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CHAPTER XLVI
VAIN ZEAL
Leaving his telescope leveled at the men, the Major marched off with his opera-glass in a consciously provoking style, and Mrs. Hockin most heartily joined me in condemning such behavior. In a minute or two, however, she would not have one word said against him, and the tide of her mind (as befits a married woman) was beyond all science; so that the drift of all words came back to her husband’s extraordinary merits. And certainly these, if at all like her description, deserved to be dwelt upon at very precious periods.
However, I had heard enough of them before; for the Major himself was not mute upon this point, though comparatively modest, and oftentimes deprecating praise ere ever he received it. And so I brought Mrs. Hockin back at last to talk about the lady who was living in the ruin.
“It is not quite a ruin,” she said. “My dear husband is fond of picturesque expressions. However, it is not in very good repair; and being unable to get possession of it, through some legal quibble, possibly he may look at it from a rather unfavorable point of view. And for the same reason—though he is so purely just—he may have formed a bad opinion of the strange individual who lives there. What right has she to be living without his leave upon his own manor? But there she is, and she does not care for us or any body. She fetches all she wants, she speaks to none, and if any body calls for rates or taxes, or any other public intrusion, they may knock and knock, but never get in, and at last they go away again.”
“But surely that can not go on forever. Bruntsea is such an enlightened place.”
“Our part of it is, but the rest quite benighted. As the man says—I forget his name, but the man that misunderstands us so—his contention is that ‘Desolate Hole,’ as the Major calls it, although in the middle of our land, is entirely distinct from it. My husband never will put up with that—his love of justice is far too strong—and he means to have a lawsuit. But still he has reasons for not beginning yet; and he puts up with a great deal, I am sure. It is too bad for them to tease him so.”
“It does seem a very sad thing,” I replied; “and the poor soul living there all alone! Even in the summer it is bad enough; but whatever will she do when the winter comes? Why, the sea in bad weather must be almost in upon her. And the roar of the pebbles all night! Major Hockin will never allow her to stay there.”
“What can he do, when he can not get in, and they even deny his title? I assure you, Erema, I have sent down cream, and even a dozen of my precious eggs, with the lady of the manor’s compliments; but instead of being grateful, they were never taken in; and my Polly—‘Miss Polly Hopkins,’ you know—very wisely took it all to her grandmother.”
“To her grandmother instead of mine, as the Major facetiously calls her. And now he says this is her portrait; and instead of giving his reasons, runs away! Really you must excuse me, Aunt Mary, for thinking that your good husband has a little too much upon his mind sometimes.”
The old lady laughed, as I loved to see her do. “Well, my dear, after that, I think you had better have it out with him. He comes home to tea at 6.30, which used to be half past six in my days. He is very tired then, though he never will allow it, and it would not be fair to attack him. I give him a mutton-chop, or two poached eggs, or some other trifle of nourishment. And then I make him doze for an hour and a half, to soothe his agitated intellect. And when he wakes he has just one glass of hot water and sugar, with a little Lochnagar. And then he is equal to any thing—backgammon, bezique, or even conversation.”
Impatient as I was, I saw nothing better; and by this time I was becoming used to what all of us must put up with—the long postponement of our heavy cares to the light convenience of others. Major Hockin might just as well have stopped, when he saw how anxious I was. Uncle Sam would have stopped the mill itself, with a dozen customers waiting; but no doubt he had spoiled me; and even that should not make me bitter. Aunt Mary and I understood one another. We gazed away over the breadth of the sea and the gleam of its texture, and we held our peace.
Few things are more surprising than the calm way in which ripe age looks on at things which ought to amaze it. And yet any little one of its own concerns grows more important, perhaps, than ever as the shadow of the future dwindles. Major Hockin had found on the beach a pebble with a streak of agate in it. He took it as the harbinger of countless agates, and resolved to set up a lapidary, with a tent, or even a shop, perhaps—not to pay, but to be advertised, and catch distinguished visitors.
“Erema, you are a mighty finder; you found the biggest nugget yet discovered. You know about stones from the Rocky Mountains, or at least the Sierra Nevada. You did not discover this beautiful agate, but you saw and greatly admired it. We might say that a ‘young lady, eminent for great skill in lithology, famed as the discoverer,’ etc. Hold it between your eyes and this candle, but wet it in the slop-basin first; now you see the magnificent veins of blue.”
