Loe raamatut: «Erema; Or, My Father's Sin», lehekülg 22
Before he stood up again, to ease his back and to look at the ground which he still had to turn, I was kneeling behind a short, close-branched holly, the very last bush of the hedge-row, scarcely fifteen yards from the hawthorn-tree. It was quite impossible to get nearer without coming face to face with him. And now I began again to tremble, but with a great effort conquered it.
The man was panting with his labor, and seemed to be in a vile temper too. He did not swear, but made low noises full of disappointment. And then he caught up his tool, with a savage self-control, and fell to again.
Now was my time to see what he was like, and engrave him on my memory. But, lo! in a moment I need not do that. The face was the bad image of my father’s. A lowered, and vicious, and ill-bred image of a noble countenance—such as it was just possible to dream that my dear father’s might have fallen to, if his mind and soul had plunged away from the good inborn and implanted in them. The figure was that of a tall strong man, with shoulders rather slouching, and a habit of keeping his head thrown back, which made a long chin look longer. Altogether he seemed a perilous foe, and perhaps a friend still more perilous.
Be he what he might, he was working very hard. Not one of all Uncle Sam’s men, to my knowledge, least of all Martin, would have worked so hard. With his narrow and ill-adapted tool he contrived to turn over, in less than twenty minutes, the entire bed of the meadow-leet, or trough, for a length of about ten yards. Then he came to the mouth, where the water of the main stream lapped back into it, and he turned up the bottom as far as he could reach, and waited for the mud he had raised to clear away. When this had flowed down with the stream, he walked in for some little distance till the pool grew deep; but in spite of all his labor, there was nothing.
Meanwhile the sunset glow was failing, and a gray autumnal haze crept up the tranquil valley. Shadows waned and faded into dimness more diffuse, and light grew soft and vague and vaporous. The gleam of water, and the gloss of grass, and deep relief of trees, began to lose their several phase and mingle into one large twilight blend. And cattle, from their milking sheds, came lowing for more pasture; and the bark of a shepherd’s dog rang quick, as if his sheep were drowsy.
In the midst of innocent sights and sounds that murderer’s heart misgave him. He left his vain quest off, and gazed, with fear and hate of nature’s beauty, at the change from day to night which had not waited for him. Some touch of his childhood moved him perhaps, some thought of times when he played “I spy,” or listened to twilight ghost tales; at any rate, as he rose and faced the evening, he sighed heavily.
Then he strode away; and although he passed me almost within length of his rod, there was little fear of his discovering me, because his mind was elsewhere.
It will, perhaps, be confessed by all who are not as brave as lions that so far I had acquitted myself pretty well in this trying matter. Horribly scared as I was at first, I had not allowed this to conquer me, but had even rushed into new jeopardy. But now the best part of my courage was spent; and when the tall stranger refixed his rod and calmly recrossed those ominous planks, I durst not set forth on the perilous errand of spying out his ways and tracking him. A glance was enough to show the impossibility in those long meadows of following without being seen in this stage of the twilight. Moreover, my nerves had been tried too long, and presence of mind could not last forever. All I could do, therefore, was to creep as far as the trunk of the hawthorn-tree, and thence observe that my enemy did not return by the way he had come, but hastened down the dusky valley.
One part of his labors has not been described, though doubtless a highly needful one. To erase the traces of his work, or at least obscure them to a careless eye, when he had turned as much ground as he thought it worth his while to meddle with, he trod it back again to its level as nearly as might be, and then (with a can out of his fishing basket) sluiced the place well with the water of the stream. This made it look to any heedless person, who would not descend to examine it, as if there had been nothing more than a little reflux from the river, caused by a flush from the mill-pond. This little stratagem increased my fear of a cunning and active villain.
CHAPTER XLI
A STRONG TEMPTATION
Now it will be said, and I also knew, that there was nothing as yet, except most frail and feeble evidence, to connect that nameless stranger with the crime charged upon my father. Indeed, it might be argued well that there was no evidence at all, only inference and suspicion. That, however, was no fault of mine; and I felt as sure about it as if I had seen him in the very act. And this conclusion was not mine alone; for Mrs. Busk, a most clever woman, and the one who kept the post-office, entirely agreed with me that there could be no doubt on earth about it.
