On the twenty-fourth of December Miss Carden and Jael Dence drove to Cairnhope village, and stopped at the farm: but Nathan and his eldest daughter had already gone up to the Hall; so they waited there but a minute or two to light the carriage lamps, and then went on up the hill. It was pitch dark when they reached the house. Inside, one of Mr. Raby's servants was on the look-out for the sound of wheels, and the visitors had no need to knock or ring; this was a point of honor with the master of the mansion; when he did invite people, the house opened its arms; even as they drove up, open flew the great hall-door, and an enormous fire inside blazed in their faces, and shot its flame beyond them out into the night.
Grace alighted, and was about to enter the house, when Jael stopped her, and said, “Oh, miss, you will be going in left foot foremost. Pray don't do that: it is so unlucky.”
Grace laughed, but changed her foot, and entered a lofty hall, hung with helmets, pikes, breast-plates, bows, cross-bows, antlers etc., etc. Opposite her was the ancient chimneypiece and ingle-nook, with no grate but two huge iron dogs, set five feet apart; and on them lay a birch log and root, the size of a man, with a dozen beech billets burning briskly and crackling underneath and aside it. This genial furnace warmed the staircase and passages, and cast a fiery glow out on the carriage, and glorified the steep helmets and breast-plates of the dead Rabys on the wall, and the sparkling eyes of the two beautiful women who now stood opposite it in the pride of their youth, and were warmed to the heart by its crackle and glow. “Oh! what a glorious fire, this bitter night. Why, I never saw such a—”
“It is the yule log, miss. Ay, and you might go all round England, and not find its fellow, I trow. But our Squire he don't go to the chandler's shop for his yule log, but to his own woods, and fells a great tree.”
A housemaid now came forward with bed candles, to show Miss Carden to her room. Grace was going up, as a matter of course, when Jael, busy helping the footman with her boxes, called after her: “The stocking, miss! the stocking!”
Grace looked down at her feet in surprise.
“There it is, hung up by the door. We must put our presents into it before we go upstairs.”
“Must we? what on earth am I to give?”
“Oh, any thing will do. See, I shall put in this crooked sixpence.”
Grace examined her purse, and complained that all her stupid sixpences were straight.
“Never mind, miss; put in a hairpin, sooner than pass the stocking o' Christmas Eve.”
Grace had come prepared to encounter old customs. She offered her shawl-pin: and Jael, who had modestly inserted her own gift, pinned Grace's offering on the outside of the stocking with a flush of pride. Then they went upstairs with the servant, and Grace was ushered into a bedroom of vast size, with two huge fires burning at each end; each fireplace was flanked with a coal-scuttle full of kennel coal in large lumps, and also with an enormous basket of beech billets. She admired the old-fashioned furniture, and said, “Oh, what a palace of a bedroom! This will spoil me for my little poky room. Here one can roam about and have great thoughts. Hillsborough, good-by! I end my days in the country.”
Presently her quick ears caught the rattle of swift wheels upon the hard road: she ran to the window, and peeped behind the curtain. Two brilliant lamps were in sight, and drew nearer and nearer, like great goggling eyes, and soon a neat dog-cart came up to the door. Before it had well-stopped, the hospitable door flew open, and the yule fire shone on Mr. Coventry, and his natty groom, and his dog cart with plated axles; it illumined the silver harness, and the roan horse himself, and the breath that poured into the keen air from his nostrils red inside.
Mr. Coventry dropped from his shoulders, with easy grace, something between a coat and a cloak, lined throughout with foxes' skin; and, alighting, left his groom to do the rest. The fur was reddish, relieved with occasional white; and Grace gloated over it, as it lay glowing in the fire-light. “Ah,” said she, “I should never do for a poor man's wife: I'm so fond of soft furs and things, and I don't like poky rooms.” With that she fell into a reverie, which was only interrupted by the arrival of Jael and her boxes.
Jael helped her unpack, and dress. There was no lack of conversation between these two, but most of it turned upon nothings. One topic, that might have been interesting to the readers of this tale, was avoided by them both. They had now come to have a high opinion of each other's penetration, and it made them rather timid and reserved on that subject.
Grace was dressed, and just going down, when she found she wanted a pin. She asked Jael for one.
Jael looked aghast. “Oh, miss, I'd rather you would take one, in spite of me.”
“Well, so I will. There!” And she whipped one away from the bosom of Jael's dress.
“Mind, I never gave it you.”
“No. I took it by brute force.”
“I like you too well to give you a pin.”
“May I venture to inquire what would be the consequence?”
“Ill luck, you may be sure. Heart-trouble, they do say.”
“Well, I'm glad to escape that so easily. Why, this is the temple of superstition, and you are the high-Priestess. How shall I ever get on at dinner, without you? I know I shall do something to shock Mr. Raby. Perhaps spill the very salt. I generally do.”
“Ay, miss, at home. But, dear heart, you won't see any of them nasty little salt-cellars here, that some crazy creature have invented to bring down bad luck. You won't spill the salt here, no fear: but don't ye let any body help you to it neither, if he helps you to salt, he helps you to sorrow.”
“Oh, does he? Then it is fortunate nobody ever does help anybody to salt. Well, yours is a nice creed. Why, we are all at the mercy of other people, according to you. Say I have a rival: she smiles in my face, and says, 'My sweet friend, accept this tribute of my esteem;' and gives me a pinch of salt, before I know where I am. I wither on the spot; and she sails off with the prize. Or, if there is no salt about, she comes behind me with a pin, and pins it to my skirt, and that pierces my heart. Don't you see what abominable nonsense it all is?”
The argument was cut short by the ringing of a tremendous bell.
Grace gave the last, swift, searching, all-comprehensive look of her sex into the glass, and went down to the drawing-room. There she found Mr. Raby and Mr. Coventry, who both greeted her cordially; and the next moment dinner was announced.
“Raby Hall” was a square house, with two large low wings. The left wing contained the kitchen, pantry, scullery, bakehouse, brew-house, etc.; and servants' bedrooms above. The right wing the stables, coach-houses, cattle-sheds, and several bedrooms. The main building of the hall, the best bedrooms, and the double staircase, leading up to them in horse-shoe form from the hall: and, behind the hall, on the ground-floor, there was a morning-room, in which several of the Squire's small tenants were even now preparing for supper by drinking tea, and eating cakes made in rude imitation of the infant Saviour. On the right of the hall were the two drawing-rooms en suite, and on the left was the remarkable room into which the host now handed Miss Carden, and Mr. Coventry followed. This room had been, originally, the banqueting-hall. It was about twenty feet high, twenty-eight feet wide, and fifty feet long, and ended in an enormous bay window, that opened upon the lawn. It was entirely paneled with oak, carved by old Flemish workmen, and adorned here and there with bold devices. The oak, having grown old in a pure atmosphere, and in a district where wood and roots were generally burned in dining-rooms, had acquired a very rich and beautiful color, a pure and healthy reddish brown, with no tinge whatever of black; a mighty different hue from any you can find in Wardour Street. Plaster ceiling there was none, and never had been. The original joists, and beams, and boards, were still there, only not quite so rudely fashioned as of old; for Mr. Raby's grandfather had caused them to be planed and varnished, and gilded a little in serpentine lines. This woodwork above gave nobility to the room, and its gilding, though worn, relieved the eye agreeably.
The further end was used as a study, and one side of it graced with books, all handsomely bound: the other side, with a very beautiful organ that had an oval mirror in the midst of its gilt dummy-pipes. All this made a cozy nook in the grand room.
What might be called the dining-room part, though rich, was rather somber on ordinary occasions; but this night it was decorated gloriously. The materials were simple—wax-candles and holly; the effect was produced by a magnificent use of these materials. There were eighty candles, of the largest size sold in shops, and twelve wax pillars, five feet high, and the size of a man's calf; of these, four only were lighted at present. The holly was not in sprigs, but in enormous branches, that filled the eye with glistening green and red: and, in the embrasure of the front window stood a young holly-tree entire, eighteen feet high, and gorgeous with five hundred branches of red berries. The tree had been dug up, and planted here in an enormous bucket, used for that purpose, and filled with mold.
Close behind this tree were placed two of the wax pillars, lighted, and their flame shone through the leaves and berries magically.
As Miss Carden entered, on Mr. Raby's arm, her eye swept the room with complacency, and settled on the holly-tree. At sight of that she pinched Mr. Raby's arm, and cried “Oh!” three times. Then, ignoring the dinner-table altogether, she pulled her host away to the tree, and stood before it, with clasped hands. “Oh, how beautiful!”
Mr. Raby was gratified. “So then our forefathers were not quite such fools as some people say.”
“They were angels, they were ducks. It is beautiful, it is divine.”
Mr. Raby looked at the glowing cheek, and deep, sparkling, sapphire eye. “Come,” said he; “after all, there's nothing here so beautiful as the young lady who now honors the place with her presence.”
With this he handed her ceremoniously to a place at his right hand; said a short grace, and sat down between his two guests.
“But, Mr. Raby,” said Grace, ruefully, “I'm with my back to the holly-tree.”
“You can ask Coventry to change places.”
Mr. Coventry rose, and the change was effected.
“Well, it is your doing, Coventry. Now she'll overlook YOU.”
“All the better for me, perhaps. I'm content: Miss Carden will look at the holly, and I shall look at Miss Carden.”
“Faute de mieux.”
“C'est mechant.”
“And I shall fine you both a bumper of champagne, for going out of the English language.”
“I shall take my punishment like a man.”
“Then take mine as well. Champagne with me means frenzy.”
But, in the midst of the easy banter and jocose airy nothings of the modern dining-room, an object attracted Grace's eye. It was a picture, with its face turned to the wall, and some large letters on the back of the canvas.
This excited Grace's curiosity directly, and, whenever she could, without being observed, she peeped, and tried to read the inscription; but, what with Mr. Raby's head, and a monster candle that stood before it, she could not decipher it unobserved. She was inclined to ask Mr. Raby; but she was very quick, and, observing that the other portraits were of his family, she suspected at once that the original of this picture had offended her host, and that it would be in bad taste, and might be offensive, to question him. Still the subject took possession of her.
At about eight o'clock a servant announced candles in the drawing-room.
Upon this Mr. Raby rose, and, without giving her any option on the matter, handed her to the door with obsolete deference.
In the drawing-room she found a harpsichord, a spinet, and a piano, all tuned expressly for her. This amused her, as she had never seen either of the two older instruments in her life. She played on them all three.
Mr. Raby had the doors thrown open to hear her.
She played some pretty little things from Mendelssohn, Spohr, and Schubert.
The gentlemen smoked and praised.
Then she found an old music-book, and played Hamlet's overture to Otho, and the minuet.
The gentlemen left off praising directly, and came silently into the room to hear the immortal melodist. But this is the rule in music; the lips praise the delicate gelatinous, the heart beats in silence at the mighty melodious.
Tea and coffee came directly afterward, and ere they were disposed of, a servant announced “The Wassailers.”
“Well, let them come in,” said Mr. Raby.
The school-children and young people of the village trooped in, and made their obeisances, and sang the Christmas Carol—
“God rest you, merry gentlemen,
Let nothing you dismay.”
Then one of the party produced an image of the Virgin and Child, and another offered comfits in a box; a third presented the wassail-cup, into which Raby immediately poured some silver, and Coventry followed his example. Grace fumbled for her purse, and, when she had found it, began to fumble in it for her silver.
But Raby lost all patience, and said, “There, I give this for the lady, and she'll pay me NEXT CHRISTMAS.”
The wassailers departed, and the Squire went to say a kind word to his humbler guests.
Miss Carden took that opportunity to ask Mr. Coventry if he had noticed the picture with its face to the wall. He said he had.
“Do you know who it is?”
“No idea.”
“Did you read the inscription?”
“No. But, if you are curious, I'll go back to the dining-room, and read it.”
“I'm afraid he might be angry. There is no excuse for going there now.”
“Send me for your pocket-handkerchief.”
“Please see whether I have left my pocket-handkerchief in the dining-room, Mr. Coventry,” said Grace, demurely.
Mr. Coventry smiled, and hurried away. But he soon came back to say that the candles were all out, the windows open, and the servants laying the cloth for supper.
“Oh, never mind, then,” said Grace; “when we go in to supper I'll look myself.”
But a considerable time elapsed before supper, and Mr. Coventry spent this time in making love rather ardently, and Grace in defending herself rather feebly.
It was nearly eleven o'clock when Mr. Raby rejoined them, and they all went in to supper. There were candles lighted on the table and a few here and there upon the walls; but the room was very somber: and Mr. Raby informed them this was to remind them of the moral darkness, in which the world lay before that great event they were about to celebrate.
He then helped each of them to a ladleful of frumety, remarking at the same time, with a grim smile, that they were not obliged to eat it; there would be a very different supper after midnight. Then a black-letter Bible was brought him, and he read it all to himself at a side-table.
After an interval of silence so passed there was a gentle tap at the bay window. Mr. Raby went and threw it open, and immediately a woman's voice, full, clear, and ringing, sang outside:
“The first Noel the angels did say,
Was to three poor shepherds, in fields as they lay,
In fields where they were keeping their sheep,
On a cold winter's night that was so deep.
Chorus.—Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel,
Born is the King of Israel.”
The chorus also was sung outside.
During the chorus one of the doors opened, and Jael Dence came in by it; and the treble singer, who was the blacksmith's sister, came in at the window, and so the two women met in the room, and sang the second verse in sweetest harmony. These two did not sing like invalids, as their more refined sisters too often do; from their broad chests, and healthy lungs, and noble throats, and above all, their musical hearts, they poured out the harmony so clear and full, that every glass in the room rang like a harp, and a bolt of ice seemed to shoot down Grace Carden's backbone; and, in the chorus, gentle George's bass was like a diapason.
“They looked up and saw a star
That shone in the East beyond them far,
And unto the earth it gave a great light,
And so it continued both day and night.
Chorus—Noel, Noel, Noel, Noel,
Born is the King of Israel.”
As the Noel proceeded, some came in at the window, others at the doors, and the lower part of the room began to fill with singers and auditors.
The Noel ended: there was a silence, during which the organ was opened, the bellows blown, and a number of servants and others came into the room with little lighted tapers, and stood, in a long row, awaiting a signal from the Squire.
He took out his watch, and, finding it was close on twelve o'clock, directed the doors to be flung open, that he might hear the great clock in the hall strike the quarters.
There was a solemn hush of expectation, that made the sensitive heart of Grace Carden thrill with anticipation.
The clock struck the first quarter—dead silence; the second—the third—dead silence.
But, at the fourth, and with the first stroke of midnight, out burst the full organ and fifty voices, with the “Gloria in excelsis Deo;” and, as that divine hymn surged on, the lighters ran along the walls and lighted the eighty candles, and, for the first time, the twelve waxen pillars, so that, as the hymn concluded, the room was in a blaze, and it was Christmas Day.
Instantly an enormous punch-bowl was brought to the host. He put his lips to it, and said, “Friends, neighbors, I wish you all a merry Christmas.” Then there was a cheer that made the whole house echo; and, by this time, the tears were running down Grace Carden's cheeks.
She turned aside, to hide her pious emotion, and found herself right opposite the picture, with this inscription, large and plain, in the blaze of light—
“GONE INTO TRADE”
If, in the middle of the pious harmony that had stirred her soul, some blaring trumpet had played a polka, in another key, it could hardly have jarred more upon her devotional frame, than did this earthly line, that glared out between two gigantic yule candles, just lighted in honor of Him, whose mother was in trade when he was born.
She turned from it with deep repugnance, and seated herself in silence at the table.
Very early in the supper she made an excuse, and retired to her room: and, as she went out, her last glance was at the mysterious picture.
She saw it again next morning at breakfast-time; but, it must be owned, with different eyes. It was no longer contrasted with a religious ceremony, and with the sentiments of gratitude and humility proper to that great occasion, when we commemorate His birth, whose mother had gone into trade. The world, and society, whose child she was, seemed now to speak with authority from the canvas, and to warn her how vain and hopeless were certain regrets, which lay secretly, I might say clandestinely, at her heart.
She revered her godfather, and it was no small nor irrelevant discovery to find that he had actually turned a picture in disgrace to the wall, because its owner had descended to the level, or probably not quite to the level, of Henry Little.
Jael Dence came up from the farm on Christmas afternoon, and almost the first word Grace spoke was to ask her if she knew whose picture that was in the dining-room. This vague description was enough for Jael. She said she could not tell for certain, but she had once heard her father say it was the Squire's own sister; but, when she had pressed him on the subject, the old man had rebuked her—told her not to meddle too much with other folks' business. “And, to be sure, Squire has his reasons, no doubt,” said Jael, rather dryly.
“The reason that is written on the back?”
“Ay: and a very poor reason too, to my mind.”
“You are not the best judge of that—excuse me for saying so. Oh dear, I wish I could see it.”
“Don't think of such a thing, miss. You can't, however, for it's padlocked down that way you could never loose it without being found out. No longer agone than last Yule-time 'twas only turned, and not fastened. But they say in the kitchen, that one day last month Squire had them all up, and said the picture had been tampered with while he was at Hillsboro'; and he scolded, and had it strapped and padlocked down as 'tis.”
The reader can imagine the effect of these fresh revelations. And a lover was at hand, of good birth, good manners, and approved by her godfather. That lover saw her inclining toward him, and omitted nothing to compliment and please her. To be sure, that was no uphill work, for he loved her better than he had ever loved a woman in his life, which was a good deal to say, in his case.
They spent Christmas Day very happily together. Church in the morning; then luncheon; then thick boots, a warmer shawl, and a little walk all together; for Mr. Raby took a middle course; since no positive engagement existed, he would not allow his fair guest to go about with Mr. Coventry alone, and so he compromised, even in village eyes; but, on the other hand, by stopping now and then to give an order, or exchange a word, he gave Coventry many opportunities, and that gentleman availed himself of them with his usual tact.
In the evening they sat round the great fire, and Mr. Raby mulled and spiced red wine by a family receipt, in a large silver saucepan; and they sipped the hot and generous beverage, and told stories and legends, the custom of the house on Christmas night. Mr. Raby was an inexhaustible repertory of ghost-stories and popular legends. But I select one that was told by Mr. Coventry, and told with a certain easy grace that gave it no little interest.
MR. COVENTRY'S TALE.
“When I was quite a child, there was a very old woman living in our village, that used to frighten me with her goggle eyes, and muttering. She passed for a witch, I think; and when she died—I was eight years old then—old people put their heads together, and told strange stories about her early life. It seems that this Molly Slater was away in service at Bollington, a village half way between our place and Hillsborough, and her fellow-servants used to quiz her because she had no sweetheart. At last, she told them to wait till next Hilisboro' fair, and they should see. And just before the fair, she reminded them of their sneers, and said she would not come home without a sweetheart, though she took the Evil one himself. For all that, she did leave the fair alone. But, as she trudged home in the dark, a man overtook her, and made acquaintance with her. He was a pleasant fellow, and told her his name was William Easton. Of course she could not see his face very well, but he had a wonderfully sweet voice. After that night, he used to court her, and sing to her, but always in the dark. He never would face a candle, though he was challenged to more than once. One night there was a terrible noise heard—it is described as if a number of men were threshing out corn upon the roof—and Molly Slater was found wedged in between the bed and the wall, in a place where there was scarcely room to put your hand. Several strong men tried to extricate her by force; but both the bed and the woman's body resisted so strangely that, at last, they thought it best to send for the parson. He was a great scholar, and himself under some suspicion of knowing more than it would be good for any less pious person to know. Well, the parson came, and took a candle that was burning, and held it to the place where poor Molly was imprisoned, and moaning; and they say he turned pale, and shivered, for all his learning. I forget what he said or did next; but by-and-by there was a colloquy in a whisper between him and some person unseen, and they say that this unseen whisper was very sweet, and something like the chords of a harp, only low and very articulate. The parson whispered, 'God gives a sinner time.' The sweet voice answered, 'He can afford to; he is the stronger.' Then the parson adjured the unseen one to wait a year and a day. But he refused, still in the gentlest voice. Then the parson said these words: 'By all we love and fear, by all you fear and hate, I adjure you to loose her, or wait till next Christmas Eve.'
“I suppose the Evil Spirit saw some trap in that proposal, for he is said to have laughed most musically. He answered, 'By all I fear and hate, I'll loose her never; but, but I'll wait for her—till the candle's burnt out;' and he chuckled most musically again.
“'Then wait to all eternity,' the parson roared; and blew the candle out directly, and held it, with his hands crossed over it.”
Grace Carden's eyes sparkled in the firelight. “Go on,” she cried, excitedly.
“The girl was loosed easily enough after that; but she was found to be in a swoon; and not the least bruised, though ten villagers had been pulling at her one after another.”
“And what became of her afterward?”
“She lived to be ninety-six, and died in my time. I think she had money left her. But she never married; and when she was old she wandered about the lanes, muttering, and frightening little boys, myself among the number. But now my little story follows another actor of the tale.”
“Oh, I'm so glad it is not over.”
“No. The parson took the candle away, and it was never seen again. But, somehow, it got wind that he had built it into the wall of the church; perhaps he didn't say so, but was only understood to say so. However, people used to look round the church for the place. And now comes the most remarkable thing of all; three years ago the present rector repaired the floor of the chancel, intending to put down encaustic tiles. Much to his surprise, the workmen found plenty of old encaustic tiles; they had been interred as rubbish at some period, when antiquity and beauty were less respected than they are now, I suppose.”
Mr. Raby broke in, “The Puritans. Barbarians! beasts! It was just like them. Well, sir—?”
