CHAPTER XXVIII.
VAGABONDS
Although Mr. Penniloe's anxiety about the growth of Church-debt was thus relieved a little, another of his troubles was by no means lightened through the visit of the Rector. That nasty suspicion, suggested by Gowler, and heartily confirmed by Chevithorne, was a very great discomfort, and even a torment, inasmuch as he had no one to argue it with. He reasoned with himself that even if the lady were a schemer, so heartless as to ruin a young man (who had done her no harm) that she might screen herself, as well as an actress so heaven-gifted as to impose on every one – both of which qualifications he warmly denied – yet there was no motive, so far as he could see, strong enough to lead her into such a crooked course. To the best of his belief, she was far too indifferent upon religious questions; he had never seen, or heard, of a priest at Walderscourt; and although she never came to church with the others of the family, she had allowed her only daughter to be brought up as a Protestant. She certainly did not value our great nation, quite as much as it values itself, and in fact was rather an ardent Spaniard, though herself of mixed race. But it seemed most unlikely, that either religion or patriotism, or both combined, were strong enough to drive her into action contrary to her dead husband's wishes and to her own character, so far as an unprejudiced man could judge it.
There remained the last theory, No. 6, as given above. To the Curate it seemed the more probable one, although surrounded with difficulties. There might be some Spanish relative, or even one of other country, resolute to save the soul of Sir Thomas Waldron, without equal respect for his body; and in that case it was just possible, that the whole thing might have been arranged, and done, without Lady Waldron's knowledge. But if that were so, what meant the visit of the foreigner, who had tried to escape his notice, when he left the coach?
Before Mr. Penniloe could think it out – Jemmy Fox (who might have helped him, by way of Nicie, upon that last point) was called away suddenly from Perlycross. His mother was obliged, in the course of nature, to look upon him now as everybody's prop and comfort; because her husband could not be regarded in that light any longer. And two or three things were coming to pass, of family import and issue, which could not go aright, except through Jemmy's fingers. And of these things the most important was concerning his sister Christina.
"I assure you, Jemmy, that her state of mind is most unsatisfactory," the lady said to her son, upon their very first consultation. "She does not care for any of her usual occupations. She takes no interest in parish matters. She let that wicked old Margery Daw get no less than three pairs of blankets, and Polly Church go without any at all – at least she might, so far as Christie cared. Then you know that admirable Huggins' Charity – a loaf and three halfpence for every cottage containing more than nine little ones; – well, she let them pass the children from one house to another; and neither loaves nor halfpence held out at all! 'I'll make it good,' she said, 'what's the odds?' or something almost as vulgar. How thankful I was, that Sir Henry did not hear her! 'Oh I wish he had, rayther,' she exclaimed with a toss of her head. You know that extremely low slangish way of saying rayther to everything. It does irritate me so, and she knows it. One would think that instead of desiring to please as excellent a man as ever lived, her one object was to annoy and disgust him. And she does not even confine herself to – to the language of good society. She has come back from Perlycross, with a sad quantity of Devonshirisms; and she always brings them out before Sir Henry, who is, as you know, a fastidious man, without any love of jocularity. And it is such a very desirable thing. I did hope it would have been all settled, before your dear father's birthday."
"Well, mother, and so it may easily be. The only point is this – after all her bad behaviour, will Sir Henry come to the scratch?"
"My dear son! My dear Jemmy, what an expression! And with reference to wedded life! But if I understand your meaning, he is only waiting my permission to propose; and I am only waiting for a favourable time. The sweetest tempered girl I ever saw; better even than yours, Jemmy, and yours has always been very fine. But now – and she has found out, or made up, some wretched low song, and she sings it down the stairs, or even comes singing it into the room, pretending that she does not see me. All about the miseries of stepmothers. Oh, she is most worrying and aggravating! And to me, who have laboured so hard for her good! Sometimes I fancy that she must have seen somebody. Surely, it never could have been at Perlycross?"
