we ought to dramatize them.  There is, however, only
+the testimony of a maid and a mariner to show that Tinman did it, and
+those are witnesses coming of particularly long-bow classes, given to
+magnify small items of fact.
+
+On reaching the hall Herbert found the fire alight in the smoking-room,
+and soon after settling himself there he heard Van Diemen's voice at the
+hall-door saying good night to Tinman.
+
+"Thank the Lord! there you are," said Van Diemen, entering the room.
+"I couldn't have hoped so much.  That rascal!"  he turned round to the
+door.  "He has been threatening me, and then smoothing me.  Hang his oil!
+It's combustible.  And hang the port he's for laying down, as he calls
+it.  'Leave it to posterity,' says I.  'Why?' says he.  'Because the
+young ones 'll be better able to take care of themselves,' says I, and he
+insists on an explanation.  I gave it to him.  Out he bursts like a
+wasp's nest.  He may have said what he did say in temper.  He seemed
+sorry afterwards--poor old Mart!  The scoundrel talked of Horse Guards
+and telegraph wires."
+
+"Scoundrel, but more ninny," said Herbert, full of his contempt.  "Dare
+him to do his worst.  The General tells me they 'd be glad to overlook it
+at the Guards, even if they had all the facts.  Branding 's out of the
+question."
+
+"I swear it was done in my time," cried Van Diemen, all on fire.
+
+"It's out of the question.  You might be advised to leave England for a
+few months.  As for the society here--"
+
+"If I leave, I leave for good.  My heart's broken.  I'm disappointed.
+I'm deceived in my friend.  He and I in the old days!  What's come to
+him?  What on earth is it changes men who stop in England so?  It can't
+be the climate.  And did you mention my name to General Fellingham?"
+
+"Certainly not," said Herbert.  "But listen to me, sir, a moment.  Why
+not get together half-a-dozen friends of the neighbourhood, and make a
+clean breast of it.  Englishmen like that kind of manliness, and they are
+sure to ring sound to it."
+
+"I couldn't!"  Van Diemen sighed.  "It's not a natural feeling I have
+about it--I 've brooded on the word.  If I have a nightmare, I see
+Deserter written in sulphur on the black wall."
+
+"You can't remain at his mercy, and be bullied as you are.  He makes you
+ill, sir.  He won't do anything, but he'll go on worrying you.  I'd stop
+him at once.  I'd take the train to-morrow and get an introduction to the
+Commander-in-Chief.  He's the very man to be kind to you in a situation
+like this.  The General would get you the introduction."
+
+"That's more to my taste; but no, I couldn't," Van Diemen moaned in his
+weakness.  "Money has unmanned me.  I was n't this kind of man formerly;
+nor more was Mart Tinman, the traitor!  All the world seems changeing for
+the worse, and England is n't what she used to be."
+
+"You let that man spoil it for you, sir."  Herbert related Mrs.
+Crickledon's tale of Mr. Tinman, adding, "He's an utter donkey.  I should
+defy him.  What I should do would be to let him know to-morrow morning
+that you don't intend to see him again.  Blow for, blow, is the thing he
+requires.  He'll be cringing to you in a week."
+
+"And you'd like to marry Annette," said Van Diemen, relishing,
+nevertheless, the advice, whose origin and object he perceived so
+plainly.
+
+"Of course I should," said Herbert, franker still in his colour than his
+speech.
+
+"I don't see him my girl's husband."  Van Diemen eyed the red hollow in
+the falling coals.  "When I came first, and found him a healthy man,
+good-looking enough for a trifle over forty, I 'd have given her gladly,
+she nodding Yes.  Now all my fear is she's in earnest.  Upon my soul, I
+had the notion old Mart was a sort of a boy still; playing man, you know.
+But how can you understand?  I fancied his airs and stiffness were put
+on; thought I saw him burning true behind it.  Who can tell?  He seems to
+be jealous of my buying property in his native town.  Something frets
+him.  I ought never to have struck him!  There's my error, and I repent
+it.  Strike a friend!  I wonder he didn't go off to the Horse Guards at
+once.  I might have done it in his place, if I found I couldn't lick him.
+I should have tried kicking first."
+
+"Yes, shinning before peaching," said Herbert, astonished almost as much
+as he was disgusted by the inveterate sentimental attachment of Van
+Diemen to his old friend.
+
+Martin Tinman anticipated good things of the fright he had given the man
+after dinner.  He had, undoubtedly, yielded to temper, forgetting pure
+policy, which it is so exceeding difficult to practice.  But he had
+soothed the startled beast; they had shaken hands at parting, and Tinman
+hoped that the week of Annette's absence would enable him to mould her
+father.  Young Fellingham's appointment to come to Elba had slipped Mr.
+Tinman's memory.  It was annoying to see this intruder.  "At all events,
+he's not with Annette," said Mrs. Cavely.  "How long has her father to
+run on?"
+
+"Five months," Tinman replied.  "He would have completed his term of
+service in five months."
+
+"And to think of his being a rich man because he deserted," Mrs. Cavely
+interjected.  "Oh! I do call it immoral.  He ought to be apprehended and
+punished, to be an example for the good of society.  If you lose time,
+my dear Martin, your chance is gone.  He's wriggling now.  And if I could
+believe he talked us over to that young impudent, who has n't a penny
+that he does n't get from his pen, I'd say, denounce him to-morrow.