“When the rector found that, he excavated more than was absolutely necessary for his purpose, and the deeper he went the more encaustic tiles. In one place they got down to the foundation, and they found an oak chest fast in the rock—a sort of channel had been cut in the rock for this chest, or rather box (for it was only about eighteen inches long), to lie in. The master mason was there luckily, and would not move it till the rector had seen it. He was sent for, but half the parish was there before him; and he tells me there were three theories firmly established and proved, before he could finish his breakfast and get to the spot. Theory of Wilder, the village grocer: 'It is treasure hidden by them there sly old monks.' Mr. Wilder is a miser, and is known to lay up money. He is, I believe, the only man left in the North Country who can show you a hundred spade guineas.”
Mr. Raby replied, energetically, “I respect him. Wilder forever! What was the next theory?”
“The skeleton of a child. I forget who propounded this; but I believe it carried the majority. But the old sexton gave it a blow. 'Nay, nay,' said he; 'them's the notions of strangers. I was born here, and my father afore me. It will be Molly Slater's candle, and naught else.' Then poor Molly's whole story came up again over the suspected box. But I am very tedious.”
“Tedious! You are delightful, and thrilling, and pray go on. The rector had the box opened?”
“On the spot.”
“Well!”
“The box went to pieces, in spite of all their care. But there was no doubt as to its contents.”
Grace exclaimed, enthusiastically, “A candle. Oh, do say a candle!”
Mr. Coventry responded, “It's awfully tempting; but I suspect the traditional part of my story is SLIGHTLY EMBELLISHED, so the historical part must be accurate. What the box did really contain, to my knowledge, was a rush-wick, much thicker than they are made nowadays: and this rush-wick was impregnated with grease, and even lightly coated with a sort of brown wafer-like paste. The rector thinks it was a combination of fine dust from the box with the original grease. He shall show it you, if you are curious to see it.”
“Of course we are curious. Oh, Mr. Raby, what a strange story. And how well he told it.”
“Admirably. We must drink his health.”
“I'll wish it him instead, because I require all my reason just now to understand his story. And I don't understand it, after all. There: you found the candle, and so it is all true. But what does the rector think?”
“Well, he says there is no connection whatever between the rush-wick and—”
“Don't tell her what HE says,” cried Raby, with a sudden fury that made Grace start and open her eyes. “I know the puppy. He is what is called a divine nowadays; but used to be called a skeptic. There never was so infidel an age. Socinus was content to prove Jesus Christ a man; but Renan has gone and proved him a Frenchman. Nothing is so gullible as an unbeliever. The right reverend father in God, Cocker, has gnawed away the Old Testament: the Oxford doctors are nibbling away the New: nothing escapes but the apocrypha: yet these same skeptics believe the impudent lies, and monstrous arithmetic of geology, which babbles about a million years, a period actually beyond the comprehension of the human intellect; and takes up a jaw-bone, that some sly navvy has transplanted over-night from the churchyard into Lord knows what stratum, fees the navvy, gloats over the bone, and knocks the Bible down with it. No, Mr. Coventry, your story is a good one, and well told; don't let us defile it with the comments of a skeptical credulous pedant. Fill your glass, sir. Here's to old religion, old stories, old songs, old houses, old wine, old friends, or” (recovering himself with admirable grace) “to new friends that are to be old ones ere we die. Come, let the stronger vessel drink, and the weaker vessel sip, and all say together, after me—
“Well may we all be,
Ill may we never see,
That make good company,
Beneath the roof of Raby.”
When this rude rhyme had been repeated in chorus, there was a little silence, and the conversation took a somewhat deeper tone. It began through Grace asking Mr. Raby, with all the simplicity of youth, whether he had ever seen anything supernatural with his own eyes. “For instance,” said she, “this deserted church of yours, that you say the shepherd said he saw on fire—did YOU see that?”
“Not I. Indeed, the church is not in sight from here. No, Grace, I never saw any thing supernatural: and I am sorry for it, for I laugh at people's notion that a dead man has any power to injure the living; how can a cold wind come from a disembodied spirit? I am all that a ghost is, and something more; and I only wish I COULD call the dead from their graves; I'd soon have a dozen gentlemen and ladies out of that old church-yard into this very room. And, if they would only come, you would see me converse with them as civilly and as calmly as I am doing with you. The fact is, I have some questions to put, which only the dead can answer—passages in the family correspondence, referring to things I can't make out for the life of me.”
“Oh, Mr. Raby, pray don't talk in this dreadful way, for fear they should be angry and come.” And Grace looked fearfully round over her shoulder.
Mr. Raby shook his head; and there was a dead silence.
Mr. Raby broke it rather unexpectedly. “But,” said he, gravely, “if I have seen nothing, I've heard something. Whether it was supernatural, I can't say; but, at least, it was unaccountable and terrible. I have heard THE GABRIEL HOUNDS.”
Mr. Coventry and Grace looked at one another, and then inquired, almost in a breath, what the Gabriel hounds were.
“A strange thing in the air that is said, in these parts, to foretell calamity.”
“Oh dear!” said Grace, “this is thrilling again; pray tell us.”
“Well, one night I was at Hillsborough on business, and, as I walked by the old parish church, a great pack of beagles, in full cry, passed close over my head.”
“Oh!”
“Yes; they startled me, as I never was startled in my life before. I had never heard of the Gabriel hounds then, and I was stupefied. I think I leaned against the wall there full five minutes, before I recovered myself, and went on.”
“Oh dear! But did any thing come of it?”
“You shall judge for yourself. I had left a certain house about an hour and a half: there was trouble in that house, but only of a pecuniary kind. To tell the truth, I came back with some money for them, or rather, I should say, with the promise of it. I found the wife in a swoon: and, upstairs, her husband lay dead by his own hand.”
“Oh, my poor godpapa!” cried Grace, flinging her arm tenderly round his neck.
“Ay, my child, and the trouble did not end there. Insult followed; ingratitude; and a family feud, which is not healed yet, and never will be—till she and her brat come on their knees to me.”
Mr. Raby had no sooner uttered these last words with great heat, than he was angry with himself. “Ah!” said he, “the older a man gets, the weaker. To think of my mentioning that to you young people!” And he rose and walked about the room in considerable agitation and vexation. “Curse the Gabriel hounds! It is the first time I have spoken of them since that awful night; it is the last I ever will speak of them. What they are, God, who made them, knows. Only I pray I may never hear them again, nor any friend of mine.”
Next morning Jael Dence came up to the hall, and almost the first question Grace asked her was, whether she had ever heard of the Gabriel hounds.
Jael looked rather puzzled. Grace described them after Mr. Raby.
“Why, that will be Gabble Retchet,” said Jael. “I wouldn't talk much about the like, if I was you, miss.”
But Grace persisted, and, at last, extracted from her that sounds had repeatedly been heard in the air at night, as of a pack of hounds in full cry, and that these hounds ran before trouble. “But,” said Jael, solemnly, “they are not hounds at all; they are the souls of unbaptized children, wandering in the air till the day of judgment.”
This description, however probable, had the effect of making Grace disbelieve the phenomenon altogether, and she showed her incredulity by humming a little air.
But Jael soon stopped that. “Oh, miss, pray don't do so. If you sing before breakfast, you'll cry before supper.”
At breakfast, Mr. Coventry invited Miss Carden to go to the top of Cairnhope Peak, and look over four counties. He also told her she could see Bollinghope house, his own place, very well from the Peak.
Grace assented: and, immediately after breakfast, begged Jael to be in the way to accompany her. She divined, with feminine quickness, that Mr. Coventry would be very apt, if he pointed out Bollinghope House to her from the top of a mountain, to say, “Will you be its mistress?” but, possibly, she did not wish to be hurried, or it may have been only a mere instinct, an irrational impulse of self-defense, with which the judgment had nothing to do; or perhaps it was simple modesty. Any way, she engaged Jael to be of the party.
It was talked of again at luncheon, and then Mr. Raby put in a word. “I have one stipulation to make, young people, and that is that you go up the east side, and down the same way. It is all safe walking on that side. I shall send you in my four-wheel to the foot of the hill, and George will wait for you there at the 'Colley Dog' public-house, and bring you home again.”
This was, of course, accepted with thanks, and the four-wheel came round at two o'clock. Jael was seated in front by the side of George, who drove; Mr. Coventry and Grace, behind. He had his fur-cloak to keep his companion warm on returning from the hill; but Mr. Raby, who did nothing by halves, threw in some more wraps, and gave a warm one to Jael; she was a favorite with him, as indeed were all the Dences.
They started gayly, and rattled off at a good pace. Before they had got many yards on the high-road, they passed a fir-plantation, belonging to Mr. Raby, and a magpie fluttered out of this, and flew across the road before them.
Jael seized the reins, and pulled them so powerfully, she stopped the pony directly. “Oh, the foul bird!” she cried, “turn back! turn back!”
“What for?” inquired Mr. Coventry.
“We shall meet with trouble else. One magpie! and right athwart us too.”
“What nonsense!” said Grace.
“Nay, nay, it is not; Squire knows better. Wait just one minute, till I speak to Squire.” She sprang from the carriage with one bound, and, holding up her dress with one hand, ran into the house like a lapwing.
“The good, kind, silly thing!” said Grace Carden.
Jael soon found Mr. Raby, and told him about the magpie, and begged him to come out and order them back.
But Mr. Raby smiled, and shook his head. “That won't do. Young ladies and gentlemen of the present day don't believe in omens.”
“But you do know better, sir. I have heard father say you were going into Hillsborough with him one day, and a magpie flew across, and father persuaded you to turn back.”
“That is true; he was going in to buy some merino sheep, and I to deposit my rents in Carrington's bank. Next day the bank broke. And the merino sheep all died within the year. But how many thousand times does a magpie cross us and nothing come of it? Come, run away, my good girl, and don't keep them waiting.”
Jael obeyed, with a sigh. She went back to her party—they were gone. The carriage was just disappearing round a turn in the road. She looked at it with amazement, and even with anger. It seemed to her a brazen act of bad faith.
“I wouldn't have believed it of her,” said she, and went back to the house, mortified and grieved. She did not go to Mr. Raby again; but he happened to catch sight of her about an hour afterward, and called to her—“How is this, Jael? Have you let them go alone, because of a magpie?” And he looked displeased.
“Nay, sir: she gave me the slip, while I went to speak to you for her good; and I call it a dirty trick, saving your presence. I told her I'd be back in a moment.”
“Oh, it is not her doing, you may be sure; it is the young gentleman. He saw a chance to get her alone, and of course he took it. I am not very well pleased; but I suppose she knows her own mind. It is to be a marriage, no doubt.” He smoothed it over, but was a little put out, and stalked away without another word: he had said enough to put Jael's bosom in a flutter, and open a bright prospect to her heart; Miss Carden once disposed of in marriage, what might she not hope? She now reflected, with honest pride, that she had merited Henry's love by rare unselfishness. She had advised him loyally, had even co-operated with him as far as any poor girl, with her feelings for him, could do; and now Mr. Coventry was going to propose marriage to her rival, and she believed Miss Carden would say “yes,” though she could not in her heart believe that even Miss Carden did not prefer the other. “Ay, lad,” said she, “if I am to win thee, I'll be able to say I won thee fair.”
These sweet thoughts and hopes soon removed her temporary anger, and nothing remained to dash the hopeful joy that warmed that large and loyal heart this afternoon, except a gentle misgiving that Mr. Coventry might make Grace a worse husband than she deserved. It was thus she read the magpie, from three o'clock till six that afternoon.
When a man and a woman do any thing wrong, it is amusing to hear the judgments of other men and women thereupon. The men all blame the man, and the women all the woman. That is judgment, is it not?
But in some cases our pitch-farthing judgments must be either heads or tails; so Mr. Raby, who had cried heads, when a Mrs. Raby would have cried “woman,” was right; it WAS Mr. Coventry, and not Miss Carden, who leaned over to George, and whispered, “A sovereign, to drive on without her! Make some excuse.”
The cunning Yorkshire groom's eye twinkled at this, and he remained passive a minute or two: then, said suddenly, with well-acted fervor, “I can't keep the pony waiting in the cold, like this;” applied the whip, and rattled off with such decision, that Grace did not like to interfere, especially as George was known to be one of those hard masters, an old servant.
So, by this little ruse, Mr. Coventry had got her all to himself for the afternoon. And now she felt sure he would propose that very day.
She made no movement whatever either to advance or to avoid the declaration.
It is five miles from Raby Hall, through Cairnhope village, to the eastern foot of Cairnhope; and while George rattles them over the hard and frosty road, I will tell the reader something about this young gentleman, who holds the winning cards.
Mr. Frederick Coventry was a man of the world. He began life with a good estate, and a large fund accumulated during his minority.
He spent all the money in learning the world at home and abroad; and, when it was all gone, he opened one eye.
But, as a man cannot see very clear with a single orb, he exchanged rouge-et-noir, etc., for the share-market, and, in other respects, lived as fast as ever, till he had mortgaged his estate rather heavily. Then he began to open both eyes.
Next, he fell in love with Grace Carden; and upon that he opened both eyes very wide, and wished very much he had his time to live over again.
Nevertheless, he was not much to be pitied. He had still an estate which, with due care, could pay off its incumbrances; and he had gathered some valuable knowledge. He knew women better than most men, and he knew whist profoundly. Above all, he had acquired what Voltaire justly calls “le grand art de plaire;” he had studied this art, as many women study it, and few men. Why, he even watched the countenance, and smoothed the rising bristles of those he wished to please, or did not wish to displease. This was the easier to him that he had no strong convictions on any great topic. It is your plaguy convictions that make men stubborn and disagreeable.
A character of this kind is very susceptible, either of good or evil influences; and his attachment to Grace Carden was turning him the right way.
Add to this a good figure and a distinguished air, and you have some superficial idea of the gentleman toward whom Grace Carden found herself drawn by circumstances, and not unwillingly, though not with that sacred joy and thrill which marks a genuine passion.
They left George and the trap at the “Colley Dog,” and ascended the mountain. There were no serious difficulties on this side; but still there were little occasional asperities, that gave the lover an opportunity to offer his arm; and Mr. Coventry threw a graceful devotion even into this slight act of homage. He wooed her with perfect moderation at first; it was not his business to alarm her at starting; he proceeded gradually; and, by the time they had reached the summit, he had felt his way, and had every reason to hope she would accept him.
At the summit the remarkable beauty of the view threw her into raptures, and interrupted the more interesting topic on which he was bent.
But the man of the world showed no impatience (I don't say he felt none); he answered all Grace's questions, and told her what all the places were.
But, by-and-by, the atmosphere thickened suddenly in that quarter, and he then told her gently he had something to show her on the other side of the knob.
He conducted her to a shed the shepherds had erected, and seated her on a rude bench. “You must be a little tired,” he said.
Then he showed her, in the valley, one of those delightful old red brick houses, with white stone facings. “That is Bollinghope.”
She looked at it with polite interest.
“Do you like it?”
“Very much. It warms the landscape so.”
He expected a more prosaic answer; but he took her cue. “I wish it was a great deal prettier than it is, and its owner a much better man; richer—wiser—”
“You are hard to please, Mr. Coventry.”
“Miss Carden—Grace—may I call you Grace?”
“It seems to me you have done it.”
“But I had no right.”
“Then, of course, you will never do it again.”
“I should be very unhappy if I thought that. Miss Carden, I think you know how dear you are to me, and have been ever since I first met you. I wish I had ten times more to offer you than I have. But I am only a poor gentleman, of good descent, but moderate means, as you see.” Comedie! (Bollinghope was the sort of house that generally goes with L5000 a year at least.)
“I don't care about your means, Mr. Coventry,” said Grace, with a lofty smile. “It is your amiable character that I esteem.”
“You forgive me for loving you; for hoping that you will let me lead you to my poor house there, as my adored wife?”
It had come; and, although she knew it was coming, yet her face was dyed with blushes.
“I esteem you very much,” she faltered. “I thank you for the honor you do me; but I—oh, pray, let me think what I am doing.” She covered her face with her hands, and her bosom panted visibly.
Mr. Coventry loved her sincerely, and his own heart beat high at this moment. He augured well from her agitation; but presently he saw something that puzzled him, and gave a man of his experience a qualm.
A tear forced its way between her fingers; another, and another, soon followed.
Coventry said to himself, “There's some other man.” And he sighed heavily; but even in this moment of true and strong feeling he was on his guard, and said nothing.
It was his wisest course. She was left to herself, and an amazing piece of female logic came to Mr. Coventry's aid. She found herself crying, and got frightened at herself. That, which would have made a man pause, had just the opposite effect on her. She felt that no good could come to any body of those wild and weak regrets that made her weep. She saw she had a weakness and a folly to cure herself of; and the cure was at hand. There was a magic in marriage; a gentleman could, somehow, MAKE a girl love him when once she had married him. Mr. Coventry should be enabled to make her love him; he should cure her of this trick of crying; it would be the best thing for every body—for HIM, for Jael, for Mr. Coventry, and even for herself.
She dried her eyes, and said, in a low, tremulous voice: “Have you spoken to papa of—of this?”
“No. I waited to be authorized by you. May I speak to him?”
“Yes.”
“May I tell him—?”
“Oh I can't tell you what to tell him. How dark it is getting. Please take me home.” Another tear or two.
Then, if Coventry had not loved her sincerely, and also been a man of the world, he would have lost his temper; and if he had lost his temper, he would have lost the lady, for she would have seized the first fair opportunity to quarrel. But no, he took her hand gently, and set himself to comfort her. He poured out his love to her, and promised her a life of wedded happiness. He drew so delightful a picture of their wedded life, and in a voice so winning, that she began to be consoled, and her tears ceased.
“I believe you love me,” she murmured; “and I esteem you sincerely.”
Mr. Coventry drew a family ring from his pocket. It was a sapphire of uncommon beauty.
“This was my mother's,” said he. “Will you do me the honor to wear it, as a pledge?”
But the actual fetter startled her, I think. She started up, and said, “Oh, please take me home first! IT IS GOING TO SNOW.”
Call her slippery, if you don't like her; call her unhappy and wavering, if you do like her.
Mr. Coventry smiled now at this attempt to put off the inevitable, and complied at once.
But, before they had gone a hundred yards, the snow did really fall, and so heavily that the air was darkened.
“We had better go back to the shed till it is over,” said Mr. Coventry.
“Do you think so?” said Grace, doubtfully. “Well.”
And they went back.
But the snow did not abate, and the air got darker. So, by-and-by, Grace suggested that Mr. Coventry should run down the hill, and send George up to her with an umbrella.
“What, and leave you alone?” said he.
“Well, then, we had better go together.”
They started together.
By this time the whole ground was covered about three inches deep; not enough to impede their progress; but it had the unfortunate effect of effacing the distinct features of the ground; and, as the declining sun could no longer struggle successfully through the atmosphere, which was half air, half snow, they were almost in darkness, and soon lost their way. They kept slanting unconsciously to the left, till they got over one of the forks of the mountain and into a ravine: they managed to get out of that, and continued to descend; for the great thing they had to do was to reach the valley, no matter where.
But, after a long laborious, and even dangerous descent, they found themselves beginning to ascend. Another mountain or hill barred their progress. Then they knew they must be all wrong, and began to feel rather anxious. They wished they had stayed up on the hill.
They consulted together, and agreed to go on for the present; it might be only a small rise in the ground.
And so it proved. After a while they found themselves descending again.
But now the path was full of pitfalls, hidden by the snow and the darkness.
Mr. Coventry insisted on going first.
In this order they moved cautiously on, often stumbling.
Suddenly Mr. Coventry disappeared with a sudden plunge, and rolled down a ravine, with a loud cry.
Grace stood transfixed with terror.
Then she called to him.
There was no answer.
She called again.
A faint voice replied that he was not much hurt, and would try to get back to her.
This, however, was impossible, and all he could do was to scramble along the bottom of the ravine.
Grace kept on the high ground, and they called to each other every moment. They seemed to be a long way from each other; yet they were never sixty yards apart. At last the descent moderated, and Grace rejoined him.
Then they kept in the hollow for some time, but at last found another acclivity to mount: they toiled up it, laden with snow, yet perspiring profusely with the exertion of toiling uphill through heather clogged with heavy snow.
They reached the summit, and began to descend again. But now their hearts began to quake. Men had been lost on Cairnhope before to-day, and never found alive: and they were lost on Cairnhope; buried in the sinuosities of the mountain, and in a tremendous snowstorm.
They wandered and staggered, sick at heart; since each step might be for the worse.
They wandered and staggered, miserably; and the man began to sigh, and the woman to cry.
At last they were so exhausted, they sat down in despair: and, in a few minutes, they were a couple of snow-heaps.
Mr. Coventry was the first to see all the danger they ran by this course.
“For God's sake, let us go on!” he said; “if we once get benumbed, we are lost. We MUST keep moving, till help comes to us.”
Then they staggered, and stumbled on again, till they both sank into a deep snow-drift.
They extricated themselves, but, oh, when they felt that deep cold snow all round them, it was a foretaste of the grave.
The sun had set, it was bitterly cold, and still the enormous flakes fell, and doubled the darkness of the night.
They staggered and stumbled on, not now with any hope of extricating themselves from the fatal mountain, but merely to keep the blood alive in their veins. And, when they were exhausted, they sat down, and soon were heaps of snow.
While they sat thus, side by side, thinking no more of love, or any other thing but this: should they ever see the sun rise, or sit by a fireside again? suddenly they heard a sound in the air behind them, and, in a moment, what seemed a pack of hounds in full cry passed close over their heads.
They uttered a loud cry.
“We are saved!” cried Grace. “Mr. Raby is hunting us with his dogs. That was the echo.”
Coventry groaned. “What scent would lie?” said he. “Those hounds were in the air; a hundred strong.”
Neither spoke for a moment, and then it was Grace who broke the terrible silence.
“THE GABRIEL HOUNDS!”
“The Gabriel hounds; that run before calamity! Mr. Coventry, there's nothing to be done now, but to make our peace with God. For you are a dead man, and I'm a dead woman. My poor papa! poor Mr. Little!”