"I'll put a stop to all that pretty smartly" – the doctor exclaimed, with fine confidence. "But – but perhaps it would be better, mother, for me not to seem to take Sir Henry's part too strongly. At any rate until things come to a climax. He is coming this afternoon, you said; let him pop the question at once; and if she dares to refuse him, then let me have a turn at her. She has got a rare tongue; but I think I know something – at any rate, you know that I don't stand much nonsense."
They had scarcely settled their arrangements for her, when down the stairs came Christie, looking wonderfully pretty; but her song was not of equal beauty.
"There was an old dog, and his name was 'Shep;'
Says he to his daughter – don't you ever be a Step."
She nodded to her mother very dutifully, and to her brother with a smile that made him laugh; and then she went out of the front-door, almost as if she felt contempt for it.
"Won't do. Won't do at all;" said Jemmy. "She'll say 'no,' this afternoon. Girls never know what they are about. But better let him bring it to the point. And then leave it to me, mother. I understand her. And she knows I am not to be trifled with."
Sir Henry Haggerstone came in time for luncheon, showed no signs of nervousness, and got on very well with everybody. He knew something of everything that is likely to be talked of anywhere; and yet he had the knack of letting down his knowledge, as a carpet for his friends to walk upon. Everybody thought – "Well, I have taught him something. He could not be expected to understand that subject. But now, from his own words, I feel that he will. What a fool Smith is, to be bothering a man like Sir Henry with the stuff that is a. b. c. to him! I wonder that he could put up with it."
But however great Sir Henry was in powers of conversation, or even of auscultation, his eloquence – if there was any – fell flat, and his audience was brief, and the answer unmistakable.
"It can't be. It mustn't be. It shan't be, at any price." That last expression was a bit of slang, but it happened to fit the circumstances.
"But why can it not be? Surely, Miss Fox, I may ask you to give me some reason for that."
The gentleman thought – "What a strange girl you are!" While the lady was thinking – "What a difference there is between an artificial man and a natural one!"
"What o'clock is it, by that time-piece, if you please, Sir Henry Haggerstone?"
"Half-past two, within about two minutes."
"Thank you; can you tell me why it isn't half-past ten? Just because it isn't. And so now you understand."
"I am sorry to say, that I do not very clearly. Probably it is very stupid of me. But can you not give me a little hope, Miss Fox?"
"Yes, a great deal; and with my best wishes. There are thousands of nice girls, a thousand times nicer than I ever was, who would say 'yes,' in a minute."
"But the only one, whose 'yes' I want, says 'no,' in less than half a minute!"
"To be sure, she does – and means it all over; but begs to offer no end of thanks."
"Perhaps it is all for the best," he thought as he rode homeward slowly; "she is a very sweet girl; but of late she seems to have grown so fond of slang expressions – all very well for a man, but not at all what I like in a woman. I should have been compelled to break her of that trick; and even the sweetest tempered woman hates to be corrected."
This gentleman would have been surprised to hear that the phrases he disliked were used, because he so thoroughly disliked them. Which, to say the least, was unamiable.
"All settled? Hurrah! My dear Chris, let me congratulate you," cried Jemmy rushing in with a jaunty air, though he well knew what the truth was.
"Amen! It is a happy thing. That golden parallelogram, all tapered and well-rounded, will come to harass me no more."
"What a mixture of quotations! A girl alone could achieve it. A tapered parallelogram! But you have never been fool enough to refuse him?"
"I have been wise enough to do so."
"And soon you will be wise enough to think better of it. I shall take good care to let him know, that no notice is to be taken of your pretty little vagaries."
"Don't lose your temper, my dear Jemmy. As for taking notice of it, Sir Henry may be nothing very wonderful. But at any rate he is a gentleman."
"I am heartily glad that you have found that out. I thought nobody could be a gentleman, unless he lived in a farm-house, and could do a day's ploughing, and shear his own sheep."
"Yes, oh yes! If he can roll his own pills, and mix his own black draughts, and stick a knife into any one."
"Now, it is no use trying to insult me, my dear girl. My profession is above all that."
"What, above its own business? Oh Jemmy, Jemmy! And yet you know, you were afraid sometimes of leaving it all to that little boy George. However George did the best part of it."
"Christie, I shall be off, because you don't know what you are talking of. I am sorry for any man, who gets you."
