Arminell, Vol. 3 - Sabine Baring-Gould 2 стр.


You are right, put in the tailor, landed property is tied up, and his lordships property is tied up tied up and sealed like mail bags till the young lord comes of age, which will not be for eleven years. So Blatchford, addressing the blacksmith you must multiply your horses by eleven.

That makes, said the smith, working out the sum in chalk on the shutter of the shop, say fourteen horses eighteen times two hundred and two and by four and again by eleven and halved because of sixpences, that makes five hundred and fifty-four pounds; then there were odd jobs, but them I wont reckon. Whoever chucked Lord Lamerton down the Cleave chucked five hundred and fifty-four pounds of as honestly-earned money as ever was got, belonging to me, down along with him.

Fax is fax, said the miner.

And human nature is human nature to feel it, added the tailor.

Theres another thing to be considered, said a game-keeper. In the proper sporting season, my lord had down scores of gentlemen to shoot his covers, and that brought me a good many sovereigns and half-sovs. Now, Id like to know, with the family in mourning, and the young lord not able to handle a gun, will there be a house full of gentlemen? It wouldnt be decent. And that means the loss of twenty pounds to me if one penny.

Nor is that all, said the tailor, youll have Macduff to keep an eye on you, not my lord. Therell be no more chucking of hampers into the goods train as it passes Copley Wood, I reckon.

The keeper made no other reply than a growl, and drew back.

There is my daughter Jane, scullery-maid at the Park, said the shoe-maker, learning to be a cook. If her ladyship shuts up the house, and leaves the place, what will become of Jane? It isnt the place I grieve for, nor the loss of learning, for places ask to be filled now and any one will be taken as cook, if she can do no more than boil water but it is the perquisites. My wife was uncommon fond of jellies and sweets of all sorts, and I dont suppose these are to be picked off hedges, when the house is empty.

Here comes Farmer Labett, exclaimed the tailor. I say, Mr. Labett, did not his lordship let off five-and-twenty per cent. from his rents last fall?

That is no concern of yours, replied the farmer.

But it does concern you, retorted the tailor, for now that his lordship is dead, the property is tied up and put in the hands of trustees, and trustees cant remit rents. If they were to do so, the young lord, when he comes of age, might be down on them and make them refund out of their own pockets. So that away over the rocks, down the Cleave, went twenty-five per cent. abatement when his lordship fell, or was helped over.

Ah! groaned the shoemaker, and all them jellies, and blanc-mange, and custards was chucked down along of him.

And now, said another, Macduff will have the rule. Afore, if we didnt like what Macduff ordained, we could go direct to his lordship, but now there will be no one above Macduff but trustees, and trustees wont meddle. That will be a pretty state of things, and his wife to ride in a victoria, too.

Then a woman called Tregose pushed her way through the throng, and with loud voice expressed her views.

I dont see what occasion you men have to grumble. Dont y see that the family will have to go into mourning, and so get rid of their colours, and we shall get them. Theres Miss Arminells terra-cotta Ive had my eye on for my Louisa, but I never reckoned on having it so soon. There never was a wind blowed, argued Mrs. Tregose, that was an unmixed evil, and didnt blow somebody good. If this here wind have blowed fourteen horses, and jellies and twenty-five per cent. and the keepers tips over the Cleave it ha blowed a terra-cotta gown on to my Louisa.

But, argued the tailor in his strident voice, supposing, in consequence of the death, that her ladyship and the young lady and the little lord give up living here, and go for education to London or abroad, where will you be, Mrs. Tregose, for their cast gowns? Your Louisa aint going to wear that terra-cotta for eleven years, I reckon.

Theres something in that, assented the woman, and her mouth fell. Yes, she said, after a pause for consideration, who can tell how many beautiful dresses and bonnets and mantles have gone over the Cleave along with the blanc-mange, and the horses and the five-and-twenty per cent.? Im uncommon sorry now his lordship is dead.

Ive been credibly informed, said the tailor, that his lordship laid claim to Chillacot, and said that because old Gaffer Saltren squatted there, that did not constitute a title. Does it give a rook a title to a Scotch fir because he builds a nest on it? Can the rook dispose of the timber? Can it refuse to allow the tree to be cut down and sawn up, for and because he have sat on the top of it? Ive an old brood sow in my stye. Does the stye belong to the sow or to me?