But when she went on to ask me what it was my intention to do next, for the moment I could do nothing more than inquire what her opinion was. And she told me that she must have a good night’s rest before advising any thing. For the thought of having such a heinous character in her own delivery district was enough to unhinge her from her postal duties, some of which might be useful to me.
With a significant glance she left me to my own thoughts, which were sad enough, and too sad to be worth recording. For Mrs. Busk had not the art of rousing people and cheering them, such as Betsy Strouss, my old nurse, had, perhaps from her knowledge of the nursery. My present landlady might be the more sagacious and sensible woman of the two, and therefore the better adviser; but for keeping one up to the mark she was not in any way equal to Betsy.
There is no ingratitude in saying this, because she herself admitted it. A clever woman, with a well-balanced mind, knows what she can do, and wherein she fails, better than a man of her own proportion does. And Mrs. Busk often lamented, without much real mortification, that she had not been “born sympathetic.”
All the more perhaps for that, she was born sagacious, which is a less pleasing, but, in a bitter pinch, a more really useful, quality. And before I had time to think much of her defects, in the crowd of more important thought, in she came again, with a letter in her hand, and a sparkle of triumph in her small black eyes. After looking back along the passage, and closing my door, she saw that my little bay-window had its old-fashioned shutters fastened, and then, in a very low whisper, she said, “What you want to know is here, miss.”
“Indeed!” I answered, in my usual voice. “How can you know that? The letter is sealed.”
“Hush! Would you have me ruined for your sake? This was at the bottom of the Nepheton bag. It fell on the floor. That was God’s will, to place it in your power.”
“It is not in my power,” I answered, whispering in my turn, and staring at it, in the strong temptation. “I have no right even to look at it. It is meant for some one else, and sealed.”
“The seal is nothing. I can manage that. Another drop of wax—and I strike our stamp by accident over the breakage. I refuse to know any thing about it. I am too busy with the other letters. Five minutes—lock the door—and I will come again.”
This was a desperate conflict for me, worse even than bodily danger. My first impulse was to have nothing to do with it—even to let the letter lie untouched, and, if possible, unglanced at. But already it was too late for the eyes to turn away. The address had flashed upon me before I thought of any thing, and while Mrs. Busk held it up to me. And now that address was staring at me, like a contemptuous challenge, while the seal, the symbol of private rights and deterrent honor, lay undermost. The letter was directed to “H. W. C., Post-office, Newport, Sussex.” The writing was in round hand, and clear, so as not to demand any scrutiny, and to seem like that of a lawyer’s clerk, and the envelope was of thin repellent blue.
My second impulse was to break the letter open and read it without shrinking. Public duty must conquer private scruples. Nothing but the hand of Providence itself could have placed this deadly secret in my power so amazingly. Away with all squeamishness, and perhaps prevent more murder.
But that “perhaps” gave me sudden pause. I had caught up the letter, and stood near the candle to soften the wax and lift the cover with a small sharp paper-knife, when it flashed on my mind that my cousin would condemn and scorn what I was doing. Unconsciously I must have made him now my standard of human judgment, or what made me think of him at that moment? I threw down the letter, and then I knew. The image of Lord Castlewood had crossed my mind, because the initials were his own—those of Herbert William Castlewood. This strange coincidence—if it were, indeed, an accident—once more set me thinking. Might not this letter be from his agent, of whom he had spoken as my protector here, but to whom as all unseen I scarcely ever gave a thought? Might not young Stixon, who so often was at Bruntsea, be employed to call at Newport for such letters, and return with them to his master? It was not very likely, for my cousin had the strongest contempt of anonymous doings. Still it was possible, and the bare possibility doubled my reluctance to break the seal.
For one minute longer I stood in doubt, and then honor and candor and truth prevailed. If any other life had been in peril but my own, duty to another might have overridden all. But duty to one’s self, if overpushed in such a case, would hold some taint of cowardice. So I threw the letter, with a sense of loathing, on a chair. Whatever it might contain, it should pass, at least for me, inviolate.
