CHAPTER XXXIX
NOT AT HOME
Mrs. Hockin, however, had not the pleasure promised her by the facetiousMajor of seeing me "make up to my grandmamma." For although we set offat once to catch the strange woman who had roused so much curiosity,and though, as we passed the door of Bruntlands, we saw her still at herpost in the valley, like Major Hockin's new letter-box, for some reasonbest known to herself we could not see any more of her. For, hurry as hemight upon other occasions, nothing would make the Major cut a corner ofhis winding "drive" when descending it with a visitor. He enjoyed everyyard of its length, because it was his own at every step, and he countedhis paces in an under-tone, to be sure of the length, for perhaps thethousandth time. It was long enough in a straight line, one would havethought, but he was not the one who thought so; and therefore he haddoubled it by judicious windings, as if for the purpose of breaking thedescent.
"Three hundred and twenty-one," he said, as he came to a post, where hemeant to have a lodge as soon as his wife would let him; "now the oldwoman stands fifty-five yards on, at a spot where I mean to have anornamental bridge, because our fine saline element runs up there whenthe new moon is perigee. My dear, I am a little out of breath, whichaffects my sight for the moment. Doubtless that is why I do not seeher."
"If I may offer an opinion," I said, "in my ignorance of all the changesyou have made, the reason why we do not see her may be that she is goneout of sight."
"Impossible!" Major Hockin cried--"simply impossible, Erema! She nevermoves for an hour and a half. And she was not come, was she, when youcame by?"
"I will not be certain," I answered; "but I think that I must have seenher if she had been there, because I was looking about particularly atall your works as we came by."
"Then she must be there still; let us tackle her."
This was easier said than done, for we found no sign of any body at theplace where she certainly had been standing less than five minutes ago.We stood at the very end and last corner of the ancient river trough,where a little seam went inland from it, as if some trifle of a brookhad stolen down while it found a good river to welcome it. But now therewas only a little oozy gloss from the gleam of the sun upon some lees ofmarshy brine left among the rushes by the last high tide.
"You see my new road and the key to my intentions?" said the Major,forgetting all about his witch, and flourishing his geological hammer,while standing thus at his "nucleus." "To understand all, you have onlyto stand here. You see those leveling posts, adjusted with scientificaccuracy. You see all those angles, calculated with micrometricprecision. You see how the curves are radiated--"
"It is very beautiful, I have no doubt; but you can not have Uncle Sam'sgift of machinery. And do you understand every bit of it yourself?"
"Erema, not a jot of it. I like to talk about it freely when I can,because I see all its beauties. But as to understanding it, my dear, youmight set to, if you were an educated female, and deliver me a lectureupon my own plan. Intellect is, in such matters, a bubble. I know goodbricks, good mortar, and good foundations."
"With your great ability, you must do that," I answered, very gently,being touched with his humility and allowance of my opinion; "you willmake a noble town of it. But when is the railway coming?"
"Not yet. We have first to get our Act; and a miserable-minded wretch,who owns nothing but a rabbit-warren, means to oppose it. Don't let ustalk of him. It puts one out of patience when a man can not see hisown interest. But come and see our assembly-rooms, literary institute,baths, etc., etc.--that is what we are urging forward now."
"But may I not go first and look for my strange namesake? Would it bewrong of me to call upon her?"
"No harm whatever," replied my companion; "likewise no good. Call fiftytimes, but you will get no answer. However, it is not a very greatround, and you will understand my plans more clearly. Step out, my dear,as if you had got a troop of Mexicans after you. Ah, what a fine turnfor that lot now!" He was thinking of the war which had broken out, andthe battle of Bull's Run.
Without any such headlong speed, we soon came to the dwelling-place ofthe stranger, and really for once the good Major had not much overdonehis description. Truly it was almost tumbling down, though massivelybuilt, and a good house long ago; and it looked the more miserable nowfrom being placed in a hollow of the ground, whose slopes were tuftedwith rushes and thistles and ragwort. The lower windows were blocked upfrom within, the upper were shattered and crumbling and dangerous,with blocks of cracked stone jutting over them; and the last survivingchimney gave less smoke than a workman's homeward whiff of his pipe tocomfort and relieve the air.
The only door that we could see was of heavy black oak, without anyknocker; but I clinched my hand, having thick gloves on, and made whatI thought a very creditable knock, while the Major stood by, with hisblue-lights up, and keenly gazed and gently smiled.
"Knock again, my dear," he said; "you don't knock half hard enough."
I knocked again with all my might, and got a bruised hand for afortnight, but there was not even the momentary content produced by anactive echo. The door was as dead as every thing else.