+I long for Elba.  I hate this house.  It will be swallowed up some day;
+I know it; I have dreamt it.  Elba at any cost.  Depend upon it, Martin,
+you have been foiled in your suits on account of the mean house you
+inhabit.  Enter Elba as that girl's husband, or go there to own it, and
+girls will crawl to you."
+
+"You are a ridiculous woman, Martha," said Tinman, not dissenting.
+
+The mixture of an idea of public duty with a feeling of personal rancour
+is a strong incentive to the pursuit of a stern line of conduct; and the
+glimmer of self-interest superadded does not check the steps of the
+moralist.  Nevertheless, Tinman held himself in.  He loved peace.  He
+preached it, he disseminated it.  At a meeting in the town he strove to
+win Van Diemen's voice in favour of a vote for further moneys to protect
+'our shores.'"  Van Diemen laughed at him, telling him he wanted a
+battery.  "No," said Tinman, "I've had enough to do with soldiers."
+
+"How's that?"
+
+"They might be more cautious.  I say, they might learn to know their
+friends from their enemies."
+
+"That's it, that's it," said Van Diemen.  "If you say much more, my
+hearty, you'll find me bidding against you next week for Marine Parade
+and Belle Vue Terrace.  I've a cute eye for property, and this town's
+looking up."
+
+"You look about you before you speculate in land and house property
+here," retorted Tinman.
+
+Van Diemen bore so much from him that he asked himself whether he could
+be an Englishman.  The title of Deserter was his raw wound.  He attempted
+to form the habit of stigmatizing himself with it in the privacy of his
+chamber, and he succeeded in establishing the habit of talking to
+himself, so that he was heard by the household, and Annette, on her
+return, was obliged to warn him of his indiscretion.  This development of
+a new weakness exasperated him.  Rather to prove his courage by defiance
+than to baffle Tinman's ambition to become the principal owner of houses
+in Crikswich, by outbidding him at the auction for the sale of Marine
+Parade and Belle Vue Terrace, Van Diemen ran the houses up at the
+auction, and ultimately had Belle Vue knocked down to him.  So fierce was
+the quarrel that Annette, in conjunction with Mrs. Cavely; was called on
+to interpose with her sweetest grace.  "My native place," Tinman said to
+her; "it is my native place.  I have a pride in it; I desire to own
+property in it, and your father opposes me.  He opposes me.  Then says I
+may have it back at auction price, after he has gone far to double the
+price!  I have borne--I repeat I have borne too much."
+
+"Are n't your properties to be equal to one?"  said Mrs. Cavely, smiling
+mother--like from Tinman to Annette.
+
+He sought to produce a fondling eye in a wry face, and said, "Yes, I will
+remember that."
+
+"Annette will bless you with her dear hand in a month or two at the
+outside," Mrs. Cavely murmured, cherishingly.
+
+"She will?"  Tinman cracked his body to bend to her.
+
+"Oh, I cannot say; do not distress me.  Be friendly with papa," the girl
+resumed, moving to escape.
+
+"That is the essential," said Mrs. Cavely; and continued, when Annette
+had gone, "The essential is to get over the next few months, miss, and
+then to snap your fingers at us.  Martin, I would force that man to sell
+you Belle Vue under the price he paid for it, just to try your power."
+
+Tinman was not quite so forcible.  He obtained Belle Vue at auction
+price, and his passion for revenge was tipped with fire by having it
+accorded as a friend's favour.
+
+The poisoned state of his mind was increased by a December high wind that
+rattled his casements, and warned him of his accession of property
+exposed to the elements.  Both he and his sister attributed their
+nervousness to the sinister behaviour of Van Diemen.  For the house on
+the beach had only, in most distant times, been threatened by the sea,
+and no house on earth was better protected from man,--Neptune, in the
+shape of a coastguard, being paid by Government to patrol about it during
+the hours of darkness.  They had never had any fears before Van Diemen
+arrived, and caused them to give thrice their ordinary number of dinners
+to guests per annum.  In fact, before Van Diemen came, the house on the
+beach looked on Crikswich without a rival to challenge its anticipated
+lordship over the place, and for some inexplicable reason it seemed to
+its inhabitants to have been a safer as well as a happier residence.
+
+They were consoled by Tinman's performance of a clever stroke in
+privately purchasing the cottages west of the town, and including
+Crickledon's shop, abutting on Marine Parade.  Then from the house
+on the beach they looked at an entire frontage of their property.
+
+They entered the month of February.  No further time was to be lost,
+"or we shall wake up to find that man has fooled us," Mrs. Cavely said.
+Tinman appeared at Elba to demand a private interview with Annette.  His
+hat was blown into the hall as the door opened to him, and he himself was
+glad to be sheltered by the door, so violent was the gale.  Annette and
+her father were sitting together.  They kept the betrothed gentleman
+waiting a very long time.  At last Van Diemen went to him, and said,
+"Netty 'll see you, if you must.  I suppose you have no business with
+me?"
+
+"Not to-day," Tinman replied.
+
+Van Diemen strode round the drawing-room with his hands in his pockets.