She kneeled down on the snow, and prayed patiently, and prepared to deliver up her innocent soul to Him who gave it.
Not so her companion. He writhed away from death. He groaned, he sighed, he cursed, he complained. What was Raby thinking of, to let them perish?
Presently he shouted out—“I'll not die this dog's death, I will not. I'll save myself, and come back for you.”
The girl prayed on, and never heeded him.
But he was already on his feet, and set off to run: and he actually did go blundering on for a furlong and more, and fell into a mountain-stream, swollen by floods, which whirled him along with it like a feather, it was not deep enough to drown him by submersion, but it rolled him over and over again, and knocked him against rocks and stones, and would infallibly have destroyed him, but that a sudden sharp turn in the current drove him, at last, against a projecting tree, which he clutched, and drew himself out with infinite difficulty. But when he tried to walk, his limbs gave way; and he sank fainting on the ground, and the remorseless snow soon covered his prostrate body.
All this time, Grace Carden was kneeling on the snow, and was, literally a heap of snow. She was patient and composed now, and felt a gentle sleep stealing over.
That sleep would have been her death.
But, all of a sudden something heavy touched her clothes, and startled her, and two dark objects passed her.
They were animals.
In a moment it darted through her mind that animals are wiser than man in some things. She got up with difficulty, for her limbs were stiffened, and followed them.
The dark forms struggled on before. They knew the ground, and soon took her to the edge of that very stream into which Coventry had fallen.
They all three went within a yard of Mr. Coventry, and still they pursued their way; and Grace hoped they were making for some shelter. She now called aloud to Mr. Coventry, thinking he must be on before her. But he had not recovered his senses.
Unfortunately, the cry startled the sheep, and they made a rush, and she could not keep up with them: she toiled, she called, she prayed for strength; but they left her behind, and she could see their very forms no more. Then she cried out in agony, and still, with that power of self-excitement, which her sex possess in an eminent degree, she struggled on and on, beyond her strength till, at last, she fell down from sheer exhaustion, and the snow fell fast upon her body.
But, even as she lay, she heard a tinkling. She took it for sheep-bells, and started up once more, and once more cried to Mr. Coventry; and this time he heard her, and shook off his deadly lethargy, and tried to hobble toward her voice.
Meantime, Grace struggled toward the sound, and lo, a light was before her, a light gleaming red and dullish in the laden atmosphere. With her remnant of life and strength, she dashed at it, and found a wall in her way. She got over it somehow, and saw the light quite close, and heard the ringing of steel on steel.
She cried out for help, for she felt herself failing. She tottered along the wall of the building, searching for a door. She found the porch. She found the church door. But by this time she was quite spent; her senses reeled; her cry was a moan.
She knocked once with her hands. She tried to knock again; but the door flew suddenly open, and, in the vain endeavor to knock again, her helpless body, like a pillar of snow, fell forward; but Henry Little caught her directly, and then she clutched him feebly, by mere instinct.
He uttered a cry of love and alarm. She opened her filmy eyes, and stared at him. Her cold neck and white cheek rested on his bare and glowing arm.
The moment he saw it was really Grace Carden that had fallen inanimate into his arms, Henry Little uttered a loud cry of love and terror, and, putting his other sinewy arm under her, carried her swiftly off to his fires, uttering little moans of fear and pity as he went; he laid her down by the fire, and darted to the forge, and blew it to a white heat; and then darted back to her, and kissed her cold hands with pretty moans of love; and then blew up the other fires; and then back to her, and patted her hands, and kissed them with all his soul, and drew them to his bosom to warm them; and drew her head to his heart to warm her; and all with pretty moans of love, and fear, and pity; and the tears rained out of his eyes at sight of her helpless condition, and the tears fell upon her brow and her hands; and all this vitality and love soon electrified her; she opened her eyes, and smiled faintly, but such a smile, and murmured, “It's you,” and closed her eyes again.
Then he panted out, “Yes, it is I,—a friend. I won't hurt you—I won't tell you how I love you any more—only live! Don't give way. You shall marry who you like. You shall never be thwarted, nor worried, nor made love to again; only be brave and live; don't rob the world of the only angel that is in it. Have mercy, and live! I'll never ask more of you than that. Oh, how pale! I am frightened. Cursed fires, have you no warmth IN you?” And he was at the bellows again. And the next moment back to her, imploring her, and sighing over her, and saying the wildest, sweetest, drollest things, such as only those who love can say, in moments when hearts are bursting.
How now? Her cheek that was so white is pink—pinker—red—scarlet. She is blushing.
She had closed her eyes at love's cries. Perhaps she was not altogether unwilling to hear that divine music of the heart, so long as she was not bound to reply and remonstrate—being insensible.
But now she speaks, faintly, but clearly, “Don't he frightened. I promise not to die. Pray don't cry so.” Then she put out her hand to him, and turned her head away, and cried herself, gently, but plenteously.
Henry, kneeling by her, clasped the hand she lent him with both his, and drew it to his panting heart in ecstasy.
Grace's cheeks were rosy red.
They remained so a little while in silence.
Henry's heart was too full of beatitude to speak. He drew her a little nearer to the glowing fires, to revive her quite; but still kneeled by her, and clasped her hand to his heart. She felt it beat, and turned her blushing brow away, but made no resistance: she was too weak.
“Halloo!” cried a new voice, that jarred with the whole scene; and Mr. Coventry hobbled in sight. He gazed in utter amazement on the picture before him.
Grace snatched her hand from Henry, and raised herself with a vigor that contrasted with her late weakness. “Oh, it is Mr. Coventry. How wicked of me to forget him for a moment. Thank Heaven you are alive. Where have you been?”
“I fell into the mountain stream, and it rolled me down, nearly to here. I think I must have fainted on the bank. I found myself lying covered with snow; it was your beloved voice that recalled me to life.”
Henry turned yellow, and rose to his feet.
Grace observed him, and replied, “Oh, Mr. Coventry, this is too high-flown. Let us both return thanks to the Almighty, who has preserved us, and, in the next place, to Mr. Little: we should both be dead but for him.” Then, before he could reply, she turned to Little, and said, beseechingly, “Mr. Coventry has been the companion of my danger.”
“Oh, I'll do the best I can for him,” said Henry, doggedly. “Draw nearer the fire, sir.” He then put some coal on the forge, and blew up an amazing fire: he also gave the hand-bellows to Mr. Coventry, and set him to blow at the small grates in the mausoleum. He then produced a pair of woolen stockings. “Now, Miss Carden,” said he, “just step into that pew, if you please, and make a dressing-room of it.”
She demurred, faintly, but he insisted, and put her into the great pew, and shut her in.
“And now, please take off your shoes and stockings, and hand them over the pew to me.”
“Oh, Mr. Little: you are giving yourself so much trouble.”
“Nonsense. Do what you are bid.” He said this a little roughly.
“I'll do whatever YOU bid me,” said she, meekly: and instantly took off her dripping shoes, and stockings, and handed them over the pew. She received, in return, a nice warm pair of worsted stockings.
“Put on these directly,” said he, “while I warm your shoes.”
He dashed all the wet he could out of the shoes, and, taking them to the forge, put hot cinders in: he shook the cinders up and down the shoes so quickly, they had not time to burn, but only to warm and dry them. He advised Coventry to do the same, and said he was sorry he had only one pair of stockings to lend. And that was a lie: for he was glad he had only one pair to lend. When he had quite dried the shoes, he turned round, and found Grace was peeping over the pew, and looking intolerably lovely in the firelight. He kissed the shoes furtively, and gave them to her. She shook her head in a remonstrating way, but her eyes filled.
He turned away, and, rousing all his generous manhood, said, “Now you must both eat something, before you go.” He produced a Yorkshire pie, and some bread, and a bottle of wine. He gave Mr. Coventry a saucepan, and set him to heat the wine; then turned up his sleeves to the shoulder, blew his bellows, and, with his pincers, took a lath of steel and placed it in the white embers. “I have only got one knife, and you won't like to eat with that. I must forge you one apiece.”
Then Grace came out, and stood looking on, while he forged knives, like magic, before the eyes of his astonished guests. Her feet were now as warm as a toast, and her healthy young body could resist all the rest. She stood, with her back to the nearest pew, and her hands against the pew too, and looked with amazement, and dreamy complacency, at the strange scene before her: a scene well worthy of Salvator Rosa; though, in fact, that painter never had the luck to hit on so variegated a subject.
Three broad bands of light shot from the fires, expanding in size, but weakening in intensity. These lights, and the candles at the west end, revealed in a strange combination the middle ages, the nineteenth century, and eternal nature.
Nature first. Snow gleaming on the windows. Oh, it was cozy to see it gleam and sparkle, and to think “Aha! you all but killed me; now King Fire warms both thee and me.” Snow-flakes, of enormous size, softly descending, and each appearing a diamond brooch, as it passed through the channels of fiery light.
The middle ages. Massive old arches, chipped, and stained; a moldering altar-piece, dog's-eared (Henry had nailed it up again all but the top corner, and in it still faintly gleamed the Virgin's golden crown). Pulpit, richly carved, but moldering: gaunt walls, streaked and stained by time. At the west end, one saint—the last of many—lit by two candles, and glowing ruby red across the intervening gulf of blackness: on the nearest wall an inscription, that still told, in rusty letters, how Giles de la Beche had charged his lands with six merks a year forever, to buy bread and white watered herrings, the same to be brought into Cairnhope Church every Sunday in Lent, and given to two poor men and four women; and the same on Good Friday with a penny dole, and, on that day, the clerk to toll the bell at three of the clock after noon, and read the lamentation of a sinner, and receive one groat.
Ancient monuments, sculptures with here an arm gone, and here a head, that yet looked half-alive in the weird and partial light.
And between one of those mediaeval sculptures, and that moldering picture of the Virgin, stood a living horse, munching his corn; and in the foreground was a portable forge, a mausoleum turned into fires and hot plate, and a young man, type of his century, forging table-knives amidst the wrecks of another age.
When Grace had taken in the whole scene with wonder, her eye was absorbed by this one figure, a model of manly strength, and skill, and grace. How lightly he stepped: how easily his left arm blew the coals to a white heat, with blue flames rising from them. How deftly he drew out the white steel. With what tremendous force his first blows fell, and scattered hot steel around. Yet all that force was regulated to a hair—he beat, he molded, he never broke. Then came the lighter blows; and not one left the steel as it found it. In less than a minute the bar was a blade, it was work incredibly unlike his method in carving; yet, at a glance, Grace saw it was also perfection, but in an opposite style. In carving, the hand of a countess; in forging, a blacksmith's arm.
She gazed with secret wonder and admiration; and the comparison was to the disadvantage of Mr. Coventry; for he sat shivering, and the other seemed all power. And women adore power.
When Little had forged the knives and forks, and two deep saucers, with magical celerity, he plunged them into water a minute, and they hissed; he sawed off the rim of a pew, and fitted handles.
Then he washed his face and hands, and made himself dry and glowing; let down his sleeves, and served them some Yorkshire pie, and bread, and salt, and stirred a little sugar into the wine, and poured it into the saucers.
“Now eat a bit, both of you, before you go.”
Mr. Coventry responded at once to the invitation.
But Grace said, timidly, “Yes, if you will eat with us.”
“No, no,” said he. “I've not been perished with snow, nor rolled in a river.”
Grace hesitated still; but Coventry attacked the pie directly. It was delicious. “By Jove, sir,” said he, “you are the prince of blacksmiths.”
“Blacksmiths!” said Grace, coloring high. But Little only smiled satirically.
Grace, who was really faint with hunger, now ate a little; and then the host made her sip some wine.
The food and wine did Mr. Coventry so much good, that he began to recover his superiority, and expressed his obligations to Henry in a tone which was natural, and not meant to be offensive; but yet, it was so, under all the circumstances: there was an underlying tone of condescension, it made Grace fear he would offer Henry his purse at leaving.
Henry himself writhed under it; but said nothing. Grace, however, saw his ire, his mortification, and his jealousy in his face, and that irritated her; but she did not choose to show either of the men how much it angered her.
She was in a most trying situation, and all the woman's wit and tact were keenly on their guard.
What she did was this; she did not utter one word of remonstrance, but she addressed most of her remarks to Mr. Little; and, though the remarks were nothing in themselves, she contrived to throw profound respect into them. Indeed, she went beyond respect. She took the tone of an inferior addressing a superior.
This was nicely calculated to soothe Henry, and also to make Coventry, who was a man of tact, change his own manner.
Nor was it altogether without that effect. But then it annoyed Coventry, and made him wish to end it.
After a while he said, “My dear Grace, it can't be far from Raby Hall. I think you had better let me take you home at once.”
Grace colored high, and bit her lip.
Henry was green with jealous anguish.
“Are you quite recovered yourself?” said Grace, demurely, to Mr. Coventry.
“Quite; thanks to this good fellow's hospitality.”
“Then WOULD you mind going to Raby, and sending some people for me? I really feel hardly equal to fresh exertion just yet.”
This proposal brought a flush of pleasure to Henry's cheek, and mortified Mr. Coventry cruelly in his turn.
“What, go and leave you here? Surely you can not be serious.”
“Oh, I don't wish you to leave me. Only you seemed in a hurry.”
Henry was miserable again.
Coventry did not let well alone, he alluded delicately but tenderly to what had passed between them, and said he could not bear her out of his sight until she was safe at Raby. The words and the tone were those of a lover, and Henry was in agony: thereupon Grace laughed it off, “Not bear me out of your sight!” said she. “Why, you ran away from me, and tumbled into the river. Ha! ha! ha! And” (very seriously) “we should both be in another world but for Mr. Little.”
“You are very cruel,” said Mr. Coventry. “When you gave up in despair, I ran for help. You punish me for failure; punish me savagely.”
“Yes, I was ungenerous,” said Grace. “Forgive me.” But she said it rather coolly, and not with a very penitent air.
She added an explanation more calculated to please Henry than him. “Your gallantry is always graceful; and it is charming, in a drawing-room; but in this wild place, and just after escaping the grave, let us talk like sensible people. If you and I set out for Raby Hall alone, we shall lose our way again, and perish, to a certainty. But I think Mr. Little must know the way to Raby Hall.”
“Oh, then,” said Coventry, catching at her idea, “perhaps Mr. Little would add to the great obligation, under which he has laid us both, by going to Raby Hall and sending assistance hither.”
“I can't do that,” said Henry, roughly.
“And that is not at all what I was going to propose,” said Grace, quietly. “But perhaps you would be so good as to go with us to Raby Hall? Then I should feel safe; and I want Mr. Raby to thank you, for I feel how cold and unmeaning all I have said to you is; I seem to have no words.” Her voice faltered, and her sweet eyes filled.
“Miss Carden,” said the young man, gravely, “I can't do that. Mr. Raby is no friend of mine, and he is a bigoted old man, who would turn me out of this place if he knew. Come, now, when you talk about gratitude to me for not letting you be starved to death, you make me blush. Is there a man in the world that wouldn't? But this I do say; it would be rather hard if you two were to go away, and cut my throat in return; and, if you open your mouths ever so little, either of you, you WILL cut my throat. Why, ask yourselves, have I set up my workshop in such a place as this—by choice? It takes a stout heart to work here, I can tell you, and a stout heart to sleep here over dead bones.”
“I see it all. The Trades unions!”
“That is it. So, now, there are only two ways. You must promise me never to breathe a word to any living soul, or I must give up my livelihood, and leave the country.”
“What can not you trust me? Oh, Mr. Little!”
“No, no; it's this gentleman. He is a stranger to me, you know; and, you see, my life may be at stake, as well as my means.”
“Mr. Coventry is a gentleman, and a man of honor. He is incapable of betraying you.”
“I should hope so,” said Coventry. “I pledge you the word of a gentleman I will never let any human creature know that you are working here.”
“Give me your hand on that, if you please.”
Coventry gave him his hand with warmth and evident sincerity.
Young Little was reassured. “Come,” said he, “I feel I can trust you both. And, sir, Miss Carden will tell you what happened to me in Cheetham's works; and then you will understand what I risk upon your honor.”
“I accept the responsibility; and I thank you for giving me this opportunity to show you how deeply I feel indebted to you.”
“That is square enough. Well, now my mind is at ease about that, I'll tell you what I'll do; I won't take you quite to Raby Hall; but I'll take you so near to it, you can't miss it; and then I'll go back to my work.”
He sighed deeply at the lonely prospect, and Grace heard him.
“Come,” said he, almost violently, and led the way out of church. But he stayed behind to lock the door, and then joined them.
They all three went together, Grace in the middle.
There was now but little snow falling, and the air was not so thick; but it was most laborious walking, and soon Mr. Coventry, who was stiff and in pain, fell a little behind, and groaned as he hobbled on.
Grace whispered to Henry: “Be generous. He has hurt himself so.”
This made Henry groan in return. But he said nothing. He just turned back to Coventry—“You can't get on without help, sir; lean on me.”
The act was friendly, the tone surly. Coventry accepted the act, and noted the tone in his memory.
When Grace had done this, she saw Henry misunderstood it, and she was sorry, and waited an opportunity to restore the balance; but, ere one came, a bell was heard in the air; the great alarm-bell of Raby Hall.
Then faint voices were heard of people calling to each other here and there in the distance.
“What is it?” asked Grace.
Henry replied, “What should it be? The whole country is out after you. Mr Raby has sense enough for that.”
“Oh, I hope they will not see the light in the church, and find you out.”
“You are very good to think of that. Ah! There's a bonfire: and here comes a torch. I must go and quench my fires. Good-by, Miss Carden. Good-evening, sir.”
With this, he retired: but, as he went, he sighed.
Grace said to Coventry, “Oh, I forgot to ask him a question;” and ran after him. “Mr. Little!”
He heard and came back to her.
She was violently agitated. “I can't leave you so,” she said. “Give me your hand.”
He gave it to her.
“I mortified you; and you have saved me.” She took his hand, and, holding it gently in both her little palms, sobbed out,—“Oh, think of something I can do, to show my gratitude, my esteem. Pray, pray, pray.”
“Wait two years for me.”
“Oh, not that. I don't mean that.”
“That or nothing. In two years, I'll be as good a gentleman as HE is. I'm not risking my life in that church, for nothing. If you have one grain of pity or esteem for me, wait two years.”
“Incurable!” she murmured: but he was gone.
Coventry heard the prayer. That was loud and earnest enough. Her reply he could not bear.
She rejoined him, and the torch came rapidly forward.
It was carried by a lass, with her gown pinned nearly to her knees, and displaying grand and powerful limbs; she was crying, like the tenderest woman, and striding through the snow, like a young giant.
When the snow first came down, Mr. Raby merely ordered large fires to be lighted and fed in his guests' bedrooms; he feared nothing worse for them than a good wetting.
When dinner-time came, without them, he began to be anxious, and sent a servant to the little public-house, to inquire if they were there.
The servant had to walk through the snow, and had been gone about an hour, and Mr. Raby was walking nervously up and down the hall, when Jael Dence burst in at the front door, as white as a sheet, and gasped out in his face: “THE GABRIEL HOUNDS!!”
Raby ran out directly, and sure enough, that strange pack were passing in full cry over the very house. It was appalling. He was dumb with awe for a moment. Then he darted into the kitchen and ordered them to ring the great alarm-bell incessantly; then into the yard, and sent messengers to the village, and to all his tenants, and in about an hour there were fifty torches, and as many sheep-bells, directed upon Cairnhope hill; and, as men and boys came in from every quarter, to know why Raby's great alarm-bell was ringing, they were armed with torches and sent up Cairnhope.
At last the servant returned from “The Colley Dog,” with the alarming tidings that Miss Carden and Mr. Coventry had gone up the hill, and never returned. This, however, was hardly news. The Gabriel hounds always ran before calamity.
At about eleven o'clock, there being still no news of them, Jael Dence came to Mr. Raby wringing her hands. “Why do all the men go east for them?”
“Because they are on the east side.”
“How can ye tell that? They have lost their way.”
“I am afraid so,” groaned Raby.
“Then why do you send all the men as if they hadn't lost their way? East side of Cairnhope! why that is where they ought to be, but it is not where they are, man.”
“You are a good girl, and I'm a fool,” cried Raby. “Whoever comes in after this, I'll send them up by the old church.”
“Give me a torch, and I'll run myself.”
“Ay, do, and I'll put on my boots, and after you.”
Then Jael got a torch, and kilted her gown to her knees, and went striding through the snow with desperate vigor, crying as she went, for her fear was great and her hope was small, from the moment she heard the Gabriel hounds.
Owing to the torch, Grace saw her first, and uttered a little scream; a loud scream of rapture replied: the torch went anywhere, and gentle and simple were locked in each other's arms, Jael sobbing for very joy after terror, and Grace for sympathy, and also because she wanted to cry, on more accounts than one.
Another torch came on, and Jael cried triumphantly, “This way, Squire. She is here!” and kissed her violently again.
Mr. Raby came up, and took her in his arms, without a word, being broken with emotion: and, after he had shaken Coventry by both hands, they all turned homeward, and went so fast that Coventry gave in with a groan.
Then Grace told Jael what had befallen him, and just then another torch came in, held by George the blacksmith, who, at sight of the party, uttered a stentorian cheer, and danced upon the snow.
“Behave, now,” said Jael, “and here's the gentleman sore hurt in the river; Geordie, come and make a chair with me.”
George obeyed and put out his hands, with the fingers upward, Jael did the same, with the fingers downward: they took hands, and, putting their stalwart arms under Coventry, told him to fling an arm round each of their necks: he did so, and up he went; he was no more than a feather to this pair, the strongest man and woman in Cairnhope.
As they went along, he told them his adventure in the stream, and, when they heard it, they ejaculated to each other, and condoled with him kindly, and assured him he was alive by a miracle.