Now when Mrs. Busk came to see what I had done, or rather left undone, she flew into a towering passion, until she had no time to go on with it. The rattle of the rickety old mail-cart, on its way to Winchester that night, was heard, and the horn of the driver as he passed the church.
“Give it me. ‘A mercy! A young natural, that you are!” the good woman cried, as she flung out of the room to dash her office stamp upon that hateful missive, and to seal the leathern bag. “Seal, indeed! Inviolate! How many seals have I got to make every day of my life?”
I heard a great thump from the corner of the shop where the business of the mails was conducted; and she told me afterward that she was so put out, that broken that seal should be—one way or another. Accordingly she smashed it with the office stamp, which was rather like a woman’s act, methought; and then, having broken it, she never looked inside—which, perhaps, was even more so.
When she recovered her leisure and serenity, and came in, to forgive me and be forgiven, we resolved to dismiss the moral aspect of the question, as we never should agree about it, although Mrs. Busk was not so certain as she had been, when she found that the initials were the initials of a lord. And then I asked her how she came to fix upon that letter among so many others, and to feel so sure that it came from my treacherous enemy.
“In the first place, I know every letter from Nepheton,” she answered, very sensibly. “There are only fourteen people that write letters in the place, and twelve of those fourteen buy their paper in my shop—there is no shop at all at Nepheton. In the next place, none of them could write a hand like that, except the parson and the doctor, who are far above disguise. And two other things made me certain as could be. That letter was written at the ‘Green Man’ ale-house; not on their paper, nor yet with their ink; but being in great hurry, it was dusted with their sand—a sand that turns red upon ink, miss. And the time of dispatch there is just what he would catch, by walking fast after his dig where you saw him, going in that direction too, and then having his materials ready to save time. And if all that is not enough to convince you, miss—you remember that you told me our old sexton’s tale?”
“To be sure I do. The first evening I was left alone here. And you have been so kind, there is nothing I would hide from you.”
“Well, miss, the time of old Jacob’s tale is fixed by the death of poor old Sally Mock; and the stranger came again after you were here, just before the death of the miller’s eldest daughter, and you might almost have seen him. Poor thing! we all called her the ‘flower of the Moon,’ meaning our little river. What a fine young woman she was, to be sure! Whenever we heard of any strangers about, we thought they were prowling after her. I was invited to her funeral, and I went, and nothing could be done nicer. But they never will be punctual with burials here; they like to dwell on them, and keep the bell going, for the sake of the body, and the souls that must come after it. And so, when it was done, I was twenty minutes late for the up mail and the cross-country post, and had to move my hands pretty sharp, I can assure you. That doesn’t matter; I got through it, with the driver of the cart obliging, by means of some beer and cold bacon. But what I feared most was the Nepheton bag, having seen the old man at the funeral, and knowing what they do afterward. I could not return him ‘too late’ again, or he would lose his place for certain, and a shilling a day made all the difference to him, between wife and no wife. The old pair without it must go to the workhouse, and never see one another. However, when I was despairing quite of him, up he comes with his bag quite correct, but only one letter to sort in it, and that letter was, miss, the very identical of the one you held in your hands just now. And a letter as like it as two peas had come when we buried old Sally. It puzzled me then, but I had no clew to it; only now, you see, putting this and that together, the things we behold must have some meaning for us; and to let them go without it is against the will of God; especially when at the bottom of the bag.”
“If you hear so soon of any stranger in the valley,” I asked, to escape the re-opening of the opening question, “how can that man come and go—a man of remarkable stature and appearance—without any body asking who he is?”
“You scarcely could have put it better, miss, for me to give the answer. They do ask who he is, and they want to know it, and would like any body to tell them. But being of a different breed, as they are, from all outside the long valley, speaking also with a different voice, they fear to talk so freely out of their own ways and places. Any thing they can learn in and out among themselves, they will learn; but any thing out of that they let go, in the sense of outlandish matter. Bless you, miss, if your poor grandfather had been shot any where else in England, how different it would have been for him!”