+"There's a disparity of ages," he said, abruptly, as if desirous to pour
+out his lesson while he remembered it.  "A man upwards of forty marries a
+girl under twenty, he's over sixty before she's forty; he's decaying when
+she's only mellow.  I ought never to have struck you, I know.  And you're
+such an infernal bad temper at times, and age does n't improve that, they
+say; and she's been educated tip-top.  She's sharp on grammar, and a man
+may n't like that much when he's a husband.  See her, if you must.  But
+she does n't take to the idea; there's the truth.  Disparity of ages and
+unsuitableness of dispositions--what was it Fellingham said?--like two
+barrel-organs grinding different tunes all day in a house."
+
+"I don't want to hear Mr. Fellingham's comparisons," Tinman snapped.
+
+"Oh! he's nothing to the girl," said Van Diemen.  "She doesn't stomach
+leaving me."
+
+"My dear Philip! why should she leave you?  When we have interests in
+common as one household--"
+
+"She says you're such a damned bad temper."
+
+Tinman was pursuing amicably, "When we are united--" But the frightful
+charge brought against his temper drew him up.  "Fiery I may be.  Annette
+has seen I am forgiving.  I am a Christian.  You have provoked me; you
+have struck me."
+
+"I 'll give you a couple of thousand pounds in hard money to be off the
+bargain, and not bother the girl," said Van Diemen.
+
+"Now," rejoined Tinman, "I am offended.  I like money, like most men who
+have made it.  You do, Philip.  But I don't come courting like a pauper.
+Not for ten thousand; not for twenty.  Money cannot be a compensation to
+me for the loss of Annette.  I say I love Annette."
+
+"Because," Van Diemen continued his speech, "you trapped us into that
+engagement, Mart.  You dosed me with the stuff you buy for wine, while
+your sister sat sugaring and mollifying my girl; and she did the trick in
+a minute, taking Netty by surprise when I was all heart and no head; and
+since that you may have seen the girl turn her head from marriage like my
+woods from the wind."
+
+"Mr. Van Diemen Smith!"  Tinman panted; he mastered himself.  "You shall
+not provoke me.  My introductions of you in this neighbourhood, my
+patronage, prove my friendship."
+
+"You'll be a good old fellow, Mart, when you get over your hopes of being
+knighted."
+
+"Mr. Fellingham may set you against my wine, Philip.  Let me tell you--I
+know you--you would not object to have your daughter called Lady."
+
+"With a spindle-shanked husband capering in a Court suit before he goes
+to bed every night, that he may n't forget what a fine fellow he was one
+day bygone!  You're growing lean on it, Mart, like a recollection fifty
+years old."
+
+"You have never forgiven me that day, Philip!"
+
+"Jealous, am I?  Take the money, give up the girl, and see what friends
+we'll be.  I'll back your buyings, I'll advertise your sellings.  I'll
+pay a painter to paint you in your Court suit, and hang up a copy of you
+in my diningroom."
+
+"Annette is here," said Tinman, who had been showing Etna's tokens of
+insurgency.
+
+He admired Annette.  Not till latterly had Herbert Fellingham been so
+true an admirer of Annette as Tinman was.  She looked sincere and she
+dressed inexpensively.  For these reasons she was the best example of
+womankind that he knew, and her enthusiasm for England had the
+sympathetic effect on him of obscuring the rest of the world, and
+thrilling him with the reassuring belief that he was blest in his blood
+and his birthplace--points which her father, with his boastings of
+Gippsland, and other people talking of scenes on the Continent,
+sometimes disturbed in his mind.
+
+"Annette," said he, "I come requesting to converse with you in private."
+
+"If you wish it--I would rather not," she answered.
+
+Tinman raised his head, as often at Helmstone when some offending
+shopwoman was to hear her doom.
+
+He bent to her.  "I see.  Before your father, then!"
+
+"It isn't an agreeable bit of business, to me," Van Diemen grumbled,
+frowning and shrugging.
+
+"I have come, Annette, to ask you, to beg you, entreat--before a third
+person--laughing, Philip?"
+
+"The wrong side of my mouth, my friend.  And I'll tell you what: we're in
+for heavy seas, and I 'm not sorry you've taken the house on the beach
+off my hands."
+
+"Pray, Mr. Tinman, speak at once, if you please, and I will do my best.
+Papa vexes you."
+
+"No, no," replied Tinman.
+
+He renewed his commencement.  Van Diemen interrupted him again.
+
+"Hang your power over me, as you call it.  Eh, old Mart?  I'm a Deserter.
+I'll pay a thousand pounds to the British army, whether they punish me or
+not.  March me off tomorrow!"
+
+"Papa, you are unjust, unkind."  Annette turned to him in tears.
+
+"No, no," said Tinman, "I do not feel it.  Your father has misunderstood
+me, Annette."
+
+"I am sure he has," she said fervently.  "And, Mr. Tinman, I will
+faithfully promise that so long as you are good to my dear father, I will
+not be untrue to my engagement, only do not wish me to name any day.  We
+shall be such very good dear friends if you consent to this.  Will you?"
+
+Pausing for a space, the enamoured man unrolled his voice in lamentation:
+"Oh!  Annette, how long will you keep me?"