"Now for my hammer," my companion cried. "This house, in all sound law,is my own. I will have a 'John Doe and Richard Roe'--a fine action ofejectment. Shall I be barred out upon my own manor?"
With hot indignation he swung his hammer, but nothing came of it exceptmore noise. Then the Major grew warm and angry.
"My charter contains the right of burning witches or drowning them,according to their color. The execution is specially imposed upon thebailiff of this ancient town, and he is my own pickled-pork man. Hisname is Hopkins, and I will have him out with his seal and stick and allthe rest. Am I to be laughed at in this way?"
For we thought we heard a little screech of laughter from the lonelinessof the deep dark place, but no other answer came, and perhaps it wasonly our own imagining.
"Is there no other door--perhaps one at the back?" I asked, as the lordof the manor stamped.
"No, that has been walled up long ago. The villain has defied me fromthe very first. Well, we shall see. This is all very fine. You witnessthat they deny the owner entrance?"
"Undoubtedly I can depose to that. But we must not waste your valuabletime."
"After all, the poor ruin is worthless," he went on, calming down as weretired. "It must be leveled, and that hole filled up. It is quite aneye-sore to our new parade. And no doubt it belongs to me--no doubt itdoes. The fellow who claims it was turned out of the law. Fancy any manturned out of the law! Erema, in all your far West experience, did youever see a man bad enough to be turned out of the law?"
"Major Hockin, how can I tell? But I fear that their practice was very,very sad--they very nearly always used to hang them."
"The best use--the best use a rogue can be put to. Some big thief hasput it the opposite way, because he was afraid of his own turn. Theconstitution must be upheld, and, by the Lord! it shall be--at any rate,in East Bruntsea. West Bruntsea is all a small-pox warren out of mycontrol, and a skewer in my flesh. And some of my tenants have goneacross the line to snap their dirty hands at me."
Being once in this cue, Major Hockin went on, not talking to me much,but rather to himself, though expecting me now and then to say "yes;"and this I did when necessary, for his principles of action were beyondall challenge, and the only question was how he carried them out.
He took me to his rampart, which was sure to stop the sea, and at thesame time to afford the finest place in all Great Britain for a view ofit. Even an invalid might sit here in perfect shelter from the heaviestgale, and watch such billows as were not to be seen except upon theMajor's property.
"The reason of that is quite simple," he said, "and a child may see theforce of it. In no other part of the kingdom can you find so steep abeach fronting the southwest winds, which are ten to one of all otherwinds, without any break of sand or rock outside. Hence we have what youcan not have on a shallow shore--grand rol
lers: straight from the veryAtlantic, Erema; you and I have seen them. You may see by the map thatthey all end here, with the wind in the proper quarter."
"Oh, please not to talk of such horrors," I said. "Why, your rampartswould go like pie crust."
The Major smiled a superior smile, and after more talk we went home todinner.
From something more than mere curiosity, I waited at Bruntsea for a dayor two, hoping to see that strange namesake of mine who had shown somuch inhospitality. For she must have been at home when we made thatpressing call, inasmuch as there was no other place to hide her withinthe needful distance of the spot where she had stood. But the longerI waited, the less would she come out--to borrow the good Irishman'sexpression--and the Major's pillar-box, her favorite resort, was left inconspicuous solitude. And when a letter came from Sir Montague Hockin,asking leave to be at Bruntlands on the following evening, I packedup my goods with all haste, and set off, not an hour too soon, forShoxford.
But before taking leave of these kind friends, I begged them to do forme one little thing, without asking me to explain my reason, which,indeed, was more than I could do. I begged them, not of course to watchSir Montague, for that they could not well do to a guest, but simply tokeep their eyes open and prepared for any sign of intercourse, if suchthere were, between this gentleman and that strange interloper. MajorHockin stared, and his wife looked at me as if my poor mind musthave gone astray, and even to myself my own thought appeared absurd.Remembering, however, what Sir Montague had said, and other littlethings as well, I did not laugh as they did. But perhaps one part of myconduct was not right, though the wrong (if any) had been done beforethat--to wit, I had faithfully promised Mrs. Price not to say a wordat Bruntlands about their visitor's low and sinful treachery toward mycousin. To give such a promise had perhaps been wrong, but still withoutit I should have heard nothing of matters that concerned me nearly. Andnow it seemed almost worse to keep than to break such a pledge, when Ithought of a pious, pure-minded, and holy-hearted woman, like my dear"Aunt Mary," unwittingly brought into friendly contact with a man of thelowest nature. And as for the Major, instead of sitting down with sucha man to dinner, what would he have done but drive him straightway fromthe door, and chase him to the utmost verge of his manor with the peakend of his "geological hammer?"