“I see nothing of the kind,” I said; for really it was too bad of him. “It seems to me a dirty bit of the commonest flint you could pick up.”
This vexed him more than I wished to have done, and I could not help being sorry; for he went into a little fit of sulks, and Aunt Mary almost frowned at me. But he could not stay long in that condition, and after his doze and his glass he came forth as lively and meddlesome as ever. And the first thing he did was to ask me for the locket.
“Open it?” he cried; “why, of course I can; there is never any difficulty about that. The finest workmanship in the world is that of the Indian jewelers. I have been among them often; I know all their devices and mechanism, of which the European are bad copies. I have only to look round this thing twice, and then pronounce my Sesame.”
“My dear, then look round it as fast as you can,” said his wife, with a traitorous smile at me, “and we won’t breathe a Sess till it flies asunder.”
“Mary, Miss Castlewood makes you pert, although herself so well conducted. However, I do not hesitate to say that I will open this case in two minutes.”
“Of course you will, dear,” Mrs. Hockin replied, with provoking acquiescence. “The Major never fails, Erema, in any thing he is so sure about; and this is a mere child’s toy to him. Well, dear, have you done it? But I need not ask. Oh, let us see what is inside of it!”
“I have not done it yet, Mrs. Hockin; and if you talk with such rapidity, of course you throw me out. How can I command my thoughts, or even recall my experience?”
“Hush! now hush, Erema! And I myself will hush most reverently.”
“You have no reverence in you, and no patience. Do you expect me to do such a job in one second? Do you take me for a common jeweler? I beg you to remember—”
“Well, my dear, I remember only what you told us. You were to turn it round twice, you know, and then cry Sesame. Erema, was it not so?”
“I never said any thing of the sort. What I said was simply this—However, to reason with ladies is rude; I shall just be off to my study.”
“Where you keep your tools, my darling,” Mrs. Hockin said, softly, after him: “at least, I mean, when you know where they are.”
I was astonished at Aunt Mary’s power of being so highly provoking, and still more at her having the heart to employ it. But she knew best what her husband was; and to worship forever is not wise.
“Go and knock at his door in about five minutes,” Mrs. Hockin said to me, with some mischief in her eyes. “If he continues to fail, he may possibly take a shorter way with it. And with his tools so close at hand—”
“Oh,” I exclaimed, “his geological hammer—that dreadful crusher! May I go at once? I detest that thing, but I can not have it smashed.”
“He will not break it up, my dear, without your leave. He never would think of such a thing, of course. However, you may as well go after him.”
It was wrong of Mrs. Hockin to make me do this; and I felt quite ashamed of myself when I saw the kind old Major sitting by his lamp, and wrinkling his forehead into locks and keys of puzzle, but using violence to his own mind alone. And I was the more ashamed when, instead of resenting my intrusion, he came to meet me, and led me to his chair, and placed the jeweled trinket in my hand, and said, “My dear, I give it up. I was wrong in taking it away from you. You must consult some one wiser.”
“That odious thing!” I answered, being touched by this unusual humility of his; “you shall not give it up; and I know no wiser person. A lapidary’s tricks are below your knowledge. But if you are not tired of me and offended, may I leave it to you to get it opened?”
“I would like nothing better,” he replied, recovering his natural briskness and importance; “but you ought to be there, my dear; you must be there. Are you sure that you ought not rather to take it to your good cousin Lord Castlewood? Now think before you answer.”
“I need not think twice of that, Major Hockin. Good and learned as my father’s cousin is, he has distinctly refused to help me, for some mysterious reason of his own, in searching into this question. Indeed, my great hope is to do it without him: for all that I know, he might even wish to thwart me.”
“Enough, my dear; it shall be just as you wish. I brought you to England, and I will stand by you. My cousin, Colonel Gundry, has committed you to me. I have no patience with malefactors. I never took this matter up, for very many reasons; and among them not the least was that Sampson, your beloved ‘Uncle Sam,’ thought it better not to do so. But if you desire it, and now that I feel certain that an infamous wrong has been done to you—which I heartily beg your pardon for my doubt of—by the Lord of all justice, every thing else may go to the devil, till I see it out. Do you desire it, Erema?”