+
+"There; you'll set her crying!"  said Van Diemen.  "Now you can run
+upstairs, Netty.  By jingo!  Mart Tinman, you've got a bass voice for
+love affairs."
+
+"Annette," Tinman called to her, and made her turn round as she was
+retiring.  "I must know the day before the end of winter.  Please.
+In kind consideration.  My arrangements demand it."
+
+"Do let the girl go," said Van Diemen.  "Dine with me tonight and I'll
+give you a wine to brisk your spirits, old boy"
+
+"Thank you.  When I have ordered dinner at home, I----and my wine agrees
+with ME," Tinman replied.
+
+"I doubt it."
+
+"You shall not provoke me, Philip."
+
+They parted stiffly.
+
+Mrs. Cavely had unpleasant domestic news to communicate to her brother,
+in return for his tale of affliction and wrath.  It concerned the
+ungrateful conduct of their little housemaid Jane, who, as Mrs. Cavely
+said, "egged on by that woman Crickledon," had been hinting at an advance
+of wages.
+
+"She didn't dare speak, but I saw what was in her when she broke a plate,
+and wouldn't say she was sorry.  I know she goes to Crickledon and talks
+us over.  She's a willing worker, but she has no heart."
+
+Tinman had been accustomed in his shop at Helmstone--where heaven had
+blessed him with the patronage of the rich, as visibly as rays of
+supernal light are seen selecting from above the heads of prophets in the
+illustrations to cheap holy books--to deal with willing workers that have
+no hearts.  Before the application for an advance of wages--and he knew
+the signs of it coming--his method was to calculate how much he might be
+asked for, and divide the estimated sum by the figure 4; which, as it
+seemed to come from a generous impulse, and had been unsolicited, was
+often humbly accepted, and the willing worker pursued her lean and hungry
+course in his service.  The treatment did not always agree with his
+males.  Women it suited; because they do not like to lift up their voices
+unless they are in a passion; and if you take from them the grounds of
+temper, you take their words away--you make chickens of them.  And as
+Tinman said, "Gratitude I never expect!"  Why not?  For the reason that
+he knew human nature.  He could record shocking instances of the
+ingratitude of human nature, as revealed to him in the term of his tenure
+of the shop at Helmstone.  Blest from above, human nature's wickedness
+had from below too frequently besulphured and suffumigated him for his
+memory to be dim; and though he was ever ready to own himself an example
+that heaven prevaileth, he could cite instances of scandalmongering shop-
+women dismissed and working him mischief in the town, which pointed to
+him in person for a proof that the Powers of Good and Evil were still
+engaged in unhappy contention.  Witness Strikes! witness Revolutions!
+
+"Tell her, when she lays the cloth, that I advance her, on account of
+general good conduct, five shillings per annum.  Add," said Tinman, "that
+I wish no thanks.  It is for her merits--to reward her; you understand
+me, Martha?"
+
+"Quite; if you think it prudent, Martin."
+
+"I do.  She is not to breathe a syllable to cook."
+
+"She will."
+
+"Then keep your eye on cook."
+
+Mrs. Cavely promised she would do so.  She felt sure she was paying five
+shillings for ingratitude; and, therefore, it was with humility that she
+owned her error when, while her brother sipped his sugared acrid liquor
+after dinner (in devotion to the doctor's decree, that he should take a
+couple of glasses, rigorously as body-lashing friar), she imparted to him
+the singular effect of the advance of wages upon little Jane--"Oh, ma'am!
+and me never asked you for it!"  She informed her brother how little Jane
+had confided to her that they were called "close," and how little Jane
+had vowed she would--the willing little thing!--go about letting
+everybody know their kindness.
+
+"Yes! Ah!"  Tinman inhaled the praise.  "No, no; I don't want to be
+puffed," he said.  "Remember cook.  I have," he continued, meditatively,
+"rarely found my plan fail.  But mind, I give the Crickledons notice to
+quit to-morrow.  They are a pest.  Besides, I shall probably think of
+erecting villas."
+
+"How dreadful the wind is!" Mrs. Cavely exclaimed.  "I would give that
+girl Annette one chance more.  Try her by letter."
+
+Tinman despatched a business letter to Annette, which brought back a
+vague, unbusiness-like reply.  Two days afterward Mrs. Cavely reported to
+her brother the presence of Mr. Fellingham and Miss Mary Fellingham in
+Crikswich.  At her dictation he wrote a second letter.  This time the
+reply came from Van Diemen:
+
+     "My DEAR MARTIN,--Please do not go on bothering my girl.  She does
+     not like the idea of leaving me, and my experience tells me I could
+     not live in the house with you. So there it is.  Take it friendly.
+     I have always wanted to be, and am,
+                                        "Your friend,
+                                                       "PHIL."
+
+Tinman proceeded straight to Elba; that is, as nearly straight as the
+wind would allow his legs to walk.  Van Diemen was announced to be out;
+Miss Annette begged to be excused, under the pretext that she was unwell;
+and Tinman heard of a dinner-party at Elba that night.
+
+He met Mr. Fellingham on the carriage drive.  The young Londoner presumed
+to touch upon Tinman's private affairs by pleading on behalf of the
+Crikledons, who were, he said, much dejected by the notice they had
+received to quit house and shop.