Fax is fax, assented the miner.

And, urged the blacksmith, if his lordship wanted to get the land back, why not? If I lend my ladder to Farmer Eggins, havent I a right to reclaim it? His lordship asked for the land back, not because he wanted it for himself, but in the interest of the public, to give us a station nigh at hand, instead of forcing us to walk three and a half or four miles, and sweat terrible on a summers day. And his lordship intended to run a new road to Chillacot, where the station was to be, and so find work for hands out of employ, and he said it would cost him a thousand pounds. And now, there is the new road and all it would have cost as good as thrown over the Cleave along with his lordship.

The captain he did it, shouted the blacksmith.

Fax speak they are fax. Skin me alive, if they baint, said the miner.

Giles Inglett Saltren had heard enough. He raised his voice and said, Mr. Blatchford, and the rest of you some insinuate, others openly assert that my father has been guilty of an odious crime, that he has had a hand in the death of Lord Lamerton.

He was interrupted by shouts of He has, he has! We know it!

How do you know it? You only suppose it. You have no grounds absolutely, no grounds for basing such a supposition. The coroner, as yourselves admit, refused to listen to the charge.

A voice: He was afraid of having his shirt-fronts moulded.

Here, again, you bring an accusation as unfounded as it is absurd, against an honourable man and a Crown official. If you had been able to produce a particle of evidence against my father, a particle of evidence to show that what you imagine is not as hollow as a dream, the coroner would have hearkened and acted. Are you aware that this bandying of accusations is an indictable offence? My father has not hurt you in any way.

This elicited a chorus of cries.

He has spoiled my shoeing. He has prevented the making of the road. My wife will never have blanc-mange again. And Samuel Ceely, now arrived on the scene, in whispering voice added, All my beautiful darlings twelve of them, as healthy as apples, and took their vaccination well all gone down the Cleave.

It really seemed as if the happiness, the hopes, the prosperity of all Orleigh, had gone over the edge of the cliff with his lordship.

I repeat it, exclaimed the young man, waxing warm; I repeat it, my father never did you an injury. You are now charging him with hurting you, because you suffer through his lordships death, and you are eager to find some one on whom to cast blame. As for any real sorrow and sympathy, you have none; wrapped up in your petty and selfish ends.

It really seemed as if the happiness, the hopes, the prosperity of all Orleigh, had gone over the edge of the cliff with his lordship.

I repeat it, exclaimed the young man, waxing warm; I repeat it, my father never did you an injury. You are now charging him with hurting you, because you suffer through his lordships death, and you are eager to find some one on whom to cast blame. As for any real sorrow and sympathy, you have none; wrapped up in your petty and selfish ends.

A voice: Fax is fax he did kill Lord Lamerton.

The tailor: Human nature is human nature, and nobody can deny he prophesied my lords death.

I dare you to charge my father with the crime, cried young Saltren. I warn you. I have laid by a little money, and I will spend it in prosecuting the man who does.

We all do. Prosecute the parish, rose in a general shout.

My father is incapable of the crime.

We have no quarrel with you, young Jingles, roared a miner. Our contention is with the captain. Mates, what do y say? Shall we pay him a visit?

Aye aye! from all sides. Let us show him our minds.

A boisterous voice exclaimed: Well serve him out for taking the bread out of our mouths. Well tumble his house about his ears. He shant stand in our light any more.

And another called, If you want to prosecute us, well provide you with occasion.

Then a stone was flung, which struck Jingles on the head and knocked him down.

For a few minutes the young man was unconscious, or rather confused, he never quite lost his senses. The women clustered about him, and Mrs. Tregose threw water in his face.

He speedily gathered his faculties together, and stood up, rather angry than hurt, to see that nearly all the men had departed. The act of violence, instead of quelling the excitement, had stirred it to greater heat; and the body of the men, the miners, labourers, the blacksmith, tailor, and shoemaker, their sons and apprentices, went off in a shouting gesticulating rabble in the direction of the Cleave, not of Chillacot, but of the down overhanging it.

In a moment the latent savage, suppressed in those orderly men, was awake and asserting itself. Mr. Welsh had spoken the truth when he told Jingles that the destructive passion was to be found in all; it was aroused now. The blacksmith, the tailor, the shoemaker, the labourers, had in all their several ways been working constructively all their life, one to make shoes and harrows, one to shape trousers and waistcoats, one to put together boots, others to build, and plant, and stack, and roof, and now, all at once, an appeal came to the suppressed barbarian in each, the chained madman in the asylum, and the destructive faculty was loose and rioting in its freedom.