However, away I went without a word against that contemptible and baseman, toward whom--though he never had injured me--I cherished, for mypoor cousin's sake, the implacable hatred of virtuous youth. And a wildidea had occurred to me (as many wild ideas did now in the crowd ofthings gathering round me) that this strange woman, concealed from theworld, yet keenly watching some members of it, might be that fallen andmiserable creature who had fled from a good man with a bad one, becausehe was more like herself--Flittamore, Lady Castlewood. Not that shecould be an "old woman" yet, but she might look old, either by disguise,or through her own wickedness; and every body knows how suddenly thosesouthern beauties fall off, alike in face and figure. Mrs. Price had nottold me what became of her, or even whether she was dead or alive, butmerely said, with a meaning look, that she was "punished" for her sin,and I had not ventured to inquire how, the subject being so distasteful.
To my great surprise, and uneasiness as well, I had found at Bruntlandsno letter whatever, either to the Major or myself, from Uncle Sam or anyother person at the saw-mills. There had not been time for any answerto my letter of some two months back, yet being alarmed by the Sawyer'slast tidings, I longed, with some terror, for later news. And all theUnited Kingdom was now watching with tender interest the dismemberment,as it almost appeared, of the other mighty Union. Not with malice, orsnug satisfaction, as the men of the North in their agony said, butcertainly without any proper anguish yet, and rather as a genialand sprightly spectator, whose love of fair play perhaps kindles hisapplause of the spirit and skill of the weaker side. "'Tis a goodfight--let them fight it out!" seemed to be the general sentiment; butin spite of some American vaunt and menace (which of late years had beengalling) every true Englishman deeply would have mourned the humiliationof his kindred.
In this anxiety for news I begged that my letters might be forwardedunder cover to the postmistress at Shoxford, and bearing my initials.For now I had made up my mind to let Mrs. Busk know whatever I couldtell her. I had found her a cross and well-educated woman, far above herneighbors, and determined to remain so. Gossip, that universal leveler,theoretically she despised; and she had that magnificent esteem forrank which works so beautifully in England. And now when my good nursereasonably said that, much as she loved to be with me, her businesswould allow that delight no longer, and it also came home to my own mindthat money would be running short again, and small hope left in thisdreadful civil war of our nugget escaping pillage (which made me shudderhorribly at internal discord), I just did this--I dismissed Betsy, orrather I let her dismiss herself, which she might not have altogethermeant to do, although she threatened it so often. For here she hadnothing to do but live well, and protest against tricks of her ownprofession which she practiced as necessary laws at home; and so, withmuch affection, for the time we parted.
Mrs. Busk was delighted at her departure, for she never had liked to becriticised so keenly while she was doing her very best. And as soon asthe wheels of Betsy's fly had shown their last spoke at the corner, shetold me, with a smile, that her mind had been made up to give us noticethat very evening to seek for better lodgings. But she could not wishfor a quieter, pleasanter, or more easily pleased young lady than I waswithout any mischief-maker; and so, on the spur of the moment, I tookher into my own room, while her little girl minded the shop, and thereand then I told her who I was, and what I wanted.
And now she behaved most admirably. Instead of expressing surprise, sheassured me that all along she had felt there was something, and thatI must be somebody. Lovely as my paintings were (which I never heard,before or since, from any impartial censor), she had known that it couldnot be that alone which had kept me so long in their happy valley. Andnow she did hope I would do her the honor to stay beneath her humbleroof, though entitled to one so different. And was the fairy ring in thechurch-yard made of all my family?
I replied that too surely this was so, and that nothing would please mebetter than to find, according to my stature, room to sleep inside itas soon as ever I should have solved the mystery of its origin. At themoment this was no exaggeration, so depressing was the sense of fightingagainst the unknown so long, with scarcely any one to stand by me, oravenge me if I fell. And Betsy's departure, though I tried to take itmildly, had left me with a readiness to catch my breath.
But to dwell upon sadness no more than need be (a need as sure ashunger), it was manifest now to my wondering mind that once more I hadchanced upon a good, and warm, and steadfast heart. Every body is saidto be born, whether that happens by night or day, with a certain littlewidowed star, which has lost its previous mortal, concentrating from abillion billion of miles, or leagues, or larger measure, intense, butgenerally invisible, radiance upon him or her; and to take for themoment this old fable as of serious meaning, my star was to find badfacts at a glance, but no bad folk without long gaze.