“For us, you mean, Mrs. Busk. Do you think the man who did it had that in his mind?”
“Not unless he knew the place, as few know it. No, that was an accident of his luck, as many other things have been. But the best luck stops at last, Miss Erema; and unless I am very much mistaken, you will be the stop of his. I shall find out, in a few days, where he came from, where he staid, and when he went away. I suppose you mean to let him go away?”
“What else am I to do?” I asked. “I have no evidence at all against him; only my own ideas. The police would scarcely take it up, even if—”
“Oh, don’t talk of them. They spoil every thing. And none of our people would say a word, or care to help us, if it came to that. The police are all strangers, and our people hate them. And, indeed, I believe that the worst thing ever done was the meddling of that old Jobbins. The old stupe is still alive at Petersfield, and as pompous-headed as ever. My father would have been the man for your sad affair, miss, if the police had only been invented in his time. Ah, yes, he was sharp! Not a Moonstock man—you may take your oath of that, miss—but a good honest native from Essex. But he married my mother, a Moonstock woman; or they would not put up with me here at all. You quality people have your ideas to hold by, and despise all others, and reasonable in your opinions; but you know nothing—nothing—nothing—of the stiffness of the people under you.”
“How should I know any thing of that?” I answered; “all these things are new to me. I have not been brought up in this country, as you know. I come from a larger land, where your stiffness may have burst out into roughness, from having so much room suddenly. But tell me what you think now your father would have done in such a case as mine is.”
“Miss Erema, he was that long-headed that nobody could play leap-frog with him. None of them ever cleared over his barrel. He walked into this village fifty-five years back, this very month, with his spade upon his shoulder and the knowledge of every body in his eye. They all put up against him, but they never put him down; and in less than three months he went to church, I do assure you, with the only daughter of the only baker. After that he went into the baking line himself; he turned his spade into a shovel, as he said, and he introduced new practices.”
“Oh, Mrs. Busk, not adulteration?”
“No, miss, no! The very last thing he would think of. Only the good use of potatoes in the bread, when flour was frightful bad and painful dear. What is the best meal of the day? he used to reason. Dinner. And why? Why, because of the potatoes. If I can make people take potato for their breakfast, and potato for their supper too, I am giving them three meals a day instead of one. And the health of the village corresponded to it.”
“Oh, but, Mrs. Busk, he might have made them do it by persuasion, or at least with their own knowledge—”
“No, miss, no! The whole nature of our people, Moonstock or out of it, is never to take victuals by any sort of persuasion. If St. Paul was to come and preach, ‘Eat this or that,’ all I had of it in the shop would go rotten. They hate any meddling with their likings, and they suspect doctor’s rubbish in all of it.”
“I am quite of their opinion,” I replied; “and I am glad to hear of their independence. I always used to hear that in England none of the poor people dared have a will of their own.”
Mrs. Busk lifted up her hands to express amazement at my ignorance, and said that she “must run away and put the shutters up, or else the policeman would come rapping, and look for a glass of beer, which he had no right to till it came to the bottom of the firkin; and this one was only tapped last Sunday week. Don’t you ever think of the police, miss.”
Probably this was good advice, and it quite agreed with the opinions of others, and my own impressions as to the arrogant lethargy of “the force,” as they called themselves, in my father’s case. Mrs. Busk had more activity and intelligence in her little head than all the fat sergeants and inspectors of the county, helmet, belt, and staff, and all.
CHAPTER XLII
MASTER WITHYPOOL
At first I was much inclined to run for help, or at least for counsel, either to Lord Castlewood or to Major Hockin; but further consideration kept me from doing any thing of the kind. In the first place, neither of them would do much good; for my cousin’s ill health would prevent him from helping me, even if his strange view of the case did not, while the excellent Major was much too hot and hasty for a delicate task like this. And, again, I might lose the most valuable and important of all chances by being away from the spot just now. And so I remained at Shoxford for a while, keeping strict watch upon the stranger’s haunt, and asking about him by means of Mrs. Busk.