“I certainly do not wish that any of your great works should be neglected. But if, without that, you can give me your strong help, my only difficulty will be to thank you.”
“I like plain speaking, and you always speak plainly; sometimes too plainly,” he said, recollecting little times when he had the worst of it. “How far do you trust me now?”
“Major Hockin, I trust you altogether. You may make mistakes, as all men do—”
“Yes, yes, yes. About my own affairs; but I never do that for other people. I pay a bill for twopence, if it is my own. If I am trustee of it, I pay three half-pence.”
His meaning was a little beyond me now; but it seemed better not to tell him so; for he loved to explain his own figures of speech, even when he had no time to spare for it. And he clearly expected me to ask him to begin; or at least it seemed so from his eyebrows. But that only came home to me afterward.
“Please not to speak of my affairs like that,” I said, as if I were quite stupid; “I mean to pay fourpence for every twopence—both to friends and enemies.”
“You are a queer girl; I have always said so. You turn things to your own ideas so. However, we must put up with that, though none of my daughters have ever done it; for which I am truly thankful. But now there is very little time to lose. The meaning of this thing must be cleared up at once. And there is another thing to be done as well, quite as important, in my opinion. I will go to London with you to-morrow, if you like. My clever little Cornishman will see to things here—the man that sets up all the angles.”
“But why should I hurry you to London so?” I asked. “Surely any good country jeweler could manage it? Or let us break it open.”
“On no account,” he answered; “we might spoil it all; besides the great risk to the diamonds, which are very brittle things. To London we must take it, for this reason—the closure of this case is no jeweler’s work; of that I have quite convinced myself. It is the work of a first-rate lapidary, and the same sort of man must undo it.”
To this I agreed quite readily, because of such things I knew nothing; whereas my host spoke just as if he had been brought up to both those walks of art. And then I put a question which had long been burning on my tongue.
“What made you imagine, Major Hockin, that this very beautiful face could have ever been that of the old lady living in the ruin?”
“In Desolate Hole? I will tell you at once; and then call it, if you like, an imagination. Of all the features of the human face there is none more distinctive than the eyebrow. ‘Distinctive’ is not exactly what I mean—I mean more permanently marked and clear. The eyes change, the nose changes, so does the mouth, and even the shape of the forehead sometimes; but the eyebrows change very little, except in color. This I have noticed, because my own may perhaps be a little peculiar; and they have always been so. At school I received a nickname about it, for boys are much sharper than men about such things; and that name after fifty years fits as well as ever. You may smile, if you like; I shall not tell you what it was, but leave you to re-invent it, if you can. Now look at this first-rate miniature. Do you see an unusual but not uncomely formation of the eyebrows?”
“Certainly I do; though I did not observe it until you drew my attention. I had only regarded the face, as a whole.”
“The face, as a whole, is undoubtedly fine. But the eyebrows have a peculiar arch, and the least little turn at the lower end, as if they designed to rise again. The lady of Desolate Hole has the same.”
“But how can you tell? How very strange! I thought she let nobody see her face.”
“You are perfectly right about that, Erema; so far at least as she has vouchsafed to exhibit her countenance to me. Other people may be more fortunate. But when I met her for the second time, being curious already about her, I ventured to offer my services, with my inborn chivalry, at a place where the tide was running up, and threatened to surround her. My politeness was not appreciated, as too often is the case; for she made me a very stiff bow, and turned away. Her face had been covered by the muffler of her cloak, as if the sea-breeze were too much for her; and she did not even raise her eyes. But before she turned away, I obtained a good glance at her eyebrows—and they were formed like these.”
“But her age, Major Hockin! Her age—what is it?”
“Upon that proverbially delicate point I can tell you but little, Erema. Perhaps, however, I may safely say that she can not be much under twenty.”
“It is not right to provoke me so. You call her ‘the old woman,’ and compare her to your letter-box. You must have some idea—is she seventy?”
“Certainly not, I should say; though she can not expect me to defend her, when she will not show her face to me; and what is far worse, at my time of life, she won’t even pay me a half-penny of rent. Now let us go back to Aunt Mary, my dear; she always insists upon packing overnight.”
CHAPTER XLVII
CADMEIAN VICTORY
Before two o’clock of the following day Major Hockin and myself were in London, and ready to stay there for two or three days, if it should prove needful. Before leaving Bruntsea I had written briefly to Lord Castlewood, telling him that important matters had taken me away from Shoxford, and as soon as I could explain them, I would come and tell him all about it. This was done only through fear of his being annoyed at my independence.