"Ha! That depends upon whether I like him. If I do, wouldn't I polish his boots? If I don't, wouldn't I have the hair off his head?"
"Good-bye, my dear child. You will be better, by and by."
"Stop," exclaimed Christie, who perceived that dear Jemmy preferred to have it out with her, when she might be less ready; "don't be in such a hurry. There is no child with the measles, which is about the worst human complaint that you can cure. Just answer me one question. Have I ever interfered, between you and Nicie Waldron?"
"The Lord look down upon me! What an idea! As if you could ever be so absurd!"
"The Lord looks down upon me, also, Jemmy;" said Christie, passing into a different mood. "And He gives me the right to see to my own happiness, without consulting you; any more than you do me."
The Doctor made off, without another word; for he was not a quarrelsome fellow; especially when he felt that he would get the worst of it.
"Let her alone a bit;" he told his mother. "She has been so much used to have her own way, that she expects to have it always. It will require a little judgment, and careful handling, to bring her out of her absurdities. You must not expect her to have the sense a man has. And she has got an idea that she is so clever; which makes her confoundedly obstinate. If you had heard how insolent she was to me, you would have been angry with her. But she cannot vex me with her childish little talk. I shall go for a thirty mile ride, dear mother, to get a little fresh air after all that. Don't expect me back to dinner. Be distant with her, and let her see that you are grieved; but give her no chance of arguing – if indeed she calls such stuff argument."
In a few minutes he was on the back of Perle– as he called the kindly and free-going little mare, who had brought him again from Perlycross – and trotting briskly towards the long curve of highlands, which form the western bulwark of the Mendip Hills. The weather had been very mild and rather stormy, ever since the Christmas frost broke up, and now in the first week of the year, the air was quite gentle and pleasant. But the roads were heavy and very soft, as they always are in a thaw; and a great deal of water was out in the meadows, and even in the ditches alongside of the lanes.
In a puzzle of country roads and commons, further from home than his usual track, and very poorly furnished with guide-posts, Fox rode on without asking whither; caring only for the exercise and air, and absorbed in thought about the present state of things, both at Perlycross and Foxden. To his quick perception and medical knowledge it was clear that his father's strength was failing, gradually, but without recall. And one of the very few things that can be done by medical knowledge is that it can tell us (when it likes) that it is helpless.
Now Jemmy was fond of his father, although there had been many breezes between them; and as nature will have it, he loved him a hundredfold, now that he was sure to lose him. Moreover the change in his own position, which must ensue upon his father's death, was entirely against his liking. What he liked was simplicity, plain living and plain speaking, with enough of this world's goods to help a friend in trouble, or a poor man in distress; but not enough to put one in a fright about the responsibility, that turns the gold to lead. But now, if he should be compelled to take his father's place at Foxden, as a landowner and a wealthy man, he must give up the practice of his beloved art, he must give up the active and changeful life, the free and easy manners, and the game with Bill and Dick; and assume the slow dignity and stiff importance, the consciousness of being an example and a law, and all the other briars and blackthorns in the paradise of wealth and station. Yet even while he sighed at the coming transformation, it never occurred to him that his sister was endowed with tastes no less simple than his own, and was not compelled by duty to forego them.
Occupied thus, and riding loose-reined without knowing or caring whither, he turned the corner of a high-banked lane, and came upon a sight which astonished him. The deep lane ended with a hunting-gate, leading to an open track across a level pasture, upon which the low sun cast long shadows of the rider's hat, and shoulders, and elbow lifted to unhasp the gate. Turning in the saddle he beheld a grand and fiery sunset, such as in mild weather often closes a winter but not wintry day.
A long cloud-bank, straight and level at the base, but arched and pulpy in its upper part, embosomed and turned into a deep red glow the yellow flush of the departing sun. Below this great volume of vapoury fire, were long thin streaks of carmine, pencilled very delicately on a background of limpid hyaline. It was not the beauty of the sky however, nor the splendour, nor the subtlety, that made the young man stop and gaze. Fine sunsets he had seen by the hundred, and looked at them, if there was time to spare; but what he had never seen before was the grandeur of the earth's reply.