+
+"Another time," bawled Tinman.  "I can't hear you in this wind."
+
+"Come in," said Fellingham.
+
+"The master of the house is absent," was the smart retort roared at him;
+and Tinman staggered away, enjoying it as he did his wine.
+
+His house rocked.  He was backed by his sister in the assurance that he
+had been duped.
+
+The process he supposed to be thinking, which was the castigation of his
+brains with every sting wherewith a native touchiness could ply immediate
+recollection, led him to conclude that he must bring Van Diemen to his
+senses, and Annette running to him for mercy.
+
+He sat down that night amid the howling of the storm, wind whistling,
+water crashing, casements rattling, beach desperately dragging, as by the
+wide-stretched star-fish fingers of the half-engulphed.
+
+He hardly knew what he wrote.  The man was in a state of personal terror,
+burning with indignation at Van Diemen as the main cause of his jeopardy.
+For, in order to prosecute his pursuit of Annette, he had abstained from
+going to Helmstone to pay moneys into his bank there, and what was
+precious to life as well as life itself, was imperilled by those two--
+Annette and her father--who, had they been true, had they been honest,
+to say nothing of honourable, would by this time have opened Elba to him
+as a fast and safe abode.
+
+His letter was addressed, on a large envelope,
+
+     "To the Adjutant-General,
+
+     "HORSE GUARDS."
+
+But if ever consigned to the Post, that post-office must be in London;
+and Tinman left the letter on his desk till the morning should bring
+counsel to him as to the London friend to whom he might despatch it under
+cover for posting, if he pushed it so far.
+
+Sleep was impossible.  Black night favoured the tearing fiends of
+shipwreck, and looking through a back window over sea, Tinman saw with
+dismay huge towering ghostwhite wreaths, that travelled up swiftly on his
+level, and lit the dark as they flung themselves in ruin, with a gasp,
+across the mound of shingle at his feet.
+
+He undressed: His sister called to him to know if they were in danger.
+Clothed in his dressing-gown, he slipped along to her door, to vociferate
+to her hoarsely that she must not frighten the servants; and one fine
+quality in the training of the couple, which had helped them to prosper,
+a form of self-command, kept her quiet in her shivering fears.
+
+For a distraction Tinman pulled open the drawers of his wardrobe.  His
+glittering suit lay in one.  And he thought, "What wonderful changes
+there are in the world!" meaning, between a man exposed to the wrath of
+the elements, and the same individual reading from vellum, in that suit,
+in a palace, to the Head of all of us!
+
+The presumption is; that he must have often done it before.  The fact is
+established, that he did it that night.  The conclusion drawn from it is,
+that it must have given him a sense of stability and safety.
+
+At any rate that he put on the suit is quite certain.
+
+Probably it was a work of ingratiation and degrees; a feeling of the
+silk, a trying on to one leg, then a matching of the fellow with it.
+O you Revolutionists!  who would have no state, no ceremonial, and but
+one order of galligaskins!  This man must have been wooed away in spirit
+to forgetfulness of the tempest scourging his mighty neighbour to a
+bigger and a farther leap; he must have obtained from the contemplation
+of himself in his suit that which would be the saving of all men, in
+especial of his countrymen--imagination, namely.
+
+Certain it is, as I have said, that he attired himself in the suit.  He
+covered it with his dressing-gown, and he lay down on his bed so garbed,
+to await the morrow's light, being probably surprised by sleep acting
+upon fatigue and nerves appeased and soothed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+Elba lay more sheltered from South-east winds under the slopes of down
+than any other house in Crikswich.  The South-caster struck off the cliff
+to a martello tower and the house on the beach, leaving Elba to repose,
+so that the worst wind for that coast was one of the most comfortable for
+the owner of the hall, and he looked from his upper window on a sea of
+crumbling grey chalk, lashed unremittingly by the featureless piping
+gale, without fear that his elevated grounds and walls would be open at
+high tide to the ravage of water.  Van Diemen had no idea of calamity
+being at work on land when he sat down to breakfast.  He told Herbert
+that he had prayed for poor fellows at sea last night.  Mary Fellingham
+and Annette were anxious to finish breakfast and mount the down to gaze
+on the sea, and receiving a caution from Van Diemen not to go too near
+the cliff, they were inclined to think he was needlessly timorous on
+their account.
+
+Before they were half way through the meal, word was brought in of great
+breaches in the shingle, and water covering the common.  Van Diemen sent
+for his head gardener, whose report of the state of things outside took
+the comprehensive form of prophecy; he predicted the fall of the town.
+
+"Nonsense; what do you mean, John Scott?"  said Van Diemen, eyeing his
+orderly breakfast table and the man in turns.  "It does n't seem like
+that, yet, does it?"
+
+"The house on the beach won't stand an hour longer, sir."
+
+"Who says so?"
+
+"It's cut off from land now, and waves mast-high all about it."
+
+"Mart Tinman?"  cried Van Diemen.
+
+All started; all jumped up; and there was a scampering for hats and
+cloaks.  Maids and men of the house ran in and out confirming the news of
+inundation.  Some in terror for the fate of relatives, others pleasantly
+excited, glad of catastrophe if it but killed monotony, for at any rate
+it was a change of demons.