“I have heard more about him, miss,” she said one day, when the down letters had been dispatched, which happened about middle-day. “He has been here only those three times this summer, upon excuse of fishing always. He stays at old Wellham, about five miles down the river, where the people are not true Moonites. And one thing that puzzles them is, that although he puts up there simply for the angling, he always chooses times when the water is so low that to catch fish is next to impossible. He left his fishing quarters upon the very day after you saw him searching so; and he spoke as if he did not mean to come again this season. And they say that they don’t want him neither, he is such a morose, close-fisted man; and drinking nothing but water, there is very little profit with him.”
“And did you find out what his name is? How cleverly you have managed!”
“He passes by the name of ‘Captain Brown;’ but the landlord of his inn, who has been an old soldier, is sure he was never in the army, nor any other branch of the service. He thinks that he lives by inventing things, for he is always at some experiments, and one of his great points is to make a lamp that will burn and move about under water. To be sure you see the object of that, miss?”
“No, really, Mrs. Busk, I can not. I have not your penetration.”
“Why, of course, to find what he can not find upon land. There is something of great importance there, either for its value or its meaning. Have you ever been told that your poor grandfather wore any diamonds or precious jewels?”
“No. I have asked about that most especially. He had nothing about him to tempt a robber. He was a very strong-willed man, and he hated outward trumpery.”
“Then it must be something that this man himself has dropped, unless it were a document, or any other token, missing from his lordship. And few things of that sort would last for twenty years almost.”
“Nineteen years the day after to-morrow,” I answered, with a glance at my pocket-book. “I determined to be here on that very day. No doubt I am very superstitious. But one thing I can not understand is this—what reason can there have been for his letting so many years pass, and then hunting like this?”
“No one can answer that question, miss, without knowing more than we know. But many reasons might be supposed. He might have been roving abroad, for instance, just as you and your father have been. Or he might not have known that the thing was there; or it might not have been of importance till lately; or he might have been afraid, until something else happened. Does he know that you are now in England?”
“How can I possibly tell, Mrs. Busk? He seems to know a great deal too much. He found me out when I was at Colonel Gundry’s. At least I conclude so, from what I know now; but I hope he does not know”—and at such a dreadful idea I shuddered.
“I am almost sure that he can not know it,” the good postmistress answered, “or he would have found means to put an end to you. That would have been his first object.”
“But, Mrs. Busk,” I said, being much disturbed by her calmness, “surely, surely he is not to be allowed to make an end of every one! I came to this country with the full intention of going into every thing. But I did not mean at all, except in my very best moments, to sacrifice myself. It seems too bad—too bad to think of.”
“So it is, Miss Erema,” Mrs. Busk replied, without any congenial excitement. “It does seem hard for them that have the liability on them. But still, miss, you have always shown such a high sense of duty, and of what you were about—”
“I can’t—I can not. There are times, I do assure you, when I am fit for nothing, Mrs. Busk, and wish myself back in America. And if this man is to have it all his own way—”
“Not he, miss—not he. Be you in no hurry. Could he even have his way with our old miller? No; Master Withypool was too many for him.”
“That is a new thing. You never told me that. What did he try to do with the miller?”
“I don’t justly know what it was, Miss Erema. I never spoke to miller about it, and, indeed, I have had no time since I heard of it. But those that told me said that the tall strange gentleman was terribly put out, and left the gate with a black cloud upon his face, and the very next day the miller’s daughter died, quite sudden and mysterious.”
“How very strange! But now I have got a new idea. Has the miller a strong high dam to his pond, and a good stout sluice-gate at the end!”
“Yes, miss, to be sure he has,” said Mrs. Busk; “otherwise how could he grind at all, when the river is so low as it is sometimes?”
“Then I know what he wanted, and I will take a leaf out of his own book—the miscreant! He wanted the miller to stop back the water and leave the pool dry at the ‘Murder-bridge.’ Would it be possible for him to do that?”
“I can not tell you, miss; but your thought is very clever. It is likely enough that he did want that, though he never would dare to ask without some pretense—some other cause I mean, to show for it. He may have been thinking that whatever he was wanting was likely to be under water. And that shows another thing, if it is so.”