On the opposite side of the level land, a furlong or so in front of him, arose the great breastwork to leagues of plain; first a steep pitch of shale and shingle, channelled with storm-lines, and studded with gorse; and then, from its crest, a tall crag towering, straight and smooth as a castle-wall. The rugged pediment was dark and dim, and streaked with sombre shadows; but the bastion cliff above it mantled with a deep red glow, as if colour had its echo, in answer to the rich suffusion of that sunset cloud. Even the ivy, and other creepers, on its kindled face shone forth, like chaplets thrown upon a shield of ruddy gold. And all the environed air was thrilling with the pulses of red light.
Fox was smitten with rare delight – for he was an observant fellow – and even Perle's bright eyes expanded, as if they had never seen such a noble vision. "I'll be up there before it is gone," cried Jemmy, like a boy in full chase of a rainbow; "the view from that crag must be glorious."
At the foot of the hill stood a queer little hostel, called the Smoking Limekiln; and there he led his mare into the stable, ordered some bread and cheese for half an hour later, and made off at speed for the steep ascent. Active as he was, and sound of foot, he found it a slippery and awkward climb, on account of the sliding shingle; but after a sharp bout of leaping and scrambling he stood at the base of the vertical rock, and looked back over the lowlands.
The beauty of colour was vanishing now, and the glory of the clouds grown sombre, for the sun had sunk into a pale gray bed; but the view was vast and striking. The fairest and richest of English land, the broad expanse of the western plains for leagues and leagues rolled before him, deepening beneath the approach of night, and shining with veins of silver, where three flooded rivers wound their way. Afar towards the north, a faint gleam showed the hovering of light, above the Severn sea; whence slender clues of fog began to steal, like snakes, up the watercourses, and the marshy inlets. Before there was time to watch them far, the veil of dusk fell over them, and things unwatched stood forth, and took a prominence unaccountable, according to the laws of twilight, arbitrary and mysterious.
Fox felt that the view had repaid his toil, and set his face to go down again, with a tendency towards bread and cheese; but his very first step caused such a slide of shingle and loose ballast, that he would have been lucky to escape with a broken bone, had he followed it. Thereupon instead of descending there, he thought it wiser to keep along the ledge at the foot of the precipice, and search for a safer track down the hill. None however presented itself, until he had turned the corner of the limestone crag, and reached its southern side, where the descent became less abrupt and stony.
Here he was stepping sideways down, for the pitch was still sharp and dangerous, and the daylight failing in the blinks of hills, when he heard a loud shout – "Jemmy! Jemmy!" – which seemed to spring out of the earth at his feet. In the start of surprise he had shaped his lips for the answering halloa, when good luck more than discretion saved him; for both his feet slipped, and his breath was caught. By a quick turn he recovered balance; but the check had given him time to think, and spying a stubby cornel-bush, he came to a halt behind it, and looked through the branches cautiously.
Some twenty yards further down the hill, he saw a big man come striding forth from the bowels of the earth – as it seemed at first – and then standing with his back turned, and the haze beyond enlarging him. And then again, that mighty shout rang up the steep and down the valley – "Jemmy, Jemmy, come back, I tell thee, or I'l let thee know what's what!"
Fox kept close, and crouched in his bush, for he never had seen such a man till now, unless it were in a caravan; and a shudder ran through him, as it came home that his friend down there could with one hand rob, throttle, and throw him down a mining shaft. This made him keep a very sharp look-out, and have one foot ready for the lightest of leg-bail.
Presently a man of moderate stature, who could have walked under the other's arm, came panting and grumbling back again from a bushy track leading downwards. He flung something on the ground and asked —
"What be up now; to vetch me back up-hill for? Harvey, there bain't no sense in 'e. Maight every bit as well a' had it out, over a half pint of beer."
"Sit you there, Jem," replied the other, pressing him down on a ledge of stone with the weight of one thumb on his shoulder. Then he sat himself down on a higher ridge, and pulled out a pipe, with a sigh as loud as the bellows of a forge could compass; and then slowly spread upon the dome of his knee a patch of German punk, and struck sparks into it.