They reached Raby, and, in the great hall, the Squire collected his people and gave his orders. “Stop the bell. Broach a barrel of ale, and keep open house, so long as malt, and bacon, and cheese last. Turn neither body nor beast from my door this night, or may God shut His gate in your faces. Here are two guineas, George, to ring the church-bells, you and your fellows; but sup here first. Cans of hot water upstairs, for us. Lay supper, instead of dinner; brew a bowl of punch. Light all the Yule candles, as if it was Christmas eve. But first down on your knees, all of ye, whilst I thank God, who has baffled those Gabriel Hell-hounds for once, and saved a good man and a bonny lass from a dog's death.”
They all went down on their knees, on the marble floor, directly, and the Squire uttered a few words of hearty thanksgiving, and there was scarcely a dry eye.
Then the guests went upstairs, and had their hot baths, and changed their clothes, and came down to supper in the blazing room.
Whilst they were at supper, the old servant who waited on them said something in a low voice to his master. He replied that he would speak to the man in the hall.
As soon as he was gone, Miss Carden said in French, “Did you hear that?”
“No.”
“Well, I did. Now, mind your promise. We shall have to fib. You had better say nothing. Let me speak for you; ladies fib so much better than gentlemen.”
Mr. Raby came back, and Grace waited to see if he would tell her. I don't think he intended to, at first: but he observed her eyes inquiring, and said, “One of the men, who was out after you tonight, has brought in word there is a light in Cairnhope old church.”
“Do you believe it?”
“No. But it is a curious thing; a fortnight ago (I think, I told you) a shepherd brought me the same story. He had seen the church on fire; at least he said so. But mark the paralyzing effect of superstition. My present informant no sooner saw this light—probably a reflection from one of the distant torches—than he coolly gave up searching for you. 'They are dead,' says he, 'and the spirits in the old church are saying mass for their souls. I'll go to supper.' So he came here to drink my ale, and tell his cock-and-bull story.”
Grace put in her word with a sweet, candid face. “Sir, if there had been a light in that church, should we not have seen it?”
“Why, of course you would: you must have been within a hundred yards of it in your wanderings. I never thought of that.”
Grace breathed again.
“However, we shall soon know. I have sent George and another man right up to the church to look. It is quite clear now.”
Grace felt very anxious, but she forced on a careless air. “And suppose, after all, there should be a light?”
“Then George has his orders to come back and tell me; if there is a light, it is no ghost nor spirit, but some smuggler, or poacher, or vagrant, who is desecrating that sacred place; and I shall turn out with fifty men, and surround the church, and capture the scoundrel, and make an example of him.”
Grace turned cold and looked at Mr. Coventry. She surprised a twinkle of satisfaction in his eye. She never forgot it.
She sat on thorns, and was so distraite she could hardly answer the simplest question.
At last, after an hour of cruel suspense, the servant came in, and said, “George is come back, sir.”
“Oh, please let him come in here, and tell us.”
“By all means. Send him in.”
George appeared, the next moment, in the doorway. “Well?” said Mr. Raby.
“Well?” said Grace, pale, but self-possessed.
“Well,” said George, sulkily, “it is all a lie. Th' old church is as black as my hat.”
“I thought as much,” said Mr. Raby. “There, go and get your supper.”
Soon after this Grace went up to bed, and Jael came to her, and they talked by the fire while she was curling her hair. She was in high spirits, and Jael eyed her with wonder and curiosity.
“But, miss,” said Jael, “the magpie was right. Oh, the foul bird! That's the only bird that wouldn't go into the ark with Noah and his folk.”
“Indeed! I was not aware of the circumstance.”
“'Twas so, miss; and I know the reason. A very old woman told me.”
“She must have been very old indeed, to be an authority on that subject. Well, what was the reason?”
“She liked better to perch on the roof of th' ark, and jabber over the drowning world; that was why. So, ever after that, when a magpie flies across, turn back, or look to meet ill-luck.”
“That is to say the worst creatures are stronger than their Creator, and can bring us bad luck against His will. And you call yourself a Christian? Why this is Paganism. They were frightened at ravens, and you at magpies. A fig for your magpies! and another for your Gabriel hounds! God is high above them all.”
“Ay, sure; but these are signs of His will. Trouble and all comes from God. And so, whenever you see a magpie, or hear those terrible hounds—”
“Then tremble! for it is all to end in a bowl of punch, and a roaring fire; and Mr. Raby, that passes for a Tartar, being so kind to me; and me being in better spirits than I have been for ever so long.”
“Oh, miss!”
“And oh, miss, to you. Why, what is the matter? I have been in danger! Very well; am I the first? I have had an adventure! All the better. Besides, it has shown me what good hearts there are in the world, yours amongst the rest.” (Kissing her.) “Now don't interrupt, but listen to the words of the wise and their dark sayings. Excitement is a blessing. Young ladies need it more than anybody. Half the foolish things we do, it is because the old people are so stupid and don't provide us enough innocent excitement. Dancing till five is a good thing now and then; only that is too bodily, and ends in a headache, and feeling stupider than before. But to-night, what glorious excitement! Too late for dinner—drenched with snow—lost on a mountain—anxiety—fear—the Gabriel hounds—terror—despair—resignation—sudden relief—warm stockings—delightful sympathy—petted on every side—hungry—happy—fires—punch! I never lived till to-night—I never relished life till now. How could I? I never saw Death nor Danger near enough to be worth a straw.”
Jael made no attempt to arrest this flow of spirits. She waited quietly for a single pause, and then she laid her hand on the young lady's, and, fastening her eyes on her, she said quietly,—
“You have seen HIM.”
Grace Carden's face was scarlet in a moment, and she looked with a rueful imploring glance, into those great gray searching eyes of Jael Dence.
Her fine silvery tones of eloquence went off into a little piteous whine “You are very cunning—to believe in a magpie.” And she hid her blushing face in her hands. She took an early opportunity of sending this too sagacious rustic to bed.
Next day Mr. Coventry was so stiff and sore he did not come down to breakfast. But Grace Carden, though very sleepy, made her appearance, and had a most affectionate conversation with Mr. Raby. She asked leave to christen him again. “I must call you something, you know, after all this. Mr. Raby is cold. Godpapa is childish. What do you say to—'Uncle'?”
He said he should be delighted. Then she dipped her forefinger in water. He drew back with horror.
“Come, young lady,” said he, “I know it is an age of burlesque. But let us spare the sacraments, and the altar, and such trifles.”
“I am not half so wicked as you think,” said Grace. Then she wrote “Uncle” on his brow, and so settled that matter.
Mr. Coventry came down about noon, and resumed his courtship. He was very tender, spoke of the perils they had endured together as an additional tie, and pressed his suit with ardor.
But he found a great change in the lady.
Yesterday, on Cairnhope Peak, she was passive, but soft and complying. To-day she was polite, but cool, and as slippery as an eel. There was no pinning her.
And, at last, she said, “The fact is I'm thinking of our great preservation, and more inclined to pray than flirt, for once.”
“And so am I,” said the man of tact; “but what I offer is a sacred and life-long affection.”
“Oh, of course.”
“A few hours ago you did me the honor to listen to me. You even hinted I might speak to your father.”
“No, no. I only asked if you HAD spoken to him.”
“I will not contradict you. I will trust to your own candor. Dear Grace, tell me, have I been so unfortunate as to offend you since then?”
“No.”
“Have I lost your respect?”
“Oh, no.”
“Have I forfeited your good opinion?”
“Dear me, no.” (A little pettishly.)
“Then how is it that I love you better, if possible, than yesterday, and you seem not to like me so well as yesterday?”
“One is not always in the same humor.”
“Then you don't like me to-day?”
“Oh yes, but I do. And I shall always like you: if you don't tease me, and urge me too much. It is hardly fair to hurry me so; I am only a girl, and girls make such mistakes sometimes.”
“That is true; they marry on too short an acquaintance. But you have known me more than two years, and, in all that time, have I once given you reason to think that you had a rival in my admiration, my love?”
“I never watched you to see. But all that time you have certainly honored me with your attention, and I do believe you love me more than I deserve. Please do not be angry: do not be mortified. There is no occasion; I am resolved not to marry until I am of age; that is all; and where's the harm of that?”
“I will wait your pleasure; all I ask you, at present, is to relieve me of my fears, by engaging yourself to me.”
“Ah! but I have always been warned against long engagements.”
“Long engagements! Why, how old are you, may I ask?”
“Only nineteen. Give me a little time to think.”
“If I wait till you are of age, THAT WILL BE TWO YEARS.”
“Just about. I was nineteen on the 12th of December. What is the matter?”
“Oh, nothing. A sudden twinge. A man does not get rolled over sharp rocks, by a mountain torrent, for nothing.”
“No, indeed.”
“Never mind that, if I'm not to be punished in my heart as well. This resolution, not to marry for two years, is it your own idea? or has somebody put it into your head since we stood on Cairnhope, and looked at Bollinghope?”
“Please give me credit for it,” said Grace, turning very red: “it is the only sensible one I have had for a long time.”
Mr. Coventry groaned aloud, and turned very pale.
Grace said she wanted to go upstairs for her work, and so got away from him.
She turned at the door, and saw him sink into a chair, with an agony in his face that was quite new to him.
She fled to her own room, to think it all over, and she entered it so rapidly that she caught Jael crying, and rocking herself before the fire.
The moment she came in Jael got up, and affected to be very busy, arranging things; but always kept her back turned to Grace.
The young lady sat down, and leaned her cheek on her hand, and reflected very sadly and seriously on the misery she had left in the drawing-room, and the tears she had found here.
Accustomed to make others bright and happy by her bare presence, this beautiful and unselfish young creature was shocked at the misery she was sowing around her, and all for something her judgment told her would prove a chimera. And again she asked herself was she brave enough, and selfish enough, to defy her father and her godfather, whose mind was written so clearly in that terrible inscription.
She sat there, cold at heart, a long time, and at last came to a desperate resolution.
“Give me my writing-desk.”
Jael brought it her.
“Sit down there where I can see you; and don't hide your tears from me. I want to see you cry. I want every help. I wasn't born to make everybody miserable: I am going to end it.”
She wrote a little, and then she stopped, and sighed; then she wrote a little more, and stopped, and sighed. Then she burned the letter, and began again; and as she wrote, she sighed; and as she wrote on, she moaned.
And, as she wrote on, the tears began to fall upon the paper.
It was piteous to see the struggle of this lovely girl, and the patient fortitude that could sigh, and moan, and weep, yet go on doing the brave act that made her sigh, and moan, and weep.
At last, the letter was finished, and directed; and Grace put it in her bosom, and dismissed Jael abruptly, almost harshly, and sat down, cold and miserable, before the fire.
At dinner-time her eyes were so red she would not appear. She pleaded headache, and dined in her own room.
Meantime Mr. Coventry passed a bitter time.
He had heard young Little say, “Wait two years.” And now Grace was evading and procrastinating, and so, literally, obeying that young man, with all manner of false pretenses. This was a revelation, and cast back a bright light on many suspicious things he had observed in the church.
He was tortured with jealous agony. And it added to his misery that he could not see his way to any hostilities.
Little could easily be driven out of the country, for that matter; he had himself told them both how certainly that would befall him if he was betrayed to the unions. But honor and gratitude forbade this line; and Coventry, in the midst of his jealous agony, resisted that temptation fiercely, would not allow his mind even to dwell upon it for a moment.
He recalled all his experiences; and, after a sore struggle of passion, he came to some such conclusion as this: that Grace would have married him if she had not unexpectedly fallen in with Little, under very peculiar and moving circumstances; that an accident of this kind would never occur again, and he must patiently wear out the effect of it.
He had observed that in playing an uphill game of love the lover must constantly ask himself, “What should I do, were I to listen to my heart?” and having ascertained that, must do the opposite. So now Mr. Coventry grimly resolved to control his wishes for a time, to hide his jealousy, to hide his knowledge of her deceit, to hide his own anger. He would wait some months before he again asked her to marry him, unless he saw a change in her; and, meantime, he would lay himself out to please her, trusting to this, that there could be no intercourse by letter between her and a workman, and they were not likely to meet again in a hurry.
It required considerable fortitude to curb his love and jealousy, and settle on this course. But he did conquer after a hard struggle, and prepared to meet Miss Carden at dinner with artificial gayety.
But she did not appear; and that set Mr. Coventry thinking again. Why should she have a headache? He had a rooted disbelief in women's headaches. His own head had far more reason to ache, and his heart too. He puzzled himself all dinner-time about this headache, and was very bad company.
Soon after dinner he took a leaf out of her book, pretended headache, and said he should like to take a turn by himself in the air.
What he really wanted to do was to watch Miss Carden's windows, for he had all manner of ugly suspicions.
There seemed to be a strong light in the room. He could see no more.
He walked moodily up and down, very little satisfied with himself, and at last he got ashamed of his own thoughts.
“Oh, no!” he said, “she is in her room, sure enough.”
He turned his back, and strolled out into the road.
Presently he heard the rustle of a woman's dress. He stepped into the shade of the firs directly, and his heart began to beat hard.
But it was only Jael Dence. She came out within a few yards of him. She had something white in her hand, which, however, she instinctively conveyed into her bosom the moment she found herself in the moonlight. Coventry saw her do it though.
She turned to the left, and walked swiftly up the road.
Now Coventry knew nothing about this girl, except that she belonged to a class with whom money generally goes a long way. And he now asked himself whether it might not be well worth his while to enlist her sympathies on his side.
While he was coming to this conclusion, Jael, who was gliding along at a great pace, reached a turn in the road, and Mr. Coventry had to run after her to catch her.
When he got to the turn in the road, she was just going round another turn, having quickened her pace.
Coventry followed more leisurely. She might be going to meet her sweetheart; and, if so, he had better talk to her on her return.
He walked on till he saw at some distance a building, with light shining though it in a peculiar way; and now the path became very rugged and difficult. He came to a standstill, and eyed the place where his rival was working at that moment. He eyed it with a strange mixture of feelings. It had saved his life and hers, after all. He fell into another mood, and began to laugh at himself for allowing himself to be disturbed by such a rival.
But what is this? Jael Dence comes in sight again: she is making for the old church.
Coventry watched her unseen. She went to the porch, and, after she had been there some time, the door was opened just a little, then wide, and she entered the building. He saw it all in a moment: the girl was already bought by the other side, and had carried his rival a letter before his eyes.
A clandestine correspondence!
All his plans and his resolutions melted away before this discovery. There was nothing to be done but to save the poor girl from this miserable and degrading attachment, and its inevitable consequences.
He went home, pale with fury, and never once closed his eyes all night.
Next day he ordered his dog-cart early; and told Mr. Raby and Grace he was going to Hillsborough for medical advice: had a pain in his back he could not get rid of.
He called on the chief constable of Hillsborough, and asked him, confidentially, if he knew any thing about a workman called Little.
“What; a Londoner, sir? the young man that is at odds with the Trades?”
“I shouldn't wonder. Yes; I think he is. A friend of mine takes an interest in him.”
“And so do I. His case was a disgrace to the country, and to the constabulary of the place. It occurred just ten days before I came here, and it seems to me that nothing was done which ought to have been done.”
Mr. Coventry put in a question or two, which elicited from Mr. Ransome all he knew about the matter.
“Where does this Little live?” was the next inquiry.
“I don't know; but I think you could learn at Mr. Cheetham's. The only time I ever saw Little, he was walking with the foreman of those works. He was pointed out to me. A dark young man; carries himself remarkably well—doesn't look like a workman. If they don't know at Cheetham's, I'll find him out for you in twenty-four hours.”
“But this Grotait. Do you know him?”
“Oh, he is a public character. Keeps 'The Cutlers' Arms,' in Black Street.”
“I understand he repudiates all these outrages.”
“He does. But the workmen themselves are behind the scenes; and what do they call him? Why, 'Old Smitem.'”
“Ah! You are one of those who look below the surface,” said the courtier.
He then turned the conversation, and, soon after, went away. He had been adroit enough to put his questions in the languid way of a man who had no personal curiosity, and was merely discharging a commission.
Mr. Ransome, as a matter of form, took a short note of the conversation; but attached no importance to it. However, he used the means at his command to find out Little's abode. Not that Mr. Coventry had positively asked him to do it; but, his attention being thus unexpectedly called to the subject, he felt desirous to talk to Little on his own account.
Mr. Coventry went straight to “The Cutlers' Arms,” but he went slowly. A powerful contest was now going on within him; jealousy and rage urged him onward, honor and gratitude held him back. Then came his self-deceiving heart, and suggested that Miss Carden had been the first to break her promise (she had let Jael Dence into Little's secret), and that he himself was being undermined by cunning and deceit: strict notions of honor would be out of place in such a combat. Lastly, he felt it his DUTY to save Miss Carden from a degrading connection.
All these considerations, taken together, proved too strong for his good faith; and so stifled the voice of conscience, that it could only keep whispering against the deed, but not prevent it.
He went direct to “The Cutlers' Arms.” He walked into the parlor and ordered a glass of brandy-and-water, and asked if he could see Mr. Grotait, privately. Mr. Grotait came in.
“Sit down, Mr. Grotait. Will you have any thing?”
“A glass of ale, sir, if you please.”
When this had been brought, and left, and the parties were alone, Coventry asked him whether he could receive a communication under a strict promise of secrecy.
“If it is a trade matter, sir, you can trust me. A good many have.”
“Well then, I can tell you something about a workman called Little. But before I say a word, I must make two express conditions. One is, that no violence shall be used toward him; the other, that you never reveal to any human creature, it was I who told you.”
“What, is he working still?”
“My conditions, Mr. Grotait?”
“I promise you absolute secrecy, sir, as far as you are concerned. As to your other condition, the matter will work thus: if your communication should be as important as you think, I can do nothing—the man is not in the saw-trade—I shall carry the information to two other secretaries, and shall not tell them I had it from Mr. Coventry, of Bollinghope.” (Mr. Coventry started at finding himself known.) “Those gentlemen will be sure to advise with me, and I shall suggest to them to take effectual measures, but to keep it, if possible, from the knowledge of all those persons who discredit us by their violent acts.”
“Well then, on that understanding—the man works all night in a deserted church at Cairnhope; it is all up among the hills.”
Grotait turned red. “Are you sure of this?”
“Quite sure?”
“You have seen him?”
“Yes.”
“Has he a forge?”
“Yes; and bellows, and quantities of molds, and strips of steel. He is working on a large scale.”
“It shall be looked into, sir, by the proper persons. Indeed, the sooner they are informed, the better.”
“Yes, but mind, no violence. You are strong enough to drive him out of the country without that.”
“I should hope so.”
Coventry then rose, and left the place; but he had no sooner got into the street, than a sort of horror fell on him; horror of himself, distrust and dread of the consequences, to his rival but benefactor.
Almost at the door he was met by Mr. Ransome, who stopped him and gave him Little's address; he had obtained it without difficulty from Bayne.
“I am glad you reminded me, sir,” said he; “I shall call on him myself, one of these days.”
These words rang in Coventry's ears, and put him in a cold perspiration. “Fool!” thought he, “to go and ask a public officer, a man who hears every body in turn.”
What he had done disinclined him to return to Cairnhope. He made a call or two first, and loitered about, and then at last back to Raby, gnawed with misgivings and incipient remorse.
Mr. Grotait sent immediately for Mr. Parkin, Mr. Jobson, and Mr. Potter, and told them the secret information he had just received.
They could hardly believe it at first; Jobson, especially, was incredulous. He said he had kept his eye on Little, and assured them the man had gone into woodcarving, and was to be seen in the town all day.
“Ay,” said Parkin, “but this is at night; and, now I think of it, I met him t'other day, about dusk, galloping east, as hard as he could go.”
“My information is from a sure source,” said Grotait, stiffly.
Parkin.—“What is to be done?”
Jobson.—“Is he worth another strike?”
Potter.—“The time is unfavorable: here's a slap of dull trade.”
The three then put their heads together, and various plans were suggested and discussed, and, as the parties were not now before the public, that horror of gunpowder, vitriol, and life-preservers, which figured in their notices and resolutions, did not appear in their conversation. Grotait alone was silent and doubtful. This Grotait was the greatest fanatic of the four, and, like all fanatics, capable of vast cruelty: but his cruelty lay in his head, rather than in his heart. Out of Trade questions, the man, though vain and arrogant, was of a genial and rather a kindly nature; and, even in Trade questions, being more intelligent than his fellows, he was sometimes infested with a gleam of humanity.
His bigotry was, at this moment, disturbed by a visitation of that kind.
“I'm perplexed,” said he: “I don't often hesitate on a Trade question neither. But the men we have done were always low-lived blackguards, who would have destroyed us, if we had not disabled them. Now this Little is a decent young chap. He struck at the root of our Trades, so long as he wrought openly. But on the sly, and nobody knowing but ourselves, mightn't it be as well to shut our eyes a bit? My informant is not in trade.”
The other three took a more personal view of the matter. Little was outwitting, and resisting them. They saw nothing for it but to stop him, by hook or by crook.
While they sat debating his case in whispers, and with their heads so close you might have covered them all with a tea-tray, a clear musical voice was heard to speak to the barmaid, and, by her direction, in walked into the council-chamber—Mr. Henry Little.
This visit greatly surprised Messrs. Parkin, Jobson, and Potter, and made them stare, and look at one another uneasily. But it did not surprise Grotait so much, and it came about in the simplest way. That morning, at about eleven o'clock, Dr. Amboyne had called on Mrs. Little, and had asked Henry, rather stiffly, whether he was quite forgetting Life, Labor and Capital. Now the young man could not but feel that, for some time past, he had used the good doctor ill; had neglected and almost forgotten his benevolent hobby; so the doctor's gentle reproach went to his heart, and he said, “Give me a day or two, sir, and I'll show you how ashamed I am of my selfish behavior.” True to his pledge, he collected all his notes together, and prepared a report, to be illustrated with drawings. He then went to Cheetham's, more as a matter of form than any thing, to see if the condemned grindstone had been changed. To his infinite surprise he found it had not, and Bayne told him the reason. Henry was angry, and went direct to Grotait about it.