“Mrs. Busk, my head goes round with such a host of complications. I do my best to think them out—and then there comes another!”
“No, miss; this only clears things up a little. If the man can not be sure whether what he is looking for is on land or under water, it seems to me almost to show that it was lost at the murder time in the dark and flurry. A man would know if he dropped any thing in the water by daylight, from the splash and the ripple, and so on, for the stream is quite slow at that corner. He dropped it, miss, when he did the deed, or else it came away from his lordship.”
“Nothing was lost, as I said before, from the body of my grandfather, so far at least as our knowledge goes. Whatever was lost was the murderer’s. Now please to tell me all about the miller, and how I may get round him.”
“You make me laugh in the middle of black things, miss, by the way you have of putting them. But as to the miller—Master Withypool is a wonder, as concerns the ladies. He is one of those men that stand up for every thing when a man tries upper side of them. But let a woman come, and get up under, and there he is—a pie crust lifted. Why, I, at my age, could get round him, as you call it. But you, miss—and more than that, you are something like his daughter; and the old man frets after her terrible. Go you into his yard, and just smile upon him, miss, and if the Moon River can be stopped, he’ll stop it for you.”
This seemed a very easy way to do it. But I told Mrs. Busk that I would pay well also, for the loss of a day’s work at the mill was more than fifty smiles could make up.
But she told me, above all things, not to do that. For old Master Withypool was of that sort that he would stand for an hour with his hands in his pocket for a half-penny, if not justly owing from him. But nothing more angered him than a bribe to step outside of his duty. He had plenty of money, and was proud of it. But sooner would he lose a day’s work to do a kindness, when he was sure of having right behind it, than take a week’s profit without earning it. And very likely that was where the dark man failed, from presuming that money would do every thing. However, there was nothing like judging for one’s self; and if I would like to be introduced, she could do it for me with the best effect; taking as she did a good hundred-weight of best “households” from him every week, although not herself in the baking line, but always keeping quartern bags, because the new baker did adulterate so.
I thought of her father, and how things work round; but that they would do without remarks of mine. So I said nothing on that point, but asked whether Master Withypool would require any introduction. And to this Mrs. Busk said, “Oh dear, no!” And her throat had been a little rough since Sunday, and the dog was chained tight, even if any dog would bite a sweet young lady; and to her mind the miller would be more taken up and less fit to vapor into obstacles, if I were to hit upon him all alone, just when he came out to the bank of his cabbage garden, not so very long after his dinner, to smoke his pipe and to see his things a-growing.
It was time to get ready if I meant to catch him then, for he always dined at one o’clock, and the mill was some three or four meadows up the stream; therefore as soon as Mrs. Busk had re-assured me that she was quite certain of my enemy’s departure, I took my drawing things and set forth to call upon Master Withypool.
Passing through the church-yard, which was my nearest way, and glancing sadly at the “fairy ring,” I began to have some uneasiness about the possible issue of my new scheme. Such a thing required more thinking out than I had given to it. For instance, what reason could I give the miller for asking so strange a thing of him? And how could the whole of the valley be hindered from making the greatest talk about the stoppage of their own beloved Moon, even if the Moon could be stopped without every one of them rushing down to see it? And if it was so talked of, would it not be certain to come to the ears of that awful man? And if so, how long before he found me out, and sent me to rejoin my family?
These thoughts compelled me to be more discreet; and having lately done a most honorable thing, in refusing to read that letter, I felt a certain right to play a little trick now of a purely harmless character. I ran back therefore to my writing-desk, and took from its secret drawer a beautiful golden American eagle, a large coin, larger and handsomer than any in the English coinage. Uncle Sam gave it to me on my birthday, and I would not have taken 50 pounds for it. With this I hurried to that bridge of fear, which I had not yet brought myself to go across; and then, not to tell any story about it, I snipped a little hole in the corner of my pocket, while my hand was still steady ere I had to mount the bridge. Then pinching that hole up with a squeeze, I ran and got upon that wicked bridge, and then let go. The heavy gold coin fell upon the rotten plank, and happily rolled into the water, as if it were glad not to tempt its makers to any more sin for the sake of it.