There was just light enough for Fox to see that the place where they sat was at the mouth of a mining shaft, or sloping adit; over the rough stone crown of which, standing as he did upon a higher level, he could descry their heads and shoulders, and the big man's fingers as he moved them round his pipe. Presently a whiff of coarse brown smoke came floating uphill to the Doctor's nostrils; and his blood ran cold, as he began to fear that this great Harvey must be the Harvey Tremlett, of whom he had heard from Mr. Penniloe.
"Made up my maind I have. Can't stand this no longer;" said the big man, with the heavy drawl, which nature has inflicted upon very heavy men. "Can't get no more for a long day's work, than a hop o' my thumb like you does."
"And good raison why, mate. Do 'e ever do a hard day's work?" Fox could have sworn that the smaller throat gave utterance to the larger share of truth. "What be the vally of big arms and legs, when a chap dothn't care to make use of 'un?"
But the big man was not controversial. Giants are generally above that weakness. He gave a long puff, and confined himself to facts.
"Got my money: and d – d little it is. And now I means to hook it. You can hang on, if you be vule enough."
"What an old Turk it is!" Jem replied reproachfully. "Did ever you know me throw you over, Harvey? Who is it brings you all the luck? Tell 'e what – let's go back to Clampits. What a bit o' luck that loudering wor!"
"Hor, hor, hor!" the big man roared. "A purty lot they be to Perlycrass! To take Jemmy Kettel for a gentleman! And a doctor too! Oh Lord! Oh Lord! Doctor Jemmy Vox Kettel! Licensed to deal in zalts and zenna, powders, pills, and bolusses. Oh Jemmy, Jemmy, my eye, my eye!"
"Could do it, I'll be bound, as well as he doth. A vaine doctor, to dig up the Squire of the parish, and do it wrong way too, they zay of 'un! Vaine doctor, wasn't 'un? Oh Lord! Oh Lord!"
As these two rovers combined in a hearty roar of mirth at his expense, Dr. Jemmy Fox, instead of being grateful for a purely impartial opinion, gave way to ill feeling, and stamped one foot in passionate remonstrance. Too late he perceived that this movement of his had started a pebble below the cornel-bush, and sent it rolling down the steep. Away went the pebble with increasing skips, and striking the crown of the pit-mouth flew just over the heads of the uncouth jokers.
"Halloa, Jemmy! Anybody up there? Just you goo, and look, my boy."
Fox shrunk into himself, as he heard those words in a quicker roar coming up to him. If they should discover him, his only chance would be to bound down the hill, reckless of neck, and desperate of accident. But the light of the sky at the top of the hill was blocked by the rampart of rock, and so there was nothing for him to be marked upon.
"Nort but a badger, or a coney there, I reckon," Jem Kettel said, after peering up the steep; and just then a rabbit of fast style of life whisked by; "Goo on, Harvey. You han't offered me no 'bacco!"
"You tak' and vinish 'un;" said the lofty-minded giant, poking his pipe between the other fellow's teeth. "And now you give opinion; if the Lord hath gived thee any."
"Well, I be up for bunkum, every bit so much as you be. But where shall us be off to? That's the p'int of zettlement. Clampits, I say. Roaring fun there, and the gim'-keepers aveared of 'e."
"Darsn't goo there yet, I tell 'e. Last thing old moother did was to send me word, Passon to Perlycrass had got the tip on me. Don't want no bother with them blessed Beaks again."
"Wonder you didn't goo and twist the Passon's neck." The faithful mate looked up at him, as if the captain had failed of his duty, unaccountably.
"Wouldn't touch a hair of that man's head, if it wor here atwixt my two knees." Harvey Tremlett brought his fist down on his thigh, with a smack that made the stones ring round him. "Tell 'e why, Jem Kettel. He have took my little Zip along of his own chiller, and a' maneth to make a lady on her. And a lady the little wench hath a right to be – just you say the contrairy – if hanncient vam'ley, and all that, have right to count. Us Tremletts was here, long afore they Waldrons."
The smaller man appeared afraid to speak. He knew the weak point of the big man perhaps, and that silence oils all such bearings.