But as soon as he saw Jobson, and Parkin, and Potter, he started, and they started. “Oh!” said he, “I didn't expect to find so much good company. Why, here's the whole quorum.”
“We will retire, sir, if you wish it.”
“Not at all. My orders are to convert you all to Life, Labor, and Capital (Grotait pricked up his ears directly); and, if I succeed, the Devil will be the next to come round, no doubt. Well, Mr. Grotait, Simmons is on that same grindstone you and I condemned. And all for a matter of four shillings. I find that, in your trade, the master provides the stone, but the grinder hangs and races it, which, in one sense, is time lost. Well, Simmons declines the new stone, unless Cheetham will pay him by time for hanging and racing it; Cheetham refuses; and so, between them, that idiot works on a faulty stone. Will you use your influence with the grinder?”
“Well, Mr. Little, now, between ourselves don't you think it rather hard that the poor workman should have to hang and race the master's grindstone for nothing?”
“Why, they share the loss between them. The stone costs the master three pounds; and hanging it costs the workman only four or five shillings. Where's the grievance?”
“Hanging and racing a stone shortens the grinder's life; fills his lungs with grit. Is the workman to give Life and Labor for a forenoon, and is Capital to contribute nothing? Is that your view of Life, Labor, and Capital, young man?”
Henry was staggered a moment. “That is smart,” said he. “But a rule of trade is a rule, till it is altered by consent of the parties that made it. Now, right or wrong, it is the rule of trade here that the small grinders find their own stones, and pay for power; but the saw-grinders are better off, for they have not to find stones, nor power, and their only drawback is that they must hang and race a new stone, which costs the master sixty shillings. Cheetham is smarting under your rules, and you can't expect him to go against any rule, that saves him a shilling.”
“What does the grinder think?”
“You might as well ask what the grindstone thinks.”
“Well, what does the grinder say, then?”
“Says he'd rather run the stone out, than lose a forenoon.”
“Well, sir, it is his business.”
“It may be a man's business to hang himself; but it is the bystanders' to hinder him.”
“You mistake me. I mean that the grinder is the only man who knows whether a stone is safe.”
“Well, but this grinder does not pretend his stone is safe. All he says is, safe or not, he'll run it out. So now the question is, will you pay four shillings from your box for this blockhead's loss of time in hanging and racing a new stone?”
All the four secretaries opened their eyes with surprise at this. But Grotait merely said he had no authority to do that; the funds of the union were set apart for specified purposes.
“Very likely,” said Henry, getting warm: “but, when there's life to be TAKEN, your union can find money irregularly; so why grudge it, when there's life to be saved perhaps, and ten times cheaper than you pay for blood?”
“Young man,” said Grotait, severely, “did you come here to insult us with these worn-out slanders?”
“No, but I came to see whether you secretaries, who can find pounds to assassinate men, and blow up women and children with gunpowder, can find shillings to secure the life of one of your own members; he risks it every time he mounts his horsing.”
“Well, sir, the application is without precedent, and I must decline it; but this I beg to do as courteously, as the application has been made uncourteously.”
“Oh, it is easy to be polite, when you've got no heart.”
“You are the first ever brought that charge against me.”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” said Potter, warmly. “No heart! Mr. Grotait is known for a good husband, a tender father, and the truest friend in Hillsborough.”
The others echoed these sentiments warmly and sincerely; for, as strange as it may appear to those who have not studied human nature at first hand, every word of this eulogy was strictly true.
“Thank you, gentlemen,” said Grotait. “But we must make allowances. Mr. Little is smarting under a gross and dastardly outrage, and also under a fair defeat; and thinks his opponents must be monsters. Now I should like to show him the contrary. Let Simmons take care of himself. You have given him good advice, and much to your credit: now have you nothing to say to us, on your own account?”
“Not a word,” said Henry, steadily
“But suppose I could suggest a way by which you could carry on your trade in Hillsborough, and offend nobody?”
“I should decline to hear it even. You and I are at war on that. You have done your worst, and I shall do my best to make you all smart for it, the moment I get a chance.”
Grotait's cheek reddened with anger at this rebuff, and it cost him an effort to retain his friendly intentions. “Come, come,” said he, rather surlily, “don't be in a hurry till you have heard the nature of my proposal. Here, Jess, a quart of the best ale. Now, to begin, let us drink and be comfortable together.”
He passed the glass to Little first. But the young man's blood was boiling with his wrongs, and this patronizing air irritated him to boot. He took the glass in his hand, “Here's quick exposure—sudden death—and sure damnation—to all hypocrites and assassins!” He drained the glass to this toast, flung sixpence on the table, and strode out, white with passion himself, and leaving startled faces behind him.
“So be it,” said Grotait; and his wicked little eye glittered dangerously.
That same evening, a signal, well known to certain workmen in Hillsborough, peeped in the window of “The Cutlers' Arms.” And, in consequence, six or seven ill-conditioned fellows gathered about the doors and waited patiently for further information.
Amongst these was a sturdy fellow of about nine-and-twenty, whose existence was a puzzle to his neighbors. During the last seven years he had worked only eighteen months all together. The rest of the time he had been on the Saw-Grinders' box, receiving relief, viz.: seven shillings and sixpence for his wife, and two shillings for each child; and every now and then he would be seen with three or four sovereigns in his possession.
The name of this masterful beggar, of this invalid in theory, who, in fact, could eat three pounds of steak at a sitting, was Biggs; but it is a peculiarity of Hillsborough to defy baptismal names, and substitute others deemed spicier. Out of the parish register and the records of the police courts, the scamp was only known as Dan Tucker.
This Dan stood, with others, loitering about “The Cutlers' Arms.”
Presently out came Grotait, and surveyed the rascally lot. He beckoned to Dan, and retired.
Dan went in after him.
“Drat his luck!” said one of the rejected candidates, “he always gets the job.” The rest then dispersed.
Tucker was shown into a pitch-dark room, and there a bargain was struck between him and men unseen. He and two more were to go to Cairnhope, and DO Little. He was to avoid all those men who had lately stood at the door with him, and was to choose for his companions Simmons the grinder, and one Sam Cole, a smooth, plausible fellow, that had been in many a dark job, unsuspected even by his wife and family, who were respectable.
Thus instructed, Tucker went to the other men, and soon reported to Grotait that he had got Cole all right, but that Simmons looked coldly on the job. He was in full work, for one thing, and said Little had had his squeak already, and he didn't see following him eleven miles off; he had, however, asked him whether Little had a wife and children, which question he, Tucker, could not answer.
“But I can,” said Grotait. “He is a bachelor. You can tell Simmons so. There are reasons why Ned Simmons must be in this. Try him to-morrow at dinner-time. Bid two pounds more; and—his wife is near her time—tell him this job will help him buy her wine and things,” said the kind, parental, diabolical Grotait.
Next morning Henry worked with the pen for Dr. Amboyne till twelve o'clock. He then, still carrying out his friend's views, went down to Mr Cheetham's words to talk to Simmons.
But he found an ill-looking fellow standing by the man's side, and close at his ear. This was no other than Dan Tucker, who by a neat coincidence was tempting him to DO Little.
Yesterday's conversation had unsettled Simmons, and he did not come to work till twelve o'clock. He then fixed a small pulley-wheel to his grindstone, to make up for lost time.
He was still resisting the tempter, but more faintly than yesterday, when Little came in, and spoke to him. Both he and Dan were amazed at his appearance on the scene at that particular moment. They glared stupidly but said nothing.
“Look here, Simmons,” said Little. “I have been to your friend Grotait, and asked him to pay you for what you call time lost in hanging and racing a new stone. He won't do it. That's your FRIEND. Now I'm your ENEMY; so the union says. Well, enemy or not, I'll do what Grotait won't. I'll pay you the four shillings for lost time, if you will stop that stone at once, and hang another.”
“Why, what's wrong with the stone?”
“The best judge in Hillsborough condemned it; and now, if you are not running it with an undersized pulley-wheel, to try it worse!”
Simmons got stupid and irritated between the two. His bit of manhood revolted against Little's offer, made whilst he was half lending his ear to Tucker's proposal; and, on the other hand, that very offer irritated him with Tucker, for coming and tempting him to DO this very Little, who was a good sort.
“—— you both!” said the rough fellow. “I wish you'd let me alone. Here I've lost my morning's work already.” Then to Little, “Mind thyself, old lad. Happen thou's in more danger than I am.”
“What d'ye mean by that?” said Little, very sharply.
But Simmons saw he had gone too far, and now maintained a sullen silence.
Henry turned to Tucker. “I don't know who you are, but I call you witness that I have done all I can for this idiot. Now, if he comes to harm, his blood be upon his own head.”
Then Henry went off in dudgeon, and, meeting Bayne in the yard, had a long discussion with him on the subject.
The tempter took advantage of Little's angry departure, and steadily resumed his temptation.
But he was interrupted in his turn.
The defect in this grindstone was not so serious but that the stone might perhaps have been ground out with fair treatment: but, by fixing a small pulley-wheel, Simmons had caused it to rotate at furious speed. This tried it too hard, and it flew in two pieces, just as the grinder was pressing down a heavy saw on it with all his force.
One piece, weighing about five hundredweight, tore the horsing chains out of the floor, and went clean through the window (smashing the wood-work), out into the yard, and was descending on Little's head; but he heard the crash and saw it coming; he ran yelling out of the way, and dragged Bayne with him. The other fragment went straight up to the ceiling, and broke a heavy joist as if it had been a cane; then fell down again plump, and would have destroyed the grinder on the spot, had he been there; but the tremendous shock had sent him flying clean over the squatter board, and he fell on his stomach on the wheel-band of the next grindstone, and so close to the drum, that, before any one could recover the shock and seize him, the band drew him on to the drum, and the drum, which was drawing away from the window, pounded him against the wall with cruel thuds.
One ran and screamed to stop the power, another to cut the big wheel-bands. All this took several seconds; and here seconds were torn flesh and broken bones. Just as Little darted into the room, pale with his own narrow escape, and awe-stricken at the cries of horror within, the other grinders succeeded in dragging out, from between the wall and the drum, a bag of broken bones and blood and grease, which a minute before was Ned Simmons, and was talking over a deed of violence to be done.
The others carried him and laid him on a horsing; and there they still supported his head and his broken limbs, sick with horror.
The man's face was white, and his eyes stared, and his body quivered. They sprinkled him with water.
Then he muttered, “All right. I am not much hurt.—Ay, but I am though. I'm done for.”
After the first terror of the scene had passed, the men were for taking him to the infirmary. But Little interposed, eagerly, “No, no. I'll pay the doctor myself sooner. He shall be nursed at home, and have all that skill can do to save him. Oh, why, why would he not listen to me?”
A stretcher was got, and a mattress put on it, and they carried him through the streets, while one ran before to tell the unhappy wife, and Little took her address, and ran to Dr. Amboyne. The doctor went instantly to the sufferer.
Tucker assisted to carry the victim home. He then returned to Grotait, and told him the news. Dan was not so hardened but what he blubbered in telling it, and Grotait's eyes were moist with sympathy.
They neither of them spoke out, and said, “This upsets our design on Little.” Each waited to see whether that job was to go on. Each was ashamed to mention it now. So it came to a standstill.
As for Little, he was so shocked by this tragedy and so anxious about its victim, that he would not go out to Cairnhope. He came, in the evening to Dr. Amboyne, to inquire, “Can he live?”
“I can't say yet. He will never work again.”
Then, after a silence, he fixed his eyes on young Little, and said, “I am going to make a trial of your disposition. This is the man I suspected of blowing you up; and I'm of the same opinion still.”
“Then he has got his deserts,” were Henry's first words, after a pause of astonishment.
“Does that mean you forgive him, or you don't forgive him?”
“I dare say I should forgive the poor wretch, if he was to ask me.”
“And not without?”
“No. I might try and put it out of my head; but that is all I could do.”
“Is it true that you are the cause of his not being taken to the infirmary?”
“Yes, I said I'd pay out of my own pocket sooner; and I'm not the sort to go from my word. The man shall want for nothing, sir. But please don't ask me to love my enemies, and all that Rot. I scorn hypocrisy. Every man hates his enemies; he may hate 'em out like a man, or palaver 'em, and beg God to forgive 'em (and that means damn 'em), and hate 'em like a sneak; but he always hates 'em.”
The doctor laughed heartily. “Oh, how refreshing a thing it is to fall in with a fellow who speaks his real mind. However, I am not your enemy, am I?”
“No. You are the best friend I ever had—except my mother.”
“I am glad you think so; because I have a favor to ask you.”
“Granted, before ever you speak.”
“I want to know, for certain, whether Simmons was the man who blew you up; and I see but one way of learning it. You must visit him and be kind to him; and then my art tells me, he won't leave the world without telling you. Oblige me by taking him this bottle of wine, at once, and also this sedative, which you can administer if he is in violent pain, but not otherwise.”
“Doctor,” said the young man, “you always get your own way with me. And so you ought.”
Little stood by Simmons's bedside.
The man's eye was set, his cheek streaked with red, and his head was bandaged. He labored in breathing.
Young Little looked at him gravely, and wondered whether this battered figure was really the man who had so nearly destroyed him.
After some minutes of this contemplation, he said gravely “Simmons, I have brought you some wine.”
The man stared at him, and seemed confused. He made no reply.
“Give me a spoon,” said Henry.
Mrs. Simmons sat by the bedside rocking herself; she was stupefied with grief; but her sister, a handy girl, had come to her in her trouble: she brought Henry a spoon directly.
He poured out a little wine, and put it to the sufferer's lips. He drank it, and said it was rare good stuff. Henry gave him a little more.
Simmons then looked at him more intelligently and attentively, and gave a sort of shiver. “Who be you?”
“Henry Little; who advised you not to run that stone.”
“Ah!” said Simmons, “I thought it was you.” He seemed puzzled. But, after a while, he said, “I wish I had hearkened thee, lad. Give me some more of yonder stuff. What is it?”
“Port wine.” Then he turned to the girl, and gave her a sovereign, and sent her out for some mutton-chops. “Meat and wine are all the physic you are to have, my poor fellow.”
“It won't be for long, lad. And a good job too. For I'm a bad 'un. I'm a bad 'un.”
Henry then turned to the poor woman, and tried to say something to console her, but the words stuck in his throat. She was evidently near her confinement; and there lay her husband, worse than in his grave. Little broke down himself, while trying to comfort her.
The sufferer heard him, and said, all of a sudden, “Hold a light here.”
Henry took the candle, and held it over him.
“Nay, nay, it is thy face I want to see.”
Henry was puzzled at the request, but did as he was asked.
Simmons gave a groan. “Ay,” said he, “thou'st all right. And I lie here. That seems queer.”
The sister now returned, and Henry wrote her his address, and conversed with her, and told her the whole story of the grindstone, and said that, as he had hindered Simmons from being taken to the infirmary, he felt bound to see he did not suffer by that interference. He gave her his address, and said, if anything was wanted, she must come to him, or to his mother if he should be out.
No doubt the women talked of his kindness by the sick bed, and Simmons heard it.
Early in the morning Eliza Watney called at Little's house, with her eyes very red, and said her brother-in-law wanted to speak to him.
He went with her directly; and, on the road, asked her what it was about.
“I'm ashamed to tell you,” said she, and burst out crying. “But I hope God will reward you; and forgive him: he is a very ignorant man.”
“Here I am, Simmons.”
“So I see.”
“Anything I can do for you?”
“No.”
“You sent for me.”
“Did I? Well, I dare say I did. But gi' me time. Gi' me time. It's noane so easy to look a man in the face, and tell him what I'm to tell thee. But I can't die with it on me. It chokes me, ever since you brought me yonder stuff, and the women set a-talking. I say—old lad—'twas I did thee yon little job at Cheetham's. But I knew no better.”
There was a dead silence. And then Henry spoke.
“Who set you on?”
“Nay, that's their business.”
“How did you do it?”
At this question—will it be believed?—the penitent's eye twinkled with momentary vanity. “I fastened a tea-cup to an iron rake, and filled the cup with powder; then I passed it in, and spilt the powder out of cup, and raked it in to the smithy slack, and so on, filling and raking in. But I did thee one good turn, lad; I put powder as far from bellows as I could. Eh, but I was a bad 'un to do the like to thee; and thou's a good 'un to come here. When I saw thee lie there, all scorched and shaking, I didn't like my work; and now I hate it. But I knew no better at the time. And, you see, I've got it worse myself. And cheap served too.”
“Oh, Mr. Little,” said Eliza Watney; “TRY and forgive him.”
“My girl,” said Henry, solemnly, “I thought I never could forgive the man who did that cruel deed to me, and I had never injured any one. But it is hard to know one's own mind, let alone another man's. Now I look at him lying pale and battered there, it seems all wiped out. I forgive you, my poor fellow, and I hope God will forgive you too.”
“Nay. He is not so soft as thou. This is how He forgives me. But I knew no better. Old gal, learn the young 'un to read, that's coming just as I'm going; it is sore against a chap if he can't read. Right and wrong d—n 'em, they are locked up in books, I think: locked away from a chap like me. I know a little better now. But, eh, dear, dear, it is come too late.” And now the poor wretch began to cry at a gleam of knowledge of right and wrong having come to him only just when he could no longer profit by it.
Henry left him at last, with the tears in his eyes. He promised them all to come every day.
He called on Dr. Amboyne, and said, “You are always right, doctor. Simmons was the man, he has owned it, and I forgave him.”
He then went and told Mr. Holdfast. That gentleman was much pleased at the discovery, and said, “Ah, but who employed him? That is what you must discover.”
“I will try,” said Henry. “The poor fellow had half a mind to make a clean breast; but I didn't like to worry him over it.”
Returning home he fell in with Grotait and Parkin. They were talking earnestly at the door of a public-house, and the question they were discussing was whether or not Little's affair should be revived.
They were both a good deal staggered by the fate of Simmons, Parkin especially, who was rather superstitious. He had changed sides, and was now inclined to connive, or, at all events to temporize; to abandon the matter till a more convenient time. Grotait, on the other hand, whose vanity the young man had irritated, was bent on dismounting his forge. But even he had cooled a little, and was now disinclined to violence. He suggested that it must be easy to drive a smith out of a church, by going to the parochial authorities; and they could also send Little an anonymous letter, to tell him the Trades had their eyes on him; by this double stroke, they would probably bring him to some reasonable terms.
It certainly was a most unfortunate thing that Little passed that way just then; unfortunate that Youth is so impetuous.
He crossed the street to speak to these two potentates, whom it was his interest to let alone—if he could only have known it.
“Well, gentlemen, have you seen Simmons?”
“No,” said Mr. Parkin.
“What, not been to see the poor fellow who owes his death to you?”
“He is not dead yet.”
“No, thank Heaven! He has got a good work to do first; some hypocrites, assassins, and cowards to expose.”
Parkin turned pale; Grotait's eye glistened like a snake's: he made Parkin a rapid signal to say nothing, but only listen.
“He has begun by telling me who it was that put gunpowder into my forge, and how it was done. I have forgiven him. He was only the tool of much worse villains; base, cowardly, sneaking villains. Those I shall not forgive. Oh, I shall know all about it before long. Good-morning.”
This information and threat, and the vindictive bitterness and resolution with which the young man had delivered it, struck terror into the gentle Parkin, and shook even Grotait. The latter, however, soon recovered himself, and it became a battle for life or death between him and Little.
He invited Parkin to his own place, and there the pair sat closeted.
Dan Tucker and Sam Cole were sent for.
Tucker came first. He was instantly dispatched to Simmons, with money from the Saw Grinders' box. He was to ascertain how much Simmons had let out, and to adjure him to be true to the Trade, and split on no man but himself. When he had been gone about twenty minutes, Sam Cole came in, and was instructed to get two other men in place of Simmons, and be in readiness to do Little.
By-and-by Tucker returned with news. Simmons had at present split only on himself; but the women were evidently in love with Little; said he was their only friend; and he, Tucker, foresaw that, with their co-operation, Simmons would be turned inside out by Little before he died.
Grotait struck his hand on the table. “The unions are in danger,” said he. “There is but one way, Little must be made so that he can't leave Cairnhope while Simmons is alive.”
So important did the crisis appear to him, that he insisted on Parkin going with him at once to Cairnhope, to reconnoiter the ground.
Parkin had a gig and a fast horse: so, in ten minutes more, they were on the road.
They reached Cairnhope, put up at the village inn, and soon extracted some particulars about the church. They went up to it, and examined it, and Grotait gave Parkin a leg up, to peer through the window.
In this position they were nailed by old George.
“What be you at?”
“What is that to you?” said Grotait.
“It is plenty. You mustn't come trespassing here. Squire won't have it.”
“Trespassing in a churchyard! Why it belongs to all the world.”
“Nay, this one belongs to the Lord o' the manor.”
“Well, we won't hurt your church. Who keeps the key?”
“Squire Raby.”
Old George from this moment followed them about everywhere, grumbling at their heels, like a mastiff.
Grotait, however, treated him with cool contempt, and proceeded to make a sketch of the door, and a little map showing how the church could be approached from Hillsborough on foot without passing through Cairnhope village. This done, he went back with Parkin to the inn, and thence to Hillsborough.
It was old Christmas Eve. Henry was working at his forge, little dreaming of danger. Yet it was close at hand, and from two distinct quarters.
Four men, with crape masks, and provided with all manner of tools, and armed with bludgeons, were creeping about the churchyard, examining and listening. Their orders were to make Little so that he should not leave Cairnhope for a month. And that, in plain English, meant to beat him within an inch of his life, if not kill him.
At the same time, a body of nine men were stealing up the road, with designs scarcely less hostile to Little.