From London Bridge the Major took a cab direct to Clerkenwell; and again I observed that of all his joys one of the keenest was to match his wits against a cabman’s. “A regular muff, this time,” he said, as he jerked up and down with his usual delight in displaying great knowledge of London; “no sport to be had out of him. Why, he stared at me when I said ‘Rosamond Street,’ and made me stick on ‘Clerkenwell.’ Now here he is taking us down Snow Hill, when he should have been crossing Smithfield. Smithfield, cabby, Smithfield!”
“Certain, Sir, Smiffle, if you gives the order;” and he turned the poor horse again, and took us up the hill, and among a great number of barriers. “No thoroughfare,” “No thoroughfare,” on all hands stretched across us; but the cabman threaded his way between, till he came to the brink of a precipice. The horse seemed quite ready, like a Roman, to leap down it, seeing nothing less desirable than his present mode of life, till a man with a pickaxe stopped him.
“What are you at?” cried the Major, with fury equalled by nothing except his fright. “Erema, untie my big rattan. Quick—quick—”
“Captain,” said the cabman, coolly, “I must have another shilling for this job. A hextra mile and a quarter, to your orders. You knows Lunnon so much better. Smiffle stopped—new railway—new meat market—never heered of that now, did you?”
“You scoundrel, drive straight to the nearest police office.”
“Must jump this little ditch, then, Captain. Five pun’ fine for you, when we gets there. Hold on inside, old gentleman. Kuck, kuck, Bob, you was a hunter once. It ain’t more than fifty feet deep, my boy.”
“Turn round! turn round, I tell you! turn round! If your neck is forfeit, you rogue, mine is not. I never was so taken in in my life!” Major Hockin continued to rave, and amid many jeers we retreated humbly, and the driver looked in at us with a gentle grin. “And I thought he was so soft, you know! Erema, may I swear at him?”
“On no account,” I said. “Why, after all, it is only a shilling, and the loss of time. And then, you can always reflect that you have discharged, as you say, a public duty, by protesting against a vile system.”
“Protesting is very well, when it pays,” the Major answered, gloomily; “but to pay for protesting is another pair of shoes.”
This made him cross, and he grew quite fierce when the cabman smote him for eight-pence more. “Four parcels on the roof, Captain,” he said, looking as only a cabman can look at his money, and spinning his extra shilling. “Twopence each under new hact, you know. Scarcely thought a hofficer would ‘a tried evasion.”
“You consummate scoundrel—and you dress yourself like a countryman! I’ll have your badge indorsed—I’ll have your license marked. Erema, pay the thief; it is more than I can do.”
“Captain, your address, if you please; I shall summon you for scurrilous language, as the hact directs. Ah, you do right to be driven to a pawn shop.”
Triumphantly he drove off, while the Major cried, “Never tie up my rattan again. Oh, it was Mrs. Hockin, was it? What a fool I was not to stop on my own manor!”
“I pray you to disdain such low impudence,” I said, for I could not bear to see him shake like that, and grieved to have brought him into it. “You have beaten fifty of them—a hundred of them—I have heard you say.”
“Certainly I have, my dear; but I had no Bruntsea then, and could not afford to pay the rogues. That makes me feel it so bitterly, so loftily, and so righteously. To be treated like this, when I think of all my labors for the benefit of the rascally human race! my Institute, my Lyceum, my Mutual Improvement Association, and Christian Young Men’s something. There is no institution, after all, to be compared to the tread-mill.”
Recovering himself with this fine conclusion, he led me down a little sloping alley, scarcely wide enough for a wheelbarrow, to an old black door, where we set down our parcels; for he had taken his, while I carried mine, and not knowing what might happen yet, like a true peace-maker I stuck to the sheaf of umbrellas and the rattan cane. And thankful I was, and so might be the cabman, to have that weapon nicely sheathed with silk.
Major Hockin’s breath was short, through too much talking without action, and he waited for a minute at this door, to come back to his equanimity. And I thought that our female breath falls short for the very opposite reason—when we do too much and talk too little; which happily seldom happens.