"Tull 'e what, Jemmy," said the other coming round, after stripping his friend's mouth of his proper pipe; "us'll go up country – shoulder packs and be off, soon as ever the moon be up. Like to see any man stop me, I would."
He stood up, with the power of his mighty size upon him; a man who seemed fit to stop an avalanche, and able to give as much trouble about stopping him.
"All right, I be your man;" replied the other, speaking as if he were quite as big, and upon the whole more important. "Bristol fust; and then Lunnon, if so plaise 'e. Always a bit of louderin' there. But that remindeth me of Perlycrass. Us be bound to be back by fair-time, you know. Can't afford to miss old Timberlegs."
"Time enow for that;" Harvey Tremlett answered. "Zix or zeven weeks yet to Perlycrass fair. What time wor it as old Timberlegs app'inted?"
"Ten o'clock at naight, by Churchyard wall. Reckon the old man hath another job of louderin' handy. What a spree that wor, and none a rap the wiser! Come along, Harvey, let's have a pint at the Kiln, to drink good luck to this here new start."
The big man took his hat off, while the other jumped nimbly on a stump and flung over his head the straps of both their bundles; and then with a few more leisurely and peaceful oaths they quitted their stony platform, and began to descend the winding path, from which Jem Kettel had been recalled.
Fox was content for a minute or two with peeping warily after them, while his whole frame tingled with excitement, wrath, and horror, succeeded by a burning joy at the knowledge thus vouchsafed to him, by a higher power than fortune. As soon as he felt certain that they could not see him, even if they looked back again, he slipped from his lurking-place, and at some risk of limb set off in a straighter course than theirs for the Public house in the valley, where a feeble light was twinkling. From time to time he could hear the two rovers laughing at their leisure, probably with fine enjoyment of very bad jokes at his expense. But he set his teeth, and made more speed, and keeping his distance from them, easily arrived first at the Inn, where he found his bread and cheese set forth, in a little private parlour having fair view of the Bar.
This suited him well, for his object was to obtain so clear a sight of them, that no change of dress or disguise should cast any doubt upon their identity; and he felt sure that they were wending hither to drink good speed to their enterprise. There was not much fear of their recognising him, even if his face were known to them, which he did not think at all likely. But he provided against any such mishap, by paying his bill beforehand, and placing his candle so that his face was in the dark. Then he fell to and enjoyed his bread and cheese; for the ride and the peril had produced fine relish, and a genuine Cheddar – now sighed for so vainly – did justice to its nativity. He also enjoyed, being now in safety, the sweet sense of turning the tables upon his wanton and hateful deriders.
For sure enough, while his mouth was full, and the froth on his ale was winking at him, in came those two scoffing fellows, followed by a dozen other miners. It appeared to be pay-night, and generous men were shedding sixpences on one another; but Fox saw enough to convince him that the rest fought shy of his two acquaintances.
When he saw this, a wild idea occurred to him for a moment – was it not possible to arrest that pair, with the aid of their brother miners? But a little consideration showed the folly of such a project. He had no warrant, no witness, no ally, and he was wholly unknown in that neighbourhood. And even if the miners should believe his tale, would they combine, to lay hands on brother workmen, and hand them over to the mercies of the law? Even if they would, it was doubtful that they could, sturdy fellows though they were.
But the young man was so loth to let these two vagabonds get away, that his next idea was to bribe somebody to follow them, and keep them in view until he should come in chase, armed with the needful warrant, and supported by stout posse comitatus. He studied the faces of his friends at the Bar, to judge whether any were fitted for the job. Alas, among all those rough and honest features, there was not a spark of craft, nor a flash of swift intelligence. If one of them were put to watch another, the first thing he would do would be to go and tell him of it.
And what Justice of the Peace would issue warrant upon a stranger's deposition of hearsays? Much against his will, Jemmy Fox perceived that there was nothing for it, but to give these two rogues a wide berth for the present, keep his own counsel most jealously, and be ready to meet them at Perlycross fair. And even so, on his long homeward ride, he thought that the prospect was brightening in the west; and that he with his name cleared might come forward, and assert his love for the gentle Nicie.