Thomasine Kite stood before the young man. Now then, she said half mockingly, if you want to save your mother out of the house before the roof is broke in, you must make haste. Come along with me.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE FLOW OF THE TIDE

Captain Saltren returned at night to sleep at Chillacot, but he wandered during the day in the woods, with his Bible in his pocket or in his hand, now reading how Gideon was raised up to deliver Israel from Midian, and Samson was set apart from his mothers womb to smite the Philistines, then sitting at the edge of the quarry brooding over his thoughts.

He was not able to fix his mind for long on anything, and he found that the Scripture only interested and arrested his attention so far as it touched on analogous trains of ideas. For the first time in his life a chilling sense of doubt, a cold suspicion of error stole over his heart. When this was the case he was for a moment in agony, his nerves tingled, his throat contracted, and a clammy sweat broke out over his face. The fit passed, and he was again confident, and in his confidence strong. He raised his voice and intoned a hymn, then became frightened at the sound, and stopped in the midst of a stanza.

Presently he recalled his wifes deceptions and how his heart had foamed and leaped at the thought of the wrong done her and himself, and how he had nourished a deadly hatred against Lord Lamerton on that account. Now he knew that there had been no occasion for this hatred. What had he done to his lordship? Had he really with his hand thrust him over the precipice, or had the nobleman fallen in stepping back to avoid the blow. Either way the guilt, if guilt there were, rested on Saltrens head; but the captain would not listen to the ever welling-up suggestion that there was guilt. It was not he who had killed his lordship, it was the hand of God that had slain him, because the hand of human justice had failed to reach him. The captain entertained little or no personal fear he was ready, if it were the will of heaven, to appear before magistrates and juries; before them he would testify as the apostles had testified. If it were the will of heaven that he should die on the gallows, he was ready to ascend the scaffold, sure of receiving the crown of glory; perhaps the world was not ripe to receive his mission.

When that wave of horror swept over him, no fear of the consequences of his act helped to chill the wave; his only horrible apprehension was lest he should have made a mistake. This it was that lowered his pulsation, turned his lips blue, and made a cloud come between him and the landscape. He fought against the doubt, battled with it as against a temptation of the Evil One, but as often as he overcame it, it returned. The discovery that he had been deceived by Marianne into believing that Lord Lamerton had injured him, was the little rift in his hitherto unbroken all-enveloping faith; but even now he had no doubt about the vision, but only as to its purport. That he had seen and heard all that he professed to have seen and heard that he believed still, but he feared and quaked with apprehension lest he should have misread his revelation.

It is not easy, rather is it impossible, for a man of education, surrounded as he has been from infancy by ten thousand influences to which the inferior classes are not subjected, to understand the self-delusion of such a man.

The critical, sceptical spirit is developed in this century among the cultured classes at an early age, and the child of the present day begins with a Dubito not with a Credo. Where there is no conviction there can be no enthusiasm, for enthusiasm is the flame that dances about the glowing coals of belief; and where no fire is, there can be no flame. We allow of any amount of professions, but not of conviction. Zeal is as much a mark of bad breeding as a hoarse guffaw.

Enthusiasms are only endurable when affectations, to be put on and put off at pleasure; to be trifled with, not to be possessed by. This is an age of toleration; we tolerate everything but what is earnest, and we lavish our adulation on the pretence, not the reality of sincerity. For we know that a genuine enthusiasm is unsuitable for social intercourse; he who is carried away by it is carried beyond the limits of that toleration which allows a little of everything, but exclusiveness to none. He who harbours a belief is not suffered to obtrude it; if he be a teetotaller he must hide his blue ribbon; if a Home Ruler, must joke over his shamrock; if a Quaker; must dress in colours; if a Catholic, eat meat on Good Friday. The apostle expressed his desire to be all things to all men; we have made universal what was then a possibility only to one, we are all things to all men, only sincere neither to ourselves nor to any one. We are like childrens penny watches that mark any hour the wearers desire, not chronometers that fix the time for all. How can we be chronometers when we have no main springs, or if we had them, wilfully break them.

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