These assailants were as yet at a considerable distance, but more formidable in appearance than the others being most of them armed with swords, and led by a man with a double-barreled gun.
Grotait's men, having well surveyed the ground, now crept softly up to the porch, and examined the lock.
The key was inside, and they saw no means of forcing the lock without making a noise, and putting their victim on his guard.
After a long whispered consultation, they resolved to unscrew the hinges.
These hinges were of great length, and were nailed upon the door, but screwed into the door-post with four screws each.
Two men, with excellent tools, and masters of the business, went softly to work. One stood, and worked on the upper screws; the other kneeled, and unfastened the lower screws.
They made no more noise than a rat gnawing; yet, such was their caution, and determination to surprise their victim, that they timed all their work by Little's. Whenever the blows of his hammer intermitted, they left off; and began again when he did.
When all the screws were out but two, one above, one below, they beckoned the other two men, and these two drove large gimlets into the door, and so held it that it might not fall forward when the last screw should come out.
“Are all screws out?” whispered Cole, who was the leader.
“Ay,” was the whispered reply.
“Then put in two more gimlets.”
That was done.
“Now, men,” whispered Cole. “Lay the door softly down outside: then, up sticks—into church—and DO HIM!”
If Mr. Coventry, before he set all this mischief moving, could have seen the INSIDE of Grace Carden's letter to Henry Little!
“DEAR MR. LITTLE,—I do not know whether I ought to write to you at all, nor whether it is delicate of me to say what I am going; but you have saved my life, and I do so want to do all I can to atone for the pain I have given you, who have been so good to me. I am afraid you will never know happiness, if you waste your invaluable life longing after what is impossible. There is an impassable barrier between you and me. But you might be happy if you would condescend to take my advice, and let yourself see the beauty and the goodness of another. The person who bears this letter comes nearer to perfection than any other woman I ever saw. If you would trust my judgment (and, believe me, I am not to be mistaken in one of my own sex), if you could turn your heart toward her, she would make you very happy. I am sure she could love you devotedly, if she only heard those words from your lips, which every woman requires to hear before she surrenders her affections. Pray do not be angry with me; pray do not think it cost me little to give this strange but honest advice to one I admire so. But I feel it would be so weak and selfish in me to cling to that, which, sooner or later, I must resign, and to make so many persons unhappy, when all might be happy, except perhaps myself.
“Once more, forgive me. Do not think me blind; do not think me heartless; but say, this is a poor girl, who is sadly perplexed, and is trying very hard to be good and wise, and not selfish.
“One line, to say you will consider my advice, and never hate nor despise your grateful and unhappy friend.
“GRACE CARDEN.”
When she had dispatched this letter, she felt heroic.
The next day, she wished she had not written it, and awaited the reply with anxiety.
The next day, she began to wonder at Little's silence: and by-and-by she was offended at it. Surely what she had written with so great an effort was worth a reply.
Finally, she got it into her head that Little despised her. Upon this she was angry with him for not seeing what a sacrifice she had made, and for despising her, instead of admiring her a little, and pitying her ever so much. The old story in short—a girl vexed with a man for letting her throw dust in his eyes.
And, if she was vexed with Little for not appreciating her sacrifice, she was quite as angry with Coventry and Jael for being the causes of that unappreciated sacrifice. So then she was irritable and cross. But she could not be that long: so she fell into a languid, listless state: and then she let herself drift. She never sent Jael to the church again.
Mr. Coventry watched all her moods; and when she reached the listless stage, he came softly on again, and began to recover his lost ground.
On the fifth of January occurred a rather curious coincidence. In Hillsborough Dr. Amboyne offered his services to Mrs. Little to reconcile her and her brother. Mrs. Little feared the proposal came too late: but showed an inclination to be reconciled for Henry's sake. But Henry said he would never be reconciled to a man who had insulted his mother. He then reminded her she had sent him clandestinely into Raby Hall to see her picture. “And what did I see? Your picture was turned with its face to the wall, and insulting words written on the back—'Gone into trade.' I didn't mean to tell yell, mother; but you see I have. And, after that, you may be reconciled to the old scoundrel if you like; but don't ask me.” Mrs. Little was deeply wounded by this revelation. She tried to make light of it, but failed. She had been a beauty, and the affront was too bitter. Said she, “You mustn't judge him like other people: he was always so very eccentric. Turn my picture to the wall! My poor picture! Oh, Guy, Guy, could one mother have borne you and me?” Amboyne had not a word more to say; he was indignant himself.
Now that very afternoon, as if by the influence of what they call a brain-wave, Grace Carden, who felt herself much stronger with Mr. Raby than when she first came, was moved to ask him, with many apologies, and no little inward tremor, whether she might see the other side of that very picture before she went.
“What for?”
“Don't be angry, uncle dear. Curiosity.”
“I do not like to refuse you anything, Grace. But—Well, if I lend you the key, will you satisfy your curiosity, and then replace the picture as it is?”
“Yes, I will.”
“And you shall do it when I am not in the room. It would only open wounds that time has skinned. I'll bring you down the key at dinner-time.” Then, assuming a lighter tone, “Your curiosity will be punished; you will see your rival in beauty. That will be new to you.”
Grace was half frightened at her own success, and I doubt whether she would ever have asked for the key again; but Raby's word was his bond; he handed her the key at dinner-time.
Her eyes sparkled when she got it; but she was not to open it before him; so she fell thinking: and she determined to get the gentlemen into the drawing-room as soon as she could, and then slip back and see this famous picture.
Accordingly she left the table rather earlier than usual, and sat down to her piano in the drawing-room.
But, alas, her little maneuver was defeated. Instead of the gentlemen leaving the dining-room, a servant was sent to recall her.
It was old Christmas Eve, and the Mummers were come.
Now, of all the old customs Mr. Raby had promised her, this was the pearl.
Accordingly, her curiosity took for the time another turn, and she was soon seated in the dining-room, with Mr. Raby and Mr. Coventry, awaiting the Mummers.
The servants then came in, and, when all was ready, the sound of a fiddle was heard, and a fiddler, grotesquely dressed, entered along with two clowns, one called the Tommy, dressed in chintz and a fox's skin over his shoulders and a fox's head for a cap; and one, called the Bessy, in a woman's gown and beaver hat.
This pair introduced the true dramatis personae, to the drollest violin accompaniment, consisting of chords till the end of each verse, and then a few notes of melody.
“Now the first that I call on
Is George, our noble king,
Long time he has been at war,
Good tidings back he'll bring.
Too-ral-loo.”
Thereupon in came a man, with black breeches and red stripes at the side, a white shirt decked with ribbons over his waistcoat, and a little hat with streamers, and a sword.
The clown walked round in a ring, and King George followed him, holding his sword upright.
Meantime the female clown chanted,—
“The next that we call on,
He is a squire's son;
He's like to lose his love,
Because he is so young.
Too-ral-loo.”
The Squire's Son followed King George round the ring; and the clowns, marching and singing at the head, introduced another, and then another sword-dancer, all attired like the first, until there were five marching round and round, each with his sword upright.
Then Foxey sang, to a violin accompaniment,
“Now, fiddler, then, take up thy fiddle,
Play the lads their hearts' desire,
Or else we'll break thy fiddle,
And fling thee a-back o' the fire.”
On this the fiddler instantly played a dance-tune peculiar to this occasion, and the five sword-dancers danced by themselves in a ring, holding their swords out so as to form a cone.
Then a knot, prepared beforehand, was slipped over the swords, and all the swords so knotted were held aloft by the first dancer; he danced in the center awhile, under the connected swords, then deftly drew his own sword out and handed it to the second dancer; the second gave the third dancer his sword, and so on, in rotation, till all the swords were resumed.
Raby's eyes sparkled with delight at all this, and he whispered his comments on the verses and the dance.
“King George!” said he. “Bosh! This is the old story of St. George and the Dragon, overburdened with modern additions.” As to the dance, he assured her that, though danced in honor of old Christmas, it was older than Christianity, and came from the ancient Goths and Swedes.
These comments were interrupted by a man, with a white face, who burst into the assembly crying, “Will ye believe me now? Cairnhope old church is all afire!”
“Ay, Squire,” said Abel Eaves, for he was the bearer of this strange news, “ye wouldn't believe ME, now come and see for yourself.”
This announcement set all staring; and George the blacksmith did but utter the general sentiment when, suddenly dropping his assumed character of King George, he said, “Bless us and save us! True Christmas Eve; and Cairnhope old church alight!”
Then there was a furious buzz of tongues, and, in the midst of it Mr. Raby disappeared, and the sword-dancers returned to the kitchen, talking over this strange matter as they went.
Grace retired to the drawing-room followed by Coventry.
She sat silent some time, and he watched her keenly.
“I wonder what has become of Mr. Raby?”
Mr. Coventry did not know.
“I hope he is not going out.”
“I should think not, it is a very cold night; clear, but frosty.”
“Surely he would never go to see.”
“Shall I inquire?”
“No; but that might put it into his head. But I wish I knew where he was.”
Presently a servant brought the tea in.
Miss Carden inquired after Mr. Raby.
“He is gone out, miss; but he won't be long, I was to tell you.”
Grace felt terribly uneasy and restless! rang the bell and asked for Jael Dence. The reply was that she had not been to the hall that day.
But, soon afterward, Jael came up from the village, and went into the kitchen of Raby. There she heard news, which soon took her into the drawing-room.
“Oh, miss,” said she, “do you know where the squire is?”
“Gone to the church?” asked Grace, trembling.
“Ay, and all the sword-dancers at his back.” And she stood there and wrung her hands with dismay.
The ancients had a proverb, “Better is an army of stags with a lion for their leader, than an army of lions with a stag for their leader.” The Cairnhope sword-dancers, though stout fellows and strong against a mortal foe, were but stags against the supernatural; yet, led by Guy Raby, they advanced upon the old church with a pretty bold front, only they kept twenty yards in their leader's rear. The order was to march in dead silence.
At the last turn in the road their leader suddenly halted, and, kneeling on one knee, waved to his men to keep quiet: he had seen several dark figures busy about the porch.
After many minutes of thrilling, yet chilling, expectation, he rose and told his men, in a whisper, to follow him again.
The pace was now expedited greatly, and still Mr. Raby, with his double-barreled gun in his hand, maintained a lead of some yards and his men followed as noiselessly as they could, and made for the church: sure enough it was lighted inside.
The young man who was thus beset by two distinct bands of enemies, deserved a very different fate at the hands of his fellow-creatures.
For, at this moment, though any thing but happy himself, he was working some hours every day for the good of mankind; and was every day visiting as a friend the battered saw-grinder who had once put his own life in mortal peril.
He had not fathomed the letter Grace had sent him. He was a young man and a straightforward; he did not understand the amiable defects of the female character. He studied every line of this letter, and it angered and almost disgusted him. It was the letter of a lady; but beneath the surface of gentleness and politeness lay a proposal which he considered mean and cold-blooded. It lowered his esteem for her.
His pride and indignation were roused, and battled with his love, and they were aided by the healthy invigorating habits into which Dr. Amboyne had at last inveigled him, and so he resisted: he wrote more than one letter in reply to Grace Carden; but, when he came to read them over and compare them with her gentle effusion, he was ashamed of his harshness, and would not send the letter.
He fought on; philanthropy in Hillsborough, forging in Cairnhope Church; and still he dreamed strange dreams now and then: for who can work, both night and day, as this man did—with impunity?
One night he dreamed that he was working at his forge, when suddenly the floor of the aisle burst, and a dead knight sprang from the grave with a single bound, and stood erect before him, in rusty armor: out of his helmet looked two eyes like black diamonds, and a nose like a falcon's. Yet, by one of the droll contradictions of a dream, this impetuous, warlike form no sooner opened its lips, than out issued a lackadaisical whine. “See my breastplate, good sir,” said he. “It was bright as silver when I made it—I was like you, I forged my own weapons, forged them with these hands. But now the damps of the grave have rusted it. Odsbodikins! is this a thing for a good knight to appear in before his judge? And to-morrow is doomsday, so they all say.”
Then Henry pitied the poor simple knight (in his dream), and offered his services to polish the corslet up a bit against that great occasion. He pointed toward his forge, and the knight marched to it, in three wide steps that savored strongly of theatrical burlesque. But the moment he saw the specimens of Henry's work lying about, he drew back, and wheeled upon the man of the day with huge disdain. “What,” said he, “do you forge toys! Learn that a gentleman can only forge those weapons of war that gentlemen do use. And I took you for a Raby!”
With these bitter words he vanished, with flashing eyes and a look of magnificent scorn, and left his fiery, haughty features imprinted clearly on Henry's memory.
One evening, as he plied his hammer, he heard a light sound at a window, in an interval of his own noise. He looked hastily up, and caught a momentary sight of a face disappearing from the window. It was gone like a flash even as he caught sight of it.
Transient as the glance was, it shook him greatly. He heated a bar of iron white hot at one end, and sallied out into the night. But there was not a creature to be seen.
Then he called aloud, “Who's there?” No reply. “Jael, was it you?” Dead silence.
He returned to his work, and set the appearance down to an ocular illusion. But his dreams had been so vivid, that this really seemed only one step more into the realm of hallucination.
This was an unfortunate view of the matter.
On old Christmas Eve he lighted the fires in his mausoleum first, and at last succeeded in writing a letter to Grace Carden. He got out of the difficulty in the best way, by making it very short. He put it in an envelope, and addressed it, intending to give it to Jael Dence, from whom he was always expecting a second visit.
He then lighted his forge, and soon the old walls were ringing again with the blows of his hammer.
It was ten o'clock at night; a clear frosty night; but he was heated and perspiring with his ardent work, when, all of a sudden, a cold air seemed to come in upon him from a new quarter—the door. He left his forge, and took a few steps to where he could see the door. Instead of the door, he saw the blue sky.
He uttered an exclamation, and rubbed his eyes.
It was no hallucination. The door lay flat on the ground, and the stars glittered in the horizon.
Young Little ran toward the door; but, when he got near it, he paused, and a dire misgiving quelled him. A workman soon recognizes a workman's hand; and he saw Hillsborough cunning and skill in this feat, and Hillsborough cunning and cruelty lurking in ambush at the door.
He went back to his forge, and, the truth must be told, his knees felt weak under him with fears of what was to come.
He searched about for weapons, and could find nothing to protect him against numbers. Pistols he had: but, from a wretched over-security, he had never brought them to Cairnhope Church.
Oh, it was an era of agony that minute, in which, after avoiding the ambuscade that he felt sure awaited him at the door, he had nothing on earth he could do but wait and see what was to come next.
He knew that however small his chance of escape by fighting, it was his only one; and he resolved to receive the attack where he was. He blew his bellows and, cold at heart, affected to forge.
Dusky forms stole into the old church.
Little blew his coals to a white heat: then took his hammer into his left hand, and his little iron shovel, a weapon about two feet long, into his right.
Three assailants crept toward him, and his position was such that two at least could assail him front and rear. He counted on that, and measured their approach with pale cheek but glittering eye, and thrust his shovel deep into the white coals.
They crept nearer and nearer, and, at last, made an almost simultaneous rush on him back and front.
The man in the rear was a shade in advance of the other. Little, whose whole soul was in arms, had calculated on this, and turning as they came at him, sent a shovelful of fiery coals into that nearest assailant's face, then stepped swiftly out of the way of the other, who struck at him too immediately for him to parry; ere he could recover the wasted blow, Little's hot shovel came down in his head with tremendous force, and laid him senseless and bleeding on the hearth, with blood running from his ears.
Little ladled the coals right and left on the other two assailants, one of whom was already yelling with the pain of the first shovelful; then, vaulting suddenly over a pew, he ran for the door.
There he was encountered by Sam Cole, an accomplished cudgel-player, who parried his blows coolly, and gave him a severe rap on the head that dazzled him. But he fought on, till he heard footsteps coming behind him, and then rage and despair seized him, he drew back, shifted his hammer into his right hand and hurled it with all his force at Cole's breast, for he feared to miss his head. Had it struck him on the breast, delivered as it was, it would probably have smashed his breastbone, and killed him; but it struck him on his throat, which was, in some degree, protected by a muffler: it struck him and sent him flying like a feather: he fell on his back in the porch, yards from where he received that prodigious blow.
Henry was bounding out after him, when he was seized from behind, and the next moment another seized him too, and his right hand was now disarmed by throwing away the hammer.
He struggled furiously with them, and twice he shook them off, and struck them with his fist, and jobbed them with his shovel quick and short, as a horse kicking.
But one was cunning enough to make a feint at his face, and then fell down and lay hold of his knees: he was about to pulverize this fellow with one blow of his shovel, when the other flung his arms round him. It became a mere struggle. Such was his fury and his vigor, however, that they could not master him. He played his head like a snake, so that they could not seize him disadvantageously; and at last he dropped his shovel and got them both by the throat, and grasped them so fiercely that their faces were purple, and their eyes beginning to fix, when to his dismay, he received a violent blow on the right arm that nearly broke it: he let go, with a cry of pain, and with his left hand twisted the other man round so quickly, that he received the next blow of Cole's cudgel. Then he dashed his left fist into Cole's eye, who staggered, but still barred the way; so Little rushed upon him, and got him by the throat, and would soon have settled him: but the others recovered themselves ere he could squeeze all the wind out of Cole, and it became a struggle of three to one.
He dragged them all three about with him; he kicked, he hit, he did every thing that a man with one hand, and a lion's heart, could do.
But gradually they got the better of him; and at last it came to this, that two were struggling on the ground with him, and Cole standing over them all three, ready to strike.
“Now, hold him so, while I settle him,” cried Cole, and raised his murderous cudgel.
It came down on Little's shoulder, and only just missed his head.
Again it came down, and with terrible force.
Up to this time he had fought as mute as a fox. But now that it had come to mere butchery, he cried out, in his agony, “They'll kill me. My mother! Help! Murder! Help!”
“Ay! thou'lt never forge no more!” roared Cole, and thwack came down the crushing bludgeon.
“Help! Murder! Help!” screamed the victim, more faintly; and at the next blow more faintly still.
But again the murderous cudgel was lifted high, to descend upon his young head.
As the confederates held the now breathless and despairing victim to receive the blow, and the butcher, with one eye closed by Henry's fist, but the other gleaming savagely, raised the cudgel to finish him, Henry saw a huge tongue of flame pour out at them all, from outside the church, and a report, that sounded like a cannon, was accompanied by the vicious ping of shot. Cole screamed and yelled, and dropped his cudgel, and his face was covered with blood in a moment; he yelled, and covered his face with his hands; and instantly came another flash, another report, another cruel ping of shot, and this time his hands were covered with blood.
The others rolled yelling out of the line of fire, and ran up the aisle for their lives.
Cole, yelling, tried to follow; but Henry, though sick and weak with the blows, caught him, and clung to his knees, and the next moment the place was filled with men carrying torches and gleaming swords, and led by a gentleman, who stood over Henry, in evening dress, but with the haughty expanded nostrils, the brilliant black eyes, and all the features of that knight in rusty armor who had come to him in his dream and left him with scorn.
At this moment a crash was heard: two of the culprits, with desperate agility, had leaped on to the vestry chest, and from that on to the horse, and from him headlong out of the window.
Mr. Raby dispatched all his men but one in pursuit, with this brief order—“Take them, alive or dead—doesn't matter which—they are only cutlers; and cowards.”
His next word was to Cole. “What, three blackguards to one!—that's how Hillsborough fights, eh?”
“I'm not a blackguard,” said Henry, faintly.
“That remains to be proved, sir,” said Raby, grimly.
Henry made answer by fainting away.
When Henry Little came to himself, he was seated on men's hands, and being carried through the keen refreshing air. Mr. Raby was striding on in front; the horse's hoofs were clamping along on the hard road behind; and he himself was surrounded by swordsmen in fantastic dresses.
He opened his eyes, and thought, of course, it was another vision. But no, the man, with whose blows his body was sore, and his right arm utterly numbed, walked close to him between two sword-dancers with Raby-marks and Little-marks upon him, viz., a face spotted with blood, and a black eye.
Little sighed.
“Eh, that's music to me,” said a friendly voice close to him. It was the King George of the lyrical drama, and, out of poetry, George the blacksmith.
“What, it is you, is it?” said Little.
“Ay, sir, and a joyful man to hear you speak again. The cowardly varmint! And to think they have all got clear but this one! Are ye sore hurt, sir?”
“I'm in awful pain, but no bones broken.” Then, in a whisper—“Where are you taking me, George?”
“To Raby Hall,” was the whispered reply.
“Not for all the world! if you are my friend, put me down, and let me slip away.”
“Don't ask me, don't ask me,” said George, in great distress. “How could I look Squire in the face? He did put you in my charge.”
“Then I'm a prisoner!” said Henry, sternly.
George hung his head, but made no reply.
Henry also maintained a sullen silence after that.
The lights of Raby came in sight.
That house contained two women, who awaited the result of the nocturnal expedition with terrible anxiety.
Its fate, they both felt, had been determined before they even knew that the expedition had started.
They had nothing to do but to wait, and pray that Henry had made his escape, or else had not been so mad as to attempt resistance.
In this view of things, the number and even the arms of his assailants were some comfort to them, as rendering resistance impossible.
As for Mr. Coventry, he was secretly delighted. His conscience was relieved. Raby would now drive his rival out of the church and out of the country without the help of the Trades, and his act of treachery and bad faith would be harmless. Things had taken the happiest possible turn for him.
For all that, this courtier affected sympathy, and even some anxiety, to please Miss Carden, and divert all suspicion from himself. But the true ring was wanting to his words, and both the women felt them jar, and got away from him, and laid their heads together, in agitated whispers. And the result was, they put shawls over their heads, and went together out into the night.
They ran up the road, sighing and clasping their hands, but no longer speaking.