+
+The view from the outer bank of Elba was of water covering the space of
+the common up to the stones of Marine Parade and Belle Vue.  But at a
+distance it had not the appearance of angry water; the ladies thought it
+picturesque, and the house on the beach was seen standing firm.  A second
+look showed the house completely isolated; and as the party led by Van
+Diemen circled hurriedly toward the town, they discerned heavy cataracts
+of foam pouring down the wrecked mound of shingle on either side of the
+house.
+
+"Why, the outer wall's washed away," said Van Diemen."  Are they in real
+danger?" asked Annette, her teeth chattering, and the cold and other
+matters at her heart precluding for the moment such warmth of sympathy as
+she hoped soon to feel for them.  She was glad to hear her father say:
+
+"Oh!  they're high and dry by this time.  We shall find them in the town
+And we'll take them in and comfort them.  Ten to one they have n't
+breakfasted.  They sha'n't go to an inn while I'm handy."
+
+He dashed ahead, followed closely by Herbert.  The ladies beheld them
+talking to townsfolk as they passed along the upper streets, and did not
+augur well of their increase of speed.  At the head of the town water was
+visible, part of the way up the main street, and crossing it, the ladies
+went swiftly under the old church, on the tower of which were spectators,
+through the churchyard to a high meadow that dropped to a stone wall
+fixed between the meadow and a grass bank above the level of the road,
+where now salt water beat and cast some spray.  Not less than a hundred
+people were in this field, among them Crickledon and his wife.  All were
+in silent watch of the house on the beach, which was to east of the
+field, at a distance of perhaps three stonethrows.  The scene was wild.
+Continuously the torrents poured through the shingleclefts, and momently
+a thunder sounded, and high leapt a billow that topped the house and
+folded it weltering.
+
+"They tell me Mart Tinman's in the house," Van Diemen roared to Herbert.
+He listened to further information, and bellowed: "There's no boat!"
+
+Herbert answered: "It must be a mistake, I think; here's Crickledon says
+he had a warning before dawn and managed to move most of his things, and
+the people over there must have been awakened by the row in time to get
+off"
+
+"I can't hear a word you say;" Van Diemen tried to pitch his voice higher
+than the wind.  "Did you say a boat?  But where?"
+
+Crickledon the carpenter made signal to Herbert.  They stepped rapidly up
+the field.
+
+"Women feels their weakness in times like these, my dear," Mrs.
+Crickledon said to Annette.  "What with our clothes and our cowardice
+it do seem we're not the equals of men when winds is high."
+
+Annette expressed the hope to her that she had not lost much property.
+Mrs. Crickledon said she was glad to let her know she was insured in an
+Accident Company.  "But," said she, "I do grieve for that poor man
+Tinman, if alive he be, and comes ashore to find his property wrecked by
+water.  Bless ye! he wouldn't insure against anything less common than
+fire; and my house and Crickledon's shop are floating timbers by this
+time; and Marine Parade and Belle Vue are safe to go.  And it'll be a
+pretty welcome for him, poor man, from his investments."
+
+A cry at a tremendous blow of a wave on the doomed house rose from the
+field.  Back and front door were broken down, and the force of water
+drove a round volume through the channel, shaking the walls.
+
+"I can't stand this," Van Diemen cried.
+
+Annette was too late to hold him back.  He ran up the field.  She was
+preparing to run after when Mrs. Crickledon touched her arm and implored
+her: "Interfere not with men, but let them follow their judgements when
+it's seasons of mighty peril, my dear.  If any one's guilty it's me, for
+minding my husband of a boat that was launched for a life-boat here, and
+wouldn't answer, and is at the shed by the Crouch--left lying there, I've
+often said, as if it was a-sulking.  My goodness!"
+
+A linen sheet bad been flung out from one of the windows of the house on
+the beach, and flew loose and flapping in sign of distress.
+
+"It looks as if they had gone mad in that house, to have waited so long
+for to declare theirselves, poor souls," Mrs. Crickledon said, sighing.
+
+She was assured right and left that signals had been seen before, and
+some one stated that the cook of Mr. Tinman, and also Mrs. Cavely, were
+on shore.
+
+"It's his furniture, poor man, he sticks to: and nothing gets round the
+heart so!"  resumed Mrs. Crickledon.  "There goes his bed-linen!"
+
+The sheet was whirled and snapped away by the wind; distended doubled,
+like a flock of winter geese changeing alphabetical letters on the
+clouds, darted this way and that, and finally outspread on the waters
+breaking against Marine Parade.
+
+"They cannot have thought there was positive danger in remaining," said
+Annette.
+
+"Mr. Tinman was waiting for the cheapest Insurance office," a man
+remarked to Mrs. Crickledon.
+
+"The least to pay is to the undertaker," she replied, standing on tiptoe.
+"And it's to be hoped he 'll pay more to-day.  If only those walls don't
+fall and stop the chance of the boat to save him for more outlay, poor
+man!  What boats was on the beach last night, high up and over the ridge
+as they was, are planks by this time and only good for carpenters."
+
+"Half our town's done for," one old man said; and another followed him in.
+a pious tone: "From water we came and to water we go."