He was not long in coming back to his usual sprightliness and decision. And it was no small relief to me, who was looking at him miserably, and longing that his wife was there, through that very sad one-and-eightpence, when he pulled out a key, which he always carried as signer and lord of Bruntsea, the key of the town-hall, which had survived lock, door, and walls by centuries, and therewith struck a door which must have reminded that key of its fine old youth.
Before he had knocked so very many times, the door was opened by a young man wearing an apron and a brown paper cap, who knew Major Hockin at once, and showed us up stairs to a long low workshop. Here were many wheels and plates and cylinders revolving by energy of a strap which came through the floor and went through the ceiling. And the young man told us to be careful how we walked, for fear of getting entangled. Several men, wearing paper caps and aprons of leather or baize, were sitting doing dextrous work, no doubt, and doing it very easily, and the master of them all was hissing over some fine touch of jewel as a groom does at a horse. Then seeing us, he dropped his holders, and threw a leather upon his large lens, and came and took us to a little side room.
“Are you not afraid to leave them?” asked the Major. “They may secrete some gems, Mr. Handkin.”
“Never,” said the lapidary, with some pride. “I could trust these men with the Koh-i-noor; which we could have done better, I believe, than it was done by the Hollanders. But we don’t get the chance to do much in diamonds, through the old superstition about Amsterdam, and so on. No, no; the only thing I can’t trust my men about is to work as hard when I am away as when I am there. And now, Sir, what can I do for you? Any more Bruntsea pebbles? The last were not worth the cutting.”
“So you said; but I did not think so. We have some agates as good as any from Aberystwith or Perthshire. But what I want now is to open this case. It must be done quite privately, for a most particular reason. It does open, doesn’t it? I am sure it does.”
“Certainly it opens,” Mr. Handkin answered, while I trembled with anxiety as he lightly felt it round the edges with fingers engrained with corundum. “I could open it in one instant, but the enamel might fly. Will you risk it?”
The Major looked at me, and I said, “Oh no; please not to risk any thing, if any slower process will do it without risk. We want it done without injury.”
“Then it will cost a good bit,” he replied. “I can open it for five shillings, if you run the risk; if that rests with me, I must charge five pounds.”
“Say three,” cried the Major. “Well, then, say four guineas: I have a lot of work in store for you.”
“I never overcharge, and I never depart from my figures,” the lapidary answered. “There is only one other man in London who knows the secret of this enamel, and he is my brother. They never make such enamel now. The art is lost, like that of the French paste of a hundred years ago, which almost puzzles even me until I go behind it. I will give you my brother’s address if you like; but instead of five pounds, he will charge you ten guineas—if it must be done in private. Without that condition, I can do it for two pounds. You wish to know why that should make such a difference. Well, for this simple reason: to make sure of the job, it must be done by daylight; it can be done only in my chief work-room; if no one is to see what I am about (and my men have sharp eyes, I can tell you), all my hands must be sacked for the afternoon, but not without their wages. That alone would go far toward the difference, and then there is the dropping of the jobs in hand, and waste of power, and so on. I have asked you too little, Major Hockin, I assure you; but having said, I will stick to it, although I would much rather you would let me off.”
“I have known you for many years,” the Major answered—“ever since you were a boy, with a flat box, working at our Cornish opals. You would have done a lot of work for five pounds then. But I never knew you overcharge for any thing. We agree to your terms, and are obliged to you. But you guarantee no damage?”
“I will open this locket, take out its contents, whatever they may be, and reclose it so that the maker, if still alive—which is not very probable—should not know that it had been meddled with.”
“Very well; that is exactly what we want; for I have an idea about it which I may try to go on with afterward. And for that it is essential to have no symptom that it ever has been opened. What are these brilliants worth, Mr. Handkin?”
“Well, Sir, in the trade, about a hundred and fifty, though I dare say they cost three hundred. And the portrait is worth another hundred, if I find on the back the marks I expect.”
“You do not mean to say that you know the artist?” I could not help exclaiming, though determined not to speak. “Oh, then, we shall find out every thing!”
“Erema, you are a—well, you are a silly!” Major Hockin exclaimed, and then colored with remembering that rather he should have let my lapse pass. But the lapidary seemed to pay no attention, only to be calling down to some one far below. “Now mind what you say,” the Major whispered to me, just as if he were the essence of discretion.