At the first turn they saw the whole body coming toward them.
“I'll soon know,” said Jael, struggling with her agitation. “Don't you be seen, miss; that might anger the Squire; and, oh, he will be a wrathful man this night, if he caught him working in yonder church.”
Grace then slipped back, and Jael ran on. But no sooner did she come up with the party, than Raby ordered her back, in a tone she dared not resist.
She ran back, and told Grace they were carrying him in, hurt, and the Squire's eyes were like hot coals.
Grace slipped into the drawing-room and kept the door ajar.
Soon afterward, Raby, his men, and his prisoners, entered the hall, and Grace heard Raby say, “Bring the prisoners into the dining-room.”
Grace Carden sat down, and leaned her head upon her hand, and her little foot beat the ground, all in a flutter.
But this ended in a spirited resolve. She rose, pale, but firm, and said, “Come with me, Jael;” and she walked straight into the dining-room. Coventry strolled in after her.
The room was still brilliantly lighted. Mr. Raby was seated at his writing-table at the far end, and the prisoners, well guarded, stood ready to be examined.
“You can't come in here,” was Mr. Raby's first word to Grace.
But she was prepared for this, and stood her ground. “Excuse me, dear uncle, but I wish to see you administer justice; and, besides, I believe I can tell you something about one of the prisoners.”
“Indeed! that alters the case. Somebody give Miss Carden a chair.”
She sat down, and fixed her eyes upon Henry Little—eyes that said plainly, “I shall defend you, if necessary:” his pale cheek was flushing at sight of her.
Mr. Raby arranged his papers to make notes, and turned to Cole. “The charge against you is, that you were seen this night by several persons engaged in an assault of a cruel and aggravated character. You, and two other men, attacked and overpowered an individual here present; and, while he was helpless, and on the ground, you were seen to raise a heavy cudgel (Got the cudgel, George?)—”
“Ay, your worship, here 'tis.”
“—And to strike him several times on the head and limbs, with all your force.”
“Oh, cruel! cruel!”
“This won't do, Miss Carden; no observations, please. In consequence of which blows he soon after swooned away, and was for some time unconscious, and—”
“Oh!”
“—For aught I know, may have received some permanent injury.”
“Not he,” said Cole; “he's all right. I'm the only man that is hurt; and I've got it hot; he hit me with his hammer, and knocked me down like a bullock. He's given me this black eye too.”
“In self-defense, apparently. Which party attacked the other first?”
“Why they attacked me, of course,” said Henry. “Four of them.”
“Four! I saw but three.”
“Oh, I settled one at starting, up near the forge. Didn't you find him?” (This to George.)
“Nay, we found none of the trash but this,” indicating Cole, with a contemptuous jerk of the thumb.
“Now, don't all speak at once,” said Mr. Raby. “My advice to you is to say nothing, or you'll probably make bad worse. But if you choose to say anything, I'm bound to hear it.”
“Well, sir,” said Cole, in a carrying voice, “what I say is this: what need we go to law over this? If you go against me for hitting him with a stick, after he had hit me with a blacksmith's hammer, I shall have to go against you for shooting me with a gun.”
“That is between you and me, sir. You will find a bystander may shoot a malefactor to save the life of a citizen. Confine your defense, at present, to the point at issue. Have you any excuse, as against this young man?” (To Henry.)—“You look pale. You can sit down till your turn comes.”
“Not in this house.”
“And why not in this house, pray? Is your own house a better?”
No answer from Henry. A look of amazement and alarm from Grace. But she was afraid to utter a word, after the admonition she had received.
“Well, sir,” said Cole, “he was desecrating a church.”
“So he was, and I shall talk to him in his turn. But you desecrated it worse. He turned it into a blacksmith shop; you turned it into a shambles. I shall commit you. You will be taken to Hillsborough to-morrow; to-night you will remain in my strong-room. Fling him down a mattress and some blankets, and give him plenty to eat and drink; I wouldn't starve the devil on old Christmas Eve. There, take him away. Stop; search his pockets before you leave him alone.”
Cole was taken away, and Henry's turn came.
Just before this examination commenced, Grace clasped her hands, and cast a deprecating look on Henry, as much as to say, “Be moderate.” And then her eyes roved to and fro, and the whole woman was in arms, and on the watch.
Mr. Raby began on him. “As for you, your offense is not so criminal in the eye of the law; but it is bad enough; you have broken into a church by unlawful means; you have turned it into a smithy, defiled the graves of the dead, and turned the tomb of a good knight into an oven, to the scandal of men and the dishonor of god. Have you any excuse to offer?”
“Plenty. I was plying an honest trade, in a country where freedom is the law. The Hillsborough unions combined against me, and restrained my freedom, and threatened my life, ay, and attempted my life too, before to-day: and so the injustice and cruelty of men drove me to a sanctuary, me and my livelihood. Blame the Trades, blame the public laws, blame the useless police: but you can't blame me; a man must live.”
“Why not set up your shop in the village? Why wantonly desecrate a church?”
“The church was more secret, and more safe: and nobody worships in it. The wind and the weather are allowed to destroy it; you care so little for it you let it molder; then why howl if a fellow uses it and keeps it warm?”
At this sally there was a broad rustic laugh, which, however, Mr. Raby quelled with one glance of his eye.
“Come, don't be impertinent,” said he to Little.
“Then don't you provoke a fellow,” cried Henry, raising his voice.
Grace clasped her hands in dismay.
Jael Dence said, in her gravest and most mellow voice, “You do forget the good Squire saved your life this very night.”
This was like oil on all the waters.
“Well, certainly I oughtn't to forget that,” said Henry, apologetically. Then he appealed piteously to Jael, whose power over him struck every body directly, including Grace Carden. “Look here, you mustn't think, because I don't keep howling, I'm all right. My arm is disabled: my back is almost broken: my thigh is cut. I'm in sharp pain, all this time: and that makes a fellow impatient of being lectured on the back of it all. Why doesn't he let me go? I don't want to affront him now. All I want is to go and get nursed a bit somewhere.”
“Now that is the first word of reason and common sense you have uttered, young man. It decides me not to detain you. All I shall do, under the circumstances, is to clear your rubbish out of that holy building, and watch it by night as well as day. Your property, however, shall be collected, and delivered to you uninjured: so oblige me with your name and address.”
Henry made no reply.
Raby turned his eye full upon him.
“Surely you do not object to tell me your name.”
“I do.”
“Why?”
“Excuse me.”
“What are you afraid of? Do you doubt my word, when I tell you I shall not proceed against you?”
“No: it is not that at all. But this is no place for me to utter my father's name. We all have our secrets, sir. You have got yours. There's a picture, with its face to the wall. Suppose I was to ask you to tell all the world whose face it is you insult and hide from the world?”
Raby turned red with wrath and surprise, at this sudden thrust. “You insolent young scoundrel!” he cried. “What is that to you, and what connection can there be between that portrait and a man in your way of life?”
“There's a close connection,” said Henry, trembling with anger, in his turn: “and the proof is that, when that picture is turned to the light, I'll tell you my name: and, till that picture is turned to the light, I'll not tell you my name; and if any body here knows my name, and tells it you, may that person's tongue be blistered at the root!”
“Oh, how fearful!” cried Grace, turning very pale. “But I'll put an end to it all. I've got the key, and I've his permission, and I'll—oh, Mr. Raby, there's something more in this than we know.” She darted to the picture, and unlocked the padlock, and, with Jael's assistance, began to turn the picture. Then Mr. Raby rose and seemed to bend his mind inward, but he neither forbade, nor encouraged, this impulsive act of Grace Carden's.
Now there was not a man nor a woman in the room whose curiosity had not been more or less excited about this picture; so there was a general movement toward it, of all but Mr. Raby, who stood quite still, turning his eye inward, and evidently much moved, though passive.
There happened to be a strong light upon the picture, and the lovely olive face, the vivid features, and glorious black eyes and eyebrows, seemed to flash out of the canvas into life.
Even the living faces, being blondes, paled before it, in the one particular of color. They seemed fair glittering moons, and this a glowing sun.
Grace's first feelings were those of simple surprise and admiration. But, as she gazed, Henry's words returned to her, and all manner of ideas struck her pell-mell. “Oh, beautiful! beautiful!” she cried. Then, turning to Henry, “You are right; it was not a face to hide from the world—oh! the likeness! just look at HIM, and then at her! can I be mistaken?”
This appeal was made to the company, and roused curiosity to a high pitch; every eye began to compare the dark-skinned beauty on the wall with the swarthy young man, who now stood there, and submitted in haughty silence to the comparison.
The words caught Mr. Raby's attention. He made a start, and elbowing them all out of his way, strode up to the picture.
“What do you say, Miss Carden? What likeness can there be between my sister and a smith?” and he turned and frowned haughtily on Henry Little.
Henry returned his look of defiance directly.
But that very exchange of defiance brought out another likeness, which Grace's quick eye seized directly.
“Why, he is still liker you,” she cried. “Look, good people! Look at all three. Look at their great black eyes, and their brown hair. Look at their dark skins, and their haughty noses. Oh, you needn't blow your nostrils out at me, gentlemen; I am not a bit afraid of either of you.—And then look at this lovely creature. She is a Raby too, only softened down by her sweet womanliness. Look at them all three, if they are not one flesh and blood, I have no eyes.”
“Oh yes, miss; and this lady is his mother. For I have SEEN her; and she is a sweet lady; and she told me I had a Cairnhope face, and kissed me for it.”
Upon this from Jael, the general conviction rose into a hum that buzzed round the room.
Mr. Raby was struck with amazement. At last he turned slowly upon Henry, and said, with stiff politeness, “Is your name Little, sir?”
“Little is my name, and I'm proud of it.”
“Your name may be Little, but your face is Raby. All the better for you, sir.”
He then turned his back to the young man, and walked right in front of the picture, and looked at it steadily and sadly.
It was a simple and natural action, yet somehow done in so imposing a way, that the bystanders held their breath, to see what would follow.
He gazed long and steadily on the picture, and his features worked visibly.
“Ay!” he said. “Nature makes no such faces nowadays. Poor unfortunate girl!” And his voice faltered a moment.
He then began to utter, in a low grave voice, some things that took every body by surprise, by the manner as well as the matter; for, with his never once taking his eyes off the picture, and speaking in a voice softened by the sudden presence of that womanly beauty, the companion of his youth, it was just like a man speaking softly in a dream.
“Thomas, this picture will remain as it is while I live.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I find I can bear the sight of you. As we get older we get tougher. You look as if you didn't want me to quarrel with your son? Well, I will not: there has been quarreling enough. Any of the loyal Dences here?” But he never even turned his head from the picture to look for them.
“Only me, sir; Jael Dence, at your service. Father's not very well.”
“Nathan, or Jael, it is all one, so that it is Dence. You'll take that young gentleman home with you, and send him to bed. He'll want nursing: for he got some ugly blows, and took them like a gentleman. The young gentleman has a fancy for forging things—the Lord knows what. He shall not forge things in a church, and defile the tombs of his own forefathers; but” (with a groan) “he can forge in your yard. All the snobs in Hillsborough sha'n't hinder him, if that is his cursed hobby. Gentlemen are not to be dictated to by snobs. Arm three men every night with guns; load the guns with ball, not small shot, as I did; and if those ruffians molest him again, kill them, and then come to me and complain of them. But, mind you kill them first—complain afterward. And now take half-a-dozen of these men with you, to carry him to the farm, if he needs it. THERE, EDITH!”
And still he never moved his eyes from the picture, and the words seemed to drop out of him.
Henry stood bewildered, and, ere he could say anything that might revive the dormant irritation of Mr. Raby against him, female tact interposed. Grace clasped her hands to him, with tears in her eyes; and as for Jael Dence, she assumed the authority with which she had been invested and hurried him bodily away; and the sword-dancers all gathered round him, and they carried him in triumphant procession, with the fiddler playing, and George whistling, the favorite tune of “Raby come home again,” while every sturdy foot beat the hard and ringing road in admirable keeping with that spirit-stirring march.
When he was gone, Grace crept up to Mr. Raby, who still stood before the picture, and eyed it and thought of his youth. She took his arm wondrous softly with her two hands, rested her sweet head against his shoulder, and gazed at it along with him.
When she had nestled to him some time in this delicate attitude, she turned her eyes up to him, and murmured, “how good, how noble you are: and how I love you.” Then, all in a moment, she curled round his neck, and kissed him with a tender violence, that took him quite by surprise.
As for Mr. Coventry, he had been reduced to a nullity, and escaped attention all this time: he sat in gloomy silence, and watched with chilled and foreboding heart the strange turn events had taken, and were taking; events which he, and no other man, had set rolling.
Frederick Coventry, being still unacquainted with the contents of Grace's letter, was now almost desperate. Grace Carden, inaccessible to an unknown workman, would she be inaccessible to a workman whom Mr. Raby, proud as he was, had publicly recognized as his nephew? This was not to be expected. But something was to be expected, viz., that in a few days the door would be closed with scorn in the face of Frederick Coventry, the miserable traitor, who had broken his solemn pledge, and betrayed his benefactor to those who had all but assassinated him. Little would be sure to suspect him, and the prisoner, when he came to be examined, would furnish some clew.
A cold perspiration bedewed his very back, when he recollected that the chief constable would be present at Cole's examination, and supply the link, even if there should be one missing. He had serious thoughts of leaving the country at once.
Finding himself unobserved, he walked out of the room, and paced up and down the hall.
His thoughts now took a practical form. He must bribe the prisoner to hold his tongue.
But how? and when? and where?
After to-night there might be no opportunity of saying a word to him.
While he was debating this in his mind, Knight the butler crossed the hall.
Coventry stopped him, and asked where the prisoner was.
“Where Squire told us to put him, sir.”
“No chance of his escaping—I hope?”
“Not he, sir.
“I should like to take a look at him.”
Knight demurred. “Well, sir, you see the orders are—but, of course, master won't mind you. I'll speak to him.”
“No, it is not worth while. I am only anxious the villain should be secure.” This of course was a feeler.
“Oh, there's no fear of that. Why, he is in the strong room. It's right above yours. If you'll come with me, sir, I'll show you the door.” Coventry accompanied him, and Thomas Knight showed him a strong door with two enormous bolts outside, both shot.
Coventry felt despair, and affected satisfaction.
Then, after a pause, he said, “But is the window equally secure?”
“Two iron bars almost as thick as these bolts: and, if it stood open, what could he do but break his neck, and cheat the gallows? He is all right, sir; never you fear. We sarched him from head to foot, and found no eend o' tools in his pockets. He is a deep 'un. But we are Yorkshire too, as the saying is. He goes to Hillsbro' town-hall to-morrow; and glad to be shut on him.”
Coventry complimented him, and agreed with him that escape was impossible.
He then got a light, and went to his own bedroom, and sat down, cold at heart, before the fire.
He sat in that state, till two o'clock in the morning, distracting his brain with schemes, that were invented only to be dismissed as idle.
At last an idea came to him. He took his fishing-rod, and put the thinner joints together, and laid them on the bed. He then opened his window very cautiously. But as that made some noise, he remained quite quiet for full ten minutes. Then he got upon the window-seat, and passed the fishing rod out. After one or two attempts he struck the window above, with the fine end.
Instantly he heard a movement above, and a window cautiously opened.
He gave a low “Hem!”
“Who's that?” whispered the prisoner, from above.
“A man who wants you to escape.”
“Nay; but I have no tools.”
“What do you require?”
“I think I could do summut with a screw-driver.”
“I'll send you one up.”
The next minute a couple of small screw-drivers were passed up—part of the furniture of his gun.
Cole worked hard, but silently, for about an hour, and then he whispered down that he should be able to get a bar out. But how high was it from the ground?
“About forty feet.”
Coventry heard the man actually groan at the intelligence.
“Let yourself down on my window-sill. I can find you rope enough for that.”
“What, d'ye take me for a bird, that can light of a gate?”
“But the sill is solid stone, and full a foot wide.”
“Say ye so, lad? Then luck is o' my side. Send up rope.”
The rope was sent up, and presently was fast to something above and dangled down a little past the window-sill.
“Put out a light on sill,” whispered the voice above.
“I will.”
Then there was a long silence, during which Coventry's blood ran cold.
As nothing further occurred, he whispered, “What is the matter?”
“My stomach fails me. Send me up a drop of brandy, will ye? Eh, man, but this is queer work.”
“I can't get it up to you; you must drink it here. Come, think! It will be five years' penal servitude if you don't.”
“Is the rope long enough?”
“Plenty for that.”
Then there was another awful silence.
By-and-by a man's legs came dangling down, and Cole landed on the sill, still holding tight by the rope. He swung down on the sill, and slid into the room, perspiring and white with fear.
Coventry gave him some brandy directly,—Cole's trembling hand sent it flying down his throat, and the two men stared at each ether.
“Why, it is a gentleman!”
“Yes.”
“And do you really mean to see me clear?”
“Drink a little more brandy, and recover yourself, and then I'll tell you.”
When the man was fortified and ready for fresh exertions, Coventry told him he must try and slip out of the house at the front door: he would lend him a feather and some oil to apply to the bolts if necessary.
When the plan of operation was settled, Coventry asked him how long it would take him to get to Hillsborough.
“I can run it in two hours.”
“Then if I give the alarm in an hour and a half, it won't hurt.”
“Give me that start and you may send bloodhounds on my heels, they'll never catch me.”
“Now take off your shoes.”
While he was taking them off, Cole eyed his unexpected friend very keenly, and took stock of all his features.
When he was ready, Coventry opened his door very carefully, and placed a light so as to be of some use to the fugitive. Cole descended the stairs like a cat, and soon found the heavy bolts and drew them; then slipped out into the night, and away, with fleet foot and wondering heart, to Hillsborough.
Coventry put out his light and slipped into bed.
About four o'clock in the morning the whole house was alarmed with loud cries, followed by two pistol-shots: and all those who ran out of their bedrooms at all promptly, found Coventry in his nightgown and trowsers, with a smoking pistol in his hand, which he said he had discharged at a robber. The account he gave was, that he had been suddenly awakened by hearing his door shut, and found his window open; had slipped on his trowsers, got to his pistols, and run out just in time to see a man opening the great front door: had fired twice at him, and thought he must have hit him the second time.
On examining the window the rope was found dangling.
Instantly there was a rush to the strong-room.
The bird was flown.
“Ah!” said Coventry. “I felt there ought to be some one with him, but I didn't like to interfere.”
George the groom and another were mounted on swift horses, and took the road to Hillsborough.
But Cole, with his start of a hundred minutes, was safe in a back slum before they got half way.
What puzzled the servants most was how Cole could have unscrewed the bar, and where he could have obtained the cord. And while they were twisting this matter every way in hot discussion, Coventry quaked, for he feared his little gunscrews would be discovered. But no, they were not in the room.
It was a great mystery; but Raby said they ought to have searched the man's body as well as his pockets.
He locked the cord up, however, and remarked it was a new one, and had probably been bought in Hillsborough. He would try and learn where.
At breakfast-time a bullet was found in the door. Coventry apologized.
“Your mistake was missing the man, not hitting the door,” said Raby. “One comfort, I tickled the fellow with small shot. It shall be slugs next time. All we can do now is to lay the matter before the police. I must go into Hillsborough, I suppose.”
He went into Hillsborough accordingly, and told the chief constable the whole story, and deposited the piece of cord with him. He found that zealous officer already acquainted with the outline of the business, and on his mettle to discover the authors and agents of the outrage, if possible. And it occurred to his sagacity that there was at this moment a workman in Hillsborough, who must know many secrets of the Trades, and had now nothing to gain by concealing them.
Thus the attempt to do Little was more successful than it looks. Its object was to keep Little and Simmons apart, and sure enough those two men never met again in life.
But, on the other hand, this new crime imbittered two able men against the union, and put Grotait in immediate peril. Mr. Ransome conferred with Mr. Holdfast and they both visited Simmons, and urged him to make a clean breast before he left the world.
Simmons hesitated. He said repeatedly, “Gi' me time! gi' me time!”
Grotait heard of these visits, and was greatly alarmed. He set Dan Tucker and another to watch by turns and report.
Messrs. Holdfast and Ransome had an ally inside the house. Eliza Watney had come in from another town, and had no Hillsborough prejudices. She was furious at this new outrage on Little, who had won her regard, and she hoped her brother-in-law would reveal all he knew. Such a confession, she thought, might remove the stigma from himself to those better-educated persons, who had made a tool of her poor ignorant relative.
Accordingly no sooner did the nurse Little had provided inform her, in a low voice, that there was A CHANGE, than she put on her bonnet, and went in all haste to Mr. Holdfast, and also to the chief constable, as she had promised them to do.
But of course she could not go without talking. She met an acquaintance not far from the door, and told her Ned was near his end, and she was going to tell the gentlemen.
Dan Tucker stepped up to this woman, and she was as open-mouthed to him as Eliza had been to her. Dan went directly with the news to Grotait.
Grotait came all in a hurry, but Holdfast was there before him, and was actually exhorting Simmons to do a good action in his last moments, and reveal those greater culprits who had employed him, when Grotait, ill at ease, walked in, sat down at the foot of the bed, and fixed his eye on Simmons.
Simmons caught sight of him and stared, but said nothing to him. Yet, when Holdfast had done, Simmons was observed to look at Grotait, though he replied to the other. “If you was a Hillsbro' man, you'd know we tell on dead folk, but not on quick. I told on Ned Simmons, because he was as good as dead; but to tell on Trade, that's different.”
“And I think, my poor fellow,” suggested Grotait, smoothly, “you might spend your last moments better in telling US what you would wish the Trade to do for your wife, and the child if it lives.”
“Well, I think ye might make the old gal an allowance till she marries again.”
“Oh, Ned! Ned!” cried the poor woman. “I'll have no man after thee.” And a violent burst of grief followed.