+
+They talked of ancient inroads of the sea, none so serious as this
+threatened to be for them.  The gallant solidity, of the house on the
+beach had withstood heavy gales: it was a brave house.  Heaven be
+thanked, no fishing boats were out.  Chiefly well-to-do people would be
+the sufferers--an exceptional case.  For it is the mysterious and
+unexplained dispensation that: "Mostly heaven chastises we."
+
+A knot of excited gazers drew the rest of the field to them.  Mrs.
+Crickledon, on the edge of the crowd, reported what was doing to Annette
+and Miss Fellingham.  A boat had been launched from the town.  "Praise
+the Lord, there's none but coastguard in it!"  she exclaimed, and excused
+herself for having her heart on her husband.
+
+Annette was as deeply thankful that her father was not in the boat.
+
+They looked round and saw Herbert beside them.  Van Diemen was in the
+rear, panting, and straining his neck to catch sight of the boat now
+pulling fast across a tumbled sea to where Tinman himself was perceived,
+beckoning them wildly, half out of one of the windows.
+
+"A pound apiece to those fellows, and two if they land Mart Tinman dry;
+I've promised it, and they'll earn it.  Look at that!  Quick, you
+rascals!"
+
+To the east a portion of the house had fallen, melted away.  Where it
+stood, just below the line of shingle, it was now like a structure
+wasting on a tormented submerged reef.  The whole line was given over to
+the waves.
+
+"Where is his sister?"  Annette shrieked to her father.
+
+"Safe ashore; and one of the women with her.  But Mart Tinman would stop,
+the fool!  to-poor old boy!  save his papers and things; and has n't a
+head to do it, Martha Cavely tells me.  They're at him now!  They've got
+him in!  There's another?  Oh! it's a girl, who would n't go and leave
+him.  They'll pull to the field here.  Brave lads!--By jingo, why ain't
+Englishmen always in danger!--eh?  if you want to see them shine!"
+
+"It's little Jane," said Mrs. Crickledon, who had been joined by her
+husband, and now that she knew him to be no longer in peril, kept her
+hand on him to restrain him, just for comfort's sake.
+
+The boat held under the lee of the house-wreck a minute; then, as if
+shooting a small rapid, came down on a wave crowned with foam, to hurrahs
+from the townsmen.
+
+"They're all right," said Van Diemen, puffing as at a mist before his
+eyes.  "They'll pull westward, with the wind, and land him among us.  I
+remember when old Mart and I were bathing once, he was younger than me,
+and could n't swim much, and I saw him going down.  It'd have been hard
+to see him washed off before one's eyes thirty years afterwards.  Here
+they come.  He's all right.  He's in his dressing-gown!"
+
+The crowd made way for Mr. Van Diemen Smith to welcome his friend.  Two
+of the coastguard jumped out, and handed him to the dry bank, while
+Herbert, Van Diemen, and Crickledon took him by hand and arm, and hoisted
+him on to the flint wall, preparatory to his descent into the field.  In
+this exposed situation the wind, whose pranks are endless when it is once
+up, seized and blew Martin Tinman's dressing-gown wide as two violently
+flapping wings on each side of him, and finally over his head.
+
+Van Diemen turned a pair of stupefied flat eyes on Herbert, who cast a
+sly look at the ladies.  Tinman had sprung down.  But not before the.
+world, in one tempestuous glimpse, had caught sight of the Court suit.
+
+Perfect gravity greeted him from the crowd.
+
+"Safe, old Mart! and glad to be able to say it," said Van Diemen.
+
+"We are so happy," said Annette.
+
+"House, furniture, property, everything I possess!"  ejaculated Tinman,
+shivering.
+
+"Fiddle, man; you want some hot breakfast in you.  Your sister has gone
+on--to Elba.  Come you too, old Man; and where's that plucky little girl
+who stood by--"
+
+"Was there a girl?"  said Tinman.
+
+"Yes, and there was a boy wanted to help."  Van Diemen pointed at
+Herbert.
+
+Tinman looked, and piteously asked, "Have you examined Marine Parade and
+Belle Vue?  It depends on the tide!"
+
+"Here is little Jane, sir," said Mrs. Crickledon.
+
+"Fall in," Van Diemen said to little Jane.
+
+The girl was bobbing curtseys to Annette, on her introduction by Mrs.
+Crickledon.
+
+"Martin, you stay at my house; you stay at Elba till you get things
+comfortable about you, and then you shall have the Crouch for a year,
+rent free.  Eh, Netty?"
+
+Annette chimed in: "Anything we can do, anything.  Nothing can be too
+much."
+
+Van Diemen was praising little Jane for her devotion to her master.
+
+"Master have been so kind to me," said little Jane.
+
+"Now, march; it is cold," Van Diemen gave the word, and Herbert stood by
+Mary rather dejectedly, foreseeing that his prospects at Elba were
+darkened.
+
+"Now then, Mart, left leg forward," Van Diemen linked his arm in his
+friend's.
+
+"I must have a look," Tinman broke from him, and cast a forlorn look of
+farewell on the last of the house on the beach.
+
+"You've got me left to you, old Mart; don't forget that," said Van
+Diemen.
+
+Tinman's chest fell.  "Yes, yes," he responded.  He was touched.