“The work-room is clear now,” Mr. Handkin said; “the fellows were delighted to get their afternoon. Now you see that I have to take off this hoop, and there lies the difficulty. I could have taken out the gold back, as I said, with very little trouble, by simply cutting it. But the locket would never have been quite the same, though we put a new back; and, more than that, the pressure of the tool might flaw the enamel, or even crack the portrait, for the make of this thing is peculiar. Now first I submit the rim or verge, without touching the brilliants, mind you, to the action of a little preparation of my own—a gentle but penetrative solvent. You are welcome to watch me; you will be none the wiser; you are not in the trade, though the young lady looks as if she would make a good polisher. Very well: if this were an ordinary closure, with two flat surfaces meeting, the solvent would be absorbed into the adhesion, expansion would take place, and there we have it. But this is what we call a cyme-joint, a cohesion of two curved surfaces, formed in a reflex curve which admits the solvent most reluctantly, or, indeed, not at all, without too long application. For that, then, another kind of process is needful, and we find it in frictional heat applied most gradually and judiciously. For that I must have a buff-leather wheel, whose revolutions are timed to a nicety, and that wheel I only have in this room. Now you see why I sent the men away.”
Though I watched his work with great interest, it is out of my power to describe it now, and, moreover, it is not needful. Major Hockin, according to his nature, grew quite restless and impatient, and even went out for a walk, with his cane unpacked and unsheathed against cabmen. But I was content to wait and watch, having always heard and thought that good work will not do itself, but must have time and skill to second it. And Mr. Handkin, moving arms, palms, and fingers beautifully, put the same thought into words.
“Good work takes a deal of time to do; but the man that does it all the time knows well that it will take long to undo. Here it comes undone at last!”
As he spoke, the excitable Major returned.
“Done it, eh? Well, you are a clever fellow. Now don’t look inside it; that is no part of your business, nor mine either, unless this young lady desires it. Hand it to her first, my friend.”
“Wait half a minute,” said the lapidary; “it is so far opened that the hoop spins round, but it must not be taken off until it cools. The lady may lift it then with care. I have done this job as a piece of fine art; I have no wish to see any more of it.”
“Handkin, don’t you be so touchy to a brother Cornishman. I thought that I was Cornish enough, but you go cliffs beyond me.”
“Well, Major Hockin,” the lapidary answered, “I beg your pardon, if I said harm. But a man doing careful and skilled work—and skilled work it is, at every turn of the hand, as miss can bear witness, while you walked off—he don’t care who it is, Major Hockin, he would fight his own brother to maintain it.”
“Very well, very well. Let us come away. I always enter into every body’s feelings. I see yours as clearly, Handkin, as if you had laid them open on that blessed wheel. My insight has always been remarkable. Every one, without exception, says that of me. Now come away, come away—will you never see?”
Intent as I was upon what lay in my left palm relaxing itself, I could not help being sorry for the way in which the man of art, after all his care, was ground down by his brother Cornishman. However, he had lived long enough in the world to feel no surprise at ingratitude.
Now I went to one of the windows, as the light (which had been very good) began to pale from its long and labored sufferance of London, and then, with soft and steady touch, I lifted off the loosened hoop. A smell of mustiness—for smells go through what nothing else can—was the first thing to perceive, and then, having moved the disk of gold, I found a piece of vellum. This was doubled, and I opened it, and read, in small clear writing:
“May 7, 1809 A.D., George, Lord Castlewood, married Winifred, only child of Thomas Hoyle, as this his signature witnesseth.
“CASTLEWOOD.
“(Witness) THOMAS HOYLE.”
There was nothing more inside this locket, except two little wisps of hair tied with gold thread, and the miniature upon ivory, bearing on the back some anagram, probably that of the artist.
Already had I passed through a great many troubles, changes, chances, and adventures which always seem strange (when I come to look back), but never surprised me at the moment. Indeed, I might almost make bold to pronounce that not many persons of my age and sex have been visited, wholly against their own will, by such a series of incidents, not to say marvelous, but at any rate fairly to be called unusual. And throughout them perhaps it will be acknowledged by all who have cared to consider them, that up to the present time I did not fail more than themselves might have done in patience. And in no description of what came to pass have I colored things at all in my own favor—at least so far as intention goes—neither laid myself out to get sympathy, though it often would have done me a world of good.