“Thou'll do like the rest,” said the dying man. “Hold thy bellering, and let me speak, that's got no time to lose. How much will ye allow her, old lad?”
“Six shillings a week, Ned.”
“And what is to come of young 'un?”
“We'll apprentice him.”
“To my trade?”
“You know better than that, Ned. You are a freeman; but he won't be a freeman's son by our law, thou knowst. But there's plenty of outside trades in Hillsbro'. We'll bind him to one of those, and keep an eye on him, for thy sake.”
“Well, I must take what I can get.”
“And little enough too,” said Eliza Watney. “Now do you know that they have set upon Mr. Little and beaten him within an inch of his life? Oh, Ned, you can't approve that, and him our best friend.”
“Who says I approve it, thou fool?”
“Then tell the gentleman who the villain was; for I believe you know.”
“I'll tell 'em summut about it.”
Grotait turned pale; but still kept his glittering eye fixed on the sick man.
“The job was offered to me; but I wouldn't be in it. I know that much. Says I, 'He has had his squeak.'”
“Who offered you the job?” asked Mr. Holdfast. And at this moment Ransome came in.
“What, another black coat!” said Simmons. “——, if you are not like so many crows over a dead horse.” He then began to wander, and Holdfast's question remained unanswered.
This aberration continued so long, and accompanied with such interruptions of the breathing, that both Holdfast and Ransome despaired of ever hearing another rational word from the man's lips.
They lingered on, however, and still Grotait sat at the foot of the bed, with his glittering eye fixed on the dying man.
Presently Simmons became silent, and reflected.
“Who offered me the job to do Little?” said he, in a clear rational voice.
“Yes,” said Mr. Holdfast. “And who paid you to blow up the forge?” Simmons made no reply. His fast fleeting powers appeared unable now to hold an idea for above a second or two.
Yet, after another short interval, he seemed to go back a second time to the subject as intelligibly as ever.
“Master Editor!” said he, with a sort of start.
“Yes.” And Holdfast stepped close to his bedside.
“Can you keep a secret?”
Grotait started up.
“Yes!” said Holdfast, eagerly.
“THEN SO CAN I.”
These were the last words of Ned Simmons. He died, false to himself, but true to his fellows, and faithful to a terrible confederacy, which, in England and the nineteenth century, was Venice and the middle ages over again.
Mr. Coventry, relieved of a great and immediate anxiety, could now turn his whole attention to Grace Carden; and she puzzled him. He expected to see her come down beaming with satisfaction at the great event of last night. Instead of that she appeared late, with cheeks rather pale, and signs of trouble under her fair eyes.
As the day wore on, she showed positive distress of mind, irritable and dejected by turns, and quite unable to settle to anything.
Mr. Coventry, with all his skill, was quite at fault. He could understand her being in anxiety for news about Little; but why not relieve her anxiety by sending a servant to inquire? Above all, why this irritation? this positive suffering?
A mystery to him, there is no reason why it should be one to my readers. Grace Carden, for the first time in her life, was in the clutches of a fiend, a torturing fiend, called jealousy.
The thought that another woman was nursing Henry Little all this time distracted her. It would have been such heaven to her to tend him, after those cruel men had hurt him so; but that pure joy was given to another, and that other loved him, and could now indulge and show her love. Show it? Why, she had herself opened his eyes to Jael's love, and advised him to reward it.
And now she could do nothing to defend herself. The very improvement in Henry's circumstances held her back. She could not write to him and say, “Now I know you are Mr. Raby's nephew, that makes all the difference.” That would only give him fresh offense, and misrepresent herself; for in truth she had repented her letter long before the relationship was discovered.
No; all she could do was to wait till Jael Dence came up, and then charge her with some subtle message, that might make Henry Little pause if he still loved her.
She detected Coventry watching her. She fled directly to her own room, and there sat on thorns, waiting for her rival to come and give her an opportunity.
But afternoon came, and no Jael; evening came, and no Jael.
“Ah!” thought Grace, bitterly, “she is better employed than to come near me. She is not a self-sacrificing fool like me. When I had the advantage, I gave it up; now she has got it, she uses it without mercy, decency, or gratitude. And that is the way to love. Oh! if my turn could but come again. But it never will.”
Having arrived at this conclusion, she lay on the couch in her own room, and was thoroughly miserable.
She came down to dinner, and managed to take a share in the conversation, but was very languid; and Coventry detected that she had been crying.
After dinner, Knight brought in a verbal message from Jael to Mr. Raby, to the effect that the young gentleman was stiff and sore, and she had sent into Hillsborough for Dr. Amboyne.
“Quite right of her,” said the squire. “You needn't look so alarmed, Grace; there are no bones broken; and he is in capital hands: he couldn't have a tenderer nurse than that great strapping lass, nor a better doctor than my friend and maniac, Amboyne.”
Next morning, soon after breakfast, Raby addressed his guests as follows:—“I was obliged to go into Hillsborough yesterday, and postpone the purification of that sacred building. But I set a watch on it; and this day I devote to a pious purpose; I'm going to un-Little the church of my forefathers; and you can come with me, if you choose.” This invitation, however, was given in a tone so gloomy, and so little cordial, that Coventry, courtier-like, said in reply, he felt it would be a painful sight to his host, and the fewer witnesses the better. Raby nodded assent, and seemed pleased. Not so Miss Carden. She said: “If that is your feeling, you had better stay at home. I shall go. I have something to tell Mr. Raby when we get there; and I'm vain enough to think it will make him not quite so angry about the poor dear old church.”
“Then come, by all means,” said Raby; “for I'm angry enough at present.”
Before they got half way to the church, they were hailed from behind: and turning round, saw the burly figure of Dr. Amboyne coming after them.
They waited for him, and he came up with them. He had heard the whole business from Little, and was warm in the praises of his patient.
To a dry inquiry from Raby, whether he approved of his patient desecrating a church, he said, with delicious coolness, he thought there was not much harm in that, the church not being used for divine service.
At this, Raby uttered an inarticulate but savage growl; and Grace, to avert a hot discussion, begged the doctor not to go into that question, but to tell her how Mr. Little was.
“Oh, he has received some severe contusions, but there is nothing serious. He is in good hands, I assure you. I met him out walking with his nurse; and I must say I never saw a handsomer couple. He is dark; she is fair. She is like the ancient statues of Venus, massive and grand, but not clumsy; he is lean and sinewy, as a man ought to be.”
“Oh, doctor, this from you?” said Grace, with undisguised spite.
“Well, it WAS a concession. He was leaning on her shoulder, and her face and downcast eyes were turned toward him so sweetly—said I to myself—Hum!”
“What!” said Raby. “Would you marry him to a farmer's daughter?”
“No; I'd let him marry whom he likes; only, having seen him and his nurse together, it struck me that, between two such fine creatures of the same age, the tender relation of patient and nurse, sanctioned, as I hear it is, by a benevolent uncle—”
“Confound your impudence!”
“—Would hardly stop there. What do you think, Miss Carden?”
“I'll tell you, if you will promise, on your honor, never to repeat what I say.” And she slackened her pace, and lingered behind Mr. Raby.
He promised her.
“Then,” she whispered in his ear, “I HATE YOU!”
And her eyes flashed blue fire at him, and startled him.
Then she darted forward, and took Mr. Raby's arm, with a scarlet face, and a piteous deprecating glance shot back at the sagacious personage she had defied.
Dr. Amboyne proceeded instantly to put himself in this young lady's place, and so divine what was the matter. The familiar process soon brought a knowing smile to his sly lip.
They entered the church, and went straight to the forge.
Raby stood with folded arms, and contemplated the various acts of sacrilege with a silent distress that was really touching.
Amboyne took more interest in the traces of the combat. “Ah!” said he, “this is where he threw the hot coals in their faces—he has told me all about it. And look at this pool of blood on the floor! Here he felled one of them with his shovel. What is this? traces of blood leading up to this chest!”
He opened the chest, and found plain proofs inside that the wounded man had hid himself in it for some time. He pointed this out to Raby; and gave it as his opinion that the man's confederates had come back for him, and carried him away. “These fellows are very true to one another. I have often admired them for that.”
Raby examined the blood-stained interior of the chest, and could not help agreeing with the sagacious doctor.
“Yes,” said he, sadly; “if we had been sharp, we might have caught the blackguard. But I was in a hurry to leave the scene of sacrilege. Look here; the tomb of a good knight defiled into an oven, and the pews mutilated—and all for the base uses of trade.” And in this strain he continued for a long time so eloquently that, at last, he roused Grace Carden's ire.
“Mr. Raby,” said she, firmly, “please add to those base uses one more. One dismal night, two poor creatures, a man and a woman, lost their way in the snow; and, after many a hard struggle, the cold and the snow overpowered them, and death was upon them. But, just at her last gasp, the girl saw a light, and heard the tinkling of a hammer. She tottered toward it; and it was a church. She just managed to strike the door with her benumbed hands, and then fell insensible. When she came to herself, gentle hands had laid her before two glorious fires in that cold tomb there. Then the same gentle hands gave her food and wine, and words of comfort, and did everything for her that brave men do for poor weak suffering women. Yes, sir, it was my life he saved, and Mr. Coventry's too; and I can't bear to hear a word against him, especially while I stand looking at his poor forge, and his grates, that you abuse; but I adore them, and bless them; and so would you, if they had saved your life, as they did mine. You don't love me one bit; and it is very cruel.”
Raby stood astonished and silent. At last he said, in a very altered tone, quite mild and deprecating, “Why did you not tell me this before?”
“Because he made us promise not. Would you have had me betray my benefactor?”
“No. You are a brave girl, an honest girl. I love you more than a bit, and, for your sake, I forgive him the whole thing. I will never call it sacrilege again, since its effect was to save an angel's life. Come, now, you have shown a proper spirit, and stood up for the absent, and brought me to submission by your impetuosity, so don't spoil it all by crying.”
“No, I won't,” said Grace, with a gulp. But her tears would not cease all in a moment. She had evoked that tender scene, in which words and tears of true and passionate love had rained upon her. They were an era in her life; had swept forever out of her heart all the puny voices that had prattled what they called love to her; and that divine music, should she ever hear it again? She had resigned it, had bidden it shine upon another. For this, in reality, her tears were trickling.
Mr. Raby took a much lighter view of it, and, to divert attention from her, he said, “Hallo! why this inscription has become legible. It used to be only legible in parts. Is that his doing?”
“Not a doubt of it,” said Amboyne.
“Set that against his sacrilege.”
“Miss Carden and I are both agreed it was not sacrilege. What is here in this pew? A brass! Why this is the brass we could none of us decipher. Hang me, if he has not read it, and restored it!”
“So he has. And where's the wonder? We live in a glorious age” (Raby smiled) “that has read the written mountains of the East, and the Abyssinian monuments: and he is a man of the age, and your mediaeval brasses are no more to him than cuneiform letters to Rawlinson. Let me read this resuscitated record. 'Edith Little, daughter of Robert Raby, by Leah Dence his wife:' why here's a hodge-podge! What! have the noble Rabys intermarried with the humble Dences?”
“So it seems. A younger son.”
“And a Raby, daughter of Dence, married a Little three hundred years ago?”
“So it seems.”
“Then what a pity this brass was not deciphered thirty years ago! But never mind that. All I demand is tardy justice to my protege. Is not this a remarkable man? By day he carves wood, and carries out a philanthropic scheme (which I mean to communicate to you this very day, together with this young man's report); at night he forges tools that all Hillsborough can't rival; in an interval of his work he saves a valuable life or two; in another odd moment he fights like a lion, one to four; even in his moments of downright leisure, when he is neither saving life nor taking it, he practices honorable arts, restores the fading letters of a charitable bequest, and deciphers brasses, and vastly improves his uncle's genealogical knowledge, who, nevertheless, passed for an authority, till my Crichton stepped upon the scene.”
Raby bore all this admirably. “You may add,” said he, “that he nevertheless finds time to correspond with his friends. Here is a letter, addressed to Miss Carden, I declare!”
“A letter to me!” said Grace, faintly.
Raby handed it over the pew to her, and turned the address, so that she could judge for herself.
She took it very slowly and feebly, and her color came and went.
“You seemed surprised; and so am I. It must have been written two days ago.”
“Yes.”
“Why, what on earth could he have to say to you?”
“I suppose it is the reply to mine,” stammered Grace.
Mr. Raby looked amazement, and something more.
Grace faltered out an explanation. “When he had saved my life, I was so grateful I wanted to make him a return. I believed Jael Dence and he—I have so high an opinion of her—I ventured to give him a hint that he might find happiness there.”
Raby bit his lip. “A most singular interference on the part of a young lady,” said he, stiffly. “You are right, doctor; this age resembles no other. I suppose you meant it kindly; but I am very sorry you felt called upon, at your age, to put any such idea into the young man's head.”
“So am I,” said poor Grace. “Oh, pray forgive me. I am so unhappy.” And she hid her face in her hands.
“Of course I forgive you,” said Raby. “But, unfortunately, I knew nothing of all this, and went and put him under her charge; and here he has found a precedent for marrying a Dence—found it on this confounded brass! Well, no matter. Life is one long disappointment. What does he say? Where is the letter gone to? It has vanished.”
“I have got it safe,” said Grace, deprecatingly.
“Then please let me know what he says.”
“What, read his letter to you?”
“Why not, pray? I'm his uncle. He is my heir-at-law. I agree with Amboyne, he has some fine qualities. It is foolish of me, no doubt, but I am very anxious to know what he says about marrying my tenant's daughter.” Then, with amazing dignity, “Can I be mistaken in thinking I have a right to know who my nephew intends to marry?” And he began to get very red.
Grace hung her head, and, trembling a little, drew the letter very slowly out of her bosom.
It just flashed through her mind how cruel it was to make her read out the death-warrant of her heart before two men; but she summoned all a woman's fortitude and self-defense, prepared to hide her anguish under a marble demeanor, and quietly opened the letter.
“You advise me to marry one, when I love another; and this, you think, is the way to be happy. It has seldom proved so, and I should despise happiness if I could only get it in that way.
“Yours, sadly but devotedly,
“H. LITTLE.
“Will you wait two years?”
Grace, being on her defense, read this letter very slowly, and as if she had to decipher it. That gave her time to say, “Yours, et cetera,” instead of “sadly and devotedly.” (Why be needlessly precise?) As for the postscript, she didn't trouble them with that at all.
She then hurried the letter into her pocket, that it might not be asked for, and said, with all the nonchalance she could manage to assume, “Oh, if he loves somebody else!”
“No; that is worse still,” said Mr. Raby. “In his own rank of life, it is ten to one if he finds anything as modest, as good, and as loyal as Dence's daughter. It's some factory-girl, I suppose.”
“Let us hope not,” said Grace, demurely; but Amboyne noticed that her cheek was now flushed, and her eyes sparkling like diamonds.
Soon afterward she strolled apart, and took a wonderful interest in the monuments and things, until she found an opportunity to slip out into the church-yard. There she took the letter out, and kissed it again and again, as if she would devour it; and all the way home she was as gay as a lark. Amboyne put himself in her place.
When they got home, he said to her, “My dear Miss Carden, I have a favor to ask you. I want an hour's conversation with Mr. Raby. Will you be so very kind as to see that I am not interrupted?”
“Oh yes. No; you must tell me, first, what you are going to talk about. I can't have gentlemen talking nonsense together UNINTERRUPTEDLY.”
“You ladies claim to monopolize nonsense, eh? Well, I am going to talk about my friend, Mr. Little. Is he nonsense?”
“That depends. What are you going to say about him?”
“Going to advance his interests—and my own hobby. Such is man.”
“Never mind what is man; what is your hobby?”
“Saving idiotic ruffians' lives.”
“Well, that is a hobby. But, if Mr. Little is to profit by it, never mind; you shall not be interrupted, if I can keep 'les facheux' away.”
Accordingly she got her work, and sat in the hall. Here, as she expected, she was soon joined by Mr. Coventry, and he found her in a gracious mood, and in excellent spirits.
After some very pleasant conversation, she told him she was keeping sentinel over Dr. Amboyne and his hobby.
“What is that?”
“Saving idiotic ruffians' lives. Ha! ha! ha!”
Her merry laugh rang through the hall like a peal of bells.
Coventry stared, and then gave up trying to understand her and her eternal changes. He just set himself to please her, and he never found it easier than that afternoon.
Meantime Dr. Amboyne got Raby alone, and begged leave, in the first place, to premise that his (Raby's) nephew was a remarkable man. To prove it, he related Little's whole battle with the Hillsborough Trades; and then produced a report the young man had handed him that very day. It was actually in his pocket during the fight, mute protest against that barbarous act.
The Report was entitled—“LIFE, LABOR AND CAPITAL IN HILLSBOROUGH,” and was divided into two parts.
Part 1 was entitled—“PECULIARITIES OF CUTLERY HURTFUL TO LIFE AND HEALTH.”
And part 2 was entitled—“The REMEDIES TO THE ABOVE.”
Part 2 was divided thus:—
A. What the masters could do.
B. What the workmen could do.
C. What the Legislature could do.
Part 1 dealt first with the diseases of the grinders; but instead of
quoting it, I ask leave to refer to Chapter VIII., where the main facts lie recorded.
Having thus curtailed the Report, I print the remainder in an Appendix, for the use of those few readers who can endure useful knowledge in works of this class.
Raby read the report without moving a muscle.
“Well, what do you think of him?” asked Amboyne.
“I think he is a fool to trouble his head whether these animals live or die.”
“Oh, that is my folly; not his. At bottom, he cares no more than you do.”
“Then I retract my observation.”
“As to its being folly, or as to Little being the fool?”
“Whichever you like best.”
“Thank you. Well, but to be serious, this young man is very anxious to be a master, instead of a man. What do you say? Will you help his ambition, and my sacred hobby?”
“What, plunge you deeper in folly, and him in trade? Not I. I don't approve folly, I hate trade. But I tell you what I'll do. If he and his mother can see my conduct in its proper light, and say so, they can come to Raby, and he can turn gentleman, take the name of Raby, as he has got the face, and be my heir.”
“Are you serious, Raby?”
“Perfectly.”
“Then you had better write it, and I'll take it to him.”
“Certainly.” He sat down and wrote as follows:
“SIR,—What has recently occurred appears calculated to soften one of those animosities which, between persons allied in blood, are always to be regretted. I take the opportunity to say, that if your mother, under your advice, will now reconsider the duties of a trustee, and my conduct in that character, and her remarks on that conduct, I think she will do me justice, and honor me once more with her esteem. Should this be the result, I further hope that she and yourself will come to Raby, and that you will change that way of life which you have found so full of thorns, and prepare yourself to succeed to my name and place. I am, your obedient servant,
“GUY RABY.”
“There read that.”
Amboyne read it, and approved it. Then he gave a sigh, and said, “And so down goes my poor hobby.”
“Oh, never mind,” said Raby; “you've got one or two left in your stable.”
Dr. Amboyne went out, and passed through the hall. There he found Mr. Coventry and Miss Carden: the latter asked him, rather keenly, if the conference was over.
“Yes, and not without a result: I'll read it to you.” He did so, and Grace's cheek was dyed with blushes, and her eyes beamed with joy.
“Oh, how noble is, and how good you are. Run! Fly!”
“Such movements are undignified, and unsuited to my figure. Shall I roll down the hill? That would be my quickest way.”
This discussion was cut short by a servant, who came to tell the doctor that a carriage was ordered for him, and would be round in a minute. Dr. Amboyne drove off, and Miss Carden now avoided Coventry: she retired to her room. But, it seems, she was on the watch; for, on the doctor's return, she was the person who met him in the hall.
“Well?” said she, eagerly.
“Well, would you believe it? he declines. He objects to leave his way of life, and to wait for dead men's shoes.”
“Oh, Dr. Amboyne! And you were there to advise him!”
“I did not venture to advise him. There was so much to be said on both sides.” Then he went off to Raby with the note; but, as he went, he heard Grace say, in a low voice, “Ah, you never thought of me.”
Little's note ran thus:
“SIR,—I thank you for your proposal; and as to the first part of it, I quite agree, and should be glad to see my mother and you friends again. But, as to my way of life, I have chosen my path, and mean to stick to it. I hope soon to be a master, instead of a workman, and I shall try and behave like a gentleman, so that you may not have to blush for me. Should blush for myself if I were to give up industry and independence, and take to waiting for dead men's shoes; that is a baser occupation than any trade in Hillsborough, I think. This is not as politely written as I could wish; but I am a blunt fellow, and I hope you will excuse it. I am not ungrateful to you for shooting those vermin, nor for your offer, though I can not accept it. Yours respectfully,
“HENRY LITTLE.”
Raby read this, and turned white with rage.
He locked the letter up along with poor Mrs. Little's letters, and merely said, “I have only one request to make. Never mention the name of Little to me again.”
Dr. Amboyne went home very thoughtful.
That same day Mr. Carden wrote from London to his daughter informing her he should be at Hillsborough next day to dinner. She got the letter next morning, and showed it to Mr. Raby. He ordered his carriage after breakfast for Hillsborough.
This was a blow to Grace. She had been hoping all this time a fair opportunity might occur for saying something to young Little.
She longed to write to him, and set his heart and her own at rest. But a great shyness and timidity paralyzed her, and she gave up the idea of writing, and had hitherto been hoping they might meet, and she might reinstate herself by some one cunning word. And now the end of it all was, that she was driven away from Raby Hall without doing any thing but wish, and sigh, and resolve, and give up her resolutions with a blush.
The carriage passed the farm on its way to Hillsborough. This was Grace's last chance.
Little was standing at the porch.
A thrill of delight traversed Grace's bosom.
It was followed, however, by a keen pang. Jael Dence sat beside him, sewing; and Grace saw, in a moment, she was sewing complacently. It was more than Grace could bear. She pulled the check-string, and the carriage stopped.