+
+"And I told those fellows if they landed you dry they should have--I'd
+give them double pay; and I do believe they've earned their money."
+
+"I don't think I'm very wet, I'm cold," said Tinman.
+
+"You can't help being cold, so come along."
+
+"But, Philip!" Tinman lifted his voice; "I've lost everything.  I tried
+to save a little. I worked hard, I exposed my life, and all in vain."
+
+The voice of little Jane was heard.
+
+"What's the matter with the child?" said Van Diemen.
+
+Annette went up to her quietly.
+
+But little Jane was addressing her master.
+
+"Oh! if you please, I did manage to save something the last thing when
+the boat was at the window, and if you please, sir, all the bundles is
+lost, but I saved you a papercutter, and a letter Horse Guards, and here
+they are, sir."
+
+The grateful little creature drew the square letter and paper-cutter from
+her bosom, and held them out to Mr. Tinman.
+
+It was a letter of the imposing size, with THE HORSE GUARDS very
+distinctly inscribed on it in Tinman's best round hand, to strike his
+vindictive spirit as positively intended for transmission, and give him
+sight of his power to wound if it pleased him; as it might.
+
+"What!" cried he, not clearly comprehending how much her devotion had
+accomplished for him.
+
+"A letter to the Horse Guards!" cried Van Diemen.
+
+"Here, give it me," said little Jane's master, and grasped it nervously.
+
+"What's in that letter?" Van Diemen asked.  "Let me look at that letter.
+Don't tell me it's private correspondence."
+
+"My dear Philip, dear friend, kind thanks; it's not a letter," said
+Tinman.
+
+"Not a letter! why, I read the address, 'Horse Guards.' I read it as it
+passed into your hands.  Now, my man, one look at that letter, or take
+the consequences."
+
+"Kind thanks for your assistance, dear Philip, indeed!  Oh! this?  Oh!
+it's nothing."  He tore it in halves.
+
+His face was of the winter sea-colour, with the chalk wash on it.
+
+"Tear again, and I shall know what to think of the contents," Van Diemen
+frowned.  "Let me see what you've said.  You've sworn you would do it,
+and there it is at last, by miracle; but let me see it and I'll overlook
+it, and you shall be my house-mate still.  If not!----"
+
+Tinman tore away.
+
+"You mistake, you mistake, you're entirely wrong," he said, as he pursued
+with desperation his task of rendering every word unreadable.
+
+Van Diemen stood fronting him; the accumulation of stores of petty
+injuries and meannesses which he had endured from this man, swelled under
+the whip of the conclusive exhibition of treachery.  He looked so black
+that Annette called, "Papa!"
+
+"Philip," said Tinman.  "Philip! my best friend!"
+
+"Pooh, you're a poor creature.  Come along and breakfast at Elba, and you
+can sleep at the Crouch, and goodnight to you.  Crickledon," he called to
+the houseless couple, "you stop at Elba till I build you a shop."
+
+With these words, Van Diemen led the way, walking alone.  Herbert was
+compelled to walk with Tinman.
+
+Mary and Annette came behind, and Mary pinched Annette's arm so sharply
+that she must have cried out aloud had it been possible for her to feel
+pain at that moment, instead of a personal exultation, flying wildly over
+the clash of astonishment and horror, like a sea-bird over the foam.
+
+In the first silent place they came to, Mary murmured the words: "Little
+Jane."
+
+Annette looked round at Mrs. Crickledon, who wound up the procession,
+taking little Jane by the hand.  Little Jane was walking demurely, with a
+placid face.  Annette glanced at Tinman.  Her excited feelings nearly
+rose to a scream of laughter.  For hours after, Mary had only to say to
+her: "Little Jane," to produce the same convulsion.  It rolled her heart
+and senses in a headlong surge, shook her to burning tears, and seemed to
+her ideas the most wonderful running together of opposite things ever
+known on this earth.  The young lady was ashamed of her laughter; but she
+was deeply indebted to it, for never was mind made so clear by that
+beneficent exercise.
+
+
+
+
+ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+Adversary at once offensive and helpless provokes brutality
+Causes him to be popularly weighed
+Distinguished by his not allowing himself to be provoked
+Eccentric behaviour in trifles
+Excited, glad of catastrophe if it but killed monotony
+Generally he noticed nothing
+Good jokes are not always good policy
+I make a point of never recommending my own house
+Indulged in their privilege of thinking what they liked
+Infants are said to have their ideas, and why not young ladies?
+Lend him your own generosity
+Men love to boast of things nobody else has seen
+Naughtily Australian and kangarooly
+Not in love--She was only not unwilling to be in love
+Rich and poor 's all right, if I'm rich and you're poor
+She began to feel that this was life in earnest
+She dealt in the flashes which connect ideas
+She sought, by looking hard, to understand it better
+Sunning itself in the glass of Envy
+That which fine cookery does for the cementing of couples
+The intricate, which she takes for the infinite
+Tossed him from repulsion to incredulity, and so back
+Two principal roads by which poor sinners come to a conscience
+
+
+[The End]
+
+
+
+
+******************************************************************
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The House on the Beach, by Meredith
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+End of the Project Gutenberg etext of The House on the Beach
+by George Meredith
+
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